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Chapter Text

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

Overwatch Headquarters, Zurich - The Basement (aka Covert Ops, aka Blackwatch Division)

All that Angela Ziegler could hear was her footsteps, echoing off the floor as she walked the dim hallway. Within the elevator ride down, she'd cast herself as Alice through the looking glass, and all the world belowground some eerie inversion of the one above. The reality of the infamous Blackwatch division was, in a word - disappointing. Sequestered in a glorified basement, where it couldn't touch the shiny and PR-boosting optimism of the rest of Overwatch headquarters.

The glorified basement that she'd been reassigned to an hour earlier.

Captain Amari had stressed Angela's new role as a vital one, that she'd been chosen because of her field record, not despite it. For all the respect Angela held for the older woman, she didn't feel convinced.

"Are you familiar with one of our Blackwatch agents, Moira O'Deorain?"

Blackwatch? Blackwatch was as far from her division - medical field corps - as one got. The most interaction Angela had with Blackwatch agents was when they were sent to her for patching up, and even without the apparent oaths of secrecy they were all sworn to, the job didn't seem to call to chatty types. Still, the name caught in her memory.

"Entirely by reputation, but I know of her. That she's brilliant, unorthodox. Regarding our research, it certainly encompasses similar theories. I've thought it a shame we've never met in person, considering who we both work for." This last bit was admittedly an exaggeration - Angela had read one of her papers and put a mental pin in the biography marking Moira O'Deorain as a fellow Overwatch research grant beneficiary, before forgetting about it entirely until this conversation.

But even organizations held in such global esteem as Overwatch came with their share of office gossip. Blackwatch agents held a certain celebrity, and Angela had heard the nicknames that went along with descriptions of Moira O'Deorain.

'Doctor Moreau' was among the kindest.

The hallway felt narrower than it had to be. Angela couldn't testify as to whether that was the leering shadows or her spinning head. The offices she passed were either disused or unoccupied. A Blackwatch assignment didn't seem to entail much desk work. Silver lining, maybe?

Might Agent O'Deorain be similarly out? But no, one light was shining from beneath the door at the very end of the hallway.

"You're speaking of Agent O'Deorain's thesis on the potential harmful and restorative properties of nanobiotic technology?" Captain Amari clarified. Angela nodded, and for the first time since she'd entered the room, the figure standing at the window beside Captain Amari's desk turned. Angela's stomach jumped when she recognized the face of Captain Morrison. The captain of Overwatch and the emergency acting captain of Blackwatch, calling Angela to a private meeting. Whatever this meant, it could be career-defining - or ending.

"That's what we've let her go public with," Captain Morrison took over after a nod from Captain Amari. "But Agent O'Deorain has a fixation - bordering on obsession - with a different field of research. She's begun devoting more of her funding to pursuing that over what we recruited her for, with nearly nothing to show for it."

Angela stood before the door to Agent O'Deorain's office, taking a moment to straighten her blazer and tuck her hair back from her face. She debated whether to conceal the small Star of David pendant around her throat, but left it exposed. Her connection to it was more familial than religious. Alright, Agent. That's it, you're a normal Overwatch agent, and this is a normal part of your job.

She rapped her knuckles against the door, wondering if she would have to knock louder for the industrial dance music blaring from the other side. But the song shut off immediately, and a deep voice with a slight Irish lilt called out, "Sorry, nobody down here but Blackwatch's most unwanted." Which didn't exactly seem like an invitation to enter, but Angela wasn't sure what else to do.

Agent O'Deorain's back was turned when Angela opened the door. No photograph had accompanied that one paper in the medical journal. Her fiery hair was slicked back and neatly cropped. Indicative of someone who cared about appearances, which was at odds with the state of her office. Every available space was cluttered with files and papers, along with several tackboards pinned to the walls that were only missing tangles of red string connecting them. A half-finished DNA chart that Angela couldn't immediately recognize made its home alongside the poster for a David Bowie album, while a beat-up copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray rested precariously on the edge of Agent O'Deorain's desk. The placard bearing her name had been unceremoniously shoved on its side and was holding the place of an open medical journal. Angela thought back on the EDM she'd just heard pounding from this office. Her conclusion: just because Angela had never met her didn't mean that she was unfamiliar with this equation.

The other woman finally looked up as Angela drew closer to her desk. Angela smiled, holding out her hand. "Agent O'Deorain, my name is Angela Ziegler. I'm going to be working with you for the foreseeable future."

Hydrocarbon, meet oxygen.

Agent O'Deorain was silent, giving her a once-over while ignoring the cue to shake her hand. Angela couldn't help fixating on her eyes - one such a light brown it could be mistaken for red, the other icy blue. Heterochromia, the portion of her mind that had never left medical school noted.

"Well, isn't it wonderful to be so highly regarded?" Agent O'Deorain stood. She was a full head taller than Angela. "Whatever did you do to get your wrist chained to mine, Angela Ziegler?" She drew out the syllables of Angela's name as she cleared a space on her desk. Angela found herself flustered, for some reason.

"Oh, I don't view it that way, Agent O'Deorain! Judging by the content of your research, I'm looking forward to our partnership."

One of Agent O'Deorain's thin eyebrows shot upwards. "Then either you weren't given a proper briefing, or you're dancing around that our superiors are tired of attempting to debunk my theories and have sent you to do it for them."

Angela gritted her teeth, her optimism growing more forced with each word out of Agent O'Deorain's mouth. "I assure you, there's no need for hostilities. I am a fully qualified doctor and Overwatch field agent -"

"Yes, I did my homework. Top honors from multiple universities, including an admittedly impressive paper on nanobiotic technology, considering that you wrote it when the field was little more than a laboratory plaything. I particularly enjoyed your thesis about how nanites might be utilized to bring severely wounded individuals back from the brink of death, although if I told you my reasons, you would undoubtedly be handing in your resignation within the hour. In short, Agent Ziegler, we are already acquainted, so allow me to cut to the chase." After breezing through the crowning achievements of Angela's career like she was ordering takeout, Agent O'Deorain located a paper file and handed it to her. "As I've been left with no say in the matter, might I introduce our first partnered assignment. Officially, we're to conduct an inquiry into a rash of nocturnal killings within the King's Row neighborhood of London. Unofficially, I suspect that the culprit may lie beyond Overwatch's depth."

Angela knew it was bait. "Why is that?"

Agent O'Deorain gave an infuriating smirk. "What you should learn to ask is why a textbook Blackwatch case spent weeks being sifted through the tiers of bureaucracy before I stumbled upon it, and our superiors only agreed to send me in after I called their bluff." Following a dramatic pause, she added, "Almost as though they wanted it buried alive."

Paging through the case file, Angela frowned. "Whatever reasons Overwatch has for not prioritizing this case, I doubt some vague cover-up conspiracy. Even the likes of little old me have heard about the disarray you've all been in since Captain Reyes was killed."

Agent O'Deorain let out a short laugh. "Don't count yourself separate from that 'you all' any longer. The likes of yourself will no doubt love my theory as to why the bodies of four King's Row residents have turned up over the last fortnight completely drained of their blood. The autopsy reports in that file make for quite interesting reading, assuming that you can lower yourself to vague conspiracy."

Left speechless, Angela could only watch as Agent O'Deorain tossed her jacket over her shoulder. "The corpses were exsanguinated?" she finally got out. She squinted down at the first autopsy photo, a force of habit despite her contacts. "There's no sign of any needle markings."

Agent O'Deorain grinned a cheshire smile back at her, and Angela wondered how long it would be before the claws followed. Unpleasant as this exchange had been, she already had the sense that Agent O'Deorain was so far simply playing with her food. "You'll have to show up for our flight to London if you want to know what I think. Have a pleasant rest of your day, Agent Ziegler."

She closed the door behind her, leaving Angela alone in her - theirs now, she wondered? - office. So, that was Moira O'Deorain.

Angela just had to remind herself why she was here. Observe Agent O'Deorain in the field, report to Captain Amari, and Angela would be back in medical where she belonged before the month was out.

"Unorthodox projects?" Angela frowned. "Captain, what could be too unorthodox for even Overwatch to consider pursuing?"

Captain Morrison's face was grave, the shadows of the room doubled within his eyes. "Agent O'Deorain has begun pushing the boundaries of what we consider scientific inquiry. Some of her newer proposals are rooted in territory you could consider... supernatural."

Supernatural. There was a word determined to never let Angela put it behind her.

She held back the shudder that wanted to run through her. "Supernatural? What, is Agent O'Deorain suggesting Overwatch dedicate its resources to studying alchemy?" The look that Captain Amari exchanged with Captain Morrison did nothing to set her at ease.

"Just remind her that we offer her funding to pursue decidedly realistic theories." Captain Amari was clearly choosing her words with care. "And if the need arises, alert us should you feel she's become too engrossed in these interests for her own good."

Angela felt struck in the gut. "Captain, I... I'm sorry, but I'm not a spy. I don't think that this is my area of expertise." Say nothing more than what you need to survive. Overwatch never peddled advice so sinister up front, but the job had nevertheless turned out to play by one constant rule. It never bothered Angela until this very moment. Didn't people appreciate discretion from their doctors, after all?

Her superior shook her head, tapping the wadjet tattooed beneath her right eye. Angela noticed the dark circles there too. She could only imagine how many sleepless nights Captain Amari had suffered since being pulled from head of medical to replace Captain Reyes, likely with just as little warning as Angela was receiving now. "Don't think of it like that, Agent Ziegler. If all goes well, your reports won't need to concern these interests of Agent O'Deorain's at all. Overwatch's goals are what we all hold at heart. We feel a partner might keep Agent O'Deorain more grounded in her pursuit of that, and your name was the first one suggested."

It should have felt like the fine praise Captain Amari clearly meant it as. But here lay the truth - Angela would never run so close to the reality Captain Amari envisioned her representing. Turning Moira O'Deorain into anyone like who Overwatch thought Angela to be was destined to be sisyphean.

Taking another look around the office, Angela had a sinking feeling that even if it were possible, it would be far easier said than done.

Chapter Text

"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."

Flight 1255, ZRH to LHR, somewhere above the English Channel

It seemed impossible for Agent O'Deorain to focus on just one task at a time. Their shuttle flight to London (public, so clearly the nebulous details of Blackwatch's budget weren't going to agent transportation) wasn't even an hour, but for its duration, Agent O'Deorain turned the radius of her seat and the empty one between her and Angela into her command center.

Clockwise from in front of her was her laptop, the dog-eared copy of Dorian Gray that she would read a page or two of in-between typing the beginnings of a case report, and a steaming cup of Earl Grey resting dangerously close to the aforementioned laptop. Angela had brought her copy of the file, but Agent O'Deorain's significantly more marked-up original rested between them, covered in a shorthand scrawl Angela couldn't begin to make heads or tails of. Even over the steady drone of the shuttle, Angela could pick up the nu-disco synths leaking from Agent O'Deorain's earbuds.

Shaking her head, Angela returned to the autopsy report in front of her. Admittedly, Agent O'Deorain was right in this regard. The circumstances were... unusual, to say the least.

Nothing linked the victims; they were all different genders, races, and ages (the most recent, one Chloe Thompson, had been just a few months shy of going off to university). Only humans targeted so far, but the exsanguination aspect tossed a wrench into the gears of an omnic assailant theory. No, a nagging suspicion told Angela that another human had done this. Would do this again, if she and Agent O'Deorain couldn't succeed where Scotland Yard had failed.

An automated voice rang through the shuttle, announcing that their descent into London had begun. Angela stowed the file back in her purse, wondering if she should save a flight attendant from asking Agent O'Deorain to do the same, when she felt it - like a blast of chilled air at the back of her neck. It trickled down her spine, flooding her blood with liquid nitrogen. An invisible weight pressed onto her shoulders, and for a split second, Angela swore that she heard something whispered into her ear.

Her hands clenched around the armrests of her seat. Focus on the necklace, focus on the necklace.

"Miss, are you alright?" Angela looked up to a concerned flight attendant.

Forcing herself to smile, she nodded. "Yes, thank you. Just a bit light-headed."

The flight attendant knowingly laughed, a gesture of sympathy that probably worked just fine on normal human people. "Once we're on the ground, I can bring you some food or water if you'd like." She tapped Agent O'Deorain on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, but I do need you to pack your belongings away. The descent will be just a few minutes." Agent O'Deorain made an exaggerated gesture of removing her earbuds.

"Did you feel that?" Angela murmured to her once the flight attendant moved on. "A chill, just now?"

"Have you considered turning the air conditioning vent away from your face?"

Angela bit back a retort. Either Agent O'Deorain was sitting right next to her and hadn't been affected, or her poker face could win her several world championships. She held no reason to lie to Angela, did she?

Well. Other than the entire reason for Angela's being here.

London, King's Row

"You didn't mention that Overwatch has investigated this case," Angela remarked as they crossed the street towards the crime scene.

Agent O'Deorain didn't conceal rolling her eyes. "One could barely call it that. When the first body turned up, an agent was sent in at Scotland Yard's request. The most 'investigation' that he got up to was discovering a chippy on Hanbury Street that's apparently to die for, if you'll pardon the expression." She eyed the buildings around them with no small amount of cynicism. "I don't find myself willing to take his word for it."

"Do you have a problem with street food, too?" Here, Angela couldn't help offense. Some of the best meals she'd eaten in her life had come from roadside carts that half the time didn't even advertise their names.

"Not at all. I simply believe," Agent O'Deorain said, and there was no mistaking the deliberate thickening of her accent. "That if anywhere within this world is so comparable to a great black pit, that place goes by the name of London."

Ah. Angela did not pursue arguing against this, and with that Agent O'Deorain resumed, "Not 24 hours later, he was called back with no explanation, and the attempt was made to bury the case within the unsolved archives until I happened upon it. After the third victim."

"That's not what I meant," Angela pressed. "Overwatch did send someone else in, a medical examiner. She conducted the autopsies, which is why I'm so surprised at their inconclusiveness. The latest victim hasn't undergone one yet, though."

That received a nod from Agent O'Deorain. "I see that you at least did your research."

Angela couldn't resist shooting back, "Better than you expected?"

The officer guarding the crime scene moved to stop them, but after they flashed their identifications, his posture noticeably straightened when he stood aside. As they approached the domestic head of this investigation, Agent O'Deorain responded, "I'll let you know once we're through with the easy part."

The role that Blackwatch played was simple enough. Overwatch maintained peace wherever the public eye demanded it, but never pushed boundaries beyond comfort. For international matters requiring a more discreet hand, there would always be a Blackwatch agent waiting for their next assignment, prepared to neutralize the threat by any means necessary. This often meant Blackwatch only got called in once local law enforcement realized they were far in over their heads.

The police chief turned to greet them, a middle-aged man with graying brown hair who Agent O'Deorain had at least two centimeters on in height. "Agents O'Deorain and Ziegler?," he confirmed as he held out a hand. Only Angela took it. "I'm Chief Inspector Oxton."

While Agent O'Deorain cut to the chase, Angela's attention went to the graffiti sprayed on the side of the alleyway. Several omnic rights slogans covered the brick wall in a violent rainbow of color, surrounding a mural of two clenched human and omnic hands. Angela didn't consider herself to have much of an artistic eye, but even she could see that whoever had done this was talented.

"Ah, that." Inspector Oxton followed Angela's gaze. "A gang of street artists is leaving sprays like that all over the Row. Trying to catch them has been a massive other headache. With this case - well, you can guess which one we've dedicated more resources towards. As I was telling your partner, we think the most recent victim was one of them."

"You think the victims were exsanguinated where they were found?" There was no telltale chemical scent from cleaning the sort of bloodstains that would leave.

"There's no sign they were moved. Given the attacks all happened late at night, it's likely the victims were incapacitated before they could cry for help." Inspector Oxton grimaced. "A handful of more sensational publications are running the story as some Omnic-Ripper.

"You don't approve?" Agent O'Deorain asked. Both Angela and Inspector Oxton shook their heads.

"I say a human did this, but the Crisis is still fresh in a lot of people's minds. It's easy to sell papers by exploiting prejudices. Even before, London was never fantastic in its treatment of 'em."

"I concur," Angela said. "We're looking for a human culprit. I'm sure Agent O'Deorain would be interested in seeing what profiles your team has come up with. I would also like to conduct the autopsy on the latest victim."

"That shouldn't be a problem. I'll have everything in order by tomorrow morning, but you two can head along to wherever you're staying for now. We're grateful to have Overwatch's help on this, I'll tell you that much."

Angela waited until they were a block away before voicing the trouble on her mind. "If Overwatch sent someone before us, why was he acting like we were the first agents he'd met?"

"Neither of us will like the probable answer," Agent O'Deorain said. They made for the nearest underground depot, keeping a frigid distance between their bodies. Before they could descend, a teenage girl with spiky brown hair stepped in front of them with clear intent to cut them off.

"You two are Overwatch?" Her voice betrayed her nerves, despite her attempt to look casual.

"We don't give out autographs," Agent O'Deorain deadpanned as she pushed past. The girl moved in front of them again, an increased desperation about her this time.

"Please! My name is Lena Oxton. I saw what... what happened to Chloe." Lena looked down, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her blue hoodie. Her paint-stained hoodie, Angela noted. "I can't tell my dad, but I thought maybe you two might believe me."

Some switch flipped in Agent O'Deorain at those words, an electricity Angela had yet to witness now running behind her eyes. "What might be so difficult to believe?"

Lena's eyes darted between the agents. "Chloe was attacked. But I'm not sure it was by something human."

The Knight and Chapel Pub, King's Row

"I haven't told this to anyone else yet, so, uh - sorry if it's rough. Here's what happened." Lena rapped her knuckles against the dark wood of the booth as Angela began recording. "I admit, I run with the Tracers. So did Chloe. But our message isn't anything wrong, and I'm not giving anyone else up!" she added, her face turning cross.

"That's not our concern," Angela reassured her. "Although I should still advocate for you to do something with your nights other than wander the streets and spray graffiti." This earned her an indignant look from Lena, and a not-so-subtle cough from Agent O'Deorain.

"Go on, Lena," the other woman said. Lena scooped several of the chips going on Blackwatch's tab into her mouth before continuing - apparently her story wasn't so horrific as to affect her adolescent appetite.

"Chloe and I wanted to go back to the mural and add a few more details. Touch up the coloring, make sure people really had to look when they walked by. I knew there'd been incidents along the Row, but we thought we'd be safe together." She shivered. "Sorry, I - guess it goes to show. We got there around midnight, and for about an hour everything went fine. I left for just a second to toss our empty paints, and when I came back-" Her eyes widened as she recalled the memory. "A man was in the alleyway with Chloe. I figured he was coming from a pub, so I was about to tell him to bugger off, but Chloe was listening to him. Well, she hadn't already told him to bugger off, and coming from her that was as much respect as you got. I didn't interrupt them is what I mean, and I hate to think it but... it's probably right lucky I didn't. I don't know what he did to her. On my life, he didn't touch her. But Chloe just collapsed. Like one of those old movies where a person gets knocked on the head and goes right down? Like that, only they were a good few meters apart. And crazy as it sounds, I swear - his eyes were glowing. I felt pulled towards him."

Agent O'Deorain nodded beside Angela. Had she somehow heard another story like this, to act so familiar?

"That was why I didn't do anything. I couldn't. I just had to watch Chloe go down, and how he went for her neck. I didn't understand what he was doing until I heard the sound. He was... he drained her. It was her blood..." At this Lena grew overwhelmed, gasping out the last word.

Angela looked to Agent O'Deorain. Surely not even the Blackwatch agent was willing to induce a teenage girl into a panic attack in the middle of a crowded pub. But Lena looked up once more, determined to finish what she'd started.

"It felt like forever, but - it couldn't have been longer than five minutes." She shuddered, and Angela wanted to embrace the poor girl. "She was a good friend. I had a bit of a thing for her, but Chloe wasn't into girls, so - I mean, I would have gotten over it, right? We were going up to Scotland for Easter holiday next month. She didn't deserve to die."

"Did the man do anything else?" Agent O'Deorain, whose bedside manner could not be called sensitive, pressed. Angela glared at her, but Lena didn't seem to mind.

"Yeah, actually. When he was done... draining Chloe. He stored a bit of her blood inside some container. I was so scared I barely knew what was happening. That was the other creepy part - he walked to the edge of the alleyway, and just melted into the shadows. The second he was gone, I could move again. I ran all the way home. So, yeah, I've kept my window locked for the past two nights." Lena leaned in, lowering her voice. "I know what it sounds like. Even if I could tell my dad without him putting me under house arrest over the Tracers, he'd say I just watch too many horror movies. But I swear that's what I saw."

"I believe you, Lena," Agent O'Deorain said. "I've heard far stranger accounts than yours. Thank you for sharing with us. You've helped our investigation far more than you realize."

"You mean that? I just want justice for Chloe. I can help however you need me-"

"Right now, we want you to get home safely and stay there," Angela emphasized before Agent O'Deorain could enlist Lena into anything more than an eyewitness testimony. "No more midnight outings. At least until whoever killed Chloe is put away?"

Lena didn't look happy about this addition, but she nodded. "Deal, I guess."

Outside the pub, Angela wasn't reassured by Agent O'Deorain's expression as her eyes followed the taillights of Lena's cab. "You don't believe she isn't misremembering what happened, do you? I can buy that the killer potentially extracts the blood to sell on the black market, but that would be with a syringe, or possibly even a small med-bot. If an incision was simply made into the jugular, particularly if Chloe was still alive, they would still be cleaning up the blood."

"The depot is nearer if we cut through here," Agent O'Deorain changed the subject, turning towards the narrow alley beside the pub. "And if we encounter any black market organ thieves, you can say 'I told you so'," she added at Angela's disdainful expression.

"Fine," Angela sighed. The lure of a bed grew stronger with each passing minute, and the last thing that she wanted was to conduct an autopsy on a poor night's sleep. As they stepped into the dim alley, Agent O'Deorain reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved - a bag of sunflower seeds. Angela had seen her buy them at the airport that morning, but assumed it was for their intended purpose.

"What are you-" she started to ask, but Agent O'Deorain tossed a handful of seeds to the ground before Angela could finish. She heard it then - a scuffling noise from the direction Agent O'Deorain had thrown the seeds in, by the dumpsters from the pub.

Angela sucked in a breath as a shadowed figure shot out from behind the dumpster. Agent O'Deorain was faster.

To say that she lunged was the only proper description. Before Angela could exhale, Agent O'Deorain had hauled the figure up and pinned against the brick wall, planting her feet to hold them in place. Angela cried out, "Agent O'Deorain, what are you doing?"

