How?

Satya stood like a monolith, her hand cupped over her dropped jaw. The blood from the corpse that had pooled at her feet and that dripped from the spots on her clothes now flowed over the datapad, coating her shoes and legs, as well as herself further as she slid down to a seat on the hard cobblestones, drawing in laboured breaths as she massaged her bruised neck.

How is this possible, she asked herself, but no logical, thinkable answer came. All that did was a frightened lament of the revelation that felt like it could alter reality itself.

How?

Forty-five minutes earlier...

"To kill you?"

"Yes," Maximilien purred. "though you needn't sound so shocked. It's a sad truth that Omnics as successful as myself have no shortage of enemies."

Satya kept her posture and face inexpressive, but fiddling with her dress' sleeves when they were still perfectly straight said all it needed to. The Omnic, seeing her struggle to find the right words, led her towards the casino's bar and provided a seat that she obliged. A hand gesture also provided her another glass of tequila, which she acknowledged with with a thankful glance.

"I assume this isn't what you were expecting when you received this assignment", he continued. "Are you sure that you'll be up to the task?"

Satya took her time to collect her thoughts and make sure that everything she said was fully processed before it left her tongue. She'd let her professional conduct slip enough for one night, and if she was going to be doing what she guessed she would, there wasn't going to be room for error. "Yes," she replied assertively. "I'll be fine. I'm just... surprised, that's all."

Maximilien folded his hands together like the steeple of a church as he regarded her with relaxed pensiveness. "You're wondering who would want me dead."

She purged her preconceptions, at least for the moment, with a few quick blinks. "I suppose so."

"Like I said, I have no shortage of enemies. The guilty party who sent tonight's guest, however, is particularly troublesome."

Satya raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

The Omnic unfolded his hands, placing one on his lap and holding up the other on his elbow as he spoke. "One of my more profitable ventures comes through private investments in various large contracts. Some time ago, I loaned our friend a large sum to ensure the completion of a project with exceptional potential. Unfortunately, he's been frivolous with my finances, and now stands on the verge of defaulting. When I asked to see my return he became defensive, and made threats against me."

Satya swiveled her head quizzically while still maintaining eye contact. "Just threats?"

"I wouldn't be so dismissive. He is a duplicitous and desperate sort, especially when he has his own bottom line to lose. This isn't the first time he's given me cause for concern. The only reason why I still do business with him is because he provides connections to his employers and other investments."

She took in a deep breath through her nose and let it circulate, making sure that her head was clear and her nerves were nonexistent. "'Better the devil you know', as it were?"

"Exactly. Still, once you've dealt with the assassin, there is something else I want you to do."

"That being...?"

The Omnic chuckled coldly. "I enjoy your eagerness; It will be useful. I've learned that your target will be carrying a datapad with a direct line of contact to their clients." He leaned in further, his metal fingers leaving wood shavings in their wake as they scraped along the bar. "I want you to leave a message for our friend," he hissed. "so he knows the price of letting good business sour."

Normally, Satya would've found a sense of the uncomfortable in getting involved with personal disputes; All of the work she'd done at Vishkar had been strictly business-oriented. But tonight, a sly smile crept along her face, brought on by months of experience with a well-versed hacker and a newfound appreciation for expanding her comfort zone.

She reached for the glass and held it beside her, swirling the ice cubes around. "Consider it done. You won't be disappointed."

Maximilien pulled back, adopting a satisfied posture as he clasped his hands back together. "Bonne chance, then."

"Luck is disorderly, and as you said earlier, nonexistent." With a single, swift and fluid motion, she tipped the glass up, knocked back a mouthful, and set it back down with a loud clatter. "What you mean is 'bonne chasse'."

As she waited, she began to dance.

Satya much preferred the feeling of her field attire to any sort of formal wear, be it the conservative but restrictive business suit she wore on Vishkar time, or the dress she had replaced with the literal snap of her fingers. They had their uses, and Satya had never thought she looked ugly or unprofessional in them, but they just didn't give her the same feeling of control that she loved so much.

