Apparently Hana wasn't quite as browbeaten as she'd believed she was. The moment she heard a familiar click she was at the door and pulling it open. Without electricity the room's high-tech locks were no challenge. She was just able to escape the room before some sort of emergency generator must have kicked on, relocking the door behind her and powering up just a single overhead light in the hallway.

She may not have known what the hell was going on, but she knew for damn sure that if she was ever going to have a shot at getting out of Vishkar, a surprise power outage was probably it.

She started to hear voices from other parts of the building. The Vishkar employees working the night shift were all in an uproar. What the heck even happened? She didn't allow herself time to postulate an answer. The sound of rapid footsteps behind her kicked her into motion. She darted around a corner, keeping hidden from the employees hurrying by. It wasn't difficult to do, as the employees were clearly in a panic and did not seem to be looking for escaped Junkers at that moment.

She perked up at the sound of a familiar step-click, step-click, step-click echoing from the other end of the hall. She could have cried with relief when she spotted Junkrat limping toward her, waving eagerly.

"You got out!" Hana stole a glance around to make sure they weren't being followed. When she was sure they were alone, she threw her arms around him and hugged him quickly.

With a bit of visible surprise Junkrat hugged her back. "I didn't see Roadie or your friend Ana," he said. His tone was markedly more solemn than she was used to. It sounded so strange to her. She guessed that could only be expected after so many weeks of being caged up like an animal. "I don't think they got out."

Hana crouched and hurried down the hallway. Junkrat followed suit. Truthfully she had no idea what she was doing, but she guessed it was good to at least look like she had a plan.

They scuttled down the hall in silence at first, but eventually Junkrat couldn't resist opening his mouth. "So do you have any idea what's even goin' on right now?" he loudly whispered to Hana.

"I've been talking to a hacker that apparently hates Vishkar as much as we do," she whispered back. "I'm wondering if they did something."

With another whirr the limited power supplied by the generators suddenly cut out as well. "Ana!" Hana whispered loudly, despite knowing the walls were all most likely as soundproof as her own had been. "Roadhog!"

One of the doors flew open and slammed off the wall. Roadhog forced his way out through the small doorway. They had apparently taken his mask and makeshift armor, for he was in nothing but the pair of torn pants he'd worn into the place.

"Roadie!" Junkrat hopped over to him. "We're bustin' out of here, pal! C'mon!"

Roadhog lumbered down the hall after them. "I don't know what room Ana's in," Hana whispered. "She's supposedly in some special medical room being examined."

With one huge, meaty fist Roadhog started pounding on each door. "Oi, what're you doin' mate?" Junkrat hopped nervously around him. "What if there's someone else in one'a these cells?"

Rather than knocking, Hana started simply yanking doors open. All the rooms she checked were empty. Eventually they reached the end of the hall, with only one door remaining. "She's gotta be in this one."

Hana pulled the door open. Instead of Ana, what she found sent her staggering backward.

The room appeared more like some sort of laboratory. What startled Hana was not the room itself, but the thing hovering in the middle of it – a massive, vaguely-human-shaped entity of neon green light. It almost looked like a ghost in terms of its poorly-defined shape and long, flowing limbs.

Its body twisted toward Hana, practically searing her eyes with how bright it was. "HANA!" The voice was highly distorted, as if the creature's vocal chords were partially melted. "I DID IT! IT WAS ME!" Some sort of horrific, gurgling noise emerged from the creature as it thrust its oozing, almost-dripping hands of light or energy out triumphantly before it.

"Wh-what are you?" Hana kept her eyes shielded with one hand as she cautiously approached the creature.

Its triumphant pose melted away. It tilted its vaguely head-shaped appendage. "IT'S…ME. IT'S BOSS."

"Boss?!" Hana rushed over to her. "Oh my God, what happened to you?"

"I…I'M…" She began to sink downward, her lower half melting into a puddle of energy on the floor around her. "I THINK I…need help…"

With a note of hesitation, Hana reached out to Boss, and touched her fingertips to one of her massive, tentacle-like limbs of pure light. As soon as they made contact a surge of energy jolted through Hana. The sheer force of it knocked her to the floor.

