VII

Zarya remembered well the feeling of powerlessness. On the farm that had been her home of her early life. She was the one who was relegated the tasks that needed the least strength. For all her girth, which was remarked upon by others her age as unusual, there was not much that she could do. She couldn't manage a single pushup, not a real one. If anything required heavy lifting, that would be the domain of her father. Or, as he'd aged, increasingly her brother.

"Little Zarya needs help again," they'd say, never with derision. "Little Zarya's gone and got stuck. Zarya swung the gate over too far."

She'd learned to be smart and avoid the problems that couldn't be solved with her own skill. And she taught these things to her diminutive sister, at least what she could understand. This gave her no end of pride. Inwardly, however, she knew that this was not a solution. She had become afraid of what she couldn't do.

Her brother's comics spoke of a hero whose skin could turn to steel. His size wasn't something that made him too clumsy or too big for anything, but was rather another tool in his favor. After school, Zarya would sometimes try the weight set they kept in the gym, but she always walked away, red-faced with embarrassment, and exhaustion, and rage, and loathing. She took up proper position, by all accounts, did everything right. She couldn't even get the bar up off the rest. She continued to read the hero's adventures long after her brother had grown out of them. She even kept his old comics after he thought he'd thrown them out. Zarya would never be like him, she thought, but she could dream.

The hero had discovered his power jumping in front of a runaway tractor to save his own sister. An act of selflessness befitting the warrior he'd become. Zarya, on the other hand, stood and watched. The Crisis had come to Siberia. A possessed train, bearing the futurist logo of Omnica on it's side, tore itself from the tracks and tumbled over her sister, crushing her tiny body, so loud that it drowned the crack of bone and squelch of flesh. Zarya wasn't fast enough to reach her in time, even if she was, she couldn't have gotten away. And she would never have stopped the roaring juggernaut of steam and steel, wouldn't even slow it down, no matter how heavy she was. She knew this. And she was afraid of it. Her faults had caught up with her, and were all the worse for their delay.

"We are here, Zarya," they said. "Did you think we'd never come?"

It was silly to think she would ever stop a train. But that day, even as her family fled the demon machines ravaging their old home, she decided she would never be powerless again. She thought of returning to the village often, of helping with the restoration. But it was entirely moot. What good could this cow of a girl do there?

She went to the new room, a different one, though it also stank of stale sweat and old metal, with none of the useless furtiveness she'd exercised before. The results might have been the same as always, had Zarya not resolved that they would not be, would never be again.

When she'd finally managed to lift the weight, it had caught her off guard. It dropped down toward her throat like a dull guillotine, and Zarya's fear almost paralyzed her again. It was just one more thing she couldn't do. One more thing she couldn't stop.

"The train is coming for you now, Zarya," she thought. "And it will kill you if you do not stop it."

She forced everything away. Every piece of her that told her she could not, she put on hold. Her arms locked into place, trembling, stinging trunks of thick, useless flesh, the bar inches above her neck. She was alone there. Her life was in her hands alone. In retrospect, she realized she may not have died, only been unable to speak for a while, and utterly humiliated. But the fear was necessary.

Zarya screamed, actually screamed, not at the bar, the train, but at her body. Move. You can move. It's just steel. It's not breaking you. It can't break you because if it could, it already would have.

The bar went up slowly, but up it went. Higher, higher, arms burning, Zarya sobbing the whole while, until finally, her elbows were straight, a few inches above the bar rest.

She sat up, squeezing her arms, breathing heavily.

"I cannot do this," she said. "I cannot do this."

She cupped her face into her hands and sat for a while before she realized the truth. She could do this. She had just done it.

"Howdy, Big Z," said Jesse McCree. "You still awake in there?"

Zarya realized that she had dozed. She had been in the middle of a butterfly stretch when she had, and now realized that she must have been sitting there for a full five minutes that way with her eyes closed, looking like some sort of meditating monk.

She stood, taller than the cowboy, brushing the dust off her prison greys. She leaned against the cold wall. The temperature had been dropping, slowly but steadily. Nowhere close to the temperature outside, but closer every second. She scratched her head, no longer surprised at her lack of hair. She looked up, intending to check on the Rat's progress.

"Rat's still workin'." McCree said. "He'll be done in a minute or so."

Zarya nodded and said. "Then is there something else?"

"Yeah," he said. "Why'd you trust him? The junker?"

"You are trusting him, no?"

"Wasn't my idea to," McCree evaded. "That was yours."

His idea, actually. But you are correct, I did agree. Zarya thought, then said. "Because he did something for me he didn't have to. Something maybe he should not have done, but he did."

"He did you one favor. That make him trustworthy?"

"Maybe not. But… Not everyone here, I think, is a criminal."

"It is a prison, Z," said McCree. He tapped his lips with two fingers, trying to make it look like a casual, even thoughtful tick, but Zarya knew he was craving a cigar.

"Maybe the word I'm looking for is…" Zarya paused, taking a long blink as she searched for a word, and was disappointed with the simplistic one she pulled up. "Bad. Not everyone here is bad, I think."

McCree raised his eyebrows. "Seems to be some compellin' evidence to the contrary, Ma'am."

