Chapter Text
A shotgun blast to his side. It figured that Ana Amari would be the one to heal it.
Ghosts, all of them – when he tried to tell her so, she sighed and turned her head. Might have smiled, but then if she did, it was probably at the photo in her hand that she'd plucked from the ground. He gave her that privacy, and turned on his heel to survey the shimmering air, thick with stirred sand, that focused into filtered red when the visor clicked and re-engaged.
An alert pinged to his left: Hakim's body. Unconscious. He walked over and gave it a nudge with his boot. A soft grunt. A vial glinted over the collar of his shirt.
"Worked on the pistol, huh?" he said, yanking it out and holding it up to the light. The old Amari tranquilliser concoction, if he remembered that chemical sequence from the visor correctly. Might have been a change in the formula somewhere, but he at least recognised the golden residue.
Her voice had mellowed in her age, cool as river waters, dry as the baked earth of the desert. "I thought that it might have a few more applications than just sending the new recruits to bed."
Ana flanked him and held out her hand. He dropped the tranquilliser into it. Photo must have been tucked away. His side twinged, still healing. He straightened his jacket, the right side frayed, and felt Ana's gaze sizing him up.
"I can give you another shot," she continued, and he glanced at her to catch her wry grin whilst she slotted the tranquilliser back into the pistol, "but neither you nor Fareeha ever had any patience with them."
The pistol hummed, and he saw it regenerating the liquid before she holstered it. The mirth remained in her eye. He bit back a grin.
"There are some things biotic rounds can't heal," he said dryly.
Ana huffed, pulling her own visor over her face. He stared at the design. The Shrike. Infamous - worth every piastre of her E£70,000,000 bounty.
"Ever the drama queen," she muttered, and gestured to the complex. "Hakim had a dozen bounty hunters enlisted at his beck and call - none of them very bright, but it won't take a genius to recognise the pile of bodies you've left at the front door."
He nodded, glancing at the entrance to the grounds that he'd scaled in under thirty seconds. Some security. Hadn't expected much anyway. The guy who just cashed everything in, exchanged bounties for credits, didn't think that his targets would bypass the hunters and go straight for him.
Ana started for the entrance, running up and then springboarding from the security console to clamber onto the ledge - twice the grace he'd had, same vigour as she'd always had. He rolled his eyes. The worst part was that he knew she wasn't even trying to impress him. Never had any need to.
It was why he'd sought her in the first place.
"I'm guessing that you want to scope this place out," he called, earning her chuckle.
"I'm guessing that you're too impatient to stick around," she said in retort, picking up her rifle and slinging it across her shoulder. "But you're welcome to join me."
"We need to talk."
"I know." Her visor couldn't obscure the gravity of her tone. She jerked her head to her left. "West of here, if you follow the street straight until the green bus stop, there is a building opposite it with a red door. A clinic."
He frowned. "The people?"
"I'm missing one eye, not blind," chastised Ana, cocking her head. "I know you're fond of the tough soldier act, Jack, but as flattered as I am of your faith in me, a real doctor can patch you up better than a biotic round." She lowered herself back onto the ground and dusted her hands. He hefted his rifle into both hands as she advanced, patting his shoulder, continuing on to Hakim's house. "You said it yourself: there are things that biotic rounds can't heal."
He sighed, casting one last look around - a battleground moments before - and then nodding to her. "Let me know what you find."
"See you in five," she replied cheerfully. "Try not to find more trouble on the way."
Atlas News had a quaint way of depicting global suffering: flashes of images, people posed just right, a little blood here and there, fire, collapsed buildings, smoke.
Never the raw banality of it: the everyday undercurrent of fear, business as usual under the blackened skies, the children running in the street with swollen bellies. And certainly never the multitudes: communities praying in halls, or laid out in the streets in pieces that cameramen angled away from. Just enough for shock factor: remind people to be grateful.
Jack watched the monitor on the wall, the sombre newswoman describing the local shootout at a nearby compound, and then looked out the window to where the shuttle bus rumbled by on choking fumes of petrol. A million miles away from modern technology.
The newswoman continued; he caught the name 'Hakim', followed by the loud tuts of the nurses inside the clinic over the groaning and chatter. Sounded like Hakim had it a long time coming anyway. Jack drummed his fingers on his rucksack, thudding on the barrel of his pulse rifle stuffed inside.
"Ahmed was studying at the Al-Azhar Faculty of Medicine before the university was attacked."
He looked up, and spotted Ana with her arms crossed, surveying the outside world with a gaze weighed with fatigue. Behind her, the nurse who had first turned him away but then, once Ana had arrived, tended to the gunshot, was still bustling between patients. Just another kind of casualty, albeit one lucky enough to still able to walk between ratty mattresses and chat to the others.
Jack caught Ana's eye, even through his visor, and her expression eased into a weary smile. She'd changed out of her armour; a tail of white hair curled out from her blue hijab.