Her colleague paid her no mind, her focus entirely for the dark-haired man straining against her grip. "Où est-elle?" Agent O'Deorain barked, and Angela's mind was left scrambling before recognizing the words as French. "Where is she?"

The man gave another cry, attempting to clench his fingers around Agent O'Deorain's wrist. His skin was bone-white, his frame shaped by a lankiness that Angela's medical opinion didn't chalk up to simple genetics. "Perhaps another language?" The utter coldness of Agent O'Deorain's voice snaked a tendril of fear through Angela. "Wo ist sie? So che tu sai! Unde este Amélie?" "Where is she? I know that you know! Where is Amélie?"

Angela seized Agent O'Deorain's shoulder, forcing her to rebalance herself. The man slid down the wall, wheezing as he backed away on his hands. Angela rushed to his side, asking, "Sir, are you alright?" just as Agent O'Deorain warned, "Keep back!"

The man met Angela's eyes, opening his mouth in a hiss at her. Angela stopped as the sound rasped from his throat, as she registered the unnatural dilation of his watery brown eyes. His exposed canines, flashing in the low light.

"Stay away from her!" Agent O'Deorain shouted. Her shadow moved across the wall towards them, and another guttural sound escaped the man's throat.

He fled faster than Angela would have expected in his physical condition. Agent O'Deorain chased after him, Angela following after a moment, but he was gone by the time that they reached the street. Agent O'Deorain cursed in Gaelic under her breath before saying, "That could have gone better."

"What was 'that'?" Angela demanded. "How did you know that man? And who on Earth is Amélie?"

Agent O'Deorain's shoulders tensed as Angela spoke the name, but she only stared ahead. Who could say whether Agent O'Deorain was the sort who kept her brooding to herself, or lashed out. Angela wasn't likely to get anything out of her if the other woman didn't feel like sharing.

So their way back to the hotel was spent in silence. Angela's mind replayed every second of the alleyway. Four exsanguinated victims, and the medically improbable autopsy reports. What could one even call a logical conclusion, when the one Angela feared that Agent O'Deorain indeed favored was... Angela couldn't let herself think the word.

Let it be a misunderstanding. The man in the alleyway could have been an addict, strung out on who knew what (but why had his eyes gleamed, his teeth seemed more like fangs?). The medical examiner might have overlooked some crucial detail in the autopsies (even though Angela knew her to triple-run tests if there was something she wasn't certain of). What mattered was that Angela couldn't let this all point to what it seemed.

Hadn't she run far enough?

The Crown Jewel Hotel, West End

Angela looked up from her laptop, attempting to gather her thoughts into her own case report. Rein Moira O'Deorain in, that was what Captain Amari had assigned her to do.

Well, Angela had certainly made a first day of that. Medcorps had been downright easy compared to this. Running between appointments for ten hours straight, and field missions that could last anywhere between two weeks to two years, but at least there was that certainty. Blackwatch was shaping up to be a promise of never seeing an end in sight.

She started at the knock on her hotel room door. Angela closed her laptop, calling out, "Who is it?"

"Elisabeth Bathory," came Agent O'Deorain's voice. Angela couldn't help the laugh that escaped her, before reminding herself who she was dealing with. But perhaps she wasn't the only one reflecting on the absurdity of the whole situation, after all.

Opening the door, Angela was greeted by Agent O'Deorain, business casual edition - meaning she'd foregone the jacket and tie rounding out her earlier ensemble. Angela eyed Agent O'Deorain's bare forearms, the sleeves of her black button-up now rolled to her elbows. Most Blackwatch agents tended to sport tattoos, but the natural look on Agent O'Deorain was admittedly... very good.

What surprised Angela, though, was the sincerity in Agent O'Deorain's voice. "Agent Ziegler, I would like to offer an explanation for what occurred earlier. Should you care to join me, I plan on getting a drink at the pub next door."

It wasn't quite friendly - that descriptor being attached to Agent O'Deorain would herald some divine end of days. The offer was tempting, though, Angela wouldn't lie. Off-duty drinks with a coworker - when was the last time she'd done something like that? Not since her days with Fareeha, at least.

Still, Angela shook her head. "I'm afraid that I have to pass, Agent O'Deorain. I'd be glad to hear you out in the morning, but right now, what I need is to rest." She was certainly looking too far into the momentary flicker that passed through Agent O'Deorain's eyes. Any part of her that Agent O'Deorain wanted to know, it was best to keep hidden.

"Well, when you grow tired of puzzling over those autopsy reports, you'll know where to find me." Agent O'Deorain turned to leave.

"I think we both agree there's not enough in them to help anyone sleep." This earned a rueful laugh from Agent O'Deorain as she walked away, waving without looking back.

Despite it all, Angela couldn't suppress a twinge of guilt in her stomach.

After spending an hour transcribing the recording of Lena's story, Angela decided the report could wait until they made more progress. Rolling her neck, she could already tell that she needed to ease the tension in her muscles if she wanted a good night's sleep.

The hotel room shower was one-in-a-million in that it actually helped accomplish this purpose. Ideally, Angela preferred a bath, but hot water against her skin felt wonderful in any form after the day she'd been through. She let her troubled thoughts dissipate with the steam, swirling down the drain with the suds of her shampoo.

When she was finished, Angela wrapped herself in the plush white bathrobe hanging on the door. Not much need for modesty when she was all alone. As she began toweling her hair, she saw that the light had turned off in the main room. Well, that was to be expected. She waved her hand in front of the light switch outside, but nothing happened.

Frowning, she tried again. Still nothing. That was odd, since the lights in the bathroom were working. She walked over to the lamp beside her bed, pressing the button at its base. Victory! Enough to give her a pool of illumination until she could report the outage. The thought of dealing with some front desk clerk who would have to make who knew how many other rounds of phone calls... ugh, it could absolutely wait until morning.

Angela was about to close the curtains when she saw something outside the window - the lights in the flat across from her hotel room, flickering on and off as well. What was more, the figure silhouetted at the flat's window wasn't paying it mind in the slightest.

Leaning closer to the glass, Angela wished that she hadn't taken her contacts out for the night. It seemed the figure wasn't inside the flat after all, but standing on its balcony. The sight reminded Angela so much of her own one-bedroom back in Zurich. She felt the little pang of homesickness she could never quite banish, no matter how many times she went out on Overwatch business.

She blinked, and the figure was gone. Strange. Angela felt a desire to open the window and breathe in the night. Which was ridiculous, since the window couldn't open...

A figure dropped down in front of her. Eyes wide and bloodshot, staring into hers as the man from the alleyway parted his mouth in another snarl. The sound cut through the glass. The man from the alleyway, who was floating in midair, and looking Angela right in the eyes as he slowly, deliberately, tapped on the window between them.

Angela stumbled backwards, fighting the scream in her throat. It couldn't be, it wasn't possible, she must have fallen asleep. But there was the sound of fingernails scraping against glass. The man smiled at her.

The anchor holding Angela to the floor broke. She ran into the hallway, her heart pounding in her ears as she banged her fist on the door of the neighboring room. She desperately tried to suck in air.

A bewildered Agent O'Deorain pulled the door open. "Agent Ziegler? What are you-" She stopped as she took in Angela's pale face, how her legs trembled as she leaned against the door frame. "Come inside, now."

Angela made it as far as the threshold before she broke, throwing her arms around Agent O'Deorain. The other woman stiffened. "He was here!" was all that Angela could cry.

Yet 'here' was insufficient, like they had merely existed in the same place for some brief moment. 'Here' would never capture how Angela would have sold her soul to banish the memory of that horrible smile. "The man from before, he was outside my window, he's trying to get in!"

A moment passed where all that she could hear was her own wild breathing. She slowly realized the complete violation of personal boundaries she was inflicting upon her colleague. Yet Agent O'Deorain only looked into the hallway, sliding Angela's robe back onto her shoulder from where it had slipped down. "Fear not, Agent Ziegler. Nothing is getting inside this room."

"How can you be sure?" She hated how fragile she sounded. She couldn't bring herself to separate from the other woman.

Just as how she'd made clear her feelings regarding Angela, there was no misreading the steel in Agent O'Deorain's voice. "Not if I can help it."

After several minutes, Angela grew calm enough to stand, to breathe, to regret not taking Agent O'Deorain up on that offer for a drink. What she still couldn't bear was the thought of returning to her room. There was no way to voice this without it sounding an imposition, but Agent O'Deorain must have read her face. "Can you stomach being alone tonight?"

Angela debated lying - but here and now, what would be the point? She hesitantly shook her head.

"Then you take the bed. I've slept in chairs far less comfortable than this one." And that was that.

Angela took her time after excusing herself to the bathroom, hovering over the sink until she stopped feeling nauseous every time her mind returned to the too-pale man, staring her down like the prey she'd realized herself to be. By the time that she exited, Agent O'Deorain had moved a pillow and spare blanket to the armchair by the bed, leaving the majority of bedding for Angela. "Thank you, Agent O'Deorain." Angela couldn't make herself meet the other woman's eyes. "You didn't have to go through such trouble."

After a long moment, she said, "Moira is fine. Whatever our differences, I believe that this puts us past such formalities."

Sinking into the bed, Angela rolled onto her side as Moira turned off the light. She feared to close her eyes. Was that sound the guest in the room above walking across the floor, or yellowed fingernails scratching against the curtained window? The heating vents of the hotel, or Angela's name hissed on a breath smelling of rot?

"Amélie was my partner. In the other sense of the word," came Moira's surprisingly soft voice. Angela shifted to look at her. Moira could have been speaking to the night air.

"We met four years ago. I was conducting independent research in Paris when I saw her dance Salome in the Opera Ballet. I had never encountered someone with so much passion as myself, but God - and that's no figure I invoke lightly - it radiated from her. So many of us spend all our lives straining for that pure transcendence playing out on our stage of a world." Moira closed her eyes, the smallest sigh escaping her. It felt a crushing display of vulnerability.

"The next day, I met her by chance at a cafe in Montmartre. Two years later, I brought her back there with the intention of proposing. We took a shortcut, it was late at night - and something intercepted us."

Angela's heart clenched. "That man in the alleyway?"

Moira nodded. "I don't let myself dream, unless to remember their faces. There were four of them. You've seen how they move. For some reason, they only wanted Amélie. I had to watch as they vanished her into the night, just as inexplicably leaving me alive, and I had no facts to confront for as to why. She was no longer with the ballet at that point, and was estranged from her family. You can imagine how helpful the police were. I had to take matters into my own hands, if only so that someone could prove she existed. None of the research that I threw myself into offered any hope. Until one of my better-known papers landed upon the desk of one Ana Amari."

"Nanobiotic technology," Angela knew. "And its potential applications."

"Overwatch expressed interest in my theories. Your former department was well underway as far as healing technology, but Blackwatch envisioned different ways to harness biotech. Alongside funding, they allow me more freedom to pursue my experiments than Overwatch would, although I ultimately report to the same people as you. I kept my pursuit of more peculiar interests under the radar. Until I attempted to capture one of those creatures three months ago. While I was unsuccessful, I managed to obtain some of its DNA, and proposed experimentation on how biotech might affect it differently than a living human's. It was rejected. When I inquired as to why, I encountered the exact red tape that I was promised would not obstruct me in Blackwatch."

"That's what we've let her go public with." Captain Morrison's words rang in Angela's ears.

"You think someone in Blackwatch is trying to silence you, then?"

Moira scoffed. "Blackwatch, Overwatch - climb high enough, and we both know that it's the same people running the show. My research networks have led me to all manner of troubling conclusions about what Overwatch might be trying to cover up. A trail of cases buried within the archives, classified as unsolvable for seemingly no reason. At first, I only acquainted myself with the ones similar to my experience. But there are so many more, Agent Ziegler. This would have ended up as one of them, if whoever is pulling the strings had gotten their way."

Angela propped an elbow against the pillow, intrigued despite her best interest. This may well have been her only chance to see this side of Moira. "You don't think it's Captain Amari?" She would be lying to say that wouldn't be a reassurance. The thought of all the years that Angela had spent looking up to her...

Moira shook her head. "She may be aware, but she's also the one who reopened this case at my request. I would have pointed the finger at Captain Reyes, except it's been months since he was killed, and if anything I've since found it more difficult to hunt down answers. I suspect that Blackwatch would have already terminated my funding if not for the legitimate contributions I've provided. You've simply been pulled into the agenda to keep an eye on me. I won't apologize for them, but for whatever it may be worth, I do believe that you deserve better."

"I'm not part of anyone's agenda," Angela insisted, even as her meeting with Captain Amari replayed in her mind. "All I want is to solve this. Isn't that our job?"

Moira leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I'm telling you this, Agent Ziegler, because you need to know even if you're not ready to believe. What you've seen tonight has pulled you in much deeper than I expect that Overwatch planned. And I have allies in most places where it matters - except Overwatch. This exists, Agent Ziegler, and I despise that all I truly know is this fact."

"Do you know?" Angela lay there, sunken into the borrowed softness against her cheek, and she still had to question the one who'd offered it to her. "Why would Overwatch risk its international reputation on something of the scale that you're implying?"

"Even Overwatch conducts investigations off the public record. It's the reason for our employment. The weed-out for less promising individuals than myself is determined by how vocally that individual dissents. When it mattered, yes, I kept my mouth shut, but know that I am well past that now. For Amélie's sake, I have to know what they're protecting that could be so important. That is what drives me, if Amari is so curious to know. This assignment is the closest that I've come to answers on how to save my partner. Fear not, I have no intention of jeopardizing Overwatch's stake."

Angela could find no adequate response. How could she have been expected to know? Yet it wasn't this that truly unsettled her. Did she understand her own motivations anywhere near so crucially?

Yes, she supposed she could see - if nothing else - why Moira had made this such a personal crusade. A woman of Angela Ziegler's circumstances knew perfectly well what people embraced in refusal to face their grief.

"I would like to help you, Moira." How she hoped the other woman could hear that she meant it. "But... I can't accept this as reality. I'm a doctor. If - creatures like this - did exist, wouldn't someone have found out the truth by now?"

Angela heard no response, and she wondered if Moira had fallen asleep. After several moments, the other woman sighed. "If only it were that simple."

Chapter Text

"This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."

Scotland Yard, Morgue

"How are you holding up?"

Angela jerked upwards from the body she'd been autopsying, blood running cold before she recognized whose voice was interrupting her stitches. "I was actually doing alright, until you crept up on me without any warning."

Her colleague leaned against the doorway, all business as she nodded her head upwards. "I heard everything that I needed from Oxton. How are things coming along on the deceased front?"

At the last second, Angela thought to strip off her gore-stained gloves before rubbing at her temples. "I did have to conduct the autopsy to believe it." She grimaced. "I will concede that neither you nor Lena was exaggerating. Every last drop of blood was drained from Chloe. Her body is perfectly preserved, though - which is more than improbable. And then there's the puncture wounds on the neck, right where Lena's testimony said we would find them. I was able to get some of her saliva for a toxicology report, so if she was injected with a paralyzing agent, we'll know soon enough."

"If you'll recall what else Lena said, Chloe's assailant never came close enough to incapacitate her. So unless Chloe had some unnoted prior medical condition which might cause her to spontaneously collapse and not respond through all the blood being drained from her veins, might I put forward-"

"Something tells me that your theory is nothing Overwatch wants to hear." Angela cut her off against an unwelcome sensation in her chest - like she owed Moira some hearing out, just because of what had happened last night. "I don't want our primary conclusion to be the most extreme one. I won't deny our witnessing certain - phenomena, but to be frank, you're in a position where Captain Amari will likely throw any report of yours that I haven't co-signed right into the garbage."

"Strigoi, soucouyant, manananggal. None are foul terms in and of themselves, Agent Ziegler," Moira kept right on going, her voice bordering on teasing - like Angela was being the foolish one. "Vampire. If I can say it, you can as well. And be sure to keep a close watch on your autopsy report, unless you'd like to see it replaced by one of your predecessor's abridged copies." Her words sounded ridiculous now, within the brightly-lit realm of science that was the morgue. But Angela was less certain than she liked that she wouldn't have given them any stock last night.

Of course, she was well on her way to erasing the entirety of last night from her memory. Just because this was Moira's life didn't mean that Angela had to get sucked into it. She had to guarantee as much.

"Tell yourself otherwise all that you like, Agent Ziegler, but I'm not simply insane." She apparently had to guard herself against Moira's uncanny ability to read her thoughts, as well. "I wish for the same capacity to doubt as you. Hold onto what of it you still can."

Taking any of Moira's word would damn her pride. Science was only one thing she loved, and Angela wouldn't claim monogamy to it over the even purer simple logic. "Well then, what would you propose? Forgive me if I've misread you, but you seem to take some offense to my role of keeping you in check."

Moira nodded, Angela's sarcasm flying right over her head. "There is some nuance to your observation. It would certainly be an issue if I believed that you were directly interfering with my investigations. But, for the sake of cooperation, I suppose that I don't see the harm in adopting a method of operations. I will handle the 'extreme', as you put it, conclusions. You may devise more acceptable alternatives that won't have Overwatch sending us both for psychiatric evaluations. Would that be to your preferences?"

Angela raised an eyebrow. "You're making it sound like my conclusions will be proven wrong."

"We can negotiate the finer terms over dinner," Moira unexpectedly put forth. "Put the cadaver on ice, and let's see if that chippy lives up to our predecessor's enthusiasm."

London, Whitechapel

"Not that the history lesson isn't fascinating, but tell me - do you make an effort to compile all the most macabre knowledge imaginable, or does it come naturally?" Angela cut off Moira's extremely detailed account of the Whitechapel murders. "Or, wait, don't tell me-" She bit into the last of her fish and chips. "You think they never caught the Ripper because he was a vampire?"

"I think that the Ripper was never caught because she was a woman, but that's an entirely different discussion," Moira responded as they continued through the outdoor market they'd happened upon. "One which, if you can believe it, I can be gracious enough to not subject you to should you desire a change in conversation."

"Seems like I can talk you down after all," Angela said, to a rueful smirk from Moira. This felt strange after the blur of the prior twenty-four hours. It seemed her overnight stay in Moira's hotel room was confined to the realm of 'not to be discussed unless brought up again', a decision with which Angela was more than fine. Maybe, if she was feeling generous, she could call this her first attempt at understanding Moira O'Deorain.

An individual, that much was clear. The soft evening light couldn't conceal the thoughts running at breakneck pace behind her eyes. The angular panes of her face betrayed all and nothing at once; in that Angela was certain Moira's presentation of herself now was nowhere near the wounds she had, for some reason, sliced open for Angela last night. Maybe that was why she was willing to consider this side of Moira as genuine - someone who walked through London and remarked on the aesthetics of the architecture in the same casual tone she used to point out sites of infamous unsolved murders.

Angela wandered to a nearby stall. Its proprietor worked her craft through fabric, and Angela ran her fingers through a soft scarf of snowy cashmere. "If you want it, then buy it," Moira unexpectedly commented from behind her.

Why not, Angela even more unexpectedly thought. She wasn't a frequent impulse purchaser, but maybe her wardrobe was suffering for it. Unhooking the scarf, she brought it to the vendor just as Moira's phone rang. She stepped aside to answer it while Angela paid and wrapped the scarf around her neck, tucking the excess fabric beneath her modest gray trench coat. She was all soft monochromes beside Moira's tailored black outline, she noted. What a pair they made.

"We'll be right there," Angela heard Moira say as she drew closer.

"Is there an update?"

"In a sense. That was Lena."

It took a moment for that to process. "You - you gave her your phone number?" Angela asked, aghast. "Moira, that is the exact opposite of keeping her out of the investigation!" Her voice pitched beyond her control on 'investigation', and Angela bit back the next several words she wanted to say to avoid sounding in public like some demented bird.

"It's fortunate that I did. She arrived home to someone inside her house, even though you and I met with her father before we left the Yard. By the time that she'd fetched a neighbor for help, her room had been torn apart. Agent Ziegler, she believes that the intruder was looking for her."

Moira's emphasis on those final words lodged a rock of dread in Angela's chest. "She's the next target?"

"One mater upon which we finally agree. She'll meet us at the Meridian Theater."

The wind cut right through Angela's formerly warm coat. This was a deeper cold, the same sensation she'd felt in her veins on the airplane. "Let's not keep her waiting."

The underground ride was agony. Angela's eyes flicked to every passing stop like she could will the train faster. It was ten minutes to King's Row, and the evening light outside wasn't nearly so inviting as before. Moira, though, was eerily calm, and had begun rummaging through the interior pockets of her jacket in a silent inventory of their contents. Come to think of it, Angela had seen her colleague tuck something inside it that morning...

"Moira, what do you expect to walk into-" She was cut off by an automated voice announcing they had reached the King's Row station.

Angela barely registered her feet against the platform as she and Moira broke into a run, ignoring the alarmed pedestrians they pushed aside. She forced herself not to look as they passed the alleyway where Chloe had been killed. After two blocks, the Meridian Theater came into view, Angela reaching its steps before Moira. A crowd awaiting entry to the evening show had formed outside its doors, and a pair of nearby tour buses were disembarking as well. Angela called Lena's name over the bustle to little success. Staking out a vantage point on the steps of a nearby building, she tried to look over the crowd, cursing the flat shoes she'd worn today.

It was then that she felt it - a small, yet forceful tug in her mind.

The world slowed as Angela felt a pull to the shadows between the streetlights and the glowing theater marquee. A spark of hope flared in her chest as she recognized the dark-haired teenage girl standing there.

That hope dropped from under Angela's feet as the man from last night flashed her another sickening grin from behind Lena. Lena, who was calling through the crowd, "Agent Ziegler? Agent O'Deorain?"

There was no time to find Moira. "Lena! I'm over here!" Angela waved her hand towards the girl, anything to get her away from the man, and pushed through the crowd with her other arm towards Lena's paint-splattered hoodie. She heard Moira calling her name in the same instant. On instinct, she whipped around, and saw the other woman looking at what Angela had turned her back on.

Angela's heart plunged into her stomach. Now the crowd cleared to give them a path to Lena - and a perfect view of how her eyes glazed over when the man's hand landed on her shoulder. Lena blankly looked up at him, and followed him into the darkened alleyway beside the theater.

Somebody cried out a protest - it must have been Angela. She and Moira pushed through the tourists and theatergoers remaining between them and the man, Angela's blood rushing in her ears. This was their fault. He'd been spying on them outside the pub, he surely saw them talking to Lena.

Moira and Angela reached the alleyway together. Nobody was there.

