Widowmaker stalks down the well lit hallway, hugging the wall, and cradling the useless pulse rifle in her arms. Her ears straining at every sound as she tries door after door, seeing which ones the guard's ID's will open.
She doesn't have a plan, not really. She could escape, get away, but then what? Go back to constantly running, constantly looking over her shoulder while her body shuts down?
If she hangs on long enough Reyes will come for her. He has enough guilt over Lacroix's death that she could ask him to launch himself into the sun and he'd at least make it as far as stealing a rocket. But can she even wait that long?
The next door, a janitorial closet, it too is locked but with a cheap metal contraption. After a moment's hesitation Widowmaker rams the stock of the rifle at the latch once, twice, then the door swings open.
No, she decides, rigging the door to stay closed behind her, Talon would never let such an expensive project escape them twice. The lights flicker on revealing paper towels, soaps, cleaners, extension cords, buckets, and mops.
If Talon gets their hands on her again, they'll put that damned silence back in her head. Oh, and she'd been so easy to control back then, hadn't she? Go over here. Kill that person. Do this and you'll be safe. They just had to make her feel special, a little bit of praise. Wind her up and watch her go.
The ripples of her hospital gown lets her know she is shaking. She squeezes her eyes shut.
And Gérard, how could she forget Gérard? After she'd killed Gerard all she'd wanted to do was crawl into a hole and die. She'd just wanted the pain to stop.
She glances at the purple letters stained across her right arm, Cauchemar. And that plan had worked out wonderfully, hadn't it?
"Assez!" she hisses fighting to get her body under control.
She knows who she is, she knows where she is, and she knows what she wants.
She might not be able to get away but she can cause thirty to fifty billion euros worth of damage easily. And she likes that idea - she likes it a lot.
Blue fingers adorned with stiff bandages work at forcing the plastic shell covering the computer terminal apart. The plastic bends but the knife slips and Widowmaker loses her leverage. She swears and starts again. Nearby, glass cracks and pops as all the lab's petri dishes and test tubes had been forced inside the incubator set on 'high.' A shredder works diligently in the background at the textbook sized collection of documents that have been put in its maw. The plastic covering snaps off and Widowmaker hums in satisfaction. Mindless destruction is rather fun - maybe Reaper was onto something.
She steps away, walking past a trembling Talon researcher kneeling next to a pile of surrendered ID tags, smart watches, and phones on the floor. She stops at the sink as the researcher sitting near it, hands on his head, resolutely stares at the wall. Widowmaker fills up a water bottle and walks back to the shattered terminal.
She dumps the entire bottle into the exposed computer, listening to the electronics hiss and sputter as it becomes a hunk of useless metal. A researcher whimpers at the sound of thousands of hours of data lost.
Widowmaker muses because somewhere, Sombra is screaming, and she doesn't know why.
From the floor a clatter rings out as the pile of electronic devices light up and begin buzzing, numerous ringtones fighting against each other. Picking a phone up reveals to Widowmaker that an alert has been issued to clear this floor. The edge of her lip ticks up.
The squadron of twelve Talon soldiers advances slowly down the dark and silent floor. Scope flashlights illuminate dark corners not reached by the red emergency light in pale circles. One circle stops at a point on a nearby wall, revealing a rough triangle cut into the drywall and severed wires dangling from it, before returning to search formation. The rustling of combat uniforms and the squadron's breathing were the only sounds.
Squadron leader Silver blinks a bead of sweat out of her eye. She doesn't like this. The Rome job had been rough: around half the stealth armors were out from damage along with three of her men for the same reason. O'Deorain had refused to give her more information about this ex-operative they were hunting down. The gig smelled fishy.
They had already cleared the two blacked out floors below. Empty. In all likelihood the next three would be the same and the target would be hiding in a broom closet somewhere.
Silver licks her lips. She just has to trust in her team.
"Contact," a voice rings through the comms, "This is Bing, I've spotted an object at the end of fifth east hallway. It appears to be a discarded weapon."
"Section secure?" Silver asks
"Yes, ma'am, secure and empty. Permission to investigate?"
It's probably the locked pulse rifle that was taken off a guard. The target realized it was useless and dropped it for a quicker getaway.
"Granted, Big C go join him," Silver says. "Eyes up, looks like we've got a runner."
A round of Yes ma'am, affirmative, and grunts follow but are cut short by an agonized scream and pulse shots.
There's no need for an order, as the soldiers close to the east side take off while the ones on the periphery take up defensive positions moving inward.