"No need to add another wrinkle to your forehead, old man: Ahmed won't say a word. None of them will. Silence sells itself as a commodity when free speech means as little as the grains under your feet."
He shared the bitterness of her tone with a low hum. "But you have a safe house somewhere," he prompted, and she sighed, taking the seat next to him on the sofa.
"I'll let you know when you're ready to walk to it," she said, nudging him playfully. "I'm surprised you've come as far as you have. If it weren't for this clinic, my knees would have collapsed before I could save your ass."
She reclined into the worn fabric, the cushions barely padding the skeleton of the sofa, and admired the passers-by outside.
"I have some tea that you may like: chamomile and cornflower. Or are you still burning through vats of coffee to keep you alive?"
He couldn't help the short laugh that escaped him. "If this-" He waved a hand over himself "-is what you call 'alive', then you can thank Ziegler. How is the tea collection?"
"Flourishing. The benefits of international travel."
"Yeah, you've been a real globe-trotter, huh?"
"Yet work always comes first," she teased. She peered at his arm. "Yes, I noticed those canisters. No wonder you've been breaking into old Watchpoints."
He grunted, and she fell quiet, the clamour of inside and out more than compensating for their conversation. His side ached - nothing like the painful familiarity of rubbing shoulders with the world's best sniper. His skin burned with the alcohol that Ahmed had dabbed in - an ember to the shame and guilt roaring in his chest, stealing his air.
He'd let six years pass - better late than never, but in any other situation, he would have cursed his own incapability.
But it wasn't as though Ana had made it an easy task to find her. Janina Kowalska? Tricks like that. Standard Amari stealth. Old soldiers, hard to kill.
Not his words.
Jack looked up to see Ana watching, her expression amused. "I can practically see the gears turning in your head," she remarked, standing and helping him to his feet as well.
He hauled his rucksack onto his back, fighting a wince when it slammed against a sensitive string of muscle. She shouldered her own knapsack with a resolute nod.
"If we stay here any longer, I think your head will explode with all of the questions that you have."
"You know me, Ana," he said, a little too quickly. She paused, glancing at him.
"Yes I do," she said, and clasped his shoulder. He laid a hand over hers, swallowing thickly through the smouldering in his throat.
Then she moved her hand to ruffle his hair, and laughed as if she could see the pout that he'd automatically pulled, leading the way through the maze of mattresses to a backdoor. The nurses didn't even glance their way. Jack cast one last look at the monitor: some failed government initiative to tackle the drought.
"Come, then. This way. I've paid Ahmed for his service and discretion." She unlocked the door, entering a small courtyard crowded with children.
"How long has this clinic been up and running?" He followed her out, hearing the door slam and lock behind him, heat swarming him through his jacket.
The children ran up with wide smiles, shouting over one another to be heard, giggling and pushing whilst he and Ana crossed the courtyard. Jack noted the scratches on one girl's cheek, eyes shining with wonder; she was looking at him, trying to focus on where his eyes could be behind the visor, and he huffed to himself. Not the first.
Ana cooed at them, her smile drawing laughter lines on her face. Her gloves cleaned away the dust on their skin.
"Seven months, give or take," she replied over the happy noise, "and it's been tenuous at that."
They came to a back alley, and Ana waved to the children before they disappeared behind the walls of the courtyard. Jack traced the drawings made into the stone of the alley: stick figures, some more robotic than others, scratches tearing indiscriminately into the brick.
"A lot of small practices have sprung up since the attacks on the universities and hospitals."
"Omnics?" he said warily as they emerged into a main street, waiting for a group of women with earthenware to pass before they joined the flow. He bristled at the jostling bodies around him. One hand kept on the belt of biotic canisters at his hip. The weight of the rucksack kept him grounded.
"Thieves. Terrorists." Ana steered into another alley, stepping over the legs of those reclined against the walls. Jack felt the hunger of their eyes and quickened his pace. "Omnics, yes. The latter break down the doors and the scavengers come after. Steel doesn't need medicine, after all."
"Ain't ever been about what they need," he said, wincing at the rasp in his voice. At least the air filtered through his mask cooled his lungs. "After all these years, we never figured that out."
They were winding through streets now, lost in a labyrinth of flashing cloths, undulating clamour, and pressing bodies. He spotted a familiar sign: A.I. IS OUR RIGHT. At least not blood this time, nor a pigment close to rusted iron.
He tore his gaze away, gritting his teeth to concentrate on something other than the bile at the back of his throat. A nearby road was clogged with traffic, the remnants of the market having dispersed and smoke pluming from the old machines, but he and Ana kept their distance. CCTV was a little more active along the main streets; of course, word about them would spread, but word itself couldn't track them down the same way taped evidence could. The sight of his visor was probably exciting to the backstreet civilians.
"So why bounty hunting? You said yourself that you weren't interested in the fight."