Angela nearly fell to her knees. How could a person just vanish into the night air with a teenage girl in tow, mere meters from one of London's most-frequented neighborhoods?

How could a person hover upside down in front of a fifth-floor window, her treacherous mind answered?

"Damn it!" Moira growled beside her. A horrible, hollow feeling carved through Angela's insides as she stared into the shadows of the alley. A piece of paper fluttered from one of its walls. She feverishly tore it from the brick.

"She is in the underworld, but is not who it desires." Moira read over her shoulder. Angela's eyes moved to the jagged lines drawn below the message. They almost looked like...

They were, Angela realized - with a horror entirely separate from the one she should have been feeling. She barely registered Moira's musing of, "Underworld, as in, Lena will be killed because we didn't bring them whoever she'll take the place of? Or perhaps - yes, that could be it." She felt Moira's hand on her shoulder. "Focus, Agent Ziegler. There's a reason Lena wasn't killed outright the way that the others were. They want us to come after her. They're hiding below the city."

"Below the city? You mean... in the underground tunnels?"

"The disused ones, yes. During the Crisis, many omnic communities beneath London were evacuated, if their inhabitants weren't outright chased out. It's referred to as the Underworld now. Portions have been taken over by criminal rings, but many of the settlements remain abandoned. It's an entire labyrinth beneath the city's feet."

Damn her job, Angela didn't want to ask how Moira knew this. But if this hunch of hers was right - and unbelievably, it did feel grounded - then every passing second they spent in this alleyway marked a narrowing window for Lena. "Contact Inspector Oxton. Do you know how we can enter this... Underworld?"

"An acquaintance of mine who shall go unnamed loaned me the most current map when I mentioned that I would be in London. The nearest entrance to King's Row is inside the old power plant, several blocks from here. Do you have it in you for some minor breaking and entering, or would that not appear professional on your case report?"

Angela swallowed down her fear, ignoring the jab. "Whatever it takes."

Moira left the alleyway to call for backup, while Angela went back to staring at the paper still clenched in her hands. Ignoring the knot in her stomach, she folded it inside her coat pocket.

There was no mistaking the image below the warning. It was drawn in black - but Angela remembered those wings all too well, spread outwards above her in tawny and gold.

King's Row Power Plant

The power plant was cavernous in the low light, its shadows only held back only by the flashlights Angela and Moira had happened upon outside. Neither chose to remark on the fact that whoever left them by the ajar side entrance had never come back for them.

Moira tapped the screen of her phone, and a holographic map appeared in front of them. Two glowing purple dots marked what Angela assumed to be her and Moira. Not far off from where they stood blinked a red dot. "It should be within the closest generator room. Once we're inside, I should hope you don't need me telling you that splitting up would be a fantastically bad idea."

"Why not wait for Inspector Oxton? He's on the way, isn't he?"

"And lose another ten minutes?" Moira shook her head. "Lena might still have time, but are you so willing to gamble it?"

They continued deeper into the power plant until their dots on the map overlapped with the marker for the generator room; a large, spherical chamber with a grid in the floor that had once hummed with electricity at all hours. Hopefully no stray sparks were still active. Angela followed Moira into an antechamber, which contained a side door and a staircase leading down. "This must be it," Moira said.

"Moira." Angela stopped, cursing her carelessness as she realized the emptiness of her pockets. "My blaster is at the hotel."

The other woman paused, her hand clasped around the door handle as she drew in a tense breath. "Carelessness aside, that's likely for the better. Mine didn't do much good three months ago." Moira reached into her jacket, retrieving a small cylinder about a quarter-meter in length. "This should suit you. I have my own means."

Angela took the cylinder hesitantly, feeling its smooth shaft in her hands before she pressed a button close to the bottom. She gasped as a shudder ran through it, before twin limbs sprang from its sides, faint purple sight lines glowing to life between them. "This is - you've been carrying a crossbow on your person?" Angela only lowered her voice for how harshly it echoed in the small space. "This isn't exactly an Overwatch-issue weapon!"

"The projectiles are hard light, so the recoil is minimal," was Moira's answer. "I've found it effective enough." Before Angela could object further, Moira pushed the door open, both women bracing themselves for whatever could be on the other side. Moira's flashlight illuminated an empty stairwell leading down. "Although I'm certain that the dramatic irony is tempting, try not to shoot me through the back."

Moira took the lead as they descended into the narrow bowels of the power plant. Angela reluctantly shut off her flashlight, clipping it to the belt of her coat and relying on the beam from Moira's. The flashlights were old models, still powered by batteries. She didn't feel like risking both running out of power at the same time.

The hologram flickered, and the map of the power plant was replaced by a weave of tunnels overlapping one another. "Do you know where we turn once we reach the bottom?" Angela asked, barely above a whisper. Even the walls felt unfriendly.

"I daresay that they want us to find Lena. They'll tire of watching us stumble in the dark soon enough."

Angela was about to challenge that as Moira's roundabout way of saying she had no idea. But as they came upon a branch in the path, she felt it again - a tug like the one from outside the theater. It told her to go... "Left."

Moira looked over her shoulder, her suspicion evident. "What makes you so sure?"

Angela shrugged, although it didn't even feel convincing to her. "Just a hunch." Which could be true. For all she knew, she was leading them into unknown territory based on her adrenaline-flooded brain imagining perceptions that didn't exist. And yet.

This felt stronger. Older.

They picked up their pace, Moira not further questioning Angela's somehow knowing where to lead them deeper and deeper beneath London. It was an endless intestine of corridors and stairwells, but occasionally they passed through room-sized spaces. Angela hoped whatever omnics once lived here had been able to find safer cities after the Crisis.

The next room they came upon wasn't so empty. Moira's flashlight revealed a table covered with papers, and... not taking much care to preserve evidence integrity, she held up of a vial of what was unmistakably blood. "This aligns with Lena's story. The question is, why keep it like this?"

Angela risked turning her flashlight back on, better illuminating the strewn mess of papers. She flipped one over - only to pull her hand back from the symbol drawn on it, in what something told her wasn't ink. It resembled an upside-down pentagram, although smaller circles extended from each of the five tips. Inside each circle was writing. "The Dragon, The Seer, The Summoner... The Huntress?" Angela read out loud, wishing she'd sprung for the higher-tech glasses whose lenses could increase their resolution. The last title made her blood again run cold with that understanding beyond memory. "The Reaper."

Moira looked just as troubled by the contents of whatever paper she was reading, but just then, a shout rang out from nearby. "Someone, help me!" Lena's voice called.

Angela tightened her grip on the crossbow as she and Moira took off running. Although she no longer needed the insistent thread in her mind pulling her forward, it grew ever stronger with each fall of her feet. She wanted to shout reassurance that Lena wasn't alone in the dark, but they were certainly in enemy territory by now. If their presence wasn't already known, the element of surprise might be the only thing Angela and Moira had on their side.

They emerged into a space too wide to seem like it should be underground, although Angela couldn't make out too much of it beyond that. "Agent Ziegler? Agent O'Deorain?" Lena's voice came from... above them?

Moira shone her flashlight upwards, where Lena hung upside-down from some kind of snare, but was seemingly unhurt. Lena's eyes widened. "It is you! I've been trying to get down ever since whatever that creep did to me outside wore off. My back is gonna kill me from all the curl-ups."

"Lena, where is the man who took you?" Angela asked as Moira retrieved a switchblade from yet another jacket pocket (note to self, she thought, keep tabs on exactly how many illicit weapons Moira owned) and tossed it up to Lena. As Lena began to cut through the ties around her ankles, that sense heralded Angela's focus to the opposite end of the room.

Where there stood the man who had dogged their every step through London, not at all alarmed by the presence of Moira and Angela. A low hiss came from his mouth, reverberating like harsh rain in the hollow space of the room. "Just as we hoped." His gaze was all for Angela. "Welcome, Elisabeth."

"Elisabeth?" Angela's chest tightened. "You have me mistaken for someone else."

That amused the man. "You don't know, then? Or is this some poor bluff on your part?" He once again moved faster than should have been possible, and Angela pulled the trigger on the crossbow without clear aim. A bolt of purple light flew across the room, dispersing against the wall the man was standing in front of a moment earlier.

"Over here," his voice slithered from behind Angela and Moira. The flare went off in Angela's mind, and she whirled to the side just in time to avoid the man's hand lunging past her.

Angela registered a second humanoid shape blurring from the shadows of the room. "Moira, behind you!" While Moira whipped around to intercept the newcomer, Angela stood her ground against the man. "Is there a reason you've been following me? Why involve an innocent girl to get to me? Who am I to you?"

The man swiped at her again, and Angela held up the crossbow with little more mind than to shield herself. It was knocked from her grip, sliding away across the floor, and she frantically tried to recall the hand-to-hand combat she'd been taught years ago in Overwatch basic training. Behind her, she heard Moira engaging the other figure - a woman, based on a laugh too high-pitched to be Moira's.

Angela's first strike was panicked, sloppy. The man slid past it with liquid ease, aiming for her left side. She barely jumped out of the way, and the man moved with her, using the momentum from his failed blow to carry him in the same direction. "Come on, Ziegler!" she heard her former combat instructor shouting in her mind. "Doctors aren't much use when they're out of commission themselves!"

The man's strikes were aimed, but he seemed to be holding himself back despite his clear advantage. Angela wondered if he was waiting for Moira to go down first, before he opened his palm. The shadows around them bent into it.

Trick of the light or no, Angela scrambled to escape his reach, and her shoulders slammed against the wall. Damn it, he'd been backing her into a corner.

Moira cried out from the other side of the room, the narrow beam of her flashlight thrown across the floor. And now that the man had Angela where he wanted her, he was savoring the moment, advancing on her as he had the night before. A smoky purple tendril shot from his palm, spiraling around Angela's torso before she could comprehend it. It didn't seem to deal her a physical wound, but she gasped as a rushing sound filled her ears.

Her legs gave out. The crash of her knees against the cold metal floor sent a wave of pain through her, but it was enough to break whatever grip this man had claimed. Keeping low, Angela gritted her teeth against her protesting muscles and ran beneath the man's grip. An inhuman snarl tore from his throat as he tackled Angela's legs, sending them both down. He was trying to pin her one way or another, but two could play at that game. They grappled hands and arms, legs and feet, each roll of one's body carrying them in another direction. They were close to the center of the room now.

""Nothing that you do can surprise me, Elisabeth." The man's eyes glinted in the dark, barely centimeters from Angela's face. "I am bound to The Seer. Even if you refuse your gift, mine tells me every possible move you could make!" She forced herself to tune him out, to ignore the way his incisors lengthened as he opened his mouth. She looked past him - at what was above them.

She had just enough time to brace herself before a weight slammed onto her and the man, wringing a cry of surprise from him. Angela pushed upwards, as Lena shouted from on top of them, "This is for killing my friend, you tosser!" She raised Moira's knife that she had cut herself free with into the air, slamming the blade into the center of the man's back.

Angela shoved him off. "Get back!" she barked at Lena, just as he started to seize on the ground. His body arched into an impossible U shape, its apex where the knife remained buried below his shoulders. Angela had a thought to cover Lena's eyes as the man's veins bulged from his hands, his mouth parting in a soundless scream. Then he fell to the floor.

Even in true death, his body made no sound.

There was no time to process what had just happened. "Agent Ziegler!" Moira shouted from behind them. Angela cast her flashlight across the floor until it found where the crossbow had been torn from her hands.

"Stay right here," she ordered Lena as she picked the weapon up, reactivating its sights. "Moira!" She set the flashlight on the ground. "Lead her over to the beam!"

She lowered herself to one knee, finger on the trigger of the crossbow, and let it fire as Moira and her adversary fell across the light. A purple flash, a cry of pain. Angela's heart lurched, terrified she'd struck Moira, because wouldn't this be the worst time imaginable for her to kill the other woman.

But it was the stranger whose leg had been pierced by the crossbow's hard light. She had collapsed, shrieking as she pawed at the bolt embedded in her skin. Moira seized the opportunity, straddling the woman and raising both arms above her head with terrifyingly precise speed - like she'd done this before. It took Angela a moment to make out what the pointed object in Moira's hands. She couldn't stop the gasp that escaped her mouth as Moira drove the stake into the woman's chest. The low light couldn't conceal the feral glint in Moira's eyes.

The woman's death was similar, but Moira refused to be thrown off her. Once the theatrics of it had passed, Angela stood on shaking legs and walked to where Moira still hadn't moved, tentatively lowering her hand onto Moira's shoulder. "Moira? It's over. Lena is safe. We should go now."

Moira looked up, her expression blank. "Agent Ziegler," she said, like for a moment she hadn't recognized Angela. Then she gave a small laugh. "It seems that I stand corrected. Or you had an extremely lucky shot." She shook Angela off as she got to her feet, picking up her own flashlight and casting it at Lena. "Fine handiwork with the knife. There's holy water on the blade. How are you holding up?"

Lena shrugged, although the gesture couldn't hide the ragged breathing behind her statement of, "I'm alright. Ah - Do you want it back?"

Without comment, Moira walked over to the man's body and pulled the blade from his back. Lena flinched at the sound of metal being wrenched from bone, and Angela wrapped a comforting arm around her. The adrenaline would be lowering now, and Lena was probably just beginning to comprehend all of what had just happened to her.

"Let's go," Angela said. "here's nothing else for us down here."

Inspector Oxton's office, Scotland Yard

Captain Amari's face frowned from the hologram. "What you two say that you've witnessed - of course, we'll wait and see if the bodies can be identified. But several aspects of this report's credibility seem rather unsupportable."

"I understand your concerns, Captain. I'll see that the official write-up is more objective, and we should know more by then. I don't think either of us has drawn any definite conclusions about what we've seen." Angela said this with an edge to her voice that she doubted even Moira could claim to miss.

"Very well. I'll expect you two back in Zurich." The holo-call shut off before Angela could say anything more.

"She's not the only one who's going to want answers," Moira said as Angela slumped in her chair, too tired to appear professional any longer. "Once Oxton can be separated from Lena for longer than two minutes, I expect that he'll be after our statements as well." When Angela's response was a weary rubbing at her temples, Moira continued down a different vein. "That man. He kept calling you Elisabeth. Do you know why?"

Angela shook her head. "I don't know anyone named Elisabeth. I have no idea why he was so hell-bent on getting to me."

It wasn't the first lie she had told Moira so far. It wouldn't be the last.

Zurich, Switzerland

Moira O'Deorain entered her apartment without sentimentality. The neutral-colored walls, which she could never quite deduce if they were yellow or brown, greeted her on the side of brown today. The shades by her desk remained drawn against the sunlight, casting a shadowed dustiness about the whole sorry place. She supposed that she should make herself look presentable before meeting with Amari, but then, her reputation would always precede her. She might as well give the people what they wanted.

She set, in order: her laptop on her desk, penning a concise thank-you for the map to the newest decoy email before the account self-destructed. The parcel of raw meat held under her arm went within her mostly-empty refrigerator, her only detour on the way here having been purchasing it from a butcher whose discretion she somewhat trusted. Her jacket, which she had now been wearing for nearly 24 hours, was slung across the back of her desk chair with only the briefest care to brush out any wrinkles.

The Underworld map hadn't done her much good, thanks to Agent Ziegler's uncanny sense of direction, but it would be harder the next time that Moira needed something if she didn't send gratitude - sincerity was beside the point. The meat's purpose could be filled after her meeting with Amari - all the better to keep that waiting. As for the jacket, Moira liked it - the confrontation in the power plant thankfully hadn't damaged it.

It was Angela Ziegler who remained an intrusion on her thoughts. It would be easier for Moira to say that there existed no potential within her. Tragically, Moira no longer lied to herself. All that she could do was cast any irrelevant memory of her new partner on their first mission to the wayside.

With her living room in order, Moira pushed open the door to her bedroom. Most of the materials within the jacket's inner pockets had been confiscated after the power plant. Not that she didn't have a backup cache here, but replacing that crossbow might be harder. The woman she'd sourced it from had gone underground several months earlier in Greece, and based on the word surrounding that region, Moira's hopes for her weren't high.

Moira slept on her couch nowadays. The sheer amount of equipment - scientific and otherwise - that she kept in here had grown to dominate the space. This suited her fine; her bed had been empty since Amelie, and it wasn't as though the likes of her had been hosting the Blackwatch holiday party (although Agent Shimada inexplicably sent her an invitation to his, which Moira had assumed a joke until he tried again for New Year's). She walked to a desk containing all manner of beakers and test tubes. It took her a moment to locate, as the rack she sought had been pushed close to the wall by her more recent findings, and was now half-hidden by a stack of Moira's notes. Sliding the only tube inhabiting it out, Moira held it to the light, retrieving the vial of blood that she'd slipped from the room beneath the power plant. When she compared the two side-by-side, there was no doubt. The vials were of the same make.

But the creature that she'd retrieved this first one from had been stalking the streets of Cairo. Moira was a scientist, and she knew far better than to chalk this up to coincidence - especially since she still couldn't identify what the vials were made of.

Whatever mysteries were to be unraveled regarding the newest thorn in her side - armor to a rose by the name of Angela Ziegler - they still took the backseat to this.

Moira wondered sometimes what Amélie would make of the state Moira had put herself in, what little regard she'd previously felt for her reputation now entirely forgotten in the name of the truth. If Amélie could somehow know all that Moira had done over the past year.

She still had time before her and Agent Ziegler's meeting with Amari. Unstopping the vial of blood, Moira poured a sample under her microscope and set to work.

Chapter Text

"Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us."

Overwatch relief center, eastern Europe

Panic rang through the night, the central complex erupting into chaos like an unearthed anthill. Field doctors were racing through the courtyard, paying little mind to the biting February wind in their bids to save as much - and as many - as they could.

Angela had to be pulled away from the window, unable to tear her eyes from the frenzy on the ground. “You remember the drills, yes, Angela?” her mother prompted her.

A memory associated with that word, spurring Angela robotically to action. Her mother took her place at the window as Angela retrieved a backpack from beneath the couch she'd been sleeping on for weeks. The phrase she heard Ilse Ziegler muttering under her breath would have earned Angela a week’s grounding for repeating it.

The Omnic Crisis hadn't yet marred the tapestry of international affairs. Tonight’s attack was owed to human greed, one that cared not for the civilians trapped in its crossfire. It was Angela’s third time joining her parents in Overwatch relief efforts. The first two missions had been far from combat; areas stricken by poverty and disease, but not immediate bloodshed. Other Overwatch agents always embraced her presence, viewing her not as some tagalong teenager but another welcome pair of hands (many years later, Angela would remember this with greater unease. For what kind of organization so easily welcomed children into its ranks, but one far more desperate than it was willing to let on?).

This time, Angela’s father had first contacted his sister in Prague about Angela staying with her. Only when that failed to pan out was she allowed to come along. She'd felt smug at the time, with a resentment of the thought that her parents no longer believed her capable.

Now she understood their worry, the way one understood they'd drunk poison only when it began to curdle their stomach.

Nathan Ziegler was among the first to respond when the bomb threat hit up his communicator, only sparing quick embraces for his daughter and wife. Ilse worried he would question why she wasn't going with him, but then, they had agreed Angela’s safety to be the utmost priority. If safety was even a concept that existed for them.

Even if Ilse had her own definition of what it meant.

Turning around, she saw a wide-eyed Angela ready to go. Ilse held out her hand. "Stay close to me. I don't want to lose sight of you until they sound the all-clear siren-"

A momentary whistling noise her only warning. A blinding flash lit up the night as the bomb struck the courtyard, the BOOM driving Angela to clap her hands over her ears.

Ilse threw herself over her daughter as the window behind them shattered. Shards of broken glass knifed into her back and legs, nothing compared to the void that tore open in her chest. It didn't matter that she hadn't seen it. Ilse had other ways of knowing that instant had been her husband's last.

Church bells were ringing inside Ilse's head, a particularly cruel finality. She wondered if all the women of the family she'd tried so hard to leave behind heard this before they died. Angela shuddered with sobs beneath her. Ice flooded Ilse's veins, her warning in place of whistling that another bomb was hurtling towards the building.

At this, Ilse hardened her heart to the thought that she and Angela would not survive this. That was not true. Only Ilse would not.

She felt the magic where it pooled in her chest, where it slept more than it used to. A hundred pieces of golden stardust, becoming a thousand, a million as she forced each one awake. The bomb detonated through the complex as Ilse forced her power out, draining her body - and glad for it, when she opened her eyes to the translucent sphere that had formed around her and Angela. Time became an eternity of seconds as she lowered her head and kissed Angela's brow.

"I love you, kleine hexe. And so I bless you, with all the power of all those who came before us."

No sooner had the words left Ilse's mouth did the blast tear through her.

Angela's eyes snapped open, her body curling up on defensive instinct. The dream bled into reality as she mistook the blanket draped over her body for her mother, shielding Angela with the last of her strength. Shoving it off, Angela rolled onto her back, running the familiar breathing exercises as she stared at the ceiling.

It had been almost a year since a nightmare that severe. But it came every year, a reminder that Angela's anniversary of becoming an orphan was close at hand. She'd seen a therapist afterwards, in Prague - they talked through survivor's guilt, coping methods, ways she could remember her parents without letting their ghosts shackle her every step.

But sometimes a nightmare wanted to be had.

A light flashed in the corner of Angela's eye. She turned her head, and was met with the impossible.

She was still dreaming. She had to be. There was no other way her mother could be sitting in Angela's apartment, that soft golden aura still radiating from her body.

Ilse opened her mouth, her same blue eyes as Angela's filling with sadness as she looked upon the woman her daughter had grown into. She tried to form words, but no sound came from her throat.

"Mom?" Angela unconsciously slipped into the German of her childhood. "How... how are you here?" She lowered one foot to the floor, feeling the carpet bunch beneath her toes. Certainly a high amount of sensory stimulation for a dream. "Is Dad with you?"

Ilse gave no answer, although it didn't look to be for lack of trying. Frustration crossed her face as she made a violent gesture towards her chest, then pushed her hand back out towards Angela. Her daughter froze, clenching the bathrobe she'd worn to bed tighter around her.

Her phone vibrating against her bedside table tore Angela's gaze from Ilse's specter, to Moira's name flashing alongside a new message. Just like that, the light - and her mother - vanished.

"Wait!" Angela stumbled towards the chair, grasping for Ilse's outline. "Mom!"

Her hands passed through thin air.

Chapter Text

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

The Basement

Pausing before Moira's office door, Angela drew in one breath to steady herself and another to inhale the collar of her blazer. Over a week since their last assignment, and her clothes all still smelled like a damned pet store.

