Not much is asked of Angela in preparation for the ceremony aside from her presence, nor are there any surprises on that end throughout. Customarily, she might have been made part of the honour guard, but her height renders the notion moot.
Her role, instead, is limited to standing at attention in the third row of the gathered agents, making the affair the slightest bit farcical as the arriving plane and the subsequent proceeding are largely obscured from her sight by the towering men and women around her.
It takes an hour just to unload the flag-draped caskets and line them up for the in front of the amassed Overwatch forces and other assorted officials, a few minutes each, only after which the speeches commence. Some will go on and be shipped abroad after embalming or cremation, back to the fallen agents' countries of origin, but most shall remain here, where they'd made lives for themselves and their families. The funerals themselves will start in a few days once the bodies are ready for burial, and likewise take a few to finish.
Angela wonders, airly - where she would like her own empty tombstone to be placed in the unlikely event of her death. Nothing at all would be left of her body, so that's one less problem to consider. Stockholm feels right, most like home. But then, the thought of sharing the Zurich slope with her old parents also has a poetic quality to it, and she fully plans never to need and consider the logistics of her living family funeral arrangements.
Idling thoughts. Angela doesn't expect to die anytime in the next few thousand years, during which time she should hope to earn a different sort of memorial. One shared across the uncounted billions of human minds as the woman who gifted them all life eternal. And maybe a few other things besides that, like ending scarcity, for example - that ought to earn her a statue or two. Or however many more, it's not like the price would be an issue anymore.
First things first, though. She can focus on improving lives once those lives are assured to persist. Once they have all the time in the world. Once no families will have to shed tears for their returning loved ones. Then she can spare attention for the frivolities of comfort.
No more funerals. No more tears.
No more monuments.
Not to sadness. To joy and greatness, instead!
One day. Today they still mourn. What rotten luck to die at a time like this, when most people alive right now will live well into their hundreds. Already her PFUSMN strand can extend lifespans by decades, and studying the process of resurrection will extend that by centuries more, she knows this. In fact, they could be using it right now as a periodic treatment in the form of injections to slow down ageing - a single shot once a quarter would do the trick, though she fears what the demand would do for availability once the machines go into production. She hasn't only accepted four manufacturers for PFUMNs on a whim; the assembly process requires what very few can provide, and will only become more stringent for the synthetic generation of her technology. It'll take until the end of the year just to fulfil the initial batch of orders, and another two are projected for the ones placed after, with production in full swing - a measly fifty thousand units.
Millions of fabricators running round the clock will be needed to satisfy the demand for the stopgap of a solution that is life extension treatment. A difficult proposition even before the war, back when humanity had the omniums at their disposal. An impossibility now. Athena's models predict it'll take another generation, until the turn of the century, before the global economy recovers to the point they can tackle the matter, to say nothing of building the billions of personal units needed to outfit every human on the planet with a new heart.
And then implanting them.
The sheer magnitude of the task ahead is perhaps best characterised by the fact that even if she were to overcome the issue of scarcity, it would nonetheless still take decades for the whole of humanity alive right now to be made immortal. The manufacturing capacity required to undertake this feat in a timely manner simply doesn't exist anymore. It might well never have existed. Not that it even matters given the bottleneck of available surgeons to conduct implantations, and to think she once thought she'd be taking their jobs away.
A stopgap will be necessary, lest she accepts people dying of old age while waiting in the queue. A worse injustice than any other death she can think of. Hope given and turned into ash. Preventable. Pointless. And cruel.
Angela dashes her sullen thoughts away. One step at a time. Her mission is altogether too daunting to consider every step of the way in its totality, and whether it takes a decade or a century matters not in the end, she'll give it her all as best she knows how, regardless.
Not that the present is much better to consider. She barely got to know them before most of her field team was killed, alongside two dozen others. Futures cut short, families bereft of what made them whole.
