II
Lena Oxton slurped the cup of drinking chocolate, burnt her lip. She chose it because a cold drink would be unacceptable in this weather, and more specifically, tea was a waiting girls drink. The tea that the Orca dispensed, which was typical of most 'brewless' teas, was shit. Real tea tasted better, but you had to wait for that. It was Em who had introduced Lena to tea made the 'old fashioned' way. Before their first date, it had never even occurred to her that the word 'brewless' might not be a man's name. In the face of hard evidence, Lena then had to begrudgingly admit that tea was not always terrible. But it came to a choice: wait for good tea, or drink something else. Lena was not a waiting girl. Even so, she hadn't waited long enough. Jerking the thing away from her mouth, a dot of brown fell from it, through the display of the holo-tablet on her lap, and stained her yellow tights.
Sighing, she gently set down the cup, blue, printed with crème-colored horses, and Recalled. She changed, becoming as she was, where she was, three seconds before. In this case, exactly as she would be, sans lip burn. The stain, frustratingly, remained. She stood, brushing it. She walked a few feet away from the blue and white foam crash chair, which was supposed to be only for high-G maneuvers, but was so much more comfortable than the actual sitting chairs.
With a bit of practice, she could cause the temporal reaction required to revert her quantum state without touching the Chronal Accelerator, but it still wasn't easy. She smacked the device in its dead center, and she returned to sitting in the crash couch. The drop, free of the fabric that had just disappeared, fell onto the floor. She retrieved a towel from one of the cabinets on the wall, and wiped it up.
One minute down. God knew how many more to go.
The leather-shelled gel of the couch felt more like floating in midair. She got her holotablet from the armrest, looked at the drinking chocolate once more, and decided to wait a bit longer. She pressed play, and the video resumed. The two elaborately dressed ballet dancers whirled about the stage, speaking with their bodies as Wagner's music, so iconic that many don't realize they already know it, played along with them. So graceful was the performance that the music seemed to follow the dancers, and not the other way around.
Know your enemy, Jesse McCree had said, and Lena took that to heart. Lena had read the dossiers on Reaper, on Sombra, and on Amelie LaCroix, aka the Widowmaker. She lingered on the last one for longer. Perhaps because she'd met and known Gabriel Reyes, who would become Reaper, in life, and there was nothing about Sombra. She'd gotten sidetracked. Amelie LaCroix had been a ballet dancer, but the production Lena watched was not one that LaCroix had been involved in. LaCroix's Swan Lake had ended in disaster, with the lead and understudy crippled for life. She'd already seen most of LaCroix's work that could be found on the internet, and had found herself unexpectedly appreciating the art form.
"Athena," Lena said, rubbing her eyes. "Status report?"
"Nothing has changed since two hours ago, Agent Oxton," Athena said, her voice a whisper in the corners of the ship.
"Only two hours?" she said. She got up again. Her legs were stiff again from the reversion, she took a moment to stretch out, then ascended to the cockpit, watching the blind white of snow whirl and tear. Somewhere out there was the subterranean Icebox facility. She saw it before the storm acted up, now it was like it didn't even exist. The Orca and everything in it was alone on an artist's forgotten page, or floating in some timeless void where only it remained.
"Plan execution in six hours," said Athena.
Lena rubbed her forehead. "And why do we have to wait here all this time?" This must have been the seventh or tenth time she'd asked.
Athena explained that the exterior defenses of the Icebox were usually disabled. If anyone ever got out, the north pole might well kill them anyway. So they only activated them if their patrol drones detected a threat. According to Winston's notes, there was a thermal, sonar, and radar drone. Lena saw them, hovering busily, watching the ground for escapees. They three black, hovering spheres were identifiable by the distinct arrays atop them. Once the exterior defenses were activated, such as they would be in a lockdown situation, an approach run would be impossible. But an escape run, with the right pilot, could be done.
"Is there at least a way I can let Jess and Jack know I'm alright?" Lena said. She touched the tingling coin that appeared below her ribs at the thought of being shot. She'd recalled further than she ever had for that. Almost a whole hour. Afterward, she'd been afflicted with a monstrous headache for almost the entire next day.
"No," said Athena. You would risk losing your cover. If we're discovered, the prison would go into high alert, lockdown. Morrison and McCree would be trapped for quite some time."
"So there's nothing I can do?"
Athena said nothing. Lena pictured her shrugging.
The snow let up for a second, and in the distance Lena could see the subtle dark ring in the ground. It was the sign that told of the extensive facility beneath. Man-made tunnels and caves coursed through the frozen sea cliff and far down into the earth.
There was another dark shape far away. So small, so distant, Lena was surprised to see it at all. She could have sworn it moved.
