Junkrat was ecstatic at Hana's decision to leave with him and Roadhog. He was certainly more excited than Hana herself, who could only think of what lay ahead for her on that path. Murder, theft, all supposedly leading back to a "normal" life for her – how could that be? Hana already felt that she would never truly return to her old self. Killing people to steal their stuff seemed the last way to re-evoke her lost humanity.

She and Junkrat spent the evening plotting exactly what was going to go down. Junkrat had some ideas, but they were scattered and mostly pretty half-baked, forcing Hana to piece them together into something coherent. The plan they ultimately came up with was fairly straightforward – sneak out of the prison between watch shift changes early in the morning, pretend to offer Hana's mech, some of Junkrat's explosives, and whatever else it took to get the boat owners to accept, then kill them, retrieve their offerings, and take the boat. Junkrat had caught a glimpse of the boat when he'd encountered the men the first time – it was apparently a pretty big ship, not your average motorboat for weekend outings. None of them had any idea how to pilot a ship, but upon Hana mentioning she'd steered one a lot in an Assassin's Creed game it was decided she would be the first to have a go at directing their path. Hana had no idea if real, modern boats actually steered like virtual sail boats from the seventeen hundreds. She assumed not, but that was apparently the extent of any of their experiences with boating.

"This is gonna be fun." Junkrat hopped excitedly to the other side of his cell, where the tire he'd been tinkering with lately leaned against the wall. "Maybe I'll get a chance to try this baby out. I just put the finishing touches on the ripcord tonight, in fact!"

Hana smirked a little. "Are you ever not cooking up some new explodey thing?"

"Well hey, I got plenty'a time on my hands! Might as well be making something."

"Guess explosives are one of the only hobbies worth taking up anymore."

"Right!" He hobbled back over to Hana, taking a seat on the other end of the cot. "Speaking of, you never did let me try to turn that mech of yours into a big ol' bomb. Now that would be a hell of an explosion!"

"Yeah, and then I wouldn't have a mech anymore!" Hana folded her arms. "I happen to like it very much. I wouldn't want it blown to smithereens."

"Pfft." Junkrat waved her off. "Who turns down the chance to make a seven-foot scrap bomb."

A ringing alarm went off throughout the prison. Like trained dogs Hana and Junkrat both perked up.

"All right assholes," Boss' voice over the generator-rigged P.A. system rang through the halls. "Dinner's ready. First come first serve, unless you want to have to beat someone up over it."

Hana was still pretty sated from the rabbit earlier, but she couldn't let on that she'd eaten a meal instead of bringing it back to split with the Junkers. When Junkrat started hopping out into the hall, rambling about how "bloody starvin'" he was, Hana wordlessly followed him.

Dinner was uneventful. Hana kept looking for Ana, but saw no sign of her. Roadhog had to pull the Junker with the animal skull (Hana had never learned their name) off another Junker at one point for whatever reason, but other than that basically nothing happened. Hana almost wished something would. It would help take her mind off everything else for just a minute.

Several times she caught herself staring over at Boss. Usually with a personal entourage, tonight the other girl sat alone. Curiously she didn't have any food in front of her – only a notebook she was scratching away at. Maybe she'd wanted some time to herself, Hana thought, although the way she kept looking at everyone around her didn't really make it seem that way. On another day Hana might have approached her, but she couldn't face her tonight.

After dinner Hana returned to her cell and attempted to sleep. Of course she failed completely. Thoughts of what lay ahead plagued her. Maybe she shouldn't have said yes to the plan. Maybe she should just stay with the Junkers. It wasn't really that bad, was it? So she didn't have internet, or running water, or food that wasn't tainted with radioactivity – she had already learned to live without that stuff. And besides, did the old world really have any place for someone like her now?

She thought back on all the horrors she had witnessed the first days and weeks after the explosion. So many people, people she had known since her childhood, lying scattered, sick and dying, throughout the remains of her neighborhood. The smoke cloud full of toxins had risen up in the sky right before Hana's eyes, temporarily blacking out the sun itself. She could remember people choking, people just collapsing all around her. Buildings, shaken from the force of the explosion, crumbling with who knew how many people inside. A lot of her memories after that were a blur. Her next clear one was of her sick parents trying to care for her even though they were pale as ghosts and struggling for breath. Maybe they were the reason she survived. Hana wished she could remember.