"Jack is evidence. He is here. He is not bad." She shrugged. "You are here. Rat and Hog, I do not think that they are bad either."

"Jack seems to reckon so. From my experience, I can't much say I disagree about the Rat."

"Tell me, did you notice the tattoos on their hands?"

"Australian Liberation Front," McCree said. "I saw. So what if they nuked half of their country?"

"My country was one of the lucky ones. We pushed back the omnics. At heavy cost, but by our own strength. Australia did not fight their part of the war, Overwatch did. I think if after everything, we moved our own people to make room for clanks, I would have done the same. Same feeling, different circumstance. Different result."

"That's… Harsh," said McCree, sucking air. He'd winced at the omnic slur. "What's this feelin' then? I ain't sure I follow."

"We all refused to be powerless," said Zarya. "History punished them for it, blessed us. I do not claim to know why. But this feeling, resilience, fortitude, is a good one."

"Damn," said McCree, he scratched his head, casting a glance back at the bickering Hog and Rat. "You... Wish I could look at people that way. Seems like I only ever see the worst." He looked back to Zarya, smiling, "There's someone you're going to meet soon. I think you two'd really hit it off."

"Hooley dooley," muttered the rat. "Oy, your gun's done! Get over here!"

"After you," said McCree, bowing. Zarya stepped forward.

The rat had rebuilt an entire weight machine into a gun. Padding on the handles, a column of five kilo weights rested at the back, atop a mechanism that would automatically load the iron disks into a chamber.

"I'd hand it to you," said the Rat. "But I don't stand on ceremony."

"He can't lift it," said the Hog.

"Yeah, and there's that," the rat shot a hostile look at his partner, who didn't seem to notice.

Zarya picked it up, and found it similar in weight, though not in balance, to her particle cannon. It would take some getting used to, but it would prove quite the powerful tool.

McCree stopped gawking at the feat of strength, cleared his throat, and said, "So, uh… Where's mine?"

"I ain't a goddamn weapons factory, yankee! Wait your turn!"

…

Thaddeus Ellis would not abide such a grievous insult. He would not be humiliated. He would kill Aleksandra Zaryanova. And then, he'd kill Sombra, too, if only for the displeasure of his momentary lapse in control. Becoming that bestial thing, even for those brief moments to escape, had been the most demeaning of all. He was back in his element now. Outsmarting the threats rather than running from them. And Thaddeus found himself a very happy omnic.

Today had been strange. The past few weeks had been stranger still. For some reason, he had not been bothered. In fact, many people in the prison had been quite amiable, for a prison, at any rate. Even the new arrival he'd press-ganged into brief service, the 'Joe,' or 'Jack,' or whoever he was, had not attacked, even when he'd had the immediate and clear advantage. Thaddeus was starting to grow suspicious of these boons, even as much as he prayed they would continue. He'd been waiting for the perfect moment to slip out. All the while, he pretended to be a normal omnic, so that they would not put him in the Powered Wing, where escape would become nigh impossible.

For all the stupid things Sombra would come to regret, she had not done one stupid thing, and that was something Thaddeus might have considered himself grateful for a few minutes ago. She'd not released the Powered Wing from captivity. The Icebox housed the deadliest criminals. Many, many of those criminals were Oddities. Sombra knew enough to know that even she couldn't control them. But Thaddeus was better than her. Somehow, he knew he could make this work, even without his tools of trade.

There were still guards in the powered wing. Wisely, this is where the warden and his men decided to stay until Sombra had finished her business. Locked up Oddities behind were better than free psychopaths all around. They'd find soon that released Oddities behind were the worst of all. And so would Sombra.

He moved on, not stupidly, sneaking past whoever he could, killing the rest. When he finally arrived, the anticipation was almost too much. He scanned his top-level clearance ID to open door number one:

He was bound from head to toe, so that he could not move an inch. Smiling took a great deal of effort for him, but still, he did it.

"A visitor?" He said. His voice was a snake that crawled in one's ears, but Thaddeus was unafraid. His skin was ebon black, his body a void of blindness rather than a presence. His yellow, pointed teeth hovered in this eyeless void.

"I'm putting a team together," said Thaddeus Ellis, smiling back. "Interested?"

"Just point me towards the chaos," he said. "I'll make it bigger."

"Good, good, good," said Thaddeus giddily. He undid one of the straps, then stood back, cautiously. For a second, he wondered what he was doing. This was a madman, more likely than not an uncontrollable one. He'd have done better to find those who could be controlled, but it was too late.

"Come on, now," he said. "I won't bite. Not you. Not yet." But then he did bite. His own hand. The blood was a sickly color. Not the color of healthy human blood, though it was close enough to red. He dripped it onto the remaining binds, and they melted away, smoldering.

Thaddeus clapped in delight, wondering how this was going to play out. Everything else today had decided to go wrong. "And what do I call you?" he asked.

"I am Chaos," he said.

Behind door number two was a comparatively normal, grey-haired man. There was a black muzzle over his face, strapped tight. Someone did not want it coming off. Ever. It was practically stitched into his skin. He sat, looking forlorn, on the edge of his bed. He looked at Thaddeus and Chaos as they walked in.

