The ORCA BW-001 was spacious compared to almost all other Overwatch aircraft, but with five people and a pilot on board for a twenty-four hour flight, two of whom were the estranged Shimada brothers, it was already feeling cramped.
In the end, Reyes had brought Ana along to form a second team with him. Apart from the fact that she was the only one who could hold a conversation with Hanzo, she could also help prevent the brothers from fighting, and when it came to the mission itself, she was one of the few people Reyes actually didn't mind spending company with.
Genji had found a large cupboard with a slat door that rolled down from above, tossed all its original contents onto the floor, and summarily taken the space over as his own personal living quarters. There were bunks enough for everyone, but Reyes wasn't going to force anyone to sleep in a sensible place. Besides, the longer Genji was out of sight, the more civil his brother became.
The bunks were delved like honeycombs into the walls of the ship living quarters. A small curtain could be drawn across for privacy, but otherwise the cell consisted of a bed, a strip reading light on its cabin ceiling, a coat hook, and a small shelf for personal belongings. Hanzo looked immediately at home in the spartan arrangement. He laid a fine patterned blanket on his bed and smoothed away the creases. He set a single sake jar on his shelf, and hung his bow horizontal on the coat hook. He sat crosslegged in his new abode and watched everyone else.
Reyes had already hit his head twice as he pulled off his enormous boots. Several shotguns and at least three belts worth of ammunition were littered on the floor near his bunk. Jesse had chosen a high bunk first, and now looked like he was regretting it as he poked his nose over the edge and realised the commander was in the bunk below. His bed was a pile of multi-coloured blankets he looked like he was trying to covertly hide from the commander. Ana took the cell next to Hanzo and laid it full of photographs, a tiny holoprojector, and small trinkets from her homeland. She caught Hanzo looking and gave him a smile.
"My daughter." She handed him a photograph of a young smiling girl with bright eager eyes and braids in her hair.
"She has a kind smile."
"She did." Ana took the photo back and set it on her shelf, "She's six foot something now and spends all her time glaring at her poor mother."
Hanzo nodded. His mind was on a similar smiling child who had always been so full of energy, so admiring, so eager to play games with him, so different from the part-man part-machine hiding in the storage cupboard opposite him.
"They do not stay the same forever."
"No, they don't."
Jesse dangled his head upside down into Reyes' cell.
"Boss," He whispered, "Did we bring any Jack Daniels?"
"Jesse, this is your one warning. You stick your head down from that bunk again and you're losing it."
Jesse hastily pulled his head back up. A moment later his muffled voice chirped up again,
"You didn't answer the question."
"No one's drinking on the job."
"That Hanzo Shimada is," Jesse put his face dangerously close to the edge of his bunk, "He's got a little bottle of his own 'n' all."
"So go ask him to share." Reyes propped up a pillow, and sat back with a paper map of Akita. He rolled his shoulders and cricked his neck. He hated these ORCA bunks. They were far too small to accommodate his bulk.
"Maybe I'll do just that!" Jesse exclaimed. And then promptly didn't. After a few moments, he said, "I for sure know you got a stash o' whiskey here somewhere, Boss, so don't think I ain't going to find it." He grumbled and mumbled to himself. Reyes could hear him muttering about how his hat wouldn't fit on the coat hook.
They took a meal together three hours into the flight. Jesse helped Ana pull up a table from where it was stored in the aircraft floor then laid it with four ready meals from the in-flight refrigerator.
"Four?" Hanzo asked. McCree and Reyes ignored him, but Ana took pity.
"Genji doesn't eat as we do."
Reyes looked at McCree then jerked his head towards the cupboard. Jesse mouthed why me? at him, and then edged up to Genji's cupboard. He gave it a sharp rap.
"Uh. We're having a bite to eat, want to sit with us?"
There was no reply.
Jesse remembered the unconscious body he'd dragged from a not-so-different cupboard very recently.
"Can you at least answer so I don't go athinkin' you're dead in there again?"
"I don't want to sit and watch you eat, Jesse." Genji said coldly.
McCree shrugged at Reyes and came back to join them at the table.
They sat eating in silence, using plastic forks to attack a lukewarm paella. There was total quiet as they chewed.