After several hours of lying awake Hana finally admitted defeat. She would get no rest that night. With bleary eyes and a shambling step she wandered out of her cell and down the hall. A slow minute later she was knocking at the bars of Junkrat's cell. He was apparently awake too, for her sat up from his bed instantaneously.

"Hey Junky," she said through a stifled yawn, "you're up?"

"Hey Deevs. Yeah, I, uh, couldn't really sleep." He got up, affixed his metal leg, and met her at the bars. "You neither?"

"Nah."

Junkrat pulled the door open and let her in. Hana sat down on his cot. The bed was warm where he must have been lying for some time, struggling, as she was, to get even a wink of sleep.

"Are you sure you really want to leave?" she asked him after sitting in silence for a minute.

Junkrat scratched the back of his neck. "I kinda have to. It's a long story, but…"

Hana stared at him curiously, waiting to see if he would continue.

"Eh, during the early days when all this happened, I went snoopin' around the wrecked omnium. Ya can't get too close, it's just way too toxic. But I, uh…well I kinda fibbed and used it to get my way with other scrappers I ran into on the road. Told them I found some big ol' secret in there, and I'd tell them if they didn't kill me."

"What did they do when they found out you were lying?"

"I didn't exactly tell 'em I was lying. Usually I just made a break for it. But uh, word started gettin' around that I'd found some crazy valuable treasure inside the omnium and was keeping it all to myself. So then on top of the people who wanted to kill me for double-crossing 'em, all the looters and bounty hunters started coming for me too. Seemed like every last survivor in the Outback wanted me dead for some reason or another."

"How did you end up here?"

"I came to the Junkers lookin' for a bodyguard. This was before Boss rounded 'em all up and got 'em organized like this. I found Roadhog and made a deal with him – he protects me, I split the spoils of everything we steal 50-50."

Hana chewed her lip. "So that's why you wanna steal stuff? To pay back Roadhog?"

Junkrat laughed. "Nah, mate, I'm just a criminal at heart. I'd be stealing shit no matter what."

Hana folded her arms pensively. "When I was a kid I used to steal Pokémon cards," she eventually murmured. "It was great. I always had all the best cards at school and nobody knew how I got them all."

That spurred more laughter from Junkrat. "Oi, that's golden! I can picture you stuffin' cards in your pockets and runnin' out like you just robbed a bank."

"That's probably how it went, honestly."

Once their mutual laughter died down, Junkrat turned to her. He had a bit of a gleam in his eye, and Hana could sense he was working something out in his head. "So," he said, "if you could steal anything in the world, what would you take?"

She'd never really thought about that. The chance to have anything in the world? "Well I'd probably take a really nice computer, like, the nicest gaming PC on the market–"

"You lying bitch!"

Hana's head snapped up at the sound of a man yelling somewhere deep in the prison. Junkrat pushed her down onto the cot. "Ow, what are you–" She was cut off again, this time by Junkrat, who shushed her and laid low beside her on the mattress.

It didn't take long for Hana to realize what he was doing – a dozen Junkers lumbered down the hall, all brandishing their deadly homebrew weapons, apparently itching for a fight. It took just a few steps for someone to apparently bump into another, resulting in one of them cracking the other with a bat wrapped in barbed wire. The struck Junker scrambled to his feet after the blow, chasing after the rogue lot.

"You think screaming at me makes you a big man? Huh?" Boss' voice answered the first, just as loud and seemingly unfazed by whomever was screaming at her. "Back the fuck off."

"What's going on?" Hana whispered.

"No idea." Junkrat kept his hand rested lightly on Hana's back. The gesture was surprisingly comforting. Hana nestled down into the old bed, listening and trying not to make any noise.

They heard some sort of general commotion after that, presumably as the other Junkers reached Boss and started escalating the situation. Hana could still hear Boss' voice, but it was quickly getting drowned out by multiple male voices shouting over her. When it didn't seem to be dying down Hana sat up in the bed. "What if they're hurting her?"

"What are you gonna do about it?" Junkrat whispered back. "Jump in there and start throwin' punches at those big lugs?" He took hold of one of her tiny gloved hands and held it up for emphasis.

