For a moment, nothing happened.

Not a word was said as Satya and her enemies stared each other down, weapons ready and fingers itching at triggers to either make the first move or be the second, but faster. She didn't dare blink, even as the pathway of rain weighed down her hair and pushed locks out of place. Ignoring them itched at her thoughts almost as much as the possibility of death, but she forced herself to do so. If she didn't, that possibility would become a guarantee.

Her eyes darted from left to right, then right to left, and then back again; On one side, Tracer placed one foot behind the other like a sprinter at the starting line, her chest and the softly humming machine on it slowly heaving up and down with each measured breath. Next to her, white puffs of hot breath steamed out of the ape/scientist's nose as he shot her a look squarely in the eyes that radiated pure ferocity, a feeling oddly juxtaposed with his glasses. At the same time, a low rumbling cut through the rain's patter. The fact that she couldn't be sure it was thunder sent a chill crawling down her spine.

On the other end, the Omnic seemed strangely inquisitive, with her head slightly tilted to one side and a vague expression crossing her face as she floated just above the pavement. Her hand was raised, but she didn't carry a weapon, and there was barely a sight or sound to say that she had one. Satya had learned long ago not to trust things like this at face value, so she made a mental note to exercise caution with her.
The Omnic's friend had no such subtlety; She rolled her shoulder back, leading the lethal end of her mace along a short path that scraped through a puddle to get to into position.

The sudden arrival of a bright light, recognizable as the lights of a bus making its nightly run even out of the corner of her eye, tempted Satya's powers of concentration, but she closed her eyes to block it out. For an instant before its expunging, however, a troubling concept crossed her mind: A public area filled with oblivious civilians stood less than thirty feet away, bringing a close parallel to a night in Rio not too long ago that still haunted her. Her heart raced even faster: What was going to happen to them? What could happen to them?

If Reaper knew Overwatch was going to be here, why had they been allowed to get so close?

Another rumble echoed in the night as she cleared her mind with a single exhale; Questions like those were for a less dangerous time. Her thin smile returned. Fighting was unpredictable by nature, but she was in the eye of the storm, the calmest and easiest part to control. If Overwatch was going to lay their hands on the box, they'd have to come to her to do it.

And so, they did.

Tracer was the first one to move, but the others were just a half-step behind. As she zipped in behind and opened up with her pulse pistols, bolts of harnessed lightning leaped from the ape's cannon on a deadly course. At the same time the Omnic shot a trio of energy beams from her fingertips, while the knight whipped her flail towards her with a spin and a tremendous heave.

It was then, and only then, that Satya opened her eyes.

Spinning on her heel she held her artificial arm out, catching the bolts as they reached her and caught it in an invisible orb in the palm of her hand. As she twirled back around, a great stroke through the air with her projector raised a barrier to absorb Tracer and the Omnic's incoming fire. Safe from two sides, a lean backwards just out of harm's way allowed the flail to rush past and force the ape to dodge, while turning the electrical torrent on the knight forced her to raise an extendable shield on her other arm to block it

Satya's eyes narrowed. She controlled the eye, and now it was time to control the storm.

Shots reigned down from above as Tracer and the Omnic circled, dissipating on Satya's barrier before briefly being driven off by a photon blast or a few swipes from a giant hand construct. A blink in close from Tracer in hopes of a sucker punch ended with the grasp of a construct throwing her down the ravine, only for the British brat to finally use a full rewind and return herself to her initial circling. The knight landed the first blow when she caught Satya off guard with a charge when she attempted to grab the flail's chain and pull it away, but an energy ball to disarm the shield and immobilizing tendrils from her prosthetic palm threw the attacker across the pavement.

Her attention was grabbed by a guttural roar as the ape launched himself in a parabolic arc towards her. The barrier she conjured hurtled straight up towards him, only to shatter as his jetpack screamed to life and rocketed him down towards her like a meteor. There was barely a second to raise another one before he made landing, crushing the asphalt under fist and foot as Satya was thrown against the truck with a brutal thud.

She coughed as she picked herself up, the taste of rainwater, gravel, and iron mixing into an unpalatable concoction in her throat. Raising a hand that wasn't clinging to the truck in case her feet gave out, she wiped a trickle of blood off her forehead and sighed frustratedly. Not again.

When the world around her finally stopped spinning and her blurred vision cleared, she could see that the quartet were gathered at the crater, weapons drawn yet again and an electric yellow glow in the ape's eyes. "Stand down," he said with a tone of strongly implication. "This won't end well for anyone if you don't."

The glare Satya sent back as she wrapped an arm over her chest would have been enough without any words, but she mustered up enough air in her lungs to spit them out all the same. "That's not... going to... happen."

"Do you even know what's in that box?" the knight demanded.

"No, and I don't need to."

"Love, please," Tracer begged. "If we don't get at it, people are going to die, and if I'm right about who set you up to this that includes you and me."

Satya gritted her teeth; This was long past the time for any more playing. "What are you talking about?"

"He's got a mission and he's going to see it through, no matter who gets caught in the crossfire. To him, you're expendable. Why do you think he didn't tell you what's in there?"