Stunned, she sat up and rubbed her head. "Ungh…what the…huh?" She blinked a few times. The lab was gone. She was lying instead on the floor of some sort of factory – or rather the ruins of a factory. Is this…the omnium?

The lower half of her body was crushed under some sort of dimly-glowing chunk of metal. It seemed like it should have been painful, but she felt nothing. Hana lifted it off of herself and then stumbled to her feet. "Hello?" The voice that called out was not her own. It belonged to Boss. "Is anybody else…?"

Hana gasped as she spotted a handful of people lying scattered across the floor not too far from her. And they were quite literally scattered – their bodies were melted, puddles of liquefied flesh still bubbling on the floor a stretch away from them. Hana felt sickness churn in her stomach, but she could not empty it. "H-Hello?" Boss' voice called again, much less certain the second time. "Professor? Anyone? Is anybody still…alive…?"

Parts of the ceiling had apparently crashed down in the explosion, poking holes of sunlight through the darkness of the wrecked omnium. Hana crawled over the twisted metal and remains of Boss' classmates. What's going on? Why am I even seeing all this?

One of the metal scraps she stepped on broke and cracked in half. She heard a noise beneath it, a disturbingly human one. Hana scrambled off the wreckage just in time to notice a girl about her own age semi-crushed beneath it. "Lacey!" Hana lifted the debris off the other girl. "Oh my God, you're alive! You're…"

The girl, Lacey, was staring vacantly up at the ceiling. Her body was twitching, and she was making small, incoherent noises. Upon moving the rubble, Hana realized something horrific – the girl's legs were completely crushed.

"Oh my God. Oh my God, Lacey." Hana tried to lift her from the wreckage, but the girl groaned and withdrew from her grip.

"V…Va…Vanessa…" The girl's eyes slid to Hana's – Boss' – Vanessa's – face. Hana winced as she noticed that the girl's eyes were red with blood.

"I'm here, Lace," Boss said. "I'm fine! I can help you! I'll get you out of here!"

Lacey shook her head. An abrupt cough rattled her, and she coughed a puddle of blood onto the floor beside her head.

"S-stop! Let me help you!" Hana grabbed her, a little more roughly this time, and started dragging her across the floor. As she moved forward she realized her skin was changing from Boss' usual dark brown to an eerie green, the color she took on when she was phasing through things. "I'll help you…I'll…help you…" Eventually Hana realized she wasn't holding onto Lacey anymore. In fact she couldn't seem to get a hold of anything. Her feet were sinking right through the floor.

"What's going on?" It was as if she were sinking in quicksand. Her dragging Lacey had left a trail of smeared blood from the poor other girl, who had collapsed and was no longer moving. "Lacey, I'm so sorry – I have no idea what's happening, I'm–"

Hana gasped as she sat up from the floor of the Vishkar laboratory. Junkrat was crouched next to her, Roadhog staring down at her from her other side. A few meters away Boss was clutching her head, seemingly back to her normal form.

"Jeez, you okay Deevs?" Junkrat offered her his hand. "Thought we lost ya for a tick."

Still a bit unsteady, Hana let Junkrat help her to her feet. She did not answer him, though – she was focused on Boss instead. She approached the other girl cautiously. "Are you okay, Boss?"

Boss lowered her hands from her face and looked up at Hana. Her eyes still held a reflective green light, like a cat's. "I…don't know what just happened. One minute I was trying to cause a power surge, the next minute…" Hana extended a hand to her, which she accepted as she clambered to her feet. "I…think I saw your parents? They looked like you. I mean like, I could see you in them. Um…"

"You saw my parents?" Hana grabbed her arm. "What, like, in the – in the afterlife, or something?"

"I don't know." Boss shook her head, still looking a bit confused herself. "They were talking to me like I was you. Maybe it was your memory or something. When we touched like that I was all raw energy, so maybe it opened some kind of weird channel."

A voice from somewhere down the hall startled them back to the reality of the present situation. "Yeah, let's maybe chat about this later, right?" Junkrat grabbed hold of both girls and started anxiously pulling them toward the door.

"We still have to find Ana!" Hana let him drag her out into the hallway, but then broke from his grip.

