“Congratulations, Dr. Ziegler.”
“Well done, Angela!”
“You really are our dependable ‘Mercy’!”
A grand wave of cheers surrounded her.
No one knew what the female doctor who had just worked a “miracle” was thinking in that moment.
In the end, “Angela Ziegler” answered everyone with a polite smile—but in her heart she’d already sorted these people into two groups.
One group was the “heroes” she’d once seen on her computer screen.
The other was the “extras” she’d never seen in the game.
Long, long ago, the shadow and darkness that had lived in Qi An’s heart since the day she opened her eyes in this world finally broke free of its bonds entirely.
The wings of the “merciful angel” were stained black.
When the wounds on her hands no longer bled and only the health bar on a data panel dropped instead, Qi An stopped wondering whether this world was real or illusory.
The only thing left that could give her back her old sense of familiarity and safety was her “comrades” in Overwatch.
Comrades.
The “heroes” who had once appeared in a roster the same way—game characters waiting to be picked by players, deploying into combat missions across map after map.
Only they were people like her.
Only when she was out on a mission alongside her “comrades” could Qi An recover the sense of security she’d once known.
Even if her comrades would spout “voice lines” she’d heard who-knew-how-many times, even if a fallen comrade could easily be “revived,” even if they themselves formed part of this half-real, half-illusory world—that was still the only “reality” Qi An could hold on to.
So Qi An treasured Overwatch more than anyone.
She was terrified of losing a single comrade, terrified of Overwatch disbanding.
She didn’t know how she’d ever get through the disbandment destined to come, didn’t know how she’d hold out until Winston recalled the members of Overwatch once more.
Heaven wasn’t too cruel.
Qi An did find the unconscious Ana Amari—before she died.
The healing beam linked to Ana and rapidly refilled her health bar.
But the ever-reliable healing ran into a problem.
The eye Ana had been shot through couldn’t be healed.
Qi An finally remembered: when the support hero Ana made her debut in a certain patch, she’d already been blind in one eye.
She remembered something else, too.
That the attack on Ana by “Widowmaker” was the prelude to a chain of events.
Ana would fake her death and leave Overwatch.
After that, McCree would leave Blackwatch.
Then the turmoil within Overwatch would grow worse and worse, until Morrison and Reyes broke with each other completely, Overwatch Headquarters exploded, and Overwatch was forced to disband.
Everything that followed unfolded just as Qi An remembered.
She had no time to stop it, and no way to stop it.
The agents who had first gathered into Overwatch each carried their own ambitions, and when those ambitions could no longer be reconciled, these “heroes” wouldn’t bend or compromise.
Maybe Qi An should count herself lucky, because every departing agent said goodbye to her, and quite a few quietly left her their contact information—proof that her years of effort hadn’t been wasted, that she was, at the very least, well-liked.
But what did that even mean?
When Overwatch disbanded, the agents still gathered at the ruins of headquarters left one by one.
Qi An stayed until the very end, saying goodbye to everyone—goodbye to every “hero” she knew, and goodbye to the “heroes” she’d never gotten the chance to meet.
The ruins of Overwatch Headquarters suffered another massive explosion on the day of the disbandment, and every possible surviving clue vanished for good.
Vanishing along with them was Dr. Angela Ziegler.
In the blaze of the explosion, Qi An thought she would disappear completely, dissolve into a heap of data, or leave nothing behind at all.
But when the roar of the blast faded and the tremors and blinding light had ended, Qi An was startled to find she was still conscious.
She heard the rush of wind, saw a blindingly bright white dot in the distance, surrounded by a chaotic blue.
No!
That wasn’t a white dot!
That was the sun!
From the blue rushing and warping around her, Qi An grasped her situation.
She was falling from a great height.
“Mercy” could “fly” by following a teammate—but on her own she couldn’t fly at all!
Now that the urge to die had passed, Qi An became afraid of dying all over again.
She let out a panicked cry for help.
“Help!
Help me!”
Surely she wouldn’t be the first “hero” in history to fall to her death?!
From twelve thousand meters up (about 39,000 feet), in free fall, how long until you hit the ground?
Qi An could work out the answer in her head without pen or paper, but this was hardly the time for math.
If nothing unexpected happened, then even if she solved it, this would be the last problem Qi An ever solved.
Luckily, Qi An ran into a little “unexpected.”
Before her cry for help up in the sky could even travel through the air to the ground, the near-sobbing scream had already reached someone’s mind first.
The headmaster of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters looked up in surprise at the clear sky.
The sky was still a spotless, clear blue; nothing out of the ordinary could be seen.
There was too little time to launch an aircraft, and rescuing someone from that altitude would be hard.
But giving up without even trying went against his nature even more.
Charles Xavier swiftly used his telepathy to link with Warren Worthington III, who happened to be visiting the school that day.
(Warren, would you mind taking a look at the sky? You might be able to save an unfortunate soul.)
Warren Worthington III was a mutant as well, with a pair of pure-white wings on his back, like the apostles of God in legend—which was exactly why his nickname was “Angel.” Those wings gave him the power to soar through the sky, and without question he was the man best suited to be the rescuer right now.
Once he got the message, Warren curled his lip, spread his wings, and shot up into the sky.
He could only hope the poor wretch hadn’t been falling too long, or the speed would be too great for him to catch them—and too great for him to take the impact.
Anyone with a little knowledge of physics knows that reaching out bare-handed to catch something falling from a height means facing enormous force.
Even an object dropping a few stories could punch straight through a person’s skull, never mind a fall from ten thousand meters up.
Warren’s body was specially built, giving him greater load-bearing strength, but that didn’t mean he could withstand the impact of an object falling from a great height without limit.
So all he could do was pray for the unfortunate soul—pray that by the time he found them, their falling speed hadn’t already exceeded what he could bear.
Warren Worthington III’s flight speed was quite fast; going all out, he could fly four thousand meters (about 13,000 feet) a minute.
But in one minute, how far does a person in free fall drop?
The moment a black shape appeared in his sight, Warren had already written them off as dead.
The fall was too fast.
Even if he broke both arms trying, he’d never be able to hold on to them.
He changed his flight direction, still wanting to try to save the person—if their two descent speeds were close, maybe he still had a chance.
Just then, Warren heard an ecstatic thank-you, and looked over in shock.
The person falling from the sky had suddenly stopped falling.
She hovered steadily in the air and slowly flew toward him.
Behind her, a pair of white wings spread open, glinting gold in the sunlight, and a golden halo shone brilliantly above her head.