"It has been one month since Antonio's murder and Talon slipping through our fingers yet again, and we still have no leads." Jack let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair. "All we have is a destroyed facility and this picture of the supposed killer."

Ana crossed her arms as they looked at the picture for what seemed like the hundredth time; by now it had been burned into her memory. "Talon has remained relatively quiet since then; it is possible that whatever they were planning was disturbed by the murder."

Jack let out a grunt of agreement. "But how did they know we were coming? I still can't wrap my brain around any plausible explanation, except for one…"

"You think someone in our organization is helping them," Ana finished; she had heard this theory before.

"Why not? We lost both Reyes and O'Deorain to Talon." It was a possibility Jack didn't want to admit. "Two of our best agents…"

Ana's expression softened at that; she knew it killed Jack, the knowledge that they had lost their agents to a terrorist organization. She suspected the commander blamed himself, no matter what anyone else might try to say. "Their decisions are their own, through no fault of yours Jack."

Jack let out a breath as he leaned back in his chair. "How much do you trust Amélie?"

"You think she is the connection?"

"Ana, don't pretend as if you haven't noticed her changed behavior since her rescue."

"She was kidnapped and tortured—"

"And it was traumatizing, I know, but we don't know what happened in that facility and Amélie can't fully remember." Jack got to his feet before he said, "I'll have Winston check her phone and other communication devices."

Ana frowned; she knew why Jack was doing this, but that didn't mean it would go over well. "Do you really want to do this? You know there will be no going back; Amélie will never trust us again, not fully—"

"I have to. We have to eliminate her as the possible leak." Jack paused upon seeing the look on Ana's face. "I know you trust her, but we have to be sure."

"Well, I think that about wraps it up for today," Angela said as she closed her notebook.

"What happens when we run out of things to talk about?" Amélie asked as the two got to their feet. "Will our sessions finally come to an end?"

Angela shrugged. "If you feel as though you no longer need them, though you know I will always be available if you have the urge to talk."

Amélie nodded; the past month had seemed to go a bit easier than the others, and Amélie was even beginning to let herself believe that her life was starting to slip back into a sense of normalcy. Being able to participate in missions again had helped, even with her slight hiccup with Vasha (she'd heard quite an earful from Ana after that). Still, Amélie knew she'd done the right thing; a few days after releasing Vasha, the sniper had received a postcard from Numbani. No return address, no name, nothing but a scrawled message of "Thank you".

There was a knock at the door, and Angela's brow furrowed slightly before she went to open it. "Jack—"

"Is Amélie still here?"

The sniper approached, not entirely sure why Jack was asking for her; usually Ana came to fetch her for missions. "Commander?"

Jack turned his attention to the French woman before he said, "Your phone; I need it."

This was an unusual request. "My phone? Why?"

"Just a routine check."

Amélie's gaze narrowed. "You're lying to me."

Jack paused a moment before he said, "We need to check for Talon interference."

"Talon interference—you think I'm working for them?" Now it made sense; she should have known better than to believe that they all truly trusted her.

"Maybe not directly, but the reality of the matter is that you have been inside their facility—"

"Against my will! I was kidnapped and tortured—"

"And you don't remember everything that happened. Talon has remained one step ahead of us, and right now, we need to investigate every possibility. Now, your phone."

Amélie shook her head as she pulled her phone from her pocket. "You honestly believe I would help those people after what they did to me, after they murdered my husband—"

"So you say."

Amélie stopped dead at that. "So I say?" she repeated slowly. Being accused of working with Talon was bad enough, but what Jack was implying now… that was more than she could handle. She began sputtering angrily in a mixture of French, English, and some other language only known to her, unable to find words in any language to convey just how enraged she was.

"Amélie, don't—" Angela started, seeing how close the sniper was to losing it.

"You think I killed my husband!" Amélie finally managed, fixing her gaze on the commander.

"Nobody is saying that—"

"You don't have to; I can see it in the way you look at me, just like the way every other person here looks at me!" Amélie all but threw her phone at Jack, too angry to feel guilty about it. "Next I suppose you'll want my tablet, or you'll start checking my mail—"

"We already have everything we need."

Amélie's eyes widened. "You went through my things?" Before the commander could respond, Amélie pushed past him and began running down the hallway.

"Jack, this isn't necessary," Angela said with a frown, turning the commander's attention back to her. "I have spent months working with Amélie, trying to help her readjust to life and feel comfortable, and your treating her like a criminal will only undo all our progress."

"I have already explained myself," Jack said, looking down at the phone in his hand.

"You can't honestly believe that Amélie—"

"I didn't honestly believe that Gabriel could betray us, and yet he shot me in the back. And you couldn't honestly believe that your wife would betray us, and she stole your technology before joining Talon." Jack looked up at the doctor, and she could see the pain behind his hardened gaze. "So I guess in the end we don't really know what anyone is capable of, do we?"