With that, she entered the office to her customary sight of Moira hunched over her desk. Over a month had passed since that first casefile in London, and despite investigating two subsequent assignments since, there was no shift on the Moira front. Angela had heard nothing from Captain Amari either regarding a reinstatement to her former position, and to say she was getting antsy would have been understating things.

This was her routine for now - meeting Moira engrossed in whatever book or file had currently captured her attention (yesterday, Orlando). A synth-dripping guitar riff shimmered from Moira's computer, the background music an indication that Moira was, as she put it, 'intellectually engaged'. This didn't stop Angela from peering over her shoulder and commenting, "Interesting music for Virginia Woolf."

Moira looked up, unmoved. "You look tired, Ziegler."

Ziegler. That was new. But then, so had been going up against that killer hamster from last week.

"Well, you did decide to send me several messages at four in the morning." There was no chance Angela would be telling Moira about... whatever her vision of Ilse had been. "Several incredibly vague messages, at that."

"Forgive me for offering the primer material which you keep requesting." Moira set her book aside (its cover now revealing it as a dime-store rag feauring two improbably busty astronauts, to Angela's mild stupefaction). She opened a file covered in her shorthand's signature scrawl, which Angela still couldn't make heads or tails of. "Two days ago, a pair of students attending the University of Melbourne were reported missing. To say that foul play is suspected would be understating matters."

This much, Angela had gleaned from the chain of messages. Combined with Moira's never failing to beat her to the office, if Angela hadn't witnessed it herself that night in London, she would wonder if the other woman ever slept.

Moira pointed a purple talon of a fingernail to a picture of the student's car. Its window had been shattered, and blood was sprayed across the front seat. "This disappearance falls on the anniversary of a two-person abduction last year at Monash University. One week later, both students' bodies were found butchered and gutted, at least partially while they were alive."

Angela's discomfort at hearing this wasn't owed so much to the photos as it was the unaffected way Moira delivered this information, like a passing comment on the weather. While Angela never let herself believe the brutality that often greeted her on Overwatch assignments to be the way of the world, she had worked with other field doctors who'd let themselves grow desensitized. She was still trying to gauge if Moira was one of those so far gone.

"No arrests were ever made, but until the link to the date was correlated, the police believed it a one-time incident."

"And now that it's not, they want Blackwatch," Angela finished. "So if this is a serial offender, we only have five days to find the students alive? That's not much to work on."

"And it's not the only deadline with which we have to contend." Moira opened a desk drawer, removing a significantly thicker file than the first. This one was also marked with a vivid 'confidential' stamp from the archives. Angela had no idea why Moira preferred hard copies of everything when they took up so much space. With just a quick scan of the office, she could pick out several amounts of room that would be much less cluttered were Moira to go digital.

She did recognize this second file. "Tekhartha Zenyatta? I thought Agent Shimada had closed that case." He'd been the rare toast of both Overwatch and Blackwatch for it. Angela was amazed they hadn't popped champagne at his feet the moment he'd walked into the building after bringing Zenyatta in.

"Yes, almost a month ago. But one month is all the time that Overwatch was granted to hold Zenyatta before they'll have to release him back to the Shambali. Which would be of little concern, if not for Zenyatta claiming to possess information about this case. He described one of the abductees down to her nose piercing. I reinforce the fact that Zenyatta has spent the last three weeks inside of an Overwatch holding cell, and before that, the mountains of Nepal."

"That doesn't mean he couldn't have been in league with this." Even as Angela said the words, she knew they were a stretch, but negotiations over every casefile had been her conditional - consider everything.

"Zenyatta claims to have reached a level of enlightenment beyond that of his former order." Angela was surprised to hear the skepticism in Moira's voice, even as she resented being explained this information on the clear assumption that she didn't already know it. "He was cast out of the Shambali for rejecting their belief in the Iris, instead embracing a call which he refers to as the Abyss. It was the Abyss that, for some mysterious reason, bestowed upon him a vision of our victims."

Pulling up the second chair that had finally been brought down to the office, Angela sat across from Moira. "I would think an omnic cultist to be exactly your department."

Moira rolled her eyes. "Despite your allegiances, do me the favor of not condescending to me in the exact same manner that Overwatch does. I was in fact consulted when Zenyatta was brought in, but putting aside my doubt in the entire Iris business to begin with, I find it likely that Zenyatta will say anything to avoid returning to the Shambali. I believe that there are forces within this world greater than you or me, Ziegler, but Zenyatta's Abyss is far too vague for my tastes. To put it in layman's terms, it's little more than some Lovecraftian hocus pocus."

"So then, Zenyatta somehow orchestrated a kidnapping from another continent?" Angela didn't try to mask her doubt, now doubly miffed from Moira's comment about her 'alleigiances'.

"He made Blackwatch's list for a reason. His sacrifices to his Abyss may have started small - animals in the mountains. Then came the lost hikers who turned up rambling in unidentifiable languages, if they didn't die from exposure." Moira flipped open Agent Shimada's case report. "Finally, the death of a Shambali monk who attempted to stop Zenyatta. Even their peaceful order cannot overlook such an offense, especially when committed by one of their own."

That shadowed curiosity, the same she felt as she'd listened to Moira's voice inside a darkened hotel room, sparked inside Angela against her better judgment. Something about this Abyss that Zenyatta spoke of, as little documentation of it existed, recalled the sight of her mother the night before. "And Overwatch still thinks you stand a better chance at profiling him?"

Standing, Moira turned to the door. "Zenyatta requested to speak with me. Despite Agent Shimada spending a far longer time on this case, Zenyatta seems to believe after our first meeting that I am the one whom the Abyss meant for him to find."

"I'll go with you, then. I simply must experience for myself that which tests your capacity for belief."

Moira looked her over again, a closer inspection than before. "Are you certain? You seem on edge."

Was Moira trying to provoke her, or was Angela just that easy to read? Purely as an exercise, she ran through the possible receptions Moira might grant the story of Ilse's visitation. No, none of them were discussions Angela wanted to have. "It's nothing that getting some work done won't help."

Moira's gaze stayed fixed on her for another moment. "Well, far be it for me to deny you entry to the show."

Angela looked back down at Zenyatta's file as they exited the office. Her eyes fell to Agent Shimada's notes. "Zenyatta claims this Abyss, among other abilities, grants him communication with the deceased."

Snapping the file shut, Angela forced her mind to clear as she followed Moira.

Overwatch Holding Cells

Tekhartha Zenyatta looked like any other omnic from footage of the Shambali that Angela had seen - save for the sickly green light emanating from him, casting neon shadows across the walls of the small holding cell. It couldn't all be coming from the sensory grid on his head. The light... oozed from him.

No sooner had they entered did he intone, "The being of Tekhartha Zenyatta is one with the Abyss. The Shadows claim him now."

Moira sank into the chair before him, seething an impressive apathy. "The Shadows? That's a new addition."

Zenyatta made no movement, didn't even turn his head, but Angela swore the glow around him darkened. "The dead. The living. All souls are born within the Shadows, but few return once the light of the Iris leads them astray."

"And, remind me - you're their chosen conduit, yes?"

Overwatch's medical division hadn't brought Angela into contact with omnics very often. Staring at Zenyatta, she had no idea how she was supposed to read him; if Moira somehow did, or if she too could only follow his verbal cues. It was little wonder Zenyatta had been able to lead previous questionings in circles.

"Moira O'Deorain," Zenyatta said. "Angela Ziegler." Angela tensed as the omnic spoke her name. "Understand that from here, we can return to the past. We can see the present. We can know the future."

"Forgive me, but where is 'here' exactly?" Moira pressed. "The Abyss? The lair of these Shadows? It's just all so muddled."

The seeping light cast its green pallor across Angela's skin. "You believe that Zenyatta has transgressed," the omnic said. "What redemption would you have in mind?"

"I couldn't care less what happens to you." Moira stood. "When the Shambali seal you away beneath their mountain, I won't think twice on it."

Angela hadn't been certain how much emotion Zenyatta could express, until his response to that was a plainly urgent, "No."

That got Moira's attention. Angela could see the new hypotheses unfolding in her mind as Zenyatta continued, "I would like to extend my time here in exchange for my assistance with your current case, Moira O'Deorain. I am not requesting physical freedom. The roamings embarked upon by my consciousness are all that I need to locate the students."

"Ah, but you see, there remains one problem," Moira sighed, laying on the theatrics a bit think in Angela's opinion. "I don't believe you."

Yet Angela didn't think she imagined the curiosity smoldering behind Moira's eyes. Angela felt it too, in truth - she may have even held her breath as Moira removed a scrap of dark fabric from the file and passed it to Zenyatta. "Make me believe," she challenged, her voice low.

Zenyatta lifted the fabric cyber-kinetically, letting it float between his cupped hands as he nodded. "There is pain attached to the holder of this." Moira leaned forward, unable to conceal a small smile as Zenyatta's palms clapped together. "They are unable to use their hands." The fabric snaked between his fingers. He draped it over the sensory grid on his head, a shudder running through his body. "The one who you seek views them as less than garbage." Without warning, Zenyatta dropped the cloth, the shudders running through his frame growing more violent. And a sound came from him.

Angela clung to was the file in her hands, as a scream which was not a scream came from Zenyatta. It was a perverse human's cry wrung through a rusted machine, corrupted with white noise, falling off into a glitch of a whimper. The lights on Zenyatta's sensory grid blinked frantically as he managed, "Darkness. Cold. Forgotten place. Angel of stone."

A series of whirs came from his body, straightening him back into his former position. Had that fit almost overloaded him?

The room was silent following Zenyatta's display, until Moira walked to where the fabric had fallen and picked it up. She dangled it from her palm with a smirk. "I tore this off an old jacket of mine. It has nothing to do with my case." With that, she turned and left the cell.

Hardly desiring to be alone with Zenyatta, Angela made to follow when the omnic spoke again. "Angela Ziegler."

She froze. "What is it?" She tried to imitate Moira's flat affect, anything to mask the tremor in her voice.

Angela could have sworn she felt Zenyatta scrutinizing her, like a scout determining whether what stood in their sights was a threat. "The Abyss knows you, Angela Ziegler," he horrifically concluded. "It wishes for me to deliver a message. Why do you reject its call, kleine hexe?"

No. Angela shut her eyes to the lure of that swirling green light. Hadn't Moira warned that Zenyatta would say anything to win over someone in Overwatch? Rushing out of the cell, Angela walked right into Moira, who of course took note of her too-obvious unease. "Did Zenyatta say something to you, Ziegler?"

Angela shook her head. "No, it's - like you said. I'm tired. And that wasn't quite what I expected."

"Yes, I'll admit the gall of that act even caught me by surprise. But Tekhartha Zenyatta is nothing more than a rogue omnic hiding behind well-woven words. At worst, he's orchestrated a kidnapping. Now that he knows we're onto him, it will only be a matter of time." Unexpectedly, Moira's voice lost its edge, although there couldn't have been any more meaning behind her next words of, "Go home, Ziegler. I can wait him out on my own."

Angela would have normally insisted on powering through, if only to spite Moira, but her already-fraying nerves felt dangerously close to the breaking point. The last thing she needed was Moira being present for that moment. Again. "I think I'll do just that."

Her only detour was to the bakery across from her building, although this brand of anxiey couldn't be banished with a simple bag of her favorite cookies (bless the man working the counter, though, who took one look at Angela's expression and slipped her one more than she'd paid for). When she entered her apartment, she numbly set the crumb-flecked file on her coffee table. Despite Moira's confidence in Zenyatta being a fraud, Angela couldn't stop replaying his final statement in her mind.

The trouble was, science could offer her no explanation for how he'd spoken the words of a woman fifteen years dead.

Angela's eyes went to the chair Ilse's specter had appeared in the night before. Pulling the blanket off her bed, Angela draped it around her shoulders and curled up in the chair, inhaling the upholstery for any trace of her mother's old honeyed perfume. Nothing. Weary, Angela closed her eyes.

That didn't mean sleep would come.

Chapter Text

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”

Flight 9614, ZRH to MEL, Australian airspace

Angela slept uneasily. Zenyatta's words floated through her mind, weaving scene after scene into maddening confusion.

Until finally - the drowning dream.

The forest wore its ancientness like a moth-eaten cowl. Angela was herself enough, but there was something else. That sensation in dreaming, that any body one inhabited might at any moment be blown away on the wind.

Her hands were tied behind her back, her hair loose, her feet bare against the dewy grass. The shift she wore was too thin to protect her from the cold blowing between the trees. She felt some sense of loss within her breast, but no despair. No, she was furious, burning hotter than hell in the dark hollow of her heart.

Something jabbed her in the spine, pushing her forward.

The lake came into view, a sheet of black glass yawning from the mist. Angela's horror raged against against her dream self's too-easy acceptance.

She didn't flinch, advancing into the water without any further forcing from whatever walked behind her. The lake lapped at her ankles, so freezing that Angela shuddered in her sleep. Deeper into its embrace she treaded, the lake swallowing her calves, her thighs, up to her waist. The cold flooded into her body.

Another wind tore through the wood, stronger than before, whipping her hair around her face. The gray sky above her, the water consuming her, the dark trees bearing witness to this execution - they would not be her last sights, oh no. What fools these men were, to think that they had bested her! She laughed even as the bank dropped from beneath her feet.

She fell like a stone into the lake's embrace. When her head vanished under, her laugh only grew louder, a ghastly bird's call echoing about the wood. It erupted from her mouth even as the water choked her, her lungs welcoming the torrent.

The lake was just one more abyss, and she had already conquered that.

"Ziegler!" Moira hissed in her ear.

Angela's eyes snapped open as she gulped in the shuttle's stale air. It drew a stare from the woman sitting across the aisle, but Angela couldn't be bothered to care. She drew in another deep breath, rubbing warmth back into her arms.

Moira cast her a pointed stare, and Angela made herself murmur, "Bad dream." The last thing she needed was Moira observing her anytime she fell asleep. Settling back into her seat, she wondered how unprofessional it might be to hail a flight attendant for a drink.

She barely even blinked when she saw her mother's silent ghost, staring at her from the back of the shuttle.

Melbourne Airport

"I'll take the wild guess that you couldn't get anymore out of Zenyatta?"

"Oh, I tolerated another two hours of the act that he gave me and you. Then I suppose that I might have lost my patience."

Angela raised an eyebrow.

"I merely asked Zenyatta to prove his claims that his Abyss allows him communication with the deceased." Moira couldn't totally conceal her smirk. "I suspect he was offended by my request for an audience with Bram Stoker, and a private reading of several choice passages from Dracula. As though I was being the unreasonable one."

Well, at least one of them wasn't letting Zenyatta get inside her head. As Angela ducked into the passenger door of their Overwatch hovercar, her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, half expecting to see Ilse reflected in the backseat. She'd kept glimpsing her throughout the airport, lingering at the edges of crowds, unseen by anyone else.

Whatever point Ilse wanted to make, Angela wished her mother could be more direct about it. For now, she didn't have much choice but to try and only semi-successfully ignore Ilse.

Moira started the car, consumed in her own thoughts. She hadn't asked after Angela's once, not even for a chance to neg them. Which might have been why Angela spoke up, "Moira, I did realize something." She reached into the purse at her feet, retrieving the casefile. "The kidnappings happened punctually, and presumably the murders as well if we're too late. But the date the kidnappings occurred on is an anniversary itself. This year marked the sixteenth since the Ayers Omnium meltdown, which would place the first kidnappings on the fifteenth anniversary. That seems like a specific choice if it relates to the killer's motivation."

"You think we're looking for a member of the Australian Liberation Front? Most either turned themselves in or were arrested after the meltdown, but the date does seem awfully political to be a coincidence. My own feelings regarding the conflict aside." Moira nodded. "A surprisingly good catch, Ziegler."

Angela's defiant surge of pride faltered as she glimpsed a motion in the corner of her eye. She dragged her gaze back to the rearview mirror. Ilse was with them once more, meeting Angela's grave expression with one to match.

Reservations aside, she decided to brave it. "Moira... do you feel anything strange?"

"Always," Moira responded without missing a beat. "But I assume that you're seeking a more specific answer. In the immediate sense..." She breathed in. "No."

Well, if Moira O'Deorain of all people couldn't tell that a ghost was siting in the backseat of their car... Angela wasn't sure whether to feel reassured by Ilse only wanting her. Maybe a month in Blackwatch and Moira's company was all it had taken to drive her into psychosis.

"I warned you before," Moira said, keeping her eyes focused on the road. "If Zenyatta has found his way inside your head, do whatever you must to shut him out. He'll latch onto anything." Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and Angela recalled the few kernels of Moira's research that she'd managed to glean. Yes, Zenyatta likely had plenty to work with in Moira's case.

"I thought you didn't believe in Zenyatta's abilities?"

Moira shook her head. "Not that he's so omnipotent as to reach inside your or my innermost thoughts and have his way with them. But the power of suggestion is called such for a reason. Don't let him set you up from halfway across the world."

"I'm not letting anything set me up." Even as she said this, Angela risked another glance into the mirror. Ilse hadn't moved, only watched, her eyes all for Angela. Who remembered those eyes, knew those eyes. No matter what Zenyatta claimed to be capable of, he couldn't fabricate this... could he?

Ilse's mouth began to move. Angela traced her mother's lips. "Kleine hexe. Kleine hexe."

Angela tore her gaze away, forcing herself to look out the window.

And her heart skipped a beat as a pair of outstretched wings crossed her sight. After a moment, Angela's brain registered that they'd entered the city proper -and driven past a statue. But her heart at the same moment jumped to force its way out of her chest, practically slamming her against the car door.

"Moira," she might have yelled. "Pull over."

She felt Moira eyeing her, but the other woman strangely didn't object. Angela pressed her hand to the window. She made herself breathe, the clouds of her exhales fogging the glass. This tug was more insistent than the one in London. The one that led them into danger, true - but also to what they'd been searching for.

She shoved the door open before they'd even stopped, running back towards the statue's call. Moira shouted after her, her words swept up in the blur of the city.

The statue's outstretched arms greeted Angela as suddenly as the pull was severed. Panting, she looked up at the statue's wings, carved too softly, each feather carefully shaped from the stone. This was an angel, a proper one.

Angela's footsteps picked up their pace in a trance. The angel stood at the entrance to an alleyway between two disused warehouses, a pocket of shadow in the bright afternoon. The shiver Angela was beginning to know well snaked down her spine as she stopped at the side door to one of the warehouses.

She bore her weight against it, stumbling when it opened with less resistance than she'd expected. Brushing the rust staining her palms across her slacks, Angela entered the condemned space without a second thought. It was empty, bare cement floor and shadowed walls. Water was dripping from a leak in some corner. But a force was present - one that spoke to the darkness Angela had, however reluctantly, begun running parallel to. Ever since walking into the life of one Moira O'Deorain.

A rustle from the corner. Angela whirled around, realizing too late that she was once again unarmed. But it was only a bird soaring into the rafters. She shook her head - she'd let this episode throw her far too off guard.

Still, she inspected some trash piled by the wall with a grimace. This place was clearly nothing more than a hookup spot for local teenagers. Yet that explanation did nothing to tame the shadows in the corners of her eyes...

Angela cried out as a sharp pain abruptly ripped through her face. Holding a hand to her nose, she searched for anything that might have dropped onto her. But there had been no clatter - the warehouse remained silent, save for the steady dripping of water. She felt for a nosebleed or head wound, but every time she held it in front of her, her hand came away clean.

Moira's lithe figure filled the ajar warehouse door, her breathing coming harder than usual. "What on Earth, Ziegler?"

As Angela turned, she felt something slide beneath her foot, a metallic ring echoing off the floor. Her heart gave another lurch as she knelt. The piece lay within a square of sunlight leaking through the warehouse's single window. It was small, curved at both ends, almost a ring -but not quite.

Instinct told Angela not to touch it, even before she realized the staining on the metal wasn't rust. Her nose gave another painful twinge as she looked up at Moira.

"Didn't you say the girl who was taken had a nose ring?"

Overwatch Australia Division, Melbourne Branch

"That was more reckless than I've come to think of you, Ziegler." Moira leaned against the wall of the briefing room, crossing her arms. "You'll certainly need to tighten your explanation of what drew you to the warehouse. The regional captain here may have bought a lucky hunch, but if Amari didn't like your 'instincts' in London, her opinion of them won't change on a different continent."

Angela didn't even know how to begin. How could she possibly she meant to feel about Moira insinuating she should lie to one of the heads of Overwatch? "Wouldn't Captain Amari and Captain Morrison want to know it was a tip from Zenyatta? It might validate Overwatch's interest in him."

Moira gave an irritated shake of her head. "It's different for you, Ziegler, and don't keep pretending that you aren't aware. Amari wouldn't bat an eye if I handed her claims that Tekhartha Zenyatta exhibited a presence of supernatural abilities. Half of Overwatch already thinks me some occultist fanatic. I was, however, under the impression that you still desire a salvageable career once Amari finds someone else to hold my leash."

And with that, Angela reached her breaking point. "I would have thought you'd be pleased at my trying to be more open. At least I'm being honest with you, despite every instinct telling me otherwise." Although she wished she didn't have to, she made herself direct her next words right to Moira's narrowed eyes "You still haven't given me a real explanation. Why your doubt of this one particular case, Moira, against every other one?"

Moira only seemed to drink her ire like a leech. "Why the sudden willingness to believe, Ziegler?"

Angela looked to the door, no longer caring that Moira of course followed her. When last she'd seen Ilse, they had been leaving the warehouse. Angela walked right past the ghost of her mother, staring up at the angel's outstretched arms.

Under the purely hypothetical assumption that she believed this was really happening - what could it even be called? A haunting? From what little Angela let herself understand of such matters, that was the correct word. Perhaps her Moira-induced theory that ghost stories were the mind's way of trying to find closure was less far off from herself than she wanted to admit.

The question was what Ilse had in mind for Angela. Her fingertips hummed at the thought. She balled up her hands, resisting the urge to reach for her Star of David. "You said it yourself. I enjoy working for Overwatch. It won't improve Captain Amari's view of me if we gather many more cold cases." But this still betrayed a different rock lodged in her chest, and understanding flashed across Moira's face.

"So, this is about Amari." Strangely, Moira's voice lacked the grievance it usually held for the makeshift Blackwatch commander. "You still think you've been paired with me because you did something to lessen her opinion of you."

Angela couldn't bother to deny it. "I just... don't understand why she would take me off my nanobiotic research - the research that got me tapped for Overwatch in the first place - for field assignments that have nothing to do with it. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be proving."

