"The brightest light casts the darkest shadow."

Jess C. Scott


Let There Be Light

Utopaea.

Some idiot's pun on utopia. The first, and so far only, city made entirely of hard-light in India, and indeed, the world. The crown jewel of the Vishkar Corporation, A shining beacon of peace and prosperity to a country shattered by war, and a world that wasn't much better. Utopaea, Vishkar said, was progress. Utopaea represented the future. Utopaea was the template through which the world's last remnants of poverty would be eradicated, and the last scars of the Omnic Crisis healed.

Vishkar said a lot of things, she reflected. And most of them were basura. It wasn't as Vishkar was any less a collection of vipers than the other megacorporations that dominated planet Earth, but of all of them, there was the widest gulf the image that Vishkar represented, and the reality. A shining city on the hill (technically a floodplain, but whatever) at home, a ruthless, borderline paramilitary force on the other side of the world. Peace and tranquillity in India, security forces in Brazil and Iraq grounding down anyone who resisted their development projects. Peace and prosperity down the barrel of a gun.

Hypocrites, the lot of them. But the world had always been run by hypocrites, and despite the dreams of some in Talon, always would be.

Which was fine, she told herself. As long as hypocrites existed, there'd be those who wanted to join their ranks, or cast them down, climb the golden ladder, and become hypocrites themselves. As long as there were hypocrites, there was conflict, and as long as there was conflict, she had a steady stream of dinero.

So, with a breath that most definitely wasn't based on any kind of fear or trepidation, with her duffel bag slung over her side, she headed for the city's southern entrance. A giant gate with flashing signs above, with two lanes for traffic going in and out. Beside each were pathways for those on foot, each sub-divided between the little people (those in the long queues), and those with sufficient privilege to have their travel expedited. Despite the fact that everything was made of hard-light, and that the vehicles humming in and out on lev-rims were something of the mid-21st century, she reflected that Utopaea was not unlike the fortresses that had existed on this sub-continent for millennia.

Big walls, big gate, enduring as empires rose and fell. As conquerors came and went, as kings lived and died, as the cycle of hypocrisy continued. Outside Utopaea was fertile land where people lived as they always had – breaking backs, paying tax, barely seeing any of that money re-invested outside Utopaea itself. At the end of the Omnic Crisis, Girik Vishkar had declared his intention to rebuild India, and in a sense, he'd succeeded. In another…

Well, she didn't have to dwell on that. Her life in Mexico had hardly been any better. Same war, same destruction, same rebuilding, just replace Vishkar with LumériCo. And same hijos de puta running the country from behind the scenes. If she had any sense of national pride left, or even common morality, she might have wept.

Though at the least, LumériCo had brought light to Mexico, literally and figuratively, with its network of fusion plants. For India, in many ways, things were worse than they had been before the Crisis. Like LumériCo, Vishkar brought light. Unlike LumériCo, that light was hard.

She approached the check-in area, taking note of the armoured drones lazily drifting through the air above. Flashing her card to a bored looking employee, he shooed her ahead to the check-in proper. The one reserved for high ranking Vishkar employees.

So far, so good. She'd passed the first barrier, but it was here that things would get interesting.

"Hello," she said to the security clerk.

The woman looked back at her. Fat, bored, wrinkled cheeks and forehead, no doubt counting down the minutes to the end of her shift. Which was good. Boredom and impatience worked in an infiltrator's favour.

"Name?"

"Rani Singh." She handed the woman her ID card. "Special Research & Development."

All of it was a lie. Her name wasn't Rani Singh, it was Olivia Colomar, though the alias she went by these days was "Sombra." Nor was she part of Vishkar Special R&D, or a member of Vishkar at all. And nor was she speaking Hindi, even if the clerk perceived her words as such.

The woman typed on her keyboard, a holographic screen appearing above her. Nothing happened.

"Something wrong?" Sombra asked.

"It's being slow today."

"Ah. I know the feeling."

She didn't. She was the best damn hacker on this planet, she didn't let her computers be slow. If you were slow on the streets, you were dead. And it was a philosophy she'd taken with her, be it the digital realm or otherwise.

