Chapter Text
There was the loud crackle of gunshots as the cobblestone around him erupted in clouds of dust, bullets whistling as they bounced off and sang through the air around him. Sergeant Morrison was tucked into himself in a tight squat, his back to the pile of rubble that served as his only shield against the oncoming shower of bullets. Next to him, a private clutched his gun to his chest, brown eyes glimmering with tears that he struggled to contain. He looked to Jack, terrified, awaiting orders.
Private Owens was a good soldier, always following his duty. But Jack had nothing to supply him with. No brilliant escape methods, no witty plans for a distraction. No way out, no tactics left, no tricks up his sleeve. And here was a soldier, separated from his platoon with nothing but a man five years his senior to guide him out of the jaws of death.
The omnics had shown up in Eichenwald without warning. Morrison and Lieutenant Reyes had each taken a separate team of 25 soldiers down separate routes to outflank the machines, but somehow they had learned of it and scattered the entire platoon. Some of the omnics were marching around the back streets hunting stragglers, but almost six of them were stationed just on the other side of the pile of rubble, less than one hundred feet away from the pitiful trench. They sat, silent except for the occasional spray of bullets, folded into sentry mode, waiting patiently like vultures for their prey to finally be smoked out of their den. Morrison could only hope to god that most of his men had grouped up somewhere else for evacuation. He tapped the comm on his shoulder to receive a series of panicked requests for backup, all garbled by static.
"Grouped up... Coordinates... Sergeant? Lieutenant?... No sign of Rivera... Three soldiers MIA... Sergeant Morrison, come in, Seargeant!"
A cold stone dropped in Jack's stomach, and he turned to look at Private Owens, still awaiting orders. Slowly, solemnly, he shook his head, and the last bit of hope in the Private's eyes was snuffed out like a candle light. His face fell. Jack tapped his comm again.
"Sergeant Morrison checking in."
"Thank God!... Sergeant, awaiting orders... what is your location?... Lieutenant Reyes... No response."
As if Morrison couldn't get any more sober.
"Private," he interjected.
"Yes sir?"
"Send out an emergency beacon. How many are with you?"
"Thirty-two, sir. What is your location?"
Jack cast another somber look at Owens.
"Send the beacon," he repeated. "Remain indoors until the airship arrives. Inform Major Howell that Private Owens and I are lost behind enemy lines. Find Lieutenant Reyes if you possibly can, but get yourselves to safety."
"Sergeant-"
"Do it!" Morrison yelled into the comm, then threw it from his ear and stamped it into the ground. He had heard stories of omnics tracing down beacon signals through the comms of fallen soldiers.
Suddenly, a cry rang out through the gunfire, too youthful and panicked to belong to a soldier. Jack looked over at Owens to find him gazing off to the side. Jack followed his mortified gaze into the open doorway of a nearby building, where a tiny face leaned out into the open, tears dribbling from its two blue eyes.
Jack could have killed six Bastion units in his fury just then. The civilians were supposed to be evacuated hours ago. Eichenwald had become a ghost town in a matter of hours after receiving news of a nearby omnic raid. Surely no one was foolish enough to stay behind, let alone leave their child here.
Morrison watched silently as Owens lifted his finger to his lips to shush the little boy, who sat quivering in his shelter. The gunfire had suspiciously ceased. Now the only sound was that of the eerie wind and an occasional sound like an omnic footstep, so distant that it was difficult to tell whether or not they actually heard it.
"M... Meine Mutter," he whimpered, and Owens's shoulders fell.
"What? What did he say?" Jack hissed.
"'My mom," Owens replied, looking like he, too, was about to curl up and start sniveling.
Him and the child swapped a few more words in German.
"They were in the countryside when the omnics showed up. His mother sent him south and told him to come to us."
"Where is she now?"
Owens glanced over and asked the little boy a question, but only managed to make him cry.
"Owens," Jack warned quietly.
"I only asked him where his mother was!" Owens insisted, and Jack jolted, smacking a hand over the Private's mouth.
"Shh!" he urged, flinching when a tiny spray of bullets pepper the ground next to him.
They both froze, a cold chill keeping them in place. Jack had to force himself to swallow. None of them could speak. Not one word. If they were lucky, the report was correct in that they were all bastion units. Most other models were equipped with infra-sight. Slowly, he let his hand come back away from Private Owens's face, allowing the other man to look back to the little boy, who shook silently in the dark of the building, face tucked into the safety of his knees.
Without warning, Private Owens tumbled away.
"Daniel!" Jack shouted, a thousand seconds too late. Private Owens dove towards the building, arms outstretched so he could snatch up the child and make a run for it.
Daniel had always been fast, even in bootcamp. But now he showed a speed that could only be inspired by the kind of mortal danger a bastion unit posed.