"No, first we gotta find where they stashed our shit. Once we got our weapons back, then we go rescuin'."

"Actually," Boss piped up, "I know exactly where they're keeping our stuff."

"You do?" both Junkrat and Hana replied.

"Yeah, I saw it when I was – well I can explain it later. Just follow me."

Junkrat and Roadhog seemed hesitant, but Hana could feel that Boss wasn't bluffing. In fact she felt a weirdly deeper connection to her after being in her shoes, in her memories, or whatever that had been. She took one of Boss' hands in her own. "Lead the way. I'll follow you."

Boss looked down at their hands, then up into Hana's eyes. Then she turned and hurried out the door, holding tight to Hana the entire way.

Somehow Boss knew exactly how to get to the room where their weapons were being stored. Stranger than that was the fact that the door was hanging wide open, as though someone had already been through there that very night.

"Oh my God!" Boss startled at something Hana could not see. Hana peered around her taller friend and gasped. Two Vishkar employees were sprawled out on the floor, seemingly unresponsive.

"Are they dead?" she whispered.

Boss leaned down to them. "Look at this." She pointed to something stuck into one of their arms. Upon closer inspection Hana realized it was some sort of needle – or maybe more like a dart? "They're not dead. It looks like they're…asleep."

"Sleep darts?"

Boss moved past them, over to some sort of reinforced door. It, too, was hanging open. "Everything's still in here."

Hana slipped inside the room. The walls were made of a reinforced steel, like a walk-in safe. Their weapons, barring her mech, which was chained to the far wall, were displayed prominently in the middle – way too prominently. Boss clearly had the same apprehension about it as Hana. She lifted an arm to block Hana from moving closer, then took a step forward herself. A piercing buzz suddenly rang out through the room. Boss cried out as no less than six blue laser beams drilled into her from all sides. Hana jumped back. The noise was familiar, and as she followed the lasers to their source she realized they were the same wall-mounted turrets Satya had used to zap her in the elevator some weeks ago.

Roadhog stepped through the doorway, past Hana. Without hesitation he smashed each of the turrets with his massive fist. They shattered like glass all over the floor, then the shards disintegrated into nothing but tiny wisps of flickering light.

"Ow." Boss was sprawled flat on her back. "To clarify I don't actually feel pain, but I feel like I still get to say ow after that."

Hana pulled her up. They started snatching up the weapons and doling them out to their rightful owners. Hana picked up the light pistol Ana had lent her what felt like a lifetime ago. It was only then that she realized Ana's sniper rifle was not amongst the pile of confiscated weapons. A sinking feeling weighted her gut as she turned to Boss.

"Ana's rifle isn't here."

Boss searched around the rest of the room. "Huh, yeah, it's not. Think she took it already? I mean the doors were open."

Hana's prolonged silence after that drew the attention of Junkrat and Roadhog, who were now fully armed. "What'sa matter, Deevs?" Junkrat handed her one of homemade bombs. "Want one?"

She gave it back to him. "No thanks, Junky. Let's just get my mech."

The mech was locked down with extremely strong chains. They were no match for the mech once Hana slipped in the back and engaged the boosters. The opposite wall, however, was indeed a match for it. She slammed head-on into the reinforced steel before she could stop the mech from propelling forward. The noise echoed all the way down the hall.

The mech shattered to pieces on impact.

Hana was dropped to the floor as her mech dissolved into a million sparkles of blue light, scattering throughout the room until they were no longer visible. Hana could only sit and stare in confusion until the revelation struck her. "They're not real."

Junkrat limped over to her. "Whaddya mean? What's not real?"

"They're made of that hard light stuff. Maybe everything here is made of it." Hana retrieved the pistol from the waist of her jeans. With a grunt she threw it down as hard as she could. Sure enough, the moment it struck the floor it smashed like movie glass.

"Somebody built all these fake weapons." Boss crushed her fake machete in her fist. "Maybe this whole room. But who would–"

They froze at the sound of footsteps just outside the room. Hana slowly turned around. Satya stood stick-straight in the doorway, her organic arm equipped with some sort of white, claw-like weapon that was pointed straight at them. A visor covered her eyes, but it was translucent, allowing Hana to very clearly see the upset reflected in them.