Ana chuckled somewhat humourlessly, and they finally drew into an empty alleyway. "Home used to be where family and friends were," she murmured as she unlocked a door in the wall. Jack surveyed the balconies above: clothes draped over, someone smoking on the third storey, gritty grey bricks. "When that wasn't an option, I thought it best to come back here - to Egypt. The turmoil, the disasters..."
She hesitated, and he glanced her way. Her head was bowed.
"It reminded me that there's still much to be done, and if I could use my skills for anything, it would be to stop the criminals making it even harder for people to cope."
Inside was darkness, a single shaft of light shed onto the staircase where they ascended to the fourth floor. Jack's side protested, but he thanked his knees for not creaking as loudly as they had that morning. Ana would never let him live it down.
"There's a dozen other Hakims ready to take up his business," warned Ana. "But..." She stopped in front of an apartment, and cocked her head at him with familiar amusement. He raised an eyebrow. "We have to earn our bounty somehow."
Her apartment was sparse, but only the Amari touch could turn so little furniture into a space of safety and comfort. Ana settled her biotic rifle and knapsack next to a sun-bleached chintz armchair, and Jack followed suit, slinging his rucksack down, shedding his jacket with its lining soaked with sweat and blood. Then went the armour and gloves, the belts at his waist, and Ana tutted as he dumped it all onto her coffee table.
"I would have thought that you'd at least try to be inconspicuous," she said, lifting a sleeve of his jacket. "Do I want to know where you got this?"
"Take a wild guess - you'd probably get it right," he replied, grinning when she sighed and walked away.
The sleeve flopped back over the edge of the coffee table, singed and punctured. He eyed it, and his chest tightened with an unexpected pang of sadness.
"Don't think that I'm gonna be able to glue it back this time, though," he muttered. The snap of the cupboards: he craned his neck to see Ana preparing her kettle and tea set.
“Oh, God forbid you throw away the old thing." She unearthed two tins from the shelf. "If you weren't such a picky shopper, I would offer to find something else for you to wear instead. And no," she added, before he could speak, "you don't get a choice in what tea I make you."
He humphed. "I trust your judgement, Ana; I just don't trust my tolerance of the heat with an added cup of tea."
"Drama queen," she sang, mixing the leaves together. Outside, horns blared and dogs barked; Jack peered out from between the window shutters and spotted a pack of dogs racing across the road. Wild, homeless, fearless - he’d seen their type before. One mutt was knocked off-course; it didn’t stop, and neither did the driver.
"I loathe to say it, but there’s someone I know who can fix your jacket - as much as you can fix something so garish.” He glanced at her, and she scoffed. "Don’t look so surprised. The people here are inventors: life is pieced together from the ruins of the wars and the snippets of government initiatives. I think that a simple jacket will hardly be a novelty."
He drew away from the window, scuffing his boots on the hard, dusty floor. "I’m not - it’s not-” he began, before catching his words. Not surprised that people were resourceful. Everyone was, one way or another. It wasn’t that. Ana’s movements slowed, but she continued to heat the tea: practised, unhurried, gentle.
"Of course I care," she said softly, and he gritted his teeth. Done it again - hurt her again. Off to a bad start. "Now sit down and stop fussing. I'll handle it."
"As usual."
She hummed. "As usual."
He swallowed, running a hand over his visor before unlocking it. "Thanks, Ana." His words stirred the dust floating in the air, caught in the stripes of light.
"I mean my word," she said, her sincerity warm and full. "I've got your back. I'm not sure where your path across the globe is taking you, but I'm sure there's a reason to it - and that the name 'Talon' is somewhere in the mix."
"Somewhere," he agreed, aware of Ana's sudden frown. He joined her in the kitchen, the smell of tea strong in the musty air, setting the visor in reach onto the kitchen counter. "There's more to it than them."
"More than Talon?"
"Are you surprised?"
"I'm tired," she said flatly. He grunted. "And I know you are, too. Like I said, I'll follow you on your path - but there better be an end to it."
"Or what? You'll plant a stop sign in my way?" he teased.
Ana raised a brow. "I'll beat you with one if that's what it'll take."
He sniffed. "I don't take main roads anyway."
"At least you have some sense."
Jack watched the steam rising from the kettle in soft translucent curls, suppressing a flinch when there was another loud horn from outside. When he glanced at Ana, she had her arms folded and her gaze was vacant.
"Where do we start?" he said, breaking her out of her trance. "You, or Hakim?"
Ana tucked a curl of white hair back into her hijab, rubbing her forehead in the process. "You know about the one they call Widowmaker."
"I know." His throat went tight; her scream still haunted him. Still, he choked out, "I'm sorry."
It sounded as pathetic as he felt, as pathetic as her consoling pat. He ground the words between his teeth - you disobeyed orders, you weren't fast enough, you died and it broke Overwatch apart - but he let the grains roll on his tongue, because to aim them at Ana would be to target what little was left of the world’s humanity.
