They spent the entire day running. It was probably overkill, since the police seemed surprisingly disinterested in following them. Were they even police at all? They'd been pretty damn heavily armed for average street cops. They were more akin to the soldiers that had taken them in to Vishkar back in Australia. Boss couldn't help but wonder if the whole thing had been orchestrated by that demon company.
In any case, said demon company now had Hana again. Boss had immediately demanded they go rescue her, but her order was countered by Ana. "It will be suicide to go when they are expecting us," she had said. "They aren't going to kill Hana. She's infinitely more valuable to them alive. We'll have to wait until their guard is down before we can get in there."
"But what if they hurt her? What if they're torturing her or something?"
Ana lowered her head. "There is nothing we can do. Hana must be strong on her own until we can get to her."
Junkrat was uncharacteristically silent. Ana had tended to his bullet wounds the moment they'd decided the police were no longer an immediate threat, and he was recovering just fine, but his face was devoid of its usual maniacal grin, and his shoulders sagged as he walked. Boss had to suspect he felt at least as bad as she did about Hana. Nobody had wanted to leave her behind. There were just too many cops, and Hana was just too deep into the swarm of them for any of the Junkers to have stood a chance rescuing her. She had been bait – they were trying to lure the Junkers into the crowd of cops so they could get them all at once. Boss could only hope Hana understood why they didn't pursue her.
"She knows we wouldn't abandon her, right?" Her voice broke the tense silence that had settled between the remaining Junkers. They were camped out under a bridge by the massive river. Roadhog washed his filthy feet in the water while Junkrat sat beside him, knees drawn close to his chest.
Nobody responded to her. Ana was carving into her rifle with a small switchblade. Roadhog wasn't looking at her. Junkrat looked over at her for a moment, but then resumed staring out over the water.
This was the kind of situation where Hana would start chattering away about nothing just to fill the void. She seemed to hate silence.
Boss got to her feet. "I'm going in after her."
"Me too." Junkrat was up and beside her in a second.
"No, I mean I'm gonna sneak in there. With my powers."
"You really think that's a good idea?" Ana did not look up from her rifle. "They wanted you pretty badly too, Vanessa."
Boss stiffened at the use of her real name. "I – I can get back out of there. I can do whatever I want. I'm dead!"
Ana stood up, slinging her rifle onto her back. "Don't be a fool. I'm too old to be babysitting a bunch of impulsive children."
"Don't you care about Hana?"
That seemed to tick Ana off. Her exposed eye narrowed at Boss. "We are her only chance at escape. I am not throwing it away. We wait until they are no longer expecting us, then we retrieve her."
Boss folded her arms. Turning to gaze out over the river, she muttered, "Hana sees you like a mother figure. But I guess you're not above abandoning your kids, anyway."
She glanced over her shoulder to see if Ana was reacting to her statement. She'd expected shock or anger on the old woman's face. Instead Ana was leaned back against the dingy cement of the bridge, staring down at the ground.
"…Shit, Ana, I'm sorry." Boss reached hesitantly out to her. Ana moved out of her reach. "I shouldn't have said that. I just…I really, really don't want to leave Hana with those people. They're not just a soulless corporation. They want to experiment on people. They experimented on me. I can't feel pain, but Hana can. They might not kill her, but I'm terrified of what they will do."
Ana wandered over to the river's edge. She adjusted her cloak and sat down upon it. Boss glanced over at Junkrat, who was still standing and seemingly ready to accompany her on her bull-headed Hana rescue mission.
"I'm gonna go check on her, at least." Boss pulled her leather jacket tight to her body and started to walk away. When she heard Junkrat hopping after her she paused, exhaled – then let her material form dissolve into the pavement.
Hey! Boss, wait! She could hear him shouting from above, but she did not stop. Her energy raced through the streets, determined to return to the massive, ominous tower of a skyscraper she'd hoped she would never set foot in again.
