Huh? Burnout? Did he leave the bridge? Elaborate please.
Someone asked on Dumpshock when we'd see Billy/Lethe again after 4th Ed came out. The line manager at the time said a plane crashed on him and he died during the crash.
Basically, the entire Dragonheart trilogy was meant to do a couple of things. Explain how and why Dunkelzahn died and close off the entire Horrors subplot for good. Not sure if it was by design or by chance, but after that, the design philosophy of the metaplot changed. It went from previously where they would hint at events in one book, introduce them in another, expand on them for a book or two, and finally give them full game stats and treatments and the plot "closed out". A few examples of the previous philosophy would be Bugs (hinted in Secrets of Power, introduced in Universal Brotherhood, expanded in 2XS and Queen Euphoria, and closed out in Bug City), Horrors (hinted in every Aztlan/Aztechnology write-up, introduced in Aztlan, expanded in Harlequin's Back and Worlds Without End, and closed out in the Dragonheart trilogy), and IEs (hinted in Tir Tairngire write-ups, introduced in Tir Tairngire, expanded in Tir nA nOg, Harlequin, and pretty much everything involving either of those two countries, closed out in Threats).
The design philosophy afterward seemed to take a much more organic approach. Basically, they threw a bunch of crap against the wall and waited to see what stuck. They'd set up little hints about anything and everything, then expand on the ones people seemed interested in with a single book covering about a year of gametime for the event. The Corporate War, Year of the Comet, Renraku Archology Shutdown, etc. Then when they ran out of ideas, they'd make another set-up book, typically something like the Target and Shadows of where they updated locations and set up more possible events.
This pretty much stopped after 4th Edition as they were concerned with just getting all the "Core books" out (cyber, guns, magic, matrix, and options) for so long that they didn't develop the plots for a while. By the time they were done with those, the editorial staff had multiple changeovers and the license changed hands and honestly, I haven't been able to figure out what their design philosophy is now at all. I think it's having the same problem that other systems (D&D mainly) and comics have been having. They try something new, but thanks to the internet, they get INSTANT feedback of people whining about how it's different so it sucks so they never have a chance to follow through as they try to change to fit what people want. D&D kept getting complaints in 4e about how it's different so it sucks, so they tried to move back to something closer to the previous editions in Essentials and got massive negative feedback so they scrapped that and completely ditched their entire line and they've only got something like four or five books on the schedule for the entire year (which is big for a system that used to put out 1-2 a month).