"Absolutely not," said Katya Volskaya. It had been working. It seemed that she was going to be receptive to the whole hare-brained thing. But then came the big push. The catch that Winston had fully anticipated, but still hadn't managed to work around. Volskaya stood, pacing the small, dark study room in a way that showed she was at least trying to remain calm, even she wasn't fooling anybody. "I thought you understood this. I think now I was wrong."
"Hold on a minute," Winston said, patting the air with his gargantuan hand, trying to make his voice as gentle as he could make it. "Hear me out."
"This isn't a solution," said Volskaya, turning her icy eyes back to him.
"It's the start of one," Winston said, remaining seated and calm. With his sheer size and strength, and the fact that they were utterly alone and in a security blind spot, he could have overwhelmed her, scared her into listening, even if not complying. He didn't do it, but the fact that it even occurred to him as an option was something he didn't like about himself. "It's also a solid push back. Sombra can't use your secrets against you if they're not secrets."
"I am over if this gets out," said Volskaya, "You're saying I should shoot myself in the head instead of handing Sombra the gun."
"It's not," said Winston. "Look, if Sombra leaks the info, they get the whole story raw. Everyone gets the whole story. Raw. Your enemies get to choose how the information develops. And I'll let you know that the first thing the vultures are going to pick at is the fact that you tried to hide it."
"So… Bullet, head," Volskaya reiterated.
"It's getting out in front of this thing. If you release this information, you release it on your terms."
"I cannot do this," said Volskaya.
"Then what do you do?" Winston said. His eyes now pierced the glass of his spectacles, and the darkness ahead, slamming into Volskaya with an almost physical force. He suspected that for the first time, he had her full attention. "What's the alternative? Live in fear? Cower until the day Sombra gets sick of you? Think ten years from now. Think next year. You've been a perfect servant, but Sombra's done with you. Sombra doesn't need you. Doesn't need to control you, in fact, you're better off gone. She leaks this, and all the dirty, cowardly boot-licking she's forced you to do to stay safe. What will you do then?"
With a sudden icicle of fear impaling his heart, Winston remembered that he was talking to arguably the most powerful woman in Russia. He'd been calling her 'servant,' and 'boot-licker.' Not the best negotiation tactic. He felt like hitting himself, and his immediate instinct was to backtrack. But before he could open his mouth to apologize, Volskaya spoke again.
"Servant," she smiled a wry, tortured smile, laughing at someone. Not Winston, that was sure. If the turning gears of anxiety turning behind his glasses had shown themselves at all, she hadn't seen them. "You know, that's what built this country into what it was. Revolution upon revolution to be servants no longer. And we finally won. Finally."
She turned, placing her hands on the table, and staring at her own reflection. She scrutinized it as she spoke, as if seeing it for the very first time. "When the Crisis came, we would not become servants again. When it looked as if the machines would kill us all, we didn't go running to the UN. We fought to the last man. And we won. Without you. And we all remember that glorious day when we took back our world."
She turned her gaze back to Winston with renewed steel. "That is why I can't do it. Because we remember how we won. By our strength. By the strength I must represent. If I reveal that I am colluding with our would-be oppressors. It means I am no longer strong."
Winston looked down at the table, at his own reflection, but wasn't nearly as fascinated by it as Volskaya had been. He tried to think about how to spin his counterpoint. He even considered for a moment that she was right. What good was coming out ahead if the country fell apart without a strong leader? After a moment, Winston started to speak, he was three words in before he looked to Volskaya. "I think the greatest strength is… Admitting sin."
"Sin?" said Volskaya.
"I'm… Not trying to pull this anywhere religious," Winston stammered. "Not that… there would be anything wrong with doing that, I just… Admitting mistakes. I think that's… Well, that's extremely powerful."
"Really?"
"Take… Take Jack for instance. Commander Morrison. I… but you wouldn't know…" he thought again, scratching his head. "The Mindflayer incident? Remember? Terrible thing. He took control of all those people, almost destroyed Los Angeles. There were people in LA who weren't mind controlled, but still took part in the riots and looting. They all pleaded not guilty, the 'Mindflayer Defense' was rampant, clogging up the court systems. They eventually pardoned everyone involved except Mindflayer himself, but then… Then they… Well, they weren't… right. Some people got off that…"
And like that, Winston forgot where he was going entirely.