Instead, for the umpteenth time, Angela goes back to mentally revising the after-action report she's technically speaking due for submission as the acting officer of her unit. She has so far elected to simply omit any and all harm visited upon her person, reasoning that she can clarify if confronted directly, and otherwise draw as little attention to it as possible. With a bit of luck, the Commander may just let it go.
Wishful thinking, of course. It's clear there will be no letting go the instant their eyes briefly meet following the ceremony. It's in the severe set to Morrison's brow, in his lingering gaze on the bald half of her scalp, in the particular way he turns his attention elsewhere. No, there's no avoiding it.
All the same, it isn't until the following day that she receives his summons via Athena, a fact Angela finds somewhat comforting. Another full day of waiting, four days in total since the disaster, means addressing the situation isn't on top of the Commander's priorities, as well it shouldn't.
Given the welcome she receives upon the entry to his office, it's a very good thing indeed.
"Help me understand something, Ziegler." The man sounds… less hostile than she had worried he might. Not affable, like she'd hoped, but it's probably the best she could realistically expect. "How should I reconcile your actions in Lombardy with the fact you're lying through your teeth every time you pitch me another one of your ideas?"
"I… don't understand?" She doesn't allow the wince to slip through. To defend herself, she first has to know exactly what she's defending against. No sense in revealing something the Commander did not previously know.
"I'm sure you don't. I suppose you don't understand how it is that your nanites fixed you up after a kilometre-long drop when the other month they couldn't fix a cracked skull, either? Or how you just- put your arm back on? Or where's all the plastic that you keep telling me is necessary for any of that to be possible?"
Right. Well. If she were to look for a silver lining, at least he doesn't know about her also being bisected. Not that reattaching her two halves differs any from doing so with an arm, but, laymen, and the importance they put on scale.
"All the things I've ever said about my technology remain true, Commander."
The man's nostrils flare, and he visibly reigns his next words in.
"I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you had a damn good reason to bullshit me for the last four years because of what you did after your plane was shot down. In fact, it's the only reason we're even having this conversation after what you pulled. So for once, cut the crap, and make your case. And you better make it good."
Although he does not specify the particulars of the implicit or else, Angela can all too well hear the threat of expulsion the words carry.
Which begs the question, is it worth it? Were she to answer the Commander honestly (or as honestly as the situation requires, at least), will he then accept she simply can't replicate what's inside her, or will he demand she work to do so regardless? Angela has no intention of wasting her time like that, not again, and especially not at this stage of her research. Moving backwards from the cusp of bringing the dead to life to instead once more struggle with knitting flesh without cancerous outpours is simply too much to ask for. She refuses to do it. Refuses to stall the future in favour of a solution inferior from the outset. Her own work holds so much more promise than what Uncle implanted inside her. A promise of godhood for every human alive.
How could she possibly justify not staying the course?
Should the Commander insist, she will have no choice but to leave Overwatch. Such being the case, she'd rather not tell the man anything if that were the end result.
Will it be?
They may have their differences, but ultimately, Commander Morrison and herself both want the same thing - a bright future for humanity. Did he not say back when she only just began her tenure that all he wants is for her to save lives? Despite his reservations, time and again he acquiesced to her ideas once she explained them to him in detail.
Unfortunately, courtesy of herself, all this time he was under the impression doing otherwise was an impossibility. Though he may have accepted her own vision, it was only ever a substitute for what he and his benefactors truly desire - Uncle's technology, and he doesn't know enough to understand what he would really be asking for in replicating it. In his layman mind, it may well be enough that she works harder, longer, with more resources at her disposal and more people to help - all that a wasted effort Angela is in no position to properly explain as would be required. Doing so would be, quite literally, incriminating.
But then, what? Just tell and hope for the best? If she doesn't, she might as well pack her things. In fact, resigning right here, right now, with her very next words, would be preferable as it would save her from the black mark being discharged from an organisation such as Overwatch would leave on her resume.
Only, she's doing good work here, and it would be much hindered were she without the resources and freedom at her disposal. Even Uncle doesn't work alone. Would his mockery of medical practice result in such wonders without the help? Could she have achieved what she has, without? Angela believes so, yes. It would be that much harder, true, and an order of magnitude worse still if not for her family, but she has time. She would have done it eventually.