Normally, such expression was confined to her morning routine, but tonight, she'd reasoned to herself, was a calculated risk. She and Maximilien had silently parted ways after the briefing, leaving her to follow him across the casino as he nonchalantly made his rounds. She circled the floor as well, identifying each of the places where her fellow gamblers from earlier had gone and, with the discreet swish of her hand, conjured miniature cameras that hung from the walls and the chandeliers, tracking their every movement and feeding it into her visor's holo-display. With the suspects covered she left the building, took a hard left, and slunk around the back under cover of darkness to watch everything unfold.

Their actions were mostly mundane. Thomas was mewling to his parents, a crotchety old couple who dismissed him with a cheque and a demeaning hand gesture. Madame Lei had ditched her oblivious sycophant for a bottle of gin and a man half her age wearing a bolo tie, both of which she promptly took into a secluded restroom. Satya pushed the feed aside the moment her alibi became airtight and grimaced with distaste.

The Englishman also circled the floor after swiftly winning his baccarat game, seemingly talking to no one in particular and twice passing by a roulette wheel where a frizzy-haired woman in a golden gown was doing the same thing. Satya suspected he was waiting for something, though nothing about him gave the sense of predatory intent or of trying to hide it. The nondescript man, meanwhile, left the building almost as quickly as Satya herself had and disappeared into the night.

Finally, a camera followed Maximilien himself around, covering those lethal blind spots as he passed through them. He'd been right earlier: There were plenty of opportunities for someone to attack him, but they were all passed on. Perhaps they've been scared off, she thought as a smile returned. The job might be over before it's even begun. Well done, Satya.

And so, with the Omnic inspecting a plate of muffins and nothing to do but watch and wait, she danced. A warm, delicious feeling spread within as the stars spun overhead. Life was different, so different she'd have never imagined it, but by gods it was good. She'd jumped headfirst into the lion's den and not only come out clean on the other side, but found order in those same unimaginable places. And so, she danced.

Until she was caught in the act.

She'd never been shy, but the shadow moving in the corner of her eye as she twirled around had her diving for a dark corner in an instant. Her photon projector materialized in her hand, making sure she was ready for whatever danger was headed her way.

Only it wasn't danger. Just an average, nondescript electrician.

The sight of denim blue overalls and yellow rubber gloves released the tension that squeezed her ribcage, and that he appeared to take no notice as she watched him pass by brought an undetected sigh of relief.

And yet, as he tipped his ballcap over his face, some inert sense aroused her suspicions, suspicions that opened her eyes wide as saucers when she noticed something on the back of his head.

A barcode.

With hand movements like a cat swiping at thin air, she cycled through her camera feeds until she reached the nondescript man's. Rewinding to the couple minutes before he vanished, as well as her own flawless memory, corroborated everything: The stoic face, the unassuming features, the barcode. It's him, she thought. He's the assassin!

She peered around her corner as he turned another. Raising her photon projector to a ready stance, she heard it hum up to a full charge, its light blue glow assuring that she was ready for him before making to pursue as quickly and quietly as she possibly could.

By the time she'd made it to where he'd been, however, he was long gone, presumably in the maze of hedges and fountains that made up the gardens behind the casino. All she saw in front of her, illuminated by a small LED light that pierced the dark's veil, was an open electrical panel.

The briefest of second thoughts surfaced, but the memory of the barcode put it to rest as she approached the panel, her head on a swivel and the weapon she held prepared to fire. The panel was indeed abandoned, but that issue was one she resolved to deal with after her current one. Stuck in the outlet behind the plastic door was a foot-long metal cylinder with a thumb switch at the outside end.

Satya nearly gasped before a sense of triumph prevailed. She'd seen one of the devices before on the news, back when Versailles was the world's leading story. A targeted remote EMP generator.

Slowly she raised her projector, activating its lowest setting as tendrils of hard light wrapped around the device, intent on removing it and eliminating the threat. With her free hand, she wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead. Absolute focus was necessary: One false move and the device had the very real possibility of deep-frying every Omnic circuit in the building.

As it turned out, such focus nearly cost Satya her life.

She didn't notice the soft, echoing footsteps on the grass next to the hedgerow, nor even the click of a gun being cocked less than ten feet away. What let her on was when, for the shortest, most random moment, she looked down from her task of defusing and found the errant shadow that the light above betrayed. She froze in place, absolutely still, waiting to see if he would make the first move.

When he closed the distance another step, her question was answered.

