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“I think it’s cute.”
Lynx’s sensors twitched at the vibration of Efi’s voice, although their fingers never left glowing projections before them as they flipped through various scenes taken in real time through a multitude of cameras and other devices.
“What, exactly, is cute?” they decided to humor the child (a genius, but a child nevertheless), who had somehow managed to find her way to Lynx’s hole in the ground of an apartment (followed him from the café she had been eating some freshly baked pastries at, the caramel residue still around her lips), and persuaded her way through the doorway (Orisa promised she wouldn’t immediately direct the authorities to his doorstep and Efi patted the relatively young omnic on the arm, brimming with pride).
Lynx decided there were worse things to deal with, like leaky pipes, unprecedented energy drains, or others hackers.
“That you take the time to check up on your friend even though she’s far away,” Efi replied, turning so that she was facing Lynx upside-down, sprawled over Orisa’s back.
“It is illegal, but I agree with Efi’s assessment,” Orisa voiced, although there was some amount of disapproval in the electric crackle of her words. “Can you not use means not against legal protocols of any country that is downloaded in my databanks?”
Lynx sighed, wishing they were human enough to pinch the bridge of their nose. Instead, their sensors that Efi kept referring to as ears shifted to a lower position and closer to their head to help lower the feedback and keep their head from feeling too fuzzy with input overload.
“You cannot just make a phone call to the far east of Siberia, Orisa,” they retorted, never taking their attention from the images that flitted past as they flicked yet another one away to bring up another. “Any interactions with omnics outside of breaking them beyond repair is illegal in itself.”
“So you are putting your friend in risk by reaching out to her.” They could feel the disapproval growing in Orisa’s tone, her gaze fixating on the back of their head. It made a sparking shiver race through their circuitry.
“The easiest way to stop it is to not acknowledge the messages at all,” Lynx pointed out in turn. “It is simple at that.”
“Come on, Orisa, just overlook the legality of it. Some laws are wrong. What can we say against Lynx trying to speak to their friend?” Efi came to Lynx’s rescue, but it quickly turned back at him when Efi slid off Orisa’s back and onto her shoulders on the floor with a soft thump.
“Who is she anyway? You never did tell us.”
“I didn’t think it was important,” Lynx said dryly.
“Is she pretty?”
Lynx’s fingers froze mid-swipe, their sensors jerking up in surprise.
“What?”
“Is she pretty?” Efi repeated, her mouth curling into a cheeky smile only human children could pull off, rolling over so that she was turned upright once again, her legs splayed out on the floor as Orisa absently went to fix her hair. “She’s gotta be if you’re that attached to her. Papa does that too sometimes when Mama goes off to visit family in Morocco. He’s always checking up on her.”
Lynx made an uncommitted noise, forcing themselves to return to flipping through various different cameras and electronics. “I suppose one would define her more as… an acquired taste.”
“That means they think she’s pretty,” Efi stage-whispered to Orisa, who didn’t even bother trying to hide her laugh.
That made Lynx’s sensors to press against the sides of their head.
“Then what do you think she is, since you are so bright and knowledgeable?” Lynx decided to snap, their fingers reaching across the screen and flipping different stills before settling on one as the hurried pattering of feet made Efi’s presence closer to them known. It was an image of the famous Aleksandra Zaryanova, caught in the earlier days of their search in Dorado. Her bright pink hair and blue armor actually blended in with the colorful wall art and graffiti that was the side streets of the city, full of life and color. It was one of the few times they ever saw the woman smile, her eyes upward at the rainbow of paper mache and crepe paper that were strung across the buildings above them.
They slid the image over so that it floated before Efi, their fingers already going back to work in searching the whereabouts of the tall Russian.
“Oooh! She’s prettier than I thought!” Efi gasped, leaning close to the image. “I like her hair! Are her muscles really that big?”
“She’s bigger in person,” Lynx muttered without even giving it much thought. Their fingers paused as they caught a face-splitting grin on Efi’s face out of the corner of their vision, standing by their elbow and positively smirking up at them. “What?”
“You liiiike her,” Efi sang, drawing Lynx’s full attention as they turned their head down to give their own impression of a glare.
“You’re eleven,” they retorted simply, causing Efi’s cheeks to puff out.
“Yes, but I’m not stupid,” she shot back, folding her arms over her chest. “I’ve read all about relationships and things! And Papa tells me that Mama is the most beautiful person in the world in that same tone!”
“I doubt I sound like a love-struck human.” If Lynx could, they would’ve rolled their eyes, facing their work once again. “And despite how far Numbani has come to embrace omnic and human relationships, Zaryanova is a Russian. Their ideology is incredibly bias and discriminatory.”
