Then he let it go. His hand tightened around Weiss's throat. Weiss was still smiling.
"Choose," Weiss whispered, voice low under the roar of gunfire and metal and screams and Meret rage ripping the room apart. "Cain or me. Leash or spine. Choose..."
Shawn moved. Weiss didn't see it. Well, he saw it, but he couldn't respond to it.
His left eye whirred, the microfocus core cycling up, as it gave Weiss predictive arcs painting invisible models across Shawn's path. The implant threw calculations in the form of limb angle, shoulder torque, likely strike vectors, probable killing lines. All useless.
Because Shawn did not move at a speed Weiss's implant was built to read. He had been holding back since he joined Talon. Never revealing the full scope of his abilities. Hiding his strength in plain sight because hiding was survival. No one had ever seen him move like this. He hadn't let them. He couldn't let them. You don't show predators the full shape of your teeth unless you want them testing theirs on you.
But he showed since he understood that Weiss was stalling. He allowed himself to get close to Shawn because he figured that he understood Shawn's speed and was confident that he could dodge any of his attacks. A risky gamble, one that won't pay off in his favor.
Time didn't slow. Shawn got faster.
The room blurred. The hum of the Juggernaut's rotating barrels pitched up into needle tone. Bullet trails thickened into visible streams of light. Pip's body mid-lunge smeared into a stretched arc like afterimage art. Ash's grin locked at a ridiculous angle with blood still flying from his mouth in a perfect line that hadn't finished arcing to the floor yet.
Weiss's pupils flared, desperate to keep up. Shawn was already past them.
He released Weiss's throat with his left hand and in the same microscopic instant drove his right hand inside his coat, under the segmented black panels, to the blade holstered against his ribs. It was not standard Talon issue. He hadn't told Cain about it. Because Cain didn't get everything.
The weapon was matte, dense, heavier than its size suggested. Narrow profile. A hybrid of a fighting knife and a spike, but balanced like a punch dagger. Brutal tool, meant for direct insertion. Handle sculpted to Shawn's palm.
Weiss saw the first glint of it and his knife hand twitched to parry. Too slow. Shawn slammed the blade forward, under Weiss's sternum and up, clean, deliberate, perfect. It went in up to the hilt.
Weiss's mouth opened. No sound at first came out at first. Shawn felt the resistance, that awful living resistance, the tense of bone, the slide into soft tissue, the brutal intimacy of puncturing something that still thought it was immortal. He felt Weiss jerk against him.
For one beat, there was nothing in Weiss's face. Not pain. Not outrage. Not even fear. Only surprise. Like no one, in all this, had ever said no to him. Then Weiss laughed.
Shawn's jaw clenched. This wasn't triumph laughter. It was delighted. It was… thrilled. Dangerous. Weiss's hand, the one holding his own knife, didn't drop. He didn't slash at Shawn out of spite like a cornered animal. He didn't try to take Shawn's eye as a last act. He didn't go feral.
He leaned in, metal fingers bunching in Shawn's coat, pulling him closer so he could speak directly to the black mask.
"Oh," Weiss breathed, red blooming over his teeth. "Oh, I misread you."
Blood bubbled at his lips.
Around them, battle raged. Brann roared. Rook screamed, still dragging himself into the firing line like he could body-block bullets with nothing from the knee down. Mara threw ice like a curse. Pip, wild with speed and joy, laughed like a child carving men apart.
Shawn held Weiss up on the blade, face inches away. Weiss coughed. Bright, arterial. It stained Shawn's gloves and splattered against his uniform.
"Wrong choice," Weiss whispered.
Weiss smiled, full and red and impossible as he saw Dagger's eyes narrowed behind the mask.
Then he died. It wasn't dramatic. One moment Weiss was there, anchored upright, pulse under Shawn's fingers, eyes bright with awful humor and conviction. The next, everything in him went slack.
That fast. The cyber eye dimmed. The hand with the knife dropped. The tension in his jaw let go. He sagged his full weight into Shawn and blood pumped in one last ugly gush around the blade.