Hana took a step back from her.

"You are violating your curfew." Satya's voice was even, but just barely. "You are not supposed to be out of your room at this hour."

Boss, Roadhog, and Junkrat were all looking to Hana. Apparently she was going to be the negotiator here.

"Perhaps…you got lost in the dark," Satya added, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than anything else. "I can escort you back–"

"Satya." Hana spoke the other woman's name softly, but just loud enough to stop Satya midsentence. "What did you do with our stuff?"

"It was…destroyed. Long ago."

"Your coworkers over there were knocked out with sleep darts. Obviously those were real." Hana paused. "...Wait a minute. You saw it happen, didn't you?"

Satya fumbled for a response.

"You followed Ana, watched her take out two of your coworkers, and you knew the rest of us wouldn't be far behind. So you hid our weapons somewhere and replaced them with these fakes. That's what happened, isn't it?"

"You fail to understand, Hana. You do not need weapons. They are not a part of your critical function anymore."

"And what is my function? Being the poster girl for your creepy company that brainwashes kids into serving them for life?"

"How about using us as expendable test subjects for illegal human testing?" Boss added. Junkrat and Roadhog looked to her. "Yeah, that's right. They stuck me in a cage and were trying to figure out how to replicate what happened to me in the omnium. They were going to use you guys as their first test subjects, then scoop up all the remaining Junkers in the Outback and test on them, too. They want us all dead and out of their way."

Satya glanced between Hana and Boss. "Vishkar wants to improve the lives of displaced peoples, not eliminate them." Satya raised her weapon again, but her arm visibly quivered. "You are lying to me. You still do not see our noble purpose and so you are trying to sway me. What you do not realize is that I was once exactly where you are. I did not know what was best for me until Vishkar opened my eyes to the truth."

"Satya." Hana took a slow, cautious step toward her, raising an open palm to block her weapon. "I know you think this place wants to make people's lives better. But look at us." She gestured to the rest of the Junkers in the room. "We're miserable."

"Because you do not know what's best for you." Satya was unrelenting. "You've been out in the wastelands, suffering radiation poisoning, your minds are weakened–"

"Does anybody else know we're down here right now?" Hana interrupted her again.

Satya hesitated. "...Not at the moment. Why?"

In a tone barely surpassing a whisper, Hana said, "You could let us go. You could just look the other way for five minutes. We could be free, making our lives better, and nobody would ever know."

"I would know!" That was the first time Satya had ever raised her voice that Hana had witnessed. Even she herself seemed a bit taken aback by her tone. She rested a hand on her chest and drew back a little, falling quieter after that. "How could you expect me to shoulder the burden of knowing I sent you back into the folds of chaos and disorder? That you will continue back on your path of depravity, where you will all ultimately be doomed to sicken and die?" She made direct, extended eye contact with Hana, a rarity from Hana's experience with the woman. "Tell me Hana, would you take in a sick or wounded animal, treat it until it was only semi-well, and then toss it back to the wolves again?"

"Improving people's lives doesn't always mean sheltering them from every bad thing in the world." Boss locked on to Satya, but her eyes were soft, not harsh like they could sometimes be. "My parents always did that to me. It didn't make my life better. It just made me a big awkward loser with no friends and no life experience. And it didn't save me from going through hell after the omnium blew up."

Satya looked her over. Then she looked to Hana, then to Junkrat and Roadhog. "I just don't understand," she murmured, lowering her eyes to the ground. "You would be so much happier here. Why do you fight so hard to return to a terrible world?"

Something echoed down the hall. More footsteps. Satya turned, and her eyes widened at something unseen. She quickly waved her hands in front of her. Suddenly she, and the entire hallway for that matter, were gone. There wasn't even a doorway anymore. Just a solid wall.

Though nobody was talking, Hana shushed the Junkers anyway and pressed herself against the wall. Boss and Junkrat joined her. She couldn't hear much, but Satya was saying something in a low voice. She could hear another voice too, but it was too faint to make out. She heard a scuffling of feet, as if there was a confrontation, but nobody shouted, and Hana couldn't hear any other sounds of conflict.