"Athena," she said, "can you make a radar sweep of that cliff? That one on the far side of the complex?"
"I can't make any radar sweep without deactivating the stealth drive."
Lena blew a strand of hair from her face, squinting at the spot that she'd seen the shape in, now faded back into the storm. Lena grabbed her jacket and boots.
"Watch the ship, Athena. I'll be back soon."
It was nothing. She knew. But even if it was, it wouldn't take her eight hours to find that out. There was time to kill in spades. And if it did turn out to be something, then she was potentially saving the mission. It might be another drone. A small one that traveled along the ground, but one that might throw off the plan. She punched open one of the smaller doors, and the arctic wind blasted her face before she slipped her balaclava on and ventured out.
She used her powers to stay hidden. Making sure to avoid the drones patrolling the cliff side. It was a simple enough matter. The closest she'd gotten to detection was when the sonar drone had suddenly changed course, right towards her, while she was smack in the middle of an open field. She blinked fast and far, to the nearest rock large enough to hide under, but neither was enough. She dropped into the snow, motionless and silent, face up to watch the drone as it passed. The cold leeched through Lena's gear, but she forbade herself to shiver. It blindly passed her over, not detecting motion.
As soon as the drone was out of range, she reverted to her state from one minute ago, standing, and mostly unaffected by the cold air. She continued towards where she'd seen the brief dark shape, without incident to encounter the other drones, but making more sure as she went not to be seen by the thing, assuming, again, it was anything at all.
Oxton could no longer see the Orca. The storm was worse than ever. She'd become part of the blank page. Even so, she wasn't overly concerned about finding her way back. If there was one thing Lena knew how to do, it was retrace her steps. The ground sloped heavily upwards as Lena found herself face to face with the cliff, atop which the unknown blur was seen. Her confidence in her position suddenly lapsed, but she made her way to the top. There was a cave there, a deep one, from the look of it. The darkness, the shelter, looked almost inviting next to the harsh razor winds Lena stood in.
As she stepped inside, one pulse pistol in hand, she saw something faint and distant. A white glow from very deep in the cave. Lena swallowed. A cave this close to the prison was a huge design oversight. The architects' banking on the snow as a natural anti-escape measure would fall apart if an inmate had discovered this place. She went further and further in, each step as slow and silent as the last. Soon, Lena had found what she'd been looking for this whole time.
She was sitting with her back against the frozen wall, head tilted back, eyes closed. Her hand rested on the wine-colored rifle that was her signature. Lena gripped her pistol tighter. The Widowmaker seemed asleep, more than that. The unaware observer may have taken her purpled corpse visage, and her nigh invisible breathing, to mean that she was dead. But Lena was not unaware. It would be a simple matter to blink forward, unload the clip into the assassin's head, end the career of the murderer of Mondatta and countless others. Something stayed Lena's hand for a fraction of a second. And it was enough. For the Widowmaker's golden eyes then snapped open, a malefic stare ready and piercing. Her rifle was in her hand before she was on her feet. But she didn't fire.
Lena leveled her own gun at the Widowmaker, a terrified imitation, rather than an action of its own.
"Firing that," said the Widowmaker, coolly, "would be the biggest mistake you could ever make. Think for a second."
Sonar drone. It would detect a gunshot with nary a trouble at all, especially with this megaphonic tunnel to bouncing the sound.
For some reason she couldn't place, Lena almost took a step forward. Almost. Before remembering London and the plane. A tiny scrap of metal, shaped like a spider, lurked overhead. No blinking light announced its presence, it merely stayed snug within a crack of ice and stone, grey and quiet like a watching predator.
The Widowmaker smirked, following Lena's gaze to the mechanical pet. "So you have learned." She stood easily, and made her way to the other side of the cave.
"Where are you going?" Lena said. "Don't move."
"Or what?" the Widowmaker said, not gracing her with so much as a glance.
"What are you doing?"
Widowmaker sighed, reached behind a small black box that read, 'ration' and took out a smooth handgun, the same color as her namesake rifle. "As soon as I find my silencer, I'm going to kill you," she said.
"Like I'm going to let that happen," Lena said. "Especially after you told me."
"I'm not going to let you go, either, fly. That would be the worst mistake I could make." She started to screw the cylinder to the tip of the gun. "You can't touch me, you can't fight back. So if you run, I'll chase you. And I'll find you." She fastened the silencer with a final, firm twist. "I have a few hours to kill, anyway."
She fired without warning. The crack of frost and the twang of a ricocheting slug off stone were louder than the frighteningly silent report of the Widowmaker's weapon. Tracer's head blinked away moments before the whispering hunk of lead pierced her brain.
"Run."