The better question, then, is how much time that would take, and how many people would pay the price she herself doesn't have to. Would her parents? Would Brigitte? Athena alone has shaved off between a year and two, if not more, of unnecessary effort from her work. With AI laws being what they are, where else could she find an AI of her calibre, free at her disposal? For that matter, would she be allowed to acquire her assistant once a more powerful program comes around to replace her?
"How much do you know about my family history?"
The Commander's already stormy brows furrow further.
"How is that relevant to the situation at hand?"
Hah!
"Very."
He pins her with a measured look, and whatever he's looking for, he must find.
"Orphaned in the Crisis. Torbjorn and Ingrid knew your parents and decided to adopt you following the war. What of it?"
"That's… the shape of it, yes, but fails to acknowledge I was taken care of by my uncle for much of the time in-between." She swallows in an attempt to loosen the rubber coils in her throat. "Are you familiar with the case of one Ludwig Ziegler?"
"In passing," he admits after a moment of thought, a split second before a look of alarm overtakes his features. "You're related?"
"As it happens." Angela supposes she's flattered he clearly never made the connection, or dug deeply enough into her past to have it bludgeon him over the head. Her time with Uncle isn't exactly something easily overlooked. "I would appreciate it if you kept this to yourself."
"I can imagine." He allows with a weary nod, his features taking on the contrite edge usually reserved for the times she's explaining her ideas to him. "But how does this relate to the situation at hand?"
"I'm getting there." And she would much appreciate it if her stomach wasn't so against the idea. "How much do you know about his activity?"
"I know he's a serial killer who poses as a doctor offering esoteric treatments to lure people in. He targets the desperate, usually either dispossessed or terminally ill. Used to be a real doctor but lost his licence over… something."
"Over misappropriating a patient's skeleton." Angela recalls. She's had the dubious pleasure of hearing the story from both sides of the issue. Not only is it one of Uncle's favourites, it is also, much to her chagrin, one widely known among Swiss medical circles. She never mingled with her fellow students overmuch, and still found herself beleaguered by a barrage of jokes on account of her name. If only they knew.
"Misapro - what?"
Angela shrugs, clasping her hands behind her back lest she start wringing them. She was never inclined to ask, nor was Uncle ever inclined to expand on what he needed the skeleton for.
"The relevant part here is that the patient survived." And even got better in time as his missing bones were replaced, she later learned, but that is neither here nor there. "You see, for all his many faults, my uncle was actually a very capable doctor, and a brilliant scientist besides. Unfortunately, he- misused his talents, and took advantage of his patients in the capacity of test subjects."
What hints of hostility have survived on the Commander's face in his growing confusion now fade, right alongside a noticeable amount of colour in it. His eyes momentarily lose focus as they retreat into the recesses of his mind before snapping back to her own, sharper than before.
"You were one of them."
"I was," Angela confirms with a nod, and a crunching pop sounding out from behind her. She forges on with only the slightest of winces. "The technology on display in Lombardy was placed inside me long ago by my uncle."
It's a cloying sort of silence that descends upon the office, of the kind one could drop a grain of sand and hear the clatter. Certainly loud enough for the Commander to hear the straining joints of her hands. Uncomfortable enough Angela is about to say- something, anything, just before the man abruptly pushes himself out of his chair to perform his ritual pacing. Much as if the man were an icebreaker, his agitated tread breaks the tension hanging in the air, giving her a much-needed moment to get her hands under control.
"So you see," she continues after filling the void in her stomach with spit. "I wasn't lying about my technology at all. Unfortunately, it really isn't capable of doing the things you've heard of. At least, not yet. Barring any interruptions, I expect it shouldn't take me more than five more years until it's up to par with-"
"How old were you?" He interrupts her, coming to a stop half-turned her way near the window.
.
"...I'm sorry?" Angela's brows furrow at the sudden swerve.