"No enemy! Hold fire!" shouts Big C.
Silver shifted around the corner to find an empty hallway with two of her men on the ground. A quick glance confirms a dead-end.
"Hold fire, section empty," she repeats.
Bing is laying prostrate against the wall opposite of the rifle he found, limbs splayed in all directions, looking as if he was thrown into the wall. Big C kneels over him already removing gear to check for vital signs.
Silver swears. "This is a distraction." She turns on her comm, "Alpha guard the perimeter, everyone else continue sweep."
"He's breathing but his heart rate is irregular," Big C reports, "We need medical here."
The confirmation from medical sounds in her comms but Silver ignores it focusing on the pulse rifle left in a darkened corner and jostled slightly by Bing's investigation. The look of the rifle isn't quite right, something is wrong with the coloring. She carefully pokes at the stock with her combat knife pulling it around. As it moves a thick black cord tapped to the floor appears. Her scope light follows the cord along the tile and then up the wall to where it ends pulled into an electrical outlet. Silver's eyes snap back to the discolored portion now seeing that they are roughly stripped lines of copper wrapped around the gun.
"Damnit."
"Ma'am," the medic called her attention, "His heartbeat is erratic; he needs to be med-evaced."
Silver nods and adds "Shiv, go with them."
Big C slings Bing over his back and the party of four heads out.
"Man down north side we need medical!" comes through the comms with colorful swearing in the background.
"God dammit."
The site on the north side is not a pretty one. Another one of her soldiers on the ground this time a puddle of blood around them. Fortunately, the soldier had the presence of mind to apply a tourniquet to her leg to prevent further blood loss.
"Hit a trip wire moving towards the east corner, then the target cut her upper calf while she was down," explains Dice pointing out the thin line strung between two doorways in the darkness.
The wounded soldier is hoisted up on the shoulders of a teammate and together they start to walk towards the exit. Silver's eyes linger on the soldier's limp foot as they move further into the darkness. She doesn't like this.
"Change of plans, boys," Silver announces.
"Breach!" shouts Dice as he wrenches open the metal door, a flash bang sails into the new opening and baptizes the office in painful light. The team of three rushes in, opening every door, turning over every desk and cabinet.
Subtlety was never Silver's forte after all.
The target had been singling out soldiers using the darkness and surprise to account for their lack of strength. This approach corrects for that and should shake the target out of wherever she is hiding.
"Beta sited target!" Crackles through the comm system, "Fleeing south."
"Copy!" Silver replies, leading Alpha to a jog, "Pursue, push the target towards the south stairs. Charlie move to new location."
The elevators had been shut down; they could trap the target in the stairwell.
Silver pushes to the front of the pack determined to keep the target making a mockery of her soldiers in sight. The silhouette of her prey flitters in the corner of her eye and around a corner. She pivots and sprints after the figure catching the tail end of the target's ponytail in the circle of her flashlight. A door slides shut in front of her.
Coming to a stop Silver signals for her team to stop and remain silent. Dice gets into position at the door. Silver readies a flashbang and the other soldiers fall into line behind her. Dice holds up a hand. Five, four, three, two, one.
"Breach!"
Widowmaker covers her ears, screws her eyes shut, and relaxes her jaw. Her eyelids light up pink and ringing fill her ears. The door is forced open and armored Talon soldiers pour in guns up, textbook formation and timing like clockwork. Perfect.
Pushing off the edge of the oak bookcase Widowmaker leaps from her perch toward the door. Pulse fire lights up the dim office but her fingers find the edge of the doorframe and dig in. Her grip lasts long enough to transform her momentum from a fall into a swing and her feet hit the chest of the last Talon (and smallest) soldier to file in. Widowmaker and the soldier crash into the floor together back in the hallway. She springs up and slams the emergency override for the office door, a battery-operated failsafe for a five-minute lockdown. Pounding erupts from inside and the metal flexes but the lock holds.
The movement of shadowy reflection in the stainless steel is all the warning Widowmaker gets. She spins around to meet the muzzle of a pulse rifle. The soldier squeezes the trigger.
Widowmaker side-steps towards her attacker and traps the handguard under her arm, pinning the gun to the side of her body. The pulse fire continues to scorch the floor as the soldier pulls and twists at their gun. Widowmaker holds onto whatever parts she can and thrusts the gun back into the soldier. Once, twice, their grip slackens Widowmaker reals back and then slams it into the chest plate, face plate. Wrenching the gun completely free a hard kick to the head takes the soldier down.