VI
Jack Morrison was alone in his cell, pulling himself up on the doorframe, then down, then up. Was he at fifty? Sixty? He wasn't sure, but he could stand to do a few more. He'd never liked waiting. When he was Supreme Commander of Overwatch, he'd managed to discipline himself. Tactics were about placement and timing, and timing meant waiting. In the game of geopolitics, waiting could mean weeks or years before the proper time presented itself. Waiting was part of the job. But then, he awoke from his coma. And while there was a time where he waited, first in the hospital, then on the cold streets of Berlin, where he assessed the situation fully, soon that time was over. By the time he raided the old Watch installation in Colorado, things were moving at breakneck speed, blurring together. He was in a race against time to reform Overwatch, a one-man guerilla operation where waiting might mean discovery, capture, death. He'd fallen out of practice with waiting, much further than he'd ever expected.
But perhaps the waiting wasn't truly the worst part of it. It was what he was waiting for. Waiting to see if their plan had really gone off without a hitch. Lena Oxton offered herself up as a sacrifice, something to make Jack's debut as a supervillain more convincing. Lena's ability to revert to a previous quantum state would all but guarantee survival of the bullet, even after as long as five minutes, if she pushed her powers and the chronal accelerator to their limits. Failing that, Captain Amari, or Shrike, as she now went by on comm, had been standing by to administer medical care.
He half expected that when he, Zaryanova, and McCree made it to the extraction point, they might meet Ana or Fareeha piloting the Orca instead of Lena. He'd learn that there was a complication. Lena hadn't fully recovered, as they'd anticipated. Even if she was fine, that wouldn't help the fact that Jack had shot Lena. He'd fired a real gun, real bullet, into one of his fellow agents. All so that he would look the worst and most dangerous he possibly could. He just didn't know. He couldn't. Not until the mission was over. So he'd focus on that. Make it up to Lena later.
He dropped to the floor, having worked up a sweat that dampened the center of his white undershirt. The arms of his prison grey were tied around his waist. He had no towel in his cell, so he folded his bed out of the wall and sat on it, air-drying.
A hellish screech echoed through the cell block. Before it had fully dissipated, a voice arose behind it, loud, irritated, but pretending enthusiasm.
"Buenos dias, putas!" it said, and Jack cursed inwardly. "I'd like to play a little game. Everybody look at the viewscreen in your cell. I'll know if you aren't."
Jack looked, a tight lump forming in his throat. A map of the Icebox, a map he knew well, had appeared on the viewscreen, lines of red and green coursing through it.
"You're going to head to the yard and kill somebody. Sounds fun, right? Well, the last group of idiots I put on this job fucked it up and decided to kill each other. I'm done. You kill Aleksandra Zaryanova," Zarya's mugshot appeared on the screen, she held the holoboard that bore her serial number with a face of stone and sad eyes. "And I'll let you live. If you try to escape. I kill you. Got it? Good."
The red lights on the cells started to beep and turn green chaotically. There arose whooping cheers, and terrified whimpers. Soon the entire block was green. All but Jack's cell. He pounded the door, watching the inmates streak past along the path indicated on the floor by green arrows.
"Hey! Someone open this up!" he shouted.
A purple skull appeared on Jack's viewscreen. "Not you," said the voice. "I know who you are. How'd a boyscout like you get in here?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, I-"
"Did little Dr. Zhou turn you in? For what you put her through? I wouldn't blame her."
"Open this door! Come on!" Jack kicked the door, his knee pulsed arthritically.
"Buh-bye, Soldier. Have fun thinking about your friends dying."
"Goddamnit! Hey!" Jack stopped, fist against the door, head drooped. This was far too soon. He'd known Sombra would intervene, but so quickly? There was something wrong. A leak, a security breach, maybe some preparation tipped Sombra off. Every single one of Volskaya's actions was under scrutiny, it could be anything. And now he was trapped in here. Still waiting.
"Technical difficulties?" said someone new. His voice was high-pitched, mid-pubescent.
Jack looked up and saw an Omnic in prison grey outside his cell. His face was eerily detailed, thousands of moving parts, like fragments of stained glass, to give him a full range of human emotion. His smiling teeth, blinding silver, stood out sharply from the glossy black of his body.
"Either let me out or go on your way," said Jack. "I've been taunted enough today."
"Touch-ey!" said the Omnic, smiling wider, though that had seemed heretofore impossible. "You haven't even been in here two days and you're already veteran levels of grumpy."
"As I said," said Jack.
