Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Banque de France, Paris, 17:43

After the end of the Omnic Crisis Angela had hoped to never again find herself on the scene of a battle, hoped to never again hear the nerve rattling noise of gunfire hitting your cover, or the abrupt hissing sound marking the launch of a missile.

But here she was, barely a year after the end of the war, in the midst of an intersection hunkering down behind an abandoned hover car. Angela was just wondering where she went wrong when her radio crackled to life, “Does anyone have a bead on the mark?”

“Negative Jack. The smoke is just too thick,” answered Ana over the radio.

No one else responded to Jack’s question which wasn’t unexpected. A few minutes earlier, an errand incendiary grenade had set fire to one of the hover cars parked on the side of the road. Its fuel cell had been up to specs and had burned off in a safe and controlled manner, but the fire had still burned a lot of plastics, resulting in thick, black clouds of smoke hanging in the streets of Paris.

“Thermal?”

“No joy. The smoke is still too hot.”

“Okay, pull your snipers back to the police cordon. If any of these fuckers try to escape shoot to kill.”

“Understood,” after Ana affirmed the order the radio fell silent once more. And, curiously, the enemy guns did the same.

After a few seconds of continued silence, Angela’s curiosity got the best of her and she risked a peek through the shot out windows of her cover. She was pretty certain that the gunmen wouldn’t be able to see her through all that dust and smoke filtering through the air. And if they did, they lacked the accuracy necessary to make that kind of shot. As had been proven by the many, many bullet holes riddling the surface of the road.

Mercy poked her head over the rim of the car just in time to see one of the black clad gunmen pull the arming pin from a strange device sitting on the asphalt and hurrying away. Some of her teammates must have used the lack of flying lead to reposition themselves, because the gunman didn’t take three steps before a slug ripped through his thigh. The man went down immediately, his chin hitting the pavement hard enough for him to lose consciousness and his black facemask.

Angela only watched him fall from the corners of her eyes, instead she concentrated on the device he had armed. It consisted of a bunch of silvery cylinders which had her seriously worried, as there was really only one type of bomb that required pressure cylinders of that kind. Her fears were confirmed when a white gas escaped the mess of tubes connecting the different containers.

In a flash she tapped her radio and screamed, “Nerve gas! Put your masks on right now!”

Jack responded immediately to her warning, his orders coming in a rapid-fire manner, the last part barely intelligible through his attempts to don his gasmask, “Damn it! Ana have the police move back a few blocks and help with the evacuation of the buildings. Athena get the ABC guys out here ASAP. Reynolds get a sample, Sato cover him.”

Good, Angela thought, her last talk with the strike commander must have born at least some fruit. Jack had been a bit too careless about his own safety over the last few months, often relying on the resistance to chemicals the SEP gave him.

She pulled her own mask out of the back of her urban combat suit and put it on. She had left the Valkyrie at the Geneva headquarters, without any air support or visible sniper nest it often proved more of an impediment then a help.

Once she was sure the mask’s seal was engaged and secure she started to look around, trying her hardest to see beyond the plumes of black smoke. As a medic, she carried a bunch of emergency filters, thin membranes with a sticky edge, which could resist most chemical agents for a few minutes.

Her gaze fell on the twitching body of the gunman, and slipped right of him only a second later. Helping him was way too risky, Duke’s crew wasn’t known for respecting the Red Cross, even if it was helping their own.

Her eyes came to rest on a teenager hiding in a shallow alcove one building down the road. Why the girl was there Angela did not know. The attack on the national bank had been sudden, sure, but Duke’s guys hadn’t started shooting out the windows until the police had arrived a few minutes after the first alarm.

Mercy hurried over to the girl, putting the question out of her mind for now. She was careful to keep her head low and at least some of her attention on the growing white cloud behind her.

The nerve gas and acerbic smoke proved to be reliable cover and she managed to reach the girl without being shot at. The mystery of the teenager’s choice of hiding place became clear the moment Angela was able to fully see the girl behind her cover. She was desperately holding on to a little boy, shielding most of him with her own body. They must have been walking down the road when the attack started, Angela surmised, and the girl had probably been too afraid to run down the open, and very exposed, road with him in tow.

The girl jumped at her arrival, a panicked look on her face.

“Scheisse!” Angela exclaimed, she hadn’t considered that her sudden approach might scare the girl and hoped that the girl wouldn’t do anything stupid before she could identify herself.

“Je suis avec Overwatch!”

Recognition displaced the panic on the girl’s face the moment she heard Overwatch. Apparently some of the Crisis’ lessons were still deeply embedded in the people’s minds, which suited Mercy just fine. Death was closing in fast.

“Vous avez Mercy!” The girl shouted, her relief palpable. “Nous sommes sauvés!”

“Oui. Peux-tu porter ton frère?”

‘’Je suppose,’’ the girl said, adding after a moment, “Mais pas très long.”

“D’accord. Mettre le masque et fuir! Je vais de protéger!”

She handed the girl her own mask. Unlike the emergency membranes, the mask sported a clear faceplate and would protect the girl’s eyes in case the gas was acidic, which she dearly hoped it wasn’t or her near future would suck royally. She knew that little fact from first-hand experience.

During the crisis the god AI Kali had managed to get a hold of a sophisticated chemical plant. She still suffered nightmares from what had followed.

But she had survived it, and she would survive it again if the worst came to pass. That she was sure of. The thing she wasn’t sure of was how well the little boy would fare.

The only thing she could do for him was giving him one of the membranes. For a moment, she had been tempted to give the mask to him, but logical thinking had won out. He wouldn’t be able to guide his sister out of here if her fears were proven to be true.

 So Angela put on one of the membranes, gave the girl’s mask a quick tug to check the seal and then executed a combat roll, which Jesse would be proud of, out of the alcove. Back on her feet, she swiftly readied her blaster, keeping her eyes locked on the patches of grey and blue peeking through the billowing clouds of deadly smoke.

It was times like these that justified building her own blaster to Angela. The unique weapon had zero spread, no drop-off and barely any recoil to speak of, it was a highly precise tool, perfect for a world renowned surgeon. And with it Angela would be able to pick off any snipers hiding on the bank’s top floors.

Seeing none of the tell-tale flashes of sun on a reflective surface like, say the glass of a scope, nor any black clad men, she took the time to activate her radio and call for help.

“Jack, my mask is compromised! I need to withdraw, can you lay down some cover fire?”

“Kelly, you heard the good doctor, give them something to worry about… When it rains it pours,” the last part barely a whisper.

Moments later the sharp report of gunfire echoed once more down the roads and Angela wasted none of their precious time before calling out to the girl still hiding in her corner.

“Allez, allez, allez!”

The girl picked up her little brother and took off down the street, towards the distant lights atop the police cars. Mercy followed her at a slower pace, never turning her back towards the intersection and the front of the bank.

The bomb must have filled the large multilane intersection by now as the white smoke had really picked up its pace and started creeping towards her with worrying speed.

Mercy only managed to make it past the next house before the white smoke was lapping at her feet. When the mist crept past her hips she came to an abrupt halt and took one last look backwards at the teenage girl. To her surprise, she was still running, the girl must have underestimated her strength, or more likely panic had set in and given her a second wind. Anyway, it was a good thing for Angela, at least she wouldn’t have to search for her inside of a cloud of toxic gas, possibly blind and in horrible pain at that.

“Okay, das chönti schmerzhaft werde,” Angela said to herself after turning back around, facing the encroaching clouds once more. She took one last breath of relatively clean air, the black smoke from the car fire leaving a bitter taste on her tongue, and closed her eyes. Then the toxic fumes engulfed her head.

She held her breath for a second, waiting for the slight stinging and itching sensations that were the precursor to inhumane burning pain.

Another second passed by without any pain, then another.

Angela shakily exhaled and went for her radio, but her trembling fingers missed the button.

“I guess I’m not as fearless as I thought I was,” she chuckled. She took some slow calming breaths, it wouldn’t do for the soldiers to hear what a shaken Angela Ziegler sounded like.

“Jack, the gas is not acidic. Our standard masks will hold out for at least an hour.”

“Small mercies, eh?” Was said by Jesse’s gravelly voice. He really needed to stop smoking, Angela thought.

“McCree this radio is for important information only!” Interjected Athena. Jack had asked her to do that during the war, after their second mission as a team.

“Okay, enough of this standing around and waiting for the eggheads, Mercy gave us the green light. All units converge on the bank, we’ll use this damned fog to our advantage. Once you’re close to the bank stop advancing and seek cover. Reynolds, Kelly and me will use demolition charges to make a way in. We will hit them hard and fast!”

Angela took this as her cue to start walking again. Her combat suit’s armour was rated for small arms fire and even ricochets from large calibre weapons, but she really didn’t want to tempt fate twice in a single day.

She made it to the new police cordon without any incident and was relieved to see the girl and her little brother safely in the back of a waiting ambulance, getting examined by a paramedic. She waved to them in passing and continued on towards the waiting Orca.

The rest of the operation went smoothly. The fire teams breached the bulletproof windows with ease and moved in as a single, well-trained unit, overpowering the few guards in the atrium before they managed to recover from the breaching charge's heavy blast. Once in, the experienced soldiers moved through the facility in mere minutes taking out stragglers carrying bags filled with gold bars every so often, and finally, confronting Duke and the bulk of his guys in the parking garage.

The gunmen surrendered surprisingly quickly considering the fight they had put up earlier, needing only a few well-placed shots and few flashbangs to convince them of the futility of resistance.

So only a quarter of an hour later found Angela in the back of a specialised transport plane, tending to a number of wounds Duke sustained during the final skirmish.

Duke was an exceedingly big man, easily over two metres tall and probably weighted in at two hundred and fifty kilograms. Though from Angela’s scans only a fraction of that was due to the organic part of his body.

She was certain that he would be able to squash her like a bug if it wasn’t for the heavy restraints encircling every part of his body.

His hairless scalp and brutish face completed the picture famously. Only his voice betrayed the image of a berserker of old. It was surprisingly soft for such a monstrous man.

“You know this is meaningless,” he said in a conversational tone, “they are going to put me into a supermax prison for the rest of my life.”

He chuckled, at his words or at her attempts at ignoring him, she didn’t know.

“Only, it won’t be that long,” a smug grin appeared on his face at his words.

“Overwatch won’t remove my implants out of fear of hurting me. They can’t risk my poor mechanical heart giving out on me, couldn’t be reformed if I died, could I?” He taunted her further.

“So they put me, a man who can bite through girders and crush a steel helmet and the skull of its owner with a single hand, in a tight little box hoping it will hold me,” he stopped for a moment, probably waiting for a reaction from Angela, when none came he continued, “not gonna happen angel tits. I’ll be out of there in a few months, faster if I get some help from my associates.”

Laughing he added, “Overwatch is just too damn soft.”

Angela returned the applicator for the medical adhesive she had been using on his wounds back to her tray and starred off into the empty space above the stretcher for a few moments, apparently considering something. Finally her features hardened and she lowered her gaze on the man fastened to it.

“Athena initialise protocol BW_GR37X.”

“Protocol BW_GR37X is active,” Athena said in response to Angela’s order, her voice barely recognisable as it lacked all of her normal warmth and inflection.

“What are you doing?” Duke asked, when Angela showed no reaction he shouted angrily at her, “Hey I’m talking to you!”

When Angela spoke next her voice was soft and calm, but determined, “You’re right, partly at least. Overwatch will act exactly as you described. But not because they are soft, no.”

“Yea?” asked Duke doubtfully.

“Yes, but because they are civilised and try to apply civilisation’s laws to a beast. A beast that attacks the weak, and the strong, not because of hunger or fear but instead out of sheer malice. Such a rabid animal can’t be caged nor reformed. It understand only one thing; Power, over others, over them.”

“Oh no, you’re going to put me over your knee and spank me till I cry for Mercy, is that it?”

Angela continued on as if he hadn’t made any comments, though her disdain at his words was clearly visible on her face.

“No I abhor physical violence in any form. There will be no torture, no pain, only a swift death.”

“Are you trying to scare me little girl? You’re a doctor you’ve sworn the Hippocratic Oath and you’re a self-proclaimed pacifist. Hell you even call yourself mercy. You don’t have what it takes to kill a defenceless man.”

While duke had been talking Angela had retrieved an injector from one of the many drawers lining the walls of the medical station.

“Yes I am, and yes I did. But my years as a doctor and combat medic taught me that oftentimes harm is unavoidable. That, sometimes, you have to make the hardest choice of them all and decide who lives and who dies. And that there are rare times were an act of great harm prevents even greater harm coming to pass,” at this she stopped and shot Duke a meaningful glance before continuing, “And what people do not realise is, that sometimes the greatest act of mercy possible is a quick and painless death.”

“You can’t be serious!” He shouted panicky.

Her words had managed what neither bullet nor bomb did, his composure was utterly lost.

“I never joke about murder,” Angela said while removing the cover over what looked like an electrical access port for her combat suit. She lined the injector’s needle up with the exposed port and set the injector with practised ease to intake mode. Finally, she thrust the injector’s needle into the suit and pulled the trigger until a small spurt of a clear liquid flowed into the injector’s tank.

“Oh god you’re serious!” Duke started to struggle against his bonds in earnest, and, after that proved a fruitless endeavour, started calling out for help.

“No one is going to hear you,” Angela said, her voice having lost all of its colour by now, “This part of the transporter is completely soundproofed to protect the privacy of the prisoner and the pilot’s mental health. And Athena won’t hear nor see anything of what happens inside this box till one of us leaves it.”

“Please don’t do this!”

“I’m sorry, but this has to be done. You said it yourself, you are beyond the help of the prison system.”

“Please! I can change, I promise. I will sit off the entirety of my sentence and when they release me no one will recognise that gentle giant as Duke!”

Angela let out a heavy sigh, “If only I could believe you.”

She moved up to his head and placed the injector against his neck. “But know this, I will take no joy from this, and I will never forget you, not till the day I die. And your death will be fast and painless, I promise. There will be no cramps, no vertigo, you will just… stop,” for the last word Angela averted her eyes from Duke’s fearful gaze, and only looked back at him when she heard a strangled sob escape his lips. Her eyes instantly snap back to his, which nearly proved to be her undoing. Cracks appeared in her emotionless mask when she saw his tear-stained face, and noticed the silent sobs wracking his massive chest. But this pitiful vision was quickly supplanted by a great many similar memories of men, women, and children that had suffered at the hands of his ilk.

He had to die, but everyone deserves some comfort, even the lowliest beast. Decision made, she sat down on the stretcher next to his head and lifted it into her lap. Then she started to sing:

“Am Himmel schint es Stärnli"

"Äs dunklet ja scho"

"O Liebgott im Himmel"

"Lass d‘Ängeli cho"

"O Liebgott im Himmel"

"Lass d‘Ängeli cho."

Very carefully, and without stopping her singing, she pushed the needle of the injector into his neck and pulled the trigger.

"I gange is Bettli"

"Dir Stärnli guet Nacht"

"Dr Liebgott im Himmel"

"Und Ängeli wacht"

"Dr Liebgott im Himmel"

"Und Ängeli wacht.“

Duke died quickly and quietly before the last tone was sung.

“I’m sorry.”

Angela returned his head carefully to the cushion and stepped away from the stretcher. She discarded the injector’s needle into the medical waste bin and was just putting the injector into the washer when a muffled popping sound came from the stretchers direction. Angela didn’t need to look to know what had happened. The nanites, she injected Duke with, had just followed their programming to the end.

If she turned around right now she would be faced with bloodshot eyes and small rivulets of blood flowing from his nostrils and ears. Instead she went over to the doorway leading to the rest of the transporter and disabled the protocol controlling Athena.

Then she stepped through the door and tapped her radio.

“Jack, Duke is dead. I’m sorry.”

Five minutes later the transporter touched down on the Geneva HQ’s landing pads. Jack and Ana walked up to her the moment she stepped of the tarmac. They knew better than to crowd the landing pad.

Jack was the first to speak, his irritation showing clearly in his voice.

“What the hell happened, Angela?”

“Kill switch, hidden somewhere in his skull.”

“That can’t be! There are scanners at every entrance to the transport ship. They would have found the explosives.”

Angela seemed to wilt visibly at his angry outburst, she tried to hold his gaze, but the hostility on his face was just too much, so she glanced at the ground instead, “I don’t know how he did it. My own scans came up clear, too.” Then she regained some of her earlier spunk, squared her shoulders and looked back at Jack.

“Look, he had a number of cuts and bruises and two gunshot wounds. I tended to them without any problems. Then the medical scanner picked up a small brain haemorrhage, I injected him with some of my biotics, the same I used on dozens before him, and the next thing I know his brain is gone.”

Her explanation just seemed to enrage Jack even more, he stepped up to her and grabbed her arm.

“Damn it Angela, you’re supposed to be the best! I can’t believe that a dunce like Duke managed to get that past you!”

Ana chose that moment to step in.

“Calm the fuck down Jack. Duke was a known associate of this new terrorist group. From the way they have acted so far I think it very likely that they would take care of their own. And if half our suspicions about their backers are true then they surely have access to highly experimental hardware that can even get past our tech.”

Hearing that, Jack visibly deflated and let go of Angela. He took a step back and exhaled slowly, the anger seemingly draining from him together with his breath.

“I’m sorry Doctor Ziegler that was uncalled for.”

“And very unprofessional!” Ana added.

“It’s okay, no harm done. I know how it looks,” Angela tried to covertly rub the place where Jack grabbed her but she must have failed miserable judging from Ana’s dark expression.

“That’s why I will have Theresa do the autopsy.”

“That isn’t necessary Angela, we trust you.”

“I know Ana, but this has to be done by the book.”

Ana’s expression darkened even further at her words and turned down right terrifying when Jack let out an audible sigh of relief. Jack must have felt the change in her mood because he beat an immediate retreat.

“Well, this seems settled. So I’ll be in my office trying to explain this mess to the UN Oversight Committee.”

Ana waited until Jack was out of sight before she laid her hand on Angela’s shoulder in an attempt to grant the younger woman whatever comfort she could, and spoke softly, “Angela, if you need to talk… I’m here for you.”

“Thank you, Ana,” Angela responded, voice just as soft.

“Angela, I really think you shouldn’t be alone right now. If you want I can contact Winston. I’m sure he would love to talk to you.”

“Thank you Athena, but there really isn’t any need for that. I’m quite alright.”

“You were part of a combat operation not thirty minutes ago, and the medical policy clearly states that…” Angela braced her head on one hand and rubbed her brow with the other. “Yes, yes I know what the policy is, I wrote the thing.” She let her hands drop and continued, “I’m just going to finish this report and then I’ll go home, okay?”

Athena didn’t respond for a long time, which Angela took for the AI’s equivalent of an annoyed sigh. “Very well, but I will hold you to it, Doctor Ziegler.”

After that the only thing heard in her office was once more the rapid clicking of her keyboard.

She finished the report quickly, the part she played in the whole action hadn’t been that large after all, and she kept the description of what happened in the transport to the bare minimum. Theresa would have to write a proper report about what had happened during the flight, otherwise it could be construed as an attempt to influence the investigation of the incident.

After she sent the report over to the strike commander’s office, she opened a hidden file on her computer. The file contained a number of mug shots and their owner’s names together with a date, all of them from the last year. And the file was aptly named, “My Failures”.

Angela copied Duke’s picture from her report to the file and added his full name, “Daniel “Duke” Wilson”, and today's date below the picture. She saved the file, shut down her computer and went over to the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Night had fallen sometimes between her talk with Jack, and now. Only the passenger liners’ lit interiors could be seen on the dark waves of the lac Léman.

Angela sighed, another name added to her list. That made seven now, all in the short time span of a single year.

She plumped down on the settee that stood in front of the window, pulled her legs up and leaned back.

“Seven names,” Angela whispered to the dark corner office, “Daniel ‘Duke’ Wilson, Conor Walsh, Alexandra ‘Skorpion’ Petrov, Ando Yamamoto, Zhang Liou, Liam ‘The Scot’ O’Connor, Roberto ‘l’amante’ Esposito.”

After each name she went still for a second to visualise their respective face, then continued on, “Daniel ‘Duke’ Wilson, Conor Walsh, Alexandra ‘Skorpion’ Petrov…”

Chapter Text

Geneva, Angela Ziegler’s apartment, 22:12, (same day)

“Beep, beep, beep,” a short pause, then the phone’s alarm clock started its incessant beeping once more, “Beep, beep, beep.”

The phone had been trying to get its owner’s attention ever since the clock hit ten, to no avail. Not because Angela couldn’t hear it, no, she was sitting right next to it in her favourite cushy armchair. She wouldn’t even have to move her arm to silence it, all it would take was a single finger, and still she did nothing the like.

The alarm fulfilled its duty once more, “Beep, beep, beep.”

Again, no reaction followed. Angela was too deep in her thoughts.

Over the last few months this scene had played out a small numbers of times. It was always exactly the same, Angela seemingly deep in thought, if her furrowed brow was any indication, sitting in her customary chair while doing her best at ignoring the alarm she set not twenty minutes earlier. And like always, she wore a white cocktail dress, lacking any frills, and a pair of golden, open-toed stilettos. She looked for all the world like a young woman waiting for her girlfriends to arrive for an evening out.

And the world wouldn’t be too far off with their assumption. Angela was planning to go out, just not with any of her friends. Or at least she had planned to go out, before her usual worries had caught up to her, now she wasn’t so sure anymore. She was unsure if she was doing the right thing, worried what would happen should her friends find out about it. And a quiet little part of her feared she was getting addicted to it. These and similar worries had occupied her entire mind for the better part of half of an hour, ever since she had finished her preparations. These fears had her utterly paralysed and nothing so far had managed to break through to her.

Finally, three more minutes had ticked by and the alarm’s plain beeping sound was replaced by a horrible din that sounded like the love child of a heavy metal band and a brass orchestra. This proved impossible to be ignored and Angela was finally forced out of her stupor. She shook her head as if to shake her earlier thoughts out of her mind and swiftly turned off the alarm. She rose from the chair, silenced phone in hand and went over to her generous foyer, grabbed a small golden purse matching her shoes and left without sparing the coat rack a glance. Although the nights had grown colder, the temperature wouldn’t be a problem for her, she wouldn’t have to walk far.

Outside her home she followed a narrow gravel path to the back of her apartment complex, the lose stones and uneven ground posing little trouble to her, she was used to far worse. From there it was only a few more short steps until she reached the border of a large park. The trail she followed winded around numerous trees and colourful flowering bushes, which were a beautiful sight during the day. The sparsely placed lampposts did their best to try and light the path, but they seemed to only deepen the encroaching shadows.

The trail split and merged multiple times, but the confusing maze of paths didn’t slowly Angela down as she made her way to the northern edge of the park. She had spent a great number of hours strolling these paths over the years, trying to regain her balance after the many gruelling hours she had fought on the field of battle.

Unlike the other three sides of the park the northern boundary was not formed by houses, instead the tracks for the hover trains marked the end of the park. Although, hover trains barely made any noise, their tracks were still girded by tall walls. Because of that, the only way to leave the park on this side were two underpasses, one of which was Angela’s destination.

The one Angela had chosen was seldom used by the park’s visitors. While the other one led to more houses, a parking lot and the roads beyond, this one led to a tiny abandoned train station. Unsurprisingly the underpass rarely saw any maintenance and most of its recessed wall lights were broken.

Angela’s steps resounded loudly on the bare concrete when she stepped into the underpass. At its halfway point Angela suddenly stopped and pulled out her phone. She quickly entered her pin, a different one from the one she normally used, one which was uncommonly long.

Her phone unlocked to a highly customised home screen, which only held custom apps with crudely drawn icons. Angela tapped the one labelled scanner and held her phone aloft. She remained in that positions for a few seconds, then lowered the phone and smiled when she saw its screen was completely green.

She was alone and no bugs or electronics were within listening distance.

Angela stepped up to the left side of the underpass and pried lose the plastic cover over one of the broken light fixtures. It came off with little resistance. Behind it Angela found a mess of wires and a fluorescent tube of a truly ancient design. They didn’t interest her in the slightest. She pulled the tube from its cubbyhole and fumbled for the fake piece of wall that hid a shallow indentation in the otherwise solid concrete. Once found she removed that too and replaced the items stashed there with her phone.

Her stash consisted of a few plastic cards and a new, entirely black phone, which she promptly put into her purse.

With that taken care of, she stepped away from the wall, her face contorted in concentration. For a long moment nothing happened, then a soft, golden glow started to suffuse her skin. It started at her hands and slowly spread over her entire body. Wherever the golden glow came in contact with her dress it changed the dress’ colour to the darkest black imaginable. Her stilettos suffered the same fate once the glow had reached her feet.

Though, what happened to her dress was nothing compared to the transformation Angela underwent. Her pale skin darkened to a tan colour, her blond tresses were replaced by a luscious mane of silky black hair and her facial features sharpened. She braced herself against the tunnel’s wall and let out a series of pained gasps and winces when her cheekbones moved.

After a minute without any changes the intense expression on Angela’s face finally left and she fished in her purse for her compact mirror. She opened it with a flick of her wrist and inspected her face.

Eyes of the deepest emerald were gazing back at her from the mirror. The dark eye shadow emphasising their new colour even more, and a slight change in angle revealed lips of the darkest red.

Satisfied with the changes Angela closed her compact, returned it to her bag and quickly left the underpass. Outside she called the first number saved on her new phone.

Her call was answered after the first ring.

“Rue du Cheminement, ten minutes.” Angela said.

“Certainement, lady Nyx,” came back, then the line went dead.

Geneva, Rue du Cheminement, exactly ten minutes later

La Rue du Cheminement was the name of a dank and dark back alley a few blocks removed from the park. It rarely saw use, even from the neighbouring residents. So the cats stalking this street for their next meal were quite startled when the headlights of a black limo brightly illuminated it. They immediately scrambled off in an attempt to flee the light, though even in their hurry they made sure to avoid the strange woman that had entered the alley from the other end.

The limo slowly drove down the narrow road, taking great care to avoid hitting the large waste containers standing at the mouth of the alleyway.

Finally, it came to rest in front of Nyx.

The driver’s side door opened and out stepped an inconspicuous looking man wearing a regular driver uniform. He was of medium height, had greying hair, a kind face and, if his accent was any indication, was a native.

“Bonsoir, madame Nyx. Comment allez-vous?”

“Je vais bien, Pierre,” Nyx answered, then climbed into the car via the door he held open for her. He closed the door after her and returned to his seat.

“Où voulez-vous aller cette belle soirée?” Pierre asked.

“Club Velours, aussi vite que vous le pouvez, s'il vous plaît. Je suis en retard.”

“Certainement.”

He drove off immediately and entered the main road with a bit more speed than might be prudent, considering the length of the car. He proved his prowess further when he also managed to push the button that would close the privacy screen between cab and seating, while performing the turn.

Once the screen was in place Angela opened the centre armrest and retrieved her alter ego’s gun, Nightfall, and a black Venetian mask she promptly donned.

The weapon’s grip was a perfect fit for her hand and with it came a sense of security she hadn’t even realise had been missing. It was a considerable bit heavier and bulkier than her Caduceus Blaster, though it still mostly resembled a handgun. The main difference was the barrel, which was a lot thicker, and the fact that it was mostly made from synthetic materials. Its matte black varnish was designed to absorb as much light as possible, to prevent any reflections. And so far Angela never had the need to use it outside of the firing range.

The weapon came with a thigh holster which she fastened to the lower part of her thigh. The weapon would be painfully obvious to even the briefest of glances, but that wouldn’t matter where she went. Club Velour knew their clientele and would never even dream of asking someone to give up their weapon. And the other guest would probably pack even more firepower than her.

The limousine arrived in front of the club in record time. The club’s outsides was a rather uninspired affair and little did advertise the presence of one of the cities hottest establishments. The building’s façade was a bland white which was only interrupted by a double-winged door. In fact the only thing that marked this place as a location of interest in any way what so ever were the two doormen standing next to the entrance.

The doormen sprung into motion the moment the limo came to a complete stop in front of the club. They were huge men, clearly enhanced and armed, and both of them wore black suits with the club’s signature red velvet ties.

One of the two opened the limo’s passenger door and extended a hand to help her step out of the hover car in an elegant manner, while the other already opened the club’s front doors in foresight of her arrival.

“Welcome to Club Velours, lady Nyx.”

Normally, they would check the identity of every person who wished to enter the establishment to confirm that they weren’t an undercover cop, and more importantly to ensure the health of the guest’s bank account. But Angela was a well-known patron of the club, therefore they ushered her in without any further questions.

Nyx only inclined her head in answer to his greeting and stepped through the open door.

Just beyond the entrance was a large foyer with a staffed coat check, which Nyx passed by, ignoring its presence together with the smile its attendee shot her.

She stepped past the next set of doors and into the heart of the club. Its layout was easiest described by the shape of a half moon, with the entrance on the outside of the widest part.

From the entrance a red velvet carpet led in a straight line to the club’s massive bar, that wrapped all along the inside of the curved shape. From the main path numerous smaller trails of red velvet branched out and led into the wings. One of which was occupied by lounge furniture and a large dance floor full of revellers, while the other sported numerous intimate tables and little booths that were still mostly occupied by dinner guests, even at this hour. The furniture was made of dark woods and leathers and contrasted strongly with the network of bright red paths. The club was only weakly lit by small red and white lamps placed on the many tables, the dim atmosphere this caused was even more exaggerated by the black marble floor.

To Nyx, the network of red carpet and lights on black floor bore a strong resemblance to a human cardiovascular system.

The club held two stages, one on either end of the half-moon shape, on which live music was performed from dusk till dawn. And even though they played rather loudly, Nyx heard nothing of them. The newest Vishkar sound technology ensured that not a single note made it past the central line.

She followed this line to the bar and then went to her left for a bit. She enjoyed the dinner area’s softer music a lot more than whatever modern crap they played on the dance floor. Tough, she didn’t step far past the noise cancelling line and she had a good reason for doing so. The back of the bar's entire length was spanned by a single, continuous mirror, and as long as she remained close to the centre line the mirror allowed for a constant watch of the main entrance.

Once seated she didn’t have to wait long for a bartender to attend to her. And just like the doormen he addressed her in accent-free English, “What can I get you?”

“Une flûte de champagne, Moët Chandon, s’îl vous plaît,” Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered learning French in the first place.

When her drink arrived she took a sophisticated little sip and let out a tiny sound of pleasure. For the next hour or so Nyx remained at the bar, taking the occasional sip from her glass and enjoying the soft music playing in the background. At one time, she let out a dark chuckle when the band started in on an old song she recognized, ‘Become the Beast’ by Karliene.

She had just switched over to drinking Martini, after her third glass of champagne, and was slowly getting irate over the lateness of her ‘date’ when a heavy bundle of Swiss franc hit the bar-counter right next to her glass. Its sudden arrival startled the elegantly dressed woman next to Nyx so bad that she nearly choked on her drink. She seemed to want to reprimand the thrower for his rudeness, but thought better of it after one look at the huge, suit-clad man and instead deserted her seat in a hurry.

Angela showed no reaction to any of it, she had seen the tall man approach her in the mirror, and had expected an action like that from him.

“Ah, milady Nyx, you look even more radiant this evening than usual,” the man said in greeting.

“Save it for your secretary, Akande, your charm doesn’t work on me.”

“Ah, but you can’t blame a man for trying to get into the good graces of such an extraordinary woman as you!” Akande said with a chuckle.

Without any immediate response forthcoming he claimed the recently abandoned seat next to Nyx. “As unflappable and aloof as always, I see,” he said. Then pointed at the cash he threw on the counter and continued, “Honestly, I should have known better than to bet against such an intelligent woman as you.”

“Winning that bet had nothing to do with my intellect. Even a monkey could have foreseen that outcome. Duke was a loose canon and an anarchist. He lived for the destruction and mayhem he caused and the power fear gave him over people. Him getting caught on one of his power trips was just a natural consequence of his mindless and barbaric behaviour,” Nyx said angrily through gritted teeth, emphasising every one of her sentences with a stab of her finger against his broad chest. “But then you knew that, didn’t you? Wasn’t that the entire reason you recruited and armed him? So he could further your agenda even better?”

Akande laughed at her outrage and admitted the truth of her words, “But yes of course I knew all that about him. And I also always expected him to get caught in the end, though I expected it to be some local law enforcement that would finally get him. Not even in my wildest dreams did I think his antics would rate Overwatch’s attention.” He laughed at that, then continued with a wave of his hand, “But don’t worry, I made sure he knows nothing about the organisation he worked for.”

Nyx pocketed the money on the counter, leaving one of the bills for the bartender standing to the side, doing his best imitation of a deaf man. “You don’t have to worry about him snitching, I took care of that.”

Hearing that news Akande stared at her in surprise. “You got to him while he was in Overwatch’s custody? That’s a mighty feat, even for you!”

Nyx gave an unladylike snort, “No of course not. Unlike you I don’t try to punch through walls to get things done. I took care of it during his last physical and cybernetics test.”

Akande went rigide, which was a sure sign that he was angry. “So you messed with one of my operatives and then added insult to injury by inviting me to a sucker’s bet?” he sighed, “I thought we were on friendly terms.”

Nyx moved her hand as if to shoo away a fly, “Stop the act Akande. You know very well that I don’t mess with other people’s business. Or try to play one of the most powerful crime bosses and terrorists for a fool.” She took a sip of her drink and went on, “No, I just implanted a failsafe into his thick skull that would trigger only when it comes into contact with Ziegler’s nanites.”

“You got one past the good doctor? Hah! Oh, I bet she just loved that.” Akande replied with a big smirk on his face.

“Yea, from what my spies tell me she’s still crying about it.” Nyx shook her head and added, “Stupid bitch.”

They fell silent for a long few moments, both deep in their own thoughts. “Someday you got to tell my why you hate Mercy so much,” Doomfist mused, then perked up. “But not today, I still got some other things I wanted to show you.” He pulled out his sleek phone and started tapping on the screen. “I just need to get her to come over here.”

Nyx lifted her chin from the hand she had braced it on and pointed it over towards the dance floor. “Are you talking about that punk you came in with?” He hummed in response, and kept on hammering the virtual keyboard.

After a few more angry strokes he threw the phone onto the counter in disgust. “Yes, she calls herself Sombra. Reached out to me a few days ago, asking for employment. She’s good at what she does, but she won’t last long in my organisation if she doesn’t learn to show some respect.”

“And what does she do? She doesn’t look like your type, so I doubt she has any secretarial duties.”

“I hack, pendeja,” Was said from behind them. The speaker had a very strong Mexican accent. “And I’m the fucking best at it.” Akande shook his head in exasperation, then tried to introduce them in a manner befitting the establishment they were in, “Sombra, this is lady Nyx, lady Nyx this is Sombra one of my hackers.”

“Extraordinaire.”

“What?” Asked Akande in response to Sombra’s outburst, with a suffering expression on his face.

“Extraordinaire,” repeated Sombra, “I’m a hacker extraordinaire.”

Nyx couldn’t hold her laughter back any longer at seeing Akande’s shocked face and just let it out. He didn’t like that any better than Sombra’s response.

“I see that you are already the best of friends,” he said while slipping from his seat. “So I guess you don’t need me here.” He turned towards Sombra. “You tell Nyx what you found out. I have more people to meet here.” Then he walked away.

But before he made it even three steps Sombra started to talk again. “Okay Nyxi, I’ll tell you all about Doomfist’s tiny vergaahaaha”

In a single, viper-like motion Akande had turned around and grabbed Sombra roughly by her neck. He lifted her up, so that they were face to face, and screamed at her, “If you want to live another day, you will do as you are fucking told.” Then he viciously threw her at the bar and stomped off in his original direction.

“Ugh, ese tipo realmente no puede tomar una broma,” Sombra muttered, while gingerly probing her split lip.

Seeing the blood, Nyx gently put a hand on the girl’s upper arm and pulled the distracted girl closer.  “I’ve got something for that cut,” She explained and rummaged through her purse for the tiny canister of biotic gel that she always carried wherever she went. She showed the cylinder to Sombra awaiting her approval, and when the girl nodded in agreement squeezed a small dollop on her finger, which she then, ever so gently, spread on her cut lip.

“Okay, now take a step back and slowly turn around, I’ll check you for other cuts and bruises.”

“Nah Cariño, I’m fine, nothing hurts.”

“Of course it doesn’t, your system is chock full of adrenaline right now, you could have a leg missing and you probably wouldn’t feel it.” Sombra opened her mouth to try and protest, but was cut off by Nyx, “And don’t try to lie to me Sombra, I can see your racing pulse.” She gingerly put a finger on the girl’s carotid artery just to make sure she got her point across, then repeated her instructions a bit more forcefully, “Take a step back and slowly turn around!”

Sombra did as she was directed, but not before shouting a loud, “Sir, yes, sir!” and performing a sloppy salute. Angela just smiled at the younger girl’s antics, she had had far worse patients during her career.

Normally, such public examinations were quite difficult. You couldn’t really demand someone disrobe in public, especially not in this kind of public, but she didn’t have that problem with Sombra. As the girl wore a violet halter top that was cut so short it might just as well have been a sports bra and her black shorts were just as skimpy. So Nyx had a good view on most of her patient’s skin and could be sure that she wouldn’t miss any grievous injuries, be they internal or otherwise.

Sombra’s skin was mostly smooth, she had few childhood scars and no apparent tattoos, nor any other, more technical mods. If she got rid of all the violet makeup and hair she would probably fit into just about any Mexican village without eliciting any more attention than any other attractive woman would, Nyx mused.

Sombra finished her slow turn and asked, “So did I pass?”

“As far as I can see, yes.”

The hacker smiled and sat down next to Nyx. “Thanks for patching me up, Nyx.”

“My pleasure. Now before you tell me whatever Doomfist wants me to hear, do you want something?” She indicated the bar. “My treat.”

 “Nice!” Sombra shouted, and then, just as loud, tried to get the bartender’s attention, “Yo chico! Shoot me a Paloma, and use the good stuff.” She pointed to Nyx, “The lady is paying.” Nyx answered the bartender’s questioning look with a nod, then hesitated for a moment, but finally asked as casual as possible, “By the way, how old are you exactly?”

“Old enough to get knocked around by Doomfist.” She grinned at Nyx and then took a long sip from her drink. She smiled in relish at its taste and spoke to Nyx. “Thanks chica. Little verga boy would have never offered me something for free.”

Nyx offered her smile in return. “My pleasure.” Took a swallow from her own drink and continued where she had left of earlier, “So tell me about that thing you learned, and don’t tell me about Akande’s troubles, I already know about those.”

“Sure thing, mi reina.” She set down her drink and continued, “I heard whispers on the net about some mafiosos grande teaming up. And thought: “Hey Sombra, this sounds like a challenge!” So I fucked these caninos, which call themselves IT security specialists, in their collective asses and bypassed them on my way to little doomy.” She laughed heartily at the memory of it, and, after she calmed down, went on. “Akande liked what he saw, but wanted to test me further.” Sombra’s face turned into a mask of disgust. “As if I hadn’t already proven my skill by showing up his cyber security guys. Anyway, I did what he asked and found something very interesting.” She smiled mischievously at Nyx. “I found some of Overwatch’s off the books research.”

Nyx shot her a sceptical look. “You managed to hack Athena? Forgive me, but that is quite hard to believe.”

“Nah,” She dismissed Nyx question with a lazy wave of her hand, “To do that, you need far better tech than what I have.” She looked at the ground in embarrassment at having to admit that. “But you see, the first thing you learn as a hacker is that people are muy, muy estúpido. And apparently this Moira O'Deorain character is the stupidest of them all. It’s hard to believe, but for some strange reason this chica stored a lot of her research data on a private server.” She started to laugh hard at that, nearly falling of her seat, “You’d think the crisis had taught these pendejos something about network security.” She added between laughing fits.

