They knew they couldn't stay in whatever city they were currently in. The place would soon be crawling with Vishkar employees looking for their golden girl and test subjects. Once Boss finally stopped flipping out and resigned herself to quiet stewing they were able to concoct a plan. Said plan was enacted as soon as they came across a city bus stopping to pick up passengers. It was one of those hover-buses they used in big cities. Living in Australia's butt-crack Hana's tiny town had largely still utilized buses with tires, though she had seen hover-buses in Busan and on her occasional trips into the Outback's larger towns.

It didn't take much persuading for the Junkers to gain control of the bus – the driver surrendered pretty quick once Junkrat pulled out his frag launcher. The passengers, too, all fled in terror. They didn't have to fire a single shot to take the bus for their own.

Junkrat hopped into the driver's seat. "Wait, you're gonna drive?" Hana met him at the front of the bus.

"Sure, why not?"

"With a peg leg?"

He leaned down toward the gas pedal and poked at it with his prosthetic. The bus lurched forward, then stopped, then lurched again, then stopped again.

"Let me do it." Hana pulled him out of the driver's seat and hopped into it herself. With a small whine Junkrat sat down in the first seat behind the driver's.

Hana had gotten her license at age seventeen, but she'd only ever driven small vehicles. Her parents had bought her an old car with tires for her eighteenth birthday, and she spent most of the time driving short routes – to school, to her friends' houses, stuff like that.

"So…" Hana tested the pedal gingerly. "Floor it?"

Junkrat's eyes lit up. "Yeah! Floor it!"

The other Junkers came tumbling to the front of the bus as Hana mashed the pedal to the floor. The bus flew down the busy street, weaving in and out of traffic, narrowly avoiding several pedestrians. "Woohoo!" Hana swerved around a corner. "This is fun!"

"Hana, are you trying to–" Ana's scolding was cut off by a horn as they passed a truck that was in the middle of turning. "Are you trying to get us all killed?"

"I'm a great driver!" Hana called back. "Look, I haven't hit a single–"

BANG! In the time Hana was turned around to respond a sidewalk vendor's food cart flew up and over the bus.

"Let me drive." Ana took the steering wheel from Hana.

"No, I was doing fine!"

"Hana!"

The swerved around a corner, smashing into a car and pushing it off the road. Ana seized the moment to grab the wheel from Hana's grip and push her out of the driver's seat. Hana loudly resisted, but her attention was pulled to the back of the bus when she heard a loud metallic noise.

Boss had disappeared, and in her place Hana's mech was swinging its heavy metal arms at Roadhog. Roadhog was standing at the back of the bus, looming over the hunk of scrap. He hooked the mech with his chain hook and pulled it in, then started looping his chain around the machine. The mech resisted, its rusty metal scraping in protest as it fired off its pathetic little pellets at him.

"Hey!" Hana dashed over to them, struggling to keep her balance on the moving vehicle. Thankfully it was a bit easier with Ana at the helm. "Boss, stop!"

The mech continued to fire at Roadhog, eventually driving him back. He pulled out his own gun and shot the mech point-blank. It staggered backward, then collapsed to one "knee". A series of popping sounds and a shower of sparks erupted from it. Then the mech collapsed into a pile of junk.

"My mech!" Hana knelt beside it. "Boss, what the hell?! That wasn't yours to wreck!"

The mech's pieces were still glowing. As Hana stared down at them she realized they had begun to vibrate as well. She gasped and stumbled backward as the hunks of metal flew back together and reassembled into their old shape. A radioactive green light flashed across its surface as it held its arms back out and seemed almost to stretch, or flex, or something. It turned to face Hana.

"I know it's horrible that the ALF killed your classmates," Hana said, her voice softening just a bit. "They killed my parents! But I'm just…dealing with it, because that's all we can do now. And besides, I think Roadhog feels bad about it. Right?" She glanced over at him. Roadhog shrugged. "...Um, he probably does. Anyway you're gonna have to get over it and work together with us if we want to get out of this mess. Okay?"

The mech remained immobile for a long few moments. Hana reached out and gingerly laid a hand on its cold metal surface. The mech sank down low, leaning forward into Hana's touch. Then with a quiet hiss, like escaping steam, Boss' energy seeped out onto the floor of the bus. It formed back into Boss' human shape. She sat hugging her knees on the bus' dingy floor.