But it was not fast enough. There was a morbidly enthusiastic whistle, and time slowed. Suddenly, there was no speed, strength, agility, no plan nor prayer that could save him. There was a crack, and the asphalt exploded in a geyser of beige dust that spewed from the brilliant red light that bloomed behind Owens, sending his limp body soaring forward like a ragdoll. The child did not bother trying to cover his anguished, terrified screams.
Without giving thought to a fallback plan, Jack charged out. The Bastion units were coming. His fortress of rubble would only preserve his life for a few more precious minutes anyway.
His feet carried him over the cobblestone faster than the wind itself. There was another crack, and the ground beneath him shuddered as a wave of heat touched his back. It sent him stumbling, but in sudden appreciation of his life, he somehow managed to catch himself.
There was no time for formality. There would be a time later that he would be haunted by the sight of Private Daniel Owens, lying face-down with blood pooling out where his flesh wasn't scorched into cauterization. The day would come when Jack Morrison would lie awake at night, staring at his ceiling fan and thinking about the number 76 stitched cleanly onto the breast of the other soldier's jacket. But that day could wait. For that to happen, Morrison had to first make it out alive.
So he showed no formality in throwing the gory remains of his soldier aside, off the screaming child. He didn't bother being gentle when he snatched the boy by the arm and practically yanked him into the air. And he certainly didn't pay any mind to the Bastion unit's angry whirring behind him. The gate was footsteps away. He needed just one second, one tiny hair of time to get into that bottleneck so they could tuck around a corner. Half a second. A quarter. He was almost there.
The skin on his back blazed, and everything caught fire. His arms wrapped tightly around something bony, and he clutched it tightly. It was screaming, but so was he. Still, he heard nothing but a deafening ring in his ears. Eichenwald spun around him like a kaleidoscope of orange and yellow and eventually black as the fire vanished to smoke. Distantly, he thought he heard Gabriel.
"Jack!"
76 woke up to an unbearable pain in his chest that spread like lightning down into his arm. His back arched and for one brief second of terror, he was sure he was back in Eichenwald. But when he opened his eyes, all he saw was the dizzying spin of his walls around him. His fingers clutched at the skin on his chest like if he held tight enough, his heart would be unable to seize up anymore.
He sucked in a miniscule breath of air and thrashed himself onto the floor beside his bed. He hit the carpet with a thud that knocked the breath out of him.
Panic clouded him as he writhed around on the floor, fingernails snagging in the carpet as he clawed and smacked at the ground, desperately trying to get a breath big enough to satisfy the ache in his breast that strangled the air out of him.
He couldn’t feel his arm anymore. The blaze of electricity had grown into a cold sensation of numbness.
Concentrate! Soldier commanded himself mentally and with the angry shove of his functional arm, flipped onto his stomach so he could zero in on his medicine cabinet across the room. It taunted him from its position halfway up the wall, too high for him to realistically reach in this state. He tried to move towards it, but the pain stunned him, and he found himself breathless again. His own weight crushed the air out of him now that he was on his stomach, his ribs clenched so tight that it felt like they were clamping him to the ground.
Soldier felt his head start to spin wildly, black and blue and violet spots of ink covering his vision, and he wheezed quietly as his chest lit up with fire again. Finally, his violent struggle to move allowed his unaffected arm to lash out and send his nightstand toppling onto the ground. His comm buzzed quizically at him and he hissed at it, willing it to come to him.
Luckily, it was already on.
"Jack?"
Angela's voice crackled out quietly from the little device, and he pounded his fist on the ground, violently willing his lungs to let him speak.
"Jack, is everything alright? It's late, why is your comm on?"
Finally, he managed to force out an ugly choking noise like that of a cat retching something up, and then his chest locked again, displeased with his waste of precious breath. He sucked in loudly.
"Jack?! Hang in there, I'm sending an ER bot to your room. Focus on your breathing, it'll just be a second."
The room was eerily silent for what seemed like an eternity, leaving Jack to watch as vision failed him and his heart started to clench like it was trying to squeeze itself to the point of popping. Suddenly, his door shot open and an omnic whirred in, a stretcher clamped between its claw-like hands. It scooped him up as easily as if he was a child, and then sped off down the hall.
76's veins felt like they were on fire. His heart pumped lava, not blood, and suddenly, the pain struck again. This time, it stunned him completely. He felt his chest explode, and would have cried out, but just then, everything stopped. His fingers went first, and then his limbs. In a matter of seconds, Jack Morrison fell away from reality, watching from a thousand miles away as a bright light came into his vision and above him, an angel. Her mouth moved like she was shouting. And then, the light flickered away like a flame in the dark, and all was black.