Because of her mirth Sombra didn’t see Nyx stiffen at the mention of that name, nor did she notice the expression of pure hatred that appeared on Nyx’s face for the short moment before she managed to regain control over her emotions.

“O’Deorain you say? I know of her and her research. Send me the data you collected and I’ll check it for anything that might be useful to our association.” Nyx’s voice was calm and showed none of her inner turmoil.

“Bueno,” Sombra answered and somehow conjured a phone from one of her shorts' tiny pockets, and started to enter a multitude of commands, “I’ll send it right over.”

The next thing she knew, she was laying on the hard stone floor with a veritable hand canon pointed at her head and an angry looking Nyx standing over her. “Don’t try to scan me again, I’d hate to turn your pretty little face into a smear on this nice floor, bare minutes after I patched you up.”

“Easy, easy,” Sombra immediately dropped her phone on the floor and showed her hands in an act of surrender. “I have already stopped, see? You can put your gun away.”

Nyx did just that. And then offered the hacker a hand, which the girl reluctantly took. Nyx pulled her up with no apparent difficulties and returned to her seat. Meanwhile, Sombra bent over and retrieved her discarded phone, all the while wondering how the other woman had moved so fast, her situational awareness was excellent, damn it! She should have had at least some warning. “Miedo maldito demoness,” she mumbled under her breath, just as her phone vibrated.

“Ehm, Nyx, on second thought you might want to keep your gun at the ready.”

“Why?” Nyx questioned.

“Apparently, the local police plans to raid this club, and from what I can tell they have already set an airtight cordon around the club.” She hesitated for a moment, then added embarrassed, “So might you know a way out of here for yourself and a young hacker who’d rather not get shot at?”

Nyx studied her intently for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yes, follow me.” She hopped off her seat and headed towards a break in the bar’s counter, which led straight to one of the kitchen’s entrances. “I’ll consider your warning as repayment for your earlier rudeness.” She told the meekly following Sombra.

They passed through the kitchen door without challenge and then made for the cellar and the hidden tunnel it held.

“Nyx? I think the police knows about this tunnel. There are a bunch of cop cars parked next to a utility building in the same direction as the passage.”

“Sounds like it, but that is of no matter to us.” Nyx said, sounding indifferent. After a few more metres she stopped, and then extended an arm to hold the still advancing Sombra back. The girl hadn’t realised that Nyx had stopped, as she had been too preoccupied with starring at her phone’s screen, which showed her the position of the numerous cop cars in the vicinity.

“Wait here for a moment, please.” Nyx took a few more steps down the tunnel until her phone let out a faint ping. She confirmed the notification and returned to the puzzled looking Sombra.

Sombra opened her mouth to ask something but was cut off by a loud bang followed by the even louder noise of a ton of concrete and steel caving in. She was forced to close her eyes when a thick wave of dust raced down the tunnel.

Once the dust had settled and the ground had stopped shaking Sombra finally saw what had caused the hellish noise. The part of the tunnel's floor where Nyx had stood earlier was gone, a gaping black maw in its place. “Mierda!” Sombra shouted in surprise.

“We should leave, the police probably heard that.” Nyx said in a deadpan voice and headed for the hole.

They scaled down the newly created pit and entered Geneva’s sewer system. From there it was easy enough to find a manhole far away from the police cordon.

When they were back on the surface Sombra smiled thankfully at Nyx, “Thank you, cariño.” She made to leave, but was held back by Nyx, who said, “Before you go, Debes saber que puedo hablar español.”

Nyx smiled at her shocked expression and walked off.

Chapter Text

Next day, Geneva, Overwatch HQ Bus stop, 9:55

The hover bus came to a stop in front of the Overwatch main building right on time. Angela put her phone away left her seat by the window and headed for the door. She liked riding the bus because the drive gave her ample opportunity to read something, most often medical papers, on the trip to her workplace. Which she found to be a surprisingly pleasant start for her workdays.

Outside she made sure that she wouldn’t block the path of any other passengers, then turned her face towards the sun and closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth of the morning sun. This was probably one of the last truly sunny days left in the year.

After a few more seconds enjoying the warming sun, she sighed, and turned towards the main building. It was a shame to spend such a nice day indoors, Angela thought.

In her opinion, Overwatch HQ’s main building was an ostentatious affair, not really befitting their organisation and what it should represent. It easily dwarfed all other facilities around it, and even outmatched all of Geneva’s buildings in height. The architect, as if to make sure to get his point across, had used ungodly amounts of marble, chrome, and glass in its construction and had even decided to use rare tropical woods and gold platting wherever possible. The result was a modern monstrosity that just intimidated its visitors, instead of inspiring a sense of strength and unity in them.

She had liked the utilitarian barracks and bunkers it replaced towards the end of the war way better.

Angela stepped through the revolving doors into the atrium and made her way past the security checkpoint. The guards knew her well, and only cursorily checked her ID badge before waving her through, some of them mumbling greetings to her. She returned their greetings and wished them a nice day, then made her way to the elevator bank located at the other end of the rotund hall.

When her glass clad elevator started to ascend, she did her best to ignore the gigantic Overwatch symbol inlaid into the atrium’s floor, the yellow part apparently real gold, and instead let her gaze wander over the calm lake.

She had fought Jack tooth and nail to get an office in one of the research buildings, or at least in the campus hospital, but sadly to no avail. She was still a bit miffed about it, to be honest, Jack had barely even listened to her objections before overruling her. Because, according to him, it would look bad for one of the highest ranking and most prominent members of Overwatch to shun the central building, that it might cause questions to arise about the ‘managerial integrity’ of Overwatch. She still had no clue what that meant, after all, it was Jack, Ana, and Gabriel that planned all the missions and greenlit them, oftentimes counter to her recommendations. They rarely even listened to her advice and tactical proposals.

But that had been that, and a few days later she moved into her new office. At least it had a nice view. She suspected that had been one of Jack’s clumsy attempts at bribery.

She entered her outer office and was immediately greeted by a chipper Karin, her secretary, “Good morning Angela! Did you treat yourself to a bit of a lie-in after yesterday’s mission?”

Angela sighed tiredly, “I wish! I barely even slept.” Her words caused a big frown to appear on her secretary’s face.

“You really shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. You can’t save everybody.” She said, sounding worried, then added with a smirk, “But you really have to give me some makeup tips, you don’t look tired at all, I’d never have guessed.”

“Yea, sure. But I’ll better get to work.” She answered and fumbled for her key card that would unlock the door to her office.

Karen suddenly perked up, “That reminds me, try to avoid the commander, he’s in one of his moods.”

Angela looked up from her bag and lifted a questioning eyebrow at Karen, “Why, what’s up”.

“You haven’t heard?” The woman looked gleeful at that news, she was kind of a gossip. Though, she did her work diligently so Angela had never had reason to reprimand her for her behavior. “You must have really been out of it this morning; it was all over the news! The police, apparently, raided Club Velours last night, and as luck would have it they stumbled upon Doomfist during the action. Obviously, they were seriously outmatched and as far as I know they didn’t think to notify us about what was happening until it was already over.”

“Doomfist? Here, in Geneva?” Angela asked, doing a good job at looking shocked.

“Yes, can you believe it? Commander Morrison scrambled a number of strike teams the moment he was notified, but by the time they arrived at the raid’s location he was long gone and he left nothing to trace him by.”

“Did anyone get hurt? Do they need me over at the university hospital” Angela asked worriedly. She hadn’t thought about warning Akande when they made their escape the night before. Not because she had forgotten about him, but because Nyx simply hadn’t cared about his fate after he attacked Sombra so brutally.

The secretary shook her head. “No, according to the news reports he luckily didn't have his gauntlet with him. So the officers that stood in his way just suffered some broken bones and a number of flesh wounds from a pulse pistol. Nothing they can’t handle on their own over there. They aren't that incompetent!”

“Ah, guet!” She smiled at Karen and added, “Thanks for the heads up.” Then she finally unlocked her office and went in. For the next half hour she answered all the emails she received during the night, and put her signature on a bunch of medical equipment and supply orders for the various Watchpoints scattered all over the globe.

At eleven o’clock she called for Athena, “Athena, can you tell me when we did the last inventory here at the HQ?”

The ever listening AI answered without pause, “Of course Doctor Ziegler, the last full inventory was done two months and nineteen days ago.” She always used Angela’s title during regular hours.

“Sounds like a complete check is overdue then. Athena, please inform all sub-department heads of that, and” Angela smiled broadly at the next part, “please gather all equipment logs and check them for discrepancies.”

“Certainly Doctor Ziegler.” It took the highly advanced AI only a fraction of a second to finish her tasks, gather the logs, complete their analysis and report back to Angela with her findings. “The sub-department heads have all been informed to do a complete inventory as per your orders, and the analysis of the logs is complete, 117 discrepancies have been found.”

Angela’s smile got a lot wider as she heard the news, “What are those discrepancies?”

“All of them are the same Doctor Ziegler, the equipment completed the test cycles and successfully filled their internal buffers with the results, but the data was never transferred to the main database.”

“Oh, strange, can you give me a list of all people that ran the problematic tests?” Angela asked in concerned tone of voice. “I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for the anomalies, and I’d like to talk to them before I inform the commander.”

“Yes,” Athena answered, “Though, a list won’t be necessary, all of the test were performed by Doctor Moira O’Deorain.”

“O’Deorain? You don’t say? I’ll better go and have a talk with her then. Thank you Athena; that will be all.” Angela leaned back in her chair and let out a slow chuckle, yesterday’s mess might just have been worthwhile after all. If she played her cards right she might just be able to get rid of an old, festering thorn in her side.

Bionics Research Centre, Moira O’Deorain’s lab, a lot of Schadenfreude and a short walk later

Angela stormed into Moira’s lab, without knocking, to find a startled, Irish scientist bent over a white rabbit sitting on the table that was placed against the back of the lab.

“Oi, Wha?” Moira didn’t manage to get her question out before Angela started her verbal offensive.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing O’Deorain? Haven’t I made myself extremely clear when I banned you from any and all genetic research?” She pretty much screamed the last part directly in Moira’s face, feeling quite pleased at seeing the other woman wince.

“What are you talking about?” Asked the geneticist in apparent confusion.

“I am talking about your fucking off the book research that you have performed with stolen government resources, and against my fucking explicit orders.” She underlined every swearword with a stab to Moira’s chest.

“I assure you that I did no such thing,” O’Deorain said indignantly, while trying to discreetly shoo the rabbit of the table. Angela snorted, “Und Schwein chönd flüge.” Then continued on with her tirade, ignoring Moira’s confusion at her German exclamation, “Okay? And I’m sure you know absolutely nothing about the 117 log entries that prove you otherwise, or about that little offsite server of yours.”

Moira looked stunned and asked, “How did you know about the server?” She paused and realised her misstep, and went on the attack, “That’s private, you had no right to violate my privacy like that! I’ll bring you to court for that!”

Mercy just snorted again. “Oh, please do. And when you’re at it you can also explain to them why you transferred data from a secure and closed network to an offsite cloud service. You might just as well have posted it to social media, about as secure.”

The geneticist quickly changed her approach, trying to placate the other woman and take the wind out of her sails. “Okay, okay, I’ll admit, I used some of the equipment’s off hours for a personal project, so it has no security classification! And it’s not like no one ever uses company supplies for their own projects around here, I just wanted to do some real work and feel useful for once.”

Her confession didn’t calm Angela one single bit. “Yes, some of the people use the workshops on off hours to service their prosthesis for the limbs they have lost in the Crisis, but that is a fucking long distance from imitating Frankenstein!” She paused for air and then went on, “And you dare to call improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of amputees not real research?!”

“Yes, it is a waste of my time, when I could do far better research than improving the nerve reaction time of an artificial limp by a few milliseconds.” Moira answered seriously, she grabbed the rabbit of the table and thrust it at Angela. “Look!” She pointed at the rabbit’s artificial limbs that were an intertwined mess of metal and flesh. “I nearly managed to program its flesh to seamlessly integrate with the mechanical limbs!”

Angela crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked at the rabbit with a mixture of disgust and pity. “You, Doctor O’Deorain, are a fucking hack, you were one twelve years ago and you are one now, and I’ll make damn sure that you will never, ever get the chance to harm another living, feeling being ever again!”

“A hack? I achieved amazing things for the war effort as head of the Soldier Enhancement Program, while you were still running around in diapers.”

“You forget that I have clearance to read the project files! You call butchering fifty percent of your patients a great success?” She starred incredibly at the older woman. “How can you sleep at night knowing you cost Jack and Ana a good twenty years of their life? If I hadn’t managed to fix your mistakes they would have died of old age by now. And I still haven’t managed to completely repair all the damage to Gabriel’s nervous system your hack job of an improvement has caused.”

Moira put her hands up in a defensive gesture and tried to justify her actions, “All three of them would be dead by now, if it hadn’t been for the enhanced speed, strength and reaction times the SEP gave them. The world was burning, the people were suffering. I did what I had to! And the volunteers knew the risks.”

Angela nearly choked on her anger, but somehow still managed to get a few more words past her tightening windpipe, “Suffering? You never cared for anyone but yourself and maybe your family. But there was no Omnica facility in Ireland, and no God AI cared enough to invade the island. I’m sure neither you nor your family suffered anything worse than a stubbed toe! You could have stayed there in safety, but instead you went to America, because you knew you’d be just as safe in some super-secret underground bunker where you could also fulfil your life’s dream of performing your sick experiments on real people.”

Moira shook her head in dismissal. “I guess you were just too young to really understand what was happening.”

“Too young?” Mercy screamed at the top of her lungs, shaking the entire building with her shout’s volume, “Let me tell you a fucking story about a too young girl!”

16 years ago, day 378 of the crisis, Switzerland, Cantonal Hospital Frauenfeld, 30 km from the German border, 35 km from the front line.

The door to the hospital room opened and in walked a six year old mop of blonde hair by the name of Angela Ziegler. The girl had a radiant smile on her face and carried an immense, at least when compared to her size, book in her crossed arms.

“Hoi, Sebbi.” She greeted the young man lying in the only occupied bed in the room. “Wie gahds der hüt?” Sebastian smiled at the young girl that had been his guest for many long hours ever since he was hospitalised, and answered her question about his general condition. “Hoi, Angie. Mir ghads super, jetzt wo die chli Dokter Ziegler da isch.”

The girl smiled at hearing that and climbed on his bed to sit next to him. “Tja, ich bi halt en bessere Arzt als s Mami und de Papi!” She grinned widely. “Genau,” he said, confirming her claim. Then he pointed at her book and asked, “Was isch den das für es grosses Buech? Hesch du schlaui Muus das öppe gschribe?”

Angela laughed gaily at his question and answered seriously, “Nei, nei, das isch mis Englisch Lehrbuech. I’am teaching me English!”

The young man smirked at her and asked, “Würklich? Wieso?”

“So that I can talk with, ehh” She paused for a moment, obviously searching for the right word, then continued confidently, “with the pew, pew guys.” Sebastian laughed loudly at that. “They are called soldiers, and I’m one them and you don’t need to know English to talk with me, do you?”

“Ja, aber,” Sebastian would never know what Angela’s objection was, as her words were interrupted by a loud, fearful scream that was cut short by a loud bang. A bang, just like the ones he heard in his nightmares, which haunted him every time he tried to sleep.

He was out of his bed in the blink of an eye, ignoring the burning pain in his sides and abdomen as best as he could, and went for the windows. He approached them carefully, mindful of the field of view and glanced out. What he saw froze the blood in his veins to ice. There were dozens of Omnics swarming the streets of the small city of Frauenfeld, and they had already overrun the few defenders and the tiny police force in place.

Another bang echoed down the hall, this one a lot closer than the first one. The sound was quickly followed by a scared whimper from the little girl curled up in fear, laying on his bed. He looked at her, then at the door and finally back to her and quickly came to a life altering decision. The young soldier hurried over to the tall wardrobe by the door that held his kit, wincing with every step he took. He opened it, ignored the gun leaning against the wardrobe’s back wall and grabbed his flak jacket, as the weapon wouldn't do him much good without ammunition. Then he emptied the small cabinet next to his bed, and with that done, grabbed Angela and ordered her to crawl into the cramped space. “Okay, Angie.” He told her, “Du muesch jetzt ganz still si, egal was passiert, egal was du ghörsch! Versprichsch mer das, Schätzli?”

 He waited until Angela promised him to remain silent and inside the cupboard, no matter what she heard, then closed the door and leaned his flak jacket against it. Finally, he sat down on the cold floor with his back against the jacket and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long before he heard heavy metal steps walking down the hallway outside of his room. The footfalls paused in regular intervals, the breaks were always accompanied by the opening of a door and a short round of automatic gun fire, before they started up once again.

Finally, the clunking sounds came directly from outside of the door to his room. They stopped like all the other times. Then the door opened and in stepped a Bastion unit in its Recon configuration. It turned to him instantly and put three bullets, in a neat little triangle, through his chest into the flak jacket beyond.

It scanned the room for further threats, with a mixture of normal and heat vision, but was unable to distinguish the dying man’s body heat from the far smaller blob that was Angela in her hiding place. So it turned around and left the room to continue its bloody work.

Meanwhile, Angela was curled up in her small cubbyhole with her hands held tightly against her mouth to prevent even the slightest whimper from getting past her lips. She had heard the earlier three rapid bangs, and they had badly startled her, but she had kept silent. She was a good girl, and good girls kept their promises.

Hours later, the fear and darkness finally proved to be too much for the brave little girl and she started to kick wildly against the cupboard's blocked door. After countless frantic kicks she finally managed to shift the heavy weight leaning against the door somewhat, providing her with a tiny opening to squeeze through. After a lot of wiggling she forced her way past the crack, and promptly fell into a puddle of something wet and sticky. She brought her hands up to her face and, even though night had fallen some time ago and the room was cloaked in darkness, still recognised the sticky mess on her hands as blood.

Abject horror took a hold of her the moment that realisation struck her. She ran from the room faster than she had ever run before in her short life. In her hurry to leave the room she never saw the slight smile gracing Sebastian’s face, which had been there ever since he had died, moments after the Omnic had left the room.

Little Angela frantically raced down the darkened corridors, ignoring the black lumps laying in doorways and stairs, only one thought on her mind. Where were her parents?

She found them at last, laying outside their shared office. She dropped down onto her knees next to her mother and tried to shake her awake. “Mami, wach uf, bitte, bitte?” But the woman didn’t answer her daughter’s desperate pleas, and neither would she do so ever again in the future.

That was where soldiers of the Germanic United Forces found her the next morning, still clinging to her mother’s cold chest with all the strength her tiny body held, inside a hospital that was as still as a grave.

She was the only survivor of the attack.

The story had left Moira speechless and staring stupidly at Angela, she had known the younger woman had lost her parents at an early age, hell everybody knew that much, but she hadn’t known how it happened, or that she had been there during the attack. She felt somewhat sorry for the younger woman.

Telling the story had calmed Angela’s anger, but it had left her with a horrible weariness. So she decided to end this quickly. “I’m shutting you down,” She said to the Irishwoman. “I can’t fire you because of your special deal with the UN generals, but,” And here she stressed the ‘but’, “I can reassign you to the Statistical Analysis Division, and I will send an official complaint to the UN Oversight Committee. You should better hope the generals still like you enough to have your back in this.”

“I’m absolutely not going to work with those SAD losers.” Apparently, Moira had quickly regained her voice at the prospect of working in the department that was known to be Overwatch’s dumping ground for failed engineers, researchers and medics.

“Yes, you will. At least if you want to keep on working for Overwatch. Otherwise, you’re free to resign at any time.” She turned towards the door and left without another word.

Overwatch HQ’s main mess hall, 30 minutes before lunch.

Moira O’Deorain sat at her favourite table, which stood slightly hidden at the far back of the mess hall and quietly raged at the empty seating across from her. “That sanctimonious cunt and her sob story.” She violently hit the table with her fist and then mimicked Angela’s voice, “Poor little genius me, I suffered so much more than anyone else and I’m so important and I’m the only one who knows right from wrong.”

She dropped the act and continued with her normal voice, “It should be me sitting in that corner office, deciding to shut her life’s work down.” She hit the table again and again. “They promised me the sole control of the Medical and Research Department, and then they just handed it to a fecking teeny, even after all I’ve achieved with the SEP and as a scientist. Just because that stupid cow made one slightly useful discovery, a single success she’s been coasting on ever since. And then she dares to call me a hack, I could have hit her. I should have hit her!”

She stopped for air just as a male voice spoke to her from behind her back, “I never thought you foolish enough to underestimate the good doctor, Moira. At least you weren’t stupid enough to actually hit her.”

Moira turned around in shock and anger at the intrusion on her supposedly private, anger tantrum and saw Gabriel standing only a few short steps behind her, a tray with two bottles in his hands. Gabriel pointed at the seat across from her and asked, “Is that seat taken?”

She was still rattled from being caught in such a compromising and pathetic position, so she only shook her head in reply.

The commander sat down across from her and unloaded his tray, handing her one of the beer bottles. “You might not like Doctor Ziegler,” He opened his bottle with his ever present combat knife and took a long pull from it, “But that doesn’t make her any less of a genius. And she isn’t one to underestimate her opponents out of spite.” The ‘unlike you’ was left unsaid but the accusation was still pretty clear to her, “You should know that she had security on high alert. If you had fallen for her provocations and lain a hand on her, you would already be rotting in the brig by now, waiting for your court-martial for striking a superior officer. We might not be at war any longer, but Overwatch is still a military organisation.”

Moira stared at Gabe, eyes wide from her surprise, and asked hesitantly, “She did that? I guess I should have known that she’d try something like that to bypass my special deal.”

“Yes, you should have.” Gabriel said, nodding at her words. “And by the way, she got her position for a good reason. While your advances won us a number of battles, her tech might just have turned the tide of the war in our favour.”

Moira looked incredulously at him, “You really think that? Her biotics were useful, I’ll hand her that, but I doubt they were ‘winning the war’ kind of useful.”

“You never were one for reading the boring reports, eh?” Gabriel ribbed her, “Otherwise you’d know that the mortality rate for our soldier dropped by ninety percent after the introduction of Mercy’s field biotics and med kits. The ability to not only treat a gut shot in the middle of an operation, but to get the soldier back into fighting form within mere seconds, was invaluable.” He lifted his shirt, exposing the many marks scoring his skin. “I know that from my own personal experience.”

“I guess you’re right.” Moira said, visibly deflating at the admission. “But still, they promised me that job and that I could research whatever I wanted!” She hated how whiny her words sounded.

Gabriel smiled at her over the rim of his bottle. “Yes they did, and I intend to keep their promise for them,” He paused for a moment and looked to the side, “At least the second part.” He braced his forearms against the table and leaned in closer, “The way I see it, you have a choice between working with the other people that didn’t hack it in the Statistical Analysis Department or you can leave. Or,” He grinned conspiratorial at her, “You can listen to Uncle Reyes sage advice.”

Moira stared at him unimpressed at his laying out of her grim situation. “And what might that be?”

“You request a long leave of absence from the powers that be. You tell them that you need that time to find yourself after the end of the war, preferable somewhere nice, like Mexico. Where you might, completely accidentally mind you, run into one absurdly handsome man by the name of Gabriel Reyes. Since the two of you are good, old friends, he’s going to invite you into his home away from home, which is filled with many nice people, and, for some curious reason, a state of the art laboratory. How does that sound?”

Moira scowled at him and whispered, “Like something that shouldn’t be discussed anywhere close to an Overwatch building, and certainly not inside of one.”

Gabriel shooed her worries away with a wave of his hands. “Don’t worry, big sister isn’t able to listen in. Jack might conveniently have forgotten to inform the agents, but shortly after the end of the Crisis the UN Oversight Committee put up a huge fuss over an AI being the majordomo of all Overwatch facilities. They were worried that she might be a God AI in hiding, bidding her time and gathering her forces to strike once all other AI’s were dead. Ignoring all of Winston’s assurances of the contrary and so demanded her power to be curtailed. Since then she has only been able to listen in when her name is called, or during an active emergency situation, like the one Angela invoked before confronting you.” He emptied his bottle and stood up. “So, are you ready for some nice, long holidays?”

For the first time since Angela had stormed into her lab like an angry goddess, she smiled. “Yes, I think I am.”

He offered her his knife, grip first and added, “Then you better drink up, it’s a long flight to Mexico City.” He took a short glance at her complexion and then added, “And bring loads of sunscreen.”

Chapter Text

A few days later, somewhere in the vicinity of Dorado

Moira was sitting outside a tiny, hole in the wall café in a quaint little village, which was located a few kilometres outside Dorado. She was just enjoying a cup of coffee, made from a local blend, when she saw Gabriel coming down the road. She had been here, in Mexico, a few days already. Playing the role of a normal tourist, just in case a certain someone was keeping an eye on her. But so far she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, and was quite sure that no one at Overwatch suspected her of doing anything untoward.

“Fancy seeing you here, Moira.” Gabriel said in greeting, “Did you have an agreeable flight?”

“Yes, a bit long though. Public air transport has still some way to go before they can even dream of rivalling the speed of Overwatch’s airplanes.”

Gabriel laughed at that and quickly responded, “Yes, especially if Tracer is the pilot.” Then he added with a wink, “Anyway, since we are such good friends, how about I save you some bucks on hotels? I have a free room at my holiday home.”

Moira lifted a single eyebrow in a gesture that seemed to say ‘really?’, but still opted to answer his question. She feared that otherwise he’d try to draw this out.

“I’d like that, but we’ll need to go back to my hotel to get my luggage.”

Gabriel waved her objections off. “Nah, I’ll have one of my friends get your stuff, don’t worry.” He offered her his hand to help her out of her seat, which Moira ignored, and then led the way to his car at the end of the road.

The drive to Gabriel’s place was relatively short, only about twenty, twenty-five minutes, though they still had to turn off the paved roads at some point and drive the final stretch on badly maintained dirt roads. Luckily, the dirt road’s abyssal condition didn’t slow the hover car down at all, nor were the passengers affected by the numerous potholes.

Finally, the unassuming, dusty car came to complete stop in front of a large and apparently well-kept hacienda. The few trees and bushes littering the property were cut back, the walls looked like they were freshly painted and the roof-tiles still retained their vibrant colour. From the splashing sounds coming from the back of the large building Moira deduced that the estate even had an outdoor-pool, and other tenants besides her and Gabriel.

Her observations were cut short by Gabriel walking up to her side, after he’d finished lowering the car on its landing struts for long term parking.

“You can’t see it from here, but just behind the main building lies an orchard, best oranges you’ll ever eat.” He waved for her to follow and walked towards one of the estates side buildings. “I guess you’d like to see the laboratory first?”

“Yes,” She said and followed him. “How do you handle the power demands? And supplies? Are you connected to the Lumérico network?”

Gabriel shook his head while opening the door for her, “Yes and no, we’re connected to the power grid for all the demands of the daily life. Lighting, air-conditioning and so on. But for anything beyond that we use a compact fusion reactor.”

“Wait, what?” Asked Moira, nearly tripping over her own feet out of surprise at his statement. “How the hell did you get your hands on tech like that? CFR are highly regulated!”

Gabriel turned around and shrugged, “It was just lying there, half buried, in a field in Central Africa. It was in near perfect condition too, we only had to exchange some of its circuit breakers.”

“So you stole a power plant from one of the Omniums? I guess you planned all this for a long time?” She said, moving her hand in a wide arc, encompassing the whole property with her gesture.

“Can you really talk about stealing when you take something from mankind’s worst enemy?” He asked with a rogueish smile, “And no, I didn’t really plan this during the war. I just thought that a CFR might come in handy sometimes.” Then he stepped into the darkness of the smaller building. “Are you coming?”

Moira hurriedly stepped through the open door and tried to distinguish his silhouette from all the bizarre forms in the room. “Is there a lamp in this room?” She asked, “Some of us don’t have enhanced vision.”

She heard him laugh at her words, but still couldn’t pinpoint his position. “And whose fault is that? But yea, there is a light switch just to the left of the door. And while you’re at, please close the door.”

She did as she was told, and was rewarded for her actions by an old-school neon tube flickering to life, illuminating the medium sized room in bright, white light. With the illumination, she was now able to recognise the strange forms she had seen in the dark as a multitude of gardening equipment and supplies. She also saw Gabriel standing at the back of the room, next to an unassuming, slightly rusty breaker box. She walked up to him and looked at him questioningly.

“You need to get closer than that.” He said, and after she had followed his order, put his flat hand against the outside panel of the breaker box. “I’ve already entered your hand print into the system.”

The moment he put his hand to the cold metal the seemingly solid concrete floor around them grew seams, and the part with Moira and Gabriel standing on slowly descended into the ground. “The door is locked and feels ‘sticky’ if anyone attempts to enter while the elevator is moving. Also, the mechanism will only triggered if you touch the middle of the plate, and only while the door is closed.” He explained.

The slab of concrete descended only a single floor. It emptied into a tiny, well-lit room with a modern looking elevator at the other end. The second they stepped of the slab it started to ascend again, completely sealing the rectangular hole in the ceiling and leaving it without any visible seams.

“Courtesy of Mercy,” Gabriel offered as an explanation, but seeing the confused look she shot him he decided to elaborate on his explanation. “We spray some of her Omni-biotics into the seams, you know, the stuff that is able to repair damaged armour and synthetics. Works like a charm, the floor appears as one solid piece of rock to all the scanners we tested, and this old kind of concrete is easy enough to cut.”

Moira chuckled, “Oh how Angela would hate to know that her precious tech is used to hide a black site.”

The pair of them quickly entered the second elevator, which descended considerable further, and stepped into a high domed room, which was well lit by hidden light sources. Moira gasped in happy shock at the other things she saw in the room. It held the newest and best of the laboratory equipment used for genetic research.

“I take that as approval,” Gabriel said to her with a proud smile.

At first she only nodded, too occupied by taking it all in to do anything more than that. After a minute she finally added, “Oh yes, with all of this I can build a true super soldier, not just an augmented one!”

Meanwhile, Overwatch HQ, Geneva

Angela was sitting at her desk reading over the various reports her department heads had sent her in response to the inventory of their supplies and equipment she had ordered them to do. Most of them were perfectly fine, though one or two showed some problems with the accounting of their consumables. She’d have to have a talk with them sometimes this week, she thought.

So the chime signalling the arrival of a new, important email was a welcome distraction from the very dry reading of the inventory accounts. She dropped the lightweight tablet she liked to use for such reading on her large desk and straightened out from her reclined position.

She tapped on the Email’s notification icon displayed on her screen, which instantly opened the received message. Angela took only one short glance at the note before she deleted it. It was just one of these warning emails that a certain item’s stock was about to run out. In this case it was a special kind of screw that was only used for an old product from the Ogundimu Prosthetics Corporation. She sighed in annoyance and wondered what he would want from her this time.

“Athena, activate protocol BW_GR41X.”

“Of course, Doctor Ziegler,” Came Athena’s synthesised voice from the well disguised and hidden speakers in response to her order. With that taken care of, Angela retrieved her usual phone, opened its web browser and entered the address of a special website. Because of the protocol she had activated she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone spying on her. Athena would encrypt all of the outgoing traffic from her phone and tinker with all the network logs.

On the site she entered her credentials and joined a nameless chat room.

N: What do you want? If it is about O’Deorain’s research you’ll have to wait a bit longer. That woman has the worst organisation for her files I have ever seen.

D: And a good day to you, milady.

Angela just rolled her eyes at Akande’s put on show of propriety.

D: My reason for contacting you does not concern the stolen data, tough getting an update on it is appreciated. Instead I wish to present you with a business opportunity.

N: Go on.

D: Recently a piece of God AI code came into my possession and with it my science division managed to build a device that is able to control low level Omnics. With it I had planned to teach the people of Numbani a much needed lesson about the dangers of relying on the OR14 units for their security. But because of recent events I find myself lacking a reliable agent to get the device to Numbani and trigger it.

She sighed at reading his words. This was just another one of his attempts to get her out into the open. She was sure that, from all the members of their association, he had the least amount of useful information about her, and that his inability to see her in action and gauge her abilities for himself was eating away at him. So quite naturally she declined his offer. Though, she was slightly worried about his claim about owning a piece of God AI code. She might have to do something about that.

N: Not interested.

D: Wait!

D: Of course I’m going to make it worth your while. I’ll reward you handsomely for doing me this favour.

N: Still not interested.

He had little to offer her, as she wasn’t exactly strapped for cash. There had been plenty of occasions to re-appropriate funds from criminal organisation and the corporations that funded them, and Nyx had made good use of all of them.

D: I never took you for a friend of Omnics.

She let out an embarrassing snort that was luckily heard by no one in the quiet and empty office. She was far from being a friend to the Omnics. She had seen and experienced too much suffering at their hands to not feel slightly unease when one of them passed her by on the street. Although, she had tried to better herself since the end of the war. As she couldn’t very well blame all the hacked Omnics for what they did, but so far it had been very slowly going.

N: It’s not about the Omnics. I just don’t have any interest in causing a bloodbath, that is more your forte.

After all, preventing these had been the reason why she created the persona of Nyx in the first place.

D: It won’t come to one. I can guarantee you that. The device will just exploit a vulnerability in some of the OR14 units' low level functions, the tin-cans will quite visibly malfunction but will still retain their human protection rule set. The worst that might happen is one of them discharging their crowd control weapons. It’s just intended to be a proof of concept, a show of their insecurity and the weakness of a programmable mind.

N: And what is in it for you?

D: That is answered simply enough. After the public sees the units fail, they will pressure the government to assemble a human defence force which will certainly make use of all the advances in weapons and bionics the University of Numbani made, resulting in the evolution of humanity I strife for.

N: That is all good and well, but I’m still not interested in doing your dirty work, nor am I interested to leave my operations in Europa unattended.

Getting Jack of her back to travel to Africa would be bothersome, especially right now, just after she ordered a full inventory being made. There would be requests for equipment and supplies for days and it would look out of character for her to leave in the middle of something like that.

D: Then I guess I’ll sweeten the deal for you, milady.

His message elicited another eye roll from Angela.

D: I have a certain bothersome employee whose contract I’ll have to terminate sometimes soon, from the looks of it. Now, I know you like her and I would be willing to transfer her contract to you in exchange for doing me this favour.

“Du scheiss Arschloch!” Angela shouted at her screen, unable to contain her outburst of anger. She had never thought that he would dare to try to blackmail her with the life of the young woman. Nyx had done her best to appear cold and unforgiving towards her associates. This put her in a difficult position. She liked Sombra well enough and would hate to see her die, but at the same time giving in would show Akande a point of weakness. One that he would surely try to exploit in the future.  

N: Blackmail? I thought better of you. And why would you think that I like her? I barely know her, I’ve met her once for about thirty minutes.

D: Oh, maybe because the two of you made your exit together, or maybe because you patched her up? You two looked quite cosy, but if I understood the situation wrongly I apologise and will retract the offer.

She shouldn’t have been so soft with him around, she realised. That was a mistake she would make sure to never repeat again.

N: Just for the record: I treat all of my assets well, keeps them from stabbing my back. But I guess she is quite resourceful and I’d be willing to buy her contract from you for a good price.

D: No, I won’t take any money in exchange for her. She had access to a lot of my resources and giving her away will be a fairly large risk to my assets. You’ll plant the device, or she’s going into very early retirement.

That had been a long shot, she had known that beforehand. But still one that she had to try. Now the question for Angela was; if the girl was worth the cost. Sombra had shown some skill in finding Moira’s server and gaining access to Akande’s operation. But was that enough, she wondered.

Angela reclined in her comfortable chair, one of the perks of being high up the totem pole, and calmly though the situation over. Most of the damage had already been done, Akande would try something like this time and time again, from now on. And the girl seemed like someone who’d jump at the opportunity to get access to experimental tech. Which marked her as a prime target for some of her future plans.

With a determined expression on her face she sat up straight and rapidly tapped on the hard light keyboard.

N: … very well, she seems like a perfect fit for my division, I’ll do as you ask. But know this, you just cost yourself a lot of the goodwill between us.

N: Also, I’m going to need some days to tie up some loose ends and make the travel arrangements. I’ll contact you when I’m ready.

D: Okay. But don’t take too long.

She grumbled something indecipherable at reading Doomfist’s latest message and angrily closed the window.

‘N’ logged out.

‘D’ logged out.

‘Doomfist_has_a_tiny_verga’ logged out.

3 Days later, Mexican Blacksite

Gabriel burst into Moira’s laboratory not unlike Angela had done just a week earlier. If it hadn’t been for his apologetic smile that appeared on his face upon seeing her angry glare, it would have made for a good déjà vu.

“What’s up?” Moira asked, trying to rein in her annoyance at the interruption.

“Something has come up,” Gabriel started to explain, “and I could really use some help with it. I need to infiltrate a high security compound and some chameleon skin would come in handy right about now.” He smiled at her roguishly. “You got something like that?”

Moira shook her head in response. “I might be able to cook something up, in about a year or so. I’m sorry, but the government and Overwatch confiscated most of the research material and even my personal notes from my time with the SEP.” She slammed her closed fist on the table next to her. “Another reason why I’d like strangle Ziegler. I’m sure that was done on her recommendations. It put me back years.”

She looked questioningly at Gabriel, “Hey, could you do something about that?”

“No sorry,” Gabriel said, “I might have access,” He put extra stress on the ‘might’, “But Athena would certainly flag any attempt to retrieve the data and inform the others. And we really don’t want to arouse Angela’s suspicion so soon after your fight with her and your request for leave.”

Moira massaged her temples with her hands and conceded to his arguments. “I guess. Anyway, I have done it before, I can do it again. And your blood sample was a great help. But I still need some more time before I can get to work on anything big.”

“I assumed as much.” Gabriel sighed, “So I guess I’m going to do it the old fashioned way. See you later.” And with that he left through the same side door he had entered the laboratory from. On the other side of the door a short hallway led to the other parts of the facility. The underground complex held a number of training gyms and firing ranges. A hangar for stealth vehicles and a mechanics workshop. In his opinion it was a fine base of operation for Blackwatch, the name he had chosen for the organisation.

Building the concrete warren had been surprisingly easy. All he had to do was convince Torbjörn of the need for an organisation like this, which had been a simple matter. Gabriel had just needed to play a bit on the smaller man’s hatred for Omnics, and a day later half the Mexican charter of the Ironclad guild had been digging in this remote location, without arousing any suspicion from the local authorities nor from Overwatch. He chuckled at the memory. They had managed to build the entire facility in under a week, a feat that had him amazed and worried at the same time. When they had finished the construction he had vowed to keep an eye on them to make sure that they weren’t building some kind of super weapon, like the Titans, again in secret.

He reached his office and sat down at his desk. He picked up his tablet, which immediately unlocked at his touch, displaying the message Overwatch HQ had received a day ago. The message was short, completely free of prose and appeared to be sent by a Vishkar employee who wished to remain anonymous. In the note, the author accused his employer of working together with various criminal organisation.

This was nothing new to him. Overwatch had received hundreds of similar tip-offs, though so far all of them had been sent by people protesting the corporation’s shady way of doing business and their meddling in local politics.

The thing that made this message special was the fact that Athena had been able to verify its source. It had been sent directly from Vishkar’s Headquarters in India. Though what Athena hadn’t been able to confirm was the validity of the claims made in the note. And without that, Jack had been unwilling to move against such a powerful and influential conglomerate and risk the ire of the UN Oversight Committee.

So he had done absolutely nothing with the information, even though they had long suspected Vishkar to be involved with international crime and terrorism. To many buildings, places and people that stood in the way of one of Vishkars project had been attacked, threatened and bombed during the last year to be a coincidence.

But this was why Gabriel had come up with Blackwatch in the first place. He would do what the Strike Commander couldn’t and infiltrate the local Vishkar branch to trawl their servers for information on their business dealings.