Gun hand restrained by her foot, her full weight on their chest, and a knife at their throat Widowmaker has the soldier pinned. Widowmaker peers through the cracked faceplate and into the bloodied unfocused eyes of a woman.
She starts and then chides herself. She targeted the smallest statured soldier; she knew this was a possibility. She needs to kill the soldier and move before the door gives. The woman's labored breathing is steady, clearly not aware of the danger she is in.
But why? The thought persists in Widowmaker's mind. Why does she have to die? Enemies must be eliminated. But the soldier is down and it's not like she's a real enemy anyways. She is part of Talon. Those scientists are a part of Talon, why didn't she kill them? They were just doing their job. And so is the soldier. And so many times so was she.
Widowmaker snarls and grabs the soldier's neck, squeezing the arteries under her palms. The soldier gasps and claws at her grip, kicking uselessly.
Damn her. Silver's right cross hits the metal door like a shot from a cannon. Damn her for falling for such an obvious trap. The next punch rattles the door, lock, and surrounding wall. Damn her for letting another one of her team get picked off by that thing. Another blow, the metal tears and warps. Finally.
Silver steps away, breathing harshly through her nose, letting the others through. Dice and Big C pull at the fissure making it larger, the metal shrieks and squeals with every heave. Silver's chest plate and shoulder covers are already on the ground when the gap reaches the size of a Talon helmet.
"Charlie prepare for target, Alpha and Beta are detained, I am in pursuit," Silver barks into the comms before removing her helmet and shoving her body through the gap.
She is the only one of the group that can fit and they can't risk the target doubling back. Sharp edges press into her back and hips leaving long scrapes under clothing. Silver wriggles through the hole as it collapses on the other side. The body of the missing soldier, Pam, sprawled out at her feet surrounded by scorch marks and stripped of her boots.
"Man down," barks Silver at her team, widening the gap behind her.
She tears down the dark empty hallway not caring if she damages the tile floor. She hears the target trying to call an elevator up ahead and the target can absolutely hear her. She whips around the corner to the elevator, slides past them, and shoves the door open to the stairwell. Between a soldier rushing up the stairs, down the stairs, and herself they have trapped – a bucket.
Silver, gasping for breath, stares uncomprehendingly at the yellow industrial grade container with water and a few paper towels in it that sits in the empty stairwell.
"What the hell-" she gets out before breaking down coughing and wheezing.
"Squadron leader," one of the soldiers croaks before starting to cough as well.
Silver covers her face with her shirt, in an attempt to block out the smell of burning garlic.
"It's gas!" The second soldier gets out and they flee the enclosed corridor.
They emerge wheezing and red eyed. The office door has been forced open now and Dice calls for medical. He reports that Pam is alive but concussed. Silver grunts out her thanks in between puffs of oxygen but her gray eyes glitter with malice
A handful of men in critical condition, others injured that would keep them out of the field for months, all by an enemy they never saw. She hadn't just been defeated; she had been humiliated.
But she did have one thing going for her. The gas in the stairwell was rising and making movement to a higher floor impossible until they got the proper equipment. The target had gone up.
Unnoticed to all, in the elevator car that had been stopped on the floor less than an hour ago, a new black smudge rests on the stainless-steel handrail and the maintenance panel in the ceiling remains slightly off set as if it has been used recently.
In the pitch black of the shaft above Widowmaker climbs another length of the thick wire cable greatly aided by her newly acquired boots and gloves.
"Stupid-stupid-stupid-stupid-stupid-stupid," Tracer mutters as the entire carriage jostles as the van continues flying down the highway.
This was the absolutely dumbest thing she'd done in a long while. Rescuing Widowmaker, who hates her guts, by voluntarily helping Sombra, a elite hacker with no allegiances, and Reaper, a undead mass murder, break into a Talon base? No. This was resetting the bar on bad decisions. Oh, Winston's blood pressure is going to shoot through the roof when he hears about this. And then she'll get the "Lena they don't make hypertension medication for gorillas!" lecture again.
"Stupid-stupid," she berates herself one last time sliding the flathead attachment of her multitool under a temperature sensor. Her Accelerator is laid open before her, the outer frame removed, ever so carefully she lifts a heat sensor off the inner coil a few millimeters. The air inside the Accelerator will take slightly longer to reach the max temperature than the metal giving her a little bit more blink time. Of course, that will mean the Accelerator will get hotter and stay hotter longer, but she has a feeling she's going to need every second she can get.
Sombra and Reaper are at the front of the van arguing. Sombra is in the driver seat as far away from her Accelerator as possible with Reaper's massive form blocking the hacker's view of the inner workings.