He?! Satya stood motionless as she processed her own dumbstruck-ness. How could she have possibly guessed - that's it, she guessed. It has to be.

But regardless, it was too close of a guess for comfort... and just why didn't Reaper tell her what's ins-

No. Overwatch is chaotic, and this is what chaos wants.

Letting her arms fall to her side, Satya stood as tall as she could, shaking her hair back behind her shoulders and sharpening her glare. "I don't need to know," she snarled. "and I don't care." She took on a stance from her dances, readying herself for the next move.

But Overwatch seemed hesitant to make it.

Various expressions of pain and sadness, or stoicism to hide it, crossed their faces as they looked at each other. Up above, thunder rolled through the clouds for the first definitive time that night.

"If that's what you want," the ape muttered. "Then so be it. I'm sorry."

Lightning cracked across the night, illuminating his charge and adding another level of terror to his ear-splitting roar. Satya, though, was unfazed.

Now it was her turn to attack.

The graceful twirl of her arms summoned a teleporter directly in the ape's path, sending him through before he could react and dropping him out in the way of Tracer, sending the two on a collision course that ended with them tumbling along the pavement and crashing through several fences in a crumpled mess.
No sooner had they hit the ground when the Omnic formed her hands into a triangle shape and fired another shot downrange, where it met with a very particular barrier, one created with the precision of an architect to ricochet the beam in a specific direction. Satya felt a swell of self-satisfaction as the design did exactly what it was supposed to, forcing the knight to raise her shield and leaving her unaware of the energy drain that followed suit as soon as it was closed, sending her to the ground alive, but out cold.

In two swift moves, the only opponent left was the Omnic, and Satya began to approach her as such. "You were saying about standing down?" she said through a caught breath.

The Omnic stood, or rather hovered, her ground. "I wouldn't say it's over just yet. I'm still standing, after all." She snickered as she looked down at her feet. "Relatively speaking."

A derisive smile crawled across Satya's lips. "What are you going to do, then? Your allies are all down."

The robot seemed strangely calm in her tone of voice, almost friendly. "Well, there is one thing. You can learn something from every situation, and these past few minutes I've been analyzing your patterns closely. Your movements, your tactics, your fighting style, everything. It's very graceful. Were you ever a dancer?"

If this was the machine's idea of psychological warfare, Satya though, it was terrible. "What is your point?"

Now the Omnic returned the look. For a moment Satya thought she was looking in a mirror. "I'm an artificial intelligence designed to learn by observation, and you've shown me enough to engage my adaptive circuits."

Before Satya could process what had been said, she was given an illustration as the Omnic began to spin in place, her wings curling in around her body as a holographic matrix engulfed her. When it dissipated just a second later, Satya gasped.

Now it really was like looking into a mirror.

The machine seemed to be gone; What stood in her place was a perfect copy of Satya, from the jewel of her visor/headdress down to the heels she wore and everywhere inbetween. Before she could even begin to process the sight, the doppleganger summoned a ribbon-like construct that she whipped around the real Satya's arm, pulling her forth until she tripped to the ground again. This time, though, she was much faster on her feet, rolling out of the path of a follow-up shot before firing off her own to put the copy on the defensive until she could get back up.

Their duel went back and forth, each one matching the other move for move. Satya's graceful dances were replicated flawlessly, her constructs stopped by an equal match every time. Beams were met with barriers, entrapping bubbles with explosive bursts of energy that shattered windows, attacks caught and redirected were stonewalled before being responded to with even greater force. Satya was almost impressed by the machine's imagination when she gathered the water in the puddles with a thousand tendrils of light and formed them into a tidal wave, but swiftly countered it all the same by conjuring a cigarette lighter and weaving its flame into a twisting inferno. Their collision created a massive bank of steam that blanketed the night, as though one of the rain clouds above had descended to earth.

Blind past her own nose and suddenly gasping for air as her lungs felt dense in her chest, Satya turned in a circle as if she were surrounded again, waiting but not knowing where her opposite's attack would come. Nevertheless, even with her senses preoccupied, she still found it in herself to be pleased with her work. Overwatch was almost beaten and the box had still been untouched. There were no more questions left to ponder, no more annoyances to ignore. Just one last strike and it would be all over.

Which is why it felt so unsettling when it didn't come.

Her eyes went on a swivel, attempting to penetrate the vaporous veil and discover just what was going on until she seethed with lost patience. Raising her index finger towards the sky and spinning it around, she captured the steam in a trail of blue, guiding it upwards to be pierced and removed by the ever-falling rain. It was then that she discovered the machine sneaking for the truck, a deception that nearly made Satya smile.

Nearly.

Raising her projector and crossing its beam with the one from her open palm, the razor-thin shards of glass from the windows levitated higher and higher off the ground before congregating like a school of fish and racing towards their target. By the time the impostor had either avoided the pieces that didn't shred through the tarp and wood like a hot knife through butter or broken them on her invisible shield, Satya was waiting at point-blank range, wrapping her own ribbon around the machine's throat and a charged ball of lethal energy to her gut. "It's over," she declared grimly as she shook another trickle of blood off her cheek.