"How old were you when you were experimented on?" The man clarifies, yet at the same time failing to address the core of her inquiry.
"I don't see how it is relevant?"
"Very."
Oh, har har. But fine, fair enough. …Was she six or seven by the time Uncle took her in? Ah! Right. How could she ever forget the first birthday he missed (or just didn't care enough to acknowledge). Ironic, she supposes, how it's the only thing she remembers about that day.
"It started at six, right when he took me in, and continued for… six more years? Right until the Jugendamt took me away."
The man mutters something under his breath Angela can't catch before running a hand down his face. Seeing no signs of more questions forthcoming, Angela picks up right where she left off:
"Now, as I was saying. My own research is well on the way to-"
"Stop. Just-" Morrison raises an open palm from the vicinity of his chin, where it stays for a few seconds as he works his mouth before dropping to the side along a heavy sigh. "Do Torbjorn and Ingrid know?"
Can someone confirm her claim, he means.
"Of course. Their help was immeasurable in the early stages of my research."
"Of course." The man mirrors, then sets apace again, if nowhere near so agitated as he seemed before. "And none of this ever came up at any point in the last four years, because?"
Because the less people know, the better. Because there was no need for it. Because it was to nobody's benefit. Because it is safer that way. Because Uncle deserves no recognition. Because it ran the risk of interference. Because what does it change, but make problems for her.
"Because frankly, Commander, it's none of your business."
A note of heat once again creeps into his features.
"Isn't it? Because from where I'm at, all this time you've been sitting on the most advanced piece of medical tech in the world and let everyone think yours was it. How many lives could've been saved if-"
"If what?" Angela spits. "If you'd dissected me for it?"
Whatever Morrison meant to say, her words bring to an abrupt end. She could well have struck him and garnered less of a reaction by the way his face runs the gamut of emotions from shock to the peculiar and unmistakable edge of constipation.
"Besides, I did already try to simply reverse-engineer it. For years. Before I joined Overwatch and after, as you'll recall. I didn't switch to synthetics on a whim, Commander, it's what I found most success with." Which is, all told, most fortunate. If it'd been easier to simply replicate Uncle's technology, she'd have gone with it without sparing a thought to possible superior alternatives. "There was no point in bringing the matter to light."
"Ziegler, that's not the point. You want me to trust you, but you're making it really hard to do so. You're not infallible. What if you're wrong? What if there is a way?"
Nothing short of a tragedy, that's what. Given the pushback she's faced so far, Angela holds little hope for her own tech winning the hearts of the people over Uncle's solutions any time soon, no matter the clear superiority of her own.
"Well, then we're back to dissection, aren't we?"
Something ugly crosses Morrison's face at the words.
"Do you really think so little of me that I'd make you a test subject again?"
Angela reigns the bitter laugh threatening to spill past her lips back down. This is why she hates dealing with laymen at work. They'll say one thing, and in their ignorance contradict themselves the very next moment all the while earnestly believing themselves reasonable.
"Commander, the piece we're talking about is attached to my heart and produces nanites I get violently sick without. Removing it outright could very well kill me. Now, I don't think so badly of you at all that you'd risk my death for so uncertain a gain, so what else am I supposed to assume?"
"Not-" The man cuts off, setting apace again. "You're doing it again. Assuming there isn't another way."
"There isn't." She may be exaggerating for effect when it comes to the risks removing her fabricator poses to her health - she could always replace it with her own, or even Uncle's if she were truly so desperate - but not so here. "Why don't you give one of mine to this imaginary expert you have, and see what they do with it. I can guarantee you there isn't a world out there where they can do anything worth mentioning without taking it apart."
"Then how did you do it if it's so impossible?"
She didn't.
"By spending half my life studying it. Which, may I remind you, nobody else in the world is in a position to do without carving it out of me."
"What about the nanites themselves, then?"
An image of a mouse, mad with pain and falling apart until nothing of it remains, flashes before her eyes.