"Ah, it's working," said the clerk, before scanning the card. "Let's see…"

There was a lot that the clerk might see, but a lot that she wouldn't. For instance, if she'd been looking at the woman before her as she spoke, if she'd really been paying attention, she might have seen that Sombra's mouth wasn't lining up with the words she was seemingly speaking. Underneath the Vishkar uniform she'd appropriated, she might have just made out a faint purple glow as an implanted vocaliser translated English into Hindi. Or, similarly, the earpiece in her right lobe that translated the natives' languages into Spanish through a wire directly linked into her brain.

She'd already picked up some of the latter language up, adding it to her repertoire of Spanish, English, Portuguese, and even French (it had been a long summer, and mutilating Lacroix's language was always enjoyable). But if she was going to present herself as a Vishkar employee, she wanted to sound the part. Look the part as well, but that was less of an issue. People came from all over the world to work in Utopaea. A Mexican woman with an Indian name was hardly out of the ordinary. She was wearing Vishkar's standard white and blue outfit, removed her ear piercings, and made her hair presentable.

Clothes made the woman as much as the man. And sometimes, the queen bee could play the drone.

"Alright, everything checks out," said the clerk, as she handed the card back. "Have a good day."

"Thank you," she smiled. "I will."

For a moment, she wondered what would happen to the clerk if this intrusion was traced back to her. Fired, at the least. At the worst…well, Vishkar had a way of making life very unpleasant for those it deemed worthy of its wrath.

"If I may ask, why on foot?"

She stopped short, as she glanced back at the desk clerk.

"I thought you types were able to catch a ride. Use the Citadel's heliport."

Sombra shrugged, and smiled. "What can I say? I wanted to see how the other half lived."

The woman didn't convinced. She couldn't have guessed that Sombra didn't have the means to arrange transport right to the Citadel itself, or that the card she'd flashed was entirely her own creation. That if she searched in Vishkar's personnel database hard enough, questions would start to pile up. She could, if she wanted, order the drones or security guards to do their thing, and probably had the right to do it.

"Fine. Whatever."

But in the end, apathy won out.

It always did.


She didn't want to be impressed.

She really, really didn't want to be impressed.

She knew what Vishkar was, and what it did. She knew that for all of Talon's terrorist actions (and they were terrorists, she wouldn't lie to herself), there was at least some twisted code of honour involved. Akande had his philosophy, he'd brought the group into that philosophy after Vialli had been thrown off a roof, and while Sombra had some unease as to where that philosophy would lead (not least of all due to Akande's links with Null Sector), Talon at least stood for something. Its brand of social Darwinism would have made the actual Charles Darwin recoil, but then, no matter the ideology, the human race found all sorts of reasons to kill each other, and all sorts of means as well. Even building robots to do the killing for them.

And yet, as she walked through the city of Utopaea, she found her cynicism evaporating. She'd memorized its layout, studied satellite scans, even logged onto Google Earth, but to actually be here on foot, to stand in the shadow of shimmering towers of light…

She tried to keep her head down, and her heart steady. It was all a façade, she reminded herself. The residential areas around the wall's perimeter? The shining blue-white towers of solid light? The public transport, the teleporter gates, the drones tending the fields of mangoes and guava with gentle hands? It was beautiful, yes, but it was beauty that Vishkar kept for itself. It was true that India had suffered the triple whammy of war with Pakistan, the Omnic Crisis, and climate collapse across the 21st century, and it was just as true that Vishkar had helped it rebuild from all three calamities, but what Vishkar built for itself, and what it built for others, was clear as day. Outside the walls, people toiled in abject poverty. Inside them…well, it was a slice of Heaven. Cielo.

Utopia.

She frowned, and quickened her pace. Activating her internal chrono, her cybernetic implants did their work and displayed the local time on the inside of her eyes – 15:37, local time. She had 53 minutes left to enter the Citadel, find the target, do her job, and exfiltrate. At her current pace, she estimated that she'd reach the Citadel at 15:52, which gave her just over half an hour until deadline. Had she not been one of the most wanted criminals on the planet, she'd have taken one of the solar-powered trams or busses that hovered through the streets, but the further she was from any kind of surveillance the better. There were some things that she couldn't avoid, such as the drones at the gates, but while she'd prepared for that, it was better to be safe than sorry.

She smirked. Sometimes.