Shawn let Weiss's body fall, hitting the polished floor with a wet, mortal sound. For less than a second, everything in the room felt like silence under sound. Then the Arc Spire woke up.
Alarms.
Not the polite tonal hums from earlier. Not Weiss's "do not interrupt me" internal alerts. This was a building screaming at itself. Red light exploded across the ceiling, washing the wood panels, the bookcases, the spilled paper, the blood. Emergency strobes lit the chamber in pulses that turned everyone into stop-motion ghosts.
A voice crackled through overhead emitters, neutral and cold and too calm to mean anything but catastrophe.
"ARC SPIRE CORE COMPROMISED," it intoned in perfect, uninflected German. "PRIMARY COMMAND OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. SITE PURGE IN FORTY-FIVE SECONDS. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE. ALL DATA SETS FLAGGED FOR AUTOMATIC DESTRUCTION. ARC SPIRE WILL SELF-NEUTRALIZE."
Shawn's head snapped up.
Of course. Of course Weiss hardwired a deadman. He had tied his vitals to the Spire's core and wrote in his own "if I die, you don't get to have what's mine."
Cain should have expected as much. The council knew Weiss more than anyone. In fact, Cain probably knew, but didn't warn Dagger. Nevertheless, Dagger should have seen this coming with Weiss' final moments.
Across the chamber, Weiss's soldiers faltered. The ones still standing looked up at the red light, then back to Weiss's body on the floor, then at the Meret unit, then back at the doors. Panic hit like a wave.
Some turned their guns back on the Meret squad in desperation, kill the problem first, then run. Others just outright ran. They bolted for the door at the far side, shoving each other, discipline crumpling under raw survival. A few climbed over fallen bodies. One shoulder-checked Pip into a wall in his rush to escape. Pip snarled and almost went after him out of instinct, caught himself on Rook's arm, and spat instead.
"Boss" Six snapped. "Forty-five seconds!"
"Forty," Mara corrected coldly. "Less now."
Another automated alert blared through the chamber, louder now, underlaid with that bone-vibrating emergency tone used in facilities built by people who liked thinking about what the last thirty seconds of your life would feel like.
"CORE PURGE ENGAGED. ALL ONSITE BIOMETRICS FLAGGED HOSTILE. EMERGENCY CONTAINMENT LOCKS RELEASED. ARC SPIRE WILL SELF-NEUTRALIZE."
Brann's head whipped toward Dagger. He had blood in his teeth and a Juggernaut's dented forearm clenched in both hands like a club. "Orders!"
Dagger didn't hesitate.
"The window," he said.
Silas blinked at him. "I'm sorry?"
"The window!" Dagger barked. "Move!"
Six sputtered, "That's.... that's reinforced smartglass..."
"Then hit it harder," Dagger snapped.
Brann grinned like a kid handed a new toy. "Oh YEAH."
He dropped the Juggernaut arm, grabbed Weiss's antique desk that was solid wood, actual wood, heavy as sin, wrenched it up with a grunt that sounded like ripping concrete, and hurled it at the floor-to-ceiling smartglass wall.
The first impact spiderwebbed it. Not shattered. But it cracked.
The view of Munich beyond the glass with the projected cityscape, the night skyline, flickered with the force, glitching static along the simulated horizon. Beneath the projection, you could see the barest hint of reality: hard armor laminate layers, tungsten mesh, ceramic underlacing.
Cain would've called that "annoying." Brann called it "challenge."
"Again!" Dagger shouted.
Brann roared and charged, shoulder-first, slamming his entire adaptive mass into the glass. Plates rippled over his skin in waves, densifying in real time before impact. The reinforced view screamed. The crack widened, crawling up in wild lashes.
Now it bled air.
Cold, real, outside Munich air licked through the fracture.
"Rook." Dagger's voice cut like command wire.
Rook was still on the floor, still in front of the far door, still built like a barricade with nothing below the knees but ruin and pooled blood. His face was gray and shining with sweat. His breathing came in desperate animal bursts.
He stared at Dagger across the chaos. "Boss..."
