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The first sign of the virus was when her vision went black.
"Fuck," she whispered, pressing on her neural implants as though that would initiate a reboot. The omnium they were infiltrating was abandoned, and there were few people strolling around the Mongolian steppe who posed a threat to her. But still, she was in the middle of a job, and there was a significant security system in place. She could not afford this.
"Sombra." Gabe's voice crackled in her ear and she swore again, internally this time, rubbing her eyes furiously. "Progress on the firewall has stopped. What's going on?"
"There's an, ah, issue, boss. I, uh– wait, hold up." Her sight came back to her, quick as it had left, and she looked around, smiling. The metal walls of the security terminal, the nine black monitors and the one that showed the progression of her hack, the red eyeball protruding from the ceiling.
"Sombra? Sombra!" She stopped and stared up. The eyeball dripped out slowly, and hovered in the middle of the room, making a faint humming noise, staring at her. She looked back at the screens. They weren't black any more. They were showing games of soccer where all the players were clones of Lúcio. She rubbed her eyes again. No luck.
"Sombra! What's going on?!"
"Uh, boss?" Sombra said softly. One of the Lúcios made a goal and the crowd exploded in cheers. "I think you need to come up here."
-
"So you're hallucinating," Gabe said flatly. She nodded, trying to focus on maintaining eye contact with him and not the chubby owlets that had replaced his shoes.
"Lotta this equipment is real old, but the whole reason we came here is because we knew someone had been poking around, so," she gestured vaguely at herself. "It's not a security threat. I'm not compromised. Well, not in that way." She paused momentarily, losing her train of thought as one of the owlets squeaked "Die!" at her before regrouping. "It's just an, uh. Interceptor scrambler pushed into my sensory systems. I've used it on Omnics before, and that was probably the intended target here. It's real good if you're taking them somewhere and don't want them to know where. Or want to make them forget everything about an Omnium, I guess. But I didn't know it'd work on me. That's cool."
"That is the word I'd use," Gabe said drily. He stood and pulled out his holovid. "I need to talk to HQ about transport. I'll be right back. Don't touch anything." And then he walked out, the owlets bouncing behind him. Sombra spun in her swivel chair and waited, listening to the faint sound of his voice and frowning at the anger in it.
"There's a problem," she said, as soon as he came back in. He drew a hand down his mask.
"HQ is worried about you contaminating their systems," he said. "They want the virus to weaken for twelve hours before you have contact with any equipment."
"What?!" Sombra jumped out of her chair, only to be overcome with vertigo as the world started spinning. Not spinning like when she was hungover or punch drunk, but like she was on the teacup ride at a theme park. She felt Gabe's arms at her shoulder and waist, and she leaned on him heavily.
"It's a real simple bug," she said into his bicep. "I could undo any damage it did in seconds."
"So you are contagious, then?" Sombra blinked.
"I mean, hang on–"
"Please don't." Gabe took out his holovid and began texting someone. "It's just twelve hours," he said as he snapped the device shut. "You can make it."
"I know I can," she said, not a little sullenly. Gabe didn't react, just looked her up and down.
"Can you ah. Walk?"
"Maybe." She let go of him and took a step forward. The world became a blur of colors. "...maybe not. Think this is affecting my proprioception too. Lotta this stuff is in my ossicles. That'd make sense."
"Well. Cool." He put his arm back around her and gently led her out the door, into the hallway.
"Where're we going?" she asked. She looked up and saw Slicer Omnics in the scaffolding but Gabe's step didn't falter, so she tried to focus on her breathing.
"I'm finding a place where you can lie down," he said. So you'll shut up , she heard him think. That was probably a hallucination. Maybe not. Maybe his thoughts were code the virus was making her pick up on. She still wasn't 100% on what Moira had done to him.
The hallway transformed into Moira's lab, with its dim lighting and featureless drones. Sombra frowned. She knew how much Moira hated the fact that Sombra knew things that she didn't, and she relished that. But the second Moira saw that her knowledge was in fog, she would pounce. Sombra didn't want to be here. She didn't want Gabe to take her here. If she asked, Gabe wouldn't take her there, right? He hated Moira too, didn't he?
"Gabe." She tugged at his sleeve and he looked down at her quickly. "Do you hate Moira?"
He hesitated for a moment before continuing his steady pace. They walked out of Moira's lab, into the Oasis sun. She was certain that Gabe hated this. The heat made him rot much faster.
"Why do you ask?" he said carefully.
"I don' wanna go back there. But you worked with her for a while and I'm sick, so I wanted to make sure you understood."
Gabe sighed. "Sometimes we have to do things we hate."
"Yeah, but she's a fuckin' dick."
"I know, Sombra," he said wearily.
"She acts like I'm lazy and stupid. When I was working harder by the time I was ten than she's worked in her whole damn life."
"I know, Sombra."
"She just treats me like that 'cause I'm Mexican."