She quickened her pace, and despite reminding herself as to why she was here, she looked around. People from all corners of the world, working for Vishkar, or just living out their lives. Mostly humans, some omnics, all of them wearing the same white and blues of the corporation. The sun beat down from ahead, but its heat was dissipated by the rows of trees that lined the streets, and Vishkar's climate control system – literally sucking the heat out of the air. A technology that, like many things, the people of the world needed, and didn't always receive. There were many self-sustaining cities like Utopaea in India, but many more that weren't.

Not to mention the rest of the world.

She grit her teeth, and quickened her pace. She remembered what heat was like. Before her grafts had been installed, regulating her body temperature. She remembered the heat of Mexico City in the orphanage – sitting on a balcony, sipping dirty water, begging the matrons to turn the aircon on, which they refused due to the price of electricity. She'd seen people succumb to heat stroke, or, just as often, despair. She'd never run the numbers, but she suspected that Mexico had lost more people to suicide after the Omnic Crisis than the war itself. And while that didn't-

"Oof!"

She stumbled, as something ran into her. Instinct caused her to reach for her firearm, before she reminded herself that she didn't even have a holster. And considering that the something that had run into her was actually a someone

"Sorry," the boy whispered.

There were a few lines that Sombra had never crossed. Harming children was one of them.

"It's fine," she said. "No harm, no foul, eh?"

He stared at her. "You speak Urdu?"

She shrugged, reflecting that the vocaliser could sometimes do too good a job. "My tongue's got many talents." Or so I've been told a few times.

"Sure sounds like it."

Kid, you have no idea.

She knew she should keep going. The longer this went on, the shorter she had to carry out the operation, not to mention the risk of ruining the brat's childhood innocence. But something, somehow, kept her in place. Caused her to stand stiffly and look down at the boy in front her.

Ten years old by her reckoning. Same blue and white uniform that all the people of Utopaea wore. If he spoke Urdu, chances were he was from Pakistan (or his parents were), but his fairer-than-average skin and blue eyes suggested Eurasian ancestry as well. If Utopaea was the proverbial melting pot of India, then along the way, you got a few mongrels.

But more than anything else, it was the blue visor that got to her, plus the controller in his hands. It took her only a second to realize why he'd bumped into her.

"Sorry, I was playing Vivi Tracker. There's a bobo-bobo somewhere around here, and it's going to disappear soon."

She forced a smile. "I'm sure you'll find it."

She began walking again – past the gardens, past the drones, past the throngs of humanity.

"Do you like Vivi Tracker?"

Alas, the brat wouldn't stop following her.

"I've collected all of the Cave Patrol, but I'm still five short of the Bone Brigade."

"Fascinating," Sombra murmured.

"I know, right? My dads say I spend too much time on AR games, but hey, gets me out."

Sombra remained silent. Something was clutching at her chest, and she didn't know why.

Liar.

Alright, she did know why. She just didn't want to admit it.

"So what games are you into?"

Seeing the brat wasn't giving up, Sombra looked down at him and said, "all kinds."

"What kind of kinds?"

"VR more than AR, for starters."

"Oh." He looked disappointed. "Other way for me. VR gives me a headache."

She shrugged. "To each their own."

Or not. VR was common, ranging from games, to simulation, to more…esoteric pursuits. What was less common was her ability to directly jack-into VR systems, to give her sensations that no-one else could dream of experiencing. When she'd first started jacking, she'd been crippled for days by migraines, but now, it was her analgesic. In a world with as much pain as this one – pain that she'd experienced as much as caused – she needed something to take the edge off.

Like now?

Once again, she picked up the pace. Once again, the brat kept following her.

"You going to the Citadel?"

"Something like that."

"Oh." The kid seemed to realize that his presence wasn't wanted, yet still wouldn't stop talking. "It's just that my dads work there. They're both security guards."

"That's nice to know and…" She stopped talking, stopped walking, and looked at the kid. "Wait. Did you say security guards?"

"Yeah. They get to wield guns and stuff!"

Even with her cybernetics maintaining a body temperature of 36.5 degrees, Sombra felt a chill run through her. For a second, she was tempted to ask the boy when they got off shift. Where they were stationed. What their security rating was.

"Do they…"

But only for a moment, as she reminded herself of the facts.