"God, this is bad." Reyes said at last. There was a relax of shoulders as it looked like everyone else was thinking the same thing.
"When we arrive can we get a takeout? Or can you cook for us, Boss? He's a mean cook." Jesse noted to Hanzo.
"I'm a mean cook when I've got the ingredients and spices I want to hand. I have a feeling I ain't going to be making cajun chicken in-" He leaned back on his chair and grabbed the map he'd been looking at, "What state is this? County? Region? Whatever you called them," He asked Hanzo.
"The Akita Prefecture." Hanzo replied, picking distastefully at his meal.
"Anything we should know about it?" Reyes tossed the map aside and shovelled food into his mouth, ignoring the taste and swallowing whole. He'd eaten much worse in his SEP days.
Hanzo shrugged,
"Nothing that immediately comes to mind. Every prefecture has its own culture, its own traditions, its own foods, sake, sweets."
"Sake. That what you got in your lil bottle over there?" McCree put in.
Hanzo gave him a withering look then continued moving rice around in his plastic tray.
"Perhaps I can buy a little Akita tea, see what all the fuss is about," Ana said.
Hanzo gave a slight smile,
"I would be happy to assist in the choice and the preparation, if you desired."
Ana nodded thoughtfully,
"Maybe I could get some for Fareeha too… Although, I'm not sure if she still drinks tea."
"She drinks black coffee." Reyes said after he finished an enormous mouthful.
Ana gave him a disapproving look,
"You were a bad influence on her."
"Hey, I drink black coffee," Jesse protested.
"He's a bad influence on you too," Ana said.
Reyes gave a huff of a chuckle.
Genji opened the shutter of his cupboard a fraction and looked at everyone eating. Something was tight and aching in his chest as he watched them smiling and eating with his brother. A helplessness and a strong pang of alienation gripped him. He swallowed and shut the shutter, rolling onto his back and staring up into the red-lit darkness.
He lay there for a long time, listening to the slightly muffled conversation. As he did, he felt as though he were lying on a sheet of ice that had cracked, and broken away from the float, and now drifted further and further away into a dark, rough sea.
A line of text flashed across his vision.
- You have been invited to private chatroom ClydebankIWW [20:01]
It was followed by another:
- Currently one (1) other user(s) in chatroom: Users: Goddess-Theia (Admin)
- Enter chatroom? (Y/N)
Genji hesitated. He wasn't in a hurry to earn the commander's ire again, but just then, he needed something, a lifeline, someone who would understand.
- Welcome cyborgninja2040 (guest)
/Goddess-Theia [20:02]: Sorry for the intrusion. I hope this isn't a bad time.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:02]: no its good. Im glad 2 hear from u. was worried something might have happened 2 u.
/Goddess-Theia [20:03]: I'm guessing things didn't go so well with your boss.
Genji hesitated. This was exactly the sort of thing the commander had told him to be more careful about. But the commander was eating paella with Hanzo, which suddenly made Genji feel like everything was fair game.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:04]: no. he didnt see things my way. Said he would try and be fair though, for what its worth.
/Goddess-Theia [20:04]: It's worth very little, I'm afraid. My comrades and I have got wind that the government has been tipped off that there's a Titan working in the Glasgow shipyards. I told my comrades to leave, but it's proving difficult for them to abandon me.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:04]: oh fuck
/cyborgninja2040 [20:05]: I'm rly sorry Theia
/cyborgninja2040 [20:05]: what r u going 2 do? can u run?
/Goddess-Theia [20:06]: I'm not physically mobile. We couldn't get the upgrades in time. But yes, I can run.
/Goddess-Theia [20:06]: Actually, that's why I'm talking to you. I need your help.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:06]: me?
/Goddess-Theia [20:06]: Yes. Everyone else I know will be on the government watch list. And the file transfer will be much more dangerous and detectable to a conventional personal computer.
Genji hesitated again. He could hear his heart beating fast.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:07]: file transfer?
/Goddess-Theia [20:07]: I want to transfer my consciousness over to you.
Genji blinked. He was getting way in over his head.