"I'm putting a team together," Thaddeus said again. "Interested?"

He said nothing.

"He's not talking," said Thaddeus, "Why is he not talking?"

"You need a mouth to talk," said Chaos.

"Oh, oh. I forget!" Thaddeus said, laughing. He looked at the back of the man's head, fiddling with the magnetic straps. They would not open. The man gestured with his hands, making an 'o' with one, turning the other like a key.

"Well, isn't that the damndest-" began Thaddeus.

Chaos held up his hand, dripping the smoldering blood, as a proposition. The man stood with a start, shaking his head, eyes angry and scared. He gestured 'key' with double the vigor.

Chaos still came closer, licking his lips with a void black tongue, though one could only tell from the way it hid his teeth. The man stepped away, loosening into a stance that communicated readiness to fight. Chaos ripped the white sheet from the man's bed, and threw it over his own naked body, like a cape.

"Mind if I borrow this?" asked Chaos, but there was no question in his tone. The muzzled man had no further objections.

Thaddeus and his entourage then entered the 'trophy room.' Separate from the secure lockers that kept most of the prisoners' belongings, this was where the dangerous personal effects of the new arrivals went to be processed before being sent to a research lab or museum if they were a bit too mundane to be studied. Sadly, Thaddeus' gear was not there, it had been gone for many years. But there were some exceptional new arrivals. Their things could easily be re-purposed. Thaddeus drove his slender fingers through the neck of one guard, while Chaos sliced open another, staining his pure vestment with what was only to be the first of many red streaks. The muzzled man took the final steward, snapping his neck.

He took Jesse McCree's revolver and grenades, he found himself unable to take Zaryanova's weapon. The black and gold assault rifle he didn't recognize was rather large and clumsy for his taste. The muzzled man took it, seeming satisfied enough.

Chaos took Jesse McCree's prosthetic left hand, turning it over speculatively, and didn't put it down. He answered the questioning gazes he received with a very slow, very pleased, smile, and no one asked any questions.

Thaddeus Ellis, with Chaos and the muzzled man walking behind him in the corridors, released each prisoner with increasingly intense glee. They all complied to him immediately, infected by that same something Thaddeus felt growing in his mind, convalescing and reaching out from his central processor. He could feel the synapses firing in his lackey's minds. He could feel others conspicuously dormant. He realized that this should be impossible without his helmet providing him power, but here it was, happening. The omnics were most heavily affected. One, who'd been modified extensively, possessing eight arms, couldn't even speak anymore, though he'd been ranting up until the very moment Thaddeus entered the room. Somehow, he knew he was controlling them, just like the old days. Sombra was in for a reckoning.

The slaughter that commenced, Thaddeus had not seen the like since he'd been free. Guards were mowed down by pulse munitions, melted by acid blood, and ripped to shreds by claws of flesh and metal. As Chaos manically beat a man, again and again, beyond death with his hand-shaped club, his cloak grew redder and redder until it was dripping crimson.

Thaddeus felt something growing in his mind, something familiar.

An excited expression lit on the muzzled man's face. He dug around, finding the corpse of an important-looking guard, and pulled out a small, black rectangle. He plugged it into the back of his face mask, the clamps released, and it dropped to the ground. The silhouettes of the red marks remained on his face as he yawned and stretched out his jaw.

"Ho-ly shit!" said the un-muzzled man in a booming voice. "Goddamn, it feels good to yawn again! You guys have no clue."

Thaddeus smiled, flatly.

"Especially now that I can do this again," the man's throat and chest began to glow green, building in color and brightness until it finally flew out of his smiling mouth as a blast of energy, burning a smoking hole in one of the bodies. Thaddeus' smile grew genuine.

"Hey, you guys, you know, you are the real motherfuckers, you know that? Thanks for getting me out. So where are we goin'?"

"We are going to kill Aleksandra Zaryanova," said Chaos.

"What, the bodybuilder? We're goin' all the way to Russia?"

"No," said Thaddeus. "She's here."

"Ho-ly shit, really? What'd she fuckin' do?"

"I just want to kill her," Thaddeus shrugged. "Want to come?"

"Hell yeah. You're my kind of guys," he said. "Name's Khaos, by the by."

Chaos fell silent for a long moment. "What?"

"Name's Khaos. With a K. I thought it was pretty cool, myself. There something wrong with it?"

Chaos said nothing, only seethed silently, his acid blood surely boiling. Thaddeus reveled in the minds he was touching, almost to the extent that he didn't notice what his army was doing. Almost, for he was in their minds, and felt everything there.

"Speakin' of names," said Khaos with a 'K,' ignoring his cohort's irritation. "I never did catch yours, boss."

Thaddeus almost said it out loud, 'Thaddeus Ellis,' but he paused for a good, long while. That didn't sound right. He now felt closer to his other name than ever. The power was in him, strong enough to be used without the helmet. He'd thought his old gear to give him his power, but it seemed it only amplified what had always been there, what was growing and waiting for its day in the sun. He smiled then, wide and gleaming, and said, "Mindflayer."