First one being that she couldn't look at the boy before her and feel a pang of envy. She'd never known her parents. Like so many children at the end of the Omnic Crisis, she'd been found in the rubble. Taken to an orphanage, given a computer-generated name (as no-one could identify her biological family), and been tended to as best the staff of the Orfanato del Sagrado Corazón could manage. As she'd integrated herself into hacker circles, as the grafts had accumulated, as her skills in hacking had increased, she'd been tempted on more than one occasion to track down her birth parents. Tempted, and every time, refused it. The only name that mattered to her was the hacker alias she'd chosen. Digging up the past was only a distraction.

The second fact was that regardless of whatever envy she felt for this child, regardless of whatever guilt she might have in regard to what she was about to do, she couldn't change course. She had the mission. She had the target. Talon had given her orders, her mole had given her an in, and whatever unease she had about Akande's wider plans, the spoils of this operation benefitted her as much as her masters. Throwing it away for some brat…

She wouldn't harm children. But harming her own objectives was another line she refused to cross.

"Ma'am? You alright?"

"Fine," she said. "Say, what's your name?"

"Sadiq. Sadiq Khan."

"Well, Sadiq, it's been a pleasure meeting you (not really). But I've got a meeting in the Citadel, so I better get going." Y'know, people to kill.

"Oh, right. Hey, do you know my dads?"

She shrugged. "Probably not."

The boy said something else, but already, she was moving out of earshot. Headed towards the shining, shimmering structure located in the heart of the city. The one that cast a long shadow, as the sun moved towards the horizon.

No, she didn't know who Sadiq's parents were.

And she hoped she never would.


"Welcome to the Citadel, home of the Vishkar Corporation. Your service is always appreciated."

Sombra rolled her eyes as the giant hologram continued to speak. Rolled them so hard that she was surprised that they didn't fall out of their sockets and join a roller derby.

"I'm Brahma, the operating AI of Vishkar Headquarters, more commonly referred to as the Citadel. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to use one of the terminals."

Was it sacrilegious to name an AI after a Hindu god? It wasn't as if there wasn't a precedent for such a thing, as the so-called god programs had demonstrated, but then, unlike Greek and Egyptian mythologies, Hinduism was still alive and well in this part of the world.

"Thank you, and remember – at Vishkar, we're family."

Then again, one deity was just as useless as another in her view. If God (or gods) did exist, if the Hindus or anyone else had the right of it, no supernatural entity had been there for her, or any of her other fellow orphans at Sagrado Corazón. No angel had saved Stephano from his date with gravity, no prophet had prevented Maribel from overdosing, no multi-limbed elephant had saved Dani from the bullets that had hit her from five directions. If gods did exist in this world, it seemed to her that the only gods were humans themselves. Beings that had created artificial life, and had nearly been destroyed by it.

Beings that, like the god programs, took the names of gods, and set about remaking the world in their image.

AIs like the four-faced Brahma among them. She doubted he was a literal god program, but if so, wouldn't have been surprised. Vishkar had got away with literal murder, so breaking the Metzen Declaration on the Development & Restriction of Artificial Intelligence was small fry. So as she headed to the check-in desk of the Citadel's ground level, she tried to ignore the fifteen feet tall holographic deity, and concentrate on the job at hand.

"Hello," she said, to the man at the desk. "Checking in."

Unlike the clerk she'd seen at the city limits, the man here was prim and alert. Silently, he extended a hand, and silently, she handed him her ID card. Praying to non-existent gods that it would pass muster.

In the few seconds that passed, she looked around the ground floor of the Citadel, and found it just as the mole had described. Brahma prattling on, and giant portraits mounted on hard-light walls, displaying the COs of the corporation – Girik Vishkar, Senani Modi, Jack Ryan…You could chart Vishkar's rise from national, to international, to megacorporation just from its Cos, she reflected. You could also look around and see what type of organization Vishkar was just from the lobby of the Citadel.

The name itself gave it away. "Citadel." Fortress. The keep of the city. A structure made entirely out of hard-light that was both beautiful and cold. Employees just like her dressed in the same white and blue. A holographic map mounted on the wall, showing every city where Vishkar had a presence (more than she cared for). Opposite the sliding doors of the lobby were teleporters that could take you to any number of entry points within the structure, located behind scanner-arches that would pick up anything from firearms to more esoteric devices.

And around the perimeter of the lobby, a circle of guards. Each wearing kevlar, each talking into an earpiece at odd intervals, each carrying a sonic rifle. A type of weapon that used sound-waves at low settings to incapacitate the masses. At high settings…well, suffice to say, having your organs liquified wasn't a pleasant way to go.