Hana held a hand out to her. Boss shook her head and kept her eyes down.

The bus swerved to one side. Hana glanced up front to find Ana and Junkrat exchanging what sounded like heated words. Before she could actually determine what was being said their words were drowned out by something else – a chorus of blaring sirens.

"Great." Hana stood up and peered out the bus' back window. A trio of police cars were in hot pursuit. "There's three of them."

"I can handle this." Junkrat popped open one of the windows toward the back of the bus, and pushed the end of his frag launcher out of it.

"Don't, that's just gonna make it–" Pop, pop, pop! A handful of grenades bounced out across the road. Seconds later the street was rocked with explosions. "Jamie!"

There was no way they were going to escape these brand-new-looking cars in a slow as hell city bus, but they had few options – Roadhog and Hana's mech wouldn't fit in any other type of vehicle without being completely exposed, and on foot they'd be caught immediately. Hana bit her lip and tried to think of something. "Boss," she eventually asked, "is there any way you could, like, possess the bus and make it go faster or something?"

Boss averted her eyes, sweeping them low across the floor to ignore Hana.

A voice shouted something in another language over what sounded like a megaphone or some sort of giant speaker. Out the side windows Hana spotted a police copter gaining on them from the skies above. Junkrat fired his weapon madly, but it didn't do much against an aerial threat.

"Boss?" Hana reached down and grabbed her arm. Boss yanked it free of Hana's grip. "Now would be a good time to use some of your ghost-y powers…like, right now…"

Two windows smashed as a bullet soared in through one and out another, raining glass all over the interior of the bus. It was the first of several to be fired – they were clearly aiming at Junkrat, but thankfully were having a hard time hitting him since he was ducked low in front of the last pair of seats. The bus not having tires turned out to be a blessing. Nothing for the cops to shoot out.

Boss was still largely unresponsive to Hana's pleas. She seemed distant, as if purposely removing herself from the situation around her. "Okay, I get that you want Roadhog to die or whatever. But all the rest of us are gonna die too if you don't at least try to help."

"Why should I care if you all die?"

For the first time since detaching from the mech Boss actually lifted her gaze to Hana's. Her expression was guarded, but Hana had spent enough time with the other girl to tell when she was putting up a façade. It was then that the realization struck Hana. Of course Boss felt like she had nothing to lose if they all crashed and died or got shot by the police. She would be fine, and right now she must have felt like she had no one else on her side to look out for. She was poorly concealing a feeling of utter aloneness.

Hana knelt back down in front of Boss. Resting one hand on a bench seat behind the other girl, she leaned in and laid the other gingerly on one side of Boss' face. Boss drew back a little, her eyebrows raised, but Hana pursued her. Before either of them could back out of it Hana pressed her lips against Boss', enveloping the other girl in a chaste but sweet kiss. Boss only hesitated a moment before wrapping her arms around Hana's wiry waist and pulling her in to deepen it. It was bizarre, Hana thought as she let Boss slobber all over her like someone who had clearly never kissed another human being before – Boss had no real taste. No real scent, either, and her skin, lips and even mouth felt chilly to the touch. She really was like a ghost. A sweet ghost, though.

When they finally parted, Boss stared into Hana's eyes for a long moment. "I'm doing this for you," she murmured. Her form dissolved into the floor of the bus, leaving nothing but a faint green tinge over its surface.

Hana sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth on her shirt. That…wasn't as bad as I'd expected. She'd never kissed another girl before. Another check for her post-apocalypse weird list.

One of the police cars scraped up against the side of the bus. She could hear the helicopter beating the air what sounded like directly above them. C'mon, Boss. Hana ducked low to avoid another hail of bullets sailing through the windows. Get us out of here.

Moments later the bus shifted into overdrive. It raced down the crowded streets as fast as a city bus could go, or possibly faster. Hana clung to a seat. Boss weaved them through traffic with amateur control over the massive vehicle, barreling into the occasional light pole and knocking over street signs.

"Ana!" Hana yelled up to the front. "Get down, you don't need to steer it anymore!"