"I've been keeping my eye on Talon, in particular Widowmaker." The kettle whistled and she took it off the heat to drown the tea leaves in their china. When she set the kettle down, he was surprised at the anger colouring her voice. "I'd been tracking her - what happened to Tekhartha Mondatta, I should have stopped."
It was his turn to lay a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him; the hairs on his nape pricked at the fury he saw in her eye, the danger in its darkness.
"I should have followed my instincts, followed my leads, and travelled to London. I vowed not to hesitate twice. I thought that I was making a rational choice in staying."
She sagged, and he stroked a line down her arm, remembering the motions that she herself had taught him in those quiet moments years ago when he'd been consumed by the same grief. "But I understand now that it was uncertainty that convinced me to remain here," she said. Her voice hardened. "This is war, without a doubt - and what is a war without soldiers?"
"So you let me find you," he said.
"You've been busy with your own reconnaissance, so I gave you time." She handed him the cup of tea with a smile. "Tell me what you think."
Jack relaxed at the fragrance - chamomile, like she'd said - and took a sip, if only to appease her scrutinising look. "Tastes like hot water."
"You like it." Satisfied, she raised her own cup, and he rolled his eyes before copying her. "Let's take this to the sofa. I'm too old to be hoisting myself up onto the countertop and gossiping in the kitchen."
"But not too old to be infiltrating a mercenary compound?" he retorted good-humouredly, bringing his tea and visor with him to the armchairs. "Pretty sprightly for your age."
"Yoga," she explained primly, sitting on the armchair furthest from the window, "and lots of vitamin supplements. What about you? I didn't miss the mountain of bodies that you left in your wake back there."
"Well, all that stuff they pumped into me during the SEP better be good for something. But I'll leave the acrobatics to you all the same."
“We caught Hakim unawares.” She set her cup onto the corner of free space on the coffee table not occupied by his jacket and then reached for her knapsack. “He’d been communicating with Talon for three months, sending several of his top associates to assess the Helix Securities Anubis Facility’s infrastructure.”
Jack knew what came next: a certain private enforcement unit had garnered the world’s attention with their heroics, the eulogies of the fallen soldiers and civilians summarised in a neat paragraph beneath protracted outrage and diatribes. Accusing Egypt of harbouring more rogue A.I.s and omnics. World panic ever rising – the Second Omnic Crisis drawing closer. Volskaya Industries sprung from the event with renewed vigour: better defences on the way.
But one name had stood out – one hero, one security chief – and he could almost hear it haunting his old friend as she pursed her lips and brought out a tablet.
“They were planning to hijack the Anubis God A.I. into an electronic portable cache – this.” Ana stared pointedly at the coffee table, and, heaving an aggravated sigh, he brought his things off and onto the armchair. “Thank you.”
She laid the tablet on the surface to project a holographic set of blueprints, and he studied the concentric shapes of the design, interlocked with ports and a control interface.
“I can only imagine the disaster of trying to accomplish this, let alone what they could cause once they had it. We must locate and destroy it.”
“It wasn’t stored at Hakim’s compound?” he asked.
She scoffed. “They wouldn’t trust him with it.”
“Then who-” He stopped. Resentment, old and resinous, set his joints into place. Ana picked up her cup and blew the steam from her tea; he thought he saw reminiscent wisps of black unfurl from her lips. A part of him bowed with resignation, unlocking the messy amalgam of memory and emotion tucked at the back of his mind and filed ‘Reaper’.
Reaper. Should’ve known that he would be haunted, one way or another, but maybe it was just Jack’s charm that he should be plagued day and night. Should’ve known that the ghost would take the form of his guilt. It was a pretty solid shape, after all.
Reaper. Right. A gaseous, parasitic mercenary killing ex-Overwatch agents across the world. A marionette who rasped with the voice of the dead. Historic murderer. Talon sympathiser. Shotgun extraordinaire.
Enough to rival Reyes.
Playing with memories that weren’t his to have, toying with Jack. Bringing them together. Jack focused back on Ana. Taking them apart.
“What Hakim did have at his compound was this.” She flicked away the blueprints to a series of post-excavation reports, approved by the Egyptian government stamp. “They predicted a breach. The weak points of the A.I.’s security were already on paper, yet conveniently buried in obscure government archives.”
“They?” The look in her eye told him that he already knew.
“Do you not remember the technicians that the UN flew in when we first quarantined the Anubis A.I.?” Jack nodded, and Ana continued, “Under the UN’s directive, they maintained it, eventually passing it over to the Egyptian government and then Helix Securities. Relegating responsibility after Overwatch’s fall.”
“I guess they didn’t have a scapegoat any more to blame it on if something screwed up.” Jack hummed. “Didn’t trust the A.I.’s silence, so they found a new one.”
Ana gestured to the reports. “With good reason. These reports here were buried under admin: the archaeology team remarked on the technological interference, claiming that some of the omnics malfunctioned around the site. It could have been an administrative error, or inside or outside influence. But the end result still stands. These reports haven’t been accessed in years.”
