Notes -Sombra is such a great and complex character to write about and I have many songs on my playlist that make me think about her background and relations to others. The song referenced here, Autocorrect by Kongos directly inspired this chapter and I consider it as the most accurate song representing Sombra.
I hope you will enjoy reading these stories just as much as I enjoyed writing them. I would be absolutely happy to hear your thoughts on any aspect of Sombra that might be interesting to explore in further chapters!
"I wanna get fucked up
And then hit undo
Get my head hooked up
To download some kung fu
I wanna be free
Of all responsibility"
(Kongos - Autocorrect)
Her first time was unforgettable.
It was like being born again, into this new body, new conscience, new soul, leaving behind every cumbersome thing she had and was when she was young.
It was mind-blowing, the first time she really felt something truly and deeply.
And it was never quite the same afterwards, not matter how many times she did it.
Much like with heroin, it would never be the same again.
Many people even called this a drug just the same. It coined itself the name Deep Webstasy, or DW.
Sombra - before she was an upgrade - saw this name on graffities and also the unconscious, twitching gang members of the Los Muertos hooked up to the Webstasy in shady corners. It never striked her as much, just like real drugs, alcohol or falling in love. Why have your senses dulled when everything is much more fun using them...?
But all that fun had to stop once.
She still remembered during sleepless nights how They found her and the sheer terror she felt when They wrote on her screens -
'We know who you are and where you are. We will find you.'
She had to get away, out of their reach, that was the only thing that mattered at that time. So she agreed to the surgery one of the head Muertos tempted her with a few months back. There was nothing more to lose.
The surgeon-engineer doing it told her it will be the worst pain she will probably ever feel. She also asked her if she wanted sedation, but she said no. And, just like she was told, that first one did feel like they were ripping out her spine. She tried not to cry - hell, she didn't cry since they shot her mother right before her eyes. But the pain was so unbearable that she couldn't hold it back anymore.
They drugged her then, for the last time, with classical drugs. She drifted into sleep still sobbing, hands and eyelids twitching from the nerves being manipulated in her back.
She did not really remember the rest of the operations, though there were many. She got into debt with the Muertos to be able to pay the surgeon, and they let her stay in a run-down little shack because the gang really believed that when she would become an upgrade, she would be working for them...
But she had other plans.
As the inlets were micro-welded to completion along her spine, she lay on the operating table, like a piece of wood, her back already numb from all the treatments and her mind slipping in and out of not only consciousness, but being human.
Even when she was not being operated on she was barely awake - there was no reason to, anyway, as she did not want to touch a computer again before she was complete and wiped out of the system. And besides, her nerves needed to rewire themselves so much, she needed all the sleep she could get.
The day the doc said she was ready she thought the the hard part was finally over, but it had only just begun.
With a light wrist movement she opened up a holoscreen and traced with her fingers a signature on it - Sombra. When it was complete, she stared at it blankly for what felt like an eternity.
She has been hauling up in that motel in Mexico City for days at that point. It was all done. She destroyed all her tech, left a suicide note to the foster parents, beat up and hacked the Muertos who came after her until they were either dead or close to it.
And all she felt was... emptiness, up to the point that for days she was just lying in bed.
'Fuck this' she squinted angrily at her faint reflection in the holoscreen 'You should just get up and do it.'
But her limbs felt heavy, her mind clouded.
What if they still find her? What if augmented tech fails and she dies right here? Why did she had to go so deep into this stupid rabbit-hole...?
These thoughts whirled around in her head over and over and over again, shoving her deeper and deeper into depression.
'No, no, no' she murmured to herself, and reached out to an encrypted laptop she got from a shady dealer a few days ago 'No, I am not stopping, not stopping now.'
Through The Onion Router, deep into the rabbit hole... but she couldn't do it. Her thoughts merged and split, liquidated and evaporated again and again, and her fingers kept hovering above the keys, not being able to type anything.
She wheezed and shoved the laptop aside in a panic.
The doc did say it might be bad afterwards, since they redid half of her neurosystem afterall. And she gave her some... stuff to make it more tolerable. Some DW sessions.
'No, no, never...' Sombra wheezed to herself out loud. Not DW, no. It might be bad right now with the depression, but she won't be like those helpless, unconscious guys blowing the last of their money on a few seconds worth of Deep Webstasy.
She was sweating, shaking and cursing for some time, but eventually, as if controlled by some twisted puppetmaster, she reached out into the laptopbag and pulled out the thumbnail and cables to hook herself up.
She stripped down and shoved the thin cable in the middle of her back while cursing in Spanish, where it connected with a strange click. Then she plugged herself onto the laptop, and with a violent movement, inserted the thumbnail into a USB.
The screen went black and some lines flashed up as the firmware recognized her settings. Then, a white skull flashed up on the screen, and that was the last thing she remembered.
She awoke slowly, feeling a slight wind caress her face and and a steady murmur in the background. Slowly, she opened her eyes and blinked a few times; there was only a wide strip of concrete in sight, with the incredibly blue sky above and around it.
She wondered how much time had passed or how she actually got here.
The distant murmur paired with the slight wind and warm sunshine on her skin made her smile with delight. She hadn't felt so relaxed in ages... When was the last time again...?
Sombra sat up lazily, looking around on which seemed like the top of a high-rise building.
How the hell did she end up here...? Her memories were fuzzy, as if she had amnesia - maybe she did.
Getting up, she stepped to the edge of the building. The people below were so small, so insignificant... like ants, living their life simply, without actually seeing or thinking... until someone like herself came along.