She turned her gaze back to the man in front of her. He was still staring at the screen, hand to his chin.

"There a problem?" She murmured.

"I'm having trouble finding you in the system," he said, his eyes not meeting hers.

Sombra remained silent, though inside, she was screaming. The security card she'd conjured should have worked like a charm. She'd created it herself, and used code provided by her mole. But now?

Ayúdame, si esto no funciona, derribaré este lugar con mis propias manos!

She glanced around the room. Micro-cameras dotted the walls. They weren't a problem in of themselves – a facial weave was being generated over her face, so that while people on the ground saw one thing (the face of "Olivia Colomar"), any camera, drone, or other electronic device saw "Rani Singh" – member of Vishkar R&D, satisfactory field agent, but not among the big boys. She could have tried hacking them, but there was so much surveillance here, even outside the Citadel, that she'd deemed it too risky.

No, the problem with the micro-cameras was that based on the schematics her mole had provided her with, in the event of an emergency, they would activate sentry turrets firing with pin-point position to wear her down, while the security officers moved in for the kill. It was why even sprinting for one of the teleporters at the back was out of the question, given the level of firepower that could be levied at her. And while she could cloak, the problem there was-

"We have a problem."

Her heart skipped a beat as the guard put a scanner on the desk.

"You're not in the system. I need a finger-scan."

She frowned. "Come on, you know me. I've worked at Vishkar for seven years."

"I believe you. But I can't find you in the system."

"I-"

"Just scan the damn finger, ma'am."

Sombra gave an exaggerated sigh. "Fine." She took off the glove of her right hand. "Just another day at the Citadel – there's always something messing up."

Her words betrayed her fear. A fingerprint scan? God, she hadn't prepared for this. There were so many things that could have tripped her up in Utopaea, obtaining something as basic as fingerprints had never occurred to her, when most of Vishkar's security was so high-tech. But the guard was waiting, the scanner was waiting, and she had to-

"What in the world?"

The guard followed her eyes towards the hologram of Krishna. In the brief second that followed, Sombra put her right hand over the scanner and interfaced with it. Streams of purple light extended from her fingertips, implanting her prints in Vishkar's system.

A temporary measure that wouldn't fool anyone if they really examined her profile. She could perform hacks in the field like no-one else on planet Earth, but even she wasn't that good.

But, she didn't have to be. The deed was done. The guard turned round.

"What?" He asked.

"Sorry, thought the hologram was glitching."

"Welcome to the Citadel, home of the Vishkar Corporation. Your service is always appreciated."

The guard gave a small smile. "Wouldn't surprise me." He tapped the scanner, his smile fading. "But if you could-"

"Of course." If my prints haven't been uploaded by now, then I deserve to die.

She pressed her thumb down. The scanner did its work. The guard looked at his screen, and after a very long second, said, "alright, checks out."

"Thank you," she said exaggeratedly, hoping it hid her relief. "Honestly, I expect better."

He gave her the card back. "Just doing my job, ma'am."

"I understand."

She walked forward, unable to hide the smile on her lips.

You're not doing your job, she reflected, as she walked through the scanners. If you were, you'd have realized you'd let the fox inside the hen house.


Getting past the scanners had been easy. It was the teleportation that got to her.

She'd teleported plenty of times, true, but that had always been with her own tech. Granted, her translocator wasn't really her tech (a girl had to have the latest technology after all), but she'd made the adjustments, she'd used it herself dozens of times, disappearing from one location and returning home was something she'd gotten used to.

But to pass through the Citadel's teleporter network? She'd taken a breath as she scanned the card at the teleporter, set the destination, and held her breath even after coming out from the other side. Unlike conceptions of teleportation from a century prior, it wasn't that she'd been disintegrated and put back together, but rather, passed through a 'quantum tunnel' from one point to another, cutting through the material universe where laws of relativity didn't apply.

She didn't understand how it worked. She doubted that there were more than a dozen people in this very building who could have given her the full details, and chances were they'd have gone over her head. But, having emerged from the teleporter on the Citadel's top (and most restricted) floor, it didn't matter.

The fox was in. Now, it was time to get her teeth bloody.