Hana squished herself as tight to the wall as she could, desperate to hear anything else. Boss was leaning partially into the wall. Several minutes passed, and eventually no more sound met their ears. Did they leave? Surely Satya wasn't going to just leave them trapped in this tiny room with no exits, right?

Right?

They sat in deafening silence for a few more minutes. "I don't know why I trusted her." Hana eventually sank down against the wall. "Ana was right. I really shouldn't trust anyone."

Boss slid down beside her. "Don't know how much I'd trust Ana either, honestly. She took off pretty quick first chance she got."

Hana gazed down at the floor. "Maybe she's looking for us."

"I wouldn't get my hopes up for that." Junkrat lay on the floor a few meters from them, his legs stretching up the wall. "She never did jack shit for anyone at the prison."

"I don't know why I trusted her, either. Well, I mean..." She trailed off at the realization of how foolish her planned next words would sound out loud.

"Hm?" Boss tilted her head, encouraging Hana to finish.

With a sigh, Hana said, "Well I...I lost my parents when this all happened. Like, one-two punch. Both of them in a few days. I guess Ana was kind of like having a parent again."

Boss folded her arms and exhaled slowly. "I didn't know it was like that. Sorry, Hana."

"Whatever. Anyway, I guess that's why I trusted her. She was always nice to me, though. I really don't think she'd just…" Hana stopped herself. "…But what do I know. She abandoned her own daughter. Why would she stick around for me?"

"She abandoned her daughter?"

"I guess she, like, faked her own death to get out of the military or something. She was apparently hiding out in the Outback when those idiots blew up the omnium."

Roadhog, who had been sitting at the far end of the room, got up then. With some degree of viciousness he slammed his fist into the wall where the doorway once was. The wall shattered.

"Roadie, what're you doin'?" Junkrat was on his feet in a second, hobbling to his friend's side. "Every damn bloke in this place probably just heard that!" Ignoring him, Roadhog lumbered down the hall. "Hey, wait for me, big guy!"

Hana knew she should follow them – strength in numbers and all that – but she was having trouble mustering the will to get up. They were just going to run straight into the middle of more fighting, like those men they fought for the boat way back when. More people might die. And now she didn't even have Ana.

"Hey." Boss reached out to her with an open, inviting hand. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm sure she's looking for us right now."

Hana laid her hand in Boss' palm, but made little effort to pull herself up. This left the two of them awkwardly linked together, neither making a move.

"I don't know why," Hana mumbled, "but I had this stupid idea that I was gonna be able to convince Satya to come with us. That we'd all leave as a group, break her out of this awful place. She's not a bad person."

Boss frowned. "I don't know if you'll be able to do that, Hana. You saved me, but not everyone's gonna be as open to it as I was."

"No, I know she won't go." Hana finally got to her feet. Boss' hand was ice cold, but she so sorely needed the human contact at that moment that she held on long after she probably should have let go. Boss didn't seem to mind. In fact she just sort of stood there, the two of them staring at each other for a long time.

"Well," Boss said with a modest shrug, "you've got me."

"One good thing I guess." Hana smirked. "I'd probably go crazy traveling with no one but guys."

"Ugh, try majoring in Engineering. Made Junkertown look like a gender-balanced utopia."

Hana giggled. "I was going to start uni in the fall for Media Design. I wanted to make video games. So I probably would have been in the same situation."

"Wait, where were you going? Like, what school?"

"'Darwin University'? I only got to visit it once, but it was the only school even remotely close by, so–"

"That's where I go! Or, uh, went."

Hana was tempted to talk more – God, she'd been so lonely trapped with nothing but Vishkar people for a month – but they had to keep moving. She took a step toward the smashed-open doorway. Boss stayed right beside her.

Satya really was gone. In fact the entire floor was eerily silent. Hana crept down the hall, straining her ears for any sort of sound. All she picked up were her own footsteps. Even Boss barely made a sound when her boots touched down. Dread memories crept up on Hana. It was the quietness. The silence of having nothing but her own thoughts to listen to. Between the weeks of it in the wasteland right after the explosion and the near-month of it in her soundproof Vishkar room, silence no longer held anything but bad associations in her mind.

Finally a blessed sound carried to her ears. Something was humming, like an appliance running or something. It must have been in one of the rooms up ahead. Hana perked up and immediately headed toward it.