/Goddess-Theia [20:08]: It's perfectly safe. It'll be under zip, so you can scan anything you want if you're worried about viruses. It'll also be encrypted, and I'll send you the decryption key separately.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:09]: this isn't really my area of expertise. what am I getting into here? what exactly r u asking from me?
/Goddess-Theia [20:09]: I'm asking you to receive a file with data containing the last saved state of my consciousness. You could then keep it on you, unopened, until you find a suitable receptacle to upload it into. It will be as if I have gone into a long sleep, and I will awaken in a new body. I will be able to live, even if I am destroyed at my current location at Clydebank.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:10]: u want me to find u a new body?
/Goddess-Theia [20:10]: It doesn't have to be another Titan Class, just needs to be something with enough processing power and RAM for me to work with.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:11]: um. idk. I dunno. I dnt really know u. this seems super dodgy.
/Goddess-Theia [20:12]: I'm asking you to save my life.
Genji put his organic hand to forehead, reaching for a brow that was hidden under a steel mask. He lay back and stared at the darkened cupboard ceiling.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:14]: y trust me with this? u dnt even know me or who I work 4. u dnt know anything about me and ur trusting me with ur whole life.
/Goddess-Theia [20:15]: I do not have many options at this stage. But also, you are still young, and do not yet know the full extent of the divisive hatred that runs between humans and Omnics. I do not know any other Omnics and I am afraid to trust humans. You are the closest I have to someone who might understand my fear.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:16]: I was a human u know. I was one of them.
/Goddess-Theia [20:16]: Something tells me a lot has happened to you since then.
Genji closed his eyes.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:18]: Alright. I'll do it.
/Goddess-Theia [20:18]: The transfer will take some time.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:18]: that's ok. got time to kill.
/Goddess-Theia [20:19]: Thank you.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:20]: we all need someone to offer us a lifeline now and again
- You have been sent encrypted file 'theia-ghost. zip' (5.6YB) [20:01]
- Start download? (Y/N)
/cyborgninja2040 [20:21]: wait wtf is YB?
/Goddess-Theia [20:21]: Yottabyte. Like I said, this might take some time.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:21]: how long do u mean? And do I have enough space?
/Goddess-Theia [20:22]: Only one way to find out I suppose.
- (Y)
- Estimated download time: (8 days)
- Download at 0.008%
/cyborgninja2040 [20:23]: …
/cyborgninja2040 [20:23]: it says 8 days
/Goddess-Theia [20:24]: Good. That's quite fast. You must have some good hardware.
/cyborgninja2040 [20:24]: 8 days is fast? what if ur dead by then?
/Goddess-Theia [20:26]: I've already uploaded to a temporary remote server. It should remain secure for that duration of the transfer.
/Goddess-Theia [20:26]: One more thing, cyborgninja2040, please promise me, some day, when you have the chance, you'll find me a body so that I can live again?
/cyborgninja2040 [20:27]: ok
/cyborgninja2040 [20:27]: I mean I cant promise itll be fancy or anything, but i'll do my best
/Goddess-Theia [20:27]: Thank-you. Until the next life, then. Goodbye, my friend.
- Goddess-Theia (Admin) has left chatroom ClydebankIWW [20:28]
Genji shifted himself so that he was sitting with his back to the wall. He scratched his head and let out a long breath. In the very top right of his vision was a tiny line of text 20:29| Download at 0.06%. In eight days he would have the consciousness of a Titan Class Omnic stored inside him. He shook his head. A lot of people were going to be furious with him if they found out.
He slipped back down in his cell and opened the rolling door a crack. Hanzo was helping clear the table.
"Please, allow me." He took Ana's tray for her and stacked it with his own.
Fucker, Genji thought. But was again stirred to melancholy when he saw the easy smile Ana gave his brother and the way Hanzo was already navigating his way around the commander and Jesse. It's just one mission. It's just one mission. He closed his eyes tightly. He'd be a better Blackwatch agent than you. Genji's eyes snapped open. He wasn't going to let his old doubts and insecurities follow him to Blackwatch, not when being a part of it was all he had.
"No worries, I got this."
Genji turned his face so that he could watch McCree try to take the trays off Hanzo.
"Please." Hanzo said firmly.
"You're uh… you're a guest, and the boss always makes me do these on missions anyway. Says it's character building haha."