"Proof?" Moira echoed. Angela couldn't tell how honed the edge to her voice was, if Moira had just grown accustomed to such things existing as a battle. "Is that what spurred you in the warehouse? Is all that matters to you validating how you hope some higher-up thinks of you, and that anything they take from you is worth a mere moment's praise? That's no work to strive towards, Ziegler, believe you me. What you think of as proof might seem concrete, but then all that it takes is one person's disbelief for it to be crushed. It's a poor motivation at best, and a dangerous one at worst."

Angela couldn't voice a response. This felt dangerously close to some slippery truth of Moira O'Deorain, as much as that night in London.

The briefing room door whirred open. A middle-aged woman with stylishly-bobbed dark hair rushed in, her expression doing nothing for Angela's unease. "I take it you're Agent Fisher?" she asked as the woman pulled up the table's holo-display.

"The one and only. Agents Ziegler and O'Deorain?" They nodded. "Good, because we have a problem." Agent Fisher had clearly run the length of the building. Her breath came in pants as she explained. "We just received this transmission from one of our communicators. It's not from the agent who checked it out."

A video appeared on the display, the screen taken up by a large man whose face was concealed beneath an animalistic mask. Angela sucked in a breath, and even Moira looked ill at ease. Something red was splattered across the man's mask. It looked fresh.

"That's Mako Rutledge." Agent Fisher's face was stony. "The only founding member of the ALF we've never been able to bring in. The last operation that tried... wasn't pretty."

When she clicked play, the man's heavy breathing filled the room, modified by the oxygen canisters attached to his mask. His dark eyes glared into the camera as from somewhere behind him, Angela heard a muffled sobbing. Mako stepped back, spreading his arms to show two figures tied to posts inside a dim room. A third body in Blackwatch fatigues lay slumped on the ground, blood pooling beneath them. The message was clear. "It would make sense if Rutledge planned this," Agent Fisher said as the video looped. "The meltdown anniversary has additional significance to him. His family were among the uprooted from their farms when the land went to the omnics. He was the one who gave the ALF the idea to take the fight to the omnium. When it blew, his husband and daughter were killed in the explosion. His fifteen-year-old daughter, damn it! I don't know how we were so stupid. Then again, we don't even know how he survived the levels of radiation he was exposed to."

Angela eyed the grotesque makeshift gas mask Mako wore, and wondered how much of him had.

"He's been at large ever since, and he's brought down more than one Blackwatch agent. Three years ago we tried to extradite him from Junkertown, but they told us he's no longer welcome there. Do you realize how difficult it is to get banned from Junkertown?" (Angela didn't doubt it, recalling the one relief mission that she'd run to the junker city.) "Since then, he'd dropped off the grid. It was so unlike him, we started to think maybe he died on the Outback. We should have looked into him during last year's kidnapping."

"The name does ring a bell. I recall hearing that he has a certain trademark to his kills?" Moira's tone stated she knew the answer perfectly well, she just wanted to test if someone else would say it out loud.

"I'm not sure it's clean enough to be called that. The previous two victims were cut open throat to stomach when we found them, on top of the torture Rutledge got in. He's already had this year's for four days."

Angela had read the autopsy reports. Even as far as what she'd witnessed in prior field work, the sheer carnage inflicted on those bodies had sent a shiver through her. "The building in the video. Have you tracked it down? If the transmission came from a Blackwatch communicator-"

Agent Fisher nodded. "He's in the city, no doubt about it. We're going after him as soon as we have a location."

Moira's eyes narrowed as she looked back to the video. "There is one thing of which you've yet to make sense. Making such a show of his location - it doesn't match his pattern from last year. He clearly enjoyed having the advantage." She walked closer to the display, until she was eye level with the image of Mako. She peered into it, searching for something they'd missed. "Simply put, I would advise further heightened caution."

Agent Fisher's communicator pinged. Her face darkened as she checked the message. "They've found him. The video came from the harbor - one of the disused warehouses."

"No wasting time, then," Angela said. "There are still lives that we can save."

As Agent Fisher's team assembled in the lobby, Angela was grateful that she could fall right back into the Overwatch hustle without missing a beat. She didn't notice the pleading gaze of her mother's spirit from the window.

Ilse's same blood flowed through Angela. How was her daughter unable to feel that icy choke of danger?

Melbourne Harbor

The end was coming for Mako Rutledge - but it wasn't so imminent as to interrupt his work.

His mind had long been overtaken by those strange shadows, but despite the visions they showed him, the vendetta that had driven Mako for so long remained the piercing light dictating his revenge. The people of this country had cast him aside like garbage, like they were made of anything better. When the omnium went up in flames, not even the chance to run from that danger was granted to his family. So Mako enjoyed - thought, really, it was only fair - starting on his victims' legs, once they were good and terrified of him.

He pressed a shard of glass to the calf of the whimpering man tied up before him, just as Agent Fisher slammed the warehouse door open. "Rutledge, we know you're here!" Angela and Moira followed behind her, blasters at the ready.

But this was Mako's game they had walked into. If this was to be his final slaughter, he'd made his pen a proper house for it.

All around the Blackwatch agents, sheets of fabric had been strung from corner to corner of the warehouse, creating a maze of white canvas. Angela whirled around as footsteps rushed them from behind. Agent Fisher had to call a hasty identification before the reinforcements mistook their silhouettes through the sheet for an enemy. "Tear down as much of this as you can!" Agent Fisher ordered, before being cut off by an agonized scream that filled the rusted seawater air.

Angela's inner doctor kicked into action. She couldn't stand idly by when the people they'd come to rescue could be mere meters away.

A deep, wheezing laugh echoed in gruesome harmony with the man's cries. Angela's world narrowed to the grip of the blaster in her hands. When Moira quickened her pace alongside her, Angela nearly mistook her for a different kind of enemy. The low light made every shadow looming against the white sheets seem one.

It was a new voice - the terrified sobbing of a woman, crescendoing into a wail as some squelching sound undercut it- that sent a visible shock through Moira. Angela watched her eyes widen, heard the hitch in Moira's breath as she called in an uncharacteristic voice, "I'm coming!" Charging in front of Angela, she indiscriminately tore through curtains of fabric, white sheets fluttering down behind her wake.

Angela could barely keep up. That was her job, wasn't it? The world was all rustling monochrome, Moira's shadow flitting from sheet to sheet. For the first time, it occurred to Angela that she might try intentionally triggering that guiding instinct. But she didn't have the slightest clue how, and not even their current danger seemed to be activating it.

Moira's silhouette rose behind a sheet several yards from Angela, and she broke for it with a wish that her feet could take flight. But she couldn't outpace the hulking shadow that loomed behind Moira. Angela's blood flooded too late with that colder-than-nature chill as a massive hook's outline rose into the air, and swung back down.

A sickening choke of a cry. Something splattered across the sheet, bleeding crimson outlines down the white. The monster above Moira's fallen form raised the hook again.

Angela's fingers tangled in the shroud, sending the whole line it was strung on clattering to the ground. She was dimly aware of the rapid-fire blasts from Agent Fisher behind her, emptying all the hard light in her blaster into Mako Rutledge. There was shouting from the Blackwatch agents rushing the warehouse, Mako's body flying back, Agent Fisher checking if Mako's victims were responsive. Angela's mind formed only one coherent thought.

No. No no no no no no.

Moira's blood had already eclipsed her outline. Even Angela, with all her years of medicine, couldn't process that what was staining the fabric of her pants red now, had a mere minute ago been where it belonged inside Moira's body.

Angela had seen the size of that hook. Someone of Moira's build didn't stand a chance.

Agent Fisher was calling for a medic. Medic. Ha. That used to be me. Moira gave a ragged gasp, breath still somehow tearing from the wreckage of her chest. She turned her head, one eye brown and one eye blue fixing upon Angela, damning her as Angela just stood there. For here she was, knowing she had failed. Her one job's life was forever staining her hands. The golden chain around her neck turned to a chokehold as she bore witness to Moira's desperate, fruitless defiance. A far stronger faith than anything Angela had ever claimed to run to.

She never asked to be joined to Moira O'Deorain. She never wished to look so harshly on her own aspirations. This could not end like this, with Moira maybe being right about her. This would not.

Her blood was cold, a warning all along, but now Angela let herself feel that something more - a spark, a reconnect, the rumblings of a geyser she'd tried to force into silence so many years before. It was the primal voice that first questioned death ten thousand years ago. It was looking to the sky in a different season, and seeing the return of a constellation once on the other side of the night.

Angela began to crackle as Moira's blood dyed her hands. The air around her sharpened, a force like static lifting the loose strands of her hair about her face. It wasn't enough, even as a soft glow began to pool from her palms.

She clenched her teeth as the psychic slash tore down her torso. She failed not to scream as the damage Mako's hook had dealt Moira was matched measure for measure upon her. It was a phantom threshold, but the hook had made such brutal work of flesh and bone. She felt her ribs crack open, her guts ripping into the same indiscernible mess of viscera she could glimpse inside Moira, that - an instinct she had never heard before this moment roared within her, devour. And Angela pressed her hands into the wound that was Moira, wrapped her fingers around every tissue and vein she could claim. She forced herself not to pray for the end, while golden starlight surrounded her in its halo. Heal was not a word enough for what she sought. As it was, she ordered, sinking her hands deeper still into Moira. All the way to something that may have proven her core, if Angela was brave enough to pry.

Sparks flew. She'd only ever heard that phrase in relation to love. Angela reckoned no poet had ever seen what the light from her hands was currently doing to Moira's insides. Another fresh wave of agony broke over her, from the point in her gut where the hook had gone in. It was every cell in her body igniting and dying and trembling for mercy that would not come. But Angela felt when it took, the cauterization.

The world around her had slowed to a crawl. Without any true idea of what she was unleashing, Angela worked her will upon Moira's flesh and muscle and bone. Her breathing came harder as Moira's eased. A tremble took hold, threatening to sabotage all Angela's careful work. She did not relent until that hungered light returned to Moira's eyes.

Only then did she let black slam down over her vision. Only then did Angela give in, letting it fold around her like a mother's embrace.

------

When Moira jerked upright, the memory of Mako Rutledge bore down upon her in fragments. A far stranger sequence followed. The betrayal of her own broken body, while all that she could do was lie sprawled and think how much she still hadn't done, proven, found.

Agent Ziegler, kneeling at her side. Poetry in motion. A golden light that devoured, even as it lifted Moira with feather-soft wings. As a child, she'd spied on the owls when they hunted at night from her bedroom window in her mother and father's house. One had finally caught up with her, she thought, to punish her for that voyeurism.

Moira looked down now at where she'd felt her chest tear open upon that hook, at the ruin made of her suit, the fabric's original color indiscernible for the blood - her blood - drenching it. Where she'd felt Agent Ziegler's hands rummaging through her insides, and of course that too had hurt, but with a pain so voracious it had bordered on sublime. Medical curiosity overrode modesty. Moira ran her hand all over that skin, and felt not even the slightest ridge of a scar.

Agent Ziegler. Was she responsible for this? Turning to the woman at her side, Moira opened her mouth to ask, for all the possibilities that it would mean!

In Moira's place, Agent Ziegler lay upon the ground with a deathly pallor to her skin. The light was dissipating, but not before Moira saw the last traces of it dispelling from Agent Ziegler's palms.

She was struck by the thought that had enough been left of her jacket, she might have spread it over Agent Ziegler.

The medical team did arrive, prepared for massive blood loss trauma, and was instead greeted by an inexplicably comatose Agent Ziegler. Moira didn't bother trying to explain. Agent Fisher was claiming she hadn't seen what happened. Moira's mouth was dry as she rejected the blanket being offered to her, as she watched the wretched woman's pale blonde hair disappear onto a stretcher.

What on Earth did you just do to yourself, Ziegler- and to me?

Chapter Text

"I can resist everything, except temptation."

the Black Forest, Germany

Once upon a time, when she had been a very little girl, Angela was taken into the woods.

It was in the most perfect autumn day, the forest so unlike the city of stone that had been Angela’s whole world of four years. She ran through the sunlight-dappled trees, and Ilse let her, only the slightest of frowns on her face as she thought of the lie she'd told her husband. ”A day trip, to the mountains or the lake.” She did intend for it to be just that. But Nathan would have asked questions if he'd known she was taking their daughter here.

"Mommy?" Angela called from further ahead, with a frightened tremble in her voice.

Only a few yards separated them, but as Ilse ran over, a thousand worries raced through her mind with every footfall. Coming here had been a mistake, that little voice in her mind kept telling her. Why wasn't Ilse strong enough to listen to it? What might she have brought Angela to the mercy of?

But when Ilse reached her daughter, all that was wrong was the childlike worry shining in Angela's blue eyes. “Mommy?” She pointed to a cluster of nearby bushes. “There’s an animal in there. She’s hurt.”

Oh. Ilse’s heart sank, but - it could have been so much worse.

She approached the bushes, a saddened sigh escaping her at what she saw. Within the growth lay a rabbit - it had likely escaped the jaws of a fox, judging by the wounds crossing its pelt. Its less-mangled foot thumped frantically against the ground as it tried to drag itself away from Ilse. She wished she could reassure the poor thing that everything would be alright. No creature deserved an ending of pain.

Closing her eyes, Ilse knew what she had to do. It came easy to her in this place, too easily. She knelt, cradling the rabbit between her hands, and released a burst of golden light into its trembling body. It stopped trembling.

She hadn’t realized Angela was right behind her until her daughter pushed in front of her. Ilse sucked in a breath as Angela stared down at the rabbit’s corpse.

“Mommy, something’s gone from it.".

Despite it all, nothing had prepared Ilse for this moment. She would look back on it in the years to come, agonize over it so many times, and finally accept that nothing could have. No matter how many fairytales children heard where heroes prevailed over villains, there was no magic to ever be found in real death.

“Where did it go, mommy?” Angela's voice grew more frantic, her hands hovering over the rabbit. “Who took it?”

The memory itself didn't stay with Angela as she grew, only the emotion of that panicked uselessness. In the time after her parents’ deaths, it nested itself within her core, a persistent hope that this had to only be a dream - and yet, what would be left to her, if even dreams were so cruel?

As Angela watched her younger self cry for the rabbit, she saw a different sadness darkening her mother’s eyes. She wondered if there was anyone left to feel that for her now.

Overwatch Headquarters, Zurich, Medical Wing

If these were the best assembled doctors in the world, Moira wondered who would be planning Agent Ziegler’s funeral.

“We have her presently listed under critical condition, comatose,” said a man with a Scottish burr, who Moira vaguely remembered from some inane teamwork exercise in which she'd been forced to take part. “The transport doesn’t seem to have worsened anything, but there's complete unawareness of self, environment, language comprehension, or responses to external stimuli.”

“Might I see her chart?” Moira asked impatiently. Rare was the day when she needed such a medical matter explained to her, and she did not enjoy whenever her supposed peers acted as though she did. “I could no doubt better understand Agent Ziegler’s condition if I didn’t have to act as audience to a secondhand prognosis.”

One didn’t get tapped for Overwatch’s medical division without certain nerves of steel - she supposed Agent Ziegler's recent actions had proven as much - but even this man was nervous around Moira. Then again, most of Overwatch acted openly terrified of her. Even as he responded, “I’m afraid I can’t authorize that, Agent O’Deorain. Departmental conflicts and whatnot,” he made a notable effort to stare right past her and into the wall.

Moira could have predicted as much. She felt a migraine burgeoning from her hurried drafting of a case report during that nightmare of a shuttle flight back to Zurich. She'd concocted some pure falsehood in which Agent Ziegler took a blow to the head while bringing down Mako Rutledge. A blow with no physical evidence of, but Moira had to hope that it would keep attention away from her own brush with death. When she'd finally showered off the blood at headquarters and changed into a loaned set of Blackwatch fatigues, she kept feeling the phantom scar that should have carved a canyon through her torso prickling its echo into her skin. She looked down to her hands yet again, recalling the sticky warmth of her own blood staining them. Before Agent Ziegler somehow poured it back into her body, replenishing it anew to flood Moira’s veins.

“Her blood.” Moira cut the doctor off mid-something that certainly didn't matter. “What about her blood?”

“We - we’re still running tests.” The doctor straightened his glasses, as disarmed by Moira's simple pointedness as so many were. “Agent Ziegler doesn’t have any pre-existing conditions listed, but was there something she perhaps notified you of?”

Not enough, Moira silently grimaced. But blood, yes. Blood could fill in the cracks.

Obtaining that would be on her side, though - what she needed was information. She wouldn’t get anything right now out of the septuagenarian woman she'd met upon their arrival, who only identified herself as Agent Ziegler’s aunt before bursting into tears.

Moira knew better than to hope for a sympathetic source within Blackwatch. There was a different being inside this building for whom she had questions.

Overwatch Holding Cells

Nobody stopped Moira from entering Zenyatta’s cell, the least amount of resistance she'd ever encountered regarding a case to which she was supposedly assigned. The omnic might as well have not moved since their last meeting.

Moira didn’t allow him any greeting. “Did you send me and Agent Ziegler into a trap?”

Zenyatta didn't respond, although the green light of his sensory grid indicated his awareness of Moira’s presence. “I didn’t believe a word out of you before,” Moira said. “But if it satisfies you to hear, I wonder now if perhaps you were involved with Mako Rutledge. And if, on pure hypothetical theory, you laid some sort of trap for us, I wouldn't care for whatever game that you and your Shadows might be playing. If Agent Ziegler was planned as your next victim, though - no one will stop me from being the one who seals you beneath that mountain for good!”

Her breathing was coming too heavily for her liking, just as the sudden fury of that ending had not been a part of the script she'd rehearsed on her way down. Which begged the question, where had it come from?

It was better to disengage, than to let Zenyatta think he'd succeeded any further at provoking her. Yet as Moira pivoted back towards the door, he asked, “Moira O’Deorain… whose scream did the girl’s remind you of, to make you act so irrationally?”

Moira froze. Even as she hated herself for it, even as she refused to give Zenyatta the reaction he so clearly sought. This was what he wanted, Moira yet another stupefied slave to his illusions.

“There was a crescent moon in the sky, just enough light to see the face of the one nearest you. He held you frozen. When were you frightened, Moira O’Deorain? When they took your companion? When she cried out your name? Were you trying to save her when you threw yourself in front of Mako Rutledge?”

“You don’t know.” Moira had spent all her life honing the iron within her voice now, through the worst of any words or pains slung her way.

She didn’t know if Zenyatta could laugh. His silence may have been worse. “Not as much as I know about Angela Ziegler,” he finally said. “Haven’t you wondered as I have?”

As was so often, what damned Moira was the truth. Ever since London, she had known that something followed Agent Ziegler. She should have sought those answers the same morning when Agent Ziegler had first walked through her office door, and her involvement with Moira was the reason that any blind side Agent Ziegler had clung to was torn away. Why had Moira let herself be dissuaded by the smallest show of vulnerability, a single threshold crossed into Moira's domain?

She was Orpheus, turning to face the very thing forbidden to her. She was Eurydice, wondering why it had been so impossible for Agent Ziegler to play by life and death. “What would you have me believe of her?”

Let nobody claim that omnics couldn't appreciate some damned dramatic tension. That, or Zenyatta was this abominably determined to string her along.

“Ilse.” A name. Meaningless, a piece with no corresponding puzzle - but somehow the most human sound that Moira had yet heard leave Zenyatta.

His sensory grid darkened, plunging the holding cell into a murky green abyss. “No,” he said, his voice deeper now. “No. I will tell you nothing, Moira O’Deorain, until you guarantee Zenyatta’s presence here. Do not underestimate his fear of that mountain. He knows the darkness that he will find beneath the temple, just as he did before.” His frame shuddered, Zenyatta seeming to dredge each word from the depths of his being, “It was always barred. The first time that a Shambali is assigned to keep watch is a great honor, a sign of the order’s trust. Zenyatta was always too curious. Omnics feel fear as well as any human. The horrors that we showed him were the mere beginning of what the Shambali keep at bay. The being called Zenyatta ceased to be. We have barely felt his soul struggle within that cold, dark place. The same place that your Angela Ziegler has fled from all her life.”

Moira wished to entertain the luxury of wondering what this thing within Zenyatta’s body was implying. But Agent Ziegler had proven herself more dreadfully than any of Moira's predictions.

“She never would have told you,” Zenyatta said, as consolingly as some abomination like him could manage. “But the rest, you must learn for yourself. Unless you can extend our time here.”

“If you’re so all-knowing," Moira knew herself well enough to answer, "you would know that I’m a poor advocate."

“That cold, dark place welcomes liars, Moira O’Deorain.” If it was possible for an omnic to smirk, Zenyatta surely was now. “Pretend as you must, but you believe in enough of us. Mako Rutledge was only what we needed to call Angela Ziegler home. We are not the one positioned to lose.”

Moira had heard enough. She'd sought to get Zenyatta talking, but there were only so many threads that she could pursue at once.

She slammed her hand against the button to open the holding cell door. But as Moira walked out, she heard Zenyatta finish, “And perhaps I could even search within that cold, dark place for Amélie Guillard.”

Chapter Text

"Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."

Moira O’Deorain’s apartment, Zurich

Finding the world’s most notorious hacker was only as hard as knowing where to look.

“Storefronts” were concealed within various skins, which clients were advised to access based on what would blend in with their usual browsing history. For Moira, this was a seemingly innocuous science journal. Half of its articles were even legitimate, having been stolen from actual publications. It was updated frequently enough to avoid suspicion from any but the most critical eye. In the event of an average user somehow stumbling upon it, they could browse for hours without the slightest risk of discovering its true nature.

Moira paid no mind to the front page, navigating to the papers chosen intentionally for their mind-numbing factor. She doubted that even some of her former Oxford professors would be willing to sift through this material. When she clicked on a study concerning the cellular structures of fossilized plants, she was greeted by a pop-up asking for an email before she proceeded further.

After she typed in her most recently-assigned passcode, Moira’s computer screen flickered. The website fell away, replaced by a rotating purple skull and an ear-assaulting accompaniment of hold music (and considering Moira's own tastes, this current scream-sung industrial noise rap was more offensive for her inability to turn it down). All sorts of programs were being set into effect now - blocking outside surveillance tech, feeding said tech a loop of “normal” internet activity, hijacking any of the device's communication systems. It barely even felt like an invasion of privacy anymore.

Moira knew better than to expect an immediate response. She could only imagine the sort of queue into which she'd just been placed. While she waited, she retrieved her microscope and an empty vial, preparing a syringe with medical detachedness before rolling up her shirtsleeve. It had somehow been less than 24 hours since Melbourne, and some trace of whatever Agent Ziegler did must have been left within Moira’s bloodstream.