They were living their boring lives in their boring illusions and lies, and she... she was their queen, showing them the true colors of the world.
Yes, a queen or more like a goddess... she liked the sound of that.
With a smile, she stepped up to the very ledge of the insanely tall building, the masses at her very feet. She knew she will always be superior to them.
So she jumped.
It was the most liberating feeling in the world, free-falling right above the unsuspecting crowd, and she couldn't help but scream with delight as the pavement came closer and closer...
Just a few inches above the ground, she abruptly stopped. For a moment she was just staring blankly, her heart skipping a few beats, then she let out a bewildered laugh.
It was like her whole body lit up at that moment, as if everything she was has joined in a wonderful, harmonious union, and she felt better than ever before.
With just a thought, she pulled herself up, levitating with insane speed up to the top of the building again, looking down on her dominion.
Then she jumped again, and again and again...
She awoke suddenly, twitching and trembling and feeling saliva drip down her mouth and the darkness washing over her outside - and inside.
From then on, she wanted to spend her every moment in the DW - where she was invincible.
She dove into deep oceans, fought a hundred armed omnics, went insane on the most flamboyant parties, flew around the world like one of those old-fashioned superheroes. It was all like listening too loud to an awesome soundtrack, except the music was adrenaline and it was beating in her brain so hard it was almost unbearable, in a fantastic way.
But she became soon bored of these entry-level DWs. With shaky hands and a barely clear mind, she made her way into the deepest pits of the dark web, and got the redband products.
She could kill or torture anyone she imagined. The thugs who almost raped her some time ago... The director of Lumerico... The soldier who killer her mother... When she was gutting them and hearing their painful death cries, she couldn't believe this was only virtual.
No, this was the actual reality, it all felt so real that it was both wonderfully frightening and painfully delighting.
But the deeper she went, the harder time spend being awake was. She got reckless - instead of nipping away smaller sums from several bank accounts, she took everything she got her hands on. She needed better cables, better hardware both for her laptop and herself to feel the joy of the first DW, but it never came.
After a seemingly endless time of frustrated trying, she turned to the only thing she had not tried - porn.
There was something about actually getting aroused and having only your spinal and brain nerves manipulated to come. Besides, she still remembered the only experience she had before, when both she and her then sweetheart were clumsy teens, not knowing what they were doing, and it was messy, sweaty and quite underwhelming.
But time passed and the DWs got less and less thrilling, so she slowly started becoming desperate. One day curiosity overtook her and she launched the first XXX session she got her hands on.
It must have been designed by some weird Asian-loving freak, because she found herself in an old Far-East palace in flashy kimono-like clothes.
Just after she registered her surroundings, a beautiful black-haired woman stepped to her and kissed her gently. She wanted to push her away but the kiss was so intense that she completely melted into it.
In a second she felt another pair of more muscular hands caress and fondle her and she threw back her head and gasped like a diver coming up for air the first time.
It was almost too intense, rivaling that very first experience she had, and her vision started to be fuzzy and distorted. She turned to the man's broad chest and hugged his neck for support.
She couldn't see his face, but it did not matter. Faces did not matter anymore. People did not matter anymore. Only feeling this ecstasy along her spine and her brain.
And this one would know where and how to touch her to moan again and again. And when he laid down and pulled her on top of him, it was so good she screamed out loud and her circuits almost shorted.
After that first session, she did not even want to admit it to herself how many times she did it again. Probably too many times.
It was hard to determine if all those seemingly endless sessions took place all in one day or during the course of months.
There, everything was perfect. You did not have to think or worry about a thing. The program knew exactly what you wanted, how and when you wanted it.
And still, we humans are imperfect beings, always thriving for more. She was no different, because there came a time, when it became empty.
Then, she did not even understand why she was doing it anymore. The pleasure was dulled, no matter if she was being pleased by some programs or destroying anything within sight.
Sombra also clearly remembered the last time she did it.
She hated being in the real world, where she was looking pale, skinny and sickish. Turning away from the motel bathroom, she shakily sat down on the bed, and hooked herself up to the Asian palace, where she knew they would make her feel beautiful and want to live again.
But when the broad-chested guy, with whom they shared so many nice moments, came up to her and embraced her tightly, for the first time she pushed him back a bit and looked up into his shadow-covered face, gently touching his cheek.
'What am I doing here?' she asked from the program, which did not respond. 'Look at me' she said again in a weak voice, and the man looked down, revealing nothing where his face should be.
Sombra looked at him wearily for a long-long time, and saw herself in that faceless figure.
She wanted to become a nobody, and that was exactly what she has achieved - she was erased from the system, and upgraded to being half machine.
But she went even further than that - she deliberately hollowed herself out in this urge to escape everything she was - any maybe everything she had become.
And if you yourself are empty, you cannot be filled up with cheap tricks and thrills...
But this life was not what she wanted. Not what she was destined to do.
'I need to go now' she said softly, patting the faceless program on the shoulder and forced a weak smile 'Don't you go cheating on me now.'
After that she awoke as if from a hundred years of sleeping.
She felt a bit dizzy and weak, but her mind was clearer than ever before in her life.
She lifted up a shaky hand to call forth a purple holoscreen, and flexing her augmented fingers, she started typing on it, first slowly, then more and more quickly.
'I'm back, amigos' she whispered to herself smiling as she hit enter on the process, ordering herself a few days' worth of snacks and burritos.
There was a lot of catching up to do.