Tracer let out a yell as she blinked down to the floor, running towards her target and tackling it. She attacked a few times with her blades, jumping back upon hearing gunshots. She blinked to the opposite wall, clinging for a few moments before she blinked again, slamming into the training bot and using her blades to cut the head clean off. The assassin jumped back, slicing through the other training bot approaching her. She scanned the room for any other enemies; when she didn't see any, she turned and ran to the designated "transport" area, hitting the red button once she arrived.

"Good work," came Moira's voice over the speaker. "Ninety seconds that time."

Tracer removed her helmet as the door to the training room opened, and Moira entered. The brunette remained still as Moira approached and removed the blades from her armor. The redhead had just turned back around when Tracer let out a noise that was a mix between a yawp and a growl.

"Oh, I suppose," Moira said, reaching into her lab coat pocket and pulling out a small wrapped candy. She handed it over to the brunette before she continued out of the room, Tracer following behind as she unwrapped her candy.

"So when you give her candy, it's 'positive reinforcement', but when I do it, it's 'wrong' and 'a finger losing offense'," Sombra said as the two emerged from the training room.

"The difference is that when I do it, I actually have a reason and know what I'm doing," Moira replied as Tracer ate her candy.

Sombra rolled her eyes. "I thought the whole pain suit thing was supposed to be the positive reinforcement."

Moira gave the hacker a look; honestly, the children she was forced to work with. "I used pain to break Tracer, and the suit keeps her in line, keeps her from ripping us apart. She knows the consequences of disobedience."

"So the candy is just you being nice?"

The redhead scowled. "It reinforces desired behavior, and she only gets it when she exceeds her previous performance."

"I see." Sombra paused a moment before she added, "So when do I get to try the Irish candies?"

"When you do something that doesn't annoy me, so good luck."

Tracer absently listened to the conversation as she sucked on her candy, savoring it; she always did her best to make it last as long as she could. Over the past month, everything had fallen into a sort of routine, one that Tracer had almost begun to become used to. Most of her time was spent training now, with the only breaks being to eat or sleep. On rare occasions, Moira would read to her or give her one of those wrapped candies, as she had today.

It wasn't an ideal life, she knew that much, but it was the closest thing to normal that she had.

"Why do I have to watch her, I'm not a babysitter."

"You are not part of the inner council," Moira replied as she slung her bag over her shoulder, checking once again to ensure she had all her research. "And it is too much of a risk to bring Tracer, so she needs to remain here."

Sombra crossed her arms, still not looking convinced.

"Don't act like that; you would have been left behind either way. At least now you have something to entertain yourself with."

"You know, I'm curious, what is it exactly that you think I do all day? You think I just idly wait for you to hand down tasks like this?"

"I don't concern myself with your affairs, but you seem to find enough time in the day to annoy me, so I hardly think one overnight trip will interrupt your schedule." Moira looked back at the hacker before she added, "Dinner is at seven; give her exactly what I have listed and nothing else."

"Should I read her a bedtime story too?" Sombra all but spat.

"If she doesn't listen to you, then reading will calm her, yes." Moira approached Tracer, who was sitting on the couch. "I will be leaving for a brief time, and despite how annoying she is, do your best to obey Sombra until I return."

Tracer glanced at the hacker before she looked back at Moira, letting out a noise from the back of her throat.

Moira nodded before she turned back towards Sombra, adding, "And don't even think about touching her blades unless you want to be ripped apart," before she left the room.

Sombra muttered a few choice words in Spanish before she turned to face Tracer, who was looking at her. "Well, I guess it's just you and me."

Tracer obviously didn't reply, instead just staring at the hacker.

"Here are all your personal effects back."

There was a stony silence as Amélie picked up her items, her golden eyes refusing to even meet Jack's.

The commander did his best to keep from shifting uncomfortably; as Ana had said, there was nothing on any of Amélie's devices to link her to Talon. Whoever their leak was, it was not the French woman.

"I know you're angry, but you know why we had to do this," Jack said.

"We, or you?" Amélie finally looked up at him, her expression cold.

It was only three words, but it held multiple implications: he was the paranoid one, he was the one losing control of his team, he was the one who had singled Amélie out despite protests by his peers.

"Amélie—"

"This team will never trust me again; I will always be looked at as an outsider." Amélie shook her head, and a small thought that she had tried so hard to bury for months now emerged again.

Perhaps my time at Overwatch needs to come to an end.

"They think they can keep me out, but the joke is on them. Getting into places I shouldn't is my specialty." Sombra let out a laugh as she continued typing on her screens.

From where she was watching the hacker, Tracer let out a curious yawping noise.

"Now, let's see what we have," Sombra said after another minute or so.

