"Winston!"
"Oh, it's you, Lena! I was just thinking to talk to you about—" The ape turned from the control panel. "Lena? What's wrong?"
"Genji, he—on the beach! Fell over… shaking! And… and…"
Winston moved over to Tracer. "Calm down. Take a deep breath."
She took a deep breath, exhaling quickly. "Genji collapsed on the beach. He's shaking on the ground in pain, I couldn't carry him…"
"Pain…" Winston touched his chin thoughtfully. "Angela said something about painkillers for Genji. Lena, we must fetch the doctor, and fast!"
"And another thing," she said between breaths, "he saw black aircraft headed our way. He said there's seven of them."
"Impossible," Winston mumbled, "there isn't anything on the schedule for something like this, and we have entire systems designed and in place to watch for unauthorized air occupation." He returned to the command center and started mashing keys. "All surveillance systems are green-lit. No alerts or discrepancies. Nothing on satellite imaging except for clouds and water. Radio-wave scan—" He stopped pressing keys and instead looked out the window. "Lena, what was the altitude on the flyers, and their bearings?"
"I couldn't see them myself." She was still trying to catch her breath. "But Genji said they were very close to the water. He saw them coming west, from the sea."
Winston held a button on the terminal and spoke into the microphone, "mainland, this is watch point seven-oh-nine Gibraltar. Seven unidentified aircraft discovered to be approaching this location, bearing from the west. Please advise." Silence. "Mainland, how copy?" More silence. The ape pressed a different button, speaking into the microphone once more, "section bravo-three, I need you to extract the patient on the west beach. He's incapacitated." Lena could heard the sound of static from where she stood. "Our communications relay is down," muttered Winston, "the entire relay."
Several long seconds past. Lena couldn't stop thinking about the cyborg she left on the shore. Just when she was about to speak up, Winston said with a tone of urgency she never heard before, "listen very carefully, Tracer."
Tracer nodded.
"I cannot leave this room. I'm going attempt a reboot on the relay, radio for reinforcements and initiate defense protocols from in here. You must attend to Mercy and Genji alone. Do you know where her room is?"
Tracer nodded.
"Hurry there and let her know the situation. After that, go four floors below. Third door on the right labelled heavy duty in section bravo-three will be where you will find a special stretcher. You will need that to carry Genji up to the operation theater. It's on the level directly above Mercy's quarters. We cannot remove him from the augmentations. It will end his life. Any questions?"
Tracer shook her head.
"Off you go."
And off Tracer went, as fast as she could to the doctor's room. Her legs ached and her lungs burned. There are a sharp pain to her side which grew worse with every impact her foot made against the ground. She tried to regulate her breathing, trying to ignore the constricting feeling which tightened at her chest with each breath. A light-headedness began to take her. Still, she did not falter. Not slowing down, she ran past doors, rooms and buildings, crossing to the other side of the facility. Finally catching sight of the doctor's door, she reached her hand out, twisted the doorknob and slammed her shoulder into the wood all in one motion.
The door crashed into the wall, the hinges whining loudly. Tracer fell into the room on her hands and knees, gasping for air.
"Who's there?" came a very tired voice from the bed. The source slowly pushed herself up from it, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Lena?" Angela processed the state she was in. All signs of fatigue disappeared. "Lena? What's happened? What time is it?" The doctor glanced at the clock which hung over her bed. She swore loudly in German. "Where is Genji?"
After somehow communicating to Mercy the situation with her lungs begging for air, Tracer found herself sprinting down flights of stairs to reach the third door on the right on section bravo-three. The doctor needed time to prepare the operation theater. Tracer had three minutes. When she reached the right floor, she couldn't help but let out a frustrated scream when she saw how far the doors were spaced apart.
She started running. It was then when Lena really starting regretting not keeping in shape throughout her stay here, where her time was spent moaning and moping around the facility. Gravity started to assert itself more strongly onto her, she felt. She reached the first door. Come on, she thought, just a little bit further. A couple more…
Tracer lost her balance and fell onto the floor. At this one moment of stagnancy, her exhaustion, fatigue, and pain hit her all at once like a truck. There she lay, her muscles searing and bones aching, in tears as she tried to continue onward on her belly with her arms.
"I'm sorry, Genji," she mumbled, the lights of the corridors flaring in her vision as hot tears welled in her eyes, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
She stopped moving and laid on her back, listening to the sound of her heartbeat pounding into her ears with the weight of failure and guilt upon her. She stayed like that for a while. Though her exhaustion began to recede, her guilt only grew. With herculean effort, she shoved herself off the ground, her legs shifting unsteadily beneath her. She couldn't imagine what Genji could be going through, but it was up to her to bring him to Mercy.
Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she burned with a newfound resolve as with as much of it as she could muster, threw herself down the corridor.
She fell again. This time, however, she did not cry. Tracer felt like something bizarre just happened, but she couldn't exactly tell what. Looking behind her, she saw the stain of sweat she imprinted onto the floor several feet away, where she was just a moment ago. She moved her attention to the glowing artifact on her chest. Was it just her, or was it glowing brighter just now? Has it whirred this loudly before?
With a feeling of equal amounts disbelief as there was exhilaration, Tracer stood up and tested her new theory. She stared at a spot of the floor in front of her, and with as much will as she had, imagined herself standing here.
She took a step forward—and was sorely disappointed. If it weren't for the circumstances, she would have laughed at herself for believing something so stupid could happen. Alas, this was not the time. She could see her destination at the end of the hall now, and she had no time to waste. Quickly, she glanced behind her to access how much distance she covered—and she felt her heart drop.
The stain of sweat she left on the ground was now much further away from her.
Staring at the mark on the ground, she brought up a hand to touch the device. It was vibrating slightly. And there was no doubt about it; it was glowing much brighter than before. Tracer took a deep breath. An internal war raged inside her, arguing against the evidence of what actually happened. Her knowledge and understanding as a test pilot to project Slipstream just didn't support this line of logic.
Mentally, she took this war of reason and impossibility and placed it in a box. She locked the box and put it in the sock drawer of a cupboard. She shoved the cupboard into the closet which she in turn, also locked. She swallowed both keys. By the time she got those keys back, she'll deal with the problem.
Having dealt to that, she nervously repeated what she did. And each time, she got closer and closer to the second door. A walk eventually broke into a sprint, and in mere seconds she found herself in front of a door labeled heavy duty.