“So that’s why no one saw the A.I.’s breach coming. Figures it all comes down to the paperwork.” He skimmed over the names on the reports, looking for anyone familiar. The name ‘Amari’ was signed at the bottom of one – all jagged lines, not Ana’s cursive. Still, he gave her a chance to gloat. "How come the A.I. never fell into Talon's hands? Thirty years is a long time to leave a WMD on the back burner."
Ana grinned, settling back with her tea. "We both know Helix Securities owes its reputation to one employee in particular."
"The Amari name hasn't lost its shine," he agreed, warmly enough for her to chuckle over what must have been heartbreak.
Ana had never wanted a soldier for a daughter; she'd thought it best to raise Fareeha with the capability to defend herself and around a group of people tired of war - except for Reinhardt. God knew what the old Crusader was doing nowadays; the last Jack had heard, he was travelling with Brigitte, worming their way through central Europe.
There’d been a news article - flashed up a few weeks ago, a spark of adventure and excitement in the form of a bunch of scavengers being flushed out of a German town, courtesy of outsider intervention clad in Crusader armour.
So yes, everyone tired for war except Reinhardt. Yet somehow, they had all found it in themselves to keep fighting, so was it really that surprising that Fareeha had enrolled with Helix Securities, filled with Reinhardt’s ideals of justice and Torbjörn’s paternal wisdom and Reyes’ execution of military command?
Somewhere out there, Security Chief Pharah was shouldering responsibilities that Ana had tried to discourage. The newspapers had admitted it, but ink and holograms couldn’t equal the weight of Fareeha’s actions: that she had saved the local communities from the god A.I., but in doing so, had also prevented further access to it. Saved the world. Only the Amaris could uphold a record like that.
"So why didn’t the UN interact with the A.I.? They had the opportunity when we had our hands full with Overwatch," he said, sipping his tea when Ana looked pointedly at his cup.
"Similar to before: accountability. But don’t get the wrong idea: they had plans.”
“Plans. Sounds dangerous,” he said dryly. “Couldn’t imagine anything scarier.”
Ana raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you mean other than virtual weaponisation into a virus to strip any and all databases across the world, shut down omnics, and establish a technological overlord? I don’t know, Jack: you should pose that one to Talon."
Jack nodded. "Then it's a good thing it was disabled."
He didn't like the long, disbelieving hum that Ana drew out. “The portable cache still remains, and it’s in Talon’s hands. Until recently, it was my priority.”
He sighed, and spoke the word one that they’d both been skirting around, sharks around fresh blood. “Recall.”
Ana stiffened. Her mouth puckered at the taste of the word, as if she'd been the one to form it, and then she brought a comm unit out from her pocket. He huffed and brought out a phone. Bright words, urgent letters in all-caps. Ana squinted at his screen, where another agent's name was glowing in lieu of his. He shrugged.
"I wasn't invited," he said.
"So you stole her invite?"
He glanced at the screen; the name stared back, accusing. "Not me. I was given it."
Ana's lips moved as she re-read the name and ID number, her eye widening as it clicked. "London, a week ago."
"The exact same."
"Both Monika Ozols and her daughter were found desiccated."
"I know."
She scowled. "Gabriel and his games.”
He ignored her mutter and nodded at her comm unit, earning a fond smile from her. “Yours?”
“An old friend. She’s settled down now, doesn’t want to fight when she has a family to take care of.”
That had never stopped Ana, but perhaps that was the irony of it. He paused, and then drew out a small, metal disc with an unlit circle in the centre, placing it in the same palm as Ozols’ phone. Ana made a noise.
“What is that?” she said, peering intently over the rim of her cup.
“I don’t know. It came with the phone. It’s not a peripheral – doesn’t attach to any computers that I’ve tried. Figured it opens something. Probably personal.”
“Have you tried going to London?”
“If I did, it wouldn’t be without you. Besides, the phone says that there’s a meeting in Brussels in a few days for the recalled Overwatch agents.”
“And we both know that we’re not going,” said Ana flatly, “so I fail to see what is holding you back.”
Jack downed the rest of his tea, and she pulled a face, shaking her head with disappointment at his lack of delicacy. “What’s there to see? You saw the pictures in the press: Ozols’ safe room was ransacked. Whatever this fob controls-” He tossed it to her; she caught it with one hand “-it won’t be left at the crime scene. The police will have confiscated what’s left.”
There was also the obvious: the game. Reaper’s breadcrumbs were usually a lot larger, a lot fleshier, and led in circles and crisscrosses, playing dot-to-dot with Overwatch’s insignia. But this was just perfect: an innocuous trinket to burn a hole in Jack’s pocket until he was forced to bring it out and pass it round. Surprise: look where it had landed. Ana rolled it between her fingers, and he wondered whether he should snatch it back. Too late. It would have happened, one way or another, he reasoned. Reaper always found a way.