He set the tablet back on the desk and braced his chin on his hand. But sneaking into a Vishkar facility was a lot easier said than done. Floor plans for their buildings were nigh impossible to get, as all of their facilities were planned and built by their own people. And they also incorporated tons of defensive measures to protect against intruders and spies of all kind.

To crack that nut, he would need a good team, which was a bit of a problem. Because, currently, Blackwatch was a bit understaffed. He could use McCree, the master gunslinger with little scruples, but he wasn’t really the guy for subtle attacks. Besides him, he also had a bunch of troopers in his employ, but those were soldiers not ninjas. They had plenty of experience on the battlefield, but none at trying to sneak into heavily monitored facilities. He also had a few scientist and mechanics, like Moira and Lindholm, but they weren’t any better than the others.

He woke the tablet once again with a tap of his finger, and navigated to his research on Vishkar. With the help of Athena he had compiled a comprehensive dossier about the large business conglomerate.

He idly flipped through the dossier’s many pages looking for anything that might help him with his mission. He found it on page twenty-seven. The page described a number of confrontations the corporation had in Brazil with a group calling themselves Synaesthesia over their redevelopment projects there. Apparently, the group had been pretty successful in fighting Vishkar’s paid thugs, and as rumours had it, they even managed to break into the research centre there and steal some of Vishkar’s tech and weapons. While it sounded a bit far fetched to most, Gabriel thought it to be likely, as Vishkar did their very best to try and suppress any news of the resistance from reaching the rest of the world. Something they only did when they were losing badly. Every other time they just put a spin on it, until the whole world saw the protesters as nothing more than angry rabble and terrorists.

He checked the Overwatch database for any mention of the group, and was quite surprised when he found evidence of the group’s activity all over the world. He was even more surprised when the result of his cross-reference search of the first occurrences of the group in each country came back.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Gabriel said quietly, “Looks like I’m going to a concert.”

12 Hours later, New Denver, United States of America, Colorado

The moment he stepped out of the plane it was immediately apparent to him how hard Denver had been hit during the war. Even now, a year after the end of the conflict, the city’s skyline consisted mostly of the dead steel and concrete carcasses of formerly proud skyscrapers. The smaller buildings surrounding the slain giants had suffered even worse, a big junk of them were little more than rubble and ashes.

And still, the people of Denver had been a lot more fortunate than their counterparts in Kansas City. At least they had been able to evacuate before the war machines from the Kansas Omnium had overrun the city.

And to think how ecstatic the people of the Midwest had been when the Omnica Corporation had decided to build their US Omnium there. It had been touted as the start of a second economic golden age for the region, but instead had just brought death and destruction to the territory. Gabriel shook his head at that thought, it wasn’t fair to ridiculing them for their hope, there was no way that they could have known what horrors would come to pass.

He had made arrangements with the local authorities for the use of a hover car while he had still been in the air. Therefore, he managed to leave the airport for his destination quickly. Since he had no official business in the destroyed city and didn’t want to be noticed, he opted to take the back roads instead of the cleared and repaired main road. On the short drive into the city he was very glad for the hover engine of the car. Trying to drive to the city centre with a car of old, using the bombed and abandoned roads would have been nigh impossible.

He still had to concentrate on the street, though, as even a hover car had trouble dealing with the burnt out husks of cars, Omnics and war machinery still littering the backstreets he used.

The conditions got a lot better the closer he came to the city centre. The roads showed obvious signs of repair and most of the devastated buildings and rubble had been cleared away. Only few were in the process of being rebuilt, though.

He parked somewhere close to the large clearing where the world renowned DJ Lúcio Correia dos Santos would hold his charity concert.

The preparations for the concert had already been under way for the better part of the last few days, which showed in the countless loud speakers and lights placed all around the area. Many of them secured to the scorched walls of the ruins surrounding the clearing. And still, many more would be placed before the day was over, if the bustling crowd of helpers was an indication.

Gabriel ignored them and made his way over to the large army tents standing behind the DJ’s elevated platform, doing his best to look like he belonged. But before he could make it all the way over to the tents he was challenged by one of the guards that roamed around the concert grounds.

“Hey, you! What are you doing here?”

Gabriel flashed him his Overwatch ID and tried to explain his intentions, “I was in the area for Overwatch business when I heard about the benefit concert Mister Correia dos Santos is holding here, and decided that I would thank him for his charity towards the poor people of this city and to offer a personal donation to the cause.”

The security agent took a long look at Gabriel’s ID. When he was satisfied with its authenticity he signalled for Gabriel to wait. He took a few steps back and activated his radio, “Ei, Lucio, há um agente de Overwatch aqui que quer conversar com você.” The man said in a low voice. With the distance between the two men, a normal person wouldn’t be able to listen in, but the low volume and distance didn’t pose a problem for Gabriel, nor did the used language.

“Comandante Gabriel Reyes,” The man answered the inaudible question, “Ele diz que quer agradecer e fazer uma doação. Parece uma besteira se você me perguntar.”

After a few moments of silence the man said one last word into his radio, “Bem,” and waved Gabriel over to him.

“Mister Correia would be happy to talk with you.” He pointed towards a tent with a green frog symbol. “He’s in that tent over there.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, and walked towards the indicated tent.

The inside of the large tent reminded Gabriel a bit of a monk’s cell. The space featured only a single small camping table in the middle, with a folding chair pushed against it, and an old sleeping bag lying on top of a thin mat in one of the far corners. The few items seemed lost in the large space.

Lúcio must have predicted his train of thoughts, because his first words perfectly answered his unspoken question. “Yea, I told them beforehand that I only need a small, one person tent, instead they gave me this absurdly large thing.” He indicated the tent and shook his head. “I’ve spent my entire life in the Favelas, where personal space was at a premium. That’s not something you just leave behind.”

“But where are my manners?“ He offered his hand in greeting. “Commander Gabriel Reyes, it’s a true honour to meet one of the heroes that sacrificed so much for the good of the people.”

Gabriel waved the honorific away and shook the offered hand. “Just Gabriel please, I’m not here on Overwatch business. And likewise it’s an honour to meet you, Mister Correia dos Santos.”

Lúcio laughed at the use of his last name. “Okay, okay. But please don’t use my last name, Lúcio is just fine. Using my last name reminds me too much of my mamãe when she was angry at me. Speaking of her, I would like to offer you a seat, but” He nodded towards the single chair in the room, “I doubt you’d find that thing to be comfortable.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lúcio, I’m used to standing.” He smiled at him, “We did a lot of that in the army.”

“I imagine so.” Lúcio said with a polite little chuckle, “So, what brings a busy man like you to this Cidade da morte? I doubt it is my music.”

Gabriel scratched the back of his neck and nodded, “Yea, your music isn’t really my scene. Sorry.” He admitted, sounding apologetic, “I have a bit of a Vishkar problem and I heard that you could help me solve it.”

Lúcio seemed to be genuinely surprised by his answer, “Why would you think that?”

“From what I can see a new chapter of Synaesthesia formed wherever you held a concert, although only a few days, or even weeks after you left. And the group originated in your hometown. Which would make it likely that you either are part of the group or that there are people in your employ that also work for them.”

The DJ laughed at him, “That are some mighty weak correlations.”

“Yea, it is more of a hypothesis for now.” Gabriel conceded, “But let’s think for a moment that they are true, only hypothetically of course, would you think that the group might be willing to help me in moving against Vishkar?”

Lúcio studied him for a moment, then said, “I guess so, Synaesthesia and Vishkar aren’t exactly on the best of terms currently. But why would you need the help of a bunch of rebels if you have the entirety of Overwatch at your beck and call?”

“Because I haven’t,” Answered the commander, “Overwatch moving against an international giant like Vishkar would cause an international incident. Talk of overreach would be inevitable, even if we manage to find enough proof of wrong doing to justify our actions, which isn’t guaranteed. And that is not something the Strike Commander is willing to risk, therefore Overwatch’s hands are tied in this matter.”

“And so you decided to do something about it all by yourself? Am I seeing this correctly?” The other man said, giving voice to Gabriel’s unspoken thought. “I get you, but you don’t seem to be very good at this cloak and dagger shit, just telling a stranger about it and all.”

Gabriel just shrugged. “There is no proof that I was ever here.”

“Man you are louco.” The DJ declared, “But I like you and know where you are coming from. So I guess I might be willing to talk with some of the guys around here, ask some questions. I might be able to set something up for you. You got a meeting place in mind?”

“Yea, an estate I own outside Dorado.”

Lúcio frowned, “Dorado? The one in Mexico? Why there? That is quite a distance from here.”

“Because that is where Vishkar is.” Gabriel deadpanned. “I’ll see you there.” He added and then left the tent.

Lúcio just shook his head once more and watched him go. “Esse cara é louco, totalemente louco.”

Chapter Text

Three days later, inside a CPAT somewhere above the Mediterranean Sea

Angela didn’t like CPATs, in fact she hated them. They were ridiculously tiny, had barely enough open space for a passenger or two and lacked all manual controls, the only thing a passenger could do was pray and hope that the programmed route was flawless. They had been designed at the height of the Omnic Crisis as a means to redeploy important officers and elite soldiers in as little time as possible. This purpose had earned them the nickname of Pidgeon from the brunt of the army; noisy, annoying and full of shit.

In Angela’s opinion that was too kind of a comparison. They were more like jet propelled coffins than gentle birds, also they were an eerie reminder of a certain cupboard from her past. She avoided them whenever possible.

Which it hadn’t been in this case. Large parts of central and northern Africa were still considered no-fly zones. Either because of a questionable government, or because of the numerous heavily armed war bands still roaming the countryside and terrorizing its citizens.

These groups had been the UN’s solution to the African Omniums. During the war it was decided that the UN didn’t have the man power to also fight the Omnics on African soil and that the best solution would be to arm the people of the countries closest to the Anubis and Abassi Omniums. Surprisingly enough, it had actually worked quite well. Well versed in the tactics of guerrilla warfare and with superior knowledge of the terrain and its quirks they managed to overwhelm the Abassi Omnium quickly. Especially since the tracks, scanners and power cores used by the omnics didn’t fare well in the inhospitable heat of the Sahara desert, nor in the vivid depths of the Congolese jungle.

But after the fall of the Abassi God AI they were more than unwilling to relinquish their weapons, which had easily quadrupled in number because of all the rifles, tank canons and missiles they had scavenged from ambushed Omnic battlegroups.

Because of this situation the UN had decided that it was way too dangerous to fly over, or even worse land, with something the size of an Orca in this lawless region of the world. Which, incidentally made it the perfect place for her to travel to as a cover for her plans.

She had informed the Strike Commander of her planned trip two days ago. It had gone over with him about as well as she expected it would. He hadn’t been happy with her, not at all.

Because of the whole Duke and Doomfist mess he had been even more on edge than usual. And the Moira incident hadn’t soothed his frayed nerves either. So he had shouted at her for pretty much everything he could think of. For shirking her duties, doing her duties the wrong way, for being too unprofessional, for being too draconian, for exercising too little control… In short it had been an ugly, ugly mess. His tirade stopped only when Ana came to investigate the noise.

From there on everything moved a lot smoother. Ana had greenlit her request for a trip to Africa instantly, and had accepted Angela’s justification for the planned trip without requesting any proof. In fact, she had even agreed with her that she was the best suited person to investigate, and possible treat, the outbreak of a strange new illness that an old friend from medical school had reported.

With Gabriel and Torbjörn off somewhere in Mexico, enjoying their first vacation since the end of the war, he was pretty much outvoted by the two other senior members of Overwatch. Although, as the Strike Commander he had the final say in these decision, he couldn’t really afford to raise their ire and so conceded to their combined voices quickly.

“ETA 5 Minutes!” The on-board computer’s announcement startled Angela badly. Somewhere along the line she must have lost track of time, or maybe she had fallen asleep for a few minutes and hadn’t realised it. The last time she had checked her position she had still been a good distance from Africa’s northern coastline, let alone her destination in the heart of the immensely large continent.

But the blinding, growing light in the distance proved the announcement to be true. Because only two places on earth shone like that, and of these two only one did so during the day: Elysian City.

The city was one of the few places that had truly prospered since the end of the war. Which might be strange if you consider that it stands completely alone, with no other large or even small cities for hundreds of kilometres. The reason for the city’s immense and surprising success was its origin; it was built on the grave of the Abassi Omnium. Though, built on might be a bit of an understatement, as the remains of the Omnium form the strongly beating heart of this strange city.

Then unlike other Omniums, the Abassi one hadn’t been built with most of its facilities deep underground. The land had been dirt cheap, the weather a stable ‘sunny’, tough Angela and her fair complexion considered it more of a hellish death ray. Therefore there had been no reason to dig into the earth, and Abassi hadn’t had time to rectify that before the human troops were knocking on his door.

Without having to fight a heavily dug in force the attack on the facility had been a simple affair. Shell the power plant to hell, overrun the few Omnics Abassi had left, blast the server room to hell and rip out every last wire in the building.

As a result the factory floors were mostly left intact, and since the Omnica Corporation was long dead by then, they now belonged to the brave people that had risked their lives in the attack.

Most of them departed the place quickly, with as much loot as they could possibly carry. But some saw the place’s potential and remained behind. Rebuilding it had been slow going and a lot of hard work, especially since not even a tiny scrap of the central power core could be found in the ruins of the power plant, not even a single warped screw.

So the people made do with whatever they had on hand, omnic power cores, gas powered generators and wind turbines, but mostly solar panels.

With the immense blast furnaces running once more they were able to somewhat answer the world’s massive demand for steel, iron and concrete, which had been left unsatisfied for most of the war. Turning a few dozen solar panels into hundreds, then thousands.

These days every last centimetre of roof and useful façade space was covered by solar panels, there was even a law demanding it of all construction firms in place.

It was the reflection of these solar panels that turned the city into a beacon of blinding light, prosperity, and hope.

The CPAT’s landing at the Elysian airport was distasteful, to say the least. Because CPATs don’t really land, what they do is more like a controlled crash. Or at least that is how Angela would have described it. On the other hand, If you’d asked the engineers who designed it, then you would have heard all about its merits and the beauty and joy of a vehicle that could land just about anywhere. Though for some strange reason they never partook in this joy themselves.

Angela triggered the command to open the CPAT’s canopy, which it did smoothly, allowing the country’s dry, oppressive heat to flood into the air conditioned cabin. Angela greeted it with a pained groan, she had been completely unprepared for such a high temperature. Mercy hadn’t been this far south in a long time, not since the Egyptian offensive.

Slowly she pulled herself over the rim of her ‘cockpit’ and slid down the hull to the tarmac bellow, making sure to stay a good distance away from the CPAT’s repulsor coils located at each end of the thing. She could still hear their tell-tale crackle that indicated a static charge, touching the coils wouldn’t be too dangerous, just pretty painful.

“Scheisse!” Angela shouted in surprise when her legs gave out from under her and she fell to the ground in an ungainly heap of arms and legs. Apparently her legs had still been a bit shaky from the ride in that hellish contraption. So she just laid there for a few seconds, concentrating on her breathing, and then gingerly rose to her feet. Mercy looked around to see if anyone saw her pitiful display, but to her relief the lumbering hull of the CPAT stood between her and the rest of the airport. “Wenigstens öppis,” she said under her breath.

While walking over to the main buildings of the airport she decided that she really had to do something about her claustrophobia. Because that could have been the only thing that could have possibly affected her like that. After all her team had had Lena ‘Tracer’ Oxton as their pilot. And that woman had earned her nickname when she successfully piloted an Orca through a hellish storm of wind, water and lead with most of her instruments and all her lights gone. The only thing that had given away their position in that dark night had been the burning engine and the trail of sparks and embers it left behind.

That flight had been a hundred times worse than whatever turbulences she experienced inside a CPAT, ever.

By the time she had reached the airport’s main office she had regained most of her composure.

The check-in with the office was mostly just a formality, Overwatch had submitted their flight plan the day before, and they had reserved spots and special deals with just about every single airport and landing strip in the world. But still, it never hurt to show some curtesy.

After a few nice words from her side, and a good dozen assurances that they would take excellent care of her plane, she left the office for the massive underground parking lot. Like the rest of the oversized airport it was mostly devoid of cars and people. When they had planned and built the huge facility they had been a tad bit too optimistic about the local security situation and had expected hundreds of planes per day and tens of thousands of businesspeople and tourists.

She found her hover bike easily in the well-lit halls of the underground parking. She had bought it months ago via numerous shell corporation, as she had always expected that she would have to come down here at some point. The local criminal and ‘grey’ element had a lot of very close ties to Nyx’s association. Which was unsurprising considering that numerous mercenary outfits made this their home base. Booze, whores and a permanent conflict just outside its gates had pulled them in like bees to honey.

And these organisations needed to get their weapons and medical equipment from somewhere…

Moments later Angela drove her bike out of the garage and into the overflowing streets of Elysian in the hopes of making it to the meeting point with time to spare. Though it dawned quickly on her that that wouldn’t be happening. Then apparently the tourists that were so sorely missed at the airport still reached the city in some way or fashion, because the streets and alleys were absolutely packed with them, to Mercy’s intense annoyance. These tourists seemed to have a desire to be run over by hover cars and bikes, as they walked into the street whenever they felt like it. Nine out of ten times without even looking up from their cameras and phones. And they seemingly had a bodily need to photograph every single solar panel in existence from every possible angle, always talking about recording the perfect glare, or something the like.

After what felt like an hour, she managed to reach one of the southern gates, somehow without getting blood on her pristine bike, and waited for one of the heavily armed soldiers guarding the entrance to approach her.

“The outside is no place for a pretty woman like you, schatje,” He told her in a gruff voice. Ah, not a soldier, a mercenary, Angela thought, and flashed him her Overwatch badge.

“Don’t worry about me,” She pointed at her holster holding her customary Caduceus Blaster, “I can take care of myself. And don’t call me ‘Schätzchen’.”

He laughed at her words, but signalled for his buddies to open the door. “Be careful out there! You’re not the only thing that got claws.” He warned, then turned around and lazily waved for her to drive through the open gate.

Outside, she could finally put her bike to the test. It met every one of her demands marvellously, the flat, hard earth was a near perfect terrain for her bike and so she managed to reach 250 km/h easily. After a few minutes she came upon a small copse of trees, barely more than three, four stunted, shrub like trees and used their cover to transform into Nyx. When the golden glow settled this time not only had her body and clothes changed, but so too had her bike.

It was now the colour of the night and was a perfect fit to her black biking gear. She pulled a helmet out of the luggage compartment, more for anonymity’s sake than safety, and donned it. Modern hover bikes had a plethora of nifty features that made most safety gear unnecessary.

Nyx reached Sombra’s campsite at mid-afternoon without any incidents on the way. It was located a good distance outside Numbani and looked a bit like the camping spot of an eccentric adventurer-millionaire. A large and very expensive looking hover jet was parked next to a modern, obviously modded, completely purple hover bike.

Numerous large cables snaked out of the open jet and led to a small party tent, where they connected to a large number of electronic devices and a mini fridge. Sombra sat in the shade the tent provided at a flimsy camping table studying a small black box. At hearing Nyx’s arrival she looked up from her work and waved.

“Hola Nyxi.”

Nyx answered her greeting with a wave of her own, set the bike to parking mode and stepped of it, leaving her helmet hanging on the handlebar. “Good afternoon, Sombra. How are you?”

Sombra smiled at her and said, “Excelente, mi reina, the temperature here is much better. Y tu?”

“I’ll be a lot better once this whole business is done with,” she pointed at the small box in the other woman’s hands and added, “By the way, is that Doomfist’s device?”

The young hacker nodded, then held it into the light with one hand and shot it a dark look. “Someone has been messing with it,” she said.

Nyx lifted an eyebrow at that and asked, “How do you know?”

“Los perros informáticos are still mostly shit. I found the device’s blueprints, all three of them, the one they wanted me to find, the one they didn’t and the real one. And,” she pointed at the black box, “Esta maldita cosa matches neither one of them.” She shook her head angrily. “Muy pesado.”

“To heavy? That doesn’t tell us much.” Nyx said unhappily. “You can’t tell me anything else about it?”

“It’s black.” Sombra deadpanned with an impish grin on her face. “Pero seriamente, I can tell you that it isn’t a bomb. No liquids, no gases, just metals and plastics.” She paused for a second, then continued. “Still I’m not sure you should do this thing for little verga boy, whatever he pays you can’t be worth this shit.”

Nyx shook her head, “No, backing out now is out of the question.” She wanted to add something more but was interrupted by Sombra. “Must be a shitload of money then.”

“Nah, not really,” Nyx waved Sombra’s interjection of with a lazy wave and a sunny smile directed at her, “At this level we deal with more precious things than money.”

Sombra dropped the device on the table as if it had caught on fire and turned towards her mini fridge, she pulled out a bottle of water and took a long pull from it. Quietly whispering, “Malditamente caliente.” To herself while doing so.

“What did you say?” Nyx asked, “I didn’t fully catch that.”

Sombra laughed awkwardly, “Eheh, I said it’s really hot.” She took another long gulp from her bottle. “I’m parched.” She eyed her bottle and then extended it to Nyx. “Want some, chica?”

Nyx waved her off with a shake of her head, and instead took a hold of Doomfist’s device. “Maybe after we’re done with this whole thing.” She studied the little device but couldn’t find any breaks in its solidly black surface. “How do you trigger it?”

“With this,” The hacker said, and handed her a tiny remote with a single button that had a clear plastic safety over it. “It’s single-use only and has a good fifty metres range.”

“Very good.” She accepted the offered remote and tucked it safely away in one of her black jacket’s many pockets.

Nyx nodded in thanks at the other woman, “I shouldn’t be too long,” And made as if to leave for her bike, but was stopped by Sombra’s hurried shout.

“Hey, stop! Un momento por favour.” She threw a pair of stylish, black sunglasses at Nyx. “I’ll be your pillow rider,” Nyx shot her a confused look. “Ah damn that’s not right, is it? I mean pillon rider? No, no, eh… navigator? Ángel guardian!” The girl noticed that the look of confusion on the older woman’s face had only deepened at her rambling words.

“Maldito lenguaje de mierda!” She tried to explain it again, this time with the use of more words. “Look, I’ll make sure you take the right doors, avoid patrols and so on.” She pointed at the folded pair of glasses in Nyx’s hands. “They have a camera, virtual reality lenses and a microphone imbedded.” She smiled. “I’ll be the angel on your shoulder guiding you through hell.” She paused, “Should it come to that. Which, por dios, I hope it doesn’t.”

Nyx laughed softly at Sombra’s antics, but nodded in thanks and put them on. “How do I look?”

“Divinamente!” Sombra answered, her cheeks lightly dusted with red.

“Grossartig!” Nyx realized her error instantly, and tried to gloss over it. “Do you need to test them?” The hacker didn’t look like she had noticed her blunder.

Sombra just shook her head, “Nope, tested them before you arrived.”

Without any further words Nyx returned to her bike and drove off towards Numbani Airport.

Numbani, Adawe Avenue outside the Numbani Heritage Museum, 17:19

The parking situation in the city was horrible. The streets were very minimalistic, barely offering enough space for two medium sized cars to pass each other by. Therefore parking on the side of the road had been out of the question, even for a hover bike. Also, from what she could tell so far the traffic police seemed to be a tiny bit over zealous in their work. In the short drive from the city’s outskirt to the international airport she had seen a good dozen of them, and about half as many tow trucks.

Apparently, the police union had successfully demanded that not a single officer would lose his job when the city bought the OR14 units, and to solve this staff dilemma the powers that be had simply reassigned half of the police force to the traffic department, and this was their revenge for that, or so Sombra had told her.

The airport parking lot had been out of the question, too. A single panicked driver could block the exit, leaving her in an awkward position.

So she had decided to park her bike at the museum a few hundred metres from the airport. On her walk back from the parking lot to her intended target she checked in with Sombra, to make sure that their connection was still strong enough, and to see if she had anything new to report about the security at the airport.

“Sombra, you read me?” She whispered.

“Loud and clear, chica.” The hacker answered happily. “And before you ask, nothing has changed, they’re still in DEFCON 5.”

“Roger!”

A few minutes later she turned the last bend and stood before the entry portal of the Numbani Adawe International Terminal, which, for some stupid reason, was place in the middle of the city. The noise cancelling technology alone must have cost a fortune, Nyx mused, not to mention all the security systems. Which apparently were overpriced dog shit, as Sombra had so eloquently put it.

Nyx decided that she had to agree with her, after she had stepped through the tall front portal. From what she could tell, the only security feature in the entry hall were the few OR14 units mechanically patrolling the open space. There were no cameras, hard point scanners or human security personnel. She let out a small chuckle, getting back out would be a breeze.

Since Akande hadn’t given her any specific orders on where to place the device she decided to plant it in one of the shops that lined the entry hall. She settled on the single, tiny pharmacy in the far corner, mainly because of the outrageous prices they demanded for a tiny bottle of sunscreen.

She pulled one of the tiny bottles from the store racks and sneered at it in disgust. Fleecing stressed or forgetful travellers like that… “Assholes,” she muttered and returned the bottle to its place original spot, but not before sneakily placing Akande’s device at the very back of the rack.

Outside the shop she leaned casually against a pillar, which was conveniently placed right next to the emergency exit, the second reason for choosing this shop. She waited there for a minute or two, until the OR14 were as far from her as possible and then calmly reached for her jacket pocked, flicked of the safety and pressed the remote’s only button.

The next thing she knew, absolute pandemonium had broken out. When she had accepted this job she had been worried that Akande had lied about the non-lethal part, what she hadn’t considered was that the OR14 arsenal was 95% non-lethal, but still had the firepower to stop a tank, or an army.

Their multipurpose weapon arms reconfigured themselves into grenade launcher mode in the blink of an eye, and let loose with a barrage of CC grenades. The grenades landed with pin point accuracy at the feet of the largest groups of people and detonated moments later. The loud bang and immensely bright light of the flashbang was enough to fell most civilians outright, the few that had managed to withstand the torrent of noise and light were swiftly taken down by the OR14 stun rounds.

Nyx’s shades had protected her from the flash, and the noise didn’t faze her either. Without the need to recover her wits she quickly ran for the emergency exit and ripped the door open and flung herself through. And not a second too late. Because just as the door closed behind her dozens of the drug filled gel-balls pelted the steel door.

Nyx didn’t stop to see what would happen outside, instead opting to follow the bright exit signs placed in regular intervals on the ceiling of the hallway.

“Cutting it a bit close there, Cariña!” Sombra stated. “Take a right at the end of the corridor. Outside of the main entrance is a bit of a mess. They used foam launchers.” Nyx followed her instruction without question and ran down the right hallway, counter to the exit signs.

“Good, take the second door on the left, it leads to a small loading bay.”

Nyx threw herself against the indicated door with the entire force of her reckless charge and nearly forced the door of its hinges, but the lock saved the hinges by breaking first.

On the other side of the door Nyx paused for a few short moments to regain her bearings, and to massage her leading shoulder some. The room she was now in was, as Sombra had promised her, a tiny loading bay. It sported only a single roller shutter that was lowered not entirely to the ground, and a medium sized doorway that, presumably, lead to some kind of storage. The rest of the room was just bare, rather dirty concrete.

“Mierda!” Sombra exclaimed loudly. “You got company. One of the tin cans just rounded the corner.”

Nyx pulled her gun, Nightfall, from her lower back holster and powered it up, it sprung to life with an ominous hum.

“Acknowledged!” She said in a low voice while sneaking closer to the shutter. She stayed as low as possible, her gun at the ready, and tried to catch a glimpse of the OR’s metal feet through the half a metre gap at the bottom of the shutter.

She didn’t manage to see nor hear it, it must have activated its noise cancelling systems, and decided to play it safe. Unbeknownst to Sombra her eyes started to glow in a golden light, and suddenly she was able to see a diffuse red blob overlaid over the door. The mirage kind of resembled the form of an OR14 unit, with bright yellow spots where its heat vents would be located.

Nyx took a few steps away from the gate to give herself some space for a run-up, and then stormed towards it. At the last possible moment she let herself fall and slid feet first through the small gap at the bottom of the gateway. Even before she had cleared the metal gate fully she aimed her gun unwaveringly at the centre mass of the reddish blob in her vision. She pulled the trigger the moment the white and green hull of the war machine appeared in her vision, instead of the shutter’s grey.

A hundredth of a second later the space between them was illuminated by a bright, lilac flash. While the flash itself was pretty impressive, it was nothing compared to what happened to the Omnic. Its heavily armed front plate just vanished, vaporized by the heavy impact of the invisible round. The shockwave the impact caused played absolute havoc on the rest of the robot. Ripping it to pieces and turning them into numerous, deadly projectiles that blasted countless holes into the asphalt behind it.

“Santa mierda!” Sombra exclaimed in a breathy whisper, “You pointed that fucking thing at meee!” The last part was said a lot louder and quite a bit whinier.

“Yeah, I really don’t like to be scanned.” Nyx stated, a tiny waver audible in her voice. She hadn’t expected this to happen, apparently her training dummies weren’t good substitutes for the real thing. They never exploded! They just turned into Swiss cheese! Damn it!

She checked herself all over for injuries but found none. Not even any abrasions from sliding over the rough surface. She was really glad that she had opted for the heavy biking gear in spite of the sweltering heat.

“The fuck is that thing?” Her navigator asked once she had completed her check.

“Nightfall,” She explained, “The only Proton/Neutron railgun in existence. It uses a dense mixture of neutrons and protons as its slug, which is accelerated to half a percent of the speed of light by the railgun assembly in the barrel, a good one point five million metres per second. Guaranteed to vaporize any solid material in existence.”

“Woah!”

“But enough of that, I’d rather not stay around any longer. Give me a way back to my bike.”

“Okay, Nyxi. One escape plan coming right up.” The girl answered, already sounding distracted.

“Santa Madre María!” Sombra shouted straight into her ear. “Nyx, we have a really big problem.”

“Overwatch?” Nyx asked worriedly.

“Eh, no. Not Overwatch. But the device appears to be a lot stronger than verga boy made it out to be. Every OR unit in the entire city is going amok right now. And it looks like their designers didn’t exactly consider Omnics as people.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Sombra added apologetic, “The OR14 are using deadly force against the other Omnics. We probably just made the top five most wanted terrorist list.”

“Great… So much for my anonymity.”

For a few moments the only thing she heard was the sound of aggressive tapping on a keyboard, then the hacker spoke once more. “Okay, here’s the plan. Forget your bike, the museum guards are all over the place. Head down to the railroad tracks and follow them out to the suburbs, they are pretty much devoid of OR units. You should be able to steal a car there. If you don’t know how, I’ll talk you through it.”

“Sounds good.”

Nyx ran in the direction of the hover tracks that serviced the airport, scaled the chain-link fence easily and jumped down the embankment. “Do I have to worry about any trains coming my way?”

“Nope,” Sombra answered, popping the ‘p’, “All local trains are on lockdown.”

She followed the tracks away from the airport, and was soon greeted by the black maw of a tunnel. The moment her brisk pace brought her past the tunnel’s entrance her shades switched to their residual light amplifier mode, which turned the small emergency lights at the tunnel’s sides into full blown searchlights.

Without the need to avoid panicked civilians running around like headless chickens, nor having to shoot rampaging bots, she reached the main train station in excellent time. But just as she made it out of the dark and back into bright daylight her glasses’ speakers sprung back to life.

“Uh, oh. The cavalry is here! Man they react fast.”

“Overwatch?” Nyx asked slightly out of breath from the kilometres long jog.

“Jup,” Sombra confirmed her guess.

Nyx came to a halt and braced her hands against her knees. If they were already approaching she wouldn’t make it out of the city in time if she continued on foot.

“Ah, damn, this would be the perfect moment to tell me that you just thought of a way faster plan for me to leave the city! I’d really rather not be here when they arrive!”

“Not really?” Sombra answered, her words sounding more like a question than a statement. “Why don’t you just hide out in Numbani till they leave? The city is rather big…”

“No!” Nyx stated in an assertive manner that made it clear that she wouldn’t be convinced otherwise.

“Why?”

Nyx sighed, “This is a Crisis level incident. SOP is to lock down the place and go over it with a fine tooth comb. It could be weeks before I get an opportunity to slip out, and I really don’t have that kind of time! So, any ideas? I’ll take pretty much anything at this point.”

“Bueno, hmm, how good are your action hero moves?”

Numbani, 15 metres above the tracks of the Elysian Express, 18:12

“I thought you said all the trains were grounded.” Nyx said. She stood on the overpass that bridged the private hover train tracks belonging to the Elysian Express Transport Cooperation, and kept watch for the promised train.

“I said: All the local trains are stopped.” She retorted indignantly. She made sure to put extra stress on the ‘local’, “The EETC201 is a private, autonomic train. It carries tons of precioso metales and is designed to never, ever stop outside of a station. Though, it won’t stop in Numbani. But it will slow down a good bit.”

Nyx braced herself on the railings and asked the all-important question, “How much is a bit?”

The other woman laughed awkwardly and mumbled something into her microphone.

“Could you repeat that please? I didn’t quite here you.” Nyx said slightly annoyed.

“Eh, down to 120 km/h? Maybe?”

She furrowed her brows. 120 was a lot. But she might be able to pull it off, though it would be difficult to disguise her actions as something a normal person could do. She considered her options for the next few minutes, but came to always to the same conclusion, which was that there really wasn’t any way around it. By now, Overwatch’s Orcas would be very close to the city. And Athena would have a good dozen satellites pointed at Numbani and its surroundings, there would be no chance to slip by unnoticed in a car. And hiding out in the city wouldn’t be an option either. Jack would go mental if Angela vanished for weeks, or somehow suddenly appeared in the middle of a quarantined city.

Her considerations were finally brought to an end by the sound of a hover train approaching. Which she was only able to hear because she stood just above the tracks, a place where the noise cancelling systems didn’t work as well as advertised.

The train was a lot longer than she expected, it must have transported thousands of tons of raw materials, and came in really fast. Luckily it was already braking hard.

“Okay, here we go!” Nyx pressed herself against the railing on the side closer to the train. She planned to do a running start and use the railing like a spring board to gain as much forward momentum as was humanly possible.

“¡Buena suerte!” Nyx barely heard Sombra’s words over the roaring of the approaching train and didn’t even try to answer them. Instead, she took a last deep breath and then stormed off.

She jumped over the railing perfectly, with as little upwards momentum as possible and flew unerringly at the back of the steel monster below her. In the middle of the flight her eyes and hands started to glow golden. The world seemed to slow down for her and her vision was suddenly filled with a plethora of arrows, numbers and complex graphs.

122 km/h, sloppy, she thought and rotated her body a bit, which put her a bit closer to the train’s central line.

Her feet and hands moved as if by a will of their own and positioned themselves at the best possible points to absorb the impact of the landing.

And still, hitting the steel roof was absolutely brutal. Pain shot through her arms and legs like burning lances and her shoulders felt as if they were ripped apart by the pull on her arms. But these pains were nothing compared to what her glowing hands went through. The nanites had fused her skin to the metal of the roof the second they had made contact. As a result, her hands felt as if the bones were ripped from the stuck flesh and skin. Nyx didn’t manage to hold her screams back before the pain blockers kicked in.

When the strain lessened she just collapsed onto the roof, breathing laboriously.

“Nyxi, bonita, are you alright?” Sombra’s worried cry pulled her out of her stupor. She glanced at her bloody hands, trying to determine how bad the damage was but the blood made that difficult. So instead she listened to her nanites. Which informed her of a number of contusions and tears she had sustained during her mad stunt, but that her subcutaneous armour was still intact. Her nanobots classified them as minimal damage and had already begun treating them.

“Nyx? Estás ahí?” Sombra asked again, sounding lost and close to tears. “Please?”

“I’m here, I’m fine.”

“Gracias a Dios!” The younger girl shouted. “I was so worried when the camera feed cut out.”

Only at Sombra’s words did Nyx notice that her shades were missing one of their lenses, and that the other one was spidered with cracks. She must have hit the roof with her head during the initial impact.

“Yea, I kind of destroyed your glasses, sorry? I’ll repay you for them.”

“Mamá mía! No me importa un comino las gafas!” Sombra exclaimed. “I just want you back here in one piece.”

“Me too.” Nyx sat up and looked around. She ignoring the distortions caused by the cracked lens as well as she could. In the time she had needed to recover from her leap onto the train, it had nearly doubled its speed and was rapidly approaching the city’s boundary. “Speaking of that, do you have any idea how I get off this train?”

“Yep,” Sombra answered, barely audible over the whooshing noise of her ride. “Already on it. Try to reach the engine. You should be able to stop it from there. I’m already on route to meet you when you do.”

Nyx turned around and put her knees under herself, the action was accompanied by a load groan. Her joints were still a bit unhappy with her actions. But they would heal soon, that Nyx was sure of, and a bit of crawling wouldn’t harm them any further. So she started to pull herself along the speeding train’s roof. The first part was surprisingly easy. The train was in excellent condition, the dust free surfaces made for a good grip for her nanite assisted hands and the wind breaker at the front of the engine took the majority of the brunt of the air-resistance.

The first set of difficulties appeared when she reached the end of her wagon. The gap between her car and the next proved to be much wider than she had thought at first, and would be impossible to bridge while crawling. She would have to jump.

She took a careful look ahead. She had no intention of losing her life because of a badly placed support, mast or a low flying bird.

The space before her looked devoid of any death traps.

Very carefully she rose to her feet, intently listening to her body and any complains it might have, all the while holding one hand above her head so that she would get some warning should she reach past the windbreakers protection.

When she tried to straighten her legs out her arm was flung back with brutal force, nearly throwing her on her back.

“Great.” She whispered to herself. Jumping upright would be out of the question. Instead she decided to do a bunny hop. She moved her feet to the ledge, as close as she could, and flung herself forward. She managed to avoid the dangerous stream of air above her and crashed chest first on the next wagon’s hard roof. “Oof!”

After she regained her breath she continued her crawl towards the engine, using the same technique at every new gap she encountered.

Finally, she reached the locomotive, it had been a good thing that she had jumped so early, she thought, otherwise she might not have managed it before the train reached the next checkpoint.

She crawled to ledge on the side of the train and cautiously leaned over to try and catch a glimpse of the door.

“Uh, oh. Huston, we have a problem. Something triggered the trains bunker mode.”

“Cuando llueve, diluvia.” Sombra sighed, “Can’t you vaporize that door with that hand canon of yours?”

Nyx shook her head, then realised that the other woman wouldn’t see her gesture and explained, “The slug might cause a power surge and I’d rather not sit on top of a speeding train should that happen.”

Sombra remained silent for a moment, though Nyx was able to hear furious typing, then spoke up, “A sharp bend is coming up soon. The train will have to slow down to make it, it should be possible for my bike to match the train’s speed there. Just sit tight.”

Ten minutes later the bend appeared on the horizon, and a minute later Nyx also caught sight of a dust cloud rapidly approaching the train from her left. At the same time, the train started to slow down in preparation of the sharp curve. The violet hover bike shortened the distance between it and the train even faster now, and it became clear that its driver had gauged the timing correctly and would manage to catch up to the train just as it entered the bend.

Nyx lost sight of Sombra when she drove into the dead angle just behind the train, but her worries for the young woman were immediately allayed when she heard the younger woman’s exuberate whooping through her coms.

“Yes, ha! Nyx I’m in the slipstream! That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.” She quickly swerved around the back of the train and drove up to the engine. She made sure to stick as close to the train as possible to avoid the powerful turbulences farther out.

She reached the engine just as the train levelled out and picked up speed again. She smiled up at Nyx and said cockily, “Need a ride, chica?”