Shaking loose from his grip, she hopped up and went for the door.

"DVa, wait! You can't–" Junkrat pursued her to the door. "Hana!"

"Jamie!" She spun around, taking some satisfaction in the surprise on his face at her use of his real name. "I'm going."

She threw open the door and hurried out. Not a moment later she heard Junkrat's peg leg tapping at the floor as he hobbled after her. "All right, all right, wait for me then!"

It didn't take long for them to find Boss. A whole group had clustered around her, none looking particularly pleased with their self-assigned leader. Behind Boss the door to the kitchen, usually locked tight, was busted open and hanging loose on its hinges. The Junker guard with the animal skull on their head was on all fours in the doorway, their skull jaw pulled open in a snarl as they glared up at Boss. In one of their clawed hands was a crushed empty can.

"It's not a big deal – we can get more. We'll find more!" Boss' hands were raised defensively in front of her, perhaps a subconscious attempt to keep back the swarm of angry-looking Junkers shouting at her.

"We're only here because you had plenty'a food. No food, no reason to stay here." A giant man with a face full of tattoos, who Hana knew called himself Ace, took a threatening step toward Boss. In his hands was some sort of rusty scrap gun.

"We haven't looted everywhere yet. There might be – there's probably some sort of factory or something we haven't found yet. There's gotta be something." Boss glanced nervously about the crowd. When she caught sight of Hana her eyes widened just a bit. The tiny action was apparently enough to get a few of the Junkers to turn in Hana and Junkrat's direction.

"What's goin' on here?" Junkrat asked one of the less-threatening ones, the teenage boy with patchy skin and a missing arm that Hana had seen her first day there.

The boy scratched his head. "No food. Boss been lying to us. Empty cans." He pointed with his good arm toward the kitchen door. Upon closer inspection Hana could see empty bottles and cans all over the floor. The Junker guard might have knocked them all down to prove a point.

"Look, I'll go for a food run myself, okay? I'll go right now." Boss took a few steps to the side, but was immediately met with more Junkers blocking her path. "Move."

"Don't bother. We'll find it ourselves." Ace lifted his gun to Boss as she was turning back toward him. Hana cried out without thinking.

"Boss!"

Before Boss could get out of his path, Ace pressed his gun to her forehead. With a sickening blast the gun unloaded right between her eyes, sending her jerking backward. For a split second she seemed quite aware of what just happened – long enough for her eyes to slide up to the gunshot hole in her forehead. Then she collapsed to the floor.

Hana was about to scream again, but Junkrat covered her mouth before she could. The gunshot threw the already-rowdy crowd into chaos around them. The Junkers all started shouting, seemingly in excitement, and half of them dispersed to start looting whatever remained in the kitchen and cafeteria. Junkrat pretended to be looking around for things to loot too, but he kept a hold on Hana's arm and did not allow them to get separated by the crowd.

Once most of the Junkers had dispersed Hana cautiously approached Boss where she lay on the ground, sprawled out like a ragdoll. She sank to her knees beside her. "Boss…I'm sorry…"

Strangely, there didn't seem to be any blood from her wound. As Hana leaned down to take a better look at it, suddenly Boss' eyes flew open. Hana shrieked, drawing Junkrat to her side in an instant. "What? What's – holy crap!"

"Ugh." Boss reached up, felt around her gunshot wound, and then – to Hana's shock and horror – pushed her fingers inside it and came back out with the bullet.

"You're alive?" Hana watched in astonishment as she tossed the bullet away. It seemed she didn't immediately register Hana and Junkrat's presence. When she did her facial expression changed. Before Hana could say anything else the other girl took on a bizarre, sickly green glow to her skin. She seemed to almost melt in front of Hana's eyes, disappearing into the floor as if she were never there to begin with.

"Uh…" Junkrat scratched his head. "Well, that just happened."

"I don't understand, how could someone survive being shot point-blank between the eyes like that?" Hana whispered. "And just pull it out themselves afterward?"

They heard a noise behind them, like a metal chain scraping against something. They turned to find Roadhog tossing aside a smaller Junker, who looked to have just eaten a faceful of ammo from his scrap gun. It took only a moment for Hana to look around the giant man and notice her mech lying on its side behind him. "My mech!" She leaped up and ran for it. "What happened to it?"