It was then that he caught Ana’s grin. “When were you the pessimist of the group?” She tucked the fob away. “Leave it to me, Jack.”
“The cache-” he began.
“Is still a priority of mine,” she said evenly, standing and taking his cup. He nodded his thanks, took his visor into his hands instead and cleaned the sand from the corners with a nail. Ana placed their cups into the sink and leant against the counter. “Consider this a warm-up. If this is Gabriel’s intent, then our choices are limited regardless.”
He didn’t realise that he’d been clenching the visor until he loosened his fingers. He turned to the window, where a cloud of birds danced through the sky. “You know it’s not him.”
It wasn’t silence – the outside traffic was too adamant for that – but it was the nearest thing to what Ana was aiming for. He rotated the visor in his hands and drew circles with his thumb where the eyes would be, then slid over the slope that would cover the nose, clearing dust from the cheeks – until he completed the tracing of a skull. His insides twisted, squirming like a nest of snakes unveiled from their den.
“Who are you trying to persuade?” said Ana finally. He scowled at her tone. She gazed intently at him. “We’ve all seen death, Jack; we’ve walked along its cusp. Now, I don’t know if Reaper is the footprints of Gabriel’s trail, or Gabriel clinging to the edge, but we cannot-”
“It’s not him.” Jack dropped the visor onto the armrest; when he twisted to meet Ana’s eye, his side ached. She caught his wince, but he continued, grating through the sudden burn in his throat. “Gabriel Reyes wouldn’t murder ex-Overwatch agents in cold blood.” Ana opened her mouth, but he pressed on. “I was there when the Blackwatch allegations came out, Ana; I think I have a damn good idea of the sort of things that happened in Blackwatch under my nose.”
“So why weren’t you there for him?” she snapped.
Easy. Ana Amari could make time travel sound easy, and put Winston to shame. It was easy for an arbiter to walk from A to B, from Overwatch to Blackwatch; it was easy to deliver messages, sentimental pieces that he knew would never have come from Reyes’ lips after the promotion. Before, maybe.
Maybe, he thought desperately, humouring the echo always at the back of his head.
But all that mattered was that Ana had had it easy, meeting them face-to-face without ever seeing the shadows and their knots and knives.
No knives now – no, just a shotgun to the side instead. Six years ago, he would have begged for it had it meant an early escape to the freedom he had now.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” said Jack gruffly. “The UN was breathing down my neck at every opportunity, waiting for me to fuck up; they had Reyes and I wrapped around their little fingers before we’d even shaken their hands.”
Ana made a noise as if to protest, thought better of it, sighed, and then said, “If you don’t think that communicating with Gabriel – I mean conversation, not your famous yelling matches – would have been healthy, then you’re not the commander I knew. The Jack Morrison I knew was the most expressive man I ever met, and yet he and Gabriel could move together like clockwork without ever saying a word if the need arose.”
Jack humphed. “That time’s long gone, Ana.”
She lifted her chin. “I know: it’s in the past. But to learn from our mistakes, we have to look back and face our shadows.” She walked over, scooping his jacket from the coffee table and folding it into her knapsack. He narrowed his eyes at her. “The sooner this awful thing is repaired, the sooner we can leave,” she explained. “Behave whilst I’m gone. If you touch my tea collection-”
“I probably won’t see my jacket again, will I?” he finished, forcing a small smile.
“Oh you will.” Her own smile was wicked. “I’ll personally cut it into threads and string you up with it.”
He chuckled. It was almost in pieces anyway. “Noted.”
He watched her leave, and the growing ache of realisation – this was Ana Amari, this was his best friend, she was alive and just as sharp as ever – burned in his chest when she looked back, her expression soft.
“It’s good to see you, Jack,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” he replied, and she saluted, closing the door behind her and leaving him to bake in the half-furnished living room, palms slick with sweat and head pounding.
-
They were playing a game: Jesse McCree's hat, on a bold adventure through Watchpoint: Puerto Madryn.
When Genji had flashed by, Jack had almost spilled his coffee. What was the competition now? Still betting with McCree that he could outpace a bullet? Athena had said nothing; all those he’d passed in the corridor had said nothing.
The moment he went to scratch his head, hunched over reports, he’d jumped so hard that he almost risked his coffee again. They needed to find a better outlet for Genji than allowing him to relocate the hat onto the Strike-Commander’s head.
The hat was smooth as plastic in his hands; inside was metal. He put it back on his head and felt it burn into his scalp. It wasn’t designed for him: one day, Gabriel had disembarked the transport aircraft with a stooped figure by his side, their face hidden beneath the very same hat’s brim as they set foot on the runway. The rest was history.
It was where Jack could find him now. There was a shortcut out the window; he tackled through the bulletproof glass, gut swooping when he dropped three storeys, and came up in a roll from the spongy concrete. He swallowed down the humid air – it had been raining a few hours ago – and walked into the fog, clothes clinging to his skin. The hat cinched tighter.