She unslung the duffel bag and opened it up, revealing a series of cylinders. They'd have fooled the scanners, and any guard who'd come across them would have been reassured that they were for R&D – appropriated through means that weren't exactly legal, but this was Vishkar, and if you worked at Vishkar, you knew how things worked. Beams of light extending from her fingertips, Sombra opened the cylinders one by one, revealing the components of a Hyde Global 9mm SMG, plus a spare magazine.

Oh amigo, she thought, as she laid the components out on the ground. Te extrañé.

She assembled the firearm in less than a minute. She was at home behind a screen, but was no stranger to guns either. Not in seeing them used, not in using them herself. Briefly, she allowed herself to remember that moment…the cold, heavy metal in her hands, the big men with holographic tattoos showing her how to point it at the soldier with the gag in his mouth…the recoil…her vomit hitting the floor…

Centrar.

Why was she thinking of her childhood today? Getting to her feet, and letting the bag lie where it was, she told herself it didn't matter. By her chrono, she had sixteen minutes left to make the hit. More than enough time, since he was on this very floor, but…

She tore off the Vishkar uniform, revealing the black and purple attire beneath. "Spannish phrase for cloaking."

To every eye, organic and digital alike, Sombra disappeared. Anyone watching from the security cameras here would see "Rani Singh" fade from view. They might have already been suspicious with the whole "build your own SMG" moment, but there was no way around that. Her best hope was that Vishkar wasn't expecting any assailant to make it this far in.

Nevertheless, she began to run. A shimmering humanoid figure darted down the red-carpeted hallways, flanked by blue-white walls of solid light. Given the nature of hard-light, Vishkar's architechs could alter the design of the Citadel within minutes, but as she checked her arm terminal, following the route her mole had given her, she found reassurance that so far, the layout hadn't changed.

She kept running. Faster, even, than in her visible form. The cloaking system would disappear if she carried out a hack, or fired her weapon (it was advanced, but the energy requirements and kinetic energy could disrupt it), but as long as it worked, not only was she invisible, but faster as well. Weight-loss through technology.

And people wonder how I keep my figure.

Grinning at her own joke, she blindly ran around the corner and didn't see the pair of security guards walking down the hallways until she barged into them.

Mierda!

The cloak collapsed. She knocked them down like a pair of bowling pins, but instead of achieving a strike, tumbled down onto the lush carpet.

The guards recovered quickly. One brown skinned, one fair, both of them wearing wedding rings, kevlar, and carrying sonic rifles.

"What the hell is-"

Sombra fired.

Two bursts. One guard was hit in his temple, killed instantly. The other took the bullets in the chest, knocking him down, but otherwise not being harmed.

The guard screamed – in grief, in rage, she couldn't tell. But more importantly, he fired.

"Bastardo!" She flipped through the air as a wave of sound cut through the air below her.

The guard raised his rifle for a second shot. Working quickly, she let out a pulse of electromagnetic energy from his hands. Disabling the rifle as the wave of purple light washed over it, if only for a few seconds.

Long enough for her to land in front of the guard and flip back, knocking the gun from his hands, sending it up into the air.

Long enough for it to land in her own hands.

Long enough so that it was at this point that it reactivated. Allowing Sombra to send a wave of sound into the guard at full power.

He was sent flying against the wall. Blood splattered against it, as his internal organs liquified. Her one consolation was that he would have been killed before he hit it.

She stood there in the hallway, slowly lowering the rifle. Stats danced on her eyes.

BPM? Normal.

Body temperature? Normal.

Her hands? Trembling, as she slowly lowered the rifle.

Move.

Two guards. dead. Their blood seeping into the velvet carpet.

Move. Now.

Dead, because the poor smucks had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Move, damn it.

Two male, both married…possibly the fathers of-

Muévanse! Ahora!

She dropped the rifle and sprinted down the hallway.

She'd killed before. This was no different.

She'd killed dozens of people in the field, and hundreds more from behind a computer terminal. Opening dams, cutting power, triggering meltdowns…she'd saved just as many, she told herself, but she worked with Talon. For Talon, as far as they were concerned. And in Akande's world, that meant the strong survived, while the weak were culled.

She couldn't look back. Would not look back. Not out of any guilt or grief, but because she'd opened fire, and even if by some miracle that hadn't triggered a security alert, the people on this floor still had ears.

People like her target.

People like the man whose office she barged into, bursting through the door of light marked SANJAY KORPAL.

