"Wait," he tells me outside Doomfist's door.
I obey, the golf ball in my throat refusing to go down, no matter how many plastic smiles I force onto my face. There's no one here but Reaper, yet the actress never stops does she?
Reaper glides forward, materializing in front of the keypad.Tap tap tap tap. Each claw drums with deliberation, and one held breath later the door hisses.
"He didn't bother changing the locks," he tells me.
We stare at each other for a moment, but the anticipation is killing me and I fizzle out of existence if only to escape his gaze. A speck of purple smudge still lingers at the corner of his mask. A funny thing to notice at a time like this; our plan of patchwork compromise starts as soon as he walks in that door. He takes a breath, bracing, and turns into the lion's den.
Doomfist is facing away from the door when we enter, letting me slide further into shadows even as Reaper makes himself known. The former leader look almost…non-threatening (or as least as non-threatening as a man wielding a giant giga-fist can be.) Maybe I was subconsciously expecting him to be sitting in a chair stroking a white cat but nah, that's not his style. He's direct. To the point.
Efficient.
"It is considered polite to knock." He's standing, looking at the desk in front of him. It's filled with holograms, little battles that work themselves out under his watch. He doesn't even bother to look over his shoulder.
"What can I say," Reaper growls. "They don't teach you manners in black ops."
Doomfist turns around, his eyes flicking across the blackness of the room and he seesme. I don't know how but he does, even camouflage can't hide me because there's no way in hell he doesn't know I'm here. The expression is plastered stiff—his face never betrays the calculations happening just beneath the surface. Instead, he wears the gauntlet effortlessly on one arm, the muscle and intelligence combining into something provocative yet terrifying.
Okay Sombra. Tone down your fear boner.
Instead I try to patch in Widow, only to find her channel is blocked. Damn, there must be some kind of RF field or something keeping us radio silent, trapping us here with our final boss. The loss of her almost hurts worse than the ever-growing golf ball.
"I assume you wanted to talk," Reaper says, causing Doomfist's eyes to flick off me and onto him. "Otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy to get here."
"Perhaps I did want to talk," Doomfist says. "Once."
"Was this right before the first time you sent people to kill me? Or the second?"
A smile crosses Doomfist's face, but not the one he sports at meetings, or when our team has come back with a particularly good report. No, this one doesn't reach his eyes: it's pained, bitter.
"Do not lecture me, Reaper." His voice harshens. "You have come here for the same thing. You left the last ashes of Talon for her and claimIbetrayed you?"
"Sombra's not important right now." Reaper folds his arms across his chest.
"No?" A raised eyebrow, and Doomfist's theatrics at least are buying me time, allowing me to slip around behind him. "And where isour mutual friend, then? For all your supposed 'talk', you could have smuggled her into this very room."
The oxygen sticks in my lungs, my foot halfway in the air until Reaper says, "I left her with Widow. I can handle you alone."
Doomfist laughs. His head is thrown back, each shaking bellow as contemplates the idea of Reaper facing thinking he could take him on. Every shake makes me feel vulnerable in the small room, like his voice is pressing me up against the rounded walls until I'm forced to look at him and only him. I don't dare think that he's let his guard down though, not with his un-gloved hand still resting carefully on the desk. The only light in the room is above him, no widows or detail to distract from the center of attention.
Finally he drop his head and grins.
Reaper actually looks kind of offended. "Fine. If you didn't want to talk, why is your security so jackshit?"
Doomfist casts an arm around the room. "What were you expecting, Reaper? This is all we have left. She took it, all of it, along with humanity's hope." That's when I catch something, underneath all his bravado and false smiles: despair. Even though this man would kill me without prejudice, it still sucks a little bit. I never thought Doomfist would be the one to give up. "What made you leave us, Reaper? You believed in what Talon was."
No he didn't, I want to scream. Those things you stuck in him made him believe in your psychotic cause. I don't know if that's accurate or not, if Reaper would still be the man he is today without those devices, but the accusation rings true in my mind. I sneak further into the room.
Reaper says nothing.
Doomfist's eyes narrow in snide realization. "It was for her, was it not?" And this time, I'm not the herhe's talking about. "All for her. And you told me you were not turning sentimental." He shakes his head, taking his weight off the desk and standing to his full height. "She cannot live out there for long, Reaper. You know that. If you both returned, our doctors would handle her, and our goals would be inline once again. What do you say, hm? You forget I tried to kill you, you forget you tried to kill me." He laughs, and I see the old Doomfist shining through. "That is the way Talon has always worked, after all. Together, we can all rebuild."
"Rebuild?" Reaper scoffs. "And how do you plan on doing that?"
There's no change in tone when Doomfist says, "Sombra is the key."
The key. On reflex, my hand twitches to my pocket.
"The key?" Reaper asks, just as doubtful as I am.
"Sombra stole from us. She still has it," Doomfist says. "Talon was never the people. It is the knowledge that matters, our plans. If we can get it back, we can start again."