"Move," Dagger said. "Now."
Rook tried. That was the worst part. That he tried.
He planted his palms, dragged, hauled, and pushed, then snarled in pain, cursed, left smeared streaks behind him in a trail of himself across Weiss's polished floor, forcing his body to obey through raw defiance.
He didn't get far.
His body was trying to regrow and failing. The serum fought to plate over the open ends. It tried to reinforce his thighs, trying to compensate for the new reinforcement that it was installing in him. Everything in him flickered in conflict. He didn't have ankles to push with.
"Thirty seconds," Mara said. Her voice was too even. Too clinical. The calm of someone already doing math on who makes it.
Brann slammed the window again.
This time it shattered.
It didn't explode outward in some dramatic cinematic shower. It failed like engineered material fails, in layered slabs, the outermost tempered smartglass giving way in great fractured planes that fell forward and then fell apart, followed by inner laminate bowing under pressure and then shearing. Shards snapped and spun and screamed through the air.
Cold night hit the room like a slap.
Munich yawned below them with black rooftops, wet metal, skeletal crane rigs stretching over dark yards and floodlit shipping lots. The Arc Spire sat tall. Not corporate-skyscraper tall, but enough that the ground looked far.
Far enough to kill anyone who landed wrong.
Brann turned, grinning wide. "Exit."
"Out!" Dagger shouted.
The squad surged toward the opening.
Pip whooped, sprinting. "OH THIS IS GONNA RULE—"
"PIP," Vex snapped, "STAY WITH US—"
Pip ignored "stay with us." Pip launched.
He didn't even think about it. He just ran and leapt, hurling himself out into winter air with a sound between glee and battle cry. He arced like a thrown knife, body already angling for a roll on landing because he trusted his bones more than gravity.
Rook clawed at the floor.
"Boss!" Pip yelled from midair, wild joy in his voice. "I'M FLYIIII—"
He was too far.
Dagger saw it in a flash that didn't even last a heartbeat.
Pip hit an updraft, spun, and instead of dropping toward the flat admin roof just below the Spire's window line, his body cleared it.
Too much horizontal. Not enough down.
He sailed past the roof edge into open air.
There was no second landing surface below him. Just twenty meters of empty space and then hard blacktop studded with rusting freight crates.
Pip's laugh turned into a short, surprised "—oh—"
Then he hit the ground.
No bounce.
Just a wet, final impact and a shape that didn't get up.
Vex swore, low and vicious.
Ash flinched like someone had hit him in the stomach.
Brann's grin faltered for half a breath, then snapped back in anger.
Rook clawed forward. "Go!" he roared. "GO!"
"Twenty seconds," Mara said.
Shawn's eyes flicked to Rook.
Rook was still dragging. He'd made it maybe two meters. Not enough. His forearms trembled. His face was white with fury, not fear.
"Rook," Dagger repeated. "Jump."
Rook laughed, a single brutal bark. "You seeing legs I ain't got?"
"Push yourself, and jump." Dagger ordered.
Rook stared at him.
Then Rook clenched his jaw and shoved both palms flat to the polished floor, braced his shredded thighs under him, and launched his upper body forward and out like someone doing the world's worst push-up off the edge of a rooftop. Then let out a string of curses as he tried to pull his body forward. With the pain too much for him to bear, he fell back on the floor, breathing heavily as he gave up.
His whole body seized. Every muscle went rigid like current just slammed through his spine. Rook screamed once, a ragged inhuman crack of sound.
Then he went utterly still, frozen half-on, paralyzed in a broken sprawl, eyes wide, teeth bared. Dagger understood instantly.
Cain's leash.
The obedience spine at Rook's C7 had just hit its failsafe. The implant recognized disobedience — failure to execute an order he had been given at core (fight, advance, complete objective). He was no longer in a combat position. He was in retreat. And Rook couldn't physically comply with Dagger's "jump" in the clean, functional way Cain's code considered acceptable movement.
To the spine logic, that read as refusal. Refusal triggered correction. Correction triggered paralysis. And paralysis, right now, meant sentence. Rook locked in place like a dropped marionette.
