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Overwatch: Alive
Chapter 5: After Death
"Everyone, get back. Get back!"
"Halo is down, repeat, Halo is down."
Brooks knew it was all for nothing. People around the armoured car were closing in. Others were simply weeping. Screaming. Hell, even praying, Bendatta leading a group of disciples in prayer. Perhaps Mondatta's digital soul had escaped to a digital hereafter, and was already looking down on them on the shoulder of a digital god, but he wasn't counting on it. And either way, this was the real world.
In the real world, bullets killed. And when bullets killed, you didn't come back. Not even if you were an omnic.
He looked up at the rooftops. Wondering where the sniper was. Wondering why the rooftop teams hadn't found them yet. Wondering who that figure was he'd seen in the sky above, who'd vanished in mid-air.
"I said get back!"
Wondering how the hell this was going to go down come tomorrow.
"No, no, no," Lena whispered.
She could see them down below. A crowd of people. An armoured car. Security agents separating the former from the latter. And there, visible even from this height…
"No, no, no, no!"
Tekhartha Mondatta. An omnic of peace, taken by violence. Murdered in front of the world. In front of her, despite her efforts. By someone who, seconds ago, had commented about the party being over.
An assassin. A murderer.
She turned, activated her accelerator, and dashed forward. Slamming into Widowmaker at a speed greater than any normal human could travel at. Her bones jarred as the force of impact ran through her. Her muscles ached as they rolled across the rooftop, coming to its edge as if on the threshold of Sheol. Her eyes burning, as tears lurked behind her irises.
It mattered not. Mondatta was dead. Widowmaker wasn't. And coming to a stop, on top of the sniper, she finally asked the question.
"Why?!
It made no sense. There was no reason to take Mondatta's life. An omnic who preached peace, who was no threat to anyone. Why…why…
"Why would you do this?" she whispered, her voice breaking.
The tears were there, forming on the inside of her goggles. Her lips quivered, as the weight of the world fell on top of her. She'd failed. Seven years ago, she'd saved Mondatta's life, and now, that meant nothing.
Widowmaker began to chuckle, her pale lips curling into a smirk. And Lena's eyes widened. The sniper's laughter, the glint in her eyes…
Why?
The same question. One that, as she felt a blast of warm air against her back, became less about why, and more about…
What?
She turned around and her eyes, tear-filled as they were, widened as she beheld the dropship behind her. Searchlights shone on them, and she dared to hope, if only for a moment, that the authorities had come. That there was justice in the universe, and it had come to deliver judgement. To put the bitch to sleep. But none was forthcoming, as she recognized the design of the craft. Sleek and black, with curved wings, three underbelly engines, and a cockpit that was polarized in red.
A Talon dropship. Which meant that-
Widowmaker grabbed her by the collar. Pulled her close. Whispered to her, as might a spider its prey.
"Adieu, cherie."
Let herself fall off the ledge, dragging Lena with her. Kept herself aloft by her grapple. Slammed Lena against the brick wall, before rising back up to the rooftop.
The former agent yelled. Her back slammed against bricks, and her head likewise. Her chronal accelerator sparked spluttered, kicked as it was by Widowmaker at the point of impact.
I failed.
She barely remained conscious as she fell to the building below.
Mondatta is dead.
Barely felt the sensation of slamming against the building's top. Rolling across it limply, as velocity translated to motion.
And it's because of me.
Finally, coming to a stop. Coughing. Her accelerator sparking. Struggling to stand. Struggling to breathe. To stay alive.
Lying there, as her tears continued to flow.
The job was done. The hit had been made. The Widow's Kiss had taken its victim, and never again would the target's eyes see the light of day.
What to do then, with the other fly that had found its way into the web?
She could feel the beating of her heart – the blood flowing, having finally made a kill. The kill, after taking more lives than she'd been assigned for. Men who wouldn't have had to die, if the insect lying below her hadn't interfered.
A moralist might say that Tracer deserved to die. A tactician might say that she needed to. Because as tonight had shown, the insect still had bite. Let an insect fly away, and it could come back to sting you. A threat to Talon was a threat that needed to be removed. Just like Mondatta. Just like Katya Volskaya. Just like…
Gerard.