Something about hearing my own astute fears parroted back to me rings a hollowness in my gut.
"…And what happens to Sombra when we do?"
My eyes widen, watching Reaper from over Doomfist's shoulder. Is he really negotiating this? The shock threatens to spill over, force something sharp out of my mouth.
Doomfist stops. I would say hesitates, but everything he does is so precise, that this pause is meant to be exactly where it is. "Some crimes are too great to go unpunished."
And it's then that I realize what it's come down to. Reaper has me on a silver platter, strung out long enough that it's come down to a choice between me and Widow. And I know, too, which one of us he's always going to pick.
But still. Every time I think I know everything-
"I'm sorry Akande," Reaper says, his voice clipped with lost chances. "But I'm not handing her over."
The rush of bubbling relief almost makes itself into a sound. I sag further into the wall, shoulders drooping.
"…I see." He begins to pace around the other side of the desk, and I remind myself that my opportunity is coming soon. "Everyone gets one chance Reaper. Only one."
I ready myself.
And then he turn and slams.
With speed that would make a cobra blink, I'm pinned to the wall with his regular fist, air squeezed from my throat by pure human strength. It's a good thing for me as well as him—Reaper's guns are out in an instant, and Doomfist needs the gauntlet to deflect the incoming shots.
My hands fly up, dropping my SMG and my translocator, sinking pre-hardened nonsilicon metal oxide semiconductors into flesh. Breaking skin doesn't do a damn thing though, and a thread of panic shoots up me even as Reaper closes in. I open my mouth in warning, too late, because as soon as Reaper's within five feet of us- WHAM!
Doomfist spins, releasing me and throwing his full force into the gauntlet's punch. Reaper goes flying into the opposite wall, a knock that would kill any normal man if said man couldn't turn to smoke upon contact with drywall.
Distracted. He's distracted. I scramble for my gun, rolling away as soon as my fingers glance across the familiar trigger. Raising it seems to take eons, and as I lift my head I see that he's already leaped toward me, his fist raised in another aerial slam. I only barely dodge it, the tile floor shattering behind me, and try again to force a hail of bullets into Doomfist's exposed body.
At least some of them catch, but not enough, because he doesn't slow at all. Reaper's still getting up and suddenly Doomfist is above me again.
A grab. A struggle.
There's one brief second where I think I can get free before the gauntlet crushes me like a grape, but then the world goes topsy-turvy and I'm in between Reaper and Doomfist while the former points his gun right at my chest.
He's so close. He could blast Doomfist apart from here.
If only I wansn't in the way.
You're probably thinking I'm handling this pretty well. You're proud that I followed Reaper into this room, that I've tried everything that I can to fix what I broke. Well, then I'll let you in on a secret my dear listener: I'm absolutely fucking terrified. I don't want to die. If I had my way, I never would. But in this moment when my gun arm is pinned between mine and Doomfist's bodies, my other hand scrabbling helplessly at the arm around my neck, I don't know if what is about to happen will leave me alive at the end of it.
But the show goes on.
"Is this what you have chosen Reyes?" Doomfist pulls my head back. "This?"
"…"
I lock eyes with Reaper—the black indentations connecting us together, in one brief moment of understanding.
His head tilts to Doomfist's face. "Yes."
He fires. I translocate. Doomfist's chest fills with the double blast.
I think I black out momentarily, regaining air in my lungs and touching where bruises are already forming along my neck. Doomfist's a few meters away, but that doesn't matter anymore. He's not getting back up.
My coughing draws Reaper's attention, but he doesn't come over. Instead he just stares over the body, perhaps less certain about Doomfist's termination than I am.
I get off my knees, scooping up the translocator that saved my life. "Good baby. Mamá loves you," I manage to squeeze out hoarsely. I gently rub the thing against my cheek because apparently adrenaline withdrawal makes me Like That™.
When I manage to wander over to Reaper, I blink down at Doomfist. I think I get it. It is hard to look away.
"I'm sorry you had to do that," I tell him, the single light flickering where it hadn't before. "I know he was your…friend."
Reaper snorts. It's hard to tell if there's a catch in his voice. "Yeah, that's the word." Despite that, he does lean down to close Doomfist's eyes. His hand pauses over the gauntlet, and he snorts again. "Any interest in being the next Doomfist?"
"Ha. I'll pass. I'm sure some up-and-coming young pendajowill get their hands on it eventually."
When Reaper doesn't reply, I wander over to Doomfist's desk, his last conversation weighing heavily on my mind. Some key I am. Just one that unlocks people's deaths. But whether by divine luck or some thought-based interface, I realize I'm not too far off the mark. The screen in the center of the desk is on, open to the last program Doomfist used.
"Hey boss," I call over to the man in mourning. "You might want to see this."
That finally breaks Reaper out of it, and he follows me over to the console. I tap softly, bringing up more of what I was looking for.
"It's the remains of Talon's intelligence network," I say, tracing the fractured web my worm left behind. "It's not much, but it's there."