A faint, rhythmic beeping roused Hana from her death-like sleep. She opened her eyes, blinking away the blurry coating that had formed over them. She found herself tucked into a massive, feathery bed in a room with pale pink walls and a large window that allowed a flood of sunlight inside. A beam of light arced across her pure white blanket, pleasantly warming her.
Her arm was still hooked up to some sort of monitor, the apparent source of the beeping. Hana sat up to look at it. As she did, she realized something – her head felt cold. She reached reflexively upward to comb her fingers through her hair. With a gasp, she realized there wasn't any hair to comb through. All of it had been shaven off.
Down the middle of her scalp she felt some sort of bandage. She didn't remember getting hurt. In fact she felt just fine.
"Ah, Hana, you're awake!"
A familiar-looking man stood in the doorway of her room. He strode in with a small smile, quickly checking over her machine. "How are you feeling?"
"Good." She watched him with idle curiosity. "Um, what happened to my hair?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. We needed it out of the way for the procedure." He reached over and checked her arm, which was still tethered to the machine at her bedside. "It'll grow back, and in the meantime one of our Architechs made you some synthetic hair that will look perfect."
"What was the procedure for?" she asked him.
The man studied her with soft eyes. "Your brain was very sick. All that radiation...you should find that you feel quite a bit better from now on."
She felt a strange sensation in her head, almost like a tickle. It wasn't a bad feeling. In fact, it felt good. It felt reassuring. "You helped me."
The man smiled at her again. "That's what we do here."
Through the haze of her mind somehow a memory returned to her. She recalled fleeing from Vishkar for an unknown reason. "I'm sorry I ran away," she murmured. "I…don't know why I did that…"
"It's all right, Hana. As I said, you were very sick. You can't be held accountable for your actions while you were that unwell." The man reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. The tickly feeling returned, amplified this time. She actually giggled out loud. The man laughed a little. "I'm glad to see you in good spirits, in any case. You seem to be recovering quite well. I'd guess you'll be out of bed by later today. I'd still take it easy though."
"Oh, I can probably get up now." Hana slipped her feet out from under the covers and prepared to get out of the bed. "I want to go check on everybo–argh!" She clutched her head and drew back into the center of the bed.
"Are you all right?" The man kept a supportive hand on her.
Hana winced, curling up tightly as she continued to hold her head. "Are – are you sure whatever you did is going to help me? I feel...not so good all of a sudden."
"You're taxing your mind too much, too soon. Rest some more. You'll feel better when you wake."
She struggled to form a coherent thought around all the sudden shooting pain in her head. What had she been about to say? She already couldn't remember. There was something…she wanted to check on...? What could it have been?
The pain was growing stronger. Tears stung her eyes. The Vishkar man seemed to notice this, for he helped to ease her down into the sheets again. "Try to keep your mind on simpler things. This was a very…experimental procedure, and we want to take as many precautions as possible."
"Sorry." She huddled back under the blankets and laid her head on the overstuffed pillows. "You're right. I should sleep."
The man typed something on a tablet he pulled from his pocket. Then he watched over Hana until the pain receded enough for her to drift back to sleep.
As it turned out Boss' incorporeal form wasn't exactly the most reliable method of travel. It consumed a ton of energy and distorted her perception of distance, time and space. She'd believed herself able to navigate the massive city – after all, she was just looking for the biggest building in the area. However as she traveled she quickly realized she had very much overestimated her abilities. This city was weird. Everything about it felt unnatural, and it was next to impossible to navigate. Even the people of the city seemed a bit lost – they just wandered from place to place with seemingly no real destination in mind.
After an indeterminate amount of time had passed she had to come to the surface, so to speak, and re-materialize to maintain her already-tenuous grip on the mortal plane. She formed herself behind a couple of small buildings in an alleyway. Sliding down against the brick wall of one building, she took a few deep breaths. Tactile sensations always seemed to help ground her, so she ran her fingers down the bumpy bricks and across the rough cement. Pull it together, body. I'm not ready to leave this place just yet.
