I talk a lot of high shit for someone who can't go three hours without keeling over from a lack of chewing gum. Yeah yeah, I know oral fixation is a sign of being passive and needy and blah bl-blah bla—shut up Freud. I'm not a headcase, it's just been a long-running habit to have a bit of gum between my teeth whenever I need to concentrate. Or I'm hungry. Or I get bored.
Okay, so that covers about every waking minute.
Now at the ripe old age of thirty, I make it a routine to always keep some on me. It's one of the advantages of adult life; when I was a little girl I kept a piece of gum for as long as I could, one piece lasting for three weeks when I figured out I could stick it behind my ear while I slept. (Hey! You'd be stingy too if you grew up jackshit poor.) Now that I'm older, more stable, and more criminally lucrative, I can afford to actually have more than one piece of candy on me at a time, and therefore indulge in fewer gross customs.
Or at least, that was the plan right up until I forget to restock.
"Would you stop doing that?" Reaper demands as we sit in the shadow of the uncompleted skyscraper. "It's making me want to kill something."
"It is?" I ask, flipping my wrist away from my mouth. "That's serious then, if I make our normally sweet and loving leader want to commit an act of violence."
The sound of Reaper grinding his teeth is audible behind his mask, and if I wasn't invested in my current activity, I sure am now. Anything to get under his skin is like… triple motivation.
"Is she chewing her nails again?" Widowmaker asks in our ears, her voice a soft drawl that manages to be both intense and perpetually bored.
"Yes," Reaper hisses. "Loudly."
"Hey, like you're one to talk," I object. "You're the one whose breathing is like a bag of cats being dragged through thirty two exhaust pipes."
Reaper growls, and the sound that rumbles in his chest only proves my point.
Widow won't give up though. "Are you sure you should be doing that, Sombra? Don't you need those nails to perform your job?" To anyone else it may sound like she couldn't care less what my answer is, but I know what she's angling for.
"My nails are made from pre-hardened non silicon metal oxide semiconductors," I say, popping them out of my mouth once again. "There's nothing a bit of human teeth can do to them." To annoy Reaper, I begin retracting them in and out of my gloves. "Besides, I'm bored, there's nothing to do and we've been waiting for the target to show for hours."
All fact. Talon, for whatever reason, has decided that Mondatta's assassination wasn't enough, and they want our squad to go hunt down who's next in line for the throne. That turned out to be Eloise Carmichael who, as far as I know, is barely managing to scrape together the leftover bits of omnic goodwill in King's Row. It's not going well for her, but if Talon thinks she's too much of a threat, then might as well do a bit more of their dirty laundry.
At least, I thought that right up until our stakeout hit the three-hour mark.
"You are a professional," Reaper tells me flatly. "Deal. With. It."
"I am dealing with it," I say, nibbling on the tips of my nails again. "And just because I'm a professional doesn't mean I'm not human. This is how I cope with absolutely nothing happening."
The clacking sound as I chew my fingers is pretty loud, but now that I'm involved in pushing Reaper's buttons there's not much that can stop me. I can feel him glaring at me through his bone-white faceplate.
"Fine," I relent. "What do you do when you're bored on a stakeout?"
"Nothing. I wait. Death doesn't get distracted."
To prove it, he stands absolutely still, and stares at the building across the street. I roll my eyes.
"Oh come on, you have to get bored sometime." I slide up against his side. "What is it Gabe? Some music? A good book?" A smile falls across my lips as an idea comes to me. "Watching hot vids on your communicator?"
"Sombra!" Reaper's voice spikes as he whips around on me.
I fall back, laughing, further tangling myself in the need to poke the bear. "Why so defensive, Gabe? I hit it on the nose?"
"You absolutely did-fucking-not." He's practically yelling, obviously using every speck of his willpower to keep his voice from carrying. It's not working too well, but I doubt anyone's going to come check out one screaming guy in an abandoned building. "And you fucking know it."
"Hey, no one's going to blame you for a little stress relief while on watch. No biggie." I grin and shrug, watching his hands clench and knowing he wants to strangle me a little.
"I can't believe I'm having this conversation," he says finally, pinching where the bridge of his nose would be.