Getting on the back of the bike was easy compared to the earlier jump. Sombra’s tricked out bike was able to lift up a good two metres into the air for a few short moments, which was more than enough time for Nyx to slide of the roof, step on the back of the seat, steady herself on Sombra’s shoulders and sit down. The second she was securely seated her driver playfully gunned the engine and leant into a hard turn away from the train. The turbulences hit them hard, but were nothing the bike’s overpowered stabilisers couldn’t handle.

Africa, Sombra’s camp, 20:43

After their daring escape from the city neither one of them had been in the mood to break camp and fly home. Instead they had ransacked the depths of Sombra’s mini fridge for every last drop of alcohol.

By now, Sombra was as drunk as an Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day, whereas Nyx was still completely sober. But not because of any efforts from her side. She hadn’t been able to get drunk in years, and boy had she tried during the years of the crisis.

Sombra flopped down onto the hard ground next to her with an empty bottle in her hand, her third search for more to drink as unsuccessful as the previous two. She was barely able to keep her head upright and decided not to bother.

But since the hard ground didn’t make for a very good cushion she scooted over to Nyx and laid her head in her lap. “Ah, mucho mayor.” The girl purred.

After a few minutes of lying there she opened her eyes and fixed Nyx with a serious gaze. “So, what are we going to do now? I’d really like to know, since now I kind of belong to you, mi reina, right? That was the deal?” She slurred most of her words, but Nyx was still able to make them out, she had a lot of experience talking to drunk people. Jesse alone provided literally years’ worth of experience.

“How do you know about that?” Nyx asked surprised. The drunk girl just smiled at her impishly and stated, “Hacker extraordinaire!”

This got a good chuckle out of Nyx.

She absentmindedly started to softly caress Sombra’s violet tresses while searching for an answer to the question.

A few minutes later she found it.

“Lay low for a few days, take care of whatever problems have cropped up in my absence and then,” She stopped stroking the girl’s hair and met her eyes, her very young eyes, “and then, we find Akande’s lair. I think some revenge is in order!”

Chapter Text

Gabriel’s Estate, Mexico, 5:21, The day before the Numbani Incident

Gabriel put his knife down and supressed a tired yawn. He had just finished cutting the onions for his Breakfast Enchiladas when his bone deep weariness had made itself known to the world.

He lifted his cutting board and upended it into a small pan, letting the evenly diced onions, garlic and herbs cook till the onions turned somewhat lucent. He pulled the saucepan of the stovetop and sighed at the delicious aroma unfolding in the kitchen. It truly was a shame that he could only rarely find the time to cook, he thought. He smiled, his mama would be furious with him if she knew how much fast food he ate these days.

He snatched a tomato from the countertop and held it under the faucet’s stream of warm water and readied his blade with the other hand. It was days like these that really made him feel… maybe not his age, which wasn’t that high yet, but his experiences and all the brutal things he put his body through.

He placed the washed tomato on the cutting board and positioned his knife over it. It shook slightly. Gabriel starred at it till it didn’t.

He made his first cut, straight and clean, and then another one, which was just as proficient as the first one. He let the air out of his lungs, which he hadn’t even realised he had been holding. The tremors appeared more often these days. Still only when he was tired, though. Which he certainly was right now, so he wouldn’t have to contact Mercy about them. The good doctor had told him that this might happen.

The commander ignored the tiny, reprimanding voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Angela and that told him something decidedly to the contrary.

Another yawn forced itself from between his lips. He rubbed his tired eyes, and immediately flinched. “Damn,” he had forgotten about the chilies he had cut earlier. Washing the tomato hadn’t been enough to remove the juices entirely.

Maybe the night’s activities had been stupid, he reflected. Gabriel had spent the entire night hidden on the roof across from the Vishkar complex observing its few entrances in the hope of learning something that might help him in his planned mission. To his displeasure he hadn’t, the whole night had been an utmost failure. The only people he had seen walking on the grounds were the myriad of heavily armed security guards.

He was just putting the finishing touches on his and his team’s breakfast when Jesse knocked on the doorframe leading to the kitchen.

“Hey boss. There are some strange-ass Yankees coming up the road. Might be trouble.” He sniffed the air, “Do I smell Mexican food?”

“Mhm,” Gabriel hummed in response and pointed at a readymade plate. Then he traced a complicated symbol on the kitchen ventilation’s chrome cover, which promptly turned into a screen. A few more commands opened the surveillance system and showed him multiple views of the private road leading up to the estate. Meanwhile, Jesse had grabbed his plate and had started digging in, his body propped against the marble countertop. He moaned loudly in pleasure at every bite. “Thish ish really good.” He stated through a mouthful of enchiladas.

Gabriel ignored the other man’s comment and horrendous table manners and instead focused on the image shown on the conjured screen. “You said Yankees, right?” He asked the cowboy after studying the footage for a while.

“Mhm?”

“They have dark skin.”

“So?”

“You do know what Yankee means?” Gabriel asked exasperated, “Do they look like brits to you?”

The other man just shrugged and kept on eating his breakfast.

The commander put his hand to his face and sighed in annoyance, “I know them, or at least one of them.” He pointed at the screen, indicating the man leading the group, “That is Lucio Correia dos Santos, and I assume the rest are part of his crew.”

He turned around to face Jesse again, who had barely glanced at the screen with an obvious lack of interest. Gabriel sighed for the umpteenth time this morning and ripped the plate out of the other man’s greedy grasp. “Hey!” And shoved him towards the kitchen door.

“Go, and wait for them at the gate.” He began gathering more onions and tomatoes and added absentmindedly, “Meanwhile, I’m going to make some more breakfast.”

Half an hour later found Lucio and his crew in the Hacienda’s large dining room, happily munching on their second breakfast and joking around with the two Blackwatch agents on site.

“Isso foi excelente,” Lucio complemented the food, then continued. “But I think we better get down to business.” Reyes nodded in agreement with the younger man’s sentiment and cleaned the last of the dirty plates of the table. With the bulky dinner table free of obstructions Jesse pushed one of the table’s secret buttons and turned its gleaming metal surface into an immense holographic screen.

“It’s a good thing you arrived when you did.” The commander’s voice came from the kitchen, accompanied by the noises of plates being stacked into a dishwasher. “I was thinking of traveling to a different Vishkar site, since observing the one in Dorado didn’t bear any fruit.”

“Janota! If you’d told us your address we’d have gotten here a lot sooner.”

“T’was a test.” Said a smirking McCree, “Probably,” he added in a lower voice after taking a quick glance at the still empty doorway leading to the kitchen.

“Pha, test!” Exclaimed a heavily bronzed member of Lucio’s crew. His annoyance at being here quite obviously displayed in his angrily folded arms and the rigid posture, which stood in stark contrast to the relaxed attitudes of the others. “You came to us! We don’t need you! So show some respect to your betters, babaca!”

Jesse pulled himself upright at hearing the other man’s slur and pointed an angry finger at the insolent man, his mechanical hand hovering close to his gun holster. “What did you just call me? Surfer boy?”

“Woha, woha. Calm down guys.” The DJ had sprung out of his seat at the first inkling of the confrontation that was taking place and held out a calming hand to each of the two angry men. “Look, we came here because Vishkar is our common enemy, and hurting them will help both Synaesthesia and Overwatch!” He glared at his man angrily. “Also, Carlos, you asked me to bring you along. I dearly hope that wasn’t just because you wanted to be a moron irritado!”

They stared at each other for a few seconds until Carlos finally backed down. “Desculpe Lucio.”

“Good.” He sat back down, just in time for Gabriel’s return.

The Overwatch agent didn’t say anything about the argument he had just overheard, and instead concentrated on entering the right commands into the holographic interface.

The hologram of the Hacienda that had thus far been displayed vanished and was immediately replaced by a three dimensional map of Dorado, with the Vishkar facility as its focal point. After a few more taps on the hard light keyboard the letter Overwatch had received also appeared in front of everyone sitting at the table.

“This is why I asked you to come here.”

“Is this verified?” Asked one of the unknown guys after taking a moment to read the short message.

Reyes nodded, “As far as we can tell it came directly from the Vishkar Headquarters in India. Though we can’t tell which employee sent it.”

Lucio gave them a grim smile, “So it could be a ruse? A way to discredit Overwatch?”

Gabriel shrugged. “It could be, but it’s doubtful. The strike commander has been exceedingly careful when dealing with the corporate world. They shouldn’t see us as their enemies.”

Carlos made an angry noise, “You mean you’ve been their attack dogs on occasion?”

“Yes,” Gabriel admitted with a pained grimace showing on his face.

Carlos left it at that, after a sharp look from Lucio.

“But this is also why I chose Dorado for our attack.” The commander explained. “It’s pretty out of the way, and in contested territory, with Los Muertos, Synaesthesia and LumériCo all vying for power. An attack on their facility shouldn’t garner the attention of their top analysts.”

“Sounds good,” Lucio said. “But this also means that they will expect an attack, and that their security personnel should be on high alert night and day. An attack on the facility will be a suicide mission.”

“Yes, an all-out attack is out of the question. But that’s why I wanted Synaesthesia in on this. You managed to infiltrate one of their facilities once before, right?”

“Jup,” interjected Carlos with obvious pride. “We are truly badass.”

Lucio rolled his eyes and relativized, “We got some outside help in form of the security codes.”

“What, really?” Jesse and Gabriel asked in unison, the revelation came as quite the surprise to both of them as Vishkar security was notoriously strict and tight-lipped, only high ranking members at the various HQs had access to some of these codes.

The gang members chuckled and laughed at the Blackwatch agents’ surprised outburst. “Yea, it’s not that hard if you know the right people.” Lucio explained after his chuckles had subsided.

Gabriel cleared his throat, looked at the DJ and asked, “Could you do it again? For the Dorado codes?”

Lucio pulled a digital key out of the side pocket of his bellowing pants and threw it on the table with a casual flick of the hand holding the device, an amused grin on his face. “Already did.”

The cowboy tipped his hat up and eyed the device suspiciously. “How much did that cost you?”

“About sixty bucks?” Lucio deadpanned after thinking something over for a short moment. “Twenty for my album, a good forty for the postage.”

“Wait what?” Jesse asked shocked. “And you trust in a deal like that, are you mad?” He looked at them as if they were absolute morons.

“Jup,” Lucio said with a grin. He pointed at the key and expanded upon his earlier words. “I’ve got that thing from a hacker collective known as SOMBRA. From what I can tell at least some of their members hold a powerful grudge against Vishkar. And since they are also absolute fans of my music and me, all they asked for in return for the codes was a physical copy of my newest album signed by me and a promise to fuck some Vishkar shit up.”

“You trust them?” Gabriel questioned while he carefully inspected the key.

Lucio nodded, then after he realised that the other man didn’t see it said, “Yes, we used their help with most of our actions against Vishkar, haven’t failed us yet.”

Gabriel gave an imperceptible nod and said, “Good enough for me.”

For the rest of the morning they talked strategy. It became quickly apparent that the attacking team should be kept as small as possible. After a bit of a back and forth they settled on Gabriel and Lucio. As Jesse and the other men weren’t exactly the stealthiest of fighters. And Lucio was the only one who could keep up with Gabriel’s SEP enhanced running speed.

Jesse and the other guys would wait a good bit outside the facility in the form of a backup team, ready to act as a diversion or as an attacking force to create a way out of the facility for the two infiltrators should the plan go belly-up.

A dark alley, Dorado, Mexico, 1:22 AM, The Day of the Numbani Incident

As far as dark alleys went the one Lucio and Reyes currently occupied was one of the more pleasant representatives of its kind. It was kept mostly clean and the few lamps scattered along its length were still intact, although they provided only little light and most of it tightly localised at the backdoors of various businesses.

Its cleanliness was of little surprise to the two dark clad men, as it was in close vicinity of the Vishkar tower and warehouse. And that bunch had certain expectation of their surroundings. Gabriel scoffed at the thought.

The DJ looked up at the soldier when he heard the noise, but returned to checking his skates after the older man just shook his head in response to his inquiring gaze.

A few minutes later he gave Reyes the thumps up, everything had checked out and the batteries were fully charged. He would be able to skate for days, if need be.

No communication was necessary as they sidled out of the ally and sneaked along the tall wall separating the Vishkar complex from the streets. The two of them took great care in avoiding the bright pools of light just below the powerful spotlights mounted to the outside of the whitish wall, which had suffered strongly at the hands of the roadside dust and exhaust fumes.

The pair reached the large entry way without arousing any suspicion and managed to sneak up to the heavily fortified guard house.

The digital key worked marvellously and unlocked the thick neo-steel door on the first try. The door swung inwards with surprisingly little noise. Probably oiled twice a day, Gabriel thought derisively.

He walked in with an upright and very rigid stance, hands behind his back, miming his vision of a high ranking Vishkar officer. He thought it likely that the guards in the room would be notified if someone opened the door, even if the correct code was used. And from the scrambling sounds and hushed voices coming from the security office he was probably right. “José despierta, ¡despierta! Inspección sorpresa!” He chuckled slightly and flicked the safety of the gun held behind his back off.

The door before him was flung open from the inside and revealed a young man clad in the bright colours of the Vishkar security forces. Even before the man had started to take in Gabriel’s form in the dark entry hall he opened his mouth and started to grovel to the assumed security chief. “Greetings Sir! How very good to see you, Sir!”

Gabriel took pity on him and didn’t let him go any further. He lifted his concealed gun with the speed of a striking viper and pulled the trigger without taking aim. He hit the young man in the middle of his chest, which hadn’t been too great of a feat since the two men stood barely three metres apart.

The Vishkar agent went down instantly, without as much as a whimper. The man’s collapse was accompanied by questioning calls coming from the inside of the room and hurried footsteps. Before they were able to reach the door, the seasoned soldier sprang into action and leapt over the felled guard and into the brightly lit office. A swift jab to the temple of the closest man provided Gabriel with some breathing room, which he used to fire three rapid shots at the still standing occupants of the security enclosure.

They fell just as quickly as his first victim.

The whole fight had been over in barely ten seconds.

“Fuck dude, you are cold.” Exclaimed the DJ, who had followed closely behind. “Are they dead?”

Reyes shook his head in denial. “Nah,” He held his gun to the light, revealing its peculiar look and added, “Ana’s patented sleep darts, guaranteed to knock everyone out for at least four hours.”

“Woha, can you buy those?” Lucio asked, eyes wide behind his combat glasses, “Seria útil.”

Gabriel answered the question with a chuckle and a shake of his head. “I have no idea where she got them from, sorry.”

He walked over to the main security console and took a quick glance at it. They had timed the attack perfectly. The security officers slumped on the ground had entered the ‘all green code’ only a minute earlier, they would have at least an hour before someone would come and check up on them.

He turned towards the door and waved for the resistance fighter to follow him.

Back outside everything was still as calm and deserted as it had been at the start of their attack and, after a short moment to verify the correct direction, they were off towards one of the warehouses.

While the people at SOMBRA had found no direct evidence of anything untoward happening at this facility, they had managed to glean some information about the work and loading patterns in the buildings. And they revealed that one of the three warehouses spread around the main courtyard was kept mostly empty for some reason. It would serve as a perfect way into the facility as there was little chance of discovery by an overworked employee burning the night oil.

The pair ignored the massive shutters at its front. They had decided early on in their planning that opening them would probably cause way to much noise and instead moved towards a small side entrance to the massive warehouse.

The door yielded to the key just as easily as the first one had, and opened just as quietly. That had been expected, what hadn’t been was how brightly the massive hall was illuminated.

They had assumed that the massive tube lights at the apex of the roof would be turned off.

Still, changing the plan now would just invite disaster, so Gabriel ignored the light and slipped through the gap.

Inside, he quickly assessed his situation. Fully automatic shelves shielded him from nearly all sides, their bases marked with warning colours, and on the one they didn’t no one was visible. He relaxed his tense stance a bit and signalled for his companion to follow him inside.

They moved silently along the tall racks, their heads on a swivel, towards the double doors at the far end, which would lead them to the office buildings and hopefully the server rooms somewhere beyond them.

But they never made it there, because just as they approached the first break in the shelving units Gabriel froze and signalled for the DJ to do so as well. With only their heartbeats and shallow breathing disrupting the silence of the hall the soldier closed his eyes and concentrated on his ears.

Moments later he heard it again, the faint rattling of chains, the whirring of a powerful electric motor, all the sounds that indicated a shelving robot at work.

From how low the sound was Gabriel deduced that the robot had to be located at the far end of the hall, a good two, three hundred metres and ten rows of shelving away from them.

Even though they could most likely slip past them, as they weren’t headed exactly that way, Reyes didn’t dare to attempt it.

Firstly, the workers over there could head towards the office at a moment’s notice.

Secondly, if they were loading or unloading something it was quite likely that the driver would leave soon. And without anyone awake at the checkpoint to open the gates for them, they would surely raise alarm.

And thirdly, from what they knew of the schedules, no one should be here at all.

He explained most of it, somewhat, to his brother in arms with the few hand signs he had taught him during the afternoon of waiting for night to fall. After receiving a nod in return, he stealthily moved towards the spot where he presumed the workers to be.

The two infiltrators were in luck. The work party was positioned in the main causeway, close to another intersection. This allowed Gabriel and Lucio to sneak very close to their new target and also offered a good vantage point for their observations. What they saw was deeply worrying.

A good dozen men stood waiting around three large trucks that were in the process of being loaded. The men were a ragtag bunch. Sporting frayed clothing, surplus military gear and numerous tattoos, piercings and colourful Mohawks. They were quite obviously Los Muertos.

While the guards screamed gang members to the high heavens, the workers did not. They were apparelled in the official Vishkar colours of blue and white, had visible batches clipped to their safety vests and wore OSHA conform orange helmets.

Though one of the blue and white garbed people wasn’t quite like the others. He wore no safety gear, for one. And for a second, Gabriel knew him.

“Sanjay Korpal.” The old soldier was trained to well to say the name out loud, though the same couldn’t be said about Lucio.

Luckily, one of the shelving robots had touched down that very moment and the loud clang of it hitting the concrete floor had drowned out the younger man’s ill-advised outcry. Still, Gabriel shot him an angry glare, and made a silencing gesture with his hand.

The robot must have been malfunctioning somewhat or maybe the large crate it pulled from its shelving space wasn’t the right design for the dumb machine, as the crate had slid of the prongs during the descent and had cracked open on hitting the hard flooring. Dozens of heavy Pulse-rounds fell out of the gap and tinkled merrily on the floor.

“What the fuck are you doing you moron!” Screamed a visibly enraged Korpal at the worker controlling the problematic lifter. “Are you trying to kill us all? You are damn lucky it wasn’t one of the grenade crates!” He pointed at workers at random, “You, you and you clean that shit up right now. I don’t need one of you morons driving over one of them and damaging the equipment.”

He turned around and angrily stomped off in the direction of the gang member with the full face tattoo. He spoke decidedly quieter when he addressed the colossal man. Though his words were still loud enough for Reyes to hear.

“Before you ask, yes you’ll get another crate of ammunition. Vishkar always holds up to their side of the deal.” He poked a finger at the broad chest of the gangbanger and offered a few further words that sounded very much like a threat to Gabriel, which he thought was either very brave, or very foolish. “You better make sure that you fulfil your side of the deal. Or the next delivery will be a lot more personal.”

The hulking brute just scoffed at the smaller man and wiped the poking hand away like it was an annoying fly.

Gabriel decided they had heard enough and slowly retreated from the crossroad towards the exit, Lucio in tow. They had all the evidence they needed.

They made it back to their ally in half the time it took them to enter the facility and, once they were sure that they were completely alone, requested a pick up from the second team.

While they were waiting for the hover car to arrive Lucio spoke the words he had been mulling over ever since they left the crossroad behind. “What are we going to do? We can’t let Los Muertos have that kind of hardware, they could start a civil war with that kind of gear!”

After a short moment of thoughtful silence the older man nodded in agreement. “You’re right.”

Lucio turned around, as if to walk back to the Vishkar compound, only to be stopped by Reyes heavy hand on his shoulder. “We can’t rush into this, they are way too heavily armed for that! Also, we still got some time, they had only just started loading the first truck. With the problems the crates pose I’d reckon we’ve got a good hour till they are ready to move.”

Lucio gave him an unhappy look over his shoulder, sighed and nodded. He would wait.

Rally point for the second Team, Dorado, 1:37 AM

“Twelve men and three trucks you say? I reckon two men in the front and two in the back.” Jesse surmised. “I can take out the two in the first truck’s driver’s cab, no problemo. I doubt they will keep breaking distances in mind, so most likely they will crash into each other. Should rattle their drugged out bones something good. Two men for each remaining cab. That only leaves the ones in the back, sound good?”

“What about the munitions?” Brought one of Lucio’s men up, “Won’t they detonate during the crash? Or during the firefight after?”

Gabriel shook his head, “No, if everything is as modern as the Pulse-Rounds we saw then nothing is going to happen. And we’ll be hiding behind solid cover during the initial assault anyways.”

“Okay,” The man didn’t look entirely convinced but didn’t seem prepared to ask more about it. So Reyes ignored his dubious look and continued on a different track.

“McCree’s plan sounds as decent as last hour plans get. Now we only need to know where we can ambush the convoy.” He pulled an old school paper map out of his combat belt and flattened it out on the car’s hood. “Any ideas?”

Lucio sidled up to him and studied the map for a second. He harrumphed and waved for Carlos to come over. “Você consegue ler isso?”

Carlos just nodded and pointed at the old town near the cliffs and started to explain, “Los Muertos is currently holed up in the poorer parts of the old town, close to the Mission San Juan Bautista. They use the immense network of tunnels and cellars in that part of the city to hide their drugs and weapons. Como Ratas.” He spit at the ground.

“Hmm,” Jesse leaned closer to the map and tried his best to make out the roads in the indicated area. “Hah,” He tapped his finger at a specific spot on the map, about halfway between the mission and the new LumériCo power plant. “If I read this thing right, then this gate is the only way in for vehicles the size of a truck, right? Perfect spot for an ambush.”

Carlos furrowed his brow in thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. “You’re right. And it’s pretty close to their territory, they won’t expect anyone to be daring enough to ambush them there.”

“Very well, that’s decided then.” Gabriel refolded the map and turned towards Lucio. “Do you have a man who can follow the convoy without getting spotted?”

“Yaya, Alesandro is good at that kind of stuff.” He waved the indicated fighter over and explained the plan in rapid Portuguese to him.

Five minutes later the Synaesthesia members and Blackwatch agents were off to the ambush spot.

Getting Jesse to the top of the large archway had been an easy feat. The rough plasterwork and stucco provided ample handholds and his powerful bionic arm and grip did take care of the rest. At the top the experienced gunslinger fixed a rope to the back of the arch, to ensure a quick dismount. Afterwards he used the deep shadows between the battlements to hide his form to the best of his abilities. Which wasn’t nearly as good as the rest of the ambush team. They had hid themselves in the thick foliage around the abandoned courthouse and behind the short ornamental walls lining the road. They were completely invisible to anyone traveling down the road by car.

For the freedom fighters the seconds ticked by like molasses, their attacks so far had been purely hit and run, and every few minutes one of them began to fidget, only to be shushed by his neighbours.

Gabriel just sighed inwardly every time it happened. It was a good thing they weren’t fighting Omnics, or artillery shells would already be raining down on them.

Finally, after what felt like hours to most of the ambushers, their tail warned the team of the convoy’s impending arrival.

Only Lucio didn’t check his gun for an additional time at the announcement.

The commander just barely refrained from face palming at hearing the tell-tale ratching sounds of a half dozen clips being removed from their guns and shoved back in.

A minute later the cobblestones were illuminated by the powerful headlights of three speeding trucks coming down the winding road. Their speed and closeness to each other was exceedingly unsafe on such a narrow road and something a proper military outfit would never even consider. A single roadside bomb could take them out all at once. But the gangbangers apparently felt safe in their armoured trucks, they didn’t even bother to look up at the gate and the sole man who stood tall up there with his legs apart and his hand on his Peacekeeper.

The cowboy’s wide smile was barely visible from under the rim of his large hat and the shadow it cast on his face. He lived for moments like these, when the din and chaos of the world fell away and only he and his targets remained, their fate tightly interwoven by the knowledge that only a single party would walk away and retake their place in this world.

He studied the approaching trucks and smiled even wider. His high vantage point made it possible to see deep into the valley between the trucks. Six men, six bullets. “My kind of math.”

“It’s high noon!” He shouted in complete disregard of the current time and raised his Peacekeeper.

McCree had always been a good shot. Even as a kid before the war. He had used every bit of free time he had gotten on his family’s farm to sneak off with his grandfather’s old revolver and had shot hundreds of rounds at makeshift targets. The missing bullets had never aroused any suspicion as the old man had been a bit of an Armageddon prepper, he had stashed tons of them in the farm’s storm cellar.

When he had lost his arm during the war he had been soul crushingly devastated. The one thing he had been truly good at had been take from him by filthy Omnics. He had given up on his life right then and there in that damned hospital tent.

Luckily, his commander hadn’t. Commander Gabriel Reyes had cajoled, bribed and threatened a good number of officers and medical personnel for him to get a replacement arm, one that would make him even better than he was before.

To Jesse the arm had come like a miracle, more so than anything else he had seen during his time on the frontlines. It had integrated with his nervous system exceedingly well. So good in fact that it had thrown off his aim at first. Gone was the imperceptible sluggishness, the vanishingly small tremors and the millimetres small imprecision of his movements, all replaced by unparalleled accuracy and perfect balance.

It had turned him into a revolver wielding sniper. A truly lethal opponent as the Omnic war machines soon learnt.

He had fired the six bullets in such rapid succession that they had sounded like a single shot to the untrained ears of the fighters below, but still each and every one of them struck true, killing their target before the bangs even had an inkling of a chance of reaching their ears.

Without any of the drivers left alive to steer the trucks they veered of the road and into the low walls along the roadside, although they crashed into a wall at such a flat angle that they just bounced off the walls and back into the street, where they came to a slow rolling halt.

Jesse didn’t immediately rappel down after making the shots as had been his plan. Instead he decided to use this excellent vantage point to pick off anyone coming out of the back of the trucks, even though it left him quite exposed. He doubted that anyone down there would be in any state to hit him, especially with his allies on the ground moving in.

The cab-teams were quick to realise that their work had already been done for them by the sharpshooter on the arch and instantly moved to the back. The security doors yielded to the first attempt to open them, as the gang members hadn’t bothered to properly lock them. And the men inside proved to be little of an obstacle as half of them hadn’t made it through the rough stop unscathed. The unlucky ones had apparently been sitting or lying on the floor and some of the unsecured, heavy crates had dropped down on them, squashing soft tissue and breaking bones alike.

Of the three men that were still able to over some form of resistance, one had lost sight of his gun during the tumble, and the other one had barely time to look up from his felled friend before he was struck down by a bullet to the chest.

Only the last one posed a problem, the hulking leader of the small group.

He had been inside the last of the trucks, admiring the ridiculously oversized machinegun that had been given to him by Korpal as a personal little bribe for taking care of some side business, and although he too was hit by a number of crates, they had mostly just bounced of his large frame.

When his truck had come to a full stop he had been ready and waiting. The moment he heard someone approaching the back of the truck he had thrown himself against the tailgate with the force of a raging bull, flinging it open at the speed of a cannonball. The heavy metal door hit Carlos like a rockslide, taking him out of the fight, maybe even out of life, instantly.

The other wing of the tailgate also barely missed Gabriel, only his SEP empowered reflexes had let him duck just in time to save him from a swift demise. Though, if the brute had had a smaller weapon it might not have been enough to safe him, as the large man had straightaway raised his huge gun and pointed it at the agent. But before the veritable canon could spin to life and spit death at the crouching man, Gabriel had brought up his compact shotguns and pulled the trigger.

The RVGR shotguns, which had been designed to shred through centimetres of reinforced steel, did horrible things to the brute’s chest. After the bloody mist had settled little more than a pair of disembodied legs in combat fatigues were left of him.

Gabriel wiped some gore of his face with a disgusted noise and closed the tailgates. No blood had been one of the few upsides to fighting Omnics.

One of the others was already checking up on Carlos, he gave a thumps up at Gabriel when he noticed the soldiers questing look, and pulled one of the man’s arms over his shoulder. Carlos’ face looked decidedly flatter to Gabriel.

Synaesthesia Safehouse, undisclosed location around Dorado, 3:31 AM

Gabriel had decided early on that he would, if possible, hand the weapons over to the rebel group. Blackwatch had little use for them as most of their agents sported their own, highly customized equipment. And handing the recovered weapons over to the resistance fighters would go a long way in building some more goodwill between the two groups, which might come in handy further down the road. Besides, with them they would be able to disrupt the Vishkar and Los Muertos operation in this region of the world for a good long while. And anything that would weaken the corrupt corporation was a good thing in his book.

So, with a last shake of hands and the occasional high-five Jesse and him left the safe house and headed for their base of operations, cordially brushing off all offers for a victory celebration, citing a lack of time.

Which was true enough.

After all, they had a war to plan.

Chapter Text

Geneva Airport, Switzerland, Day 1 after the Numbani Incident, 8:27 AM

“… After the unprecedented attack of yesterday afternoon all access roads to the city of Numbani are blocked off and all non-governmental travellers are turned away at the Overwatch controlled checkpoints, including our very own reporters.

While allegations of terrorism are on the rise, a spokesman for Overwatch has informed the public that so far no evidence supporting a terrorist plot has been found and that a preliminary analysis suggests a simple malfunction of the OR14 units.

Though the statement is pulled into question by a number of recently surfaced eyewitness accounts that speak of a suspicious device found at the Awade International Terminal by Strike Commander Jack Morrison’s own strike team.

Though so far no known terrorist organisation has claimed responsibility for the grievous attack which has ended the existence of hundreds of Omnics…”

Nyx shook her head and tuned the news broadcast out as best as she could. Listening to that was rather pointless for her, she’d just read the official (and unofficial) Overwatch reports once she was alone and a young little genius hacker wasn’t sprawled tiredly on the seat next to her, with her head resting against her shoulder.

 They had arrived at the airport only a few minutes earlier. Not because of the flight, as Sombra’s stealth jet had been even faster than her own horrible ride, but because they had only departed their private drinking spot in the savannah sometime in the early morning. It had taken her that long to get the Mexican girl somewhat back on her feet after her heavy drinking during the evening.

She hadn’t dared to try and operate the jet herself. She had assumed, rightly so, that the thing was riddled with booby traps and highly sophisticated code locks. Nothing she wouldn’t have cracked with enough time, mind you, but she hadn’t been in the mood to try, or to dislodge the girl’s head from her lap and interrupt her peaceful slumber. Instead she had just continued petting the hacker’s violet tresses and planned her next few steps.

The pair had remained there, sitting on the hard packed dirt in no man’s land, till the molten ball of gold had peaked over the horizon and woken the sleeping girl. The hacker had been a bit grumpy at first as she was quite unaccustomed to rising this early, but she had lost her foul mood quickly when she had realized that for once she hadn’t felt like a beaten dog after a night of blackout level drinking.

They had broken their camp in mere minutes and filed into the plane, which had, after a short discussion taken off towards Switzerland on a roundabout route to avoid the no-fly zones in northern Africa.

Sombra had somehow managed to file a bogus flight plan with the Geneva Airspace Control and had been granted permission to land her sophisticated plane. A few minutes later had found the two of them sitting in uncomfortable airport chairs with Nyx on the phone with her personal driver Pierre, and Sombra happily munching on a sandwich the older woman had gotten her.

Nyx’s train of thought came to a halt when her phone vibrated in her folded hands, which meant that Pierre had arrived. She softly patted Sombra on her arm to wake her from her catatonic state and rose from her seat.

Outside, Pierre was parked in the drop-off lane right in front of the main entrance. He waited outside the car, one gloved hand on the black limousine’s door, languidly watching the passers-by. Though his blasé attitude was marred by his sharp gaze that quickly assessed everyone in view for the threat they might pose to him, his car or his mistress.

He greeted Nyx with a wide smile and a polite flourish of his hand. “Bon matin madame Nyx.”

Nyx answered his smile with one of her own, “Et un bon matin à toi aussi, Pierre.”

The driver opened the door for her and asked, “Et qui est la jeune beauté?” Indicating Sombra who was walking besides her.

“C’est Sombra, une amie.” Nyx explained her companion and stepped into the spacious interior of the car with the driver’s gracious help.

After assisting her through the door he held his hand out for Sombra and spoke, “Je suis heureux de vous rencontrer Sombra, s'il vous plaît laissez-moi vous aider.”

Nyx couldn’t quite hold back the giggle that made its way past her lips at seeing the hacker’s expression, which flickered quickly between amusement, confusion and consternation. It was very obvious that she hadn’t understood a single word of their exchange.

After a second the girl opted to ignore the presented hand and just get into the car, muttering a few choice words at him. “No tengo idea de lo que dijiste, pendejo!” She smirked at his confused expression and added, “How well do you like it now, eh?”

Her giggling turned to full out laughter. Still she managed to shake her head at the driver’s questioning gaze and to signal for him to close the door, which he did with a professional smile for her, and a fatherly one for Sombra.

With the door closed and the privacy screen up she playfully slapped the other girl’s thigh, “He just wanted to know who you were, told you that he was delighted to make your acquaintance and offered his help to get into the car.” She smiled apologetically and explained, “He isn’t really used to other people riding with me in the car and probably forgot that not every foreigner speaks French.”

“Okay,” Sombra said with a haughty sniff, “But what made him think I’d need help getting into a car? I’m not that old!”

Nyx grinned deviously at her friend, “So you think I’m old?”

“Eh, oo quise decir eso, estúpido.” The flustered girl’s eyes went wide when she realized what she had said, “Oh mierda! I didn’t mean to say you’re stupid. You’re very intelligent. And young! You are magnifique! Eh…” The hacker let her words trail off and decided to hide her reddening face behind her hands instead of digging an even deeper hole for herself with her babbling.

Nyx just beamed sunnily at her and pulled the girl’s hands off of her face. “I know exactly what you meant to say!” She put extra emphasize on the word ‘exactly’.

Sombra’s complexion turned somehow even redder, a thing that the doctor in her thought impossible, and tried to hide her face again. But Nyx didn’t let go of the embarrassed hacker’s hands.

Without the cover of her hands available to her, Sombra turned around as best as she could with Nyx holding her and pressed her face into the upholstery.

Nyx thought the leather didn’t do a very good job of muffling the mortified screams of the younger girl.

The short drive to her safe house in the city was pretty eventless, apart from Sombra recovering from her mortification and finding the mini bar. The girl devoured all the snacks it held in record time.

The limousine came to a halt in front of a modern high-rise in a rather swanky street that sported literally a dozen jewellers and haute couture boutiques. And as was expected of a place in a neighbourhood like this, the apartment building even had a doorman garbed in black and gold.

The man had dutifully hurried over once it became plainly apparent that his building was the luxurious car’s destination and had tried to gallantly open the door for its passengers once it had come to a stop.

But instead of opening the door for the obviously very rich people behind the darkened windows all he got for his troubles was nearly getting run over by an over excited young punk high on sugar and caffeine, who had hastily jumped out of the car a second before it had come to a full stop.

She should have warned the younger woman, Nyx realised. By now it should have been obvious to her that the hacker hadn’t spent any time what so ever at the higher rungs of society and was completely unaware of their niceties and expectations. She would have to rectify that if she wanted to use the girl’s abilities to the limit.

“Oh, mira a dónde ibas, gilipollas!” Sombra shouted at the doorman when he barely managed to avoid the bull rushing girl. The purple haired woman shook an angrily clenched fist at him.

“I… I’m sorry!” Stammered the man. His torso and head were bent back as far as it would go and he had raised his arms to a warding position in front of his face, clearly afraid the enraged girl was going to hit him any second.

“You better be!”

 Nyx had used the distraction to slip out of the care herself and close the door. She handed the doorman’s jaunty little cap, which had fallen of his head during the near collision and rolled dangerously close to one of the wheels, back to the young man with an apologetic smile. He accepted it with a stammered thanks and hurriedly put it on, completely missing the two hundred francs note she had snuck into his hat’s elastic band. Ah well, he’d find it later, Nyx thought.

She slung one arm around the waist of the younger girl and guided her away from the intimidated man and towards the waiting building.

They ignored the attendee in the atrium, who eyeing the two strangers suspiciously, and moved over to the bank of elevators. Inside the metal box she searched her phone case for the right key card that was necessary to get the lift moving to anywhere else but the exit. She cursed softly under her breath while sifting through the countless nearly identical plastic cards for similar safe houses all around the world.

“You know, cariño, it might be faster if I just hacked the damn thing.” Sombra said with a smirk on her face.

She ignored the girl’s words with a surly look and continued holding one key card after the other to the lift’s scanner.

Maybe she should reconsider the whole finger print angle, it would make these things a lot easier. Though getting her fingerprint to be exactly the same each transformation was pretty difficult. And it would make tracing her a lot easier than it was now, as she currently had no finger print at all.

 “Hah!” She had finally held the right one up to the sensor. The lift doors closed immediately and the elevator begun to ascend to the top floor at a rapid pace, ignoring all the requests for stops in-between.

The topmost floor of the building was a single apartment, therefore the lift’s door opened to a spacious living room instead of a drab hallway, as it would have done on the lower floors.

Sombra cast off her arm, which had still been placed around her waist and, with a loud squeal, ran to the large, floor to ceiling windows, which overlooked most of the city and the lac léman. She pressed her face against the glass in a childish manner, leaving a number of grease marks on the pristine window, and tried to take in as much of the view as possible.

After a few moments the young woman looked over her shoulder at the indulgingly smiling Nyx and asked, “You live here?”

“Occasionally,” A blatant lie, she hadn’t stepped a single toe on this property before now. All the financial details had been handled by a number of proxies and the interior design had been managed by a famous agency she had contracted through a shell corporation.

Luckily neither of that was anything strange in this city. The rich and powerful just loved to own property in the home of the most prestigious organisation in the world; that it was situated in Switzerland didn’t hurt at all.

She studied her surroundings discreetly. The agency had followed her instruction down to a tee, the furniture was kept sober, with a lot of straight lines and few colours beyond black, white and silver, and it was kept completely dust free.

She left Sombra at the window and moved to one of the paintings on the wall, which according to the agency hid a mini safe, and retrieved a second key card. She returned to the hacker’s side and offered it to her, but the excited girl didn’t pay her presence any notice.

She laid a hand on the girl’s back to get her attention. “Here,” She wagged the card in front of her face, “this is for you.”

Sombra’s eyes grew to puppy dog size, “What? I can stay here?” She asked incredulously. After taking a moment to fully take in the luxurious space she added in a whisper, “con usted?”

“Of course, why else would I have brought you here?” She poked the hacker with the key card that she still hadn’t taken, “You can’t really return to wherever you stayed before. Way to dangerous.”

Sombra snorted derisively and finally accepted the offered key, “As if I wanted to return to that rat infested hole verga boy made me live in.”

“Wait he did what? Why didn’t you get your own place?”

“Yeah,” The young woman said awkwardly, scratching the back of her head embarrassed, “Verga boy kinda threatened to kill me if I stayed at another place. I, eh, guess it was meant as a punishment for calling el pollino names in front of his people.”

“Yes, that sounds like him.” She snorted. “But since we are on the topic of threats, I’d feel better if you stayed inside till we handled the Akande situation.” She cut the hacker off before she could speak and added, “Look I don’t mean to lock you inside, but I would feel a lot better if I knew you were safe, okay?”

“Lo entiendo!” Sombra smiled reassuringly at her and took a hold of her hand, “Don’t worry, I’ll stay here, I have no interest in ending up in his torture dungeon!” She gave her hand a squeeze and perked up, “So, where do I sleep?” Then she ran off like a whirlwind in the search of a bedroom.

“Eh, Nyxi!” The hacker called from one of the rooms down the hall. “Yes, Sombra?”

“There is only a single bed!”

Ah, yes, that was what had been nagging her in the back of her head ever since they had landed at the airport.

