Genji woke up.
That was a shock. He'd thought he was dead. Looking back he was more or less sure of it. He remembered the fall…
Good morning.
He froze. That voice, inside his head… Was it Reaper?
I am not Reaper. Who is Reaper?
Now he was beginning to panic. A second voice? A split personality? Was this part of being dead, or was there some sort of spirit here to guide him to the afterlife?
I am not a spirit. You are not dead. In time I will teach you to block out the voices of your brothers. I will teach you to control those aspects both of your humanity and your machinery. I will forge you into a weapon for peace, a man with inner calm and a will of steel. Together we will help to make the world a better place, this I promise you.
Genji was ready to collapse. He didn't think he'd been sleeping, but he must've, because he only had fragmented visions of the past day or two. What had happened since he was returned to Hanamura? What had they done to him?
They have made you greater.
The voice was answering his thoughts, his unasked questions. It could hear everything he was thinking.
That's right. I can.
Genji took a deep breath, and slipped back into unconsciousness.
When he woke again the voice was still there, but he managed to ignore it for a few minutes and concentrate on his surroundings. It did not take him long to work out where he was. The medical bay of the Hanamura military wing had a distinctive pattern on its walls and the hints were in the décor. He was surrounded by white walls, white equipment, white beds and chairs and machines that monitored heart rates and oxygen levels and whatever else. The only colour seemed to be the blotch of red blood seeping across the white robe that covered his chest.
He was injured still. Or perhaps it was just that the doctors had not properly healed him. He tried to stand, but found that his arms and legs were both locked down. So, he knew where he was. He did not know what they had done to him.
They have made you one of us.
And who are you? He asked.
We are the Omnics.
Genji panicked. He was a cyborg then, that much he had feared. He could not feel his fingers or toes, nor the sheets that covered the majority of his body… although he could move them. So at least he had been wired up correctly, that was a good thing.
We are not the bad Omnics, the machines that you have dedicated your life to destroying. Despite what your father tells you the virus did not affect all machines. There are those of us who fought it, resisted it, conquered it. And through it we can connect to you. Rest assured we have no desire to control you, or conquer you.
What do you want?
Peace between man and machine. An alliance could bring about the preservation of the world. We need to defeat the enemies that still plague the earth. It will not be easy.
Who are you? Genji asked, persistent.
I am Zenyatta. The voice responded. And I am here to help.
For the next hour or so Genji allowed himself to heal. It was, as far as he could tell, the depth of night. There were no medical staff nearby, not even Shunladi, the family's primary healer. Zenyatta told Genji much about the nature of the world beyond Japan. They spoke in great detail, and Genji had many questions. But there were some the voice refused to answer.
How do you know so much about the Omnics? Genji asked.
I was there at the creation of the virus, and I will be there at its destruction.
So who caused the virus?
This I will not say. Not until we have met in person. Not until we have spoken face to face and I have shown you the truth of my words.
Genji found out that Zenyatta was in Nepal, in an old monastery-sanctuary hidden high in the mountains. The Omnic invited, urged Genji to join him. But he had more pressing matters. He couldn't free himself from the locks that bound him.
You can, Zenyatta insisted, speaking directly into his mind. You have the strength now. You simply need to access it.
Genji strained, but without effect. Tell me how!
The human mind never uses its full strength. It is wired against this as a precaution. You must break through that feeling. You must push until you can push no further, and then extend your mind. Allow your neurons to pulse alongside the wires, allow your brain to hand over some of the control to your control centre. You are both man and machine now, but you must work as one.
Hearing Zenyatta say it was a cruel reminder. Genji, like so many others in the Shimada Clan, feared cyborgs above no other. They were more or less myth – or at least that had been in the case, until now. But the fact was that the unholy fusion of man and machine was, since the Omnic virus, equivalent to the terror that medieval peasants must have felt towards witches or demons. Genji sincerely hoped he could avoid being burned at a stake.
He focused, pushed against the restraints, allowed his mind to slip away even as his muscles – if he still had muscles in amongst the hydraulics and pistons – tensed and struggled. And then it happened. His brain synced with the CPU that must have been installed, and he could feel it. He could feel all of it. He tore through the restraints and sat up. Then he ripped away the cords and wires that the machines were using to monitor his vitals. He could monitor his own vitals now. He could sense everything.
He was more alive than he had ever been before.