"We got off on the wrong foot, clearly," said the omnic. "Thaddeus Ellis." He offered his hand, giggled, 'remembering' the cell door, and put it down. "I'm so sorry, sir." After Jack stared for a moment, unwilling to repeat himself, Thaddeus then said, "There is actually a point to all this, so if I could just get your name?"
"Joe," grumbled Jack.
"Well, Joe," said Thaddeus. "I find myself in a bind. I want to kill Zarya, for the benefits that entails. But I am… Well, my computational ability pales in comparison to our assailant. And as you can see, I am on the less physically robust side. Clearly that's not the case for you."
"You need muscle to kill Zarya," said Jack.
"Muscle with a brain is even better!" said Thaddeus, clapping. His black eyes glinted with delight.
"Fine then," said Jack. "Seems like we want the same thing. So let me out."
"Are you sure? Because you might just be telling me exactly what I want to hear. Just to get out."
"Of course I want to get out. But that's the game we're playing, isn't it? We need each other."
If there was any consideration whatsoever, Thaddeus' computerized brain did it in no time at all. "I do love muscle with a brain," reiterated Thaddeus, scanning a keycard. "Makes things so much easier."
Jack could take the runt down now. But he'd be expecting that. This omnic acted like a kid, but there was an eternity of intelligence in his eyes. He undoubtedly had some countermeasure in place. So Morrison waited just a bit longer, and his exit from his cell was uneventful.
He cracked his knuckles and neck, and said. "So… The yard."
The inmates had all gone before them, leaving the prison a silent, wrecked place indicative of former chaos. Jack found it hard to believe that such a place had ever been inhabited. The occasional guard exo stood watch above them, motionless arbiters holding their non-lethal riot weapons to their chests, transparent polycarbonate shields at their sides. Their passengers, former pilots, were purple-faced and hanging limply in the black frame, faces death-frozen in terror. Jack kept a straight face, glancing occasionally at Thaddeus, who seemed to take all this in with amusement rather than sickness.
All the while, Jack wondered why these sentries weren't attacking. Sombra had wanted him out of her game. Why was she now allowing him to enter it without a fight? A handful of exos could kill him easily and quickly, but they let him pass. Jack counted this as a blessing, but kept it in mind. These kinds of things had a way of coming back and biting.
Jack paused at the prison yard door. There was no way to see through to the other side, save to open it. When he did that, everyone on the other side would know he was there. He decided to wait by the side.
"Open it up," he said to Thaddeus. "I've got your back."
"No you don't," he said, cheerfully. He tossed the key card to Jack, who caught it out of the air. He smiled, taking up position at the opposite side of the door.
Jack grimaced drily, and scanned the card.
"Over there, over there over there!" someone shouted, the voice was familiar, though Jack could not entirely place it. Orbs of explosives began flying out of the door. Jack ducked behind the door again, feeling a blast of heat on his shoulder. Too close.
"Fortune always does favor the cautious, if you ask me," said Thaddeus.
"Now what, genius?"
"You're the muscle," Thaddeus said. "you think of something."
What he wouldn't give for that pulse rifle. Even the black one with the stupid skulls on it. Jack tried to think of some way to signal Zaryanova, if she was in there. For a long moment, filled with blasts of loud fire, no solution availed itself. But then…
"Can you hack this terminal?" Jack asked. "Get me the weight room?"
"What good will that do?"
"If Zarya is in there, that's where she'll be. It's a defensible position."
"So we call and tell her we're killing her?"
"Something like that."
There was the possibility that Sombra would detect their intrusion. Jack figured Thaddeus should know that well enough, and didn't mention it.
"Boss?" said the unexpected voice of Jesse McCree. His face, lagging terribly, appeared on the wall panel in a series of pixelated stills. Jack hadn't seen him since processing, so now was the first time witnessing his clean-shaven face and brown stubbled scalp. The look didn't suit him. He couldn't imagine himself looking any better at the moment.
"McCree, listen. On three, run out of there. He can't shoot all of us."
"They," corrected McCree, "and yeah, they can."
"The plan works," Zaryanova's voice said. "On three, run out at them. Two seconds are all I need."
"You've already made a friend," said Jack. "Good job."
McCree smirked. "That mean I'm gettin' a raise?"
"Joe? What are you people yammering about?" said Thaddeus.
"Sorry, kid," said Jack. "You're getting double-crossed."