The Omnic reverted back to her original form, a desperate look displayed on her holographic face. "Please, don't do this. You don't understand-"

She pulled the ribbon tighter. "Understand what?"

For a second, silence reigned again, until a scream curdled Satya's blood and drew her attention in the direction of the tower standing tall in the distance.

What she saw began to answer all of her questions.

It was hard to make out, seeming almost as small as a raindrop since it was so far away. But the screams, the unmistakable flailing, and the echoing shatter of more glass made the truth all too horrifying and the shock all too real.

She was drawn back to the moment when a shrill beeping began emanating from the box and the Omnic used the moment of distraction to deliver a stunning chop to the shoulder and judo-flip Satya away from the truck. For a moment her holographic face frazzled before she tore off the tarp and broke open the box, growling like the ape as the solid wood was left in splinters.

Satya's blood turned to ice. The metal cube whose beeping signified the beginning of a countdown put to rest the night's big question, leaving her to utter the answer under her breath.

"A bomb."

Behind where she lay, Tracer and the ape had finally gotten up. She stopped mid-blink to look down at Satya. "Now do you understand?" she said before zipping off to wake up the knight and bring her over to where the Omnic and the scientist were trying to disarm the payload.

From on the ground with her head spinning again, Satya could barely pick up what they were saying just a few feet away. What she did hear sounded like a muffled echo that warped her addled, dumbstruck thoughts even further.

"I just saw someone thrown off of Lijiang Tower's top floor. Do you think-?"

"If it is, that means the bomb was a setup. Talon's been playing us-!"

"Don't beat yourself up, big guy. We can still save the civilians-"

"Talon doesn't care about collateral damage. Everyone is expendable to them-"

"Echo, go find them. We can take care of things here-"

"What about that woman? Their new-"

If they looked over at her, Satya didn't see it, but they would have found nothing. She was long gone, back in the safety of the warehouse's shadows courtesy of a teleporter that she shut behind her no sooner than her feet had touched solid concrete.
As adrenaline and instinct finally wore off, she was met with the most complete feeling of utter exhaustion she'd ever felt in her entire life. She stared up at the neon refraction through the skylight as her body collapsed to the floor as though she was ten times her weight. Her head rolled from one side to the other, seeing the disorder of neon light spread out around her and the tower's shadow encompassing where she lay.

Fatigue overtook her there, but her mind still raced with jumbled thoughts. Words and memories buzzed around in her subconscious like a swarm of bees.

Overwatch... chaotic good...

Civilians...

Collateral damage...

Destruction...

Talon...

Death...

Innocent...

Setup...

Expendable...


She had no idea how much later it was when she finally opened her eyes again, only that she somehow felt even more tired than when she'd closed them. She would have drifted off again, had the shadows above her not seemed to move.

Panic gripped her like a vice, but the lingering pain of the hits she'd taken decided to rear its ugly head at that precise time kept her from scrambling away as she looked up, seeing the pale mask stare down at her, which was soon joined by a soulless blank expression coming from dusty yellow eyes.

"You have a reason for why you didn't follow my instructions?" Reaper rasped.

Satya didn't answer, not for lack of words but more because of a morbid wondering of what they were going to do to kill her. If they pulled a gun or a knife, would they make it quick or let her bleed out from a gut shot? Would they take the simple but personal approach of strangulation, or the messy but effective method they'd used at the top of the tower? It almost didn't matter since she was terrified all the same.

Besides, she was expendable, supposed to die. It would only make sense if Talon, a chaotic evil that she'd seen on the news almost as much as Overwatch, finished their job.

And yet, the hand Reaper extended down was benign, even as she felt the claws on his fingers dig into her skin as he lifted her onto her feet. "Fine," he finally accepted. "Save it for the paperwork. Now let's get out of here before Echo picks up our scent again."

What Satya croaked out as they turned around and made for the exit was something she'd have never asked with a clear head, but something driven by the pain and weariness pushed it forth with a determined but restrained anger. "Why didn't you tell me about the bomb?"

The slight turn of their heads towards each other as they stopped brought her to her senses, but the gun she expected one of them to pull never came. "Mission info is on a need-to-know basis," Reaper growled, stepping in closer. "We got what we came for, and that's all you need to know."

Satya couldn't stop herself before it happened again. "Could you at least tell me what this was all for?"

Reaper's hand curled into a tight fist as he slowly reached under his coat, making Satya's muscles tense, then release, and then tense again as he produced a small plastic rectangle displaying holographic buttons from the top. She recognized it immediately. A remote control.

No. THE remote control.

"Now that you know, let us move," Widowmaker interrupted. "We've wasted enough time."

With that, she launched a grappling line from her wrist that lifted her up and out through the skylight, while the shadow disappeared into a bank of black mist that followed her, leaving Satya standing alone once more

More questions stampeded forth from the revelation, ones about Sanjay, Project Legion, and The Conspiracy, but this time the hot blood coursing through her veins meant that she had enough sense to keep them to herself.

What it also meant was that once she was back in the familiar confines of Higher New York and readying to clean off the gravel, sweat, rainwater, and dried blood, a familiar memory became the basis of her next plan of action.

It was time she knew for certain just who she was working for.