In the blink of an eye her projector released its grasp on the device, and with her prosthetic hand she raised a transparent bubble that easily stopped the suppressed bullets he sent downrange from a pair of silver pistols. In the lighting he stood in as she turned around, Satya cursed herself on how she could have written him off, since his sunken eye sockets, ghostly pale skin, and heavy cheekbones made him look like death itself.

Again, her smile returned. If that's so, she thought, then you'll prove I'm up to the task.

A crackling ball of energy shot out from her projector, which the assassin barely avoided with a combat roll. Before he could renew his offensive, a single powder-blue beam from her own weapon carved up the turf and stone around where he stood, leaving smoldering ruts in its wake. Well-timed dodges allowed him to avoid Satya's assault, but he was still forced to retreat into the maze of hedges after his ball cap was singed off, falling to the ground in an ashen pile.

Satya saw no use in pursuing into the gardens, a place where the twisting footpaths and his obvious mastery of concealment would have set her up to be ambushed. Instead, she decided, if he was going to hide like a rabbit in a hole, she was going to flush him out.

Lowering her bubble, she took a ready stance and grasped at the ball of light that floated in her prosthetic palm with two fingers on that hand. Upon raising her arm as high as she could until she was on her tiptoes, a dazzling display spread across the area, where dozens of fifty-foot lamps grew out of thin air and shone down their light, disintegrating the shadows. Simultaneously, numerous orb-like cameras sprung from the projector before floating off to survey the grounds like hawks searching a field.

The tension in the seconds that followed was thick enough to almost be physically felt in the air. Satya kept her back to the wall, her eyes on a nonstop patrol side to side, and her trigger finger taut, not daring to give away her own position until he'd been coaxed into the light. Trickles of cold sweat dripped down her hair and her heart pounded furiously as she rapidly crossed the vulnerable open ground over to the hedgerow, keeping the panel and its all-important objective in sight. For another quick second, she wondered if he'd been scared off.

Until she heard a faint ring on the ground just three feet to her right.

With reflexive speed she about-faced to the noise and fired a beam, leaving a small crater and the smell of burnt sod to intermingle with the tension. Upon a closer look, Satya seethed when she realized that it had only been a silver coin, now disintegrated except for a portion of the edge. A false alarm, she reasoned.

Until it hit her. Wait a sec-

The wire was around her neck before she could move, forcing her windpipe closed as she struggled to break free. Her concentration broken, the lights and cameras dissipated into nothing, leaving the action only witnessed by the stars in the heavens above.

A hard-light collar slipped under the wire to try and force it off, but against his frighteningly inhuman strength it was to no avail. Every frantic kick, elbow, gouge, bite, grab, and hard slam against the building she delivered was done so with all her might, but he refused to yield. Soon each gasp for air she took became shorter than the last, and as streams of blood drained from her neck, nose, and mouth and her vision began to blur, a rush of icy fear gripped her even tighter still. She plumbed her mind for any desperate solution, but all it could pull up was the time two months earlier, in the depths of the mountain estate in Venice.

Until the echo of gunfire pierced her eardrums.

She dropped to the ground like a stone, coughing and wheezing on her hands and knees as the deadly clutch on her throat relaxed. When precious oxygen finally returned to her brain and her sight cleared, she craned her neck upwards at the hitman, still standing but with his arms limp and his face contorted with surprise. In a flash of panic she raised her artificial arm and formed a globe of energy, but another gunshot cracked across the gardens. As he convulsed and finally dropped the garrote, a third shot made impact with his skull right where the barcode was, spraying blood everywhere before he finally collapsed onto the ground with a dull thud.

Just as she did, too.

Satya couldn't be sure how long she blacked out for, but she didn't suspect it had been too long since when she finally pulled her face up off the bloody stones, the person who'd saved her life was standing overhead, in such a position that the LED on the panel left nothing in the shadow, offering a free hand to help her up.

She obliged as soon as she recognized his black bow tie, short blond hair, and intense, intelligent eyes.

"Thank you," she spluttered as she propped herself up against the wall, waiting for blood to circulate to her legs again.

"Don't mention it," the Englishman replied as he holstered his own pistol before looking down at where their opponent lay. A derisive smirk curled across his pale lips. "He didn't even apologize for spilling my drink."

"Who was he?"