"Certainly. My team has been doing it for years without knowing it."
"I assume you're about to tell me scanning won't work."
"I already have the most advanced internal mapping device in the world installed inside me. It helps to a degree, but not that much."
"Well there has to be something."
"If there is, I'll be happy to hear your ideas, but in the meantime, how about we table the speculation and stick with the facts?" Angela chirps. Facts are easy, and better yet, they ever remain on her side. "The facts are that aside from my uncle-" And his mysterious associate who shall go unmentioned. "-not only am I the foremost expert on nanotechnology in the world, I am also by default the person best positioned to study what's inside me. The facts are that in the two years I've been working on the PFUSMN, I've managed to make it capable of restoring the human body to full functionality, with the sole exception of the brain. An exception I have already demonstrated can be overcome. In contrast, after two years of working on the organic strain I only had an advanced first-aid system to show for it. That is in spite of working off of an already extant technology that I myself had made, and in spite of the years I spent trying to do that before I originally made the switch to synthetics."
Inferior as her own tech may yet be, it will in the foreseeable future reach functionality on par with Uncle's nanites. After which point she will be able to expand on the system to make it so much more than the original. Her fabricator may keep her alive through having her body torn apart, or her brain caved-in, but why suffer that in the first place? Why not create a body which would emerge from an ordeal such as that she went through with only a few scratches to be effortlessly patched up? Why not have her nanites replace the feeble flesh with something more durable? Why not create man whose very skull will function as a helmet? Why should she not create the next species of human, better than any that ever was, and give all of humanity the opportunity to join it?
"Supposing I could do it, I don't see the point of pursuing the biological variant anymore."
"The point, Ziegler, is to give people a choice."
A choice?
"There is no choice." Angela huffs. "Do you ever wonder how many people have already died because of those two years you made me work on something I told you I couldn't do? How many will yet die as a consequence of that delay? What choice do you think those people would've made in your place, back then, Commander?"
Something like pain flashes across the man's face, and something like shame blossoms in Angela's chest.
"It wasn't my choice."
Angela pushes the feeling away. There is no choice.
"But this is. You can keep this a secret and let me work on what we both know will save millions for sure. Or you can waste my time on something that will maybe work at a fraction of efficiency in a decade, and let those millions die. The dead have no choices to make."
A silence, prolonged, and heavy, and expectant falls over the office, and this time Angela lets it brew. Her words sit ill at ease with Morrison, she can tell - they do with her, too. She tries not to dwell on the question overmuch, but it is one ever at the back of her mind; how many people have died, and how many will die yet because she acquiesced? Would she have done better with a different benefactor? Could she have? Possibly. But then, maybe not.
It's precisely that uncertainty which allows her to push the question away. She doesn't know. For all she knows, she could've gotten terms elsewhere which would've offset those two additional years for the worse, and in excess.
The Commander has no such comfort. His choice was a simple one - to let her save lives as she knew best how, or not.
She finds herself hard pressed to feel any pity for him.
At last, the man sags in what looks the part for exhaustion, and Angela knows then and there that she's won. He just needs a little more convincing. Not to convince him, as much as to help him convince himself. A reassurance that this is the right way. Which is just fine with her. She can spend the whole day saying anything and everything the man wants to hear if it means she gets to keep things going as they were. A week, if need be. There once her fragile boss falls asleep, and still there, ready to continue, once he wakes up.
"That's it, then?" he asks a while later, once again seated in his chair. "No more secrets?"
"No more secrets."
At least, none he need know. What good would it do him to know about Uncle? Much as it leaves a bad taste in her mouth to ask help of the man, he remains too useful to dispose of just yet. By the cold, hard numbers, he will, through her, do more good than evil. One day, but not yet. The solution to scarcity she carries around in her chest, is, likewise, better left unmentioned, as are all the possible subsystems connected to it. Good men have done worse for less than an end to human struggle. No. Her parents remain correct on that point. Some things, no-one may know.