Ana seemed reluctant to surrender control. She quickly changed her mind when a police car came up beside them with an officer aiming out the window at her.

Another explosion sent one of the police cars spinning out and crashing into a crowd of onlookers. Hana winced. Junkrat cackled, quickly reloaded his frag launcher, and continued his assault on their pursuers.

It was becoming increasingly obvious to everyone involved they had no idea where they were going. The streets all looked the same, in a similar design to how Vishkar seemed to like everything. All things considered Boss was doing a decent job at steering them through the city, but they couldn't read the street signs, so they had no reliable way to navigate.

As they hit a bump that may have been a felled light pole, another vehicle, a person, or anything else, Hana hunkered down on the floor and looked around at her fellow Junkers. "Guys?" When they all paused to glance in her direction, Hana cleared her throat. "Um, I just wanted to say, if for whatever reason we don't make it out of this together…or at all…"

"Oi, Deevs, what a vote'a confidence!" Junkrat cut her off. "We'll make it out, don't worry."

"I'm just saying," she continued, raising her voice over all the sirens around them, "if we don't make it out of here, I just wanted to say that I – I care about you guys a lot. When I thought I was never gonna see you again at Vishkar I was really sad I never got to tell you all that." She cast a glance upward. "That goes for you too, Boss. Even if you did punch me that one time."

Junkrat shrugged and giggled a little. Roadhog gave her a thumbs up.

Still knelt opposite Hana, Ana nodded at her. "And we care about you, Hana. Trust me, I wouldn't be involved in a multi-car police chase in a stolen bus in the middle of India if I didn't." She smirked just the tiniest bit, but quickly grew solemn again. "But Junkrat is right. We shouldn't speak so morbidly. We'll be all right."

It didn't take long for more police to show up – and with bigger weapons. At the end of one street the Junkers realized the entire thing was blocked off by a police barricade. "Boss!" Hana yelled. "If you hit them we're gonna flip over!"

Boss attempted to slow the massive bus, but with the amount of momentum they had behind them it was impossible to stop in time. They crashed through the line of police cars, pushing several along with them. The sudden impact rocked the bus hard. It was unable to make the sharp turn at the end of the street. Hana shrieked as the bus tipped over and slid across the pavement with a sickening groan, throwing them around inside. Sparks seared her skin as the metal scraped across the hot cement. The bus' spin out of control came to a crunching end when it struck the side of a building, knocking the Junkers against what had once been the floor and was now the side of the bus.

Hana sat up and rubbed her head. "Ugh. Is everybody okay?"

Roadhog nodded. Junkrat, who had been hanging out the window when they flipped, dropped down from the side-turned-ceiling and landed beside Hana. The tips of his hair were smoldering, probably from the sparks of the impact. Hana put them out with her gloved fingertips.

Ana was sprawled out a meter away from them. Hana quickly clambered to her feet and hurried to her side. "Ana, are you okay?"

Ana sat up slowly, steadying herself with a hand on the ground. "It would take a lot more than that to kill me. But I might be getting a bit old for being tossed around in bus crashes."

"Sorry." Boss was kneeling on the floor near the front of the bus, her eyes downcast.

Something creaked above them. Hana glanced up. Two armored police officers were standing on top of the bus, pointing assault rifles at them.

"Uh…" Junkrat slowly set his frag launcher down. "So I guess we're under arrest?"

Hana peered through the rear window of the bus. They were completely surrounded. "Um, unless you think we can take on like fifty armed cops ourselves…"

Hana's mech creaked to life from where it had crash-landed at the back of the bus. "I don't think you can do it, Boss," Hana whispered.

One of the mech's legs was twisted in the wrong direction, severely limiting its mobility. After a few fruitless attempts to move Boss finally gave up on it and separated from the machine.

The police descended upon them, eerily reminiscent of the Australian soldiers who ambushed them in the Outback. "Drop your weapons if you want to live." One of the men pointed his rifle squarely at Hana's forehead. His voice had a strange resonance to it, perhaps because of his helmet or something.

"You're taking us alive?"

"Drop everything. Now."