It was starting to take longer for her body to re-form after each "ghost" session. Truthfully, that scared her a little. As much as she had sort of come to terms with her own death, the thought of disappearing from the mortal world forever was a frightening one. It seemed she wouldn't even leave a body behind – since her spirit and her body were apparently one and the same now, she would most likely just fade out of existence. Never again to touch anything, or talk to anyone, or…kiss anyone…
Her cheeks warmed slightly at the memory of Hana kissing her on the bus. She wasn't an idiot – it was obvious Hana just did it to get her to cooperate. Regardless, it was her first real kiss in her entire life. Hana was so soft and gentle, even with her sharp teeth and her rough skin. Boss buried her face in her hands, stifling a tiny giggle as the memory's sensations played through her mind again. But her mood quickly sobered as she reminded herself of Hana's current predicament. We have to save her. I have to save her.
For the next stretch of the journey she slunk down the streets with her hands in her pockets, trying to blend in with the swaths of residents roaming the sidewalks. It was weird being surrounded by so many people with similar skin tones to hers. Her small town in Australia had been pretty white, and her clingy parents had kept her from traveling too many places, so she was pretty used to being not just the only Black girl, but the only dark-skinned girl at all. She never really thought she was bothered by it until right that very second, when she was out of that element.
Her parents must have been devastated when they got the news about her. They must have had a wake and a funeral and all that stuff. No body to bury. She could have returned to them once she had managed to pull herself together and stop phasing through the floor like she was in a glitchy video game, and yet she never did. She did miss them. But after being kept on the world's shortest leash for twenty-two years, some part of her was almost a little happy to be away from them, at least for a while.
She paused at an intersection. The Vishkar building rose into view as she peered down one of the streets. There it is.
The trip through the city continued to be long and confusing even in mortal form, and by the time she reached Vishkar the sun had all but disappeared out of the sky. That at least made it easier for her to slip onto the company's property seemingly undetected.
Ever since she and Hana made their mysterious connection inside the Vishkar laboratory, Boss had been picking up a strange sort of feedback. It wasn't anything she could interpret clearly, more like flashes of emotion, short bursts of memories, and other largely useless bits of information. She could only suspect they originated from Hana, because when they were separated she no longer experienced them. A part of her worried that there may be another reason Hana's energy would suddenly drop off and be unreadable. Boss squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. No. I can't think like that.
Once she was close enough to Vishkar she let herself dissolve again. She passed into a wall of the building, letting her consciousness climb upward until she picked up a ripple of Hana's familiar presence somewhere nearby. Oh, thank God. She's still alive. Gravity must have still affected her in some abstract way in this form, for climbing up took a lot more out of Boss than sinking downward or moving straight forward. By the time she felt Hana's energy strongly enough to track her down she was absolutely exhausted. Still, she pressed on, and eventually she discovered the other girl in a small room with two Vishkar employees. There she is! Boss was barely able to restrain herself as she watched Hana from the walls of the oddly-homey little room.
Hana was seated in front of a vanity mirror. Boss barely recognized her – she had a full head of shining brown hair and was spotlessly clean all over. In place of her usual greasemonkey clothes she was dressed in a pink pajama top and matching bottoms with small cartoonish rabbits all over them.
"So do you like it?" A woman ran her fingers through Hana's hair. Hana tossed it one way and then the other.
"I love it." She giggled into her hands. "It looks perfect."
She must be playing along with whatever they're trying to force her to do. They had apparently wanted Hana for some sort of PR mascot. That must have still been the plan they were going with.
Boss felt a surge of anger as she watched the situation play out. One of the Vishkar women was applying some sort of fancy-looking lotion to Hana's skin while the other was trimming and filing her fingernails. Hana's not just some cute little doll for them to play with. She could only imagine the humiliation and annoyance the other girl must have been feeling at that moment.
