Overwatch 2: Sojourn

by Temi Oh

Genres: Military Fantasy; Science Fiction

Synopsis

 

Don’t miss this exclusive origin story of Sojourn—the fierce, cybernetic soldier, commander of Overwatch in days past and a steward of its future—based on the smash-hit video-game from Blizzard Entertainment.

     In the early days of the Omnic Crisis, there were few heroes to be found amid the devastation, or even on the warfront that pushed humanity to the brink. But in Toronto, a brilliant young captain named Vivian Chase refuses to cede her city to the hungry monsters pouring out of the Detroit Omnium. Vivian has yet to meet a lost cause she couldn’t save, even one as dire as this.

     To expel the omnics from her home and staunch the flow of enemy forces into Canada, Vivian will need resources, and these days only one organization has what it takes to stop the invasion: Overwatch. But when the Overwatch Strike Team arrives, it isn’t quite what she had in mind—an American supersoldier at odds with his commander, a disgruntled Swedish engineer, and a brilliant scientist whose dreams of a robotic revolution were in part what caused the Crisis. In a race against time, Vivian will have to use what she’s been given to form an elite fighting force and a winning strategy that can take the fight to the omnium . . . even if it costs them all their lives.

 

     Sojourn’s story puts the sheer devastation of the Omnic Crisis—one of the most momentous events in Overwatch history—into stark relief. Her tale is one of grit, heroism, and the fight to build a better tomorrow, even if it’s one she and her troops might not live to see. A must-read for any Overwatch fan.

 

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Release date: November 8, 2022

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Print pages: 166

Sample

 

PROLOGUE

Her father liked to say that she was born twice. The second time, in that Toronto hospital, in a body rebuilt. New discs in her spine. Her chest, a titanium cage. Heart, a silicone fist, pounding inside.

Sometimes, on the edge of waking, Vivian Chase thinks she can hear his voice, and her mother’s and Valentine’s, the shout of joy they all made when she came back to them.

“Human or omnic?”

This time, the voice that pries her consciousness open is unfamiliar.

“Sorry?” she says. She wakes horribly, her skull full of razor wire. Bones sore, the bruised skin on her temple—where she’s been hit—throbbing.

The world comes spinning into view.

“Where am I?” Chase asks.

She’s lying on grass, and a scanner floats above her head, the voice from its speakers ringing in a tinny monotone. It’s the kind of tech she’s used to seeing at airport security or at the front doors of shopping centers.

“I’m not equipped to answer your question,” the scanner says.

“Right,” Chase mutters, pulling herself up on her elbows. When she was knocked out, she was on Centre Island, part of the small chain of islands in Lake Ontario. She can tell from the trees around her that she has not moved very far. And from here, she can see Toronto’s skyline lit carmine, she thinks at first with sunset but then, Chase realizes, with flames.

What is she doing here? Memories are beginning to float back on a cresting wave of panic. A plane fell out of the sky. The power stopped. The last thing she recalls is the omnic attack. Shouts of violence. Terrified screams. Her niece, her sister—

“Valentine!” she shouts now, searching frantically. She was trying to save Valentine.

“This is a holding bay,” the scanner says. It’s an area about the size of a basketball court, surrounded by plexiglass walls. All around her are decommissioned omnics, humanoid robots with the Omnica Corp logo branded on their metallic hulls. Some of them are dented and in pieces, sparks from frayed wires winking at her. Others are slumped like drunks on the edge of the bay, or riddled with bullet holes, piled on top of each other like a litter of sleeping dogs.

Something terrible is happening. Even from where Chase is sitting now, the back of her throat burns with the acrid tang of smoke and some industrial smell, like scorched metal. The sound of gunfire tears the air, and beneath it distant shouts, cries of alarm, pain, the thunder of boots. It’s as if she’s on the periphery of a battlefield: sirens wail somewhere, engines roar. Terror makes her chest tight. Valentine and Chase’s niece, Bonnie, are nowhere to be seen.

“I need to get out,” she shouts at the scanner. Getting shakily to her feet, Chase examines the wall of the holding bay. There’s an electric field in front of it, she can tell without touching it, something about the almost subsonic hum it’s making. “I need to find them,” she says, more to herself than the scanner. “I need to make sure they’re okay.”

“I’m not authorized to release any omnics,” it says.

With a flash of annoyance that Chase works hard to keep back, she says, “I’m clearly human.”

The scanner activates once more, and a laser appears, sliding up then down her body before it emits an ear-piercing howl.

“I am not authorized to release any omnics,” the scanner repeats.

The machine is probably responding to the high level of synthetic compounds in her body. Her artificial heart renders her pulse almost undetectable, and the cybernetics in her head and eyes often trigger security scanners.

It feels absurd to her, in this moment, that she must disclose her medical history to this tin can of a machine. Especially when, somewhere out there, her sister and niece could be in danger.

Breathing deeply, Chase explains it the way she has a thousand times. “I have a condition—an autoimmune disease. My spine, heart, lungs, and most of my bones were replaced with cybernetics in a medical procedure. I can prove it—”

“I’m not authorized to release any omnics,” the scanner repeats.

“Augh!” Chase shouts in frustration, fighting the urge to slam a fist into its monitor screen. “Can I just talk to a human?”

“Chase? Vivian Chase?”

Chase turns to find a shadow emerging from the trees. Major Campbell, a man she hasn’t seen since her early days in infantry. Some four years on, his height and barrel chest still make him look larger than life. But the years have left some marks—a bald head and a graying stubble, blue eyes that flash like a cat’s in the gloom.

“What is it now? Sergeant? Captain?”

“Not yet,” she says.