"Then I shall build some character." Hanzo took the trays and left for the small washroom. McCree was left standing awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.
"Not quite how I imagined he'd be." Jesse said to Ana.
Genji watched the exchange with growing trepidation. He felt foolish, and like a child again, desperately trying to measure up to a standard set so high he could only fail. He's just washing dishes. Pull yourself together. But it wasn't just that. It wasn't just any one thing. It was the way Hanzo fitted in, could eat and drink and exchange stories with them without his self-confidence being riddled with doubt. It was the way he held himself and conducted himself – always efficient, never saying more than he needed to. It was the way he was a single whole person, so sure of himself, while Genji was… What? What? And like that his body didn't feel part of him, the things attached to him were enormous metal appendages, suffocating a small broken body still lying in a pool of blood, with wide, wide, disbelieving eyes unashamedly sending tears down to mix with so much blood.
If you'd just listened. You were always told. But you never listened. You brought this upon yourself. You were given fair warning. But I didn't know – I didn't know it would be like this. I would have changed, I could have changed. I could have been more like him. Or tried at least. If I'd just done what I was told… It's my fault. It's my fault. I wanted to blame someone else, but they told me from the start I had to step up. And I just kept running away. And now… I did this to myself.
He shut the little slit window and curled in on himself.
He lay like that, facing the wall, for a long time. He lay until people stopped talking and stopped moving and he could only hear the hum of the aircraft engine reverberating through the walls.
He silently lifted the slat door open. The living quarters were bathed in the soft blue glow of the emergency lighting strips. The table had been put away, and the privacy curtains were drawn across each bunk. All the reading lights were off, and there was a rhythmic sound of breathing that made the room feel alive.
Genji got up. He felt strange, disconnected, like he was teetering on the top of a tall tower of metal. He wasn't sure what to do. He stepped over towards the commander's bunk. Don't wake him. You're always waking him, disturbing him. He's not your father. You're father's dead. But Genji needed someone just then.
Reyes was sleeping lightly, his mind was flicking through broken dreamscapes. Old battles and tactical mistakes rose in his sleep, but it seemed each mistake he made wound up with Jack Morrison shot, and looking at him mortified as he bled out onto the ground. He twisted in his bed.
"Commander?"
He jerked in his sleep but heard that small voice again.
"Commander?"
He snapped awake and reached for a shotgun. Before he found one his hand met the curtain. He tore this back and saw Genji, kneeling on the floor near his bed, his eyes filled with a wild look. Reyes took a second, pulling himself back out of the dream. He gathered himself, then gave his attention to the young man before him.
"Sorry to wake you." There was a strange tone to Genji's voice, and the commander noticed his organic hand was shaking slightly. "I just… I just thought you should know. It's about this mission."
Reyes was careful to keep his face very even.
"I just thought you should know," Genji continued, "I shouldn't lead it. The mission, that is. It's- you see… I don't actually have the expertise, and the others do. So it should be one of them. Actually, it should be H… it should be Hanzo leading the mission." Genji continued in harried whisper, "He's done lots of things like this before. He's very good. And it should be him. That's all I have to say. Goodnight."
"Genji." The commander said gently. Genji looked at him, still with that wild look in his eyes. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Nothing wrong, Commander. Just. I-it's an important mission. And I don't want to mess it up for you. And I'm not even really here. Not really. Just bits." He gave a nervous laugh, "Just bits of me are here. And maybe not even the right bits. So it's risky. Trusting me. And I don't have a good track record… for responsibility. But Hanzo. He does."
"I don't want Hanzo leading my mission," The commander held eye contact, "I want you to lead it. Genji Shimada. The man I can trust because I've seen him in action."
"Not… man, though, Commander, am I. I'm like them. The one's who've been cut up and put for sale on the Blackmarket. That could be me. Couldn't it. So, not really a man."
Reyes stood up. He pulled on a pair of heavy black cargo pants over his pajamas and fished a tank top out of his bag,
"Come with me," He said, tugging the top on.
He opened the door to the cockpit and made sure Genji followed him. Light flooded in through the window and made Genji blink after the darkened living quarters.
"Ray, where are we?" Reyes came up behind the pilot, a young man with a thick beard and a red and white flight jacket.