"Ooh, do you guys have any nail polish? I haven't been able to paint my nails in months." Hana giggled again. It was a weird sound, almost more like she was being tickled than just laughing during a normal conversation. Boss could only guess it sounded funny because it was fake.
The women exchanged a glance. "I don't think we have any on hand," one said, "but we can definitely get you some. Hey, when you're fully recovered maybe you can come with us and pick some out yourself."
Hana's eyes widened a bit. "You think I'd be okay to leave?"
"I mean, it would have to get cleared first, but I don't see why not."
"But what if I…" She examined her freshly-trimmed nails, keeping her eyes off both women. "What if I do something bad again?"
"Well you're already behaving a lot better than when you were sick. I think you're on the road to recovery for real this time."
Hana must have been extremely committed to the act. The smile on her face was so genuine Boss herself could have been fooled by it.
"Thank you all for not giving up on me."
"Of course. That's what Vishkar does – we help the people who need it most."
Boss stalked back and forth inside the wall, waiting impatiently for the Vishkars to leave. It felt like they spent forever with Hana, fawning over her and praising her for every little thing she did like she was five years old. Hana seemed to be drinking it all in, grinning and giggling and going on about how excited she was to be getting back to her "old life".
When finally the Vishkars left her alone, Hana wandered into the bathroom and started to brush her teeth. She had to pull her cheeks outward to get in around the crooked fangs sticking every which way out of her mouth. "Can't wait 'til these are gone," she murmured at one point.
Boss couldn't wait any longer. The moment Hana was finished rinsing the toothpaste out of her mouth she stepped out of the wall and whispered, "Hey, Hana!"
Hana practically jumped out of her skin.
"Whoa, sorry, I didn't mean to scare ya." Boss reached out to her. Hana pulled away. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't think we abandoned you–"
Hana's expression changed quickly, from the dreamy smile she'd worn with the Vishkars to a surprisingly venomous snarl. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
The nasty tone caught Boss off-guard. "I'm – I'm here to help you. I figured we could try to find a way out of here together, and then everyone else can join us and help us…get…out…"
Hana walked away from Boss before Boss could even finish her sentence. She picked up a small device on the nightstand by a large bed. "Sanjay?" she said into the device. "I need help please."
"What are you doing?" Boss drifted over to her side. "Why are you calling them?"
"Hi, Hana. I'll be right up," a male voice replied over the device.
Hana's smile returned for but a brief moment. Then it dissolved back into a scowl.
"What's wrong with you, Hana?" Boss tried to soften her voice a little, listening for approaching footsteps. "What did they do to you?"
Hana kept her glare fixed on Boss as she strode over to the door, apparently waiting for the man she called.
"Hana?" Boss hesitantly pursued her. "Hana, if you're in some kind of danger, um – hold up two fingers or something, so I know?"
Hana hissed in disgust. "Since when have you ever cared if I was in danger?"
The response took Boss aback. "Since…always? We've looked out for each other this whole time."
Hana faltered a moment. Suddenly she winced and ground her teeth. Her hands tangled into her hair, and she tugged at it. She remained in that position for several seconds before apparently calming down enough to speak. She uncurled from her defensive posture and straightened up to her full, albeit still tiny, height.
"I was practically dead from radiation poisoning, and you guys didn't care." Her voice shook a bit at first, but slowly evened out. "You just wanted me to hang out with you and travel all around the world like I was fine. I was out of my mind!"
Boss had no real answer for that. It was true that they hadn't taken her for medical treatment or anything. But none of them had sought any medical attention – Boss had believed Hana was okay with, or maybe even preferred, that. "So, what, Vishkar just miraculously cured you somehow?" was all she could think to ask.
"I don't know what they did. But it helped me. I feel better than I've felt in months."
"Okay, well if you're fine now then you can come with us. You don't need to stay here anymore, right?"
Hana turned away from her, keeping her chin high. "You know, Vishkar might want to use me as a mascot, but at least they're honest about it. And they actually helped me." She spun around and pointed a finger at Boss. "You just want to fuck me."