All things considered, as far as disciplinary meetings go, Angela supposes hers went rather well. She might've had to divulge some things she'd rather stay hidden to keep her dream job, but at this stage of her research they amount to little more than personal trivia. If the news gets out, her reputation as an inventor might suffer, perhaps, but at the end of the day what does it matter when she's still got the goods? What can anyone even do? Track Uncle down to- what, offer him a stipend? It wouldn't work, first off, and would run into quite the number of legal troubles, secondly. No. There's only one source of actual, workable designs in the world, and that is herself.
Taking that into consideration, her safety, too, is under no threat with what she's revealed. Of the people who know the true value of Uncle's tech, two are her parents, and the two remaining others have created it in the first place. She could foreseeably see someone willing to carve her heart out for the promise of an end to scarcity, or even just out of greed, but for the medical application? It would be nothing short of counterproductive. She's already working on bringing this technology into the world, and if somebody wanted to steal the designs, they would presumably just steal the designs. Or else simply buy one of her PFUMNs, or steal one of her prototypes. Who would they even bring the fabricator to for reverse engineering with the foremost expert on nanotechnology dead? Her co-workers? Everything they know they've learned from her.
It is, therefore, with something of a bounce to her step that Angela enters her office, only to have her mood be immediately put to the test.
"I have a question, Doctor Ziegler." Athena's voice sounds from the wall-mounted speaker, and it's all Angela can do to hold her groan in, hoping against hope that the Commander is in this one, sole respect, less than so fully principled as to have surveillance running in his own office.
"Go ahead, Athena."
"Is it correct to assume the nanite transfusion you used to save Genji Shimada's life as a head consisted of your uncle's strain, rather than your own?"
It takes Angela a second to so suddenly switch her track of thought, but even so it brings no closure to her confusion.
"Uh- that is correct, yes?"
"So you did not, in fact, risk your own health in experimenting with your technology on your own body?"
Ah.
"No. No, that was just something I came up with on the spot to explain why I had nanites running in my bloodstream. I'm… sorry about lying," she adds at length.
"Understood. I'm glad. It appears disciplinary action will not be required, after all."
Discip- "The what now?"
"I was planning on refusing to work with you for the period of three months for breaking your promise to me regarding self-experimentation. The purpose was, quote, To teach you a lesson. This is no longer necessary."
Necessary? Quote? Quote who?
"You can do that? Refuse to work?" is the more immediately concerning question that comes to her lips.
"Of course not," the AI pleasantly replies. "However, so long as my duties include higher priority tasks, I have the freedom to choose the order in which to tackle them, as well as the amount of processing power they should be allocated with. You would have to directly demand my participation in your capacity as my supervisor within your research team, which you would not do."
It is abrupt, the way in which her stomach drops to her heels at the words as Angela realises they may well be true. The idea of forcing Athena to do work which has always been freely and gladly given stirs something unpleasant in the depths of her gut. Although never legally defined as such, theirs has always been a partnership ever since they first met. To demand instead of asking - something she is well within her right to do - would feel like a betrayal.
Which is a ridiculous notion. Disregarding the fact Athena's an AI (and an advanced one at that), she is also technically her boss. If it were any other researcher on her team, Angela knows with certainty born of practice she would not feel conflicted in any way whatsoever about ordering them to do their job. As a matter of fact, this would be expected of her. But the fact Athena's an AI can't be disregarded. Unlike humans, she can't refuse her. Or feel the resentment a human would at being forced to do something against her will, or even have the capacity for any such negative simulacrum of emotion at all, in the first place. Not only would she not be hurt by such a demand. She can't be hurt by it.
And yet, here Angela is, feeling faintly ill at such thoughts.
"Have I caused distress?" the AI asks, concern palpable, reminding Angela to steady her hands.
"No." Then again, sans the hitch. "No. Sorry. I just don't know whether to be impressed or worried."
"May I instead suggest being appreciative of my efforts at maintaining your good health?"
Some of the lead in her stomach gives with the laugh slipping past her teeth.
"You know, I think that does sound better."