"No judgment," I promise. "It's perfectly normal. I mean, what about you, araña? Ever rub one out while on a mission?"
"Yes," Widow replies instantly, completely deadpan. "In fact, I am masturbating right now."
And I just fucking lose it. Reaper has to shush me multiple times, going so far as to clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from drawing attention to our hiding spot. There are tears in my eyes, and several minutes later I'm still up against the wall laughing, only barely clear headed enough to hear Reaper mutter, "Why do you have to encourage her?"
In my mind's eye, I can see Widow's smirk, the familiar curve of her profile pressed to her scope as she says, "It's a living."
And, lo and behold, Carmichael chooses that instant to show up, cutting my recovery time short.
I push myself to my feet, still chuckling, and watch her make her way into the construction project. Reaper glares at me, as though silently telling me to pull myself together, before gliding silently after her. I don't need to be told twice though—something interesting is finally happening.
I'm silent, undetectable as I stealth inside. A quick crack at the nearest panel and the elevator is mine, Reaper and I clamoring in after the other one has already whisked Carmichael away. She's scheduled to have a quick meeting today with a local politician, getting her platform organized before a charity dinner tonight. Talon doesn't expect her to make it.
The doors swing open, and we roll out onto the half-completed floor. I can see the building we've been skulking in for the past five hours, and scan my eyes over its many windows, wondering which one Widow is in. I know I won't find her, but pretending I can see the glint of her sights out of the corner of my eye gives me a small notion of comfort.
When Reaper busts through the door of the meeting with guns blazing, seeing Carmichael's eyes widen is almost worth the wait. Almost.
Reaper tears through her limited security, my job being to bring down her two omnic guards. They're easy enough, and before I even get to draw my SMG the target is dead and the exposed floor is covered in blood. Carmichael's political correspondent—Gooberry? Gorby? I don't remember his name—is huddled against a stack of two-by-fours, shaking uncontrollably and staring in horror. I'm pretty sure he's wet himself.
Reaper walks over to him, places one finger against the mask, and says "Shhhh."
Gorby gawks at him, still shaking, but has a flash of limited understanding. He raises a finger to his own mouth and says "shhhh?"
Reaper nods, and then we're fucking out of there, jumping to the elevator while I bring us down. I only last a moment before breaking down again, supporting myself against the metal wall.
"Oh my god, did you see his face?" I laugh, clutching my side. "And the shush thing! Did you come up with that just then?"
Reaper doesn't say anything, but I can tell he's pleased with himself. Folding his arms, he drifts into satisfied silence.
"Widow," I say into my earpiece, "you're going to love what I'm about to tell you."
"Oh, I saw," she says right back, as cheerful as she ever is. "I had a wonderful view."
"Ha! Right, right. Sorry you didn't get to get in on the fun."
The brief pause where a shrug might be. "I cannot expect to be the architect of every death, yes?"
I roll my eyes, and revel in the weirdness of my two teammates. On the trip back to base I memorize every detail of our mission, recording the memory like my brain is just another hard drive.
I committed it all because I'm the only one who knows it's going to be our last.
That this time next week, most of the people I've interacted with over the past three years of my life are going to be dead. That—at least at some point—I'm going to kill my only friends in the entire world.
Maybe I should start from the beginning.
Okay, not the beginning beginning, that will come later, but the beginning of the day is a start.
Reaper informed us this morning about a mission he's leaving on. Solo. Widow, ever the duality, was so easy to read—she looked at him, struggling between a need to pursue Death like a loyal lapdog and a condition that demanded she follow his direct order.
I was much better at hiding my internal conflict.
Because when he said, "Tonight, after the mission," every nerve in my body called out in relief and I hated myself for it. Relief is useless, counterproductive, in fact. Reaper leaving on an unexpected mission tomorrow—a decision floated down from the higher ups to invariably save his life—will only cause me more pain in the long run.
Once he finds out what I've done, there's no way he won't hunt me down and kill me himself.
While he told us, he was adjusting his knee braces. There are ones on his back and wrists too, all part of a complex system that does little to make his condition bearable. They're models of modern technology. Gifts for his loyalty.