Roadhog swung his chain hook toward it, latching on and pulling it over to Hana. Hana immediately climbed inside the back door and examined its interior for damage. Immediately she noticed its settings were all messed with, like someone had been desperately trying to figure out how to operate it. No way it could have been Roadhog. It must have been that scrawny Junker he had just shot.

She felt a good deal safer once inside her mech, but she still knew one thing for certain. This place was falling, and they had to make their escape now.

Junkrat hopped up on the back of her mech as Hana stomped down the hall. They stopped at Junkrat's cell just long enough for him to grab the bag of things he'd been packing for the escape. On the way out of the cell he paused at the tire he'd been tweaking. With scarcely a moment's hesitation he snatched it up and tied it to his back with some rope he'd scavenged for fuse-making. He was back atop Hana's mech in a matter of seconds.

Not many of the Junkers apparently wanted to scrap with a giant mech, but those who did got Roadhog's hook and shotgun to the face. By the time they made it to Hana's cell, everything had already been overturned by another Junker. She hadn't had much to her name, but just knowing that someone had rooted through it without a single care for her ownership made her feel violated.

The animal skull Junker darted past her cell. They were carrying an armload of weapons.

"Okay, we better get the hell outta here now." Junkrat tapped the leg of Hana's mech. "Like, now now."

Hana piloted her mech out into the hall, then spun it around. "Wait, where's Ana?" She hadn't seen the old woman in the chaos at all.

"Who the hell's Ana?"

"Hana!"

Hana turned in her mech. Her eyes lit up when she saw Ana ducked low and hurrying down the hall, her rifle at the ready. Her mask was missing.

"Whoa, The Wastelander's an old lady!" Junkrat cried. Hana bopped him in the head with the arm of her mech. "Ow!"

As soon as Ana reached them Hana offered her the arm of her mech that Junkrat wasn't riding on. Ana hesitated, but when more gunshots rang out in a cell down the hall she quickly climbed up onto the mech and clung carefully to it with her free hand. Hana pushed the joysticks all the way forward, propelling the mech into a full run. She didn't dare engage the boosters with Ana onboard.

Thus began their mad dash out of the prison. At one point the mech took a few bullets from an unknown source. Hana looked up just in time to see a female Junker leaping down at her from the second floor. Before she could think it through she instinctively fired up the boosters. Junkrat shrieked as the mech blasted forward, just barely clearing the doorway to the main lobby.

When they stopped Hana made sure to check on Junkrat and Ana. "You guys okay?"

Ana nodded. Junkrat exhaled. "Yeah, but maybe let me know next time you're gonna do that, Deevs."

"Sorry. I didn't exactly plan on it."

A minute later Roadhog came chugging through the doorway. Once they were all together again Hana continued toward the prison entrance. It seemed clear – but as soon as they reached the doors and Junkrat hopped down to open them, they quickly realized it was locked from the outside. "God, of course it is," Hana muttered. "It's a prison. Boss probably has the keys."

"Don't worry, guys." Junkrat fished some kind of round metal device out of his rucksack. "Leave this to me! Stand back!"

Hana moved the mech back. Junkrat set the device down by the door and pulled out some sort of handheld…detonator?

With a huge explosion, and a sound oddly reminiscent of a car alarm, the device blew the doors wide open. Hana stormed out with her fellow Junkers in tow.

The night, without streetlights or parking lot lights, was pitch black and ominous as all hell. Regardless, Hana felt fairly safe with her only three remaining friends at her side. "So, um," she said after a few moments of silence, "how do we get to that boat?"

"Uhh…Roadie remembers, right?" Junkrat looked at him expectantly. Roadhog pointed out into the wastes. "Right, I knew he'd remember. He's a genius."

An explosion from inside the prison spurred them onward. "Man, those Junkers were just waiting for a chance to…" Hana trailed off when another sound caught her attention. It was muffled and quiet and coming from just beyond the prison gate.

With a few cautious steps forward, she turned and picked up on a small, barely moving figure concealed by shadow, curled up against the outer fence. In the dim moonlight Hana was able to identify it only once she closed the distance between them. "…Boss?"