On three, Jack grabbed the omnic's neck, and they rushed into the yard. The skinny man stood in the center of the yard, held in his hand a cobbled-together mass of steel and wire, feeding from a clip of exo battery packs. A manic grin spread across his rodent face, and Jack recognized the creature in full. The very second that Jack thought he was about to get a hot sphere of explosive in his face, a disk of cold iron slammed into the rat's cheek, knocking him to the ground in a rolling heap.
Another disk whirled into the hog's gut, but it bounced off like a raindrop. However, the three-hundred pounds of Aleksandra Zaryanova that barreled into the hog next did the trick. She didn't stop at putting her weight on him. She showed discipline, pressing down on the fragile center of the hog's chest with her toe.
Jack threw Thaddeus down as well, onto his back, applying pressure from the arch of his shoe to the back of the Omnic's neck.
"We had a deal," he squealed.
Jack said nothing.
The rat had already made his way to his feet, the underside of his eye sliced open, leaking red. "Get stuffed, wankers!" he shouted, and produced four grenades from his pockets.
"Hold on now," said McCree.
The rat threw them, at each of the respective targets with no regard for the disabled prisoners. Jack dodged away, as well as Zarya and McCree. The Hog stood with shocking speed for such a rotund figure, but did not make a move to rejoin the fight. He remained in place, caught the grenade, and tossed it in a new, harmless direction, it exploded, bending the basketball hoop with fiery force.
"Listen," the hog said, harshly.
No one quite knew what was going on, not even the Rat. The Rat did listen, either because of the confusion, or the intimidation, or because he was out of weapons.
Thaddeus had scrambled to his feet, whimpering and panicking. McCree almost darted after him, but something whizzed past him with blinding speed. The white sheets wrapped around the Hog's wrist, tipped with a make-shift hook, was extended, flying out. With some incredible skill, the Hog manipulated the tendril of cloth to wrap around Thaddeus' legs and trip him.
"You too," said the Hog.
"What the ever-lovin'-?" said the Rat. He was confused at his partner's behavior, for sure. But that was not all.
The cloth tore as the Hog was yanked down to his face. Jack looked to see what the Rat already had. Thaddeus' expression had turned to something horrible and inhuman. He'd come to all fours, the joints in his legs reversed, so that he walked like a spider. He snarled, skittering away, spitting guttural noises.
Thaddeus latched onto the wall, leaving five-pointed impressions wherever he stepped. Not one to be deterred, the Hog was up and at it again, launching bits of molten scrap from his weapon. But Thaddeus disappeared through a window high above, ripping out iron bars like they were nothing, and throwing them, clattering, to the ground.
McCree glanced around at his squad with a look of puzzlement that they all shared and said, "Could this maybe just be a goddamn normal-ass prison again?"
"I want a deal," said the Hog. He stood calmly, as if nothing strange had occurred at all. Of course, none present had occasion to see whether he was ever disturbed by the events of yester-moment on account of his mask.
"Are you in a position to be making deals?" Jack asked after a dazed moment. They'd all seen what had just happened with their very eyes, and if Jack was being honest, he'd seen much stranger. Besides, time was of the essence. This needed to be resolved now. "You're out of ammo, and there are three of us, two of you."
"I count four of us!" said the Rat. "I count for three!"
"Ignore him," said the Hog. "He gets rhetorical."
McCree opened his mouth as if to correct him, pointing his finger, but then thought better, and stopped.
"Look at that weapon," said Zarya. She asked, "Did you make that with things that were just lying around here?"
"Yeah."
"Jackie, I hate to admit it, but weapons are gonna be a mighty valuable thing to have."
"I'll forgive you both because you weren't there," Jack said, recalling the Middle East. "But these guys are Talon. We can't trust them."
"Are you forgetting somethin' else?" said the Rat to the Hog. "This guy's one of the tossers what threw us in here."
"Look," said McCree. "None of us have got much reason to trust one another, other than the fact bein' that we are in a deathbox operated by a crazy woman that wants to murder all of us."
"Not all of us," said the Rat, "just her. Killin' her is my ticket out of here."
"You really think that?" said Zarya. "You do not know. She might just kill all of us either way. She is angry, not rational. She is torturing us. Toying with us. That is the only reason we are not all dead."
Torturing you, Jack thought. For what you Katya did. For what we did.
"Gotta kill Sombra," said the Hog. "Only way out."
The Rat chewed his lip. Even he had to know that fighting the whole facility alone was a fool's errand. He may be a fool, but he didn't want to die. "Fine. Fine. If this ninny wants to work with you lot, there's not much I can do about it, is there?"