His eyes found Dagger's.
They were furious. They were begging.
"Ten seconds," Mara said softly.
In reality, it would have been all too easy for Dagger to simply run and grab Rook and jump out the window. With his strength and speed, he could do it in a second and a half. But this mission revealed something to Dagger.
This entire time he was comparing them to his team in Overwatch and it became all too clear. He hated everything about these guys. He had no love for any of them and knew what needed to be done.
"Out," Dagger said, voice low, flat, brutal.
Vex went first.
She didn't waste sound. She just sprinted and jumped, body compact, arms tucked, legs angled for impact. She vanished into the cold.
Ash followed, howling, "I'M GONNA REGRET THISSSSS...."
Six next, teeth gritted, eyes blown wide, fear and excitement braided. Silas flowed after him like a ribbon whipping in wind. Two went, hauling Mara with him like she was lighter than she was, Mara snapping, "Let go of me," even as she let him angle her into the fall.
Brann turned, one last look at Rook. Rook, frozen, screamed through a locked jaw, "GO, YOU BIG STUPID..."
Brann snarled and leapt. Only Shawn was left in the red pulse of the Spire's death-throes. Weiss lay at his feet, dead and grinning.
The alarm voice flooded the chamber again, louder, like it had climbed inside his skull.
"SITE PURGE IN FIVE SECONDS. FOUR. THREE—"
Shawn ran. He hit the edge, planted, and hurled himself into the night. Cold air slammed him as gravity grabbed him.
Munich spun up at him fast: black roofs, wet metal, skeletal crane shadows slashing across industrial lots, flood lamps painting hard white pools on concrete.
He didn't aim to clear the building. He stayed close to the building. His blade was still in his hand. Weiss's blood ran down it, down his wrist, now over his sleeve into the air between them.
He had one hand free. He twisted in the air mid-fall, brought the blade up over his shoulder, and drove it backward into the Arc Spire's exterior skin.
Sparks screamed.
Pain exploded up his arm, white and electric. The blade bit into armored plating like he'd slammed a prybar into a car chassis at freeway speeds. The force nearly tore his shoulder out of the socket.
He grunted and held as the pain made the world spin for a second. His fall didn't stop completely but it slowed.
His blade howled against the Spire's armored plating, carving a furious, sparking, molten-bright scar down the side of the building.
Heat ripped into his forearm. Metal screamed in protest. The shock up his bones felt like they might explode.
Far below, Brann hit a lower roof like a wrecking ball, rolled, slammed shoulder-first into a vent housing, left a crater, came up laughing and swearing.
Vex landed in a slide, shoulder tucked, turning bone and plating on her outer arm to absorb what should've shattered it.
Six hit and rolled and came up with a scream-smile like he couldn't believe he wasn't paste.
Two crashed down in a three-point crouch that shattered roof paneling, Mara in his grip, her breath hissing in furious cold steam.
Ash hit wrong, bounced, slid, let out a breathless "ha—ha—ha—ow," and then started laughing again because Ash was a problem.
Silas didn't land so much as pour onto the rooftop, body taking impact like fluid.
Then the friction took him the last few meters. His shoulder finally gave with a nauseating crack-white pop. The blood on the blade finally proved to be his enemy as it made him lose his grip.
He dropped the rest of the way like a stone and slammed into the rooftop in a sprawl of black coat and jagged momentum. Pain blew through his body like shrapnel.
For half a heartbeat, there was nothing but cold and ringing and the taste of iron. Above him, behind him, the Arc Spire bloomed.
It didn't explode outward in cinematic fireball glory. Weiss's system was smarter than that. This wasn't "blow up and take the district." This was "deny recovery."
The top third of the Spire went bright, for an instant, so bright it hurt, like staring into a welding torch held to your face. The light wasn't flame. It was flash incineration. Internal. Focused.
Then the brightness collapsed in on itself and the Spire's upper windows, the ones that hadn't already shattered, went black in a spreading wave. Panels buckled inward as internal support latches gave way. Smoke vented, not black, not greasy, but pale, vapor-thin. Superheated coolant boiled off in ghost streams.