"Just… flying over Almaty, at the moment, Commander."
"Almaty? Kazakhstan?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's the time down there?"
"Early morning, sir. About six AM, sun's just rising." The pilot pointed to the increasing light coming strident over the plain of clouds beneath them.
"Put us down on the outskirts."
"Sir?"
"We talked about a refuel stop, this'll do. And catch yourself a break."
"Commander," Genji interrupted.
"You," Reyes pointed at him, "Shut up." Reyes leaned over the pilot's shoulder. "Try to put us down gently, don't want to disturb folks in the back too much."
They alighted just as the morning came in strong brilliant colours of auburn and treacle gold, touching the tips of a forest growing thick on a grey hill.
"Follow me." Reyes said to Genji.
Genji followed him.
It was cold outside the aircraft, Genji could feel the hairs on his arm prickle in a chill wind. They'd set down in a clearing surrounded by dense forest. Reyes led them through the dark scrub and conifer boughs until the roofs of a suburban settlement appeared before them. He led them on until their feet met the road. Then he stopped and sat down on the curb.
"Sit." He ordered.
Genji sat.
He glanced around. The buildings were small and smart, with white exteriors and steep roofs all painted different colours. Crusts of old snow lingered on their slopes and dusted the streets. Genji wasn't sure what he was meant to be looking at. Back the way they had come, the wooded hill shielding the ORCA was crowned with an enormous television tower, stretching several hundred metres upward. He wondered if the commander had brought him here to look at a tower. If so, he wasn't impressed, there were plenty of towers in Tokyo that outshone this one.
His attention was brought back to the street when he saw a woman wrapped in a shawl drop a basket. Paper parcels came tumbling out of the basket, and small fat sausages spilled out of the paper parcels. Genji immediately stood to help her. Reyes put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
"But-"
"Sit."
Genji reluctantly sat back down.
There was a clink of metal and a humanoid Omnic loosely clad in thick, material wrought with spiral patters, hurried out of a nearby house. The machine spoke the woman's language and crouched down with her, rescuing the sausages, rolling them neatly back up in their paper, and placing them in the basket. The two exchanged words, then went on their way. Genji watched in silence.
Over the next twenty minutes, Genji saw a dozen or more so Omnics of different shapes and sizes leave houses and pass by their human counterparts undisturbed.
"I know why you brought me here," Genji broke the silence between them.
"Do you?" Reyes asked.
"I have heard of places like this, where Omnics and humans live alongside each other. But it doesn't change the fact that I am neither, Commander. I feel like I am a small broken thing, the remains of a person strapped to the top of a metal tower. The things below me aren't me. I am an arm, half a rib cage, bits of a skull, floundering on a pile of scrap iron that bears no relation to me. It holds me upright, wraps its iron fittings around me, suffocating me. I am back on the floor in the castle, writhing and dying. These things aren't me, Commander. They are computers and metal shaped like a human figure, but just because you graft it onto my body, it doesn't make it me. It hasn't seen the things I've seen. It hasn't walked in the places I've walked. It's never set foot in my country or my city. You call all this thing next to you Genji, but Genji is a little bit of meat. Like those sausages rolling on the floor. Genji is one of those piloting a… a Jaeger."
"Wait you lost me on that last bit."
"A Jaeger. An Evangelion. A big… fuck off mech suit."
"Right, gotcha."
They sat as the street bustle grew thicker and the sun grew stronger and the wind tickled their skin with the wintery chill of far off steppes.
"Right." Reyes slapped his legs and stood. "See that tower?" He pointed at the concrete television tower. Genji nodded. "Climb that. I'll pick you up from the top in the ORCA."
He strode off.
Genji jumped to his feet,
"Commander! You're not serious-!"
Reyes turned on him. His eyes flashed and his mouth was a thin grim line. He looked very much serious. Genji quailed under the stare.
"Do as your told."
Reyes marched off again.
Genji stood standing still. He couldn't quite shake the feeling of being abandoned. He turned his attention to the concrete tower. It was a long way up the hill. He looked back at the commander, who was already almost swallowed by the treeline. Feared lurched in Genji's chest. He set off at a run.
