Remember?
A glimpse of a featureless face. A half-whispered word.
The coffee mug fell from slack fingers, shattering against the tile floor. The man that held it was rigid, pale blue eyes wide and sharp, churning mind a thousand miles away.
Gunfire. Explosions. The haunting, tell-tale beep of a sentry gun, prepared to puncture holes into anything bearing the color blue. A woman’s voice, laced with arsenic and soaked in nicotine, bellowing their opponents’ movements.
People on fire. People there one second and lifeless ragdolls the next. People blown to kingdom come beside him.
And yet, they never died.
Those eyes shifted behind the green tinted glass of his visor, transfixed to the Blutsauger. The cannon suddenly expanded in size, the weight of a staggering battery pack felt on his shoulders. They suddenly winced with a familiar ache, from hours of running with that pack, for no amount of cinching could minimize its bounce.
Those stricken eyes looked down at his own hands, seeing light blue rubber gloves flecked with blood. A saw with a long, vicious needle.
A sudden roar of pain was wrenched from his lungs as his cybernetic leg seared in agony, and he was brought clumsily to his knees. He looked down at the synthetic calf, watching as it became flesh and bone, marred with hellish scarring.
You spent too much time outside the respawn range. Your leg refused to heal because of it. The respawn is not foolproof, even if you are within range. On rare occasions, some injuries just won’t heal.
A familiar voice speaking his native tongue. Disheveled black hair, too thin for his own good. A sightless eye.
“Aldous.”
Fritz’s voice is little more than a whisper. That name, he knew that name, that man, that man in RED-
Knew his brother, too.
Fritz’s chest was heaving from where he awkwardly fell to the floor, eyes sightless as more still poured from the deepest recesses of his brain. They finally squeezed shut, willing the images to fade.
A German Shepherd. A Himalayan cat.
“Eins...”
A grinning Scout. A livid Sniper.
“Zwei...”
An infirmary. The coffeemaker cleaned. A grey, featureless, androgynous being sitting on top of a ceiling-mounted healing cannon. A fondness for it.
We see everything.
“DREI-!”
Fritz gasped as if he had been held underwater, gazing around his lofted space with eyes both wild and terrified. A pale hand reached up, tugging off the tinted visor and throwing it aside before scrubbing both palms shakily down his face. He had taken nothing, drank nothing, he had not a damn thing in the world to blame this on.
Still, through the haze, one image stood out clearly.
A logo. A white wrench, fixed around a yellow globe. The initials BLU. The name Builders League United.
A hasty shift of his leg, cybernetic once more, and he climbed unsteadily to his feet, hellbent on reaching the archives.
He had to know what he just saw.
He had to remember.