"I know, Sombra," Gabe said. He sounded truly exhausted now. His pace had slowed. "I hate her too."
"Cool." She blinked and the hallway came back. Gabe's legs were stumps now, though, wrapped in smouldering corrugated metal. "So you're not going to make me go there?"
He squeezed her arm gently. "Let's focus on getting out of here first."
He stopped at a door, read the plaque on it, and shifted Sombra slightly as he opened it and helped her in. He flicked on the light and illuminated a ratty sofa, a little kitchenette, and a plastic table and chairs.
"Stay," he said, as he dumped her on the sofa. She grumbled at his tone, but the world had started to spin again a bit and so she couldn't form a practical argument. She tried to focus on something. On him. He was walking along the perimeter of the room. He stopped in front of some vending machines and examined them.
"Do you want anything?" he asked. She coughed and cleared her throat.
"I'll pass on the 50 year old soda, thanks."
"You're going to get hungry at some point," he said. She tilted her head. Some corpse that bore the marks of Reaper's draining appeared in one of the chairs, slumped over the table.
"I'm good," she said. "I've gone longer without." Gabe shrugged and continued to pace, and she and the body watched him silently.
-
She drifted off at some point and when she woke, she was leaning against Gabe. She looked around. They were sitting on the steps of the bakery, the Dorado sun beating down on them. That couldn't be right.
"Where are we?" she asked. Gabe hummed.
"You should go back to sleep," he said. His face was a white sugar skull. She reached up and touched it. The same old hard, bulletproof material. So he was still wearing his mask. Unless touch-hallucinations were a thing.
"Already slept," she said.
"For two hours. And you're sick."
"'m not tired." He did not respond, but put his arm around her and began gently began rocking her back and forth. She raised an eyebrow.
"What're you doing?"
Gabe stopped and looked down at her.
"It's... soothing," he said after a beat. She snorted.
"To whom? Babies?" Gabe self-consciously looked away and she studied him more carefully. "You hang around a lot of babies, Gabe?"
"I don't think I'm revealing as much as you think I am when I say yes, I have encountered babies in the past."
"Right, right. I forgot you eat them for sustenance."
He laughed, and then quickly silenced himself. Sombra looked away, and Dorado fizzled out. They were still in the dingy break room. Gabe's holovid was on the arm of the sofa, and she could see it blinking "23:47."
"We still have a ways to go." Gabe said quietly. Sombra nodded. "It'll go faster if you sleep."
"No it won't," she mumbled. "It's the same amount of time. You just don't want to have to deal with me."
"Sombra." He began to rock her again slowly. "Shut up and go back to sleep."
There was a fluorescent sheet light in the center of the room and it transformed back into the sun. She smelled warm bread as she drifted off.
-
She woke up feeling a bit better, though much colder. She pushed herself up on her elbows and looked around. She was still on the sofa in the little room. Gabe was at the plastic table, arguing with someone on the phone again.
"Even if she's operating at 50%, I'd trust her over Ito at their 100." Sombra propped her chin on the arm of the sofa and grinned.
"Daww," she said. Gabe jumped in his seat and glared at her.
"I'll call you later," he said. "Just talk to her for me." He hung up and looked over at Sombra.
"I might not have been talking about you," he said. Sombra shook her head lazily.
"Nah, you're right. Ito's a dumbass."
"They're perfectly capable."
"Why are you defending that dumbass?" Gabe rolled his eyes, and with that Sombra realized that his mask was off. Maybe. She quickly scanned the room. Everything seemed deeply boring and mundane. She turned back to Gabe. A lot of his skin was missing, some of it coming off in pulls of smoke. She could see white bone and the gummy gray substance that his muscle had become. Her life had gotten weird, that this was what told her she was probably not hallucinating.
"I think I'm feeling better," she said.
"That's good," Gabe said. "Only six more hours. For someone who wasn't tired, you slept a lot."
His tone was casual and what was left of his face was impassive, but she knew it hurt him badly when the rot set in. And he wasn't able to sleep. She sat up on the sofa.
"You can go, if you want," she said carefully. "There's an outpost maybe an hour a way, just a couple people there. You could take it, no problem."
"I'm fine, Sombra," he said. She pursed her lips.
"All I have to do is wait for the ship to pick me up. You don't need to be here, so you should go. You're hungry."
"I’m good. I've gone longer without," he said sarcastically.
"Gabe, I'm just trying to make this easier–"
"It could always be easier, Sombra." His sunken eyes were suddenly flashing and she sat back. "You don’t get it.”
“Get what?” she asked. He deflated a bit, but the tension in the room remained.
“Every time I'm in pain, there are always people at outposts,” he said after a moment. He ran his fingers through his short hair, pushing back his hood. Drips of smoke flew off his head. “But I'm in pain all the time. If I wanted to be free of it, I'd have to spend every second feeding it, or I'd have let Moira experiment on me again. And even there, that’s not a guarantee."