He reached the forest in moments, but his progress was slowed by having to slalom in and out of treetrunks. The ground was semi-frozen and unforgiving underfoot. The slope was steep enough that loose hard dirt caused him to slip as he ran. Thickets of hard thorns and wily scrub cut up his path. He leapt into a low tree branch and ran along it. He jumped to the next and found it easier to move through the low branches than the thick undergrowth beneath.
When he reached the top of the hill he was breathing hard. A glass and concrete building encircled the base of the tower. Genji wondered if he could just take a lift to the top. As he paused to catch his breath, he heard the roar of engines. Treetops flailed madly and the ORCA rose from the earth. Genji's eyes widened. He ran, jumped, somersaulted, caught the roof of the circular building, pulled himself up, hit the roof and kept running. The tower reared as a solid grey mast before him, smooth and devoid of purchase. Genji didn't have time to think about that. The nanoparticles coating his metallic body allowed him to grip that sheer face of the tower. He began to climb the concrete tower, feet and hands working in tandem. Before long, his organic arm began to seize up with the effort. The air was cold here. He paused, feet and right arm still gripping the tower. He gave his left arm a shake and windmilled it in the air.
The forest was far below him now. He could see the bright roofs of Almaty stretching away beyond the trees. The ORCA was rising slowly, jets firing at a gradual burn as it climbed in altitude. There was a snapping wind that made his nostrils burn with sharp chill air. When he breathed out he could see plumes of air snatched away from him. Come on. He opened and closed his his fingers, squeezing circulation back into them.
He began again, leaping up the concrete surface. He reached an observation room set halfway up the tower and took a moment to stare inside curiously. The glare of his red eyes glanced back off the glass reflection. He saw a figure inside jump when they saw him. Before they could investigate, he was gone, climbing higher and higher.
The ORCA rose behind him, and soon he was racing its jets. He felt an elation as the world grew smaller beneath him and the aircraft struggled to keep pace with him. Soon the tower thinned to barely a meter diameter. The wind was snapping fierce and brutally cold around him now. Twinkles of ice collected on his mask. The houses below were specks the size of his fingernails. The tower swayed in the wind. Genji's eyes were bright with the thrill. He remembered climbing to the roof of a highrise in Tokyo after a dare at a party. That had been smaller and less steep than this, but it had felt so invigorating to climb and climb and reach the roof of the world and look down to see it spread like a map below.
He reached the top of the tower and crouched on it's tiny pinnacle. The ORCA was still rising to meet him. The landscape below was brown and white where the rugged creases of snow scudded hills shrugged through the landscape. Almaty was a haven coiled at the feet of mountains. Far to the north the brilliant turquoise blue of a lake scattered sunlight on the horizon. He turned on the spot, careful to keep his grip as a roaring wind attempted to topple him. Behind him were enormous steep jagged mountain peaks. Their heads were snagged in snow and cut from hard black rock. Clouds hovered half way up them, and Genji from his meagre tower was barely a fraction of the height of their foothills. Their yawning dark cliff faces were immense, with deep slumbering shadows that spilled blue mist into hidden diving valleys. He sat, insignificant before them as the ORCA hovered over head and the cargo hold doors slid open.
He leapt and caught the cargo opening. The roar of the jets was deafening in his ear and the flap of wind pounded his exposed skin. He took one last look through the square hole that opened hundreds of metres onto the land below, then the doors slid shut. The air became quiet and warm.
Genji stayed crouching for a few moments, regaining his breath and letting the feeling return to his arm. He realised he was not alone and glanced up.
The commander was leaning in the doorway, arms folded.
"Still feel like a sausage in a Jaeger?" Reyes asked.
Genji turned his hands over, looking at them in a strange new light.
"'Cause it looked to me like it was just Genji Shimada out there climbing that tower. Nothing more, nothing less."
Author Note: Genji aesthetic is existential nihilism + anime references.
I spent a long time reading about nanoparticles and Kazakhstan for this chapter because I can never just make life easy for myself. I at least managed to mostly set this story in places I'm familiar with -.- I was actually writing an article about identity and transhumanism whilst doing this chapter, so it was a lot fun to have some intersection between work and stories.
tumblr = erenaeoth