"Whoa, Hana, where are you going?" Boss whispered as she nevertheless followed her.

Hana halted in front of one of the open doors near the end of the hall. Boss practically smacked into her. They both stared into the room. Inside Satya sat, perfectly poised, on the same stool she had manifested the day Hana met her. She was facing away from them, her attention instead on some sort of glowing blue portal projecting up from an apparatus that abstractly resembled a lotus flower. Junkrat and Roadhog were nowhere to be seen.

Hana and Boss exchanged a look.

Satya sat up straight and tall, still facing away from Hana and Boss. "No one ever desires Vishkar's help." She turned just enough to glance at them over her shoulder, exposing only one eye to them. "Why?"

The noise she'd heard was coming from the strange blue and white machine. In the hall it had been faint, but in the silence of the tiny room it felt almost deafening. Hana tried to put together a response, if for no other reason than to eliminate the silence between the three women.

"I don't want to be the cutesy mascot of your company. Those days are over."

"And, you know, they were planning on testing on us like lab animals," Boss murmured.

Satya's shoulders drooped just slightly. "I do not always agree with Vishkar's methods. They believe the end justifies the means. Sometimes that involves sacrificing innocent lives."

"And you're okay with that?" Boss' tone was sharp. Hana lifted a hand, trying to diffuse the other girl. She knew Boss could have a temper, and that would get them nowhere here.

"No. That's why I let your friends go."

Every argument Hana had planned to make dried up on her tongue. "What?"

Satya finally stood up and faced them. Still uncertain just what was going on, she and Boss both stood as tall as they could and attempted to face her down. It was pretty laughable, since Satya must have had at least ten centimeters on Boss and more than twenty on Hana.

She gestured to the glowing blue device that was now behind her. "Your friend, the old woman, she confronted me. She demanded to know where you were." Satya didn't specify who "you" was meant to be, but her gaze flicked over Hana when she said it. "She was armed, yet she did not attack me. Still, I had no choice but to send her away."

"Away? Away to where?"

"And then your other friends…all so very aggressive…" She glanced down at the claw-like weapon in her hand. "Yet they did not hurt me, either. Perhaps they have learned something from their time here."

"What did you do with them?" Hana took a menacing step toward her. Satya ran her artificial hand over the surface of her weapon, ignoring Hana. "Satya!"

Satya lifted the weapon slowly. A glowing blue light manifested between its prongs. The light expanded, then arced out toward Hana and Boss. Hana hissed as a bizarre sensation pulsed through her body. Before she could react any further she realized she suddenly was far too weak to fight back. It was as if her energy were being sucked right out of her body.

"I am sorry we could not help you more."

Boss tried to rush Satya, but it was obvious she was too weak to do much. Satya caught her arm and spun around, pushing her up against the glowing blue machine. Boss grabbed for its edges, but lost her grip as Satya pushed her clean through it. Boss did not emerge behind the device or anything. She simply disappeared.

Hana stumbled backward. Her legs gave out under her from whatever kind of energy drain Satya had used on her. She crawled desperately away, but of course did not get far. Satya picked her up with her synthetic arm and dangled her a few inches off the ground. They stared directly into each other's eyes for a moment. Then Satya forced her through the mysterious portal as well.

Hana felt herself fall. It was as if she were being dropped off a cliff or something. But a split second later she hit a soft surface – actually, it was grass. A lot of grass. She rubbed her head and rolled over onto her stomach. She was…outside. The first purple light of dawn was just breaking over the horizon. She seemed to be on some sort of hill, and it overlooked a massive city split by a wide, winding river.

"Ugh." Boss sat up a few meters away from her. "Holy crap. I haven't been outside in weeks."

"Me neither. Did she, like, let us go?"

"Deevs! Boss! Hey!"

Hana scrambled to her feet at the all-too-familiar voice behind her. Sure enough, Junkrat and Roadhog were sitting on the grass. Or at least they had been until Junkrat caught sight of Hana – then he was up and running immediately toward her. She hadn't recovered enough energy to really run yet, but she got to her feet just in time for Junkrat to grab her up into a smothering hug.