The corpse was back at the table, but the face was turned to her now. It reminded her of one of the ones she had stumbled over as a child, fleeing down the Dorado streets from Slicers.
"I can live like a monster or a lab rat or I can live like a person and be in pain," Gabe said quietly. "After everything they've done, I can't not try to be a person. But it's hard, Sombra. It's always going to be hard."
Sombra nodded and looked away from him. Her gaze fell to the table. Despite what she had told him, he had bought her a Sprite from the vending machine. His holovid sat next to it, blinking "6:02."
"Do you have any shows on that?" she asked. He glanced down at it, surprised.
"Ah. Jeopardy ?"
" Jeopardy ," Sombra repeated, and he frowned.
"Look, I went to Stanford before I enlisted–"
"I know you're smart, Gabe. That's WHY I'm disappointed in you." He rolled his eyes and she grinned and patted the seat next to her.
"No talking over OmniTrebek," he said as he sat down next to her. He handed her the Sprite. She opened it and took a sip, and almost gagged. "If you pay attention, you might actually learn something."
-
She nursed the Sprite– it was awful and flat, but she was quite thirsty. Around the second hour of Jeopardy , she risked standing up to go take a piss. The vertigo didn't hit until she was on the way back from the bathroom, but it hit hard. She sat down in the middle of the hallway and yelled for Gabe. There was a buzzing in her ears now, too, growing slowly but steadily. She cupped her hands to them but it made no difference.
"Sombra." Gabe's hand was on her shoulder and she looked up. His mask was back on. She could see fine, she thought, she hadn’t seen any hallucinations in a while, but she could barely hear him over the buzzing. "What's going on?"
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and tried to focus. "Think my visual systems cleared it out," she said. He jerked backwards slightly. She may have been yelling. "So it's concentrated in the auditory ones now. Which sucks because it's not nearly as creative here. Just noise. Not nearly as poetic."
"...Right." Gabe's arms slipped under her legs and her back. They were skinnier than they had been even ten hours ago. He lifted her up and started walking. "The ship will be here soon," he said. "Just an hour or so. And then we'll get you treated. It's going to be okay."
"You promised not to take me to her," Sombra reminded him.
"I don't remember promising anything."
"You did," she said. She took pains to try to keep her voice low, even though the noise was almost unbearable. "You said you would do dumb shit so you could be a person. This is my dumb shit. You get that. You promised."
Gabe may have responded, or may not have. The buzzing was so loud now that it would have drowned him out if he had. She pointed to her ears and shook her head and he nodded. He descended the metal staircase, towards the ground floor, and then sat on the floor in the main entrance, holding her.
"I'm too warm," she told him, or thought she told him, she couldn't hear herself either. "You should let me go."
Gabe didn’t do anything. He just sat there holding her, waiting. A ship landed, an hour later, and he stood and carried her up the jetty. He set her down in a seat in the passenger bay and buckled her in and then walked towards the cockpit. Some of the virus must have lingered in her eyes, because she saw Widowmaker in the pilot's seat.
-
But when she woke up next, Widow was still there. Moreover, Sombra was lying in one of the guest beds of the Chateau. Albeit in bed covered in old towels. Widow stood up from her armchair in the corner, her silk robe rustling softly, and walked to her bedside as Sombra slowly sat up.
"We injected nanoregulators into the motherboard in your cerebrum," she said in a clipped, rehearsed tone. "Most of the damage has been undone, and everything should break down and flush out of your system within two days, but you're running a fever and are in a weakened state. Reyes wants you on bedrest until you're fully functional again."
Sombra ran her hand over the back of her head and felt a welted straight line at the base of her skull. "You two did that?" she asked. Widow nodded and shrugged, and Sombra hummed. It wasn't like she was a stranger to surgery. There had been the cyborgization procedure, top and bottom surgeries, the time when she was seven and got clipped in the leg by a stray round from an ARAK-22 and had crawled half a mile to a medic tent. And Widow was probably more competent than that medic, to be honest. Lord knew Widow had had her head cut open a fair number of times.
(Lord knew Widow hated Moira, too.)
"Where's Reyes?" she asked, choosing to think about all of that later.
"Back at base," Widow said. She sat down at the edge of Sombra's bed, her back to her. "He wanted to make sure you got cleared for duty again as soon as possible. And..."
"Yeah." Sombra remembered how spindly his arms had been as they held her, and the artificially grown corpses in Moira’s lab. She swallowed. "I'm glad he went back."
Widow nodded, and fiddled with one of the towels. Sombra wiped at her forehead and looked down at herself. She was in her underwear, but still felt incredibly warm.
"That'd be the fever," Widow said, as if she could hear her thoughts. She had turned to face Sombra. "Here."
She took off her robe– she was wearing nothing underneath, and grinned a little when Sombra smiled up at her. She wrapped her arms around Sombra and lay down, and Sombra gasped at how cool she felt against her. Widow burrowed her icy nose against Sombra's neck. Sombra closed her eyes and placed her hands over Widows'.