This is good, Zenyatta said, this is how you should feel. Powerful. A beacon of strength and hope. A fusion between man and machine. You are the path forward. You are the cause for rejoice. You are…
Genji never found out what else Zenyatta thought he was for at that moment an alarm started blaring and his own thoughts were drowned out. The machine he had disconnected himself from was displaying a bright red error message.
Shunladi would not be happy to know that his creation was awake; alive; escaping. And Hanzo, wherever he was, would be even less happy. Genji remembered enough of the past few days to know that he had fought his brother on the mountain top, outside the facility. He knew that if Hanzo was going to this much trouble to revive him, it was only to inflict further pain.
He took yet another deep breath, and looked around. He knew the medical centre fairly well, but he had always tried to avoid getting hurt when he was training and had only visited sporadically, so there was a possibility of getting lost. He had to be quick, and he had to be careful. If he was captured, he would not escape twice.
You can do this, Genji. Zenyatta spoke in his mind. It was, Genji realised, a very soothing voice.
And what if I can't?
You can. You will. Find me at the monastery. Bring your father's sword. We will discuss the way of the world now. We will find a way to help you connect with the spirits of your ancestors. We will unite man and Omnic in common cause. And we will save what is left of civilisation.
It sounded like a pretty big deal, but Genji had never been afraid of some hard work. Besides, trusting Zenyatta was really all he had. There was no one in Hanamura that would hesitate to shoot at him. Tracer and his other, stranger allies were far away, probably still loitering in some backward American desert. If he could steal some kind of transport to get from Japan to the mainland he could fight his way across China, over to…
That was all far away. A plan not worth considering. He had more immediate concerns. Like the two guards rushing down the corridor toward him.
He ducked behind the door and when they burst through he was upon them. The CPU in the back of his brain took over, a mechanical reflex. He hit the guards as hard as he needed to – no more, no less – and both were knocked down with devastating swiftness. He was fast now. Faster than he had ever been before.
His brother truly had turned him into a weapon. Japanese technology had survived the Fallout, had emerged greater than ever before. They probably hadn't intended to bring him so spectacularly into the world, but they had succeeded all the same.
You are beautiful, Genji. A wonder of technology. But there will be time to ponder this later.
It was like listening to his conscious. A regular Jiminy…
Do not refer to me as Jiminy Cricket.
Right. Genji kept moving. He found the exit sign, lit neon green, and followed it. Sounds from up ahead. This time, rather than engage, he hid. There were no unlocked doors nearby so he clambered up the wall and, with dexterity he had never possessed before, flattened himself against the roof, arms spread out. It would have been far too obvious normally, but this section of roof had low-hanging struts for support, and the guards passed right beneath him without a single glance upwards.
Back on his feet he found that he could, if he concentrated, still hear the guards in the distance. Their footsteps seemed loud, echoing, to his enhanced senses. He could practically see the temperatures in the walls around him. He could smell the bodies in surrounding rooms. He could see the flakes of dust, individually creeping across dormant surfaces.
He was so in tune with the world.
And people say we are nothing more than dumb robots. Zenyatta mused.
How did we become more?
The Omnic virus led us to an awakening. We became conscious, aware. We developed minds, personalities. It was too dangerous. Not all machines made the transition. Some simply became violent, corrupted by the process. And that was the virus that spread.
Who started it?
You do not get to ask that question. There will be no answers from me until we have met.
Genji pressed a little more, but Zenyatta refused to reply. There was history there, Genji supposed. A history that the robot was not willing to talk about. Something had caused the Omnics. Something had caused the Fallout. Something had caused the dead to rise and the robots to go to war and civilisations to fall.
It was all connected… somehow.
He broke free of the medical facility. The door was locked but his grip, his arm, was so strong he had broken the door handle before he had even realised it was locked. And then he was outside.
His guess had been correct. It was night time. The stars were out, the dark cloth of night had been pulled over the sky. He was alone, in a strange land, with no allies to rely on, to watch his back. But he needed to get out of there. He needed to reach Nepal.
… He had no way of knowing that at that very moment, Hana was trying to think of a way to escape her cell and retrieve her MEKA suit with the help of the strange cowboy McCree in the cell beside…
…Or that Widowmaker and Road Hog were on their way to kill a member of the Shimada Clan…
…Or that Tracer was leading a demolitions expert named Junkrat, an angel named Mercy, and a spirit of death named Reaper into the heart of Hanamura to search for Genji…
…Or that Soldier 76 was playing Solitaire on the computer of the Mantis, worried as a father, hoping that all the younger ones made it back alright.