“Moira O’Deorain!” came an exclamation from her speakers as Moira finished drawing her blood. Hissing under her breath at the interruption, she sealed the vial and rested it by her microscope before turning to her computer. “This is earlier in the month than usual. Hold on, did you miss me?” the user on the other side of the computer dramatically gasped.

Whoever called themselves Sombra kept their voice digitally modified, never showing their face. Moira didn’t know if they were human or omnic, and would never assume a gender based on simple linguistics. While such a total lack of information of course bothered her, she had found that one couldn’t be picky about their allies within her field of study. “I need a background check,” she said as she bandaged her arm. “Anything that you can find on one Angela Ziegler, in Overwatch’s medical division. She was recently reassigned as my partner.”

“Makes sense. Although coming from you, surprisingly normal.” Her screen flickered again, and Moira watched in real time as Sombra pulled up Agent Ziegler’s file. “Damn, I love having a Blackwatch inside. I always wanted to go sifting through Overwatch’s database, and then you turn up, my own personal backdoor.”

“Any luck on those tighter firewalls?” Moira tried, although Sombra’s response was expected.

“You think I wouldn’t have updated you? Honestly, I'm more concerned by the fact that protecting this is so low-priority.” A headshot appeared in front of her - not Agent Ziegler’s - accompanied by a chuckle from Sombra. “Agent Moira Líadan O’Deorain, were you trying to kill whoever was on the other side of this camera?”

“If you’re quite finished,” Moira said, more forcefully than before. Sombra gave an audible ‘you’re no fun’ sort of sigh before Moira’s (admittedly dreadful) file photo was replaced by Agent Ziegler’s. “This her?” Moira couldn't respond before Sombra continued, “I know it is, I’m just messing with you. So what would you like to know about Miss Angela Chava Ziegler?”

Right - this was why Moira dealt with Sombra in monthly doses. “I dug up her basic records myself. Try family. We’ll call my file payment.” Sombra dealt in information as much as monetary currency, and Moira could live with her professional laundry being sifted through. If she also sent the hacker copies of certain Blackwatch casefiles during tighter months for her bank account, who did that really hurt either?

Several more windows popped up, in foremost view a familiar woman with graying brown curls. “Until our Angela was recruited by Overwatch out of college, she lived with one Ilona Ziegler, paternal aunt. Lack of parents is owed to-” Sombra paused for dramatic effect. “You’ll like this, Moira. Overwatch ran in the family. Drs. Nathan Ziegler and Ilse Ebner were agents of the first generation, killed during a bombing of a relief center in Armenia, which Angela was also present at. She somehow survived - without a scratch - the same blast that killed her mother, who was right next to her.”

An audio file began to play of a man’s voice prompting in German, “Can you tell us what happened, Angela?”

It was strange to hear the younger Agent Ziegler’s voice. “I don’t remember,” she insisted, so frightened that Moira almost believed it true. But therein lay the problem - she had seen, heard, Agent Ziegler truly afraid in London.

Which wasn't to say that Moira didn't recognize the voice of this girl from fifteen years ago. It was the same voice that Moira heard whenever she listened to her own recorded account of Amelie’s abduction. She and Agent Ziegler had both just learned that forgetting was a luxury - one which they would never again earn.

“What can you find on her mother?” Loath as Moira was to consider any of Zenyatta's words, the fact was, she possessed nothing but the same name she'd now heard twice in relation to Agent Ziegler.

For all their grating temperament, Sombra was efficient. Within moments of their declaring, “On it,” Moira was staring at several photographs of a woman bearing an eerie resemblance to Agent Ziegler. In fact, Ilse Ziegler showed zero signs of her listed age at the time of her death, as though something had halted any marks that time or motherhood should have left upon her body.

“I want her family’s history. Any events involving an Ebner woman and the seemingly impossible.”

“See, this is why I like you, Moira.” Sombra sounded like they were grinning. “You keep me on my toes. You have no idea how many clients come to me asking the same, 'Sombra, can you defraud this bank account? Sombra, can you get me these weapon codes?' Now did I like sifting through fetish message boards for people with bloodletting kinks, especially when you wouldn’t tell me why? Hell no, but it was variety.”

While Sombra set to work, Moira did the same, inspecting her own blood beneath her microscope. She had hoped for abnormalities, and well - that was certainly one way of putting it. She would have preferred access to her employer’s medical tech for a cross-reference, but Moira knew better than to risk this making its way into Blackwatch’s records. At first it looked like something to do with protein counts, but when she peered closer, she felt a rush of the nostalgic sheer excitement she'd rarely felt since her university days. She knew what these were.

Nanites.

The cells at the heart of nanobiotic technology had proven a delicate subject to pin under scientific inquiry, for the nanite count of an average human’s blood was minimal to the point of near-nonexistence. Only within the past decade had science evolved to better study them, and untested theories as to their potential uses remained abound. Including the theory that got one Angela Ziegler tapped for Overwatch - that nanites were the true key to life within the human body, and if recreated synthetically in a large enough amount, might be able to reverse recent death. Perhaps their research might have someday crossed more respectable paths, had Moira's focus not been turned to other realms.

She focused on the most visible chain of nanites, frowning as they came into clearer view. The fact that they were so clear was already a decimal of natural probability, and Moira felt far too normal. The nanites couldn't still be active. If anything, she would have likened them to shells, aftereffects left behind once their task had been performed. If her eyes weren’t deceiving her, it was like they'd even woven themselves into her regular blood cells. This was something that not even Overwatch could accomplish for at least another half-decade. All for the purpose of…

“Moira, you there?” Sombra’s voice cut into her train of thought.

Pushing back from her microscope, Moira returned her focus to the globally-wanted hacker whom she spoke to with a frequency that some might call acquaintanceship. “What do you have?”

“Actually, I was going to invite you to my favorite-patrons-only stream tonight.” Sombra sounded genuinely offended. “I’m nitpicking inaccuracies in movies about the dark web. It’s more fun than, what are you going to be doing, laundry? That jacket you’re wearing could use it.” Moira’s response to that was nonverbal. “Okay, now I know how that photographer felt," Sombra huffed. "But seriously, this info is right on-brand for you.”

“By all means, don’t keep me in suspense."

“Here’s the thing - the further back you trace this kind of information, the messier it usually gets. But at a certain point, every single record of the Ebner family winds up in the same region.” Sombra pulled up satellite coordinates landing in the Black Forest, accompanied by a name that Moira recognized, but hadn’t thought on for a long while.

“Eichenwalde?” Far from an ideal lead. The Omnic Crisis’ most infamous ghost town was notoriously difficult to access - even Overwatch rarely conducted surveillance within the area anymore. It proved nigh-impossible to clear the forest of its scattered Bastion units. Civilians were thus discouraged from exploring, and the remaining omnics were left to undisturbed hibernation until they deactivated on their own. Not quite one of the triumphs over the bots that Overwatch liked touting.

“So I see this, and I’m thinking her family just came from the village, way before the Crisis.” Sombra could maintain that sardonic neutrality through anything, but a notable spike pierced that last word. Both humans and omnics had reason to feel strongly about the Crisis, of course, but still. Interesting. “But now the paper trail actually has paper, and a lot of it is the same.” Several scans of physical documents unfolded before Moira, including a medieval-era tome destroyed along with everything else in Eichenwalde’s history museum. She could bemoan that another time. Enough had been preserved within photographs to aid her purpose.

The Witch of the Wilds. Moira knew of the legend in passing, that it originated from when the region was still known as Adlersbrunn, before a fire whose sources were historically disputed led to the town’s rebuilding as Eichenwalde. A local folktale regarding a woman who struck otherwordly bargains with mortal souls for a price, with her power over a 'spark of life'.

A story, yes. But a story which Agent Ziegler had led Moira to, whether it was her intent or not.

Overwatch Headquarters, Medical Wing

“You must be Moira. I never introduced myself properly.”

“Agent Ziegler’s aunt. I do recall our earlier meeting.”

Ilona Ziegler was calmer now, although a strained tension marked her vigil over her niece's hospital bed. She stretched her hand out over Agent Ziegler’s forehead, not quite touching her. The Overwatch guest clearance bracelet slipped from beneath the cuff of her beige cardigan. “I know that she’s dying. I would like to think there was some natural reason.”

"You heard what happened?"

"I have ideas about what happened.” Ilona’s hazel eyes flashed behind her glasses. “Just like I have ideas about the night Nathan and Ilse died.”

Moira moved closer. “What can you tell me?”

“About Angela?” She cast Moira a sly look. “Aren’t you curious, for someone who’s only known her a month?”

“Not about Agent Ziegler,” Moira snapped, before reining herself back in. She supposed that she should try not to get on the bad side of the only person who might know anything of use to her. “About her mother. Anything at all about Ilse.”

Ilona’s face fell further. “I won't ask how you know that name. Ilse…" It left the same hiss within the air as when Zenyatta had spoken it. “You’re the first person, I think, who’s asked me about her in the way that mattered.”

Lowering herself into the chair beside Agent Ziegler’s bed, Ilona rested her head within her hands, a tired old woman who had already seen too much loss. Moira noticed a winking light at her throat – a Star of David pendant matching the one upon the table beside Agent Ziegler’s bed. Ilona looked up like she had forgotten that Moira was still there. “Not just any woman could have stolen my brother's heart. I tried so hard to like Ilse because of that. Well, I’m making it sound like I never succeeded. There were plenty of happy times.”

Her attention returned to Agent Ziegler’s unmoving figure. “But there were mysteries that shouldn't have been. No family. Barely a past, if she ever spoke of it. It was like Ilse Ebner came down from the sky one day, the most beautiful woman either of us had ever seen, with her sights set on my brother." She looked at Moira like she was the first person with whom Ilona had confided any of this. "I never said anything to Nathan. The last thing I needed was him thinking me jealous. And I never considered turning away Angela, afterwards.” She closed her eyes, clasping her hands within her lap. “But Ilse… I feel like she still has her spell on us, even from the grave."

Ilse’s name, breathed aloud, indeed still had power.

It floated through the room, behind Angela’s closed eyes, down into the depths of her memory. It found her standing above the center of a dark, bottomless lake, with her gaze fixed upon the shore.

When her mother’s ghost materialized there, Angela wasn’t sure whether to weep or scream.

“Angela.”

In this realm where death was not quite final, Ilse’s voice could finally be heard. “Oh, my child. I’ve always wanted to be there. I tried to watch over you. To bring you home.” Her words were soft, sending not even the slightest ripple across the water. “But you ran so far. I know you craved peace. I once thought that the most wonderful thing in the world as well. Look where that brought us.”

Not one more word, Angela wanted to beg. She was so tired of hovering, fearing the moment she would plunge into the water for good. But what else could she do?

“I’ll be here when you need me, kleine hexe,” Ilse said.

Angela wondered how cold the lake would be when she sank into its embrace.

Chapter Text

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Ilona’s words swam through Moira’s head as she entered the lobby of her apartment, forming a second-step harmony with the information from Sombra. She pictured Ilse Ziegler hovering above them all, her slender fingers twitching golden puppet strings.

The elevator was out, which gave Moira more time to think as she hiked the three flights of stairs. When she reached her floor, she didn't even notice one her neighbors walking down the hallway until they jostled into her. Moira glared at them over her shoulder, but gained little satisfaction from it.

The moment that she entered her apartment, she felt something wrong.

She went immediately for her laptop. Moira always shut it down after a call with Sombra, allowing the hacker’s backdoor programs to wipe away any remaining traces. Moira had already uploaded the data to a flashdrive, which rested currently within the inside pocket of her jacket.

The door to her room was still locked, and there were no signs that it had been forced. It was more a feeling within the air of the apartment. But in her chosen field, Moira had yet to encounter a time when anyone could rightfully accuse her of being too paranoid. Her eyes went to her microscope, still standing on her desk – and to the unoccupied space beside it. The vial of her blood that Moira, liked a damned fool, had left sitting there in her rush to talk to Ilona, was missing.

The figure in the hallway.

Moira tore back out of her apartment. When she reached the stairwell, she glimpsed a shadow turning the corner a flight below her. She took the stairs two at a time, even as she debated whether letting them know they were being tailed was wise, but a new line had been crossed now. Not even Moira’s apartment, Moira’s blood, was off limits to these people. She wasn't about to start taking the high road now.

The figure picked up their pace, but Moira cleared the bottom of the stairwell in enough time to see them exit into the subterranean parking garage. If they hoped that the prospect of a getaway vehicle would discourage her, it did the opposite. Moira was more than prepared for this to become a race, hell, for her body to be dragged through the streets with her arm clamped inside a car door -

A hand latched onto her shoulder. “Agent O’Deorain. Fancy running into you.”

Moira forced herself into cool neutrality as she turned to the owner of the voice. “I could say the same for you, Captain.”

“There’s a bakery on this street that I like to stop by, when I get the chance. Vincent and I can’t get enough of their pies.” Morrison’s face through this lie was incredulously straight, considering the emptiness of his hands and the impeccability of his timing in intercepting Moira.

She shook free of his grip. If he thought that bit of solidarity would lower her guard, he was grievously wrong. “Let’s speak frankly, Captain. As you might have noticed, I’m in a hurry.”

“There are other priorities that you can consider.”

Well, he was laying it out in the open. Wasn’t this what Moira had been waiting for, confirmation that she was too close for denial? With Agent Ziegler disposed of, the chain of command had nobody left but themselves to further obstruct Moira. “How lamentable for Overwatch, if it falls to the likes of me to look out for your agent. Or has Agent Ziegler been reassigned to a position that would befit someone of her qualifications while she lies comatose?”

“You're responsible for where Agent Ziegler is now as much as Overwatch," Morrison matched her same tone, one that an unobservant listener would write off as detached. "That’s not going to happen to anyone else under me. You work for Overwatch, Agent O’Deorain, do you understand? The problems you concern yourself with are the ones handed down to you.” He drew back, rubbing at one of his eyes. In that moment, he looked just as fatigued as what Moira refused to let overtake her. His voice was different when he spoke next; more rushed, less flat. “Right now, you’re heading in a direction that will lead them straight to you.”

“What are you on about?” Moira’s lip curled, but a rogue shot of fear chilled her blood. There had been more than one figure within that Paris alleyway.

“You’re not meant to know. That’s the point.”

“Overwatch owes Agent Ziegler more than sitting and doing nothing.”

The drive that Moira put behind Agent Ziegler’s name, the last individual who she would have expected to be the center of this argument, seemed to strike Morrison. His words came heavier. “She was a good soldier. But there’s nothing you can do to bring her back, Agent O’Deorain.”

“You say that as though she's already dead."

A weak sound almost like a laugh escaped Morrison. “Listen to yourself, Agent O’Deorain. That’s all you are. An agent, who has no idea.”

Moira stalked up to him, glad that her height put them at eye level. “Have you really come here just to tell me that, Captain?”

He stiffened back into form. “I used to be you. I've been where you are now. But you’re not me, Agent O’Deorain. You don’t have the heart yet.” Morrison met Moira’s gaze, and even for someone who must have sold his soul so many times, there was such little light behind his eyes. “Walk away. Grieve for Agent Ziegler, if it strikes you. But never look back. You might find that you’ll be able to live with yourself, and if you can? That's the next time we'll talk.”

Something clattered further down the garage. Moira seized the distraction, taking off in the direction of the figure before Morrison could call after her. He could undoubtedly outpace her in a clear-cut chase - Moira would never have laid claim to top marks within the physical portion of Blackwatch conditioning - but she suspected that only one of them had reason to prioritize stealth.

Moira was gaining on the figure, chasing them into a maintenance corridor. Strange, that they weren’t breaking for the street level. Distressing, depending on what corner they might turn. Moira had her own reasons for being so familiar with this garage and these tunnels, but it was a chance of luck that she hazarded to reckon that few people came down here to begin with, let alone that none would likely linger long enough to wonder why the air sometimes smelled of raw meat.

She thanked whatever might be listening that today wouldn't be that day, as she followed the footsteps into the basement of what she mentally mapped as the laundromat down her street. She thanked her common sense to have not set down her blaster after entering her apartment. “Don’t turn around.” Moira leveled the weapon at the figure's back. “Put one hand on the wall. Keep the other on the back of your head.”

The figure gave a huff, but after a tense second, they complied. Moira would have normally relished the moment of unmasking who else Overwatch had tasked with keeping an eye on her, but what had Morrison told her? Priorities.

She frisked them, sliding her hand into their coat pocket and retrieving the vial of her blood. “Why does Morrison want this?”

The figure slammed themselves backwards into Moira, knocking them both to the ground. Before she could fire, they grabbed a loose piece of piping on the floor and slammed it into her hand.

She cried out as something gave way, as she heard bone crunch. Despite her reckless youth, Moira had never actually broken a bone. Enough years of medical school though, and she knew the textbook definitions of each sensation rapidly rippling through her hand. Her grip on the vial loosened. Her traitorous vision blurred, but not so much that she didn’t see the figure stooping to collect the blood once more.

Another pair of footsteps stormed into the room. Moira pushed her brain through the shock to register Morrison, rushing not towards her, but the figure.

Morrison grabbed their hand and twisted it behind their back. They let out a scream as something cracked. Moira was delirious enough to wonder if bone could produce different mediums of sound, if the figure's could conquer the severity of hers. Morrison was merciless, further snapping the figure’s wrist back and forcing them to their knees. With his other hand, he picked up Moira’s blaster from the floor. “Stay there,” he warned. Whether to the figure or Moira was anyone's guess.

Moira pushed herself to her feet, trying to ignore the pain holding her right hand in a vice. “Wait,” she tried to demand, and Morrison pointed the blaster – not at her.

“Do you want to see what it takes to find the truth, Agent O’Deorain? Do you want to know what I know?”

In a sense, his implication wasn’t so far off. Moira had killed. Creatures, monsters, stand-ins for the one that had taken everything from her. The one that she hadn't shown mercy upon haunted her every day. But – she had to admit. Never a human.

“Walk away,” Morrison repeated. His face shifted through a series of expressions that didn’t quite fit together, before he stiffly handed the blaster hilt-first back to her. There was a moment where both of their hands rested upon its smooth chrome casing, a tug-of-war that neither wanted to lose. Then he gritted his teeth, relinquishing the weapon back to Moira. “I’ll attend to this.”

He had the blood. Moira was down one hand. She hadn’t been smart enough this time.

This was all that she deserved.

Moira turned her back on Morrison, cradling her wounded hand inside her jacket. It had lost sensation by now, but she still waited until she was secure inside her apartment before hastily taping a med-patch over her crooked-several-ways fingers. Only then did she retrieve Sombra’s flashdrive from her inner pocket.

Moira had blood to spare. Morrison hadn’t taken what was really one of a kind.

***

Angela had never thought on her resemblance to her mother.

Was it something another child might have entertained? If Angela herself would have grown into the realization in a different adolescence? She had been something of a late bloomer, her body only just beginning to grow like a foreign plant on the night of the bombs.

No, it hadn’t been a bomb that killed Ilse. Angela had always known that truth.

They were still within the realm of the lake from Angela’s drowning nightmare. Angela had looked down to find herself clad in the same threadbare shift, looked back up to find it mirrored on her mother’s ghost. Angela had understood then, that this was a dream passed down to her like blonde hair or the shape of a face. An accompaniment to Ilse’s other gift.

From where she stood on the bank, Ilse stepped out over the water, one bare foot poised over its oblivion. Angela opened her mouth to cry a warning, but then – Ilse floated. Her other foot in front of the first atop the water, and she walked right up to Angela like she was a child again and Ilse was picking her up from school.

“Hello, mein kleine hexe,” she sighed.

Angela thought, if she tried to speak now, words would come. She just couldn’t.

Ilse seemed to understand, taking one of Angela’s hands. “You know, I never listened when people would say that ‘life is short’. Women like us, don’t we have all the time in the world? Magic brings about its own rewards.”

A tear slipped unbidden down Angela’s cheek. Remorse aged Ilse’s face as she reached to wipe it away. “But then, that last night, I knew. I understood, Angela. That one way or another, I would never see you in the same place again. So, if I only had one span of a heartbeat, one breath of life, I would have rather given it to you than kept you for myself. Even if I couldn’t explain how, or why, to you until now.”

Angela began to tremble. She pulled her own hand back from Ilse’s, wrapping her arms around herself until her breathing felt steady enough. “Why? I just grew up afraid of it. All I thought of magic was that it took you from me.”

“And I would give it away again,” Ilse swore. “If it meant that I could have one more second with you. Somewhere that wasn’t here.”

She drew back, while Angela was still processing those words. “But speaking of which,” Ilse sighed, “there remains the matter of what did bring you here. I know you’ve tried to ignore your magic. But even after all these years, you still had the strength to use my blessing on someone else.”

Pacing atop the water, Ilse seemed to rehearse her next words in her head. “The bloodline that we hail from… it holds some of the oldest magic imaginable. Life and death itself. For a long time, the shadows of death called louder to our ancestors. But I chose light. I swore that I would raise you the same. In doing so, I turned my back on something that already holds its fair share of ancient grudges. This will not be its only attempt to claim you, Angela.”

“Death magic does come easier. Because life magic calls for bargains. Kill someone, and you need only wait for the magic to replenish. Heal someone, and you do so at the risk of leaving yourself unguarded. And raising someone from the dead – it’s a trick even we can only accomplish once, if the equivalence provided is ourselves. But when I used my breath of life on you, a strange thing happened. It saved you, but it was not exhausted. I would say it was, more accurately, transferred.”

“Perhaps it’s the same witch’s blood within you. But that’s what brought you here, rather than demanding your life straightaway. My breath of life has been truly used up now, passed into whoever you spared with it. But the one that you were born with?” Ilse prodded a finger into the hollow of Angela’s collarbone, right above her chest. “It’s still yours. And should you use it again, it will be your final charge.”

Angela had imagined conversations of this nature, dozens of times. She had expected to feel confusion. Resentment.

Not hope.

But, now that Ilse was able to explain things, Angela began to realize that death didn’t feel as close over her shoulder as before. Perhaps, if she dived into the lake, she would not drown, but only surface somewhere else.

The thought was mirrored on Ilse’s face, sorrow and pride in one. “We will be together again, Angela. But not now.”

Angela took one last look through the mist, at the trees and the shore. At her mother. “I’ll try to believe that.”

When she fell into the water, it held her with the knowledge that it had been waiting.

***

Morning dawned on the wreck that had been made of Moira’s apartment. She knew this fault was hers, at least.