"What?" Boss drew back in disbelief. "No, no, it's not like that Hana – I mean, I like you, yeah, but that's not why I want you to come back. We all want you back!"
"You and Junkrat are both the same." Hana folded her arms tightly over her chest. "For all I know maybe all of you just want to have sex with me. The Outback is full of weirdos."
"Come on, that's ridiculous. Ana loves you, she doesn't want to...do that."
Hana shrugged, her arms still crossed. "People can get pretty weird when they're messed up on radiation. Trust me, I know."
Boss studied her for a long minute. The girl in front of her hardly even looked like the Hana she had come to know, all dolled up with her long, flowing hair settled perfectly over her shoulders.
"So what's with the hair, anyway?" she just had to ask.
"You like it?" Hana tossed it over one shoulder. It fell and spread flawlessly, almost too perfect in its behavior. "This is how my hair used to look."
"You went on and on before about short hair and how much you loved having it. Hell, you told me I should cut my locs off. You don't remember that?"
"Ugh." Hana took a step closer to her, leveling her with a glare of disgust. "How many times do I have to tell you I was out of my mind back then? You can't take anything I said seriously."
As much as Boss hated to admit it, Hana did look much healthier than before. Her skin had a warm glow to it, unlike the sickly sallow tone it had held the entire time they were together. It also looked to have been heavy-duty moisturized, ridding her of the rough, cracked skin the Outback's unforgiving weather had bestowed upon her. Her lips had a little more color to them, and the bags under her eyes were less starkly visible than before. The only place Boss didn't see improvement was in Hana's eyes. Although they were no longer red and running like out in the desert winds, the brightness and sharpness behind them seemed dulled. Her eyes did not sparkle like they used to, and instead were simply a flat brown with little hint of life behind them. Upon closer inspection Boss also noticed one of her pupils was slightly more dilated than the other. Isn't that a sign of brain damage?
"They messed with your brain," Boss whispered, "didn't they?"
She nodded, leveling Boss with a dull, unfocused gaze. "I told you, they fixed me."
The door to Hana's room beeped as its lock was undone. Boss quickly dissolved herself into the floor, but she stuck around just long enough to see a man in a white coat stride into the room and ask Hana what was wrong. Hana retreated to her bed, hugging her knees like a child. "One of the Junkers showed up in my room," she said." I think she wanted to hurt me."
Boss' first instinct was to re-materialize and immediately dispute that claim. She only barely held herself back.
"I'm so sorry, Hana." The man's voice was laden with over-the-top sympathy. "Are you all right?"
Hana nodded. "She made my head hurt worse though."
"Terrible people like the Junkers have a way of making everyone around them feel horrible." The man folded his arms. "Thank you for telling me. We'll look into securing the building against any unwanted guests immediately."
Hana smiled. "Thank you."
As the man walked out of the room, Hana started giggling some more. She kicked at the bed and eventually collapsed onto her back, squirming with laughter. It still had that strange sound to it, with no real cheer or joy behind each giggle. She rolled around on the bed laughing to herself until she apparently exhausted herself of the act. At that point she shimmied under the covers and curled up into a ball, drifting off to sleep peacefully.
Nobody spoke much that night. Ana got a small fire going a ways downriver, on the edge of the city, and they camped out silently under the massive trees that lined the riverbank. Boss had told them all what she had witnessed. Nobody could bear to say anything after that.
It seemed they all blamed themselves for what happened. And it pretty much was their fault, Boss thought. Hana was their youngest and most vulnerable member. They could have done more to protect her. They could have done anything rather than running away like cowards. She knew in her heart that Ana's plan had been sound – no one had expected them to go and perform some brain-altering procedure on Hana mere hours after capturing her, and they surely would have been captured or killed trying to get to her. Hell, if not for Ana's medical skills Junkrat surely would have died from the bullets in his stomach. And they hadn't even been pursuing her then.