Boss sat against the fence with her face in her hands. When Hana spoke she seemed to startle a bit, then gradually lifted her head from her hands. Hana noticed her eyes had a bizarre, almost reflective quality to them – or maybe they were actually glowing.

She climbed out of the mech and knelt down at Boss' side. Ana and Roadhog kept their weapons in hand, looking around for any potential attackers. Junkrat remained on top of the mech, tossing some sort of round ball, most likely an explosive of some kind, from palm to palm.

"Are you okay?" There were so many questions Hana wanted to ask, but that one presented itself first.

Boss' shoulders sagged a she stared off into the distance. "I knew we were running low on food. I should've warned them sooner. I just…didn't know how to tell them. I was scared of how they'd react."

Hana looked her over. "Um, I don't really care about that right now. I'm kinda more concerned with how you're even still alive."

Boss leaned the back of her head against the fence, now staring up into the cloudy, polluted sky. With a tone oddly devoid of emotion, she said, "I'm not. Not really."

"You're not alive?"

"Can I tell you something?"

"Um, sure?"

Boss took a deep, slow breath, as if stalling her next sentence. "I was inside the omnium when it got blown up."

Hana drew back a bit. "What? You were?"

Boss nodded. "I remember it all. All us engineering students were on a trip there, to see how things worked inside of it. My whole class…my Advanced Engineering professor…" She smiled a bitter smile. "Funny, that 'Liberation Front' claimed to care so much about human lives, yet they never even bothered to check if there were any of us inside the building they stormed and blew to pieces."

"How did you survive it?"

"That's my point, kiddo." She folded her arms. "I didn't. At least, not totally."

She held out one booted foot. As soon as she touched it to the ground it took on that greenish hue again, like how she looked after she'd been shot, and began to "melt" into the ground right before Hana's eyes.

"I felt myself die. But then I woke up like this. Like I'm a ghost, but not. Like my soul got melted to my body or something and couldn't get out. Still can't. I'm guessing it had something to do with all my atoms essentially getting, you know, microwaved."

Hana shook her head in confusion. It was so much to process. "So, what, you're trying to tell me you think you're dead? That you've been dead all this time?"

"Oh, I know I'm dead. It's just easier to say I 'kind of' am. I don't know. Makes it, like, easier to cope with or something, I guess." She fiddled with her gloves, then resumed staring off into space. "I haven't eaten since all this started. I told the Junkers that I eat after they all get their share. Probably didn't help them to trust me any more. And that's kind of why I let the food situation go – I didn't mean it, it just wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I was more just thinking about the whole concept of the Junkers…of being part of building a new society. Of being remembered for something."

Hana studied her for a few long seconds. "…No," she eventually said. "You can't be dead. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense at all."

"Did you not see the part where I picked a bullet out of my brain and then phased through the floor?" She punched Hana in the arm, but it was a half-hearted gesture. "Uh, sorry for that, by the way. I just didn't really know what to do in the situation. So I just kinda…fled."

Hana lowered her eyes to the ground. She could hear Junkrat saying something in the background, but it didn't really register. This girl she'd gotten to know, whom she'd lived with and almost even called a friend after a while, was dead? Blown up in a horrible, fiery explosion laced with so much radioactivity that it screwed her atoms up and prevented her from actually being able to die…

"So you tried to organize the Junkers into something so that you'd be remembered."

Boss shrugged, averting her eyes.

"Well," Hana said, her tone changing, "you don't have to stay with those jerks anymore. Because we're leaving, and you're coming with us."

"What?" She heard that interjection from Junkrat loud and clear.

"Oh God, don't go being a big soft-hearted philanthropist on me." Boss pushed her away lightly. "Leave me, Deevs. I'll make some kinda life for myself out here, even if the Junkers don't want me around. Hell, it's not like they can kill me." Ignoring her words, Hana took her by the sleeve of her jacket and began dragging her to her feet. "Ah, hey, don't rip that – dude, let go!" Despite her protests, Boss did not physically resist as Hana pulled her over to the mech.

"We're taking Boss with us," she told Junkrat, Roadhog, and Ana. Ana gave her a look, but did not challenge her decree. It was obvious Junkrat had some things to say about it, but he just barely managed to hold his tongue. Boss climbed onto the back of the mech, hanging on to its rusty truck bumper. Knowing what she knew then, Hana realized just how little weight the other girl added when compared to Junkrat and even Ana. She hadn't noticed when they were testing the boosters, but it was certainly noticeable now.