“Our records show you’re on leave,” he says, slowing as he reaches the perimeter of the holding bay.

“I was, sir.” Then she corrects herself. “I am. I was on Centre Island when—”

How to describe what happened? The day was calm and bright, and then … the park erupted into terrified chaos.

Campbell’s face is grave. “It’s a mess out there, Chase.”

That morning, Vivian Chase and Valentine couldn’t have guessed at the disaster awaiting them when they ventured out to the theme park with Valentine’s five-year-old daughter, Bonnie.

It was a happy homecoming for Chase, a joy to return to the neighborhood she’d grown up in and to this place, the Centre Island amusement park, that their parents had loved to take them.

“It feels like nothing’s changed,” she says to her sister as Bonnie makes one more round on the Beastly Bears ride. Just the sight of the child makes her think of Valentine at that age: gap-toothed, her hair tied up in cotton-candy Afro puffs, sitting happily in the embrace of the coverall-clad bears. This is like Chase’s childhood too: watching from the sidelines as the joyful shouts of children peal out across the sky. She was almost always too sick to join in whatever fun her sister was having, or her parents were too overcautious to let her.

“Some things have changed,” Valentine says slightly defensively. She nods at the ticket booths and the park rangers—everything is operated by omnics now and not bored teenagers. Bonnie has one too, an omnic caretaker dressed like an English nanny, backlit visual sensors positioned in its head like eyes and a periwinkle dress with a Peter Pan collar. She speaks in a singsong register that feels a little creepy to Chase, though Bonnie seems to love her. The little girl begged Valentine to pay for the two of them to get on a ride together.

“I don’t understand why the omnic needs a ticket as well,” Chase says, taking a sip of the big blue slushy she ordered at the concession stand.

“Well, she’s taking up a seat on the ride,” Valentine says, waving as Bonnie and the omnic turn the right-hand corner. “And … I don’t know. Having an omnic … they sort of become part of the family after a while. The technology has advanced a lot since your days with Grandpa’s old VAC model.”

“Even with Omnica shut down?”

“Oh, there are lots of companies filling that void. Omnica’s whole problem was that they were pushing the technology a little too far. Didn’t you hear about that scientist there? The one who built Aurora. What was her name?” Valentine snaps a finger.

“Liao,” Chase says, though the story still makes her feel a little uneasy. “I heard her work on Aurora was just an aberration, though, something they couldn’t mass-produce. And now the UN has put limits on that kind of research.”

“Sure, maybe,” Valentine says. “But it’s funny living with an omnic—they do start to seem alive to you after a while.”

“They still make me nervous,” Chase says.

Valentine touches her sister’s arm. “Or is it that they make you uncomfortable because some of their tech is in your legs?”

Chase kicks at the ground but stays quiet. She has always been grateful for the technology that saved her life. Truth be told, she’s relished the strength and speed of her cybernetic legs, even if it only gives her a slight edge over her comrades. But being in the military—in a career that celebrates physical uniformity—it can be complicated having a body that is different, that sometimes needs specialized care. She doesn’t like to draw attention to it. And she really doesn’t like the idea of being lumped in with robots just because they share some technology.

“What I know?” Valentine says. “Their technology was part of what saved your life. And honestly, Julietta is giving me a whole new lease on mine.” That’s what Bonnie named the nanny omnic Valentine and her husband took out a small loan to buy. “You have no idea what it was like before her … Getting home from work, exhausted, having to chase my kid around, or throw some leftovers together, collapsing on the sofa at her bedtime, and still the house was a mess. Our daycare and takeout budget alone was higher than the mortgage. Now I come home and everything is clean, taken care of …” Valentine casts a loving gaze in Julietta’s direction. “I got pregnant with her so young. I thought I’d never be able to get back to finishing my degree. There was just no way I could achieve any of my ambitions with all the responsibilities I needed to balance. But now …”

The Toronto skyline is only a little different from her memory, more crowded than before, buildings jostling like loose teeth against the blue. There, the CN Tower, Scotia Plaza, and, among them, impressive structures she doesn’t recognize—luxury condominiums and newer shopping centers—and one she does, one of Omnica’s former offices, its glass facade glittering like a knife in the afternoon sun.

“Too bad Omnica isn’t around for your glowing review,” Chase says. Creating Aurora was the beginning of the end for the company. Divided everyone involved, sent them into a tailspin, opened them up to a huge amount of scrutiny they weren’t able to withstand. “Though, it still feels like the robots are everywhere.” Chase read that there’s now one omnic for every eight humans in Canada.

“Because they make our lives better,” says Valentine. “I bet if you got one—”

“I don’t want one,” Chase says, though it comes out sounding firmer than she intended. They’re quiet for a little while. A kid vomits her cherry-flavored slushy all over her clothes and waddles to her mother with tears in her eyes. Her robot nanny stands ready with a change of clothes. An omnic caretaker helps an old man up from a bench, and they smile at each other.

Hard to deny all the good the robots are doing, Chase thinks. Beyond the cybernetics that saved Chase’s life, she came of age just as countries began to adopt all kinds of new technology—systems that linked to local traffic and weather systems, governed school boards, and allocated resources to hospitals. Major AIs that helped design improvements to the economy, agriculture, global communication, as well as leading innovations in ecological preservation. Chase knows it would be irrational to complain about the robots without acknowledging the fact that the world they live in now is far better than the one she grew up in and is getting even better every day. Bonnie can expect to live decades longer than someone born a generation ago. Her education will be perfectly tailored to her interests and needs, and she will grow up in a world where there is less global conflict than before.

Aurora had called all that good into question though—had made society stop and ask if maybe they’d gone too far. ...