“I can take the couch, no problemo!”

Nyx looked doubtfully over her shoulder from where she was propped up against the doorway to the bedroom at the stylish looking steel and leather monstrosity in the living room. “No, you absolutely will not, unless you have a real desire to find out what a slipped disc herniation feels like. Besides, the bed is more than large enough for the two of us.” Which was true enough, after all the bed was a lavish king-size as anything less would have raised quite a few brows at the interior design agency she had contracted.

Sombra went bright red at that suggestion and asked flustered, “B-but aren’t you worried I might do something … malo, bad… Eh I mean evil!”

“Something bad you say?” Nyx said with a raised eyebrow, “Like what exactly?” She let the other girl squirm for a moment, then shook her head, “No, not really. You’re a bright, resourceful young woman and you’re not motivated by money.”

The hacker looked at her surprised, “Why would you think that?”

She tilted her head, “Because otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Instead you’d be at some nice beach resort frittering away all the cash you appropriated from various banks by means of hacking. And you don’t look like someone that is looking for power for power’s sake.” She tapped her index finger against her chin in a fake display of deep thought. “If I had to guess, I’d say you are looking for tech, and a place to belong. Both of which I can offer you.”

Her words must have hit a nerve, as the other woman remained uncharacteristically silent.

“Also, as you can probably guess, I have some things in place that might make life very short for my-would be killer. Besides, while some of my associates might not like me very much, they couldn’t let such a blatant attack on their authority stand unpunished. See, I’m as save with you as I could ever be, wouldn’t you agree?”

The hacker nodded frantically.

“Anyway, I need to take care of some business. I’ll be back in an hour or two. If you need something call the number next to the phone, they’ll arrange for pretty much anything. Though, please keep it within reason, we don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention, okay?” She shot Sombra an impish smile, “So no buying Overwatch level computer gear on my dime!”

“Chido!” The hacker lunged for the phone like a starved tiger on the prole, by the time the elevator had arrived to take Nyx down to the ground floor Sombra had already entered the indicated number and was waiting for someone to answer her call. She just waved distractedly in Nyx’s direction in response to her goodbye.

Nyx chuckled softly to herself once the doors had fully closed. This was going to be interesting.

Overwatch HQ, Angela Ziegler’s office, 10:07 AM

When Angela arrived at her office Karen hadn’t been there, which she had expected. During Angela’s absence the lion’s share of her work had passed over to Theresa, her deputy, and Karen normally helped the other woman out with the increased workload. Since everything moved through Athena it didn’t matter in which office the secretary worked, she would still receive all the calls and materials pertaining Angela and her office.

Her secretary’s absence suited her just fine. As she assumed that the call she had to make wouldn’t go over to well, if Jack’s mood on her departure day was any indication. Still, she couldn’t postpone it any longer now since Athena had already logged her arrival. Not calling him the moment she arrived at her office would serve to enrage the strike commander only further, and he was certainly petty enough to check the dates.

So there was nothing to do for her but to sit down at her desk and ask Athena for a secure connection to the strike commander.

He let her wait for ten minutes before he accepted the call, which didn’t bode well at all.

“Finally you deem to call me!” The strike commander opened angrily. “Where in all the hells have you been? And why the fuck aren’t you at the HQ and not down here in Numbani!”

She sighed, this was already going great.

“Jack, as you very well know I was in Africa on an Emergency Relieve mission. And…”

“Yes I know that!” Jack interrupted gruffly, “But why didn’t you come to Numbani when the call went out! You are the chief medical officer, damn it!”

“Because Jack, I was in northern Africa, which is a no-fly zone. The fastest way out of it is to move towards Europe by hover car. Which took a good twelve hours. By the time I arrived at the coast Numbani was already on the lock down you ordered. Therefore I had to move to an Overwatch facility to catch a plane, but all the ones in the Mediterranean had already responded to the mobilisation and were reduced to their skeleton crews, which meant that they weren’t in any shape or form to assist me. So… I had to travel to the HQ to do anything, and here I am!” She wasn’t happy with how frustrated she already sounded.

“Then get your ass in gear and come down here!” Jack barked and ended the call.

“Oh, no you didn’t!” She shouted into the void of her office and reinitialised the connection.

He ignored the connection request for a few minutes before accepting it. “What now?”

“Why?”

“What why?” Asked Morrison annoyed.

“Why should I come down to Numbani? Is there a medical emergency? A humanitarian crisis? Anything that would require my presence and which couldn’t be handled by my medical teams that are already in the city?”

“No,” grumbled Jack, “There isn’t, human casualties were light and the teams suffered no injuries. But I still want you down here!”

“What for?” Replied Angela, “My mechanical knowledge? While I have to admit to some skill in the field, I think you should request Torbjörn and his department for that. Clear separation of command and all that!”

“I just want you to do your damned job!” By now the commander of Overwatch was non-stop shouting. She took a second to turn her speakers down a bit to prevent any short term damage. Which reminded her, she had to look into safeties and limits for the sound system, that and the illumination.

An incensed snort reminded her of the matter at hand.

“Now you listen Jack! That is exactly what I’m doing, unlike some other people in this organisation I don’t want to name. I have a proper hierarchy in place, I spent months during the war to train continental managers, regional managers and the local managers below them. I created a protocol for quarterly inventories and I made damn sure that my people are ready for everything, from the end of the world, over a renewed flare up of the Omnic crisis, to a burnt tongue from too hot coffee!”

She needed a moment to bring her breathing back under her control, luckily the befuddled strike commander didn’t try to interject anything.

“And I have it black on white, right here in front of me that my division was the first to respond. In fact they had to wait for your strike teams to get their asses in gear, as you so nicely put it! So tell me commander, did they fail to perform to the highest expectations?”

“Eh, no… They did excellent work.” He sounded cowed.

“Good,” Angela sighed, the anger leaving her as swiftly as it had come, “Then let me do my job by organising and directing all the units in the field from the HQ, where I have access to all the countless resources that Athena has at her beck and call.”

“Okay…”

“Good day, commander.” She ended the call with a wave of her hand, not waiting for a dismissal from her superior officer.

What a day, she thought, at least the rest shouldn’t be too bad.

Geneva Safe House, Bedroom, 11:45 AM

For the longest time she had thought that she couldn’t get tired anymore, which had proven to be true for her body, but not for her mind. Emotional tiredness was still an option for her. An option that she would have gladly given up right about now.

When she had arrived at the penthouse Sombra had been playing a game on the large television screen in the living room. She had somehow rigged her tricked out phone to it and used the small device to run some kind of cutesy farming game on the left halve of her screen, while watching some sort of foreign gaming stream on the other halve. The sounds coming from TV were what she expected to hear from a fight between a horde of angry squirrels and a cat.

Sombra had barely acknowledged her when she had trudged through the elevator doors.

With a fluent conversation out of the question she had decided to lay down for a bit and let her body unwind from the high alert mode it had been in since yesterday morning.

But with the stimulants leaving her system, her anxieties had gained room to grow and remind her of the things she had done the day before.

Her hands started to shake.

Damnit, she hadn’t meant for things to deteriorate that badly. She had known that the mission had been a trap, Akande’s blackmail made that very clear. She had just assumed that it had been a trap intended for her personally. That maybe the OR units would target her above all, or that he tipped of the authorities. Not that he was planning to massacre all the Omnics in the city!

“Verficketi scheisse nonemal, du huere arschloch!“ She said under her breath, followed by as many more expletives as she could think of.

“I should have known better!”

“Oh Akande, wenn mir eus snächste mal treffed wirschs bereuhe…“

„Because the next time we meet I will be better, I promise, you fucking asshole!“ She shouted loudly, followed by a weak ‘oh, nei,’ when she realised what she had said. The next thing she knew, she felt herself fall through the silken bedsheets to the dark void below.

8 years ago, Day 3271 of the crisis, University Hospital Zürich, Switzerland

Angela was proud of herself.

Nine years of war. Nearly two thirds of her life had been filled with nothing but worldwide conflict and suffering on an unimaginable scale, and still she had managed to make it all the way here, to one of the many busy hallways at the university hospital. Not as a patient or visitor, mind you, but as the youngest student in all of its long and distinguished history.

She, and a group of other students, were currently shadowing the head surgeon on his rounds through his patients’ rooms. They had already checked up on a number of pretty mundane cases, things she was sure she could have already handled herself, and were now moving towards the more complex cases at the intensive care unit.

The first one of which was a factory worker who had been pulled into unsafe machinery. The wounds he sustained were terrible and little could be done for him beyond stabilising his condition. The extensive reconstructive surgeries the man required just weren’t feasible in the current state of things. The meds, tools and work hours it would require just couldn’t be justified.

Sadly enough, stories like his were becoming more common by the day, as factory equipment broke down and was patched up in ways that would send an OSHA official into immediate cardiac arrest, or it was replaced by old surplus equipment altogether.

The head doctor never lingered long with these patients. He had worked as a physician since long before the start of the war, when a victim like him would be pushed to the front of the waiting list and would receive all the care and resources possible. Seeing them like this seemed to break a tiny, but fundamental part of him and he always walked away from them with a lot less energy in his step.

He paused in front of the last door they’d visit today. “Okay students. Normally we don’t treat soldiers at this hospital.” A pained lock washed over his face when he continued, “As it ordinarily isn’t… feasible to move soldiers this far from the frontline for treatment. But the woman in there is part of a special ops unit and the higher powers decided that she should be treated here in case complications might arrise. If these were normal circumstances we wouldn’t let students anywhere near someone like her, to protect her identity and her outfit. But since the Omnics don’t really care about silly things like assassinating a single elite soldier we made an exception. So that you get a chance to get some early experiences with gunshot wounds.”

For a moment there she thought the doctor’s eyes flickered over to her, but the movement had been so fast that she might have imagined it. “It isn’t a pretty sight, so brace yourselves.”

He opened the door and waved for the students to file into the room.

Objectively, the wounds weren’t all that bad compared with some of the others they had seen earlier today. The holes had already been cleanly sutured and looked like little more than a small number of angry red welts that dotted her body from one hip to just under her opposite armpit in a decently straight line.

And still, when Angela caught a first glimpse of the young Arabic woman, who had a small, slightly pained smile on her face, a sick feeling started to spread through her body.

Her eyesight started to blur and images of another young soldier with a similar smile lying in a hospital bed appeared overlaid over the woman.

With the memories came a low buzzing sound that drowned out everything else and the world seemed to constrict on a single point in her vision.

She felt like she was going to vomit any second now.

She needed to leave. Now!

Luckily she had been the last in row to enter the room and no one blocked her escape path. “I… Ich mues weg…” Angela stammered towards the doctor who still held the door and ran off for the closest lavatory.

She hid in one of the stalls, sitting on the cold, unsavoury tiles with her head between her bent legs, her hands shielding her head from the bright overhead lights and her body wracked by hysterical sobs.

She had half expected for one of the other students to chase after her, but no one came. Which honestly shouldn’t have surprised her, as she hadn’t made a lot of friends. Which mid-twenties student wanted to hang out with a socially awkward fourteen year old orphan, after all? But their cold ignorance of her plight still hurt, even if a small part of her had expected it.

So, without anyone helping her out of her dark pit of misery and despair she stayed in her tiny cubicle for a long time, trying to get her chaotic and destructive thoughts back under control.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom door with red, swollen eyes and a wet shirt she hadn’t expected a cup of lukewarm tea to be thrust upon her by the head physician, who had apparently waited outside the restroom for quite a long while.

“Let’s talk in my office, okay, Angela?” He said in a gruff, but not uncaring manner.

She just nodded and accepted the proffered tea with a wobbly smile. She liked coffee better, but that beverage had been ridiculously hard to get since a few years into the war.

“Please, sit down Angela.” The doctor said. He waited until she did so to start talking again, “I’m worried about you, Angela. I know what you went through to get here, I’ve read your file, and I can barely imagine how painful and hard it must have been for you...” Although he spoke in a soothing manner his words caused fear to flare up in her heart, and more tears to squeeze past her shut eyes. She could imagine where this was going.

He handed her a box of tissues that sat on his desk for moments like these.

“I don’t mean to belittle your skill or dedication, Angela. You’re easily the best student I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching, but today showed that you still suffer from what happened to you.” Her tears intensified.

“I think it might be the best for you if you took a year for yourse…”

“Nooo!” Angela wailed.

“Please, Angela, mental health is important, and you will still be a prodigy,” He said clumsely, clearly out of his depth. “There is no shame in taking time for yourself.”

“No, please, don’t make me leave! I just want to help people.” She begged in a small, forlorn voice.

“But how can you help if you suffer a panic attack in the middle of a surgery? How can you help patients overcome their inner demons if your own are ceaselessly trying to drag you down? There is more to being a physician than to just know where to cut!” He tried to kindly reason with her.

“Please, I can change. I can be better! I… Just give me a chance, please.”

With a sigh he put his face in his hands and massaged his temples.

“Damnit, I don’t want to be the bad guy here!” He said quietly but forcefully. He looked up from his hands and studied her tear and snot streaked face for a few short moments, then sighed again.

“Look,” He offered in a defeated voice. “I have a good friend in the psychology department. If!” He put extra emphasis into that word, “If you go see her I will let you stay, and continue your studies. For now.”

“Oh thank you! I will go talk to her right away.” Her words had regained some of their usual strength, “And I will be better, I promise!”

“Oh, dios Nyx. Despierta, vamos.” She felt someone shaking her shoulders.

She was trying her best to wake up, but it felt like she was stuck at the bottom of a very dark and ice cold lake. “¡Por favor! ¡Me estás asustando!”

Slowly she rose from the cold depths towards the surface. The violet cloud hovering above her reformed into a silken curtain of colourful hair framing the edges of a worried face.

“I’m awake, Sombra.” Nyx slurred. “I’m okay, you can let go of me.”

The hacker let go of her shoulders as if they had burnt her hands and instead slung her arms around Nyx’s upper body in a smothering hug.

“¡Gracias a dios!” After a minute the hacker let go of her. “What happened? You were screaming!”

She rubbed her face tiredly and explained, “I… I guess I let my guard down and the Numbani mess yesterday drudged up some painful memories, and, and… you know.”

Sombra did know and nodded seriously to show it. “Yeah, you don’t have to talk about it.” She added and let herself fall on the bed next to her. Everyone had bad memories from the war, even those who hadn’t been standing on the frontlines.

Both of them remained silent for a good ten minutes, until a loud grumbling from Sombra’s belly broke the brooding silence. The young woman tilted her head in Nyx direction. “Do you want to split a pizza with me?”

They went to bed early that day. The short night had finally taken a toll on the energetic hacker and she had been dozing off a bunch of times while they were sitting on the lounge, watching a random movie. When Sombra’s head had drooped for a fifth time against Nyx’s shoulder she had decided that it was time for them to move to the bed. So she had woken the tired girl and directed her to the bathroom to get herself ready for bed. She herself had taken care of all that earlier, shortly after a dinner that had consisted of leftover pizza. Sombra had gone a bit overboard with her first order.

By the time the hacker returned from the bathroom she was already snuggled under the silken covers, light turned off.  Though, at first only the hacker’s head had appeared around the door jamb sporting an embarrassed smile. “Don’t laugh!”

She lifted a single eyebrow in confusion. “Why should I?”

Sombra shook her violet mane gruffly. “Just promise!”

“Okay, okay, I won’t laugh!” She promised with a curious smile. After a moment’s hesitation the young woman stepped fully into the doorframe, revealing her black, silken shirt that proudly showed off a cutesy, rhinestone bedazzled cartoon figure wearing an oversized sombrero. She nearly missed the clearly male Boxer shorts that peeked out from under the very girly shirt.

Stifling her laughter was surprisingly hard.

“I should have made it more clear what I meant with a ‘Sombra Sugar skull’ to these imbéciles!” She grumbled. “Idiotas, todo el grupo de ellos. I’m going to hack their social media and stick pollas everywhere. Hey! You promised not to laugh.”

“Sorry, sorry,” She apologised and quickly searched for another topic. Her eyes settled on the underpants. “I like the shorts!”

“What?” Asked the approaching girl indignantly. “Their very comfortable, you should try them yourself!”

“Okay, if you say so.” Nyx said with an amused smile gracing her lips. She held out her hand as if waiting for the woman to hand them over. “Wha…” Sombra began to ask but stopped after only a single syllable, a powerful blush creeping over her face. The embarrassed girl harrumphed and slipped into bed with her figurative tail between her legs.

Sombra remained so close to the edge of the bed that Nyx worried she might fall of at any moment. This wouldn’t do, she decided.

“Hey Sombra,” She whispered. The other woman hummed in reply, still seemingly too embarrassed to talk. “I could really use someone to hold right about now.”

For a few long moments nothing happened.

She had already settled on sleeping alone as she didn’t want to force the young woman into anything she wasn’t comfortable with, when Sombra slipped up close to her, though still facing the opposite wall.

She took this as an invitation to be the big spoon and snuggled against the smaller woman’s back. She draped one arm over her hip and was rewarded for her actions by a soft hand taking hold of hers. “Good night, mi reina.” Sombra whispered softly.

“Good night.” Replied Nyx, pressing a barely there kiss to the violet shock of hair.

Chapter Text

Gabriel’s Hacienda, Day 1 after the Numbani Incident, 4:16 AM

Gabriel and Jesse had made very good time on the deserted roads and had reached the wrought iron gates of their current home in under an hour. But when they arrived the entry way was already occupied by a good sized hover van.

“What are the Ironclad doing here?” Jesse asked in a gruff voice, “I thought they finished all their work here weeks ago.”

Gabriel nodded with a worried frown on his face, “Yeah, they did.” He parked the car on the side of the dirt road and stepped out on the dusty road with one of his shotguns in his hand. McCree followed right behind him with his hand resting on his gun holster. He rounded the back corner of the van and lowered the gun immediately when he saw that it was just Torbjörn and one of his Ironclad friends heaving a bunch of suitcases into the back of the guild car.

“Leaving us already, Lindholm?”

The dwarfish man startled heavily at his sudden presence and accidentally let go of the bag he was holding. It hit the smooth cobblestones of the hacienda’s driveway with a heavy clunk. “Damn Reyes! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” The engineer exclaimed nervously, then Torbjörn nodded with a grave expression on his bearded face. “Haven’t you heard? There was an Omnic attack in Numbani. Jack wants to see me and my boys down there ASAP. Needs us to try and repair the Omnics.” The Swede spit on the ground with a disgusted expression.

Gabriel used the short pause to pull his phone from his combat belt and turn it back on. The screen immediately lit up to the well-known splash screen of a class A alert notification, but it lacked the symbol signifying that orders for him were attached to it.

“Looks like Morrison has it well in hand, hasn’t put out a recall for me.” Or he was still peeved off about their last heated discussion about the Vishkar letter, he thought. The later one sounded likelier to him.

“Lucky you,” Torbjörn grumbled. “He’s in a damn foul mood. Gave me a good dressing down for my people not rushing on site.” Lindholm stomped his metal clad boot forcefully against the cobbles and ranted on. “When will that pig-headed man grasp it that we are engineers, not a bunch of overrated masons with guns? It’s hard enough to get my boys out of bed before ten o’clock in the morning! Let alone to get them to walk on an active battlefield where they could get shot at. It’s not the time of the crisis anymore, they aren’t motivated by the fear for their loved ones any longer! Hell, I have barely got any new recruits since the end of the war! And the ones I got are the ones the private sectors or the Ironclad guild hadn’t snapped up the moment they stepped one toe past the boundaries of their Universities!” The mechanic ended his long winded rant with an angry harrumph. Then he scowled at Gabriel once more and asked hopefully, “Couldn’t you talk some sense into that thick headed bastard?”

The commander just shook his head no, “Not on the best of terms right now.”

Torbjörn uttered something unintelligible, threw the dropped bag into the back of the van and closed the doors. “Good day.” He said irritated and walked off towards the driver’s side door.

“Not much of a happy camper, isn’t he?” Chuckled Jesse as they watched the van drive off, “Eh, no matter. I’ll go and catch some shut eye.” With a tip of his hat he was of for the back of the mansion, probably planning to lay down under one of the citrus trees in the back.

In the main building Gabriel nearly walked into a tired looking Moira that was shuffling down the corridor with a lightly steaming cup in her hands. “Already awake? Or just going to bed?”

O’Deorain looked at him from under drooping eyelids. “Somewhere in between. The damned dwarf made such a loud racket when he got up that it was a physical impossibility not to wake up.” She explained quite annoyed, “If you excuse me, I’ll go right back to sleep.” He watched her take a few steps down the hallway, but after only a few metres the peculiar woman stopped again and turned back around to face him.

“I nearly forgot.” She stated drowsily, “Remember our talk a few days ago?”

“Mhm,” He hummed, “Why?”

“Talking about the records gave me an idea. I did some catching up with other researchers from the program, all in the guise of reconnecting with some old friends during my holidays, of course.” She added the last part when she saw his worried expression.

“As expected, most of them have gotten cushy jobs at state run universities and comities, probably made similar deals as me. The others retired, or died during the war. Pretty much the same if you ask me.” She said the part about retirement with an immense show of disdain. She clearly thought that no real scientist would ever opt to go home to their families and chose to do nothing worthwhile with their skills.

“Only one stood out,” She continued, “Do you remember Jan De Vries? Tall guy, awful sense of humour and couldn’t keep his mouth shut for a single second?” Gabriel shook his head no. His entire time at the SEP military compound was a bit of a confused mess. And from what the others had told him it was the same for Jack and Ana.

“No matter,” Moira said with a wave of her long-fingered, pale hand, “Somewhere down the road he must have suddenly turned into a mute. Didn’t want to talk about his life after the program, nor what he currently did for a living.”

“War changes people,” He said with a shrug of his shoulders.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, but still I did some more digging after he hung up on me. Turns out he works for Pauca Ingenii.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Moira snorted, “They are a group who buy failed ideas and research on the cheap and try to make something of it, mostly just useless crap they pander off to the gullible. They are the bottom feeders of the scientific community.” She paused and gave him an expectant look. “So tell me why a scientist who has the free pick of any of the many cushy jobs in the USA would go to the Colombian wasteland to work for a third rate corporation? Which coincidentally also received a large cash injection from the private sector days after he started working.”

She started back down the hallway again. “You might want to pay him a visit and check if he brought any souvenirs from his last job with him… Good night.”

“Night,” he replied slowly, already lost in thoughts. Yes, he just might have to make a trip down to Colombia one of these days.

Blackwatch Speedboat in international waters of the coast of Columbia, Day 3 after the Numbani Incident, 7:00 pm

“Please tell me again why I had to come with?” An irate Moira asked Gabriel through gritted teeth, while she clung to her seat’s handholds with a vice like grip, just as the boat was flung from another tall, white tipped crest to the next. “I hate boats!” She groaned right after.

“Because we simple soldiers can’t tell genetic research data from a shopping list!” He explained exasperatedly for the umpteenth time today. “And if we can’t identify the right data then this entire mission is absolutely pointless!”

“Fecker!” The Irish woman mumbled, then abruptly clapped her hand over her mouth.

“To the other side please.” Said Jesse, clearly amused about the situation. “I don’t fancy seeing your dinner for a second time.” Unlike the woman sitting next to him, Jesse sat in his seat with a casual air about him. His hat was tucked tightly against his chest and a large cigar slowly smoldered between his lips. He shot her another glance and added, “You gotta relax! It’s like riding a horse, if you sit up there like a wooden board you are going to get thrown off for sure!”

The pale woman just shook her head a tiny amount and braced herself even stronger into her seat, her face even paler after the minimal movement of her gesture.

Fortuitously, their destination appeared on the horizon soon after. The hulking form of the gigantic battleship was starkly visible against the backdrop of the setting sun and the long, deep shadow it cast on the water made it look even large than it already was.

“The USS Kansas?” McCree asked incredulous, “How the fuck did you get the admiralty to send that thing?”

Battleships had come back in vogue after the start of the crisis. The Omnics rarely used missiles, either because of a lack of modern rocket fuel and the facilities necessary to produce it, or because the god AIs deemed them weaker than conventional artillery as they had little problem shooting larger missiles down.

In the end, the reason really didn’t matter. The Omnics were in favour of massive artillery bombardments that they delivered with scary accuracy, which spelled doom for most of the smaller, lighter armoured ship designs. At the same time missile cruiser proved nearly ineffectual against the deeply dug in bunkers of the Omnics and the near perfect anti-missile defences they employed. Furthermore, only the RAF had made any headway with their airstrikes, probably because the Easal Omnium had been woefully underprepared for the all in approach the English had employed to throw the God AI, which they had seen as an invader, off their island and into the sea.

Furthermore, pretty much all of the Omniums were land bound or spotted harbours unfit to produce ships and submarines, so the newly designed, overly large battleships were the undisputed rulers of the sea.

“I still got some friends with the united states military. And they don’t take lightly to the possibility of information about the SEP leaking to the public.” Gabriel answered Jesse’s question. “Besides, you can probably guess how much the American weapons industry is lobbying for increased spending, now that the war is over and their golden days have come to an end. The literally force the generals to greenlight just about any mission that doesn’t start a major war.”

A few minutes later found the three of them deep in the bowls of the gargantuan steel beast, being led by a young mariner to one of the many meeting rooms, where they were received by the ship’s captain, the Lieutenant Commander overseeing the ship’s SEAL teams and the four men that would accompany them on their attack on the Pauca Ingenii laboratory.

“Gentleman,” Gabriel greeted the assembled men, “Let’s get down to business.”

They went quickly over the plan he had proposed to the US armed forces the day before. Just to verify that all its parts had reached everyone involved with the mission and that no new problems had come up in the time in-between. But all the data Athena had managed to collect about the facility and the organisation seemed to still hold water and were deemed reliable by the navy officers present.

So the only thing left to do was for the captain to hand them their recognition and operation codes and send them off towards the ship’s interior bay with a stern warning not to create an international incident.

Which was a bit of an ill-humoured joke, as most of Columbia was a lawless wasteland that still hadn’t recovered from the devastation that the god AI Ixpiyacoc had caused. Central governance existed only in the less ravaged parts in the east of the country, and even in these parts the rule of law wasn’t very reliable as it always found itself on the side of the current ruling party, which changed nearly monthly.

Therefore the Columbian government was in no state to notice an attack on such a remote, private facility, nor were they in any position to do something about it beyond speaking to the UN Security Council.

By the time their combat rubber raiding craft hit the turbulent waves of the Pacific Ocean darkness had completely engulfed the ship. Nevertheless, they would have liked to wait even longer and start this action later in the night or even in the early morning hours when most of the personnel was soundly asleep. But a behemoth like the Kansas could stay in a single location only for so long before even the worst, home rigged radar would get a ping of it, so unfortunately they had to move as soon as possible to avoid detection. Besides, navy command hadn’t been comfortable having it separated from its escort ships for too long.

The light craft drove most of the way propelled by its powerful outboard engine, which they only turned off once the sandy beach, and the lit buildings looming behind it, came into sight. From that point on the four mariners in their group picked up their paddles and rowed the boat the rest of the way to the shore while the Overwatch agents sat idle. They hadn’t been trusted with paddles of their own.

At the first bump and scratching of the boat’s keel touching the sandy ground two of the men jumped ship and carefully guided the black craft the rest of the way past the water line and out of sight under the sparse vegetation growing on the sandy dunes.

From there on out, Gabriel led the way, his enhanced senses far better suited to find a way up over the rough ground to the fenced lab and avoid the small squads of mercenaries patrolling the grounds.

He had learned about the numerous, heavily armed soldiers securing the grounds from satellite images taken two days ago. Although, calling them soldiers was an insult towards the profession. They were barely any better than the thugs roaming the countryside and terrorising the few people that had remained here. Just so that they could build their massive drug plantations on the fertile ashes of the once lush rainforest and use their homes and family farms as their bases and drug labs.

The mercenaries here sported surplus military equipment that was slightly better than what the gangs used, barely good enough to keep the criminals away and their researchers save from the roving bands.

The drug mafias didn’t take kindly to people they considered intruders upon their land.

Besides the patrol routes he had also learned the basic layout of the compound and about some of the security measures the mercenaries had put in place from the satellite images Athena had provided.

He was happy that he had used the time necessary to fully prepare for this mission, as the gathered knowledge came in very handy when he had to choose their angle of approach. Without having to stop and think he led them to the southern side of the wall protecting the grounds, as far away as possible from the barracks and the scientist’s dormitory located close to the opposite wall.

The group hid in the shadow of the tall, steel reinforced concrete wall, where they prepared themselves for the next step. As they had expected, the barrier between them and their target was completely featureless and offered no handholds to climb it by hand. Additionally its top was crowned by coils of dangerously sharp barbed wire, which they had already seen on the surveillance images. Though the infrared tripwires hidden within the tunnel formed by the coils were far more of a hindrance than the sharp metal. They might have been even a bigger problem if the mercenaries had bothered to hide their existence properly, as was advised by the manufacturer. But the slovenly thugs hadn’t apparently cared enough to hide the emitters as they sat completely exposed on each of the wall’s four corners. Or maybe they had though obvious security would be far more effective deterrent against the simple gang members in these parts.

Luckily, Gabriel and his team had prepared for just such an obstacle. He quietly retrieved the gecko pads from his backpack and strapped them on with practised ease. He had had ample practise with them during the war as the first few generations of Omnic war machines had serious trouble navigating rough terrain, especially mountainous one. Which in turn had made it the human forces’ battlefield of choice.

He climbed the good three, four metres of solid wall as quickly as the namesake of his climbing gear would have, a speed the others in the squad couldn’t even dream of matching. Another advantage of his enhancements.

But the soldiers and agents on the ground hadn’t been sitting idle during the time it took him to make his preparations and climb, instead they had assembled a very light weight device that looked a lot like a miniature table with legs that were oddly bent outwards at the middle of their length.

Once Gabriel was in position Private Kearns threw the strange thing swiftly up to him and where he caught it with an easy flick of his free hand.

He made sure that both his knees and the tips of his combat boots made solid contact with the wall and gently unstuck his other arm from the smooth surface, as he would need both of them for the next part.

He carefully moved the table like device in position just over the barbed wire, taking great care not to disturb it with the device’s legs and accidentally trigger the invisible tip wires hidden within. When he was sure that its legs were situated properly against both sides of the concrete barrier he hit the activation switch and clamped the bridge tightly in place over the coils of dangerously sharp iron. At the same time the clamps had engaged, the chameleon skin had activated too, changing the devices colour to match the wall’s look and the dark sky above. After a second it was nearly indistinguishable from the backdrop.

He put some weight on the thing to make sure that the clamps had engaged properly, and when it didn’t budge unspooled a good two metres of wire from the spool clipped to his combat belt, just enough for the others below him to attach a lightly built rope ladder to it. With the rope ladder in place getting over the wall was an easy feat, only Moira struggled a bit with the flimsy, pretty wobbly ladder.

On the other side of the wall they found themselves completely exposed, the groundskeepers had meticulously cut down all the shrubbery around the inside of the perimeter. Even the most cursory glance in their direction would reveal them!

As a result Gabriel led them towards the laboratory at a staunch pace, reminding Moira with a sharp gesture to stay as low to the ground as possible. He should have invested more time in training her for action, Gabriel reprimanded himself. He should have expected the need for the occasional scientist in the field.

Anyway, the small troop reached the double doors leading inside the dark laboratory without being spotted by the lazily meandering patrols.

Corporal Finley bypassed the card reader at the door easily. Its design was far too old to hold up to the codebreakers the god AIs had designed and that the different armies around the globe had appropriated. These days analogous locks were often far better than the dumb electronic ones. Though to be fair, AI controlled locks were still leagues above the rest. The dynamic defences these advanced computers offered could only really be cracked by other AIs of the same level or higher. Humans and dumb programs were way to slow to keep up with the rapid sequence of attacks, probes and traps the intelligent locks employed.

Besides, quite often the cameras all around the locks that were linked to them were more than enough for the AI to recognise an intruder the second they stepped up to the door.

Reyes let out a quite sigh of relieve when the door opened with a near inaudible squeak. This had been to only step in their plan they hadn’t been sure about. If a smarter lock had barred their way they would have had to either employ Athena, or to break the door down by force. Both of which would have been bad as the massive data uplink Athena would have required might have triggered an alarm, and the other alternative was even worse for obvious reasons.

Beyond the door the group was met by a bare concrete hallway, it was scarcely lit by a few luminescent emergency stripes that someone stuck haphazardly to the dirty walls, and probably during the day by the looks of the large swathes of corridor that lay in complete darkness.

Gabriel waited for the other soldiers to adjust their night vision goggles before he moved further down the corridor. Without even possessing the slightest clue about the lab’s interior layout they were forced to search blindly for the server room, which they knew might not even be in this building at all.

He led them a few metres in and then turned to the fire door on his right. It was the most likely of the good dozen doors on this floor to lead to the staircase, all the other doors were a lot lighter in design than the heavy metal door.

He stopped short in surprise when he stepped into the room beyond the door. He had found the staircase alright, but to his bafflement the corrugated metal stairs only went in one direction, up. The team had planned to start their search in the cellar they had been absolutely certain existed. Their satellite images had shown no other building that could reasonably function as a storage for the chemicals and materials the researcher surely needed on a daily basis for their work. And during the whole of yesterday Athena hadn’t seen a single person carrying anything into this building.

Gabriel signalled for his team to hold their position and snuck back out into the drab hallway. He kept low to the ground and moved as quietly and as quickly as possible down the hall, away from the entry way. He studied each of the doors he came upon carefully, even risked a quick glance through the small wire reinforced glass windows in them. But he found no evidence of another flight of stairs anywhere. The only thing he came upon in his search was a decrepit goods lift at the far end of the hallway.

He studied the lift’s panel and frowned. This lift too only went upwards.

Gabriel had already stepped off the platform when he noticed something peculiar about the panel. His head snapped back around instantly to verify the observation that had popped into his head. He let out an annoyed sniff and stepped back up to the panel. “How did I miss that?” He asked himself quietly.

The panel was missing half of its screws! He pulled his Swiss army knife, a souvenir from his stint with the GUF, from the back of his combat boot and unfolded the tiny screwdriver. The few screws left were pretty loose, another indication that something was decidedly wrong. He hurriedly unscrewed all of them.

He lifted the panel of the elevator’s side wall and revealed the mess of its innards. A mess that even his untrained eye could recognise as really wrong. Half the cables were bare, the plastic stripped away by intense heat and the others were all stuck together into a large mass of blackened plastic. He was certain that this lift wouldn’t move anytime soon. And from the look of the exposed metal and the patina on it, neither had it moved in recent memory.

He put the cover back into place and replaced the screws, for the unlikely event that someone would wander by.

He returned to his men with only one question on his mind; if the goods lift was out of order, and had been for a long time, then how exactly did the scientists move their equipment to the upper floors.

He softly knocked against the door to the stairway to warn the soldiers on the other side of his arrival and slipped past the heavy door. He met the expectant looks of the others with a shake of his head and gestured for them to move up the stairs carefully. He didn’t dare tell them of what he had learned in the staircase as the concrete shaft amplified noises exceedingly well.

The group moved up the stairs in single file, not their favourite tactical move but one they were forced to do. While the steps were wide enough for three of the large soldiers to walk up abreast, the centre part of the steps reverberated loudly from each footfall and the men had to stay close to the wall to avoid alerting everyone in the whole building of their presence.

They moved past the second and third floor without stopping at the landing and moved up to the fourth and last floor. Gabriel had decided that they would search the facility from top to bottom, so that they wouldn’t miss anyone who might still be in the building. He had some questions to ask now.

They found little of use on the topmost floor. All the doors branching from the dark hallway led to reasonably modern lab spaces. But all of them showed some signs of disuse and none of the computers were even plugged in.

The moment he had opened the door to the third floor hallway even just a tiny bit he knew they had struck pay dirt. A soft light spilled from the tiny crack, it was so weak that it was barely discernible from the moonlight streaming in through the dirty skylight at the top of the stairwell, even for his enhanced vision.

He pulled Ana’s sleep dart gun from its place on his belt and flicked the safety off. The action put the wary soldiers behind him on immediate high alert.

The commander opened the door a little bit further and peeked through the gap. He found that the soft light came from the tiny window inset into the laboratory door about halfway down the corridor. Apart from the light, nothing else was different from the deserted floor above them and so he risked slipping out into the hallway. He quickly checked the space behind the door for a would-be ambusher but found only empty space. He held the door open and waved for the other to move into the open.

He gestured for Kearns and lance corporal Hansen to stay and guard the door. The two soldiers stepped back through the doorway and positioned themselves on the stair landing where they would hear anyone approaching from below and take them out with a few quick shots.

The rest of the team snuck up to the illuminated door.

Finley unpacked a small display from his backpack and handed it over to Reyes who stood against the wall next to the door. The soldier had kept hold of the small, wired camera embedded into the device, pulled it out and held it up to the lower corner of the window.

On the screen Gabriel could see a lab that looked nearly identical to all the others he had seen so far in the building, the only exception was the greying man standing in the lit room and the large whiteboard he was angrily writing on. He signalled for Finley to pan the camera around, but saw nothing else that concerned him.

He returned the device to Finley, who swiftly stepped to the side, and held one finger up. The others nodded, signalling their understanding.

Jesse moved up to the door and positioned himself on the hinged side of the door. At his commander’s mark he wrenched the door open for him. Gabriel was through the door and on the man in the blink of an eye.

He bridged the distance between the scientist and himself so quickly that he was in time to catch the collapsing man before his knees had touched the ground. His sleep dart still sticking out of the man’s back.

He gently guided the unconscious man to the hard floor and laid him out.

“Speak off the devil,” Moira chuckled when she stepped into the room just behind McCree, who shot her a confused look over his shoulder. She nodded at the prostrate man lying on the floor and explained, “That’s doctor De Vries. And that is the SEP research.” She pointed to the whiteboard and the massive amount of text and tiny diagrams that were crammed on its surface. She took a couple of photos of the whiteboard’s content with a compact digital camera, then moved over to the desk. She waved her hand in the air above it to wake the computer and was delighted when it moved directly to the desktop view.

She navigated the file system swiftly with a rapid series of complex gestures and found the information she wanted in under a minute. “Jup, it’s all here,” She said to no one in particular.

“Good, download the data so that we can get out of here and blow this place to hell.” Gabriel ordered.

Moira nodded absentmindedly and searched the table for a data port powerful enough to upload the terabytes of data she found on the facilities server. She had no intention of leaving even a scrap of it behind. The doctor smiled when she found the rows of ports at the back of the terminal, all but one of them were glued shut. The open one hadn’t been untouched by the gluer, she felt some traces of epoxy around it, but someone, probably the doctor resting on the ground had removed the glue after the fact.

She plugged the high density data cube into the port and started the transfer. “This will take a while.” She mentioned already studying in some of the information displayed in open windows.

In the meantime Gabriel had sent the other two soldiers back out into the hallway with the order to search the other labs on this floor. He doubted that anyone else was still here, but he thought it better that the soldiers didn’t see what they exactly did in here. They might not be too happy about the Overwatch agents making their own copy of the secret government research. Also, it was better to be safe than sorry, he’d rather they get out of here without triggering any alarms.

He had just about finished the thought and was stepping over to Moira when he heard rustling coming from the floor. He pirouetted around instantly but was still too late to guard against the quick jab to his chin. The sudden twist must have put him off balance as he staggered backwards from the force of the punch. He recovered quickly from his surprise though, and caught himself before he stumbled to the ground.

De Vries used his momentary distraction to lunge for the alarm trigger next to the door. But the doctor hadn’t taken more than two steps before a resounding boom pierced the silence of the building and dozens of tiny neo-steel balls came hurtling towards the back of the fleeing man from the RVGR shotgun now held in Reyes hand.