“But she talks back to you!” Efi was now hanging off their arm, both of hers wrapped around the metal and wire underneath their sleeve.
“Communication is the key for a good relationship,” Orisa chimed in from behind them, tossing in her own two credits into the conversation.
“We’re barely friends,” Lynx stated, but they knew that wasn’t true. They cared quite a bit about Aleksandra Zaryanova, or Zarya she was usually referred by. The reasons why they liked her were illogical. Lynx was an omnic. Zarya was human and Russian. Lynx was Zarya’s enemy, a robot as she preferred to call them by. And yet Lynx saw how vulnerable and lost she looked after meeting with Sombra. They weren’t sure then what had happened to cause the strong woman who carried a particle cannon like it weighed as much as picnic basket look so internally beaten down since their memory of whatever happened after first seeing Sombra was fuzzy at best, but whatever it was had to be bad to make her act as if she didn’t want to return to Russia, to be there anymore.
She had even saved them, although why when she expressed nothing but scorn for their existence was beyond them. Still, they decided to reach out when they had returned to Numbani, a spur of the moment sort of decision that both the best and worst circumstances to come out of it was that Zarya would not answer at all.
And yet, just seconds after they got through the almost non-existent protections on Zarya’s handheld, she had responded back. And the time after that, and the time after that.
Even they could see that something was entirely wrong, that Zarya was troubled to where she was doubting her position in the Siberian Front. She still did the missions with everything she had, but her reports were lacking heart, and her expression became shadowed and downcast whenever they caught a camera in her vicinity with no one else around.
It was clear that, despite how the country rallied under her mere existence, their favorite past championship strongwoman-turned heroic soldier, she wasn’t connected to anyone. No family calls, no messages to friends, just the occasional note from Katya Volskaya or medical telling her she needs a check-up. She worked hard with her teammates, but outside the field she didn’t have much in common with them outside of cracking omnic heads, and even then she had fallen entirely out of that conversation unless directly spoken to.
Lynx couldn’t help but become increasingly worried for Zarya. She was reckless on the field when it came to saving people, she seemed lost and unattached and set adrift with no means of getting back on track. It wasn’t the woman they got to know in Dorado, the one who was full of confidence that they would find the infamous hacker Sombra, dedicated and headstrong in that she would go knocking on every door and walking into every business to ask, even with the language barrier between herself and the people she was asking.
It was irrational and illogical for them to even feel as remotely concerned for Zarya, but Lynx had seen the look in her eye when gazing at the picture they had taken of the Festival of Flowers and decided that maybe it was okay that this strange… development between them… didn’t make any sense.
A poke to the side of their face pulled Lynx’s attention back to reality, looking down at Efi whose finger was still on their faceplate.
“I think you’re closer friends than you realize,” Efi told them, giving them a serious look that was ruined by the fact that she was still hanging off their arm.
“Aren’t you the expert?” Lynx drolled, putting as much sarcasm in their tone as they could. “I never would’ve thought. The genius in robotics is extending to psychology now.”
Efi simply stuck her tongue out at them, letting go of their arm so she could plop down against Orisa.
“You’re just being mean because it’s true.”
“How observant.”
The snide remarks ended, however, when they finally caught sight of a familiar head of pink hair, pausing at the screen as they watched. Zarya looked healthy enough, at least in the grayscale that the video was recording in, although bandages still peeked out from under the plating of her armor where her arms and neck were bare. Her hands were folded behind her back a man in a uniform seemed to scold her, his face dark from yelling so much. Zarya didn’t seem all too phased by it at all, letting the man vent before he shooed her away with a flick of his hand.
They tracked her from camera to camera as she walked through what looked like a re-purposed bunker, no windows and alight by small, flickering lights. How the camera still worked and why they were there in the first place was beyond Lynx, but they used them to their advantage, ignoring both Orisa and Efi who had come up to watch over their shoulder.
Zarya, meanwhile, flopped onto the closest bunk she found, bringing a pillow up over her face to block out the light and noise of other soldiers around her, not even caring enough to change out of her armor. Her movements were stiff on her injured side, which made Lynx made a small note to ask her later over while at the same time pulling up her medical files.
They claimed she was recovering as she should, and although her injuries were still severe, she had been refused medical leave due to “unforeseen circumstances” without ever discussing it with her. These circumstances were, as Lynx found out, entirely unacceptable in their eyes, since most of the doctor’s notes were that she should still be on bed rest for a month- at least.
“Told you they like her,” Efi whispered to Orisa as Lynx’s sensors flattened, a low, crackling growl in their voice box as they went through more files and background of those who approved Zarya in returning back to the field in her condition, to poke and prod as many buttons as they could until she got at least some rest before she got herself killed.
And this time, Lynx didn’t even bother to correct her.