She stood there. Unmoving.
Thinking of a time seven years past. Of a time that was more often than not, little more than a blur. Of when a man had lain in a bed before her. Helpless.
Thinking of her first kill.
Two weeks.
Two weeks since the woman the world called Amelie Lacroix had been "rescued" from a Talon safehouse. Two weeks since she had been brought back to the man who believed her to be his wife – he who had hugged her kissed her, and promised her that never again would she be torn from his side. Two weeks since she had been given her own room in the target's personal estate in Sondrio – a northern Italian province, and a sparsely inhabited one at that. Far removed from the hustle and bustle of Rome and Naples, far removed from the eyes of the world, patrolled by private security. The perfect place for an Overwatch commander to direct anti-Talon operations. A perfect place for his wife to rest and recover.
The walls and surveillance drones were designed to keep enemies out. Not so much those who were within.
She lay in the bed that the target had provided her. She needed time, she'd explained, to both him and the shrink that had evaluated her. The woman with glasses and clipboard, to whom she'd wept, laughed, and cried, as the mission had demanded. There would come a time, she'd explained, when she would return to her husband's bed. When she might be held in his arms. When they would be as one, as sure as they were the day they married.
The target had accepted it and squeezed her hand. Unaware that such a time would never come.
Two weeks.
Two weeks to let Overwatch think that all was well. Two weeks, which was more than enough time, to get the layout of the estate. To plan her escape route, after the deed was done.
She lay in her bed and turned her gaze to the moon beyond her window – a crescent. Sharp, like a blade. Curved, unlike the one that she retrieved from the drawer beside her bed.
A kitchen knife. One of many, and not one that would be missed. The staff were too busy fawning over the woman they called Amelie to pay attention to much else.
She rose to her feet and glanced out at the moon. At the grounds of the estate, and how the moon cast its light over the dark grass. Taking one last lie of the land before slipping out of her night dress, and into a sweat suit, sneakers, and jeans, pocketing the knife. The moon, crescent-shaped or no, would remain unmarred. The blade, however…
She stepped out of the room, moving down the hall. Polished wood creaked beneath her feet. Portraits of men and women either side of her, dating from the Renaissance to as recent as the mid-21st century. People of privilege. People of power. People who looked at her in silent judgement, knowing what she was about to do.
Even if part of her didn't.
She clutched the knife. Fighting the urge to turn back. Within her, that spark of Amelie, trying to control her movements. That feeling which caused her heart to ache. To bid that she return. To think of a lake, and the sand between her toes…of a ring put on her finger. One that she still wore…
She fiddled with the silver around her ring finger, reminding herself of the need to wear it as part of the cover. That she was called Amelie, but not Amelie. That as the portraits looked on, while the dead might have eyes, they had no means to act.
She came to the entrance of the target's room. A steel door barred her path, standing in contrast to the wooden hallways of a building that dated back to the 17th century. It was a barrier that, according to her mission briefing, could withstand anything short of a HEAT round or high-powered direct energy weapon. But then, she didn't need to blow down the door. To be the wolf, ready to slaughter the sleeping pig. All she needed to do was press her thumb against the scanner, and watch the door to the sty open.
The target trusted her, for he believed her to be his wife.
Fool.
She stood in the doorway as the steel door slid open. She'd expected the sound of the door to wake the target up. Part of her, the part that still called herself his wife, wished it was so. For the assassin however, the opposite. Gerard Lacroix hadn't made it into Overwatch based solely on his brain, and even with her training in hand-to-hand combat…
But then, the knife.
She walked inside, the flickering light of his terminal reflecting upon her pale skin. More so than the moon, beyond the target's window as well. Silently making her way over, she plunged the knife into her left arm. Her face impassive as blood began to spill onto the desk and floor. Taking out a small, black, now bloody rectangular object.