With a sigh, Hana went to pull her light pistol from her waistband and set it on the floor. Before she could, however, she heard a pop behind her – and suddenly the bus was rocked by an explosion. Junkrat started firing his grenades wildly out the broken windows, scattering the police outside. Roadhog wasted no time smashing through the side of the bus with his huge, powerful hands. He tore an opening in the metal just wide enough for the rest of the Junkers to squeeze through. He kept tearing at it until he could fit through the rend himself.

Hana scrambled for her mech, but before she could get to it the mech boosted out of the hole and started firing into the crowd of police. This spurred the cops to start shooting back, and their weapons vastly outranked the Junkers' homebrew junk. Hana laid low inside the bus as several more explosions detonated just outside of it. She resisted the reflex to choke on the smoke, desperate to remain as quiet as possible to avoid detection. The cops seemed preoccupied with Boss and Junkrat the most. Roadhog was swinging his hook around, keeping the police at a distance. She couldn't even see Ana.

While it had appeared for a brief few minutes that the Junkers might actually have been able to turn the tide and chase off all of the dozens of cops on their tail, it didn't take long for the police to start shooting to kill. A series of machine gun pops startled Hana back into the bus. When the dust cleared she spotted Junkrat lying on the ground, clutching his side. Blood welled between his fingers.

"Jamie!" Without thinking she made a mad dash for him. As if waiting for just that moment, something seized her by the collar of her jacket. She tried to scream but was cut off by a gloved hand over her mouth. She chomped down with her jagged fangs, but whatever material the gloves were made of was resistant to her bite. The assailant dragged her into the crowd of heavily-armed police.

Through the crowd she caught sight of Roadhog grabbing Junkrat off the ground and running away from the police with him. One of the officers unloaded a clip of bullets in their direction. To Hana's shock Boss materialized in front of them, absorbing all of the bullets herself. Equally shocking, Roadhog picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and took off with her as well.

"Mmff!" Hana squirmed as inhumanly strong arms dragged her away from the center of the action. Suddenly something jabbed into the tender flesh of her neck. She screeched as it pressed deep into her, cold and sharp. She recognized the sensation from all the shots she'd had to get as a kid – it was some sort of needle.

For a few seconds she was all right, and she continued to fight back – then whatever they injected her with must have hit her system. Her brain started to fog, and somewhere inside of her an inner voice began to encourage sleep. You're so tired – no I'm not! Your body needs a rest. The situation will get sorted out without you. No, no…I'm not… It's okay, Hana. You deserve a nap.

The muscles throughout Hana's body were warm and tingling pleasantly. Whoever was holding her eased their grip just enough for her to sink limply into their arms and let her head loll forward. Her vision was slowly clouding and her hearing was dropping out. Everything sounded far away, like she was so far from everything bad and dangerous. Like she was at least momentarily safe, and able to rest.

Her battered body started to give in to the void of unconsciousness they had brought upon her. Just as her eyes were drooping closed her brain managed to register the sight of Roadhog disappearing with Junkrat and Boss, and finally she caught a glimpse of Ana in the distance, seemingly leading them to an escape route. Hana reached one hand weakly out toward them. G-guys…help…

They didn't even look back her way. Instead the four of them took off together, fending off the police who chased them down with Ana's rifle and Roadhog's scrap gun.

Hana closed her fist weakly. Her vision finally faded to black, and she collapsed deep into an induced, almost comatose sleep.

They…left me.

Hana's body apparently wasn't ready to wake just yet, but her mind was starting to come alive again.

They abandoned me.

Maybe they were getting away so they could regroup and rescue her from…wherever she was now. Maybe they had to flee. Their group was severely outnumbered and outgunned.

Or maybe their own survival was more important to them than the life of a girl they hardly knew. Hana wouldn't be able to blame them. She would probably do the same thing.

"Hana?"

A voice called out to her from a million miles away. It was murky, as if she were underwater and they were calling to her from somewhere high above the surface. It was not a voice she recognized.

She forced her heavy eyelids open, wincing at the piercing light that stabbed her eyes. As she began to regain awareness of her body she quickly realized she was strapped down. A blinding light was aimed directly at her, the source of the pain to her eyes. She turned her head to discover she was in some sort of hospital room, or at least a room full of medical supplies, and that the thing she was strapped to was an operating table.