"… and I am to understand that Antonio was murdered, by your own experiment Doctor."

"I repeatedly warned Antonio of the danger, and he chose to ignore me. If nothing else, his death proves that my experiment has been a success so far."

That was Moira's voice, but Tracer didn't see the redhead anywhere. She let out a low noise, approaching the hacker and reaching out to touch her screens.

"Don't touch," Sombra said, giving her hand a light smack.

Tracer let out a low growl.

"It's just an audio feed from the meeting," the hacker continued. "As long as our Doctor doesn't discover my little bug, we'll be able to hear everything that's going on."

"A success that caused the loss of one of our largest financial supporters; if I recall, your little project was financed by Antonio in the first place."

"And if I recall, I was given the task of developing an assassin for Talon, which I have done."

"So it is ready then?"

"Not completely—"

"Then you have not succeeded."

"Wow, they are really giving her the business," Sombra said, glancing at Tracer.

"If I may speak to the Doctor's project," a new voice said, and something in Tracer's mind told her that she had heard it before. "The assassin is certainly deadly; even several of Antonio's armed men couldn't stop it. All it seems to lack is discipline and control."

"So you have seen this assassin yourself then, Maximilien?"

"I have; Antonio invited me to his estate and proposed an investment in the project."

"He wanted to profit off my research?" Moira didn't sound happy in the slightest.

"That appeared to be his intention. If I may be so bold, his death may actually have come at an opportune time; who knows what he had planned for your assassin. If he was willing to go behind your back, it is very likely he had planned to do it to more of us."

"In any case, we need a new source of income; Overwatch will be all over Antonio's estate and his assets will be frozen," a new voice said.

"And I take it you have an idea?" That was Reaper, and he didn't sound convinced by whoever this new speaker was.

"I do, actually. For some time now, I have been… attempting to convince one Katya Volskaya to contribute finances to our organization."

Moira let out an amused noise. "I can only imagine how resistant she has been to such."

"Very much so; that is where your assassin comes in."

A pause, and then, "You do realize that she is an 'assassin', correct? Katya cannot pay us if she is dead."

"Then send someone to keep it from actually killing her."

Moira was silent at that, and Sombra could just picture the annoyed look on her face as she pressed her lips together.

"If Katya has been resistant so far, I highly doubt further intimidation will be successful," Moira said.

"I have another target in mind," another new voice said. "The Vishkar is already involved in some questionable deals; I'm sure they would be… agreeable if one of our associates had a chat with them. Of course, having an assassin as backup doesn't hurt either."

"No, Katya is the better option; we have already been putting pressure on her—"

"And it has amounted to nothing. We can keep her in mind for a later date, but we are in a difficult situation right now. We need a more immediate option. So, tell us O'Deorain: is the assassin ready for a mission or not?"

"I need more time—"

"You have one week; we cannot remain idle."

One week to prepare. While it was true that Tracer's training had been going well, Moira couldn't honestly say that she was one hundred percent confident that Tracer was ready to go out into the field again, even with supervision.

The redhead glanced over at Tracer, who was curled up on the couch. Even while asleep, Tracer seemed to be troubled and in pain, and every now and again she would twitch and jerk.

"Will she be ready in one week?"

Moira let out a sigh. "I honestly can't say for sure."

Reaper let out a sort of "hmm"ing noise and crossed his arms. "What happens if she can't—"

"What do you think?" Moira almost growled, finally looking at him. "Talon won't expend any resources to get her back if she is arrested or captured; she can't speak, so she can't give away any information."

Reaper paused for a moment before he said, "You actually care—"

"Tracer was expensive, and represents almost a year of work, so you'll forgive me if I am less than eager to throw it all down the drain." Moira let out a sigh and rubbed her eyes. "She has made progress, but bringing her out into the field is a risky move."

"It's a risk we'll have to take; the Council has made their decision."

"I am well aware of such."

Reaper let out a sigh. "Though this does push our plans back; we had another target in mind for Tracer's first mission."

"Yes, well, that will have to wait." Moira paused for a moment. "What is left now is for us to plan the mission, and I must alter Tracer's training to prepare her. She is used to killing, but this time, we only need her for intimidation."

They were talking about her. Tracer knew they thought she was asleep, though the truth was that she never really slept. Not fully anyway; there were times where she drifted into a sort of semi-conscious state, but full, dream-inducing sleep never happened.

She could understand why Moira was hesitant; the last time she'd been out in the field, she had supposedly murdered Antonio and several of his men (an incident she still couldn't remember). Tracer wanted to believe that she was better now, that all her training had helped her self-control. She didn't want a repeat of Antonio's estate; she didn't want to be that mindless killer again.

But you're still a killer.

That's what they made me into, but they tell me whom to kill. I can control my actions now.

You're a weapon; they control you.