"-look! Dios, satellites finally found Widow's tracker," Sombra says, catching Tracer's attention.
"But Talon destroyed- You stuck a tracker on Widowmaker!" Tracer accuses.
"Yeah, I slipped some nanos on her because she owes me three seventy-five for lunch." Sombra turns around and glares over Reaper's shoulder. "I tagged her because she straight up vanished for eight months. Yeesh." She turns back. "Besides, don't be jealous I put one on you too."
"What!"
"Sombra, focus," Reaper demands.
"Ah, fine, fine. So, we know who took her and where they took her, but we don't know why or how," Sombra trails off. "Oh."
"What?"
"Okay, so I think I know how they shut her down but first," Sombra raises her hands into the air.
"Sombra."
"First you gotta promise you won't get mad."
"Sombra," a haze is rising off of Reaper now, "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. This time. You know the creepy red headed doctor?"
"Yes."
"Well, our-" Sombra's eyes flicker to Tracer's in the rearview mirror. "Our big guy brought her back on payroll. And she knows Widow's command codes."
"Oh," Reaper says, the smoggy air dramatically lessens.
"Oh? Just oh?"
"I have contacts outside of Talon. I like her," Reaper says, "You didn't have to hide this from me."
"Well excuse me, you try to kill all your old coworkers!"
"And they earned it!"
"Excuse me!" Tracer calls out waving her hands, "Hey! Hi. You want to expand the "command code" part? Cause that sounds really bad for us."
"It's a set of special words or phrases that activate dormmate conditioning," Reaper says.
"So, with a single word that doctor could make Widow kill all of us?"
Sombra shrugs. "Eh, fifty-fifty chance honestly, Widow hasn't been really keen on following orders these days. We can assume the sleep command works but beyond that we don't know. Like there's one to "reset" her, which just sounds like a load of bull to me. And a failsafe word that's supposed to just straight up kill her but how are you going to test that?"
"Wait," Reaper interrupts, "How do you know- Have you been blackmailing Widowmaker with her command codes? Dios dame paciencia. No wonder she kept put hits out on you!"
"Hey, hey, hey! I didn't know there was anyone still in there! I just didn't want to get shanked after Talon got bored with me." Sombra jabs a finger at Reaper. "At least I didn't ignore her existence for a year and a half in favor of a murder spree!"
"The Lacroixs were dead, I was avenging them!" Reaper defended. Was he sulking? "How was I supposed to know? She was blue." He was definitely sulking.
Tracer plays with the straps of her harness, jumping out of the vehicle into high-speed traffic has never been so appealing. Her Accelerator is recharged. She'd be fine. Sombra and Reaper obviously have a history with Widow and she doesn't. She's eighty percent sure they can pull this off without her.
But she can't just abandon Widow.
She knows what it's like to have your entire life, your passion, your identity, your future, ripped out from underneath you. The public doesn't know because she's so much better now, but she was a bloody mess immediately after the Slipstream accident. An ugly crying, hysterical mess. She screamed for like a week before she got her head back on straight.
And she doesn't even want to think about where she might be if not for Angela's soothing presence, Winston's grounding determination, her family visiting, and her mates from the flight program breaking in to lift her spirits.
To go through something like that alone, in a terrorist organization, even if she did have these joker's help.
No one deserves that.
Tracer pulls on her straps syncing the Accelerator on tight. She feeds some Slipstream energy into it, the core spins up in response. She pushes more energy revving into first gear, second, third, and then down into reverse. The Accelerator shifts frequencies without hesitation before settling back down into purrs on her chest, like it's begging to go test its new limits.
Tracer sighs. She is so fired.
I'm back! For five seconds. I do have the entire story outlined I just have to, you know, write all of it. And I will now that I've made it through the worst of grad program just slowly because I missed sleep and people.
Translations
I'apple du vide - call of the void
Cauchemar - nightmare
Assez - focus
Dios - god
Dios dame paciencia - God give me patience (because if you give me strength I'm going to kill everyone)
Sombra and Reaper are not good people. Sombra and Reaper are trying their bests. These two statements can coexist.
Widow back lit by Talon in flames: Burn it all!
Tracer: I know technically this is worse, but I feel better about it.
Reaper upon seeing a mouthy but highly skilled Hispanic in deep shit and a brooding traumatized murder two (2) separate times: My children now.
I made Pinterest boards for these idiots a long time ago. Come take a look if you're interested under username VWolfgang