The projectiles that had only a few days ago turned a man into little more than a fine paste on the wall rocketed into the exposed back of the scientist, where they did surprisingly little damage. Sure, the damage to the lab coat was catastrophic, barely more than shreds remained where the bullets struck. And the flesh beyond looked an awful lot like raw hamburger meat, but not a single ball pierced all the way through the muscles to the organs beyond. They didn’t even shatter his spine, instead they ricocheted of the bone with a noise Gabriel would have sworn sounded metallic.

Though, while the damage was mostly superficial the metal balls still packed quite the punch and threw the doctor of balance. The man took a stumbling step to the side, which saved him from Reyes’ next shot that instead reduced the door to the lab to splinters.

The doctor flung himself against the alarm trigger with a triumphant scream that was ended abruptly by the sharp rapport of Jesse’s Peacemaker. The heavy slug had torn straight through the scientist’s skull with absolute precision, killing him instantly as most of his brain matter was splashed against the wall next to the door with great force. Sadly, the shot had come just a tad bit too late, the alarm display was already flashing red when the life left De Vries.

“Damn!” The cowboy exclaimed shocked, “I thought you’d ice him for sure with your first shot.” He shook his hand holding the Peacemaker angrily. “Didn’t want to waste a bullet, fuck!”

He looked over to Gabriel and asked, “Did you load your fucking gun with birdshot?”

Gabriel pointed at the destroyed door, “Nope.” Then he turned on his radio and ordered the others to stay put. Since the alarm was already sounded radio silence wasn’t necessary anymore.

Moira walked past the two shocked men and gingerly stepped over the widening pool of blood on the floor. De Vries had fallen forwards and was lying on his stomach in an awkward way with what remained of his head violently wrenched to the left. The ravaged back and the ruin of his face starring at her told her little about his condition, and so, with a heavy sigh, she went into a squat next to the body. Moira struggled with the limb body for a second before letting it drop back down to the ground and glaring annoyed at the two men still standing in the back of the room, bickering about who should have done what.

“Hey!” She shouted angrily, “Get over here and make yourself useful for a change! I want to check this asshole’s chest.”

The two men complied with her loud order and swiftly rolled the man over. Moira pulled a scalpel from her belt and cut his shirt down the middle.

“The fuck?!” Jesse shouted in disgust at what was revealed.

Gabriel had to agree with the other man’s sentiment. The doctor’s chest was a mess of discoloured skin and thick purple and black veins webbing all over the exposed portion of his torso.

“Self-experiments?” Moira asked astonished of no one in particular, “Didn’t think you had it in you, De Vries.”

Without a warning Moira leaned in close and cut one of the blood vessels open. All of them recoiled in disgust from the putrid black liquid spurting forth from the cut. “Oh hell no!” Jesse shouted and sprinted for the open door. Where he nearly got shot by Finley and his partner waiting outside of it, weapons at the ready.

Moira’s scientific curiosity overcame her disgust soon enough and she quickly pulled an empty syringe from her bag. She stuck it deeply into one of the tight clusters of veins and filled it to the brim with the viscous black liquid. She also took a few photos of the body, just to be sure, and then straightened out. “Might be interesting,” She explained her actions to Gabriel and returned to the terminal.

The data transfer had completed at some point during the commotion. She unplugged the storage device, put it back into the reinforced holding compartment in her belt and strode over to the door. But when she was on the same height as Reyes, he held her back with a heavy hand on her shoulder. “If you turn me into a fucking mutant like that no one will find your body.” He threatened, his dark gaze promising a far more horrible fate than a swift death.

Moira nodded sombrely and spoke with false bravado. “Of course not! There is a reason why I was in control of the project and why he was relegated to pushing pencils and perform physicals on the patients. He might have had the vision, but not the skill.”

She cast off his hand and moved past him out into the dark hallway.

He spared the body on the floor a last unsure look and followed O’Deorain through the shattered door. “Let’s get out of here!” He ordered, “Finley, Anderson, you are the rear guard. Jesse, make sure the doctor makes it out of here in one piece! Moira, keep your head down!” He had just finished with handing out the tasks, when the first gunshots echoed from the stairwell. At the same time his radio crackled to life. “Troops incoming,” stated Kearns calmly.

He pulled his second shotgun from the holster on his back and charged towards the fire door at the end of the hallway, his thundering steps echoing loudly from the solid walls.

It was a good thing he had opted to sprint as hard as he did, or otherwise the two soldiers on the landing would have been lost. Because just as he made it to the door the wall opposite it slid into the floor, revealing the elevator they had been looking for. Inside stood a welcoming committee of about eight heavily armoured soldiers clad in identical sets of menacing red and black full body armour. And all of them looked down the sight of their very large heavy pulse rifles at him with their twitchy fingers on the trigger.

Still, Gabriel reacted first and turned his mad dash into a combat roll, avoiding the ambusher’s first salvo, which pockmarked the steel door behind him. He had judged the roll perfectly and it had brought him back on his feet just a step shy of the large window at the end of the hallway. He braced himself against the hardened glass and let loose a storm of steel on the soldiers crammed into the tight space formed by the hidden elevator.

The chest plates of their armour held steadfast against the torrent of weaponized steel, developing only a few hairline fractures each. But the rest of the protective garb didn’t fare nearly as well. The joints around the knees and neck gave in first, stealing the combatants of their breath and solid footing. Even the ones in the back suffered from the heavy blasts of his weapons, though not nearly as much as the ones in the front, as they were mostly just hit by hundreds of ricochets. Still, getting heavy steel balls flung at your head is no laughing matter and all of them were quickly dazed by the countless knocks against their heads.

In their confusion they didn’t manage to get their heavy guns to bear on the fast moving SEP soldier peppering them with shells. Though even random fire can nab a kill, as Reyes knew very well. He had already suffered a small number of grazes and it would be only a matter of time before they got lucky, or before they recovered from his first onslaught. He was just about to pull forth one of his Hellfire grenades, which was a real desperate manoeuvre in such an enclosed space, when Jesse’s Peacemaker thundered to life.

The heavy slugs fired from his custom made revolver packed a much larger punch than a single one of the RVGR’s shotgun pellets and did what they couldn’t, piercing through the heavy armour on their heads and killing the attackers instantly.

The cowboy took six of them out in rapid succession, then reloaded while doing a combat roll to close the last two, three metres and shot the remaining two foes at the back of the elevator. He turned around to Gabriel with a smug grin on his face.

“Looks like you’ll need to upgrade to a weapon that requires actual aiming.” He poked one of the dead soldiers lying inside the elevator with his western boots. “Heck of an armour these third rate mercs have.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel agreed. He would really like to know how exactly a bunch of thugs and the dregs of the scientific world had managed to get their hands on gear like that. Though that mystery might have to wait for another time as the elevator’s doors began to close. More armed thugs would follow soon, he guessed.

He hurried over to the ravaged fire door and flung it open with far more force than the damaged door could handle, ripping it straight of its angles. On the landing Kearns and Hansen were engaged heavily in a fire fight with the thugs attempting to storm the landing. However the attackers had a difficult time with it, as these were the men they had seen during the infiltration of the facility. Their outdated equipment held up far worse than the modern armour of the ambushing force and they didn’t dare to fully move out into the open to cover the last set of stairs.

But from the sound of the heavy footfalls on the steps far below they were already getting better armed reinforcements.

There would be no escape along this way.

“Move as far down the hallway as possible.” He ordered the two soldiers laying down covering fire. They left without question as he pulled two red-banded canisters from his belt and pulled their arming pins with his teeth. He waited on the landing for as long as possible, giving his brothers in arms as much time as he could to sprint to safety. Then, when the men below him noticed the distinct lack of pulse fire raining down on their heads, held the incendiary grenades over the handrails and let go of them.

He spun around and raced out the broken door as if the devil himself was chasing him.

In the four seconds he had, he managed to get a fair distance down the corridor and still it was barely enough. The grenades detonated not as much with a bang, but more with something that sounded like the very loud hiss of a gigantic, angry cobra. And just behind the sound burst a wave of fire from the deadly weapons. The wall of flames consumed the lightly protected thugs in the blink of an eye, their flimsy combat vests vaporising instantly.

The modern armour of the reinforcements coming from below held out much better to the scorching flames, effectively protecting the soft bodies from the flames around them. But what the hungrily licking tongues of flames couldn’t do, the flash-heated air could or at least once the powerful armour showed one of its design flaws and allowed the men wearing it to breathe the superheated air. They couldn’t even scream when their lungs were cooked alive.

The concrete tower of the stairwell funnelled most of the shockwave up and out through the skylight on the roof, but still a good amount of the hot gases were pushed out through the broken fire door on the third floor, hurtling fire and ash down the long hallway and at the back of the running Blackwatch agent. The shockwave kicked him like a horse, lifting him up and throwing him a good five metres further down the hallway.

Luckily, the window next to the fire door hadn’t withstood the heavy blast and the fire could vent through the newly made exit, slowing the advance of the fire wall down to a crawl, until it finally dissipated completely,

Gabriel patted himself down, he wasn’t too badly hurt and nothing was burned, although the back of his pants and shirt were heavily singed. He stood back up and walked the rest of the way to his team waiting next to the ancient goods lift. Apparently they were trying to get it running, not knowing that its electronics were all burnt out.

“Won’t work,” He stated breathlessly, “The electronics are burnt to a crisp.” And even if it did work, it wouldn’t be of great use to them, it was placed on the entirely wrong end of the hallway. If they moved down this shaft they would be sitting ducks without even a shred of cover to the mercenaries waiting on the ground.

He looked around for another way out, and found it in the form of the shattered window on the opposite end of the floor. But no, jumping through that window would probably deliver them right into the middle of the soldiers rallying for another push into the building. Still, the idea was sound. They were only on the third floor, a seven metre drop was doable, at least for him. He eyed the members of his team. Jesse had survived worse stunts than this uninjured and the marines might have to lose their packs otherwise they might break something in the fall.

Moira posed the real problem, he doubted that she could make the jump without breaking every single bone in her legs considering the difficulties she had with a simple rope ladder. Gabriel sighed, he would have to carry her. Great.

“McCree, check the window on the left side room. And you,” he pointed at the American soldiers, “drop the backpacks.” They had instantly realised what he planned, so he didn’t need to explain his plan to them, which was good as he intended to tell Moira at the last moment possible, favourably when they were already falling through the air.

He hurried to check the windows in the right hand room. They were a bust as they opened towards a dumping stockpile for unneeded building materials, far too dangerous of a ground for the stunt he planned. He had no intentions of losing one of his men to an unlucky placed rebar.

He met up with the Cowboy in front of the defect elevator.

“Looks good, Gabe,” The other man told him, “Parking lot on that side, we could even steal one of their trucks.” He nodded, “Grand.”

He waved for the group to follow him into the room and surveyed the space for the best window to use. Gabriel decided on the one near the corner. The low fridge in front of it would work as an excellent stepping stone for a running start.

“Okay, let’s do this.” He said and grabbed Moira around the waist, “I’ll be first.”

“Hey fecker, wha?” Moira started to ask as she was lifted up by a muscular arm and flung over her commander’s shoulder. But her words died in her throat when Reyes started his charge towards the window and she realised what he intended to do. She screamed and tried to wiggle out of his grip, but his arm was clamped over her back with the force of a hydraulic press and didn’t leave her the slightest space for movement. Next thing she knew the window was turned into a shower of shattered glass by a barrage of bullets and the two of them were flying through empty space.

The impact was hard on the two tandem jumpers, it forced all the air from Moira’s lungs and nearly shattered his legs, or at least that was what it had felt like to take the entire force of their combined weight without the possibility of a roll to redirect some of the drop’s energy. Still, he made it in one piece, and more importantly still able to walk.

Gabriel lowered the very irate scientist to the floor and shot her a warning look not to make too much noise. The shotgun blast alone wouldn’t tell the fighters in the building a lot about their escape from the laboratory, but a screaming Irish banshee would.

The others of the squad followed swiftly, and to his relief all of them performing the jump and the subsequent roll flawlessly, they had obviously been well trained.

He led them over to a lightly armoured vehicle big enough to hold the seven men strong team. The doors were unlocked and the engine could be started with a simple push on the right button. He waved for them to get in and took the seat behind the wheel. O’Deorain took the other seat in the front while the remaining men filed into the back of the car, where they could shoot out the back window should they be followed.

He brought the car to life and gunned the engine, aiming for the metal gate guarding the entrance to the facility. While the rugged metal bars would stop any ramming attempt from the outside in its tracks, the gate’s design was a lot weaker against a force applied at its back and yielded easily to their mad charge.

Once past the wall Gabriel increased the strength of his radio and contacted the people aboard the Kansas. “Captain, blast the place to hell! We accidentally stepped into a hornet nest here.”

“And by god, tell your gunners to aim well, we’re just past the door!” He added belatedly.

“Acknowledged, preparing to fire now!” The captain responded calmly to his hurried request.

“Fifteen!” Gabriel shouted loudly with the radio turned off. “Fourteen!” The men behind him took his count up immediately, Moira just looked at them incredulously.

Unlike the men she didn’t know that the massive guns aboard the Kansas, dubbed the ‘Trumpets of Jericho’ by the soldiers on the field, took exactly fifteen seconds to fire. Four to open the gunports, six to extend the barrel, three to verify alignment and the targeting information and one second to pull the trigger.

When he reached two he put a hand from the wheel of the racing car and put it on the back of her head. At one, he wrenched her head violently towards her knees, nearly giving her a bloodied nose in the process. He himself took a last look at the rough dirt road and steadied the car as well as possible, then he too ducked down behind the wheel.

The gargantuan ship was so close to the shore, and its railguns propelled the extremely heavy shells at to such a high speed that their travel time was negligible. A second after they had reached zero the projectiles rained down onto the compound behind them.

The high-explosives shells struck the buildings like meteorites, stripping concrete from steel and throwing dust and shrapnel high into the air, propelled by a gigantic plume of fire, which turned night to day.

The shockwave they caused hit the fleeing car like the hammer of Thor, shattering the hardened windows as if they were made from waver thin porcelain and not reinforced, combat rated glass. While the glass broke into safe, dull grains the force of the impact still turned them into deadly projectiles that luckily missed the cowering passengers.

Next, the ground fell away, as the buffeting shockwaves handily lifted the entire car a good two, three metres into the air and sent it spinning of the road into the stunted undergrowth beyond. The car somersaulted once, twice and then finally came to a rest lying on its side against one of the few trees scattered on the plain.

Gabriel shook his head and surveyed the interior of the destroyed car. Its repulsion fields had kicked in right on time and had pressed them into their seats, even in spite of their bent over postures. The field had stopped them from being flung out of the car, or tumbling around its interior, it had certainly saved all their lives. He would have to send their engineers a thank you letter.

The rest of the squad started to move as well, though a lot more sluggishly than he. Jesse was the first of them to recover, he mouthed something, than stopped with an annoyed look on his face, gave him a thumbs up instead and wiped the thin rivulets of blood flowing from his ears off.

It was then that Gabriel realised that he too had been struck deaf by the heavy blast.

“Hasn’t been long enough, old friend.” He sighed, uselessly giving voice to his irritation.

Chapter Text

Geneva Safehouse, Bedroom, Day 2 after the Numbani Incident, 8:21 AM

Nyx awoke the next morning well-rested, although to the rather alien feeling of a soft, warm weight nestled against her chest. It took her a moment to recall the events of the previous evening and recognize the violet mop of hair as Sombra’s, but once she did she looked down at the young woman with a content smile.

She took a few moments to study her still sleeping houseguest, her gaze moving from the lovely, violet hair over the girl’s relaxed, unguarded face to her cute, black top with the childish rhinestone illustration; which she couldn’t see it right nowright now as Sombra was currently lying on her stomach.

Angela sighed softly, without her ever present cocky grin the woman locked even younger than normal. It was difficult to look at the innocent face and recognise the person behind it for the masterful hacker and daring adventurer that she was. Although she was quite sure that a lot of the girl’s bravado was fake, a front she showed a world that had hurt her badly way to early in her short life.

Nyx gently caressed Sombra’s lustrous hair, careful not to wake her as the girl needed the sleep, unlike her. The nanites swarming her system had already repaired any damage she had sustained in her mad escape from the small civil war she had started in Numbani. With that taken care of the nanites had returned to their low priority work of keeping her body well rested and her muscles free of aches and knots.

Her idle gaze roved over Sombra’s slim arms and back, then moved down her long legs, noting the faint definition of muscles and the smoothness of her bronzed skin. Her feet were entwined with the missing duvet, barely visible from between the folds of the heaped blanket. The girl must have kicked it down there sometimes during the night when it got to warm under the heavy cover with the added heat from Nyx’s body, which was burning slightly hotter than most people’s due to the little guests in her bloodstream.

Seeing the girl laid out against her chest and hip she realized how woefully unprepared Sombra was for the life ahead of her. It was very unlikely that the hacker had ever done anything more than maybe some light jogging, there had probably never been the need for bodily strength.

“Hmm, das gahd so ned.” Nyx whispered to herself, already planning a tough exercise regime for the girl. Sadly they didn't have much time and she would probably have to use some of her tech to get the punk up to speed, something she hated to do after seeing what Moira did to those poor soldiers in the SEP; she really didn’t want to become some kind of weapons breeder for Overwatch. Something that could happen all too easily if Jack or Gabriel ever got wind of the fact that she had pretty much perfected the SEP serum during her time of fixing the three super soldiers up.

Although, she glanced down at the girl resting against her chest, she wasn’t going to use that one for the brash hacker. No, she would use something with a little less oomph. That way further procedures would be a lot easier as she wouldn’t have to overcome the increased resistances against mutating agents the SEP provided, making additional enhancements a lot less painful.

Though all that could wait for another hour or so, Angela surmised, as in that very moment Sombra made a cute, little purring noise in her sleep and pressed herself even harder against her living and breathing pillow.

A bit over an hour later Sombra was woken by a few cheeky sun rays peeking past the slightly opened blinds to dance over her face. Instead of getting up she lazily rolled over and buried her face in the mattress that still smelled faintly of Nyx, an oddly familiar smell; which made her suddenly aware of the other woman’s absence. She quickly lifted her head and looked around, searching the bed for her… Patrona? Amiga? Amante? But she couldn’t find her in the dimly lit room, the only thing that was different from the evening before was the open bedroom door and the soft clanging of pans and cutlery coming from the kitchen.

Sombra yawned mightily, smacked her mouth and dropped back down onto the bed, though this time facing the ceiling. She would get up in a few seconds and help Nyx with the breakfast.

Meanwhile Nyx was putting the finishing touches on their breakfast, eggs and bacon, and started the coffee machine in preparation of Sombra's arrival. She was pretty sure that the young hacker would be happy with a freshly brewed cup of strong coffee. While the hot beverage was slowly sputtering out of the machine she brought their filled plates over to the dinner table and sat down on one of the comfy chairs, settling in for a short wait.

A minute later a bleary-eyed Sombra stumbled out of the bedroom, her normally straight hair a wild mess with strands sticking out in every direction, trying and apparently failing to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

“Good morning Sombra,” Nyx greeted the girl and stood up to get the hacker’s steaming cup of coffee.

“Buenos dias mi reina.” The punk answered, her words trailed by a massive yawn that she tried to hide, rather unsuccessfully, behind her small hand. She accepted the cup Nyx handed her with a grateful smile and a muttered thanks and immediately took a big gulp of the dark elixir, nearly burning her tongue in her hurry.

“Aw, demasiado caliente,” the girl quietly swore.

Nyx just smiled warmly at the younger woman and guided her over to the food laden table.

The pair of them ate in comfortable silence, neither of them feeling the need to fill the space between them with meaningless words. Though this changed the moment Sombra devoured the last bite of her food, sat back and finally raised her eyes from her empty plate.

“Eso estuvo delicioso, gracias cariña!”

Nyx accepted the praise with another dainty smile and a tilt of her head, then gathered their plates and carried them into the kitchen to put them away in the dishwasher. When she returned the young hacker wasn’t sitting in her chair anymore, instead she was bent over the table inspecting the gleaming metal briefcase resting on the other end of the oversized dinner table, her tricked out phone in hand. She was so absorbed with trying to glean something about its contents that she didn’t even hear Nyx return. Sombra only noticed the her presence once she came up behind Sombra and trailed a hand playfully over the hacker’s shoulders. The girl quickly twirled round with an apologetic smile gracing her full lips.

She managed to hold the smile for a bare second before it turned into an impish grin accompanied by a brash: “What’s in there?”

“A gift,” Nyx answered with a teasing grin.

“For who?”

“For you,” She flicked Sombra’s nose, then stepped closer to the younger woman and reached past her for the silvery case, trapping the girl between her and the table, her lustrous, black hair brushing softly against violet tresses. She didn’t lift the case of the table, instead opted to just pull it closer to the edge where she could release the two locks framing the handle without having to stretch as much; though she didn’t remove her head from its position over Sombra’s shoulder.

The heavy, high-security clasps yielded to a simple, soft touch from her, almost seeming to flow away from her fingers. Without the locks barring access any longer Nyx opened the case and removed the two items cushioned in molded foam. She felt Sombra squirm against her in an attempt to turn around and catch a glimpse of her supposed gifts, but the younger woman couldn’t overcome her strength and push past the cage formed by her upper body and arms.

Before Sombra could say anything Angela took pity on the smaller woman and stepped back, though not before hiding the two items behind her back. She grinned deviously at the girl.

“Déjeme pensar, Nyxi!” Sombra pouted unhappily with a heavy blush colouring her pretty face. A moment later the hacker tried to take her by surprise and lounge past her to get a look at the mysterious items, but Nyx proved her speed once more and just took a few quick steps to the side.

“What’s the magic word?” Nyx asked playfully.

“¡Por favor?” The violet haired girl asked quickly, giving in immediately as her curiosity rendered her unwilling to play games any longer, “Mi reina.”

Nyx took her hands from behind her back in response and presented the gleaming injector and the small bottle of lavender tinted fluid to the hacker, who stared at them in puzzlement.

“What’s that?”

Nyx didn’t answer the direct question immediately, instead she decided to first explain her reasoning to the younger woman to soften the blow somewhat.

“You were pretty bad-ass on your bike outside Numbani. You saved me from quite a bit of trouble out there,” Sombra nearly glowed with pride at hearing her praise, “but as I’ve just proven now you don’t have much in the way of muscles or quick reflexes. Which has me worried.” Sombra opened her mouth to interject something, but Nyx’s index finger against her soft lips stopped the words of denial in their tracks. “You won't always be on your bike or your plane or behind the screen of your computer. If you plan to be on my team you will meet some very dangerous people face to face. Should it come to a fight with any of them you need to be able to hold your own, otherwise you are not only endangering yourself but also me and the entire organisation.”

During her explanation the glow slowly drained from Sombra’s face, eventually to be replaced by furrowed brows and a dark, introspective look. For a moment the younger woman chewed on her lip, than reluctantly nodded, aware of her own shortcomings.

“I’d rather not do drogas,” Sombra finally said in a small voice, her statement sounding more like a question than anything else. “He visto lo que le hacen a la gente.”

Nyx gently touched the smaller girl’s shoulder with the hand holding the tiny bottle and coaxed the girl’s downcast eyes to meet her own. She smiled at her with a mix of sadness and compassion.

“Don’t worry Sombra, this” she held the small, glass bottle up to her eyes, “isn’t that kind of drug. This will just assist and accelerate your body’s natural process of building muscles and will condense what’s already there. You’ll only have to take it once, twice at most.”

Sombra’s expression lost some of the worry it held, though plenty still remained. “ No estoy muy seguro de eso…” The hacker said hesitantly, “ I don’t really want to look like a bodybuilder on steroids, I don’t think it’s a good look for me,” She added, doing her best to sound somewhat flippant, though Nyx wasn’t fooled one bit by her false bravado. The girl was scared, she needed a different approach.

The kind smile on Nyx’s face twisted into something a little more mischievous as she stretched her body as much as she could towards the ceiling, the rising hemline of her shirt revealing a good stretch of toned abdomen.

“Do I look like a steroid user to you?” Asked Nyx with a playful twinkle in her eyes, chuckling slightly at seeing how hard the other girl blushed at seeing the small stretch of tanned skin the movement exposed and the play of her muscles below it.

Sombra quickly shook her head no.

“Thought so,” Nyx said, then continued on with her earlier explanation of the drug. “You’ll look similar to me, the drug doesn’t promote unlimited muscle growth, instead it will slow down after a certain point and just increase the density of what’s there. Also, this isn’t some sort of super soldier serum that will turn you into a powerhouse overnight, it just increases your body’s efficiency. You’ll still have to do a lot of lifting to get up to my level.”

The hacker groaned heavily at hearing that, “Sports? Really?”

Nyx just nodded.

“Tal vez Akande todavía me llevará de vuelta?” The girl asked quietly apparently deep in thought.

“I don’t think so,” Nyx stated with one arched eyebrow.

“Okay, but I don’t know any exercises.” Sombra harrumphed and hopped onto the dinner table behind her. “And I also don’t have any exercise clothes.”

Nyx pointed at a plastic bag that was propped up against the wall next to the elevator’s metal doors. The bag looked just about ready to burst. “I’ve already taken care of your second problem, and I’ve also got a remedy for your first issue.” And now it was time to go in for the killing blow. She quickly pulled her T-shirt over her head and shimmied out of her comfy pants, revealing a scant, completely black sports bra and a pair of skin-tight short shorts of the same colour, both of the garments pulled completely taut against her generous curves.

“I’m going to train you myself.” She told the stunned younger woman. Before Sombra could recover from her surprise Nyx had sped past her and returned the injector and drug to the armoured case, which she promptly snapped closed.

“See you downstairs,” Nyx stated, then walked over to the elevator which took her swiftly to the gym in the basement of the building, but not before she had flung her top at the still flabbergasted hacker still rooted to her original spot. The projectile hit her smack dab in the middle of the face, instantly snapping her out of her stupor, but her angry glare only met the shiny, rather uncaring metal doors of the already departed elevator.

“Das isch erstunlich guet gange.” Nyx thought to herself when she left the high-rise about two hours later. The hacker had been down in the basement mere minutes after her, as she had expected, and had willingly offered her arm for the injection of the drug, although still a bit reluctantly. What she hadn’t expected had been how well the young girl did with the exercises she demonstrated to her. Her balance had been excellent which was probably a result of her enthusiasm for pimped out hoverbikes, and her endurance had also been surprisingly high, although they hadn’t started with large weights. The girl must have done quite a bit of running in her past, Nyx surmised as she stepped up to the kerb and the familiar, black limousine waiting there. Though this time Pierre wasn’t standing at the ready with the door in hand, instead he had opted to remain in the driver’s seat just like she had requested. She needed to get to the Geneva Airport as fast as possible.

The car pulled out into the road the moment she closed the door, the sudden acceleration pressing her into the comfy seat.

Once they were underway her thoughts returned to her earlier session with the violet haired punk. Which had, to her further surprise, not whined a single time during the entire hour of their training. Instead the girl had just whispered the occasional spanish explicit under her breath and gritted her teeth.

She would have to think of a reward if their training continued like this. Originally, she had planned to offer a massage to the girl, but then thought better of it after seeing the state the girl had been in after their strenuous exercise. Also, she really hadn’t had the time with the next flight to Australia only a scant forty minutes away. A flight which she planned to take as otherwise she would have to wait for another twenty hours or so for the next one. Australia had really fallen of as a travel destination since the Omnic war, radiation zones just weren’t much of a crowd pleaser.

Adelaide Airport, Day 3 after the Numbani Incident, 1:12 AM

The flight went over without a hitch, although a lot slower than she would have liked as her time was at a premium these days. The chaos in Numbani would calm down quickly in the next few days and Angela wouldn’t be able to spend as much time as her alter ego anymore, so she really needed this to go well and as quickly as possible.

Still, Nyx remained in her seat and patiently waited for the few other passengers to disembark the tiny commercial airplane before her. She had no interest in getting shoved down the airplane’s steep stairs by an impatient asshole behind her, which was quite likely considering the destination.

Once the passenger cabin had emptied out Nyx rose from her seat and grabbed her heavy briefcase from the baggage compartment. With her only piece of luggage in hand she made her way over to the plane’s door and the mobile stairs waiting outside. She stopped for a moment at the top of them, taking in the dark vista surrounding her and even though she arrived in the middle of the night she still could feel the heat the tarmac gave off. Beads of sweat immediately started to form on her brow. The dry, dusty wind blowing through her dark tresses doing little to cool her down.

Beyond the sweltering hot tarmac jagged and scorched ruins stood guard with numerous small lights doting the destroyed buildings like wrathful eyes in the night. Each of them an indication of a squatter or two taking refuge in these corpses of a better age. Nyx released a quite gasp at the devastation before her. On a certain level she had known that Australia had been hit especially hard, though she had never seen the destruction caused with her own eyes as Overwatch had never moved against Australia’s Omnics.

The god AI Hephaestus had been built as the foundation for a renewed space race. It should have produced all the equipment and rockets needed to establish an Omnium in orbit, a launch pad for further missions into the infinite vastness of space.

Instead it had used the sophisticated materials it had hoarded in its stores to build a massive fleet of drones capable of striking at any target on the entire continent. Without proper access to high explosives the AI had made do with incendiary munitions with truly terrifying success. Within hours of the start of the war the Fireflies had become the deadliest thing on the continent, the bushfires they caused with their weaponry turned once greenish areas into raging hellscapes and darkened the sky with their smoke.

Australia, unlike many other countries, never knew proper frontlines. A coherent defense was unthinkable against the thousands upon thousands of bombing runs a day Hephaestus threw against the surprised and deeply shaken armed forces.

Only two days after the start of the war the prime minister of Australia declared the country lost in a last radio broadcast from a bunker in Canberra, his last words of: “May God save us all!” never heard by the masses as a fuel bomb enveloped the radio tower in a towering plume of immensely hot fire.

Without any centralised command the generals and their troops fell back to five largest cities and protected them as well as humanly possible against the neverending barrage of the omnic warmachines.

Surprisingly enough they managed pretty well. It was later speculated that Hephaestus had limited fuel resources and was unable to produce anymore due to the fires consuming the countryside and damaging the pipelines leading to it. Because about a week after the start of the war the relentless flood of attacks slowed down to a trickle. Enough to keep any thoughts of a counter attack out of the heads of the generals, but never enough to break the resistance of the cornered forces in their cities. The incendiary weapons the AI employed just didn’t have the punch necessary to crack open the cellars, subway tunnels and the canalisation the people were hiding in.

Angela knew all that, knew all about the bloody role Australia had played in the war. But she had never made the connection of what years of sustained firestorms and bombs meant for a piece of land. The unpaved ground around her was devoid of greenery, cracked and as dry as the sand in the Sahara. No seed had survived the perpetual onslaught of the immense heat created by the combustion of phosphor, fuel and magnesium. And now that she was looking for it she noticed a strange, acerbic undertone in the air which brought home how badly poisoned the earth must be for it to linger for a year without losing in potency. Nothing would grow here for many years to come unless a massive reclamation project would take place. Which wouldn’t happen, Nyx scoffed in her thoughts, not if the beancounters had something to say about it and not with so many other, far easier fixable places needing help. And once the UN would be ready to provide help it would be far too late. It was painfully obvious how much the desertification had advanced around here. In a few years the entire continent would be a dead rock.

With one last sigh Nyx redirected her thoughts back to the mission at hand, climbed down the stairs and headed over to the bar next to the minuscule terminal, she had some further travel arrangements to make.

The heavy metal door yielded only unwillingly and with a loud screech to her push, which gave the people inside plenty of warning of the impending arrival of a stranger. The gloomy lit interior of the dive bar fell silent immediately, only to be replaced by the rustle of a dozen hands going for the weapons hidden in the folds of their clothes. The fact that they didn’t relaxe upon seeing the form of a woman was a testament to the dire situation this city was in.

Nyx didn’t let the dark, angry glares of the establishment’s patrons dissuade her and walked self assuredly to the middle of the room.

“Who owns that gaudy as fuck Vulture out there?” She asked, her voice ringing loudly in the silent room, her right thumb pointed back at the front door.

A beefy looking man close to her rose from his seat at her challenge, the simple wooden furniture groaned in relieve as he lifted his massive form out of it.

“What’s it to you?” The man asked menacingly with his massive arms crossed over his barrel like chest.

Nyx immediately struck with the speed of a viper and most of her enhanced strength. When her balled fist made contact with the face of the giant she could feel minutely how the cartilage of his nose fractured under the bull like force of her punch. A second later the rest of the room too witnessed her power as the man silently crumbled to the ground, his ugly mug a mess of blood and bone. It looked way worse than it was, Nyx knew, she had some experience with these kinds of things, but the new injury wouldn’t do his looks any favours even after he recovered from it.

Without missing a beat she pulled a very thick bundle of dollars from her light leather jacket and threw it on the table next to her. “I’d like to buy it.” Nyx added nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t just laid out a man on the floor thrice her weight with a single punch.

For a tick or two the atmosphere in the bar was tense, a bunch of weapons already halfway out of their holsters, then the men and women in the room collectively relaxed and went back to their drinks as if nothing had happened.

Nyx turned around and walked out of the bar, a slight spring in her step as she approached her new acquisition.

Vultures were basically hoverbikes. Although you wouldn’t do yourself a favour for calling it that to the face of one of their drivers. They were kind of peculiar about that. Which might be warranted, considering the only relation the machines had to hoverbikes was that they moved around about half a metre of the ground. Otherwise they looked nothing alike. Where the modern hoverbikes were lith and streamlined Vultures were bulky, mean looking and a very good mirror of its driver’s state of mind.

The one she was now approaching was a massive hunk of warped metal, all spikes and harsh edges painted black and gold. The only fleck of different colour was Adelaide’s flag of a winged skull amateurishly painted on the bike’s fuel tanks.

Fuel tanks that held the highly volatile mixture of peroxides and hydrazines these people used to power their rocket propulsion. Beasts like these would put even Sombra’s tricked-out bike to shame, at least until they exploded because the tanks got to hot or because the pressure valve malfunctioned or because a cow looked at it funny.

Normally she wouldn’t touch one of these deathtraps with a ten foot pole, let alone drive one of them. But she didn’t really have a choice. These machines were the only thing that could make the trip to Junkertown relatively unscaved. They were fast and temperamental enough to throw off the aim of the occasional sniper sitting in wait and they were able to bridge pretty much any bomb crater and gorge you were apt to come across in these parts of Australia.

So, with a suffering look on her face, Nyx swung herself up and into the seat of the massive bike, the cheap, musky leather nearly swallowing her smaller form whole.

Ignoring the previous owner’s stink she triggered the ignition and pushed down on the throttle. Which was a bit of a mistake as she nearly charged headfirst into the squat building next to the bar. Luckily she managed to wrench the handlebars around, turning the roaring beast away from the rapidly approaching, dirt marred wall.

Seconds later she burst through the rusty chain-link fence delimiting the small landing field and raced off towards the most notorious city of the southern hemisphere, with only the slightly smoldering wall of the terminal telling of her presence in the crime riddled city.

By the time the sun was rising in the east she had to admit that she now understood why the people around here rode these monstrosities. She could feel its unbridled power in her entire body as the miles flew past her at insane speeds. Speeds that were only possible because every bit of vegetation was gone leaving the desolate landscape open and free of obstacles for as far as the eye could see. Furthermore, the drive never got boring as every single metre was a fight of body and will against this ton of steel turned raging stallion.

The whole thing left her a bit surprised at how the normal, unenhanced people around here were able to drive these hulking beasts without tiring out after ten minutes. Though she had a pretty good hunch how they managed, after all the free city-states of Australia were some of her organisation's best customers, which was partly why she was here in the first place.

Her agents had brought some very interesting stories to her attention. Stories about the people here and the war they had fought that weren’t even known to Athena. Which made the mercenaries of Junkertown the perfect candidates for her planned operation. She gritted her teeth at that thought and opened the bike’s throttle some more, relishing in the loud roar accompanying the beast’s sudden increase of speed.

Akande’s move against her warranted a proper response; favourably one of the explosive kind, something her usual agents weren’t particularly skilled at, unlike the slightly psychotic warriors of Junkertown.

Chapter Text

Outside Junkertown, Day 3 after the Numbani Incident, 4:48 AM

About an hour later Nyx caught the first glimpses of rusty, corrugated iron rooftops on the horizon, a surefire indication that she would arrive in the anarchistic town any moment now. A few minutes later her expectations were proven correct when she crested a softly rolling hill and saw the small city sprawled before her in its dingy entirety.

The town looked exactly like she had imagined it would from the stories she had been told about it. It was an amalgamation of wildly different buildings squashed together behind the limited confines of a tall, primitive wall that looked a lot like the first project of a welder in training. Though while it looked rather badly made she was certain that it would stop a tank; The large, deep craters at various points along the blockade suggested that it had already done so in the past.

But the wall wasn’t the only defence the city sported, no, it also enjoyed a natural bulwark in the form of a pair of very high, steep cliffs. One of them towering above the town and the other one just off of the main entrance, creating a small plaza in front of the massive gate. The cliffs must have been some form of inspiration for the denizens of these wastelands as the city itself was built as if it were a miniature of the canyons. Then, as Nyx could see from her high vantage point, the city sported a single, large road that meandered through the entire city like a man made river of concrete and steel. Attempting to take the city would be a nightmare; the buildings lining the street were undoubtedly built for urban warfare and would provide ample room for defenders to attack the invaders down in the street.

The only thing that didn’t fit well into the image of a fortress city were the various decrypt shacks lining the dirt road outside of the city. They clearly were as badly constructed as the rest of the town, but unlike the buildings within the walls these rusty huts and barns didn’t seem to get any sort of maintenance at all.

After a last look over the city and the cliffs Nyx slowly turned the throttle once more and guided the hulking bike slowly down the hill and into the tiny slum in the outskirts of the walled city. While moving between the buildings Nyx discreetly watched their balconies, roofs and windows, searching for armed thugs and snipers lying in wait for an easy score, but nothing moved. In fact the entire city was eerily still. No birds, no animal noises nor the the deep rumbling of an engine. The whole place felt like a ghost town.

A few minutes later Nyx parked her hoverbike just off to the side of the main entrance and slowly walked up to the massive, dusty gate. Her eyes scanned the parapet high above her but she found nothing more interesting than flaking paint and scored metal. Her gaze slowly wandered down the massive gate, noting the many deep dents and scratches, and finally came to a rest upon the massive gears flanking the entrance to the infamous town.

“Komisch,” She wondered, why would they place parts of the gate’s mechanism on the outside of the fortification?

Nyx froze for a second and listened carefully for any disturbance of the quiet morning; her voice had sounded surprisingly loud in the absolute silence that governed this desolate place.

But even after a dozend heartbeats nothing moved.

With a slight shrug of her shoulders she turned away from the gate and took a step back, planning her next action. She could knock on the gate but it was rather doubtful that anyone would hear that noise unless she rammed her bike against the door, and that might not be the best way to introduce herself to the Junkers. She could probably scale the wall, even without proper equipment, as the wall wasn’t nearly as smooth as one might expect and there were a bunch of shanties built right against the tall fortification. Some of them probably even used the metal surface as a back wall to save materials. Climbing the shoddy structures would be a non issue. Still, she’d rather not do that, she had an inkling that the mercenaries around here had rather itchy trigger fingers and while she hadn’t seen any she was sure that there were at least some guards posted along the wall.

So through and over where out, which meant that there was nothing left to do but wait for someone to leave the city. So, with an annoyed sigh, Nyx turned her back on the city gates and walked back to her hoverbike and propped herself against one of the bike’s shoddily modded fuel tanks and settled in for a long wait. A very long wait, if the soldiers of fortune around here were anything like the ones she had met during the war. Because back then the looters, would be heroes and gangs turned personal armies had had the bad habit of drinking all night and sleeping all day with a bit of fighting sprinkled in between those two activities.