He was sitting at his desk. He looked up in shock.

"Hello, Sanjay."

Dived for cover as Sombra opened fire, emptying what was left of her magazine.

The mole had directed her to the target. Now, it was time to do her job. Which, as a bullet tore through Sanjay's left arm, she did.

Sort of.

"Security!" He put a hand to his ear. "Security, top floor! Now!"

Sombra laughed, as she ejected the magazine and loaded another. "You think that'll stop us?" She looked at two of the room's walls, each of which contained a micro-camera. "You think Talon will be swayed?"

Sanjay looked up at her, his eyes wide, his left arm bleeding. "Talon?" He whispered.

Sombra ignored him as she made his way to the terminal on his desk. She took out her keycard, put it beside the terminal, and as beams of purple light extended from her fingertips, activated it.

The card glowed with purple light, as its true function was revealed.

"What are you doing?" Sanjay whispered.

"Talon works for the good of the world," she said. "Vishkar's technology will be made ours." She looked at the room's left and back wall, knowing that the micro-cameras would be picking up everything she said and did. The only place they weren't installed was on the office's right wall, which was pure glass, looking out over Utopaea, four-hundred metres below.

"It's a new world order," Sombra continued. "The world Vishkar tried to create will be torn down. And in its place…"

The card finished the download.

"Light. Liberty." She pocketed the card. "Freedom."

"You're mad," Sanjay whispered. "Vishkar's hard-light technology is designed for peaceful purposes. Talon has no-"

She opened fire. He yelled as the bullets hit the floor beside him. Disintegrating as the hard-light surface held firm.

"Designed for peaceful purposes?" She sneered. "Oh yes. Of course." She waved the card in front of his face. "Well, be that as it may, it's Talon's now."

"What are you going to do with it?"

Sombra laughed, and pointed the gun at his temple. "It doesn't matter. You won't live long enough to see it."

He lay there. She stood there. Pointing the gun.

"Any last words?"

Sanjay was having trouble speaking.

Damn it, where are you? "I said," Sombra repeated, "do you have any last-"

"On the ground! Now!"

Ah, there you are.

Guards appeared at the doorway. Rifles drawn.

"Adios, amigos."

The guards didn't fire. Whether it be out of fear of harming Sanjay, or because Sombra opened fire in turn, it didn't matter. The burst she let out gave them pause.

The second burst was directed to the window, shattering it.

No third burst, as Sombra leapt through the air and plummeted down to the city below.

If this doesn't work… She began activating the process. Well, long drops still have short stops.

She activated her translocator. To anyone looking at the scene, they would have seen the assassin disappear in a flash of purple light.

And after that, see nothing.


The translocator was fine. The hydrogen fuel cell wasn't.

Most of the time, distance was a non-issue. In her many infiltrations, working for Talon or otherwise, she'd deploy the locator, get in, do her thing, teleport, and bug out. Usually the distance was hundreds of metres at the most. Less, when she'd worked with a squad – deploy the translocator, flank the enemy, open fire, and bug out when they started firing back. Killing them not so much with her bullets, but with her distractions.

This, however, was different. She'd smashed through a window in the top floor of the Citadel, and teleported a full five klicks away, right into an abandoned apartment block that had never been rebuild after the Omnic Crisis. For Vishkar, it had been easier to build new cities in India rather than rebuild the old ones, and the government, desperate as they were, had agreed. No-one came to places like Suresh Heights unless they were depraved, or desperate.

Sombra was neither. Not desperate, and as she told herself, not depraved. Yes, she had set up a hydrogen fuel cell to power the translocator, given the insane power requirements needed to teleport her 5284 metres away, but that didn't make her either of those things. Any more than working for Talon, or killing innocent security guards.

Right?

She frowned, as she picked the locator up, and gave the fuel cell an idle kick. The job was done. That was all that mattered. All she had to do now was wait for the smoke to clear, to Vishkar to stop thrashing around like a bee-stung elephant, and wait for retrieval.

So for a good four hours she sat in place. Looking at Utopaea from afar. Watched dropships drift through the air, watched the people work in the fields below, watched the sun's golden glow turn to red, and the shining blue-white spires of India's de facto capital change in tune. Watched as the Citadel cast its long shadow over the ground. How even as it shone with light, its shadow continued to spread. Like a hand reaching over the soil of India, and lands beyond.