The concrete was cracking beneath his feet. He held his head up, eyes on the prize. The dark shape ahead seemed a little small for the usual aircraft. The edges were blurred – but that was just his eyesight failing. He activated his visor: on.
Off, on.
Off. On.
His throat went tight, and he forced his hand down to his hip holster. Lighter than usual. Had Torbjörn taken it in for upgrades again? Must have left it in his desk. He glanced down, looked at the empty space where his sidearm should have been, and was distracted by molten red scars beneath his feet. His hands were trembling now. He missed the leather of his gloves.
The fog smelled bad, like the time he’d left the apple pies in the oven for too long back on the farm and Gabriel had turned round to swat the air with a towel-
Or the time when he’d waded into a playground of omnic carcasses, ozone and chemicals and rubber blocking his sinuses-
Or the time when he’d lit his first cigarette and stuttered on the smoke, head spinning-
Whilst he staggered through fire-
And the bodies kept piling-
And the ground split into-
Fire fire heavy rebar concrete pain leg hands gun bullet smoke throat scream heat fire Reyes Reaper-
He awoke in a flush of sweat. He gulped down air, he kicked the blanket into a corner, he wiped his brow. The armchairs’ fabrics were soaked; he’d slept sitting up, feet now freed from the blanket that Ana had spared. His thoughts swam sluggishly through the mire of fatigue and instinctive terror. Light peeked through the slits of the shutters, causing his visor to glow where lines cut through red. Animals wailed to the city.
The phone declared it almost four a.m. The loneliest time to be alive. Jack massaged his chest to cajole his heart, whilst the rest of his body awoke and seized with the after-effects of its position. He gave it a minute to settle, for the pain to subside into a low thrumming, and then reached for his visor.
Holding his thumb over the right ear shell, he finally relaxed when the display burned into life. Repeated the motion to deactivate, set back down. Ozols’ phone could go away now, too; he didn’t need to be tempted to delete the inbox any more than when he’d first picked it up.
Swivelling to the side, he scooped up his boots, because Ana had given them a very stern look before he’d settled down into his makeshift bed. Her bedroom door was open; he stared at the floorboards that she’d offered when he’d laughed at the chintz armchairs. Her bed was out of sight. Her rifle probably had a comfortable spot under the covers.
He glanced at his rucksack, held the thought, and then dismissed it.
Ana’s foresight was a gift that kept paying; her trust was invaluable still. The keys to the apartment sat on the coffee table in the absence of his jacket – he half-expected an admonishing note tacked on – along with a foil of analgesics. He packed both into his trouser pockets, and then he was on his feet with his pistol secured to his thigh and his eyes still searing from phantom heat.
Outside, the night air chilled the lingering sweat through his clothes. His head throbbed, and his side with it, embers dancing in his eyes, the ground set oblique beneath his feet. The alleyway was near solid darkness: a thousand other alleyways, a hundred other junctures in time, and always the swelter of nightmares to scald him. He emerged and headed towards the flood of streetlights.
Local delinquents loitered along the main road; they glanced his way, and he glanced theirs, and they exchanged the silent acknowledgement that he was armed and minding his own business – for once.
It was when he looked up at the darkness unfolded in the sky, the speckled stars, that he consoled himself with one truth: he was free. He had an obligation, yet he was free. The weight of his pulse rifle was stowed where he knew someone could protect it, and his jacket was in someone else’s hands. No more Seventy-Six. Just Jack, walking off the tremors in his body and replacing the memory of ash in his lungs with the air swept by the light breeze.
He followed the main road as it curved towards the desert, noting a red bus stop on his way, aware of the rustling of bushes and trees. Reaper – an intrusive, but topical, thought. He gave autonomy to his feet as he mused on what he’d seen, parsing that old shitshow into workable chunks.
If Ana was right – God help them all, but if she was – then Reaper knew everything that Reyes had. The key fob’s absence was heavier than he liked. The hideout in Dorado had never been secure, so why had he been surprised? It wasn’t that, he reasoned. Somehow, by some miracle, he’d come this far without throwing the fob away, and now Ana wanted to investigate it.
Reaper must have seen – or at least heard – what happened in Dorado.
Jack attributed the sudden stress on his heart to the shock of hearing the strange whining nearby, and walked on.
Six years of ample opportunity, and Reaper suddenly insisted on a game. Jack wondered where – if – they’d intersected at any point, after the explosion, before Dorado, when there was only one goal for Jack and grief had fuelled him more than conviction. He wondered if – why – Reaper had seen him and deemed him interesting enough to torment.
But he knew the taste of shame: it had the tendency to ferment more often than not, and the thought of the spectre bearing witness to Alejandra’s narrow escape from Los Muertos was a rotting pit in his already tenuous dignity.