She hadn’t liked them very much.

The sun was already scorching the bike and dusty ground around it by the time a noise finally disrupted Nyx’s mind bendingly dul earlyl morning and saved her from the seven hundredths slow, quiet repetition of the names of all the people she had killed. Somewhere close by a door had been thrown open with way too much force and had crashed loudly against a wall.

Nyx kicked herself of the bike and stepped out of its shadow, her dark eyes moving from side to side, roving the desolate huts. She quickly pinpointed the origin of the sound and watched curiously as a haggard figure stumbled out of a dark hut and into blazing sunlight.

The bright light revealed a thin, unshaved face with a pair of bloodshot eyes that blinked blearily at the sudden change in illumination. Below his scraggly beard a stained, old shirt covered a surprisingly thin torso. The formerly blue jeans the man wore didn’t improve his appearance anymore than the rest of his clothes. They were just as threadbare and seemingly only held together because of the copious amount of dried mud that were smeared all over them. Or at least she hoped that it was just dirt.

Strangely enough the thug didn’t wear any boots. The hot dirt and sand didn’t seem to faze him much, as he quickly headed for a little outbuilding to the side of his home.

“Hello!” Nyx shouted just as he reached his destination, realising that it could be a good long while before he emerged from it again.

The man turned towards her with astounding slowness. Which seemed rather strange to her, wasn’t this supposed to be an extremely dangerous area, where you had to be ready to fend of attacks at the drop of a hat? The man squinted curiously at her, one hand on his already unfastened belt buckle.

He held her gaze for an entire minute, not blinking once or moving. Then he slowly scratched his head and asked, “What are you standing there for?” His slow, deep voice cracking from disuse. He cleared his throat and spat out a thick wad of phlegm.

Nyx barely managed to stop herself from showing her disgust.

She bobbed her head in the direction of the city and explained, “I need to get into the city.”

“Don’t we all?” The man answered the moment her words left her mouth. Then he went back to staring disconcertingly at her.

She waited for a bit, hoping for something more helpful coming from the stranger, but after a few seconds she realised that this was all that the guy was volunteering. She opened her mouth to ask another question but was cut off by him before she could form the first syllable.

“Why?” He simply asked.

“I’m looking for two guys, Jamison Fawkes and Mako Rutledge, do you know them?”

“Laurel and Hardy?” The man asked with a stupid grin on his dirty face, “sure thing. Who doesn’t? But you won’t have to go into the city to find that crazy-ass duo.” He pointed at one of the larger structures outside the city walls. “The queen gave them the boot. They have holed up in that barn over there.” With that their conversation seemed to be over for the thug, as he turned back to the wooden outhouse.

She didn’t pay his bad manners any mind and instead started walking towards the building he had indicated. Even though she wasn’t too sure if the man had been truthful or had just made a jest at her expenses, after all he had made a reference to “Dick und Doof” which was a curious thing to do in this day and age.

“Hey you?” The man suddenly shouted, making her wince. She quickly turned around, facing the man once more. The pantless man. She used a page from his playbook and just stared at him in consternation.

“You here to ice’em?” He asked casually.

Nyx tilted her head at that question. “No?”

“A shame!” The man grumbled and vanished back into the outhouse, the door closing slowly behind him.

She started towards the barn once again, this time with a bit more speed than before, unwilling to risk another talk with that weirdo.

The large barn before her didn’t impress with originality, it was just as badly made and decrypt as the rest of them, although it was a fair bit larger than all the neighbouring buildings. In fact it was nearly as tall as the wall protecting the city. But otherwise it was rather unremarkable.

Once she reached the large, rusty garage door she spent a few moments of her precious time looking for a doorbell or something the like but was unable to find an obvious way to announce her visit. Since she had already spent a good long while waiting for anyone to emerge from one of the shacks she was unwilling to waste even more time. So she quickly pounded her balled fist three times against the metal gate creating a massive racket that was sure to wake every living creature from here to Adelaide, all five of them.

A second later the reverberating of the shoddily made door was answered by loud metallic clatter coming from inside the barn followed by the sound of very heavy footfalls approaching the entryway. The guy inside the building must have been a lot closer to the door than she had expected, because only a moment later the weighty gate was wrenched open from the inside, revealing a massive figure standing inside the doorway with a comically oversized butcher’s hook raised menacingly.

Nyx took a moment to scrutinize the owner of the barn before her, ignoring the medieval weapon he was sporting. The man was fat, obesely so, and even that was putting it lightly. The fact that he was standing before her and that he had been walking just moments earlier verged on a medical miracle, especially since he didn’t look very healthy with his spotty, sallow skin and prominent veins. Though the giant before her didn’t seem to be aware of the impossibilities of his actions as he wasn’t even breathing heavily under his black gasmask. Beyond the protective gear he only wore a pair of stained pants, which was apparently custom around here.

The man suddenly grunted loudly, redirecting her attention back to his rubber covered face. Evidently he wasn’t nearly as interested in her as she was in him.

“I’m looking for Mister Fawkes and Mister Rutledge,”

The mercenary just made a wavy motion with the hand holding the hook, which she took as a sign to go on.

So she did, “I’ve got a rather interesting business opportunity for you.” After a quick look over her should she added, “One which might be better discussed inside.” The racket she had made earlier had attracted quite a bit more attention from the denizens of these shacks than she fought healthy. She could already make out a good number of faces spying on them through grimy windows all around, and even more were sure to watch them through hidden peepholes and large gaps in the wooden walls of their homes.

A sentiment the huge guy seemed to share as he turned around and walked back inside, leaving the door open for her to follow.

The inside of the building was surprisingly clean and smelt only of ancient wood and dust which was a lot better than what she had expected from the brutish look of her host. Who currently was kicking a pile of ratty beanbags to the side of the room, which apparently served as a bed for the second of the duo if the outraged squeals coming from its depths were of any indication. Nyx used the momentarily distraction of her hosts to give the room a quick once over.

The floor of the place was mainly kept as a garage for the gaudy, yellow motorbike with a sidecar standing in the middle of it. There were numerous makeshift devices and tools scattered all around the bike which she gave only a cursory inspection to as the tall glass tank on the back wall of the building was of far more interest to her than the ancient and probably broken machinery.

The canister was filled with the tell-tale bright yellow liquid of her biotics. Or better, Mercy’s biotics which Nyx had “reverse-engineered” and was now selling all over the globe through a sophisticated network of loosely connected agents under the nom de guerre Guédé.

Nyx smiled to herself, she had been right to come here. She turned back to the pair which were by now involved in some sort of angry dispute consisting mostly of a string of angry grunts coming from below the mask of the huge man and a smattering of high pitched swear words from the pile at his feet.

She had no interest in involving herself in the argument between the odd pair and instead sat down in one of the chairs at the table in the far corner, assessing her future employees.

A few more grunts and harsh kicks later had a funny looking head rise above the pile of pillows and fix her with a surprised gaze. The stranger’s face was black from machine oil and grime and topped with a head of spiky, slightly singed hair. All in all he looked rather deranged.

“Uhh,” the man groaned, “Mako it happened again!” He pointed a long, thin arm ending in a gloved hand at her, “A strange, little birdy flew in again!” He tilted his head and appeared to think for a moment, then asked Mako shily, “Can you see it too?”

“Jup,” Nyx though, “definitely deranged.”

Mako just shook his head and sat down on the opposite side of the table, though the massive man did forgo the rickety chairs pushed against the table and instead simply sat down on the hard ground. Even so, he was tall enough to comfortably look her in the eye.

A few seconds later Fawkes flopped tiredly down on the chair next to his huge friend and glared at her with a mixture of astonishment and anger.

“Whatcha want, birdy?” The lunatic asked her, the last word dripping with derision. He clearly wasn’t a fan of her, because of her early arrival or for some other reason she didn’t even dare to guess.

“As I’ve told mister Rutledge at the door, I have a business opportunity for you…” Nyx began to explain, but was cut short by Jamison. “Not interested!”

She shot him an irritated glare and continued on, ignoring his rude hand gestures aping a talking mouth. “I find myself in need of a demolition expert and capable soldiers for an attack on a fortified base.”

Fawkes looked at her with eyes and mouth comically round from surprise and had his hands clasped to his cheeks. “We get to blow shit up? That chaaaanges…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Absolute nothing.” The madman sprung to his feet like a coiled spring and leant over the table invading her personal space. “We don’t like business birdies around these parts. So shoo.” He waved his hand erratically at her as if to shoo away an especially annoying fly.

Nyx ignored the raving lunatic and ducked her head under his wildly moving arm to face Mako, who seemed the reasonable one of the pair.

“You’ll be compensated really well,” She told the silent guy hopefully. But the huge mercenary just shook his head and grunted: “Experiences.” The word was barely intelligible to her and required an inordinate amount of effort to decipher, though his friend got it in one.

“Indeeeed,” he said, stretching the syllable annoyingly. “A few months back a suit tried to show us the bird. He made for a great firework.” His angry expression was replaced with one of bliss as he reminisced. Though that lasted only for a short moment, then his face warped back into a grimace of anger just as sudden and quick as it had been replaced by joy moments ago. “Soo, no deal!” He shouted at her.

Nyx sighed, it had been worth a try, after all they were mercenaries and what soldier of fortune didn’t put wealth above all else. But sadly these two had other priorities, so she would have to be the evil one again.

She relaxed her upright pose and slumped into the seat of her cheap plastic chair and smirked knowingly at Rutledge’s rubber visage. “Will I lose my lunch if you pull of that mask of yours?”

She dodged Jamison’s clumsy punch with a lazy wriggle of her head and watched him overbalance and crash into the pair of rickety metal lockers behind her, which promptly toppled over, smashing brutally into the unfortunate madman.

A hand rose from in between the heavy lockers and pointed accusingly at her. “Uncool, birdy, un-fucking-cool! You can’t just say something like that, birdy! Mako has feelings too and he’s really shy!”

Nyx glanced back to the man in question who, unlike his friend, hadn’t risen to her bait and was still sitting on the ground palming his rubber covered face with his huge hand.

“Your friend isn’t shy.” Nyx contradicted, “he’s dying.”

“Wait what?” The lunatic asked, threw the heavy weights pressing him down off with surprising ease, and jumped sprily to his feet as if he hadn’t just been buried under a hundred kilograms of rusty ironl.

“Roady?” He asked, worry dripping of his words. “The birdy is lying, right?” He glared angrily at her and mouthed ‘bad birdy’ at her.

Mako grunted in response.

“No!” Jamison screamed aghast, “Since when?” He had apparently gotten some kind of meaning out of the ugly sound.

Another grunt, which sounded to her exactly like the first one.

“So long? Why didn’t you say something!” The squirrely man hurried over to his friend’s side and put a comforting hand on his massive shoulder. He shook his head erratically and continued, “But what am I saying, that doesn’t matter, matey. Let’s kick this strange birdy out and go look for a doctor. Just look you’ll be right as rain in no time at all.” The thin man gripped Mako by his armpits and pulled, trying to get his friend on his feet, but the heavy soldier didn’t budge. After a minute of fruitless pulling he gave up and leant against the other man, wiping his sweaty brow. “Some help here?” He asked, looking hopefully first at Mako then at her. He tried his hand at pulling once again to the same effect as earlier and finally stepped back, his hands on his hips and asked indignantly, “Why won't you move?”

Nyx answered for his friend. “Because there are only three people on this world that could save him,” She nodded in Rutledge’s direction, “and he knows that already. Isn’t that right, Mako?” She grinned at him like the cat that got the canary.

Mako tipped his head questingly to the side and grunted, “One.”

She shook her head, “Three.” Then explained lazily, “One who styles herself an angel, she’ll heal you, no question, but she’ll also throw you in prison for the rest of your natural life. With number two you have about a twenty percent chance of being cured and an eighty percent chance of having to watch your flesh melt of your bones.” She paused for dramatic effect, “and then there is me, who only demands a year or two of service in return for my help with your nasty little biotics addiction.”

The huge man suddenly laughed at her, a truly jarring noise best described as a ‘wet rattling’. Though his mirthless laughter didn’t last for long as it quickly devolved into a panicked struggle for breath which only subsided after he had inhaled an entire canister of biotic gas.

“Not addiction, radiation,” the man stated after he threw the empty container onto a heap of identical canisters next to the large glass tank.

“Ah,” Nyx said, the final piece of the puzzle falling into place. He must have taken part in the final attack on the God AI Hephaestus. From the little Overwatch had heard about the progress of the war out here they had gathered that the God AI was finally stopped when a group of guerilla fighters managed to detonate a nuclear device in the middle of the facility. Overwatch had assumed that all of them had died during the blast, as an escape out of the sprawling facility had seemed exceedingly unlikely, especially since the weapon had to be guarded while they made their escape, otherwise Hephaestus would have disarmed the bomb long before the fighters had reached a safe distance.

But apparently the analysts in the Statistical Analysis Division had been wrong.

“Doesn’t matter,” she told the two men in the room. “I can still repair the damage, it will just take a bit longer.” She pulled a sophisticated looking canister from her belt and dropped it on the cheap table, she had transferred it from the armored case to her belt just outside Adelaide as the case had looked a bit too much like a strong box for valuables for her taste. “This will counteract the damage your excessive use of biotics has caused and will deal with any rogue biotics active in your body. Though it isn’t a miracle cure, so it won’t heal you instantly. Instead you’ll have to take it regularly for about a year,” She stopped for a moment to crunch the numbers quickly again considering the new information and then amended, “better make it two, the count of rogue biotics is probably far higher than expected due to the radiation.”

She stopped here and looked at the pair expectantly. Rutledge was as unreadable as ever, unlike his excitable friend who looked rather confused at the moment.

“What are ‘Rogue Biots’” The lunatic asked, making air quotes with his fingers around the unknown words.

“Biotics are bio-engineered lifeforms that are designed to repair and treat physical injuries in other, larger lifeforms. They were invented by Angela ‘Mercy’ Ziegler and they are what makes that,” she pointed at the large glass container holding the yellow liquid, “work. They are very good at what they do, but like with everything we humans build a small fraction of them are broken and will do random stuff inside the body, those we call rogue biotics.” Nyx explained in a roundabout fashion, “Normally, they are eliminated by either other, functioning biotics or the immune system of their host. But if a person uses a large amount of biotics some might slip through and start wreaking havoc on the host, your friend Mako in this case.” She pointed at the container said man was currently scrutinizing and continued, “The biotics in that container are specialized hunters of rogues, and are also programmed to repair any genetic mutations caused by them as best as they can.”

“Okay, okay, birdy. That doohickey will heal him got it, but what do you want for it?”

“Slavery,” Mako grunted. It was difficult for her to gauge his mood from this single utterance, but so far he didn’t seem to troubled by his that prospect. But still she considered it better to quickly alleviate any notions of that kind.

“No, I want a partnership.” She quickly hurried on before Jamison could interject something as he looked ready to blow his lid off, again. “I provide you with three canisters right now,” she detached two more tubes from her belt and rolled them over to the huge man, “that’s enough medecin for three months. After that I will send you one more dose at the end of every month, though you might have to do some favours for me. If I don’t have any work for you that month you’ll still get your dose, if I do and you refuse to do it you won’t get anything.” She smiled at the men at the other end of the table, “which isn’t too much of a problem, going without the treatment for a month won’t kill you, although it will slow your recovery. Does this sound reasonable?”

She watched the pair carefully, gauging their mood and planning what to say next. Though it didn’t seem that more convincing would be necessary as Mako flipped the cap of the container and connected it to his mask, but before he pushed the trigger he spoke to his friend: “If I die, kill her.”

A second later her custom brew filled the mask and the fat man’s lungs with a quite whooshing sound. After a moment his finger slipped of the trigger and his upper body slowly sunk back, only precariously held upright by one of the thin metal supports holding up the internal balcony ovet their heads.

For the next few moments only the impatient shuffling of Jamison could be heard then he suddenly started shouting, “You killed him! I’ll blow you up murder birdy!” And immediately pulled a grenade from one of the pockets in his stained shorts.

But before he could lob it at her a massive hand caught his arm and pulled him off balance. The tall man not expecting the sudden pull crashed into the support next to him and fell down to the floor, the grenade rolling harmlessly away.

“Idiot,” Mako uttered, his voice already sounding way better than just moments before. The huge man rose to his feet and delivered a powerful kick to his fallen friend, sending him careening into the toolboxes next to the bike.

The large mercenary stared at her for a moment, than held out his hand, which she daintely took with her own, much smaller one. He shook her hand with surprising gentleness.

“Deal.” He stated, “but if you fuck us over, we will kill you.”

“Okay,” Nyx answered, then added a threat of her own, “If you betray me, I’ll do absolutely nothing, biotic poisoning is already a horrible way to go. And I doubt your friend will last long without you.”

A pained “Hey!” came from the direction of the bike.

She smiled at Mako, “you’ll be hearing from me.” She turned to leave, but stopped at the door, “By the way, you may call me Nyx, since you never asked.” She opened the heavy gate, “and please try not to get killed before I need you.” She added as a last parting shot, then she was through the door and on her way to her Vulture bike. Even so, she still heard Jamison’s quite words coming from inside the barn. “I like that crazy bird already,” he said, his statement only answered by another grunt.

Chapter Text

Overwatch HQ, Geneva, Day 7 after the Numbani Incident, 7:59 AM

When Gabriel hurriedly stepped through the door of the meeting room most of his colleagues were already sitting at the large, oval table waiting for the meeting to start. Winston’s presence came as no surprise to him, the head of the science division always was a model employee. Plus he did spend most of his time on the Overwatch campus as the city out there wasn’t exactly built with the dimensions of a gene-altered gorilla in mind.

Nor was he surprised to see Angela here, he doubted that the Swiss doctor could ever be late, even if she tried to. But unlike Winston, who had nodded at him in greeting when he rushed through the doors the always busy head of the medical division didn’t even look up from the tablet she held in her hand, apparently oblivious to the world around her.

Though he didn’t doubt for a second that she was aware of his presence. He had been on too many combat ops with her to underestimate the young woman like that.

All in all the presence of the two scientists didn’t surprise him at all, what did was the man sitting opposite of the pair. So much in fact that he decided for a proper greeting instead of a simple head bob.

“Hello, Torbjorn. Didn’t think you’d be here.” While the Swedish engineer had just as much right to sit at this table as all of the others, as he was the head of the R&D division, he rarely graced them with his presence. The diminutive man had little patience for the politics of the council and was far happier down in his workshop between heavy machinery and other, like-minded engineers, ready to build anything they would need for one of their “hairbrained” plans. Besides, he had thought the man still in Numbani with the rest of the combat engineers trying to get the city and its many automatic and Omnic controlled systems back up and running.

Torbjorn barely nodded in his direction in response to his greeting and grumbled something unintelligible into his beard.

He didn’t take it personally, that was just how the engineer was when a bad mood struck him. And this time Torbjorn probably had ample reasons to be disgruntled, having spent the entire week in Numbani trying to fix Omnics, of all things…

Gabriel was barely seated in the chair next to the grumbly man when the door was flung open again and in stepped an angrily ranting Jack. Ana, the target of his furious words right behind him. The strike commander promptly fell silent when he saw the rest of them sitting at the table patiently waiting for their superiors.

“Good, you’re all here.” He spat at them and sat down at the head of the table, gesturing for Ana to do the same. “Then we can finally start.” He added pointlessly.

“I take it Michael won’t be coming?” Angela asked, sounding annoyed.

“No, we don’t need S.A.D. here.”

To his surprise Angela didn’t start a fight about this and instead just muttered something under her breath. Usually she was pretty adamant about having the head of the Statistical Analysis Division at these meetings, not that it ever helped. Maybe she had finally grasped the futility of that argument. It always went the same way, with the soldiers all standing together against a beancounter at their table and with the scientists advocating for the presence of the head of said division. But Winston always fell quickly in line, unwilling to cause discord in the council and with Torbjorn rarely attending these meetings she was pretty much alone with her demands.

In a way he understood her request. More intel about the enemy was always good. But it wasn’t like they just ignored that entire division. They made sure to use the division’s work when planning their missions, just only the cliff notes of it. There was really no point of one of them attending the meetings as they needed time and their high tech equipment to come to any conclusion, neither of which they would find in this chamber where quick, decisive actions were required.

From the short pause in Jack’s words he wasn’t the only one surprised by Angela abstaining from the usual argument, though he recovered quickly and started in on why he called the meeting before the blonde could change her mind.

“I’m sure you are all very much aware of recent events.” With the press of a button a top down view of Numbani flickered to life above the table. The projection of the pristine city was dotted with numerous red spots, looking to him as if it had contracted some horrible rash. Though the reality of it was even worse than that as each glowing point marked the location of a firefight. “But you might not know all the details yet,” Jack shot Gabriel a sidelong glance as if to insinuate that the elite soldier hadn’t kept up with the happenings during his vacation. He ignored the jab. “Seven days ago, around 17:30 the security Omnics in Numbani ran amok. They started to randomly attack humans with non-lethal crowd control weapons. Though while they didn’t cause humans any grievous injuries the other Omnics didn’t fair nearly as well. The OR-14s destroyed hundreds of them and damaged even more. Luckily word got around fast and those who survived the initial onslaught managed to hide from the roaming bots.” Morrison paused for a moment to let his word sink in, then continued. “We mobilised immediately and the first strike teams reached the city at 18:03, immediately starting to pacify the most important locations.” City hall, hospitals, police stations and the power plant outside of Numbani lighted up. “Strike Team Alpha and Horus Squad One reached the city twenty minutes later. Due to our greater travel distance...” Couldn’t leave that one out, could you Jack. Really needed to tell us why you weren’t the first one there…   Gabriel smirked.

“Since the bots didn’t employ their full arsenal against us we made quick progress through the city and reached the airport within the hour.” The commander pointed at the tightest cluster of red spots, the overlapping indicators almost hiding the city’s airport from sight. “Which is where we found this.” The bluish projection of the sprawling city faded away, replaced by a small, black device. “Which was our first definitive proof that this wasn’t simply a malfunction of the OR-14’s threat detection routine. While the R&D division failed to fully decipher the device,” Jack ignored the angry snort coming from the right side of the table and pushed through, “Due to the damage it sustained. Still they were able to glean some information about its purpose. Which is triggering an anti God AI failsafe by piggybacking fragments of God AI code on a falsified update package.” He stated the last part in the stilted manner of someone having read something he has no idea about in a memo and just trying to get it out there while using the exact same words as the report.

“As designed, the OR-14 units went into bunker mode once they detected the malicious code being distributed and started terminating all Omnics in vicinity with absolute prejudice, considering them already corrupted by the God AI. The use of their crowd control weaponry was just a side effect of their combat protocols being activated.”

The strike commander ended his explanation there and reverted the hologram to its previous display, giving them time to think this new information over. The implication of which were rather dire. Someone out there had not only access to God AI tech and the necessary support to weaponize it, but also the balls to unleash it on an entire city.

“Do we know who’s responsible?” Gabriel asked the all important question, “Did some group make a claim of responsibility?”

Jack just sneered in response and let Ana answer the question. “Yes, numerous. But none of them have the capabilities for something on this scale with such advanced technology.”

“Did we catch the agent who deployed the device on camera?” Winston asked, having studied the device and map carefully, “There must have been dozens of them between the OR-14 units and the airport security.”

Jack shook his head angrily, “No, our pulse rifles disrupted the memory cores of all the bots our strike teams encountered.” Something which the Strike Commander had expected, as the pulse munition they used was specifically designed to do the maximum possible damage to Omnics. During the war there was little use in taking functional combat units. Their memory banks were extremely limited and devoid of any useful information. Therefore the ability to disrupt core systems with a glancing shot was seen as a big plus.

“And anything the cameras in the airport might have recorded was wiped by very skilled hackers. Luckily for us they left their calling card.” He added with a sneer. A second later a violet sugar skull floated half a meter above the table.

“S.O.M.B.R.A?” Angela asked, voice high from surprise, “Did they clean out the city funds in the ensuing confusion? Otherwise this doesn’t look like something they’d do. Acts of random violence doesn’t seem their style.”

“Actually, they have supported terrorist organisation on multiple occasions,” Ana stated, refuting Angela’s claim, “Just a few weeks ago they helped Synaesthesia break into a research lab funded by Vishkar. So at least some of their members are not above supporting extremists.”

“I can’t really blame them for striking against that corporation. Also, I think freedom fighters is the term they would use.” Gabriel interjected offhandedly.

But before Ana could counter with some self righteous comment about justice and order Jack stepped in with a barked “We’re getting off track here.” He pointed at Angela and continued in a softer tone of voice, “Analysis of the attack vectors and hacks used identified the group with 97.32% accuracy.” He smiled sweetly at her and added, “Courtesy of the Statistics division.” Angela glared angrily at him but didn’t offer a retort.

“Now then, while most of the cameras were a bust we did in fact get some information about the person who has deployed the virus bomb. Torbjorn, if you would be so kind…”

“Athena, display scans NCI 1 to 23.” The smaller man demanded gruffly from the resident super AI. Moments later the view of the attacked city was replaced by a small number of bits and pieces of iron and plastics, the largest of which could be identified as the disembodied and dented head of an OR-14 unit.

Gabriel leaned in closer, his curiosity piqued by the images of utter carnage put so unceremoniously in front of him. “What? Did it try to cross the street without looking both ways?” “Ha! As if. These tin buckets are made from two centimetres of military grade neosteel. A hover car wouldn’t even put a dent into its armour. You need something far more powerful than that to do damage like this.”

“Was it the Doomfist?” Winston wondered.

The Swedish engineer shook his head, “That’s what we thought at first too, but then we found the head a few streets over.”

“But I thought the cpu and memory banks are located in the chest of this model and not the head?” Winston interjected again.

Torbjorn nodded, clearly annoyed by the interruptions, “Yes, they are. But unlike them the camera’s in that rustbucket didn’t get vaporised, nor did their short term memory buffers. Luckily for us the engineers used solid state memory and not something more transient, that’s how we got this. Athena, play NCIV.”

The AI followed his order immediately and swiftly replaced the images of the scrapped omnic with a three dimensional view of black tarmac and a grey wall to the side of the camera. A second later Athena started the playback of the recording.

The huge quadruped bot slowly followed the outside of the airport's main building, its head methodically swivelling from side to side, scanning every nook and cranny in front of it. The video’s lack of sound made the entire thing feel very strange to him, so used to the loud noises these warmachines normally made. And from the look on the others’ faces they felt very much the same.

A few seconds later the omnic approached some sort of receiving area for goods, most likely used by the shops inside the airport’s main building. The inside of the bays were mostly hidden by large metal shutters which someone had lackadaisical pulled down, leaving large open gaps at the bottom. Something that would have earned them a serious tongue-lashing from him if they were his employees.

The omnic must have thought the same thing, or more likely it must have heard some sound coming from inside the rooms as it came to a sudden stop a few steps away from them and focused its gaze on the closest one.

Suddenly a pair of black garbed legs appeared from under the gate which were quickly followed by the rest of the sliding person. But before the stranger’s head cleared the grey barrier a pair of hands holding a huge handgun appeared. The barrel had barely moved past the shutters when a bright flash of light blinded the cameras. After that the recording devolved into a mad swirl of colours as the head was flung across the street. Halfway through the air the recording stopped as the cameras shut down, no longer powered by the omnic’s mechanical heart.

Already expecting the next order Athena replaced the frozen recording with a still frame of the attacker a split second before they pulled the trigger.

The scene would have made for an excellent action movie poster with the energetic stance of the hero and the matte black gun all up in your face, if only the face of the star of the show weren't missing.

“Are we sure that it really was that little thing doing all the damage and not someone offscreen?” Ana wanted to know with a critical look on her face.

“Yes, angle of the weapon and spread of the fragments matches. It was undoubtedly that gun that did the bot in.”

“But how?”

“We're not entirely sure,” Which meant… “That is why we consider it an Artefact for the moment.”

Ah shit. Artefacts always meant trouble. It was how Overwatch categorised items which they couldn't reverse-engineer or even grasp the science behind them, like the Doomfist. Items like that were exceedingly rare and valuable. Unsurprisingly most of them changed owners at a rapid pace, most often wrenched from the grip of cold, dead hands by their new owners. The few items that stayed with the same person for more than a few weeks were held by either a very cold blooded individual, like Akande, or by entire groups, like the Shimada Clan’s Stormbow.

Though there were a few exception to this unspoken rule. A number of these unique items possessed the strange property that they could only be used by a selected few. Mercy's Caduceus Staff was one representation of that class, and more often than not the artefact of this group had a rather volatile temper, harming anyone deemed unworthy.

Gabriel shuddered imperceptibly as his train of thought reminded him of the first time he saw that effect first hand.

Early on in the history of Overwatch, just weeks after Mercy had joined the fight, the combined generals decided that they would win the war far more easily if they had a hundred of her kind. Therefore they decided that Mercy had to give the secret of the Caduceus Staff up, for the good of humanity. They paid her vehement warnings no mind and quickly built a copy of it using research taken from her personal computer and logs from the machines she had used to build the original one. A few weeks later the prototype was finished and deemed ready for the first tests. A number of experienced medics were quickly assembled and a bunch of “voluntary” test patients were recruited from the many field hospitals doting the frontlines.

So far everything went easy-peasy. It was when the first medic activated the staff that the aforementioned hit the fan. The lucky ones just blacked out one or two seconds after they activated the device. The unlucky ones started bleeding from every orifice in their head while clutching it hard enough to leave bone deep furrows in their scalps. Some of these poor fuckers still heard voices to this day, years after they touched the cursed thing for a bare second.

After about the seventh, or eight medic going down without so much as healing a paper cut the generals gave up on the idea of their heavenly choir and handed the copy and all research pertaining to it off to Doctor Ziegler. They had finally accepted that maybe she hadn’t been kidding when stating that not just anyone could control millions of bionites projected into random, severely hurt soldiers in the middle of a battlefield and deal with the humongous stream of information they sent back to the operator.

And still, it was far from the worst one in that respect. The Dragon Blade held by the Shimada Clan was said to burn the flesh of anyone “it” considered unworthy. And there was a device in the vaults deep below their feet that turned any biological matter into toxic sludge, although that might be its primary purpose as they had found it in the ruins of the Indian Omnium which had used chemical weapons against them for a short period of time, before they had shut it down with utmost speed.

A handgun with the power of a tank cannon suddenly didn’t seem that bad anymore to him. As long as it didn't also shield the user like a certain fist he could deal with it. He chuckled quietly to himself, lost in thought. Not even a nuclear warhead protected you from the good old bullet to the back of the head.

“What do we know about her,” Ana asked, interrupting his train of thought. Her excellent perception having already picked up on the wideness of the figure's hips and the curvature of her upper body.

Since Athena was already actively listening in on the conversation she answered instead of the Strike Commander. “Nothing but the limited information deduced from the 119 frames she was visible in.” A list of properties appeared next to the still image, most of which were either outright a question mark or displayed a wide range of uncertainty. Most of which didn't bother him as they were of little consequence to their hunt, like the colour of her eyes, a few though worried him. Weight for one was nearly always a good way to gauge how dangerous an opponent was. Heavier than their body type suggested? They are probably a machine covered by a bit of flesh. Lighter? They are a sophisticated machine covered by a bit of flesh.

This held true even for Jack, Ana and him, then while they were mostly flesh and bone, their tissue was unusually dense and their bones were reinforced by compounds not usually found in human bodies, making them weight a good bit more than what their looks would suggest.

“What we do know is that she is backed by one of the big players as neither the weapon and the device she used, nor the services of S.O.M.B.R.A come cheap.” The resident AI concluded. “Furthermore, to build the virus bomb state of the art facilities were required. It is highly unlikely that any of the smaller organisations would have access to one of these.”

“Which groups are the most likely culprits?” Captain Amari asked the assembled group in the silence following Athena's words.

“I'm sure Michael could answer that question.” Ah, there she is. He glanced over to the doctor, noting the crooked smirk gracing her youthful features.

“Athena?” The strike commander all but growled, his eyes shooting daggers across the table.

“The most likely culprit is Doomfist’s Forced Evolution, they possess both the means for an operation like this and it fits their declared ambitions.” No surprise there. “Next up is the Vishkar Corporation. Their security forces have displayed a strong tendency for appliance of force far exceeding the necessary ranges, also their laboratories are some of the most sophisticated in the world and could have built the device in short order. Furthermore they have tried to make inroads in Numbani, but so far were denied by the city council. They may plan to rile the citizens up against the current council in a bid to get more favourable candidates elected.”

Which would fit well into their modus operandi if the operation in Mexico was of any indication.

“One more likely candidate would be the shadow organisation currently going by the name of “The Council”, though this is only based on reports coming from the criminal underworld.”

“What about Synesthesia?” The strike commander asked in the lull of the conversation. He really had a hard-on for them, didn’t he. “I highly doubt that they would be involved in something like that, Jack. They are freedom fighters, not anti-omnic activists.”

“Commander Reyes is correct.” The AI swiftly agreed with him, probably to cut off the impending argument before Jack had time to voice it. “Synesthesia have shown great restraint while fighting around civilians, far more than Vishkar’s own forces. Additionally they lack the equipment and personnel to plan and execute an operation like that. The only implicatory factor is their close relation to S.O.M.B.R.A.” She paused for a moment and then volunteered some more information that sounded a lot like guesswork. “The statistical analysis division considered some other possibilities too, like the Guédé or the Junkers, but they view them as highly unlikely.”

“The Guédé? Who are they?” The strike commander asked, his earlier argument about the distinction between freedom fighters and terrorists thrown to the side in the face of this new information.

Gabriel leaned forward in his chair, eager to hear the answer himself. He too hadn’t heard of a group going by that name. A near silent laugh escaped his sealed lips as he imagined them as a group of brutish looking Lucios wearing black suits and top hats while pillaging the isles of the Caribbean Sea.

“They are a gang dealing in medical equipment,” To his surprise it wasn’t Athena that answered the commander's question, instead the head of the medical division had offered an explanation. “They have appeared about eight months ago and quickly filled the void left by the demise of some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies during the Omnic War. We estimate that by now they are in control of about 70% of the black markets dealing in these products.”

“How the fuck is this the first I hear of them?” Jack shouted, jumping out of his chair and pounded the top of the table with his meaty fist. He seemed just about ready to punch the smirk of the good doctor’s face. He only relaxed once Ana put a calming hand on his upper arm.

“E-eifach, äh, It’s äh..” Angela stuttered timidly, cowered by Morrisons sudden outburst of unadulterated rage. Though she recovered her poise quickly and continued in her usual calm and patient manner, “While they produce and trade illegally their goods are of a surprisingly high quality and are in high demand in some of the worst off regions of the world. Also, they rarely attacked other criminal groups from their own volition, mostly they just defended themselves against established gangs and win over the markets with the quality of their offered equipment. The Statistics Division came to the conclusion that attacking them would cause more harm then it would prevent, especially as they have a habit of passing out their products to the poorest for free. Trying to dislodge them from these communities would be a massive uphill battle and would do Overwatch’s PR no favours. So their fact sheets probably landed on your desk in the form of a low priority memo.” She hesitated for a moment but then added, “Also, in my opinion it is extremely unlikely that they had anything to do with the attack. It would be completely out of character for them and gain them very little as Numbani has reliable access to high quality medicine, the local black market is basically nill. I assume that they were only included in the list because of their access to at least one high-tech laboratory.” The doctor stated, the last part more of a question than anything else.

“You’re assumption is correct, Doctor Ziegler,” Athena affirmed.

“Okay,” Jack grumbled, “It’s probably not them, but I still want someone to keep a damned eye on them!”

It was moments like these that made him wonder if maybe Jack hadn’t been the best candidate for position of Head of Overwatch. He had been an excellent team leader, always aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his fellow soldiers and the ebb and flow of battle. Hell, he had even been a decent field marshal but even then his biggest flaw as a leader had been showing, his strong tendency for micromanaging. What had been working for him for years suddenly didn’t do so anymore as the variables he had to keep track of grew in number. But instead of realising that the amount of information would even be too much for the famed commanders and generals of the past he had doubled down on trying to handle it by himself instead of relying on his staff, which inevitably led to him missing something. Saying he took these errors badly was an understatement, as the poor doctor could attest to.

He leaned back a bit in his chair which coincidentally put him just out of range of his superior’s long arms and calmly spoke up, “We’re already doing that, Jack. Otherwise the good doctor couldn’t tell us all that about the gang.”

The strike commander’s scowl was so heated that he wouldn’t be surprised if the wall behind him would be scorched once he got out of his seat, though that was as bad as it got. Apparently Jack managed to reign his temper in somewhat.

“So what are we going to do about her,” Ana asked the assembled people in an obvious attempt to defuse the tense situation.

“We don’t know enough about her, or her backers, so the only thing we can do is gather intel.” Morrison said, still trying to murder him with his glare, “Gabriel, see if Jesse’s contacts know anything. Winston, see if your eggheads can track S.O.M.B.R.A somehow, they have been a nuisance for too damn long. Also, see if you can find out how that oversized hand gun works, I don’t want to have to tell Oversight that we have another Artefact in the hands of a terrorist. Doomfist is more than enough. Torbjorn, continue analysing the bomb, see if you can find out where it was manufactured, or something like that.” He ignored the Swedish man’s angry huff and turned round to Ana. “Contact the watchpoint and have them look out for this new player.” He angrily pointed at the freeze frame. “She is bound to reappear somewhere sooner or later. They always do. These fuckers are worse than any adrenaline junky, can’t go too long without their fix of violence and destruction.”

The commander then rose from his seat and made for the door, cutting Angela’s question off after the first syllable, “You do whatever it is you do.” Seconds later the door was flung shut with a bit more force than might strictly be necessary.

“He’s in a fine mood, isn’t he.” Gabriel stated the obvious after seeing the look of shock on the faces of the others in the room.

Angela nodded with a thoughtful look clouding her face, “Yes, he is. He also seems more irrational and irritable these last few weeks. Maybe a checkup is in order, could be a flare up of SEP syndrome.” Suddenly she pinned him with her sharp gaze, “By the way, when are you coming in for your regular checkup? I had you penned in two weeks ago.”

“When I’m done with my vacation,” he answered jovially, “Which I better get back to.” And hurriedly rose from his seat, mirroring the strike commander’s action from a minute ago, just with a lot less aggression and more boyish charm.

“Ana?” Angela asked, one eyebrow raised expectantly as if expecting the older woman to also slink away at the threat of a medical exam. Though the elite sniper just smiled sweetly, “I’ll be down in two hours, does that work for you?”

He didn’t hear the doctor’s reply as the soundproofed door of the meeting room fell closed behind him and instead concentrated on formulating his plans.

He’d check in with Jesse first, then he’d go and kick some rocks himself and see what was going to crawl out. Lucio might know something, after all he was pretty buddy-buddy with the hackers. And Moira too, though she was a bit of a longshot as her contacts were mostly limited to the medical community. But who knew, maybe the new player had some upgrades done to her body recently…

And if all else failed there were still his old contacts in the military.

Chapter Text

9145 Meters above the Atlantic Ocean, Day 7 after the Numbani Incident, 11:21 PM

“Sometimes,” Gabriel mused to himself, “Seniority really has its perks.” He took a languid sip from his whiskey, set his glass back on the little side table and picked up his phone. He scrolled through his contact list until he found the name he was looking for and hit the call symbol next to the name.

“O que há amigo?” Lucio answered the phone a short moment later, his question barely audible over the music beating in the background.

“Not much, certainly less than what you got going on.” Gabriel said with a laugh. “Still celebrating your victory over Los Muertos?”

“Nah, this is just the usual Friday night fiesta” The younger man chuckled as the loud music suddenly quieted down. “Ah, this is better.”

“You do realise that it isn’t Friday?” He asked the DJ with a smile, glad that his sensitive ears weren’t bombarded by the techno racket anymore.