Sleep had been the furthest thing from her mind, so she had decided to read a book. Then, after the first several mentions of blood within the text of Dracula, she had decided that the med-patch had done its job well enough on her hand for Moira to fill up another vial (now taped to the underside of the desk in her remaining-locked bedroom, for good measure). This led her to better document her second round of examination on the blood, which called for a notebook, charts, and cross-references with at least half a dozen other scientific publications, one of which being Agent Ziegler’s lauded graduate thesis itself. After all this, Moira only felt more awake, which led to her actually watching television, of all things, for a grand total of eight minutes before she remembered why her chosen media consumption was so carefully cultivated. That was when the first rays of sunlight had begun to filter through her living room blinds.

When her phone rang and she saw that the number came from Overwatch, Moira debated the odds of it being a dismissal. Still, she answered. “O’Deorain, here.”

The initial sound of Ana Amari’s voice strengthened Moira’s sureness that she was about to be given an hour to clear out her office. Then she heard Agent Ziegler’s name.

***

“Hello again, Moira.” Ilona Ziegler’s smile was more genuine now, when Moira entered Agent Ziegler’s hospital room.

A soft laugh came from the bed. “’Moira’ already? Just how well have you two gotten to know each other?”

Moira turned to face Agent Ziegler, only to be greeted by… a strange sense. Like this was some sort of betrayal.

This was the scenario that she had spent the past year envisioning with Amelie, in place of Agent Ziegler. The phone call. The hospital room. The against-all-odds of it all. This wasn’t right.

And yet, it was.

“I brought you something.” Moira strode into the room, holding out a hastily wrapped package to Agent Ziegler. The other woman eyed the book as she unveiled it.

“The complete works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson?”

“My personal collection. On loan, of course.”

“Oh, well, I knew there was a reason to keep living.”

Agent Ziegler set the book down beside her, while Ilona motioned for Moira to sit. Moira shook her head. “I’m sure you want to get some rest, but I felt it only right to visit.”

“How flattering,” Agent Ziegler remarked. Something about her seemed different, Moira thought, more than just the fact that she was no longer comatose. In this moment, Agent Ziegler seemed somehow more complete.

Whatever it was, Moira supposed there would be plenty time more for her to discern it.

***

Under the mountain of the Shambali, the confinement of shadows was just the same as Zenyatta remembered it. He reached for his Shadows in return. Their pull was strong enough to make the three monks escorting him vibrate with anxiety.

“I am truly sorry that it has had come to this, Zenyatta,” the head monk claimed as they ushered him into the confinement cell. “Perhaps the light of the Iris can still call you back to us, one day.”

The sentiment didn’t stop them from sealing him in.

No matter. Zenyatta could wait. He would wait, he and his Shadows, because the Abyss had promised to reward him. He had whispered its bidding, brought it the one it sought. He had sworn himself to the Abyss, made himself one with its power. He called on that power again, so close to the place beneath this mountain where it had first seized him.

Nothing.

What? Something had to be wrong. Zenyatta tried again. He felt a faint slither among the cords of his consciousness, a single tendril of shadow caressing its prey – before deciding that there were better catches to be hunted.

The corruption remaining within Zenyatta died right there. Which, of course, left only him. Imprisoned with that for so long, barely any trace of his own identity remained. Beyond his knowledge that he was still trapped. Still betrayed.

And it would be a very long time before anything else came to set him free.

Chapter Text

"I'm not killing people. I'm killing boys."

Ferncomb, Virginia, U.S.A.

Orange dots of candlelight illuminated the clearing, a paint-by-numbers glowing through the darkness of the night. The assembled crowd was nothing to scoff at, close to fifty or sixty, all teenagers. They stood in a crescent of respectful distance from the boy at their center, whose strained voice belied the tears that he was refusing to let fall down his cheeks.

“I remember he and I all the way back to kindergarten. I know it sounds dumb, but he really was like a brother to me. We had good times, ones I’ll never forget. Shared all kinds of shit.”

He paused, long enough for the sniffles and sobs of several others to build the tension for him. But at the edge of the crowd, two girls were significantly less moved. While none were able to see them in the shadows of the group, they only stared the boy down through his eulogy, their gazes narrowing into glares at this last sentence.

If he felt it, though, the boy didn’t let on. “Right now, we’ve all got to stick together, and protect each other. That’s what Daniel would have wanted. I mean, if the rumors are true…” A hush fell over the clearing, and the boy seemed to second-guess if it was wise to invite this topic in. But everyone’s eyes were on him, and Kenny Edison had never been one to disappoint a crowd.

“If someone comes for us – any of us – we’re not letting that happen. We’ll kick the asses of anyone who tries! Because that’s what Daniel would have done, for anyone on his team!” His voice crescendoed, riding the surge of the crowd’s emotion, and all of them responded with a homecoming-worthy rallying cry of their own.

Almost all of them.

The memorial service scattered about the clearing afterwards, finding Kenny leaning against his car and sighing. A whole month without Daniel. Not that people hadn’t been freaked out before, but Daniel had always felt untouchable.

“Kenny, you okay?”

He jumped in spite of himself. His eyes adjusted better to the low light of the clearing, and now he recognized the two figures who had joined him. Brigitte Lindholm’s signature ponytail had caught his focus first, making her look even taller than she really was – and she was one of the only girls in their school who could meet Kenny at eye level. As for who was beside her, Kenny could have guessed even without the candlelight’s confirmation. Hana Song.

He stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, trying to play off his alarm. “Yeah.”

“That was a beautiful speech,” Hana chimed in.

“I guess. I didn’t really practice it.”

“So, you believe the rumors?” Brigitte pressed closer, her expression unreadable.

“Yeah, Brig, we’re all gonna get killed by a cult! I mean, who even came up with that?” Hana was clearly trying to mess with her best friend, but her voice was undercut by the same nervousness that Brigitte let fill hers freely. Kenny had to admit, he probably would have laughed it off before too. Before Daniel, exactly a month after Oliver. Who was found exactly a month after –

“I hate to ask, but would you mind giving us a ride home?” Brigitte continued. “We walked here before the sun went down, and, well…”

“No, totally,” Kenny shook his head. “Like I said. We’ve got to stick together.”

There wasn’t much conversation to fill the car, and listening to the radio felt wrong. Brigitte sat shotgun beside him, cringing at every shadow that passed outside the window. Kenny couldn’t see as much of Hana in the backseat, but her own posture was stiff too.

“You know what keeps getting me?” Brigitte started. “I don’t like people saying that the next victim could be anyone. They haven’t been just anyone. Our school isn’t that big. We all know each other.”

“And it’s been our class, too – the seniors,” Hana added.

“Yeah, like someone just really has a bone to pick with us. Although that wouldn’t make sense. I mean, what have any of us done?” Brigitte noticed Kenny tightening his hands on the steering wheel. “Oh, sorry, Kenny. I know Daniel and Oliver were your friends. We shouldn’t be talking about this in your car.”

“It’s fine.” The girls were right to be scared. Kenny wasn’t going to be the asshole who told them to feel something else. “Seriously, I wouldn’t have wanted either of you walking home alone tonight. It’s a good thing the three of us are together.”

“Yeah,” Hana echoed from the backseat. “A really good thing.” Her normally bubbly cheerleader's voice was frigid, sending a chill down Kenny’s spine. No, it wasn’t his imagination. For some reason, it was like the air conditioning in his car had gone from appropriate for the late March night to the inside of a freezer.

His eyes went back to Hana’s shadowed reflection in the rearview mirror, just as they passed beneath the lone streetlight marking the otherwise-empty backroad. Kenny’s stomach flipped over, and he nearly veered the car off the road.

“What the hell, Kenny?” Brigitte’s voice came from beside him, but she didn’t sound alarmed. Almost like she was messing with him, the same tone as Hana’s earlier dismissal of the cult story. “Hana, do you think we’re safe in here with this maniac at the wheel?”

“Relax, Brig. We’re not the people he could hurt the worst.” As Hana finished saying those words, Kenny could hear the grin in her voice.

Just as a rattle filled the car.

Knowing that it was a mistake, he looked back at Hana again. At who had appeared beside her in the empty backseat.

“No. No way in hell!” He shook his head. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

The rattle hissed again, the inverse of a breath. “You… would… know…”

The car shuddered beneath Kenny, pulling over of its own accord. He tried to whip the steering wheel back around, to no avail. “Please! I’m not like them! I’m sorry!”

“He loves me,” Brigitte began in a sing-song voice.

“He loves me not,” Hana picked up, matching her tone.

“He loves me…” Every word out of that girl-thing’s mouth was stolen from Kenny’s lungs, tightening in his throat.

All three girls shrieked the last words that Kenny would ever hear in mutual glee. “He loves me not!”

There was a passage of time before Brigitte and Hana emerged from the car. “Ugh, I shouldn’t have worn these boots,” Hana groaned, looking down at the chunky heels of her shoes. “All this walking is going to kill the soles.”

“Hey, the big one-eight’s coming up,” Brigitte suggested. “I think some new shoes are the least you could ask for.”

“Who says a girl can’t have it all?” Hana clasped Brigitte’s hand in hers, as warmth returned to the air. The night watched their walk home, the new presence of the twin planet-stars in the sky illuminating the girls all the way.

Two days later

“Moira, the map says to turn right at this intersection.”

“How interesting. Our American counterpart sent me directions to turn left.”

“At the intersection?”

“At the stoplight.”

Angela looked out the car window with more than a hint of skepticism. America’s landscapes never ceased to amaze her, and not often in good ways. Within just an hour, she and Moira had left behind the sleek contemporary harmony of Washington, D.C. for a one-lane backroad that had likely been considered old a century ago.

Their surroundings were bare on all sides, save for a lost-looking outlet of two buildings that consisted of a private business and what appeared to be a restaurant by the name of “Mustard’s Last Stand”. Despite the ambiguity of what food such an establishment might serve, Angela’s stomach grumbled an insistent reminder that she hadn’t eaten since before boarding their flight the night before.

“This isn’t a stoplight, Moira, it’s a stop sign,” she pointed out.

“Well, I feel fairly certain that’s what she meant.”

Angela’s stomach gave another loud objection of its own before she could engage Moira in a full-blown debate over the semantics of road directories. They were stopped here anyways, and Angela had chosen a career of taking chances. “You know, just pull over. I’m hungry.”

“What about our assignment?” Moira prompted, although the disdain in her voice was undoubtedly more for Angela’s chosen lunch destination.

“What about me not having to investigate on an empty stomach, thereby drastically increasing the likelihood of us actually making headway?”

Moira lifted her hands from the steering wheel in surrender. “Fine, then, let it be your funeral.”

Mustard’s Last Stand, as it turned out, was a slightly – just slightly – more upscale version of a hot dog cart. The interior walls were painted a green so bright it offended the eyes, although only small patches showed through the various photographs and oddities hung along them. Among the collection, Angela counted a painting of a UFO, a collage of hammered-together license plates, and a framed vintage tabloid bearing the cover story of a woman who claimed to have given birth to a werewolf baby. “Moira, you’re among your own,” Angela resisted the urge to comment as her glowering partner ducked beneath the doorframe.

All three pages of the “menu”, consisting of increasingly bizarre modifications on the basic beef hot dog, would have normally horrified Angela. But somewhere in the intersection between her logic and her stomach, the latter had won out several miles back, and Angela decided to try following where it led her today.

This newfound openness was not shared, and did not stop Moira from asking in disgust, “What on Earth is that?” as Angela brought a hot dog to her mouth a few minutes later.

The noise that escaped Angela’s vocal chords at that first bite would have normally been a source of embarrassment to her for months to come. It was too late for shame though, not when her taste buds were drowning in a damningly wonderful matrimony of beef, carbs, and condiments. After blotting at her smudged lipstick with a paper napkin, Angela paused in her devouring long enough to elaborate, “That is called the Firecracker. On top of the hot dog goes the traditional ketchup, as well as an additional serving of fries, melted cheese, garlic, and sriracha sauce.”

Moira’s eyes went between Angela and the already half-eaten hot dog in disbelief. “Who are you and what have you done with my coworker?”

Angela didn’t know. She couldn’t recall the last time she had craved any of these individual components, let alone why they had seemed to scream her name when she scanned over them together on the menu. When in America, she was willing to chalk it up.

“I can’t watch this,” Moira muttered as Angela moved in on the rest of the hot dog. If Agent Ziegler really wanted to court a second near-death experience within a month of her first, she wouldn’t catch any shred of sentimentality from Moira over this set of circumstances.

Moira exited the booth, making her way to examine the wall separating the restaurant from its neighboring business. The advertised service printed on the door earned an audible scoff from her. “Oh, better and better.”

Moira O’Deorain considered herself an open-minded woman, but there were two things which she absolutely refused to waste a moment’s thought on the credibility of within her field of research. One, as she had discussed with Agent Ziegler over Tekhartha Zenyatta’s case file, was the existence of most purported deities.

The other was astrology.

In fact, Moira felt superior enough to intellectually wager with herself, the day that astrology might ever prove a valid tool in one of Moira’s cases would be the day when she would sink down to a low on the depths of what Agent Ziegler was polishing off as Moira returned to the booth. “Had enough?”

“I think so.” Agent Ziegler was now touching up the delicate pink of her lipstick in a compact mirror. The familiarity of the gesture, just the same as what Amelie had always done whenever she and Moira went out to dinner somewhere, sent an unexpected pang through Moira.

She shook it off before Agent Ziegler could register the momentary effect that she had unintentionally cast. “Come on, then,” Moira said, straightening her jacket. “Let’s get back to the murder we were sent here to investigate.”

Their Overwatch counterpart for this region of America was a woman by the name of Agent Maru, whose earlier-messaged directions to Moira seemed to be leading them straight to a church. Moira could only hope this assignment wouldn’t turn out to be in one of those American towns. How it had found its way to Amari before coming down to Moira and Agent Ziegler, she didn’t even want to know.

“A right turn,” Agent Ziegler reminded her as Moira restarted the car, somewhat unnecessarily prodding her finger through the holographic map projected by her own phone. Moira would have taken Agent Ziegler’s inexplicable, if uncanny, sixth sense over this incessant harping.

Not wanting to idle here any longer, Moira raised her eyebrows, guiding the car to the right. Agent Ziegler smirked, leaning back in her seat, and Moira waited until her guard had been let down just long enough before she jerked the vehicle around and sped them back through the intersection.

“Sorry, Ziegler,” she grinned at the sound of her coworker’s exasperated sputter. “If I drive, then I decide.”

Heaven’s Harvest Church, Ferncomb, Virginia

“Lots of people liked Kenny Edison. Everyone figured he had a bright future, until he was found hanging in the woods two days ago. Third boy from the local high school in as many months.” Their Blackwatch counterpart for this region of America was a young woman by the name of Agent Maru, who eagerly filled Angela and Moira in from the back of the funeral currently taking place. Angela recognized that enthusiasm and awe of her senior agents, and she guessed this was likely only Agent Maru’s second or third time helming a field assignment.

Moira checked Agent Maru’s own notes that had been given to both her and Angela along with the case file. “But you said that many believe there is some sort of cult at work?”

Agent Maru looked dead serious. “I’d be careful how loud you say that. The opinion has gotten a lot more popular since Kenny.”

“Based on what evidence?” Angela had to counter. These investigations went easier if she didn’t let Moira get too wound up too early in.

“Eyewitness accounts,” Agent Maru said. “Listen, Agent Ziegler, I know how it sounds. I wouldn’t be giving it weight if it wasn’t all falling together like so.”

“If you detect a hint of skepticism or incredulity in Agent Ziegler’s voice, that’s because she’s getting ready to bring in the overwhelming evidence that virtually all claims of sacrificial cult activities over the last century have gone on to be debunked as the imagination of mass hysteria,” Moira added in, although if Angela wasn’t mistaken, her voice seemed to pitch higher in a semi-imitation of Angela during that second half.

Agent Maru grimaced. “Well, if that’s true, you’re going to have a hard time convincing the locals. The story that the two girls who were with Kenny Edison on the night he died are telling has them even more riled up.”

That caught Angela’s attention. “Have they been formally interviewed?”

“By myself,” Agent Maru nodded.

“Together or separate?”

The younger woman frowned at the concern in Angela’s voice. “Together. Why?”

Angela did feel some sympathy for her, but in the field, one often had to learn as the lessons came along, and this was amateur stuff. “Then you have no way of determining whether these girls’ story was fabricated. Let me guess, they told you about… a wild beast barging into a black mass, the drinking of blood, the sacrifice of an infant – or, perhaps, a blonde virgin?”

She was aware that both Agent Maru and Moira were looking at her with surprise after her rattling off this occult laundry list. But Angela was the daughter of a witch, and even in her youth before she had fully understood what that meant, she had most certainly done her homework.

“Yes, that’s… that’s it. Excuse me,” Agent Maru unconvincingly coughed, before turning around and heading for the water cooler in the corner of the room.

“Was that supposed to be an exit?” Angela murmured to Moira.

The concern on Moira’s face over their American liaison’s qualifications was a more humored brand than what Angela was feeling. “You don’t suppose she’s a virgin, do you?”

At that, Angela resisted the urge to toss her own hair over her shoulder. “I doubt she’s a natural blonde.”

“He really was like a brother to me,” the teenage speaker at the podium unconvincingly eulogized, before someone gasped from the front row of mourners. Both Angela and Moira’s heads snapped towards the memorial, and not a moment too soon. They watched along with the wide-eyed crowd as smoke began to rise from the coffin containing the body of one Kenny Edison, before it burst into flames.

People began to scream, and even though Angela met eyes with Agent Maru from across the room, they struggled to reach one another through the sea of stampeding bodies attempting to evacuate the church. “Alright, everybody, stay calm!” Agent Maru tried ordering, while Moira used the advantage of her height to get a better view of the burning coffin.

“I don’t know, Agent Ziegler,” she managed to deadpan, even among the chaos. “Maybe we and the people of this town are just imagining that, too.”

First the car, now this. Angela would have truly killed in this moment to know what Moira’s problem was today. This wasn’t like what had become their usual disagreements on the natures of cases. If Angela hadn’t known anything whatsoever about Moira, she would have described it as downright… petty.

Moira and Agent Maru gained better control over the crowd once everyone was out of the chapel, and Angela joined them in herding people together for testimonies before sending them off. None of them saw Brigitte Lindholm and Hana Song, rising from where they had crouched behind one of the pews, their hands still clasped together as they and their three shadows watched the last of Kenny’s world burn.

Chapter Text

"What is your damage?"

“My name is Brigitte Lindholm.” The teenage girl paused to comb her fingers through her thick ponytail before leaning back into the microphone across from Angela. “I go to Ferncomb High School, and I’m a senior with a 3.9 GPA.”

“I’m Hana Song.” Moira had to hand it to this girl, she didn’t look whatsoever fazed by sitting in the presence of a Blackwatch agent. She smacked her bubblegum pink-glossed lips into the microphone. “I go to Ferncomb High School, I’m a senior with a 3.7 GPA, and I’m on the cheerleading squad with my best friend, Brigitte.”

“I’m on the cheerleading squad with my best friend, Hana,” Brigitte continued from the other room. “We plan to go to college together in the fall. I’m majoring in European history, her in game design.”

“That sounds very interesting,” Angela nodded. “I remember my own college days quite well. But if you don’t mind, could you tell me exactly what happened the night of Kenny Edison’s death?”

Brigitte’s face fell, and she looked off to the side. “Kenny – he was giving us a ride home, when all of a sudden he swerved off the road.”

“It was like he had been possessed or something,” Hana breathed, looking Moira dead in the eyes. “He made us get out of the car and walk to this clearing, where there were these people in black robes, holding candles. I couldn’t see any of their faces, but I knew they couldn’t be up to anything good.”

Moira frowned. At the risk of sounding like Agent Ziegler, this was already getting far-fetched for her tastes. “How exactly did you know that?”

“Well…” Brigitte shuddered, a wall apart. “They were all standing around this – I guess it was an altar. One of them had a long knife, like a snake, with ruby eyes on the handle. At first, I thought we were dead, because we all heard the rumors that the dead boys had been sacrificed or something…”

"But instead, they just-” Hana’s voice broke, tears welling up in her eyes practically on cue. “Do I have to keep going?”

“Do your best,” Moira and Angela prompted the girls at once, unbeknownst to any of them.

Brigitte wrapped her arms around herself, although something about the gesture felt empty. “The guy with the knife started chanting. He said they – they were bringing forth a baby to sacrifice. And there was a mass grave on the edge of town that they were going to bury it in.”

“Everybody else started chanting after that, and once I was able to tear my eyes away from that knife… Brig and I just ran for our lives.” Hana’s tinny voice rang out from the recording of Moira’s interview, echoing off the cold metal walls of the morgue. Agent Maru shook her head as the projection flickered back into the holo-recorder.

“Their stories are virtually identical. They corroborate each other.”

Angela couldn’t describe her own feelings as merely unconvinced. “I don’t suppose there have been any actual reports of stolen infants, or mass graves being uncovered anywhere in town, or that you found any evidence of a black mass?”

“No,” Agent Maru stopped, the conflict spelled out across her face. “No, in fact, we haven’t.”

“The problem is that those details could have been taken from a book in their school’s library,” Angela continued before Moira could get a word in. “As horrible as it sounds, the story that these girls told is borderline cliché.”

“If you detect a hint of impatience in Agent Ziegler’s voice, that’s because witnesses to infamous accounts of cult activity were often prompted in their statements by rumors of stories being circulated despite a lack of any evidence to support them.” Angela definitely wasn’t imagining the less-than-flattering imitation within Moira’s voice this time. A part of her couldn’t help but wonder, was this really all that the other agent thought of her?

Angela understood the torn look on Agent Maru's face, between sticking to her theory and arguing it against senior agents. “But - how do you explain the burning coffin?”

“Don’t ask me,” Moira scoffed from the corner of the room, staring down into her provided paper cup of coffee with disdain before flicking her eyes up to Angela.

Turning to the matter that had brought the agents down to the morgue, Angela sighed and carefully shifted the scorched lid of the coffin to the side. This was perhaps the first time that the deceased body was of least immediate concern to her. “There have been incidents where the embalming fluid used to preserve the body has caused chemical reactions that produced heat and burning. I see nothing here that would suggest otherwise.”

“What is that?” Agent Maru’s voice momentarily pitched before she coughed, pointing a finger towards what remained of Kenny Edison’s torso. “That pattern, there,” she clarified in a deliberately steady tone.