He’d hesitated. Between chasing Los Muertos and saving a girl from a grenade, he’d hesitated. And he knew that was one pulp of regret that would sour his conscience until his grave.
So if Reaper really had seen that, then Jack wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know whether Reaper had appeared out of spite or kinship.
Yet despite her anger at herself, Ana still bore the same burden, having hesitated twice and both when faced with Widowmaker. Look at Ana, her grace and her resolve, fighting in the face of her failures.
She believed that Gabriel Reyes was still there somewhere. It wound Jack’s head in circles just to consider it.
He stopped and spun on his heel as soon as the edges of his vision fogged with the memory of black smoke, head throbbing with each charge of adrenaline. Blinking twice was the cure. He rubbed his hands together, dried them on his trousers, and then traced his way back the way he’d come.
The whining echoed from his right; he peered down the alley just as he passed. Just as his shadow fell into it – a pre-emptive gambit, making his move for him – the whining stopped, petering into snuffling and then smothered by the trees’ sighs.
The drop in his gut was uncomfortably familiar. Jack unholstered his pistol and crept after his shadow, straining his ears past the ambient noises for the source of the whining. His vision remained clear, and the only creak of leather was his boots. A thousand different alleyways – now a thousand and one.
Ahead was an archway, and he paused before he walked under. The breeze played with the trees and bushes outside the alley, but the slight flagging of the surrounding rubbish bags persuaded him that this sack in particular should not be shuddering so.
He crouched down and nudged it with his pistol. It huffed, uncurling outwards to watch him with dark eyes, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Just a dog. After the promotion, Reyes had thrown a report into his face, coldly succinct whilst Jack recovered and scanned through it: animal bombers, bred for aggression, inserted or fixed with explosives, and then loosed on Overwatch agents. The medical bay had seen a spike in the number of cybernetic prosthetics issued.
Yet people now still called it ‘Overwatch’s glory days’. Funny: he thought they’d chosen their side long ago.
He waited, letting the dog sniff him and eventually lower its head back onto its paws, and then replaced the pistol with his other hand. Back in Indiana, another farm down the road had had three dogs, all boisterous and generous with their slobber.
Jack scratched through the short lawn of fur, nails catching on the faint bumps of its ribs. Mud caked his fingers when he withdrew and sat down; he sighed and resumed his grooming, warmth sapping from his back and into the brick behind him.
Jack paused when the dog lifted its head again, and without his shadow to shroud it, he catalogued the wounds drafted across its face: one short, perked ear missing, pink gashes around its muzzle. It shuffled clumsily, and he drew back, dusting his hand on his trousers.
It followed his hand and bumped its nose into his leg. It would be undiplomatic to decline such an invitation. He patted its muzzle and scratched its chin for good measure, flexing his wrist to find new spots as the dog pressed itself more eagerly into his hand; its tail whipped his side, fanning dust his way.
The warmth of its fur was…nice. Its bulk suggested that it was probably supposed to be a stout kind of dog – one that Reyes or Ana would have rolled off from their knowledge of dog breeds. It nudged into his petting, huffing excitedly, and he checked its scruff for a collar indent. Found more scars instead, scoring through its fur. Most of the time, it was humans that saw more warfare than animals. But here, according to Ana’s observations, was a good contest to that statement. Better to just pity both sides than to fuss about it.
Hadn’t Angela Ziegler suggested dog therapy at one point? Or had that just been one of McCree’s frivolous recommendations, scribbled at the end of his employee feedback forms? Or had it been that TV show that he’d caught Reinhardt and Torbjörn sobbing over?
He might have shed a tear or two as well. Nothing that anyone could prove, however.
With that, he gave the dog a final rub between the ears, and then stood up. His side complained, his back creaked a little, but at least the chill had soaked into his skin and cooled the burning in his blood. One hand was warm; it was also covered in grime and saliva from the dog’s licks.
The dog in question was staring up at him, tail still wagging.
“Sorry, buddy,” he said. “Ain’t got any treats for you.”
The dog watched him tuck away his pistol, and its tail slowly stilled.
Wherever it had been, wherever den or kennel it had endured, it was better out here, with the freedom to run and almost get run over and starve and scavenge. He walked out of the alley with his head lighter but heart heavier.
He passed the red bus stop and surveyed the road ahead. The delinquents were gone from the street corner; the only eyes watching him were a rat on its hind legs, which darted across the road and out of sight past other apartments.
The alleyway into Ana’s apartment was to his left; habit demanded he check both ways before crossing, and he, in turn, feigned habit as his excuse to glance back at the alley where he’d left the dog.
It stood at the mouth, still on the pathway, head ducked and sniffing the ground. He slowed, scuffing his feet against the pavement, holding its stare when it turned its head. What kind of old man was he, getting kicks out of petting strays? He scoffed to himself.
He took out the keys and braced himself for the stairs up to Ana’s apartment. Forget biotic emitters: he’d need heat packs at this rate.