His debt to Talon.
There's more to it of course, more personal history that isn't recorded in wires or bytes. An emotional splooge that goes back long before the fall of Overwatch, and of course whatever Reaper's worked up inside his own head. But I know the extent of his loyalty to Talon is enough that he wouldn't take kindly to a certain hacker blowing this whole place to kingdom come.
I'm awake now, lying in bed and thinking how it all came to this. I'd joined up differently than most of their little foot soldiers, in a way that was both carefully orchestrated and a touch dramatic. A bit of info on Katya Volskaya Talon had been so desperately looking for appeared within Novocain's files one morning, no sign of entry on the code-locked briefcase. There were no clues—just the information, and a small calling card.
Talon was very willing to be friends after that.
This was meant to be a brief stint. A chance to gain some information, make some connections. But instead, I've made different kinds of friends.
It's an inherent flaw in the human design that is Sombra. I've always told myself that I'm alone but not lonely, because I like being a big fat liar. Los Muertos was nice. Is nice, when I come back home and indulge in some old contacts, but it's never the same, and you can really tell how being unable to make a friend until the age of nineteen shaped me. A lonely fucking childhood produced a lonely fucking girl and…damn if this team doesn't make me miss having people.
It wasn't supposed to. I mean, it's a damn terrorist organization, and I've been playing the part so well I've forgotten that my original goal was to gain as much as I could from this place and then leave it a bleeding, burning shell. Theoretically, I don't have to go through with that part of the plan but…I know what's in my best interests. Once Talon found out what I stole, they would go to the ends of the Earth to make me pay.
I could hide. I'm very good at that. But in the end it'd just be another nuisance/obstacle/distraction from the bigger picture. The end goal. The thing that's bigger than all of us.
So now I'm here, staring at the ceiling, floor plan of the facility as clear as if I'd pulled it up on my hologram instead of my mind's eye. This place is the lifeblood, the beating center of Talon. But organizations aren't just places; that's why I need to destroy the brain too. Tomorrow the building will go up in smoke and their systems will go down in void and I'll be long gone from the rubble.
It took years of work to figure out a worm that would be able to bring down the mass of Talon intelligence in one go. It won't be complete (no virus is ever perfect) but any remaining semblance of unity within the organization will be gone. It will either reform too weak to do anything, or might be forced to disperse all together.
There won't even be any people left.
Doomfist, O'Deorain, Widowmaker, Novocain, Korpal, Reaper, Maximilien, Fu, Vialli, Blackburn…
The other image I can conjure in my mind. It's a list of people that will be on base when the bombs go off, several dozen names consisting of every member of Talon with a worthwhile position. There's another list, the thousands of cannon fodder, and I browse through that one occasionally wondering if I should bother to memorize the names of all the people I'm going to kill. The flimsy moral justifications for my actions stopped a long time ago, as did kidding myself into thinking I'm ridding the world of evil. There's no point to it, no lasting effect to turning things black and white. There's just big picture and small picture.
Talon thinks small. I think big.
Doomfist, O'Deorain, Widowmaker, Korpal, Reaper, Maximilien, Fu, Vialli…
Things like Reaper's sudden relocation don't change the bigger picture. Minute variables. In the end, just one man can't bring Talon back to power in the time it would take to be a problem for me.
Doomfist, O'Deorain, Widowmaker, Korpal, Reaper, Maximilien, Fu…
That's why I'm going to win. That's why I'm going to find out who runs the world, because I don't let small things stop me.
Doomfist, Widowmaker, Maximilien…
But a glitch in the code can bring down the whole system.
Widowmaker…
My worm is dormant now. Asleep. God I wish I were too.
Morning. Time for work.
There's only one briefing today, and after I show up, there's no one to miss me for the remainder of my mission. That's all I need to act normal for. One meeting, then I'm home free.
I can't stop staring at her through the whole thing.