Once the slight oxygen deprivation from Junkrat's chokehold wore off she noticed someone else approaching her. "Ana!" She dropped out of Junkrat's arms and leapt on the old woman next. Ana smiled as her powerful arms held Hana tight. "I didn't know what happened to you! I thought you left without us…"

"I would not leave you like that." Ana's voice was soft, a subtle contrast from her usual starkness.

Hana pulled back just enough to look at Ana's face. "So you came across Satya and demanded to know where we were?"

"'Satya', was that her name? I was about to knock her out with a sleep dart like I did two of her coworkers." The old woman chuckled dryly. "But I heard her speak to you, and how she seemed conflicted in her loyalties. She was actually quite civil when I spoke to her. I wasn't expecting that."

"So were you lying about not feeling well?"

"I wouldn't say 'lying'…I was trying to open up some opportunities." Ana shrugged her bony shoulders. "I wasn't expecting a sudden power outage."

Boss grinned sheepishly. "That was me."

"I assumed it was one of you, for sure."

"But you're okay?" Hana pressed. "I was really worried.

Ana nodded. "I'm sorry, child. I didn't realize you were going to hear about my claim."

Hana stood on her tiptoes to peer over Ana's shoulder. A massive building pierced the sky at the top of the hill, a super modern-looking facility amidst the more traditional-looking houses in the city below. A few meters up the wall sat a glowing blue device identical to the one Satya had pushed them through. Some sort of teleporter?

"She teleported us out of Vishkar." Hana stared up at the building for a long time. Near the teleporter she swore she caught a flash of movement. Sure enough, as she squinted in the dim dawn light she spotted someone watching them from out a nearby window. Even at a distance she recognized the faint blue glow of the visor over Satya's eyes.

Hesitantly, Hana lifted a hand and waved to her. Satya disappeared from the window.

She broke every one of her convictions for us. Vishkar will probably kill her if they find out she was responsible for us escaping.

"And guess what?" Junkrat hurried over the hill. Hana tore her eyes away from the window and followed him. In the shadow of Vishkar's main building sat a surprisingly-antiquated dumpster. Junkrat popped it open and climbed up into it, and suddenly their weapons started flying out of the garbage. Several of Junkrat's frag grenades detonated on impact, starting tiny fires in the grass that Hana snuffed out with her boot. He also flung out Hana's gloves and leather jacket with the shoddily-embroidered Junker logo one of the lady Junkers at the prison had stitched onto the back for her. Hana caught them and threw them on.

Roadhog seemed pleased when his pig mask landed in the pile. He quickly strapped it on, but Hana noticed he tested it first, probably to make sure it was actually his old leather one and not a crappy hard light replica.

A groan of rusty metal spurred her attention back to the dumpster. Junkrat was attempting to move something behind it. Hana looped around and joined him, then gasped. "My mech!" The rusty machine lay sprawled out on the ground, as if it had been dragged and discarded there as quickly as possible. Hana immediately crawled into it and checked it out. Everything seemed to be working fine – the two joysticks and guns, at least. Hana reluctantly tapped the boosters. The mech flew forward about ten meters before she was able to stop it again. She ended up back on the slope of the hill near Boss and Ana.

There was a button on the dashboard that she didn't recall ever seeing before. It was a simple round button with a picture of a weirdly-shaped hexagon with a bunch of smaller hexagons inside it. Drawing back hesitantly, Hana reached forward with one finger and lightly pushed the button. With an odd noise a shield of blue-green light projected itself out in front of her. "Whoa!"

"Holy crap, what was that?" Boss was all over it in a second. "Do it again!"

This time Hana held the button down. The shield stayed up as long as she held it. Boss reached out and touched it. "Ooh, it's tingly."

Of course next thing everyone else was touching it, too. After a while it disappeared, even with Hana holding the button.

"Where did this come from? Was Vishkar messing with my mech?" It seemed to be made out of the same type of light material as the things Satya made.

Something fluttered to the ground from Satya's teleporter. The teleporter then collapsed on itself and disintegrated into nothing.

Ana collected whatever had fallen. It turned out to be an assortment of papers and a manila envelope. Hana steered the mech over to her. "What's that?"