Boss looked over at Junkrat. It was strange not to hear him rambling and cackling to everyone and no one. Instead he was just sitting quietly on the ground, tracing circles in the dirt with his peg leg. Roadhog was sitting beside him, silent as usual. Boss glanced over at him for a moment. She still couldn't believe that bastard had been with the ALF. She wanted to hate him for it, but it was hard to channel hatred towards anything but Vishkar at the moment.
Ana was her usual elusive self, seated slightly aloof from everyone, her cloak partially obscuring her only visible eye. How had Hana managed to crack her open so easily? Guess she just has that way about her. Seemed like it was impossible not to love Hana. No wonder Vishkar wanted her as their poster girl.
The silence was driving her mental. She tried to think of something to say, anything to break up the void of conversation.
After staring at Ana for several long seconds she decided to ask, "What happened to your eye?"
Ana didn't seem fazed by the sudden intrusive question. "You have to ask?"
"Oh, uh, I don't know. I've just always kind of wondered about it."
"I lost it."
"Well yeah, I get that."
"Then what else is there to know?"
"I don't know. I just can't take the quiet anymore." Boss prodded at the campfire with a stick. "Can we talk about…something? Anything?"
Ana shifted on the ground, drawing one leg in close to her chest. She stared into the fire for a long while. "I was shot in the eye by an enemy sniper."
"Whoa. Seriously?"
Ana nodded. "I very nearly died. In fact, most of the world thinks I did."
"So that's how you were able to fake your own death?"
"Seems like telling Hana was as good as telling all of you." She sighed and smiled just the tiniest bit, but it quickly faded. "Yes, that is what happened. At the time it felt like my only option. I don't know that I would choose it now, but the past is in the past and I take full responsibility for it."
"I get that." Boss sat back on her hands. "Everyone thinks I'm dead, too. I never told my parents or anyone that I'm still around."
"My folks prob'ly think I'm long dead, too." For the first time all night Junkrat spoke up. He shimmied a little closer to them, but still sat on the other side of the fire. "Not that they ever gave much of a shit to begin with."
Boss reached out and tapped his metal leg with the stick she held. "Sorry, man. That's hard."
"Eh." He waved his prosthetic hand dismissively. "I didn't need 'em. Barely remember 'em anyways." He looked up at Roadhog, who was still facing away from the rest of them. "What about you, Hoggie? You got any family back home?"
Roadhog turned and stared at Junkrat. Then he slowly shook his head.
Boss had long considered herself the "ghost" amongst her friend group, but it seemed those here were all ghosts to some extent.
Hana was the lifeblood of the remaining Junkers. Without her the group felt more like a cemetery, an expanse of bodies with names and stories devoid of any actual life.
"We have to get her back," Boss murmured.
The other Junkers nodded.
"We have to get our shit together, get to somewhere safe, find a place to hole up. Have a base ready where we can bring Hana once we have her. Then come up with a plan to actually go get her."
"Travel will not be easy," Ana replied. "We hardly blend in to a crowd."
"Then we'll be really damn careful." Boss raised her voice a little. "We have time now. As much as I hate to say this, the damage to Hana is already done. We shouldn't try to get her again until we're sure we can do it. The more we fuck up the more likely they are to punish her or hurt her as retaliation, and she's super vulnerable right now." She could feel her old Junker leadership persona creeping back. Someone had to lead this group of vagabonds. It might as well be her.
"Let's try to get some sleep," she continued. "In the morning we'll map out where we want to try to travel to and come up with a plan from there."
"Will it involve blowing stuff up?" Junkrat asked.
"If it helps us rescue Hana then sure. Blow up all the stuff you want."
"All right! Rescue mission's a go!"
Ana did not dispute Boss' plan any further, but she didn't say anything for it, either. Regardless, Boss tried to stay positive. It beat the hell out of dwelling on all the ways the plan could go wrong and how Hana could end up a brainwashed slave of Vishkar Corporation forever.
"All right," she said. "We'll set off in the morning, then."