Weiss's body, his files, his lab heart, his codes, all gone. Rook too.
That part no one said out loud. They all watched it, breathing hard on the roof.
Silence hit them like a wall. Broken by Ash, sprawled on his back, wheezing and giggling. "HAH… hahahaha… WE LIVED—"
Vex smacked him, not hard, just enough to make the point. "Shut up. Count hands."
They did.
Brann pushed himself to his feet, cracking his neck, spitting blood in a red arc off the side of the roof. "Roll call! Sound off!"
"Six," Six gasped. "Still here."
"Two."
"Mara."
"Vex."
"Silas," Silas said lazily from a crouch like this was an interesting place to stretch.
"Ash," Ash chirped, grinning through a split mouth.
Brann exhaled. "Brann."
No "Pip."
They didn't say his name. They didn't call for Rook. They didn't ask. They didn't have to.
Brann dragged his sleeve across his face, leaving a smear of someone's blood that wasn't his, and turned to Dagger.
"Oi. Boss, you good?"
Dagger lay on his back for one more breath, vision still sparking, shoulder trying to figure out if it was going to stay attached or not, the entire right side of his body burning.
Then, before anyone could move toward him, he sat up. A fresh spike of pain tore through his torso. He ignored it. He rolled his right shoulder once, like someone working stiffness out of a joint after a long sit.
There was an audible wet grind-pop as the bone slid back into its proper track, socket realigning under flesh, tendons knitting, fibers tightening. His coat sleeve was shredded. His arm was slick with blood. Muscle underneath crawled and reknit in a way that was more controlled than Brann's flexing adaptation and less theatrical than Mara's frost.
Brann watched that, eyes narrowing.
Everyone watched that. Because they all knew what Meret healing looked like. This wasn't quite that.
Meret healing was aggressive, messy, conspicuous. Bones popped and regrew visibly, like watching coral build itself under time-lapse. Plating crawled like molten metal cooling. Nerves rewired in twitchy spasms.
This was cleaner.
His looked like it was way less painful, and graceful as it wasn't being forced back together. The gashes on his arm healed in seconds. Dagger flexed his fingers experimentally, before standing.
Brann stared at him, something hungry and wary in his expression now. "Boss," he said slowly, voice rough. "Question."
Dagger looked at him.
Brann gestured vaguely at Dagger's shoulder, at the blood that wasn't bleeding anymore, at the arm that by all rights should've been useless. Then he jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "We did the bath," he said. "We drank the poison. We got remade. You yell, we move. You hurt, you… don't stay hurt. You're telling us we're your unit. We're your 'on me.' We're your blade. So answer me one thing, yeah?"
Dagger waited.
"You like us?"
The question landed wrong. Too open for any answer. Brann shifted uncomfortably as he decided to try again as he already feared to ask the first time.
"I mean, are you Meret too?"
Dagger looked at the night sky. He'd understood what Brann was asking the first time. However, he looked at it differently. Was he an experiment like them? But the question ran deeper.
If he said yes, that would form familiarity between them. Showing that they were essentially equals and give them a sense of what a perfected Meret could look like. So he decided to take the other route.
The squad watched his movements, thinking that he wasn't going to answer.
Through the silence, came a calm, "No."
Brann blinked. "No?"
"No," Dagger repeated. "I'm not like you."
Ash let out a low whistle. "Ooooh, ego."
Mara elbowed him silent without looking.
Brann tilted his head, nostrils flaring. "Then what are you?"
Then he said, simply: "Better."
Brann's grin came back slow, savage. "Hell yeah," he muttered.
Ash cackled, delighted. "THAT'S SO RUDE."
Dagger ignored their responses, "Let's move. We still have to extract."
Without another word, they moved.
Eleven had walked in.
Eight ran out into the Munich night, bleeding and alive and feral and hunted, with Cain's leash still humming in their spines and Weiss's blood cooling on Shawn's gloves.