"We knew that already," he mutters.
"Yeah but." Tap-ti-ti-tap. "This is the highest level of clearance. He could do whatever he wanted with it." I flex my nails along the desk. "There's…a protocol in Talon systems. A digital self-destruct if you will. I couldn't use it though: it requires an unbreakable sequence that only activates when the Council gives unanimous approval."
"And?"
I turn to him, a morbid grin at the corner of my cheek. "And…guess who just became the only member of the Talon Council?"
His shoulders slide as the understanding rolls in. "Well. That's something gone right for once." He looks at the screen, not quite believing it. "So what do I do?"
"I assume there's a biometric scan, and then voice verification. After that…up to you."
For a minute, I'm not sure he's going to do it. Maybe I'd be angry with him, if I wasn't so damn tired. But then he pulls his glove off, finger by finger, and lets the little needle on the console prick him.
"Counsil authorization verified. Hello Reaper."
"System…" he says, voice faltering for just a moment. "…Terminate."
"What would you like to terminate, Reaper?"
"Everything."
Walking out into the Nigerian air feels unreal, like when I stumble into the kitchen after an all-nighter spent pouring over a particularly juicy piece of code. The world seems sticky, an entire universe in slow motion, Reaper and I at the center of it.
"…ome…pl…your status? Do you copy?" Widow's voice ekes into my ear little by little, and every bit of tension I didn't know I was holding flows out at once.
I press my finger to my com. "Yeah, I got you Widow. I copy." It comes out soft and breathless.
"Sombra." I've never heard her say her name like that, and it makes my heart swell uncomfortably large. But her relief is short lived, switching gears into a new panic. "Reaper-?"
"-Is fine," I finish for her. "We're both fine." But I pause, the tightness in my throat still grating my bruises. "…Doomfist is dead."
"…Deja que se haga."
Her voice is even, and for once I think to be glad I made it out for her sake instead of mine. It couldn't have been easy out here waiting, not with mission 417 coming uncomfortably close to a reboot.
I place a hand on Reaper's shoulder as he takes the final step out of the dark room and tell him, "she's coming to us."
As the first rays of sun break over Ümụ Bebi, we can just see the small fleck of her body arcing over rooftops. She fires her hook a second time, then a third, over and over until finally she reels herself in, our friendly neighborhood spiderwoman coming to congratulate us.
"Nice," I inform her. I could be talking about her sick three-point landing or that we (miraculously) not only survived our mission, but completed it. It's a mystery even to me.
She nods, her eyes has over each of us, something foreign etched across her expression. I don't know if it's her version of affection, or it's simply I am glad you two are not dead glare, but either way I know she's happy to see us.
At first I think we've done it. The only thing left to do is stand here on the balcony outside the elevators and watch the sunrise, a new day leaving blue spots on my vision. But Widow is drawn, her attention not on the sky or the remaining Talon agents milling about below us, but instead finding me in her sights.
"Why are you looking at me like-?" I don't get a chance to finish, since Widow steps forward and kisses me sharply on the mouth.
And (of course) poor, stupid Sombra just stands there like a fucking dumbass. No reaction, no anything, just looks like she's been fucking hit by lighting: eyes glossy and unfocused while a crazy-hot chick macks across her face.
God how do I ever manage to get anyone to like me?
Widow pulls back, leaving me not much more animated than I was a moment ago. I snap myself out of it and stare at her, admittedly a little slack jawed. Then I look at Reaper, his body language casually interested, then back to Widow again. I do this until I give myself whiplash.
"So?" I blink, the crises of killing my former boss and then being made out with compiling into a pretty wild morning. "Is that it then? Are we like a? Thing now? Because you two can be pretty obtuse when it comes to feelings and that says a lot coming from me but it really is impossible to tell if you're flirting or want to murder me or-"
"Sombra," Reaper tells me.
"Yeah?" I ask meekly.
"You really need to stop talking so much."
"…Got it."
And that's that. Widow slides closer to me and holy shit is she actually holding my hand? Did I somehow get warped into a cheesy romantic flick where my hardboiled partner suddenly extends me some fleeting human contact? My suspicions are confirmed that I have indeed been teleported to a parallel dimension when Reaper approaches on our left and puts an arm around her our shoulders, pinning me in the middle.
I exhale. Breathe Sombra, breathe.
"So…what now?" I say, red earth below us springing to life.
There's no answer at first, everyone else just as washed out as me. But then Widow hums, and says, "I would like to return to the Shambali, if that is possible. I feel as though I could learn much from there."
I don't ask what she's expecting to learn. I remember Zenyatta, the way she seemed to hang on every word of his peace and forgiveness and blah bla blah blah. But I don't begrudge her that: she could use a little healing.
"Sounds good to me," I tell her. Reaper grunts in acknowledgement.
There's nothing really more to say, so we just stand there, me in the middle and not yet ready to move on. I've got my work, they've got theirs…But we also have time. That is, after all, the difference between chasing and running away.