A USB drive. One designed by Talon's engineers to be completely untraceable by any scan Overwatch might have subjected her to. Which they hadn't – the target had been so overjoyed upon getting his supposed wife back, it had never occurred to him that the one he'd called Amelie was long gone.
She plugged it into the laptop. A program began to run, beginning a download of all the laptop's data. In less than a minute, the transfer would be done. More than enough time for her to carry out the primary objective. If she was the wolf in the chicken's coop, then the chicken's neck was about to be broken.
Or slit.
She silently walked over to the target. He was breathing shallowly. Part of her remembered that he'd never been much of a snorer. They would sleep together. Make love together. Enter slumber together, and awake together.
He would never wake now, she told herself, as she clutched her knife. Its blade shining in the gloom.
Its-
"Amelie?"
She stood there. Staring. The target. He'd woken up.
"Is that you?"
It wasn't. She wasn't Amelie. She was called Amelie, but she wasn't her. Not anymore. Never again.
"Oh my God…are you bleeding?"
The blood. She'd forgotten all about it. Strange, really. Almost as strange that, in that moment, seeing the concern in his eyes, that she felt…loved.
"How did you-"
But only a moment though. For in the moment that followed, she brought the blade upward, cutting the target's neck.
He didn't scream. He couldn't, as she'd severed his wind pipe. He clutched his throat, blood pouring out of it, staining his night clothes and sheets. His eyes wide in terror. In shock. In grief. She watched his mouth open and close, as he struggled to speak. As he struggled to get out of the bed.
The way the target's mouth moved. He seemed to be asking "why?"
She gave no answer. She just pushed him onto the bed and brought the knife down into his chest.
Twice. Thrice. Four times. Then four times more. And finally, a ninth, before the target lay there. Unmoving. Unbreathing.
The man who was…who believed himself to be her husband…which he wasn't, she reminded herself…dead.
Her first kill.
Strange. The way the blood poured from his wounds, the way it flowed from hers. She felt…alive. Even as part of her was committed to the same eternal rest that the target was.
Stranger still, that she thought of spiders. Of a time long past, where a woman named Amandine had told a girl named Amelie all about them…terrifying her…
She returned to the laptop and yanked the USB out, the download having completed. Flipping open its base, she pressed a small red button. Signaling her ride that she was on her way to the extraction point.
The job was done. She ripped off part of the sweatshirt's sleeve and wrapped it around her wound. Stemming the flow of blood while the target just lay there in a pool of blood. Come the morn, one of the maids would find the body. She'd scream. Call the police, call Overwatch, call whoever she wanted. The world would wonder what would happen the woman they called Amelie Lacroix. Part of her even wondered what answer they'd come up with.
Only part. But like the part that was dying inside, the part that wept, screamed, and clawed against the inside of her mind…as she saw the body of Gerard Lacroix lying there…that was a part best ignored.
She opened the room's window and slipped out into the night.
It was odd, how the memories returned to her now, of all places.
She knew that once, she had been different. That once, she did not bear the name of Widowmaker – a name that she had been given that night. That once, she had been called Amelie Lacroix. That she had been Amelie Lacroix.
She knew that none of it mattered. Just as she knew, looking down on the body of Tracer, just as she had on Gerard's all those years ago, that the Overwatch agent should die. That it was the sound course of action. That all it would require was to pick up the Widow's Kiss, fire a single bullet, and leave in the dropship, and leave another body in her wake.
And yet…
She turned around and picked up her rifle. Her finger at the trigger.
Her legs carrying her forward, not turning back to the broken fly behind her.
The insect didn't need to die this night. One day, perhaps, if they met again, she could take her life. Experience a similar feeling to the one she had now. A feeling which was carried in her blood. With every slow beat of her withered heart, pumped through her body. Death her drug, and terror her wine.
She walked. She remembered.
Remembered how once, she had been afraid of spiders. That there had been a girl, whose mother had told her that their hearts never beat. That they felt no emotion.
But she knew the truth. She knew the true nature of spiders. Knew that at the moment of the kill…
They were never more alive.
A/N
Similar to the previous chapter, this is another case of where London Calling didn't necessitate changes.