She's sitting as straight as always, absorbed with whatever the busybody-for-the-day is talking about. It's like she's magnetic, every angle she's poised at dragging my eyes toward her. When I see her it's hard not to remember how she usually is—on a mission, cool and detached but with that something that simmers just beneath. She's not always like that though. Some days she leaves the bareness of her own room to join me on the third floor, sneaking into Reaper's quarters and drawing his ire when he eventually finds us. He's the owner of the only couch in the entire base though, and I guess we just look too damn comfy sitting there in the cushions and watching his TV, because he always relents eventually.
Sometimes, he even joins us, chewing us out when we inevitably get popcorn between the cushions.
That and a dozen other memories flood my brain while I'm looking at her. The meeting ends, the agents file out, and my blood is trying to eat my face alive. (I know what you're thinking: poor, stupid Sombra. Grows a heart, and realizes eleven years too late that she's in the wrong business for it. Well shut up because it's nothing I haven't told myself a million times already.) I've chosen my path, I'm not going to unchoose it, and I don't have room for regrets.
She hasn't left yet. She's there, staring down at a mission report, not noticing how I've been looking at her all morning. I could talk to her, get those last words I hadn't let myself have with Reaper. Or I could turn, and make sure the worm gets a healthy breakfast.
I know which one will hurt less.
So I go, except I can't leave the base entirely when there's still things to do. When I first designed the worm, my initial plan was to hijack the full-organization self-destruct drive, blowing both the physical base and its information network to smithereens. (And yes, Talon has that. Like the lack of self-awareness to how closely they tango with supervilliany is enough to bring you to tears.) However, that purge requires unanimous approval on part of the counsel, or at least another two years of undetected code breaking by me, so I go with option B. I'm already pushing my luck here as it is, even if I didn't have other, grander plans.
The worm activates, seeping its way into the systems and preparing to detonate. It's still undetectable, and will be until it's too late. Like I said, I don't need to kill Talon—just do enough damage to make it insignificant. Kick out its supports. Thin its numbers.
And not be one of those numbers when it goes off.
It's time to go, and as I walk through the corridors I don't think about what I'm leaving behind. The security. The way it feels when there's a presence at my side and a voice in my ear. I absolutely nope, don't, nu-uh, think about that, and instead check the time-
"Um," I say in the empty hallway because um?
My connection to the worm puts detonation time at eighteen minutes.
This can't be fucking happening. I mean? What? How? I gave myself at least an hour to get out but…fuck. I've been working on that worm for over two years, something imperceptible must have changed in the time I'd been modifying it; the security was easier to break than I expected or-
Seventeen minutes.
Okay, shit. I can figure out how I messed up later, but for now I need to get down to my stashed motorbike and get the hell out of here before I'm killed by my own creation. It'll be enough time. It will.
So I fucking sprint down the hall like my life depends on it.
Sixteen minutes.
Because it does.
Thirteen minutes.
I don't care if I look suspicious now, all I'm thinking about is surviving to the next day-
Ten minutes.
And everything changes. My mind is blank, empty of any thought but panic, when I round the corner and slam directly into Widowmaker.
I bounce off her like a flea, falling on my ass while the sturdier woman looks down at me with one of those perfectly raised eyebrows. "Going somewhere, chérie?"
A second ago when my brain was shutting down is entirely preferable to now when my entire conscious is screaming with different thoughts. I need to leave, no more time to lie but now that she's standing in front of me all I can think about is her. So maybe it's that: the fact that my plans are shit and I might die and all logical thought is draining into my toes-
That's what makes me do it. Wiping away all my plans with one stupid, impulsive action.
I grab her wrist and tell her, "Run."
What happens next shouldn't. If Widow hesitates, or laughs, or in any way acts like a normal person should, things won't change, and the horrible premonition I suddenly have won't come true. But Widow doesn't recoil. Her eyes widen when she sees the state I'm in, and that precise little brain of hers does a million calculations to arrive to the conclusion that something is very wrong. And when I say the word run with more conviction than I've ever said anything in my life, she does.
She obeys.
And we're gone.
Suddenly the world is topsy-turvy because I'm dragging the sniper along behind me while non-existent explosions ring in my ear. We tear down into the basement, onto the bike as I rev it, her arms wrapped around my chest before we speed out into the desert beyond.
The worm eats its way to the core. The self-destruct goes off.