Watched, and tried to not think of the faces of the dead.

Or in Sadiq Khan's case, the living.

It came as a relief when her wrist communicator activated. Picking up the feed immediately, a hard-light screen appeared in front of her, showing the visage of one of Vishkar's top executives, and member of the Talon Council.

"Sanjay Korpal," Sombra said. "So you're among the living."

"No thanks to you." He was wearing a grey t-shirt, and his left arm was bound in a sling. "You were meant to shoot at me, not hit me."

"Relax, amigo. It's all part of the act. Besides, don't you think Vishkar would find it strange if you emerged from the attack unscathed?"

Sanjay fumed, but otherwise remained silent.

"Besides," Sombra said, "I was nearly caught in the check-in thanks to not being fully in the system, so the way I see it, we're even."

The man scoffed. "Watch yourself, little girl. In no way are we even."

Not yet, Sombra silently admitted, as she looked at the man before her. The target she'd been sent to 'kill.' And her mole inside Vishkar.

It was genius, really. Through Sombra's access to Sanjay's files, Talon now had access to Vishkar's hard-light technology. In turn, Sanjay, rather than risk sending the data himself, was made to look innocent – more than one person had questioned his allegiance to the corporation, but now, as the apparent target of a Talon attack, no-one sane would voice such concerns. Furthermore, Vishkar got to look like the victim. In the end, everyone won.

Well, she reminded herself, almost everyone. Talon had access to HL-tech. Not the imitation she had installed on her wrist, the real deal. What Talon would do with it, she had little idea. If Sanjay did, she knew he'd never tell her.

"It must be nice," Sombra murmured, "playing both sides."

"Excuse me?"

"You work with Talon and Vishkar. Talon breaks the world. Vishkar moves in to fix it. No matter where your allegiances like, either way, you come up on top."

She expected Sanjay to deny it. But instead, sitting in his office with nary a sign of the earlier firefight to be seen, he leant back in his chair and smiled.

"Jealous?" He asked.

"No, amigo. Just curious."

"Of?"

"Of, when it came down to it, which side you'd choose."

Sanjay's mouth made a contortion that wasn't meant for mortal eyes. He appeared to have trouble speaking.

"Am I wrong?" Sombra asked.

"If it came to that," Sanjay said slowly, "well, that'll be an interesting day."

She rolled her eyes. Even having him deny it would have been preferable. Having grown up in shit, she preferred its smell to people insisting it wasn't there.

"Anyway, I have to go," Sanjay said. "But the search for you has died down, so your exfiltration shouldn't have an issue. By the time you see me on Atlas News, you should be in Venice."

"All roads lead there," she murmured.

"That's Rome, but close enough." He went to terminate the feed. And had she been smart, she would have let him.

"I killed two guards, you know."

Right now however, she wasn't smart.

"I was wondering if…"

"Those two in the hallway?" Sanjay asked. "Please. There's no shortage of applicants for grunt work in Vishkar."

"I was just wondering…about their names…"

Sanjay gave her a look.

"If they…"

The look turned into a frown. "Something I should know?"

"I…" She bit her lip, as she reminded herself that she wasn't stupid, or honest, or anyone with a conscience. "No. Nothing. Two corpses are actually under average for Talon."

Sanjay didn't look convinced. But regardless, the feed was terminated. Leaving Sombra alone in a husk of a building, with a husk of a heart beating, carrying a walking husk that walked to the edge of the shattered apartment she was in. Looking out over the floodplain. At the city of Utopaea. Shining in the evening light.

La luz más brillante proyecta la sombra más oscura, she reflected, as she looked at the palm of her hand. And I've been in the shadows for a long time.

She looked out of the building. At the shining city. At the shadow, ever lengthening, cast by the Citadel. Stretching out until the time came when the sun's light faded, and the cold, artificial light of Vishkar was all that remained.

How long she stood there, she couldn't say.

How many times her mind drifted from the city to those in it, she dared not count.

What Talon would do with this technology…what Null Sector might do with it…she dared not imagine.

And when the sun had set, when the Talon dropship appeared in the air before her, she walked from building to airship and watched the ground recede behind her.

Watched the rear ramp come up.

Leaving her in the shadows.

Shadows that took her, as she rested her head against the hull, and let sleep take her.