“Isso importa?”

“I guess it isn't,” Gabriel conceded, “But listen, I wanted to know if you have heard anything about a new woman in town, carries a huge handgun and was involved in the Numbani mess. You know anything about that?”

“Nah, sorry,” Lucio answered near instantly, “Haven’t kept up with the going-ons out of town. Gotta keep this cachorros in line,” He winced as the younger man shouted that last part, “now that they got modern weapons. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, I suspected that it would be a long shot, and I still got some other sources. Take care Lucio, and keep your boys out of trouble.”

“Yeah, you too. Tchau”

That had been a bust, but just like he had told Lucio he had expected as much. Still, it never hurt to check. He took another sip from his drink and tapped the next number on his list. This one let him wait a lot longer than the international star who also led a rebellion against one of the most powerful corporations in the world, go figure.

Finally Jesse answered the call from his employer. “Yea?”

“Hey, Jesse,” Gabriel greeted the wannabe cowboy, “Get out of your hammock, I’ve got some work for you.”

“Shoot.” Jesse groaned sleepily, sounding decidedly uninterested.

“We got a new player on the field: Tall, female, quite handy with a handgun and has a penchant for black gear.”

“Is she hot?” McCree asked with a suppressed laugh. The question had become a bit of a running gag for them as it was a surefire way to put the strike commander on edge. Apparently he thought they meant that question seriously for some reason; as if they would fall for the first pretty face they would meet. During the war that had been an excellent way to wake up in some dank ally with the mother of all headaches and not enough money to buy even a single dose of painkillers.

Most of his fellow soldiers had hated them, these women who tricked the very soldiers who kept them safe. He on the other hand never had. He understood them in a way, life was hard and dangerous, especially in the cities and towns near the frontline. Food was scarce and expensive, and some of the soldiers including most of the mercenaries felt like the citizens owed them for risking their lives. They felt like they had a right to anything that they set their eyes on no matter who owned it or if it was a person.

He shook his head and answered his friend’s question, “No idea,” He sent the still frame to Jesse and continued, “But she got Jack in a tizzy, so I guess that’s a plus. You should have seen him act, he managed to make the good doctor stutter.”

“He’s growing more irrational,” the cowboy said in a suddenly somber tone of voice, all traces of the earlier mirth gone.

“Yea,” Gabriel agreed seriously, “though Angela is going to take a look at him once he calmed down some.”

“Good, if anyone can help it’s her.” Jesse answered absentmindedly, then switched the context completely, “Hmm, doesn’t look familiar. Though there is precious little to see.”

“So you can’t help me?” He asked unhappily. That was two down, one, maybe two left.

“Didn’t say that.” The cowboy stated forcefully, interrupting his train of thought. “I might know someone who might know a thing. But if I’m to visit that person I’m going to need some backup of the Hellfire shotgun carrying type.”

“Okay, we can do that. Who is it and where do we meet this mysterious contact of yours?”

“Let me check for a moment,” McCree demanded, his voice replaced by the sound of rapid tapping.

“Looks like we’re going to Arizona,” The gunman finally stated after a minute or two, “And she goes by Ashe.”

“Grande, let’s meet up in Phoenix at our usual spot,” he took a quick glance at the flight information display next to the cabin door and did some quick math, “In about six hours. Can you manage that?” That would give him ample time to clear customs and organise a vehicle, maybe even rest for a little while. “Yea sure thing boss. See you then.”

He returned his phone to the small table at his side and quickly emptied his drink. He had a lead, maybe a good one at that. He rose from his comfortable seat and made his way to the cockpit to inform the pilot of the change of plans, he wouldn’t be happy about the sudden change in the flight plan, though he would comply. Seniority really had its perks sometimes.

Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Day 8 after the Numbani Incident, 4:17 AM

The plane landed so smoothly that he nearly slept through the event. It was only due to the sudden stop of the jet engine noises and the imperceptible tremors they caused that he woke from his uneasy slumber. His many, many flights over hostile terrain had taught him painfully that the lack of these vibrations meant trouble of the worst sort: the kind you couldn’t shoot.

He sat up and slowly rubbed the sleep from his red, tired eyes.

There was no need to hurry, even though the plane was already being taxied towards the gates. It would still take a good ten minutes before he could disembark the plane and look for the car he had requested on the flight. The reason for the unusual long time between landing and arrival at the gate was a curious one, one that was also shared by the rest of the huge city: it was built underground.

When the Omnic War first broke out the people of Arizona started to build fortification as they were extremely worried that the myriads of machines spawned by the Kansas Omnium would soon break through the defences of the states in between them and run rampant through their homes. The countryside was quickly mined, littered with dragon teeth and pillboxes, turning large swaths of the land into brutal kill zones. At the same time large bunkers were built near the cities meant to host civilians and the most critical infrastructure. After a few months they felt prepared to hold the line even against the entirety of the north american population of hostile omnics, which never came. Instead of moving south the killing machines focused on moving east, devastating the great lake area with no regard for human or any other form of life. Though this didn’t stop the people of the scorching hot state from further reinforcing their defences, no, they would be ready when the God AI decided to turn around and target their home. So, the bunker systems grew ever larger as entire industrial zones were relocated underground, and with them the workers too moved into the bowels of the earth. Soon the cities above ground resembled ghost towns as even the last of the people moved down enticed by the free, modern housing, superior air conditioning system and the promise of safety in the case of a sudden sneak attack.

By the time the war ended an entire generation had been born in the generous confines beneath the scorching hot land. Kids that called these sprawling warrens their homes and were unwilling to go up top, where the bad robots were waiting to kidnap and kill them, and so the families remained.

Though the cities above the ground weren’t as dead anymore as they had been during the war. In the last two, three years large numbers of the displaced had moved into the ready, only slightly ramshackled homes. Although most didn’t stay for long, as the heat was too much for most of them. A heat that had only grown since the start of the war, magnified by massive amount of smoke and ozone destroying gases released into the atmosphere. In fact it had gotten so hot that even most machines had trouble running during the summer above ground without high-tech cooling. Which was one of the reason that the hangars for the planes were also situated underground and only the runways were left above, there was really no point in having to replace tires repeatedly just because they deformed in the heat.

Gabriel was dragged from his idle considerations of the strange city by the speakers crackling to life as the pilot informed him of their arrival. He quickly got out of his seat, grabbed his small knapsack and hurried out the door of the small plane, ready to tackle the journey to the dive bar Jack and he used for their meeting place.

The biker bar was situated on the outskirts of the large city and even though it was also underground it was still a fair distance from the airport, enough for him to require a car to reach it in time. He quickly found the rented hover car in the airport’s dedicated parking area and got in. There was no need to visit a help desk first as he could activate the car with a simple wave of his id, the chip embedded providing all the necessary information. The dashboard of the car immediately lit up and the wheel retracted inside the front console. It was forbidden to drive manually in the city proper as a fire or blockage of a road could be disastrous underground. With a sigh he entered the address of the bar into the console to his right, leaned back and pulled his hat down over his face, hoping against hope for another few minutes of sleep.

The car came to a stop in front of the dive bar a good forty minutes later, just in time for the meeting with Jesse. He jumped out of the car and walked towards the entrance of the bar, not wasting time to try and lock the car. Parking space down here was at a premium and most places didn’t even have any in front of them, instead the cars would just drive to the next “hole in the wall” where a clever system of elevators would move it into a parking position, short term in his case, guaranteed return in under five minutes.

He didn’t pay the car any mind as it drove away behind him, instead he pushed the grimy door open and stepped into the barely lit interior of the decrypt dive bar. His superhuman eyes adjusted quickly to the change in illumination, though slightly slower than just a few years ago as he noticed with a frown, and looked around the room searching for a familiar frame. Which proved to be way more difficult than he expected as apparently stetsons had come back in vogue, at least in these parts. A good number of burly men were spread around the gloomy interior of the dive bar, drinking questionable liquids from grimy glasses and talking in quiet voices to their neighbours about most likely illegal activities.

Still, he didn’t have to resort to going from stranger to stranger as his enhanced vision spied his partner soon enough. The wannabe cowboy had found a seat in the far back of the establishment between a painted over window and the door to the kitchen. He approved of the seating choice of the man, the seat allowed for a good view of the interior, had a solid wall behind him and plenty of quick escape routes.

He stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink, watching Jesse get up and out of the bar from the corner of his eyes. Good, it wouldn’t do for them to be seen together. Neither of them were to well known by the public. They hadn’t been as photogenic as Jack “Captain America” Morrison or Angela, and so the brass had rarely requested them to stand before the cameras, which had suited him quite well. But even so, seeing them next to each other might still jog some minds.

The barkeeper set down the drink before him. He picked the shot glass up and grimaced at how grease the glass was, but still this didn’t stop him from downing the strong liquor in one. It burned somewhat fierce while going down his throat and tasted even worse than he had expected. He slammed the glass on the counter, wiped his mouth, threw a few dollar bills on the counter and left after glancing at the barkeeper and seeing him nod. Apparently he had offered enough.

Outside he stepped into the waiting car, which he had called back the moment he had seen McCree. Gabriel then directed the car to drive down the tunnel towards one of the many exits out of the buried city.

“Jesse stop laying around and get up here,” Gabriel called over his shoulder, pointing at the other seat next to him.

“Nah, it’s comfy back here,” Jesse sleepily mumbled from the back.

“Cut it out, you’re the one who knows where to go. So get your ass over here!”

“Dude, you’re a real slave driver.” Jesse pouted, but righted himself in the back and climbed over the center console to the front, moaning dramatically every time he bumped into a sharp edge or the hard roof.

Finally, after what felt like ten minutes, he settled into the front passenger seat and entered the coordinates of the meeting place into the car’s navigation system. “There, all set.” He stated with another dramatic sigh and leaned back. “Wake me when we’re there,” He added and pulled his hat down to cover his eyes, settling in for a long drive.

He ignored Gabriel’s exasperated sigh with a smile and closed his eyes, slumbering peacefully only moments later.

They reached their destination a good few hours later in the late morning, not because Ashe’s hideout was that far away, but because they had to take the roundabout way of getting there. Many of the state’s roads were still closed, littered with countless mines, automatic turrets and other defensive measures that still hadn’t been cleared out. So what would have been a two hours trip before the war had morphed into this long, meandering drive through the countryside, made more difficult by the fact that most maps didn’t show the conditions very accurately.

But still, after turning around and tracking back a good dozen times Gabriel finally managed to find a path through all the blockades and came to a halt in front of an abandoned relay station.

The place was small for a military outpost, sporting only a pair of buildings, a garage and a small, squat concrete building which was probably were they had stored ammunition, equipment and fuel.

He turned around and poked the sleeping man next to him, “Wake up, we’re here.” He was always amazed by Jesse’s ability to sleep just about anywhere.

“Mhm,” The gunslinger groaned and pushed himself back up in his seat, letting his hat tumble to his lap. “Okay, great.” He added sleepily. “Let’s do this.” He fumbled for a moment with the car door and nearly tumbled out of the vehicle when it suddenly sprung open, revealing Gabriel standing on the other side. He grabbed his hat from the dusty ground with a quiet grumble, cleaned it with a quick beat or two and put it on.

“Hey boss, let me do the talking,” He told Gabriel once he had caught up with the man who was leisurely walking over to the main building. “Ashe… Ashe can be a bit finicky.” He added at seeing the other man’s questioning look.

“Who is she anyway?” Gabriel asked, voicing a question that had weighted on his mind for the entirety of the drive. He had hoped to talk about the meeting during the drive, but Jesse’s antics had scotched that. He could have woken the younger man, but decided not to, the Cowboy was rarely in a good or helpful mood afterwards.

Jesse’s eyes took on a far away look as he answered, “Someone I knew a long time ago, when I still lived on the farm. We were… Friends… Helped each other out a few times, did some work together when things got tight on the farm. We parted ways when I joined the army.” He grimaced slightly, “Not on the best of terms. So this could get a bit problematic.”

“Friends?” Gabriel questioned with an arched eyebrow and a smirk, “Why don’t I believe that.”

They were only a few steps from the main building’s front porch when the door swung open on slightly rusted hinges, screeching noisily.

Moments later a tall, platinum blonde woman appeared in the doorway, a long rifle propped against her right shoulder and her left hand resting on her hip.

“Hey boys…” The woman, Ashe apparently, called out in a strong, Texan drawl, “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“Hey, Ashe,” Jesse greeted the woman with a small wave, “It’s good to see you again.”

“Jesse McCree. It's been a while. You promised you'd write” The young blonde sneered at him.

“Well Ashe...I've been kind of busy.”

“Saving the world and being a little goody two shoes from what I’m hearing.” The woman replied, voice hard from suppressed anger. “Forgetting all about your family while sacrificing an arm and a leg for strangers.” She added, staring pointedly at his mechanical arm.

“Eh what,” Jesse asked in faked confusion, “My legs are still perfectly fine.” He leaned back and looked down as if to make sure that was still the case.

“Not for long,” Ashe stated matter of factly, taking her rifle from her shoulder and hefting it in both hands, though not yet pointing it at them.

“Hey, hey, there is no need for that, Calamity, I’m sorry!”

“For?” Ashe asked, her stance radiating anger.

“For breaking my promise, for leaving the gang, for leaving you,” The last part barely a whisper, “But I had to do it… I… I just had to.”

“Damn you McCree,” Ashe seemed to shrink as the anger left her body at the sighed words. She still glared at him for a few seconds with a strange combination of loathing and desire, before she finally spoke her next words, “So what brings you out here? I doubted it’s just to mend old fences.”

“As sharp as ever,” The cowboy stated with a tiny, sad smile, “There is a new woman on the field we don’t know much about yet, and so I though who better to ask than the most dangerous woman in the entire wild west.”

“Ah, I missed your flattery,” Ashe scoffed, her lips quirking into a smile for the first time since she stepped through the door.

“I’m not sure I can help you, though,” The gang leader remarked, her drawl was back in full force.  “I can’t just go around blabbering trade secrets to strangers, especially not if they are in bed with the law. Stuff like that is for family, and I ain’t sure that you still qualify.”

“Oh, come on Ashe, you know I can keep a secret!”

“Do I now?” The blonde asked incredulous, “I also knew that you wouldn’t just turn your back on us, and here we are!”

“Okay, what do you want, Ashe?” McCree sighed, knowing full well that this was an act, a tactic to get more out of them than they were willing to give. The girl never said no to an opportunity to make bank.

“Whatever do you mean?” Ashe asked with an innocent smile gracing her ruby red lips.

“Ashe…”

The young woman clicked her tongue, “Ah, Jesse, I remembered you way more fun than this. Did an omnic shove a stick up your ass?” She laughed hard at the angry glare her words elicit, nearly dropping the long rifle she held at her side in the process.

“Come on, that wasn’t that funny,” Jesse asked nonplussed. “Why are you still laughing?”

“You remember that night at the pool house? After that party with the good whiskey...” The blonde cackled madly.

“Not another word!” The usually so unflappable gunslinger screeched out, his glare turning deadly.

“Okay, okay…” The girl finally snorted, leaning heavily on the balustrade while trying to get her mirth under control. “Look, ha... I’ve got a little something planned in a few hours.” She managed to get out between bouts of giggling, “And I’m a bit understaffed out here.”

“I take it you want us to help you,” Jesse stated, “What’s the score?”

“Oh, you’re going to like it,” Ashe promised with a sultry smile, “A good old fashioned train robbery.”

“For a bit of information? That seems a bit steep. How do we know it will be worth the hassle?” Gabriel broke the silence that had fallen over the three at the revelation, speaking for the first time since the blonde had appeared.

The woman smirked at him and stepped off the porch approaching the pair. “Oh, it will be worth it. Mister Reyes.”

“Is that so? What would a gang leader know about the affairs of international terrorists?” He asked, his tone of voice convoying his doubts about Ashe’s assertion, ignoring the subtle, panicked head shake of his partner.

The blonde gunslinger had used the time it had taken him to say this words to close the distance between them. She came to a halt just in front of him, her long, intricate designed rifle back against her shoulder. “I’m not something as crude as a gang leader,” She tapped him on the chest with one of her long nailed fingers, “I’m a broker of rare, sought after commodities and information.” Her fingers slowly trailed down his chest, “And I’m really good at it,” Her fingers passed his belt loop, her nails tinkling against the metal of it. “I learned it all from my daaaddy…” She drawled and struck with the speed of a viper, or she wanted to as her hand was suddenly caught by a grip of steel. She tried to pull her arm away, but Gabriel’s hand didn’t even move an inch. “Your a fast boy, and so strong!” Ashe fake gushed.

“Okay, that’s creepy, Ashe.” Jesse chided the blonde, then faced his boss. “If she says her info is good, it is good, she can’t risk losing her credibility. We should accept.”

He glanced over at the man, considering his words and if they came from a place of some misplaced nostalgia, but the cowboy held his gaze unwavering, so he finally agreed to it hoping the decision wouldn’t come back to bite them.

A few hours later found them lounging on a flatbed hover truck just a scant few meters from the hovertrain tracks, just far enough away for the automated train to ignore them. They would function as spotters once the train got here and make sure that there wouldn’t be any surprises like an armed guard driving ahead or behind them. Something like that wasn’t unusual for many of the war torn regions of the world where attacks on transports are a daily occurrence, making mercenary guards an absolute necessity. Though the corporations hiring them rarely considered the hired guns any better than the criminals they were meant to deter, therefore they weren’t allowed on the trains and trucks carrying the valuables and often had to provide their own means of keeping up with the convoys, be that a train engine of their own, tricked out hoverbikes, hovercopters or something even more exotic; One security firm in Egypt was even rumoured to employ jet packs.

Once the Blackwatch agents were sure that the train would offer no surprises the attackers couldn’t handle they would radio Ashe and give her the go ahead. Then they would take the flatbed and catch up to them, offering their help with breaking into the containers, dealing with any surviving security systems and carrying the valuables off to the truck. Easy as eating pie, if you believed the gang leader, which was something Gabriel surely didn’t. He had been part of to many combat ops to believe that something was ever easy. There was always something you didn’t consider, you weren’t told or just random chance that would derail your plans.

“By the way, how does she intend to stop the train?” Gabriel quietly asked his dozing partner. The younger man tilted his hat up with a lone, gloved finger, revealing a single brown eye focusing on him. “Hm? Probably the same way we did it in the past. A bunch of directional charges placed on the tracks each about a wagon length apart from its neighbour. You blow them all at the same time just when the wagon links are above them. That way you don’t have to worry about overloading the hovercoils and blowing the entire train to the high heavens. And without the front engine pulling them forwards they’ll come to a soft, slow halt one or two kilometers later. As long as they don’t derail first and topple over without the magnetic constraints of the tracks, mind you.” The gunslinger explained, adding the last part with an impish smirk. “Sadly it’s more often the later. Directional charges just aren’t what they used to be and often disrupt or right out damage the tracks. A shame really, the police were always way nicer about it if nothing got seriously damaged and they could just link the wagons back together and drive em out. And the profits are way better if half of the goods aren’t destroyed in the tumble.” Jesse paused for a moment, softly chuckling to himself as he reminisced about scores they had pulled before he had joined the army.

“Once,” He begun the retelling of one of his favourite stories, “We got wind of a transport holding Fabérge Eggs apparently being shipped from one museum to another one. We were still young and easily to excite so we didn’t question that claim to hard, already thinking about all the things we could by with the millions they would go for… So we were there, laying in wait, ready to derail the train when…”

His words trailed off as he sat up while staring at something in the distance. Gabriel followed the other man’s example and he too righted himself. He found the thing that caught his partner’s attention immediately, a large dust cloud was rapidly approaching from the horizon which surely heralded the arrival of the expected train. A quick glance at his combat rated smartwatch revealed that the train was right on time.

The pair of them quickly jumped off the truck and hid in the shadow of its front which was turned away from the tracks. The cart alone wouldn’t raise to much suspicion with any guards on the train. They had turned its engines off the moment they had arrived, by now they had cooled down to the same high temperature as the sea of sand and dirt surrounding them. Furthermore the strong, steady wind had already covered its smooth, metallic surface with weeds and dust. For all anyone could know the thing had been abandoned here years ago.

A few minutes later the train hurtled past them at insane speeds which generated pressure waves strong enough to push the flatbed a good twenty centimeters further away from the passing train. Though, that didn’t stop the pair from fulfilling their mission and stealing glances at the metal beast. They didn’t notice any additional security, no suspicious panels could be seen on its steely hide nor any telling bumps on its body covering auto turrets. They were good to go.

“Hey, Ashe.” McCree radioed to their temporary partner, “The bike just had a loose wire, we’ll catch up to you in a minute.” They used code words as most of these trains had a weak AI monitoring the radio waves out here in the open and which would alert security if it found anything strange or threatening, like for example an encrypted channel. But the chatter of some adventurers or maybe a bunch of kids taking a joyride through the sticks wasn’t unusual and shouldn’t be flagged by the automated systems.

Once the train had completely blasted past them they jumped out from their cover and back onto the transporter. The truck awoke at the press of a single button and slowly lifted into the air with a soft humming noise. A second later it followed the runaway train at a surprisingly high speed, the pimped hover coils pushing the empty flatbed forwards with an immense force. They would reach the staging point before the dust had fully settled.

They didn’t see it when it happened as the dust filtering through the air was still far too thick, but they certainly heard it. The explosives detonated in concert and the sound they made morphed into one thunderous roar that surely shook the ground, though they were unable to feel it on the levitating platform of their truck. The explosion had barely faded away when the next deafening noise beset their sensitive ears. Although, this time the noise had a certain metallic quality it didn’t have before, and neither was it nearly as uniform as the detonations had been. Instead it was a multitude of different sound, clangs and screeching were intermingled with the dry cracking of stone, forming a cacophony that could only mean one thing: The train had derailed.

At least there was one positive, no unexpected explosions could be heard over the din, which meant that the cargo was probably still intact, or at least up to the usual safety standards.

Two minutes later the hover truck broke through the wall of dust still hanging around the scene and came to a sudden stop in front of Ashe, which was only possible because the flatbed was empty save for the two Blackwatch agents. Both of them quickly jumped off the smooth metal surface down onto the sandy dirt covering the foot of the mesa next to the track. Gabriel surveyed the scene while Jesse stepped up to their temporary boss. The woman had chosen an excellent location for the attack, Gabriel had to admit begrudgingly. A few hundred meters further down the tracks curved to the south, meaning that the train had to slow down at least a bit to make the turn. Furthermore the tall table mountain to the side offered excellent cover for the attacker. Wind and weather had broken of large boulders and deposited it around the foot of the mountain and filled in the gaps with sand, dirt and a low kind of shrubbery. The greenery wasn’t enough to make walking difficult but still was thick enough to break up the sharp lines of the rock, creating strange silhouettes that would hide the outlines of people famously.

Sadly, her gang was not nearly as capable as their leader, as he noted with distaste that most of them were just loitering around the battered, sparsely scattered train cars. Their positioning was abysmal, the ones close to the tracks had no regard for the sight lines of the gang members that stayed back and overlooked the wagons with raised weapons. They blocked possible shots at the heavily dented cars, vanished behind the tall metal boxes only to suddenly reappear on the other side, risking a bullet to the head from a nervous trigger finger.

“Hey, you maggots! This ain’t sightseeing! Get to work!” Ashe screamed angrily at her idle subordinates. Apparently she too had noticed their lollygagging and was about as happy as he about it.

To his surprise they immediately followed suit as a number of them raced over to the hover bikes parked in the shade of a large boulder to retrieve bags filled with explosives, if the hand drawn pictograms could be trusted.

“We should have enough to break two, maybe three of the cars open,” The blonde gang leader volunteered after following his gaze, “These fortified wagons are no joke.”

Gabriel nodded absentmindedly, they really weren’t. They were designed to withstand the sudden detonation of anything below the scale of a tactical nuke without shattering. A measure meant to keep the populace and workers around the train safe should a faulty trigger detonate the explosives prematurely. Luckily for them they held up not nearly as well against force applied from the outside, otherwise they would have needed plasma torches and hours of time they wouldn’t ever have. This place would probably be swarming with soldiers in and hour or two.

A fact that must have finally permeated the few brain cells of even the last few gangbangers as they suddenly worked in concert like a well oiled machine. The one with the huge machine guns now properly covered the fighters putting taffy-like strips of explosives around the large, twisted doors barring entry into the lopsided standing cargo wagon. He followed their example and pulled his Ravager Shotguns from the holsters at the small of his back. He saw Jesse mirror his movement from the side of his eye and followed the younger man down to the tracks, where they hunkered down behind the cover of another overturned wagon. They were soon joined by Ashe, who apparently trusted their instincts and choice of cover. He shuffled a bit to the side so that the blonde gunslinger could bring her rifle to bear. The long gun had far better accuracy at this distance than his shotguns.

They had barely settled in behind their cover when the gang members were already running away from the mined door, an old timey fuse sizzling away behind the scurrying fighters. He didn’t scoff at their choice of detonators, in fact he approved it. Burning fuses had made a huge comeback during the omnic war as they were reliable, easy to produce, and most importantly couldn’t be detonated prematurely with the correct radio signals. Though in this case it as more likely that a radio trigger wouldn’t detonate at all. Many of these military transports had jammers built in to block unapproved signals this close to the them.

He blinked in confusion when a loud bang sounded just a fraction of a second before the bright spark vanished into the pinkish taffy. His eyes widened in shock when he realized what this meant. He quickly grabbed the woman before him by the back of her collar and pulled her behind the cover, and not a moment too soon as a few of the fighter’s backs suddenly bloomed red.

The defenders hidden inside the train had timed their strike perfectly, blowing the hatches at the same time as the detonation of the breaching charges, catching the train robbers completely unaware, to devastating effect. The three gunmen that had each popped out of one of the strewn around wagons each targeted a different fighter and took them down with a well placed salvo of their heavy pulse rifles.

Though, while the initial attack had been well coordinated they apparently hadn’t planned past that first volley as they started firing at the fleeing gang members at random. Most of the shots missed their targets by a wide margin, instead of rending flesh the deadly projectiles just spawned little geysirs of sand all around the feet of the panicked men. Their aim thrown off by the awkward position they had to fire from as none of their wagons was standing straight.

Though not all of the ambushers missed, one of them hit one of the running fighters in the leg, sending him tumbling to the ground with anguished scream of pain. But before the shooter could deliver the coup the grace to the downed man his head vanished in a cloud of blood as a supersonic slug tore through his skull. A hurried heartbeat later the cracking report of the sniper rifle echoed down from the mesa, revealing the snipers Ashe had posted there.

The two remaining defenders immediately ducked down behind the hatches, unwilling to risk death for the small chance of hitting one of the few fighters still out in the open. Though they didn’t duck out of sight completely, instead they remained at the mouths of their holes, just out of line for the snipers, which had a hard time fully covering all of the crookedly standing wagons.

The battlefield fell silent for a moment, save for the wailing of the hamstrung man. Though it wouldn’t remain like this for long, Gabriel knew. There were probably more soldiers inside of the wagons. Considering that they had worn the same armor as the ones they had encountered a few days ago in the secret research lab he was pretty sure that at least some of them would sport even stronger armor, or at least some grenades. But even if they didn’t, they could pin down the Deadlock gang long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

This just wouldn’t do.

His gaze quickly jumped from wagon to wagon, searching for away to break this stalemate and chuckling happily when he found it.

“Cover me,” he whispered to Jesse. Without waiting for a response he dived out from his cover and stormed for the breached car with all the speed his enhanced legs could provide. A second into his sprint the sharp report of a long gun could be heard, followed by a soft ping when the bullet hit the neosteel of the wagons. Apparently Ashe had taken it on herself to provide cover for him, something he wasn’t too sure if he was happy about. The woman was a big unknown, even though she had comported herself well so far, and there was no telling if she had the experience and accuracy to keep the shooters at bay.

He leaned a bit forwards and ended his mad dash over the killing zone with a powerful lunge that launched him accurately through the breach. The impact on the metal surface would have broken a normal man’s wrists and knees but wasn’t even enough to make him pause, which might have been fatal in this situation. Instead he quickly crawled to the back of the car next to the weapons crate he had eyed earlier. He jimmied it open with the help of his combat knife and laughed with joy at what it revealed. The box was stuffed to the brim with grenades, enough of them to start a small war, or in his case force some rats out of their holes.

He grabbed a good number of the high-explosive grenades and clipped them to his combat belt. Then he turned around and eyed the brightly lit square leading out of the boxcar. He could make a run for it, risking the hail of bullets that would surely rain down upon him the second he stepped out as at least one or two of the defenders had seen him enter.

Or, he could take the top hatch, which he had just spied in the middle of the car roof. He carefully approached it, mindful of the angle of the breach and the gunmen lying in wait outside of it, and read the slightly glowing instruction painted on the hatch. He grimaced at what it was saying. Opening it would be easy enough, just pull the handle next to the fortified frame and wait a three seconds for the bolts to blow. Problem was, there was no way around this, even though this wagon was standing pretty much upright and was barely damaged from the derailment, which was the reason that they had chosen this car for breaching first. So, there was really no need for the explosive bolts in his opinion, the sound of which would give him away instantly.

But there was really no way around it so, with a heavy sigh, he pulled the lever and stepped to the side. Three second later the cover blasted of with a loud bang, ripping a hole in the light veil of dust still shrouding the site.

Moments later he stood firmly on one of the weapons crates he had pushed below the open hatch and slowly pushed his head past the rim, his muscles almost shaking from anticipation, ready to pull himself back into cover at a moment’s notice.

After what felt like an eternity to him he was finally able to peek over the metal collar surrounding the breached hatch and check out the lay of the land. The sight before him wiped the tense expression of absolute concentration from his face instantly and replaced it with a predatory smile. His car was the highest, all of the others came to rest crookedly against the sandy ground at the foot of the table mountain. Which meant that none of the gunmen in their hidey-holes had a good or even decent shot at him without exposing themselves to his counter fire. Something which the soldiers down there had apparently noticed themselves before he had, giving them time to slip down back into their cars and behind the impenetrable cover they provided. Though sadly, at least for them, they had no means of covering the hatch again, after they had blasted them off and so were completely exposed to the grenades in his hands. He didn’t try to cook them as that was an exceedingly dumb thing to do with a bunch of looted grenades and instead tossed them the moment he pulled the pin. He watched the pair’s trajectory with an expression of grim satisfactory knowing that they would hit their mark. After a good dozen years of battle he considered himself a bit of an expert there.

Just as he predicted the explosives sailed through the hatch unhindered and dropped past the startled fighter standing below the hole. They finally came to a stop next to the rest of his squad. The fighter gaped in shock at the explosives and then tried to pull himself out through the hatch to the relative safety outside of the reinforced metal box.

The gunman never stood a chance, he barely managed to pull his torso out of the death trap when the fuse run out. With a furious roar the small HE grenades turned into a storm in the metal bottle, getting reflected from one wall to the other, ripping man and machine alike to pieces in the process until the pressure raced through the only weak point it found. The concussive force enough to widen the hole in the roof and sending upper body of the fleeing soldier into the stratosphere.

Gabriel hadn’t wasted any time watching this spectacle and instead had hurriedly launched more grenades at the other two open hatches in a desperate attempt to catch them unaware. Though while he was adept at handling grenades the four second fuse was just not enough time to launch them all before the first batch detonated. Still, he managed to dispatch one more wagon without anyone escaping before the doors of the last one sprung open, revealing six soldiers racing for their lives. They barely managed to get out of the wagon in time with only the last one getting singed a bit. Although, most of the blast must have been absorbed by the heavy armor he wore as the soldier easily recovered and vanished behind the next best cover.

Gabriel quickly followed the man’s example and pushed himself out of the wagon and slid down the other side of the car, his hands flying to his guns before he even touched the sandy ground. With his Ravager Shotguns in hand he raced around the wagon and towards Jesse and the blonde, praying that he would reach them before the enemy squad pushed on them.

He didn’t need have bothered though as Jesse was already a step ahead of their assailants, having led the woman away from their previous cover and towards the table mountain in the confusion following the grenades. From there the pair rained death onto the soldiers that had attempted to flank them, taking two out of the fight instantly.

Two more fell soon after, cut down from behind by some of the gang members that had hidden behind the rocky outcroppings and slight dunes on the other side of the tracks. Their crossfire catching the soldiers completely unaware. Which only left two more standing. Though, unlike the others these two were clad in the heavy armor they had encountered in their mission in South America. The heavy plates shrugged the small arms fire off as if the projectiles were nothing worse than a few airsoft rounds. Only McCree’s Peacekeeper managed to put a dent into the power armor. Though the cowboy didn’t get more than two rounds off before his targets recognized the danger they were in and quickly turned on him and sprayed his cover with their heavy pulse rifles, forcing him and Ashe to duck back behind their rocky outcropping.

Gabriel used this moment of inattention to sneak closer to the two heavily armed soldiers. His quite footfalls were completely drowned out by the rattling of their guns. Still, he didn’t dare to attack them from behind as it was quite likely that these suits had sensor all around that would alert their wearer of his present.

Luckily for him the wagon next to them had nearly completely fallen over in the unstable, sandy ground and had formed a soft slope upwards with a slight overhang on the other side. He quickly climbed this new feature of the terrain knowing that the reinforced steel would shield him from the low powered sensor suit integrated in the thugs’ armor. Once he reached the top of the man made slope he immediately jumped off, aiming his feet at the ground between the two soldiers who stood a good bit apart, probably afraid that they would crash into each other if they were to close. Which meant that they weren’t used to the armor yet, Gabriel realized quickly.

The pair was slow to react to the new attacker in their midst, their lumbering forms turning only slowly on the quickly moving Gabriel.

The Blackwatch agent used their sluggishness to full advantage, he quickly dashed forward towards the first of the pair and pressed his twin shotguns against the bottom of the enemy’s chin. With an immense roar the deadly weapons erupted, sending fire and neosteel on its short way to the target. The point blank blast was far too much for the armor to handle, especially since Gabriel had packed the special anti omnic rounds he had used in the war. These cartridges not only contained about a third more propellant but also contained sharpened neosteel flechettes specially designed to rip through heavy armor. He had stopped using them after the war as they were considered inhumane. The projectiles pierce flesh like a needle pierces paper, creating clean wounds that bleed profusely, killing people slowly and painfully.

Counter to his expectations the helmet of his victim wasn’t torn off by the impact. Instead the sharp projectiles pierced through the chin guard, the man’s skull and exited out of the top of the helmet. Blood started dripping out of the newly made sieve long before the man had fully crumbled to the ground.

Though Gabriel didn’t pay this any mind, as he had a far more serious problem than this unsightly display. The back blast of the guns had kicked him like a mule, ripping the guns cleanly out of his hands and sending them to the sandy ground below, where they were buried by the tumbling corpse of his first victim. There was no way for him to recover them before the second attacker was upon him, so instead he twirled around and delivered a flying kick to the second attacker’s chest. His wild, steel toed attack caught the other man on the back foot, sending him staggering backwards, more out of surprise than anything else. The grunt recovered quickly, to quickly for Gabriel to think of anything else, and raised his heavy pulse rifle in an attempt to turn the commander into little more than a few bloody rags.

Though the goon never managed to pull the trigger, as six Peacekeeper round buried into his back, scrambling suit systems and organs alike. The soldier’s form crashed to the ground moments later with a loud clatter, revealing Jesse standing a good dozen meters away, Peacekeeper raised and his left hand still on the hammer.

“Howdy, Commander,” The younger man said with a smirk and holstered his colt. “Your guns getting to heavy for you?”

Gabriel just sighed and turned around to his first victim, trying and failing to turn the armored corpse over. I’ll never hear the end of this, he knew.

A few minutes later the pair of them met up with Ashe, which had somehow managed to gather the surviving gang members and gotten them to work on looting the derailed train. They stacked crate after heavy crate on the flatbed truck next to the corpses of their comrades, taking surprising care not to squash their bodies.

“Ashe?” Gabriel asked, “We held up our end of the deal, now it’s your time.”

The blonde woman gave them a grim nod, her eyes glued to the carnage before them. “Not here, I’ll tell you on the way back.” Then she turned her back on them and trudged over to the truck, stopping next to the bodies, smoothing their rumpled clothing with a slightly shaking hand.

They left quickly, without so much as opening another one of the wagons, far to worried about reinforcements coming down on them with the force of an angry god. Ashe, Gabriel and Jesse rode abreast through the dried out land. The two Blackwatch agents each driving the hoverbike of one of the dead.

Ashe didn’t speak up for a long while, her eyes surveying the skies with a far away look. When she finally did speak her words came out in a soft, halting voice.

“O-okay… You really saved us back there. We wouldn’t have had a chance against them.” She quieted down once more, but started talking without any prompting from the guys. “The woman you are looking for goes by the name of Nyx. She appeared on the scene six, seven months ago with a lot of money to throw around. No idea where the money comes from, or the woman for that matter. Though her looks, black hair, emerald eyes and healthy tan and her accent suggest Italy or Spain. Though that’s just guess work.”

“Do you have a photo of her?” Gabriel interrupted.

Ashe shook her head, “No. Attempting to take one is a good way to get yourself killed. These people don’t take kindly to that kind of spying. Her especially from what I hear. She has done her best to stay out of the public’s eye. Though she doesn’t completely shy away from public appearances, as she was seen a few weeks ago in Club Velours in Geneva. Apparently she met Doomfist there, and from what my informants are telling me they were quite buddy-buddy. Money changed hands and Doomfist was his charming self.” Ashe grimaced, having had her own dealings with the man, or at least his goons. “Though it nearly came to blows over some Bruce guy… Anyway, nothing much happened after that beyond her picking up some punk floozy.” She added with a distasteful look on her face. “Since then Nyx has been pretty quiet, though there is word on the street that she has been in Junkertown. Though I’m hard pressed to believe that… They aren’t exactly haute couture, that crowd.” She explained after seeing the questioning looks on their faces.

Gabriel nodded, “Is that all you can tell us? Not exactly a lot considering what we just went through.”

“Yeah, sadly. That woman protects her privacy fiercely. Though there is something else…” She trailed off, but started talking again at Gabriel’s unspoken prompting.

“It’s not about her, but some new group that is going around buying weapons like crazy. They have pretty much dried out the global black market of weapons, illegal materials and personnel. They went even so far as to put bounties on artefacts, crazy high bounties. They are the reason why we attacked the train.”

“Artefacts? Are you mad?” Jesse interjected loudly.

“No, no, just weapons. I’m not that crazy.” She said with a quick smile in his direction. “Since they now control the weapons market I wanted to strike up a partnership with them… You know, join the big leagues. Trouble is I don’t have anything they would want as salvaged war rifles aren’t exactly what they are looking for. I got wind of this transport here when a two-bits omnic arms dealer by the name of Maximilian boasted about his deal with the organisation. Apparently he managed to procure some interesting items and sold them to that group, ingratiating himself to them in the process.”

“Ah,” Jesse interrupted the blonde again, “And you thought you could steal the stuff and sell it to them in his stead in a way to prove to them that the Deadlocks are superior. Right?”

“Yeah,” The blonde nodded, a fearful look flashing over her face, “But I doubt that plan is going to work anymore. They guys we just killed weren’t Maximilian’s henchmen, they belonged to that shadowy group. That damned tincan must be more deeper involved with them than I thought. Damn!” The woman shouted angrily, hitting the center console of her bike with her balled fist. “These guys aren’t exactly the forgiving kinda people.” She turned around in the seat of her bike and faced Jesse, “I think I’ll disappear for a while, maybe visit some mates from down under or something like that. So if you don’t hear from me in a while don’t worry, I’ll be alright.” She shot him an impish grin, which he answered with a laugh of his own. “I guess I deserved as much.” She had used nearly the same words that he had years ago when he had left the gang for the army.

“Yes you did.”