"So where are you guys headed, anyway?" Boss leaned around front to ask Hana.

"Well, apparently there are these guys who are selling boat rides out of Australia. We're thinking we're just gonna take their boat and go without them."

"Wait, you're leaving the Outback?"

"Oh, uh, yeah."

"And you're not even just going to Sydney or something? You're gonna flee the whole continent?"

"Wait, what's in Sydney?" Hana paused the mech and looked up at her curiously.

Boss raised an eyebrow. "Civilization? I don't know, if you want to leave the Outback I don't see why you'd want to take a boat somewhere when you could travel there much easier."

Hana looked around at her companions. "…The rest of Australia isn't destroyed?"

"Wait, you didn't know that?" Junkrat scratched his greasy hair idly. "I always thought you were just here for the same reasons we were. Didn't like society, or whatever."

"Wait, you knew we could get to safety and civilization, and you just didn't bother?" Hana growled. "Jamie!"

"Agh, stop usin' my real name! It's scary!" He drew back in mock terror.

"Ana, did you know this?" Hana asked her next.

The old woman nodded. "I'm sorry, Hana. I guess I assumed the same as Junkrat, that you felt you couldn't return to civilization and therefore didn't want to. I understood the feeling."

"Well screw this, then! Let's just go to some part of Australia that isn't all radioactive and ruined!"

"Uh, Hana–" Junkrat cleared his throat. "I still got that, uh, promise to Roadhog I gotta make good on. Remember?"

"You can't steal stuff in Sydney?"

"You think we're gonna be able to take any kind of plane or train or bus armed to the teeth like this?" He crossed his arms. "On a boat there won't be nobody to stop us. We can go wherever we want."

Hana glanced up at Boss again. "What do you think? Should we take the boat, or take our chances in the rest of Australia?"

Boss seemed surprised that her opinion was going to be considered. She hesitated for a moment, and then asked, "What's your end goal here?"

"International crime spree."

"What?" Ana leveled Hana with a scornful Mom Glare.

"Oh yeah, I was gonna tell you about that..." Hana chuckled uncomfortably.

"Well if you're going for an international crime spree then yeah, a boat would be quieter and more subtle when you're traveling from place to place. A lot slower, though." Boss tapped her chin. "If I had enough time and resources I could probably mod the boat. Hook some boosters up to it like I did with your mech. That'd speed it up a bit."

"Hana, is that really the path you want to take?" Ana murmured. "You can do so much better than…"

"Holy crap, I just realized you're the Wastelander." Boss stared at Ana until Ana turned away. "I didn't know you were a lady! Awesome."

"My mask was stolen from me in the prison," Ana muttered. "I don't know who has it now."

"Um, so anyway…" Hana started slowly moving the mech forward. "If anyone wants to walk, feel free to, 'cause I'm scared I'm gonna knock you guys off with my bad driving."

Roadhog reached over and plucked Junkrat from the mech, throwing him over his shoulder.

"Okay, that's one solution I guess."

Boss relocated to the free arm of the mech. "Hey…" she said as they started back into motion, "are you sure about this?"

"About leaving?"

"About bringing me."

"Eh, if you cause any trouble I'll just suck you up in one of those ghost vacuums."

Boss laughed. "Kinda nice to have it out in the open, honestly. I probably should've told the Junkers…"

"We all have our secrets." Ana pushed a loose lock of silver hair back under her hood.

"I can see that." Boss smiled a little. "I like your tattoo, by the way. I did a project on Horus in middle school."

Ana nodded. "Thank you. It's very important to me."

Hana picked up the pace a little once she heard another explosion behind her. She couldn't stop herself from pausing to steal one last glance back at the prison. It hadn't been the most luxurious of homes, but it had shielded her from the elements and given her food and a relatively safe place to sleep for nearly two weeks. Seeing it slowly being destroyed in front of her was more than a little depressing.

She wondered what her parents would think of her current scenario. Riding in a modified, radioactive power loader, carrying an old woman and a dead girl away from an exploding prison. On their way to go steal a boat and probably murder a bunch of people in the process. Their little girl was really all grown up now.