The Englishman raised an eyebrow as he looked first at Satya, then at the corpse. "Well, now that's a story," he said, appearing more impressed as he looked back up at her. "To tell the truth, no one really knows. Rumour has it he was cloned in the former Soviet Union, that he answers to a number rather than a name, and that he works for a private espionage conglomerate specializing in contract killings. All that's for sure is that he's an urban myth in certain circles. You never see him and he never lets his targets escape."

"Then I'm happy to be the first," she quipped back, coercing a laugh that only came out as a wet cough. "I guess you could say I was lucky."

"Lucky and good. If it weren't for you and your light show, he'd have gotten away again."

"Is that why you're here?" she asked while wiping away the blood trailing from her nose. "To kill him?"

"Failing capture, yes," he continued as his tone warmed. "Let's just say that Number Ten owes you a debt of gratitude." He extended his hand again. "As do I."

Again, Satya obliged. "Well, thank you. Just don't expect me to say why I'm here, mister..."

"Fleming," he stated. "Craig Fleming, and don't worry; I wasn't going to ask." His smirk stretched into a smile as he let the handshake go and readjusted his tie. "It's been a pleasure, Miss Vaswani. Until we meet again."

Her lips puckered with surprise that he knew her name, but she was able to grab his shoulder before he could leave. "Wait," she implored.

He rotated in place quickly, showing an inquisitive look.

"Do you know who hired him? This assassin, I mean."

Fleming sent back a look Satya regarded as strange, as though he were sizing her up. "I'm afraid I don't," he said at last. "but in my experience it's always good to know who you're working for."

With that, before anything else could be said, he vanished into the shadows.

Satya didn't waste any time first defusing the EMP and storing it away, then rifling through the hitman's pockets for his datapad. Through both actions, a piece of her mind did dwell on her encounter his last words leaving a sense of confusion suspended in her memory, while the idea that he owed her after he'd saved her life made her snort with amusement. She briefly mulled over whether or not she'd see him again, but settled on the hope that she'd never need him to pay off his debt.

At last, her hands locked onto the object of her search, which she swiftly pulled out. The see-through, tablet-sized object was no match for the hacking know-how Sombra had graciously offered to teach a few weeks back; Within seconds its encryption was shredded like a beehive at the mercy of a bear's claws, looking for its sweet, golden prize. Satya's eyes narrowed with similar satisfaction when she found hers: A direct link into the dead killer's client. If she can do it, so can I, she restated inwardly.

With a few more taps and clicks and a message was sent, simple but effective:

Maybe next time.

With love,

Max.

Her heart rushed once more, only this time with the adrenaline of success. Grinning ear to ear she looked up at the stars, each one set perfectly in its place far beyond the limits of what everyone thought possible. The sky was the limit, and it made her feel like dancing again, something she resolved to do once she returned to Higher New York.

She readied to leave the tablet at the scene, just as she'd found it, but her eye caught a glimpse of the hundreds of other messages in the client's inbox, nearly all of them labelled M or S. The M was no secret, she remembered from the briefing, but the growing internal query as to who the other letter belonged to brought with it an urge to scratch the curious itch. With a few more taps, the urge was indulged and the most recent correspondence was opened.

In that moment, the sky and the tablet came crashing down.

S: I understand that the deadline is near, but Project Legion is nearly complete. I just need a little more time.

M: A good businessman, woman, or Omnic keeps their word. I've given you more time than you deserve and still you lie to me.

S: I assure you I'm telling the truth. The first test is in two weeks. Once it's over and mass production begins, a billion dollars will look like pocket change.

M: The last time you said that, I was about to have your fingernails wrenched out for stealing in Las Vegas. Perhaps if I had, you would have learned to spend responsibly.

S: Watch it. You know that Oasis is interested as well.

M: I also know that the Ministers appreciate good business Mr. Korpal, something that damn fools simply can't conduct.

S: Perhaps it's time you learned not to insult your peers. If I were you, I'd start looking over my shoulder at night.

M: No need to make threats. You'll get your time and nothing more, lest I deal with your thievery for what it is.

Satya was speechless as the tablet shorted out in the hitman's blood, the only sound being her own breathing. Sombra said he wasn't involved, she reasoned desperately. This can't be true.

And yet, the location of the inbox said it all: Sanjay's personal holocomputer in Rio de Janeiro.

How?