Ana leafed silently through the pages. Hana moved to stand beside her so she could read over her shoulder. The majority of the papers were written in Hindi and thus meant little to any of them. However there were some portions of the file that did not need words – like the many candid pictures of Hana, both as a filth-covered arrestee and as a cleaned-up prisoner of Vishkar. "Oh my God, that is so creepy."

"Surely Vishkar has digital copies of all of these files," Ana murmured. "Her giving them to us is more symbolic than anything."

Every one of them had a file, though Ana's was oddly sparse. Hana wished so badly that she could read what they said. There must have been some reason Satya gave them the paperwork.

"Oh, Hana." Ana held up a picture. Hana made a face. It was an old picture of her pulled from her account. In it she was smiling and making a peace sign, wearing her signature pink headset and painted-on pink whiskers on her cheeks. It was a fairly common picture of her, being her profile picture and all. Unsurprising that they found it.

Junkrat appeared behind them. "Ah, Hana, is that you?"

"…Yes."

"Aww, you look bloody adorable!"

"Shut up."

"Too clean though. I just wanna rub some dirt all over her face." Junkrat cackled. "Then she'll be the DVa I know."

Ana pulled a small scrap of paper from between two larger sheets. This one had an inset picture of Boss smiling, in what looked to be some sort of school picture. Hana only needed to scan the first few lines before she realized what she was looking at.

Boss must have noticed her change in expression. "What?" She headed over to them. "What's in there?"

Hana reached out of the mech and took the paper from Ana. She read it over again. "It's…your obituary."

Boss faltered. "Oh."

"Vanessa Nadège Calgori, 22, of Bakewell passed away Wednesday morning, one of thirteen human casualties in the explosion of the Northern Outback omnium. Vanessa was the loving daughter of James and Roseline Calgori. She was attending Darwin University for a degree in Engineering, and was set to graduate in the Spring."

With seemingly no provocation, Roadhog suddenly pushed past them and started stomping off down the hill. Junkrat immediately pursued him, asking where he was going in such a hurry. He eventually came to a stop a short distance away. Junkrat practically crashed into him.

With everyone staring curiously at him, he turned around and presumably leveled them with a stare of his own, though the mask hid all traces of emotion that could have been read from it. Then in a hoarse, husky voice, as if rusty from disuse, he said, "Weren't tryin' to kill a bunch of kids."

"Holy crap, you talk?" Hana had never ever heard Roadhog speak. She'd assumed he couldn't.

"He talks to me sometimes." Junkrat turned his full attention on Roadhog. "Whadd'ya mean, pal?"

Roadhog shook his head.

"Wait a minute." Boss took an uncertain step toward them. "How do you know what they were trying to do? You – wait. You weren't…involved, were you?"

"Perhaps we can discuss this later?" Ana cast a wary glance up at Vishkar's many-windowed wall. "When we're safer?"

Boss ignored her. "You son of a bitch – you were with the ALF, weren't you?! You killed all my classmates! You killed me!" She ran at Roadhog and hurled her fist into his stomach. Her blow bounced right off him, doing seemingly no damage at all.

Before anything else could transpire Hana grabbed Boss up in the clutches of her mech and started hurrying down the hill. "Put me down!" Boss shrieked. "That asshole's gonna pay!"

Junkrat tilted his head. "Oh yeah, you said before you were with those blokes! I can never remember stuff like that."

Hana carried her writhing, screeching friend all the way down the hill and into the start of some thin woods separating the Vishkar property from the rest of the city. Ana and Junkrat followed close behind. Roadhog lagged a stretch behind them all.

"So where are we goin' now?" Junkrat eventually asked. "I don't have a bloody clue where we are."

"We're, uh, somewhere in India." Hana lifted Boss up in the air to be heard by Junkrat over her yelling. "I guess we could start our crime spree here?"

"Aw, yeah. There's a ton of good shit to steal in India." Junkrat rubbed his hands together. "That Vishkar lady's gonna wish she never let us go. Hahaha!"

Hana looked to Ana. As usual, she did not seem pleased at their talk of becoming criminals. But this time she did not vocally protest, so Hana assumed maybe she was warming up to the idea. Probably not, but a girl could dream.