A series of wires ran from her right arm to a bunch of machines at her side, one of which she recognized as an IV drip. "Huh…?" Her voice was hoarse. Her throat was bone dry. How long had she been out?

A man stepped up to the table and spoke her name again. Hana's heart rate accelerated, as noted by the monitor beside her. She did not recognize him specifically, but his uniform was undeniable in origin.

"Our Satya can be quite...naive," he said. "But you know that, don't you? You played on it. You used her. You convinced her you were good people who were unjustly imprisoned, rather than what you are – murderers. Thieves. A group of wastes of human life." He scoffed. "Thankfully you made your own argument against yourselves by going and immediately doing what you did. Satya has seen the error of her ways, and she will not be helping you again."

"Wh…" Hana desperately tried to wet her mouth enough to form comprehensible words. "Why…do you want me…so bad…?"

"You couldn't possibly understand, being that you're a terrible person." The man spoke the cutting words casually, as if he wasn't putting her down but instead simply stating a fact. "But here at Vishkar we want to help people. And you are sick, Hana. Very sick. I don't know what you've been through in the Outback that warped your perspective of the world as much as it did, but we are going to cure you. You are going to rejoin society as a functional, efficient, and contributing member. And you're going to help us in return. We're going to make sure of it."

"Where are…my friends?"

"Irrelevant. They are unsalvageable." The man stared right into her eyes. "Not like they seemed to be too concerned for you, anyway. A whole flock of horrible birds of a feather."

Hana coughed weakly. It took all her resolve not to rise up and take his obvious bait. "What will it take for you to let me go?" she asked instead.

"We'll see how you are when we're finished healing you. You may find you've even changed your mind. You may realize you actually want to stay here and help us mend the world."

"Never."

"Mhm. Well we shall see, Miss Song."

A team of several men and women in lab coats swarmed around the table. The grogginess from whatever they had drugged her with was finally starting to wear off. Hana tugged at her restraints – they were made out of a thick metal that she surely wasn't getting out of. "Let me go." Her voice cracked. "Let me go!"

The man shook his head. "So selfish. You contribute nothing good to the world as you are. The only way you can help make our world a better place is by transforming yourself. Opening your mind."

One of the women surrounding the table forced a mask over Hana's nose and mouth. Hana whipped her head furiously to shake it off. That seemed to irritate the Vishkar personnel. One of them held her head steady while the woman re-affixed the mask.

Another man adjusted the settings on the IV pole. A rush of cold fluid began to flow into her arm. Hana writhed and fought against her restraints with every bit of strength she could muster. The Vishkar employees simply watched her. She noticed one of them was taking notes from the other side of the room.

"You're monsters!" she shouted over the hiss of the oxygen mask. "You're not saving anybody! You brainwash little kids like Satya and you kidnap innocent people and you…you…"

Whatever they were feeding into her veins was even more potent than the needle injection from earlier. Her limbs felt as if they were all going to sleep on her simultaneously. She fought it with every fiber of her being. "You're all...monsters…"

The first man ran a gloved hand through Hana's hair, gently pushing her down onto the table. "Shh." He smiled down at her. "When you wake up you'll see you had nothing to be afraid of. I promise."

She began to dip back into unconsciousness again, weaving in and out of awareness of her surroundings. Vaguely she felt one of the women attach some sort of wired pads to her chest and clip something to her finger. Losing control of her fine motor skills, Hana cried out wildly, her tongue and lips like foreign entities as total numbness encroached upon her.

Her memory did not record anything after that. One minute she was resisting violently. The next minute she was lying slack on the table, breathing slowly and deeply, her last traces of consciousness slipping away.

A/N: The final act, Act III, begins next week! We'll learn the fate of the Junkers, as well as what's to become of poor Hana now that she's alone in Vishkar's clutches...

Also as a side note, I discovered there have been some formatting issues on this site for the fic (mainly italics not showing up) for the past several chapters. They should all be fixed now, and I'm changing the way I upload to this site so I won't have that problem again with future chapters.

As always, thanks for reading! I'm excited to have surpassed the 50k word mark, making this my second-longest fic ever!