“Yes, I see it,” Moira confirmed, although she couldn’t possibly have from her vantage point by the door. Moving closer to the autopsy table, she joined Agent Maru in hovering over the coffin, leaving Angela feeling something of a third wheel in what should have been her domain. “I would dare to venture that it resembles some sort of horned figure. A goat, perhaps.”

“A horned figure?” Angela elbowed her way between the other two agents. She followed Moira and Agent Maru’s fingers to a burn that – perhaps, if viewed from an exact angle, with enough ideas in place to lead one to the picture – looked kind of like a horned beast. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I think you two are seeing something that isn’t there.”

“No, right here, look. You see?” Agent Maru insisted. “The horns are right there!”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see horns right there.” Snapping on a surgical glove, Angela turned to Moira, raising an eyebrow in a clear ‘don’t you have your own work to be doing?’ sort of way.

Agent Maru’s face fell again at another dismissal. Poor thing, she really was just trying to make sense of a strange case. “Well, whatever you say, Agent Ziegler.” Walking out of the morgue, she paused just long enough to make Angela feel bad before offering back over her shoulder, “Call me if you need anything further.”

“If it’s no bother,” Moira leaned in closer to Angela with a smirk, “perhaps you can get me a few photographs of that thing which bears absolutely no resemblance to a horned beast?”

“Sure!” Angela’s patience gave out, her answer louder than intended. “Fine.”

Moira stepped back, all satisfaction as she followed after Agent Maru. “Whatever,” Angela muttered, turning her back on Moira and to the work in front of her. The emotion that Moira was stirring in her currently might very well lead to spontaneous combustion on Angela’s part, she thought.

***

While Agent Ziegler was presumably digging up to her elbows in charred human cavities, Moira set about some proper fieldwork. There had to be something lying beneath the tranquil veneer of this town, for the prevailing cult theory to have set in so quickly. No better way to begin deducing what than through simple scientific observation.

As afternoon began giving way to dusk, Moira found herself walking down the sidewalk of one of Ferncomb’s residential neighborhoods, several pages of the notepad in her jacket pocket already darkened with testimonials. She stopped to watch a dog roll around in the grass of someone’s front lawn, a Great Dane by the looks of it. The sight brought Moira feeling dangerously close to sentimental. The only member of her family she remained on speaking terms with was an old widowed aunt of hers, who had taken on the care of Moira’s own dog, Cecily, following Moira’s partnership with Blackwatch.

“Agent O’Deorain!” a voice called. Within another moment, a car pulled up beside her, Agent Maru’s blonde head leaning out the window. “Fancy running into you again! I hope I’m not interrupting any kind of investigation?”

“Not immediately.” Moira leaned her hands into her pockets, tilting her head back to the lavender sky. Surprising herself, she found she wasn’t as irritated by the presence of the young American agent as she normally would have been. “I was merely pondering why the owners of that magnificent canine aren’t keeping it inside, what with the looming threat of animal-sacrificing cults.”

“I would have thought your research would have debunked that theory,” Agent Maru frowned. “You and Agent Ziegler don’t have to hide how you feel about me, you know. I’m just the fresh-out-of-training rookie you two got stuck with.”

Well, now, such disparaging talk seemed unnecessary. “First of all, I would like to apologize for Agent Ziegler’s ill-mannered behavior.” Moira climbed into the car without a proper invitation, although Agent Maru made no move to remove her. “She can be a touch – shall we say, rigid? Not that it’s always a character flaw on her part, except for today. What I’m trying to say, Agent Maru, is that I personally attempt to keep a more open mind.”

Agent Maru turned her face away from Moira, her focus redirected to the road (it felt strange to not be the one driving, Moira thought). The drive passed in a silence that Moira couldn’t quite place the mood of, until Agent Maru finally spoke up, “You know, Agent O’Deorain, I’ve never met another agent like you. Not even after I got tapped for Blackwatch.”

“At the risk of sounding banal, that’s because you never will.” Moira looked out the window, realizing that Agent Maru was driving past the outskirts of Ferncomb. In fact, they were pulling up right back outside the hot dog restaurant that providence forgot. “Why, exactly though, are we here?”

“You were going to let me buy you dinner?” Agent Maru grinned from the driver’s seat, so earnest that Moira was half-inclined to believe her until she pointed to the restaurant’s neighboring business. “Actually, I had an idea for how we might be able to chase down a lead. It’s a little unorthodox, but…”

Sure enough, a neon “OPEN” sign was now flickering from the window of the astrologer’s establishment. Moira almost climbed out of the car and prepared to walk back right then.

Back to what, though? To Agent Ziegler, with her mysteries, her dismissive denials, her inconsiderate lipstick blotting? That peculiar feeling reared up inside Moira again, pushing her focus back towards Agent Maru.

“SIGMA: astrology, readings, numerology, runes” the sign continued to flash.

***

“Let me ensure that I hear you correctly,” the vaguely European-accented Sigma, real name Siebren de Kuiper according to the certificate by the door, clarified as he examined the photograph of Kenny’s burns. “You say that you observe a pattern of horns within this picture?”

“You mean to claim that you don’t see a goat here?” Moira outlined the animal’s clear silhouette with a fingernail. “Or any kind of beast?”

Sigma’s eyebrows narrowed into an impressively furrowed line. “Ah, I see, indeed. This is a trick, to try and entrap me!”

“Nobody is trying to entrap you,” Agent Maru quickly intervened, stepping between the psychic and Moira.

“Oh, yes, and I’m supposed to believe that?” Sigma shot back. “There are a plethora of blinded buffoons running about this town that like to believe I’ve entered into some dark pact with the forces beyond! The truth is much simpler, I assure you. My eyes were opened, you see, not by any supernatural enigma, but by the wonders of science-”

"Well then, what, in your scientific opinion, is going on, if I might ask as much of you?” Moira cut him off. It was really a shame. If he wasn’t so obviously delusional, Moira could envision another lifetime where they might have been colleagues.

Sigma scoffed, leaning back in the chair behind his desk. “Well, my opinion is that this entire town has – what is the American phrase? ‘Lost its marbles’. I suppose I should have been the first to see it coming, but, it’s hard being a small business owner. Really, you should see the paperwork.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Moira pressed. Sigma gestured to the looming stacks of bills and licenses taking up the majority of his desk, and Moira had to clarify, “That you ‘should have seen it coming’?”

A shadow fell over Sigma’s face. “Ah. Well, we are facing the onset of a rare planetary alignment, where Mercury, Mars, and Uranus will all have extreme influence.”

Fantastic. This sort of nonsense was exactly what Moira had known this would end in. “On what?” she asked, bringing her fingers to her temples as Agent Maru leaned in.

Sigma wagged a finger, sliding his business card across the desk towards them. “Office hours are nine to five, agents. All payment methods are accepted.”

Ferncomb High School, the next day

Hana and Brigitte stretched their legs across the chairs by the cooler, watching the boys’ basketball team practice. Despite the loss of three members now, nothing continued to stop them.

“Gavin Yates,” Hana pointed to a well-built member of the point guard. “He was friends with Oliver too, you know.”

Brigitte frowned, but she said, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Hana nudged her with her foot. “What’s up, Brig? I know you can’t be feeling sorry for any of them.” As if to confirm her point, two of the players started shouting at each other, their teammates closing into a circle with them at the middle as they hashed it out. “Can you believe people who still act like them are almost adults?” Hana pressed. “It’s such a depressing thought.”

The coach rushed over and broke up the fight before any real damage could be dealt to either offending player. A time-out was called, and the boys dispersed around the gymnasium, clustering in their own groups. One particularly brave member, the newly appointed team captain now that Kenny was out of the picture, walked right up to the cooler without even a pretense of only wanting a drink.

“Hi there, Brigitte, Hana,” he grinned at them, tossing back a Gatorade in what Hana was sure he believed to be some greatly impressive display of male adolescent prowess.

“Hi, Thomas,” she said, the epitome of neutrality until he turned his back on them. The moment that practice resumed, she asked Brigitte, “Thomas Treller, then? If he’s on the chain of command now, he must have been buddies with someone.”

“He’s not like Oliver and Daniel were, though. Or even Kenny,” Brigitte protested. “He’s a good boyfriend to Daisy.”

“Daisy hated Yuna’s guts, ever since Yuna beat her out for cheer captain! Which means she probably hates us now, too!” Hana sat up, staring disbelievingly at Brigitte. “She would have been in on it and thought it was a great joke.”

“How far do you want to take this, Hana?” A trace of doubt undermined Brigitte’s question, but she soldiered on. “Look, I miss Yuna, too. But we already got the guys we know were behind it. Do we really have to bring down the whole basketball team, and everyone associated with them?”

“Wouldn’t we be done if it had really just been them?” Hana snapped. “Look at them, Brig! If even one of them shared those pictures, it was with all of them! And now Yuna is gone and we have more of a chance to even the score than anyone else would have given us, even if we can’t really bring her back!”

Brigitte’s eyes narrowed, but her gaze had moved past Hana, focusing on Gavin. Her voice lowered as she said, “No, you’re right.”

“For Yuna,” Hana reminded them both. The third girl’s shadow appeared behind them as they once more clasped hands, sending the basketball that Gavin was chasing off the court and behind the bleachers. He ran after it, just as the lights in the gymnasium flickered out. Everyone let out cries of alarm, except for Hana and Brigitte.

The bleachers began to fold back up against the wall, as startled benchwarmers and cheerleaders jumped off them. As Gavin, still pinned behind them, began to shout in alarm.

Hana clung to Brigitte’s hand so tightly that all her world narrowed to just the press of her fingertips into the other girl’s skin.

Later that evening

“What happened?” Angela had to ask for confirmation, even as her eyes beheld the gruesome sight in the high school gymnasium.

“Another boy on the basketball team died, that’s what happened,” Agent Maru shook her head.

Moira leaned in as close to the body as she could. “It appears that an electrical surge caused a power failure, although that wouldn’t explain the subsequent activation of the motor that would have retracted the bleachers while he would have been caught inside the mechanics of it all.”

“I’m going to talk to the witnesses,” Agent Maru clarified – specifically to Moira, Angela couldn’t help but note. Once they were alone, Angela knelt down next to Moira.

“You weren’t at the motel when I got back last night.”

“I went to follow up a lead with Agent Maru.”

Angela raised her eyebrows. “I see.”

“You see what?” Moira looked over at her with an unreadable expression.

“Listen, Moira, call this arrangement whatever you want, but you and I both know we’re not two agents thrown together on our first assignment anymore. We have different opinions, but I didn’t expect you to… well, ditch me!”

“I did not, to use your words, ‘ditch’ you. You were conducting an autopsy, as I recall.”

“Fine!” Angela reared back, forcing herself to lower her voice. “Whatever.”

If Agent Maru overheard any of their exchange as she came back, at least she didn’t let on. “Sorry to pack up here so abruptly, but we’ve got more trouble. From the sound of it, there’s a small mob gathered on the south side of town.”

Moira practically jumped up. “An angry mob? Now that’s more like it.”

***

The agents arrived to the sight of roughly two dozen adult residents of Ferncomb, all of whom presumably had jobs and families, digging holes in the ground of an abandoned field just past the end of the residential neighborhoods. “What exactly is going on here?” Agent Maru took the wheel as they approached the nearest man. Angela recognized him from the funeral as the father of Kenny Edison.

“John Ingham’s son said he was playing out here when he found some bones. We’ve all heard the story those two poor girls were telling. Where else in town could the mass grave be?”

Agent Maru placed a hand on the shovel he was frantically brandishing as he explained this. “All I see you doing is destroying private property. We’re going to have to ask you all to stop digging, Mr. Edison. You have no reasonable right to come out here and tear up someone’s backyard. Do you even know who lives in that there house?”

Mr. Edison sputtered out several more indistinguishable words, before turning his back on the agents without a proper acknowledgement. As soon as he was out of earshot, Moira remarked, “I don’t recall him being that hysterical at the funeral.”

“No,” Agent Maru shook her head. “He was the first person I interviewed when I got here. He’s the high school principal. He was so grief-stricken just yesterday, I don’t think it could have occurred to him to say anything bad about anyone else.”

Angela cleared her throat, beyond caring if her observation was what Moira wanted to hear. “This is called rumor panic. It’s when an unfortunate occurrence like - several deaths over a short period of time - links up with a myth and an increase of attention within a community. An invisible villain is singled out as the target of the ensuing confusion and angst, and rarely, if ever, does a single shred of evidence turn up to support the allegations.”

As if on cue, someone’s exclamation split the air of, “I FOUND BONES!”

Today was just Angela’s day, wasn’t it.

“Alright everybody, stay back!” she warned as she and Moira pushed their way through the crowd to the shouting woman, who triumphantly threw a dirt-covered bag at Moira’s feet. Angela and Moira knelt down in unison, reaching into their pockets for spare pairs of gloves, before looking at each other.

“Go ahead,” Moira nodded.

“No, you go ahead.”

“Oh, no, be my guest. I know how much you enjoy snapping on the latex.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that,” Angela coolly commented. Prodding open the bag with a gloved hand, she suppressed a groan. “Oh, wonderful.”

“They’re child’s bones!” the woman continued yelling, as Angela felt the definite beginnings of a headache coming on.

***

“The bones turned out to be the skeletal remains not of an infant, but of a beloved fourteen-year-old poodle, formerly known as Zero,” Angela delivered the verdict within the hour, aided greatly by the fact that just beneath the bones in the bag had been the dog’s collar. Brought in to confirm the identity of the deceased was none other than Hana Song in a glittery pink party hat, sniffling as she saw Zero’s nametag lying on the table.

“This may not be the time to mention it,” Moira muttered as Hana fought back tears while cradling the collar in her hands, “but someone is wearing my favorite perfume.”

Alright, enough was enough. “Can I have a word with you, Moira?” Angela snapped, escorting the other agent into the hallway of the police station. “This has gone on far enough.”

“What?”

“I am not going to be humiliated by you, in front of you, or by having to bring in a teenage girl, on her birthday of all days, to identify the bones of her beloved dead dog!” Angela’s voice was reaching a birdlike pitch again, but a correction of this was the least of her concerns as she realized that Moira did not seem to have heard any of it for her sniffing of the air around Angela’s head. Making a show of stepping back, Angela continued, “I see no reason to pursue this case any farther, and not only that, I’ve found your recent conduct not just alarming, but highly objectionable. What are you doing?”

“It must be Agent Maru,” Moira muttered, before her focus narrowed to Angela. “And what exactly are you going to do, Ziegler? Run back to Amari and hand her your special report on my activities? Your professional psychological evaluation of me? After all, isn’t that all you’re here to do, never mind the array of unexplained deaths that have occurred since our arrival?”

“Oh, go help Agent Maru if she’s so much better company than me!” For lack of a better ending note, Angela dramatically threw her hands into the air, settling for a good old-fashioned storm off down the hall. By that point of the day, it barely even occurred to her to wonder where any of this was really coming from.

The Song residence, 9:33 EST

The planets were aligned so brightly in the night sky, they appeared smaller jewels offsetting the centerpiece of the moon. A maddening earworm of a pop song, the chorus of which seemed to consist largely of one word, blasted from the house of Hana Song. Straying onto the front porch from the open doorway was a heart-shaped helium balloon reading, “Happy Birthday, Hana and Brigitte!” Within the foyer, half the student body of Ferncomb High School danced around a table stacked with presents, although in the living room, a different event was unfolding.

“Who am I gonna marry?” Daisy drunkenly giggled over a Ouija board surrounded by herself and a handful of other girls. Despite the game having been Hana and Brigitte’s idea, nobody knew where the birthday girls had slipped off to, and no one was taking the board too seriously.

There were shrieks of delight as it looked like the pointer was making a beeline for ‘T’… only for it to waver at the last moment and shift to ‘S’. From there, it moved in another figure eight around the board before settling on ‘A’. Another ‘T’. Another ‘A’. Finally, ‘N’. The girls read each progressing letter out loud, voices growing more strained as they all waited for one of them to confess to the prank. When nobody did, Daisy jumped up like the board had shocked her, running for the bathroom without even saying goodbye.

No sooner did she close the door did Hana and Brigitte’s heads swivel towards her from where they sat cross-legged on the countertop, the perfect reflection of one another as they had manipulated the board. Daisy took a staggered step back, her shoulders meeting the wood of the locked door. “What… what are you guys doing?”

“We wanted to ask you some questions, Daisy,” Brigitte said, looking over her shoulder. “Or, more accurately…”

“Yuna does,” Hana finished, turning her head towards the bathroom mirror in sync with Brigitte. One more shadow than there should have been in the room looked back at them.

Ferncomb Golden Motel, Rooms 2 and 3, 9:33 EST

Moira O’Deorain was not a drinker. On the rare occasion when she did partake in such activities, she had found her preferred poison to be a smooth whiskey, best chased down with coffee. Or, as tonight was so driving her to such incredible new lows – a heart attack-inducing red slush that Moira believed was regionally known as a Slurpee, poured with rigor into the first bottle of vodka she had laid eyes on upon entering the liquor store adjacent to the Ferncomb 7-11.

She opened the top two buttons of her shirt and let her tie hang loose around her neck, throwing her ill-concocted beverage back without nearly as much thought that she would be striking this night from her memory as there should have been. The motel room television was tuned to one of the last movies Moira wished to be watching in that, or really any, moment – Pride and Prejudice (Moira didn’t have anything against Austen, per se, but the Brontes were so much more poetic about all those damned moors). It was inexplicably playing on every single channel.

Angela Ziegler was not a smoker. This was a grand total of the second time in her life that she had sought out relief from a cigarette, the first time being a particularly memorable night in her undergrad years that had culminated in the confirmation of her bisexuality.

Not even the inexplicable phenomenon of one of her favorite movies – Pride and Prejudice (really, Angela concluded over again with each rewatch, Austen had just understood) – playing on every single channel was enough to bring her out of her most uncharacteristic funk. Heaving herself upwards from the motel room bed, Angela looked out the window into the night, muttering, “I’ll show her a psychological evaluation.”

Just past Collins’ ill-fated proposal to Elizabeth, Moira was about to give up and shut the damn screen off when a knock came at her door. “Agent O’Deorain, are you in?” Agent Maru’s voice called from the other side.

“Just a moment."

“Sorry if you’re busy,” the American agent began as Moira opened the door, although she didn’t particularly sound it. “I was just wondering if you wanted to run everything over with what happened today.” Her eyes then fell to the bottle in Moira’s hand. “Or… we could have a drink.”

“Yes, we could.” Moira leaned against the door as Agent Maru entered, wishing the vodka would hurry up and hit. “And you know, it’s funny. I usually never drink.”

Agent Maru nodded in understanding. Moira passed the bottle to her, and while she momentarily blinked in surprise, she accepted it and drank some herself, wincing. “I have to say, Agent O’Deorain, not my choice of cocktail.” Setting the bottle down, Agent Maru began to shrug out of her jacket. “You’ve got to love Blackwatch, you know? International organization, all the funding in the world, and all three of us are still booked side-by-side in the saddest motel Virginia had to offer.”

“Well, you can’t argue with the entertainment,” Moira deadpanned, waving a hand at the television. “It’s on every channel. I won't say it isn't strange.

“Strange,” Agent Maru repeated, rolling the word around on her tongue. Unlike Moira, it seemed that only one swig of what Moira was toying with calling the Cherry Contrition was already going to the American’s head. “You know, Agent O’Deorain, you’re strange. I like strange.” She stopped in the middle of the floor, facing Moira with a slightly glazed look in her eyes. “I feel strange.”

Before Moira could react, Agent Maru’s arms were around her neck. Moira’s first instinct was that the younger woman was strangling her, until she realized that Agent Maru was, in fact – rather sloppily – trying to kiss her.

And because some greater cosmic entity clearly had it out for Moira in that moment, Agent Ziegler chose right then to walk through the still-open door.

***

“Tell me, Moira, should I even ask?” Agent Ziegler said as they left the motel. Moira was aware of Agent Maru sheepishly following several feet behind them, having disentangled herself from Moira the instant that Agent Ziegler appeared. “Need I remind you of your fiancée?” Agent Ziegler kept going as she and Moira rounded to the same side of the car, a blow that, while Moira acknowledged might have been apt in a different context, just further irritated her here.

“Firstly, as cliched and difficult as you will no doubt find this to believe, none of that was what it looked like,” Moira groaned. What on Earth was her life anymore? “Also, why are we getting into the car?”

“Because there has been another death! A high school girl impaled with flying glass from a bathroom mirror, because these last 24 hours haven’t been fantastic enough!” Agent Ziegler made to climb into the driver’s side when Moira held out a hand, blocking her. That was what was wrong here - Agent Ziegler smelled, impossibly, like nicotine.

“Let me drive.”

“I’m driving!”

“Ziegler, it really was not anywhere near what you’re thinking.”

“It’s not like I saw anything, anyway!”

Moira sighed, looking down at Agent Ziegler with the best ‘do not make this your hill to die on’ expression she could muster. “Will you let me drive?”

“Why do you always have to drive?” The question burst from Agent Ziegler’s mouth with the ferocity of a much harsher line of attack. “Because you’re the butch? Because you’re the freakishly tall androgynous wet dream of half the women in Blackwatch, evidently?”

Well, there were several lines Moira could take with that description, but she decided in that moment to play it as safe as she possibly could. “No. I just worry that your little feet won’t be able to reach the pedals.” While Agent Ziegler appeared to short circuit as she processed that response, Moira looked back over at Agent Maru, who was standing on the curbside and looking as though she wanted nothing more than to become one with the sidewalk. “The location should be on your comm. Meet us there.”

She ducked past Agent Ziegler and into the drivers’ seat.

SIGMA’s Astrology, Readings, Numerology, and Runes

“When I was here before, you said-” Moira began, still not quite believing she had been brought to this point.

“Who’s the new woman? A Leo?” Sigma interrupted her, frowning at the pair of Moira and Agent Ziegler. “Leo and Scorpio, hm. That’s a choice." He leaned back in his chair. "But never mind, how can I help you?”

Moira made herself take a deep breath. “You said that you knew why people are behaving so strangely around here.”

Letting out a bark of laughter, Sigma nodded. “Yes, the same reason that my dog has been trying to mate with my neighbor’s gas barbecue for the last three months.”

“You said that it was planetary?” Moira pressed.

Sigma clapped his hands to dim the lights, leading Moira and Angela to a complex star map covering most of one wall. “As I was saying, once every eighty-four years, Mercury, Mars, and Uranus come into conjunction. Only this year, Uranus is in the house of Aquarius.”

“That’s a bad thing?” Agent Ziegler asked.

“Very. Objects are going to fall out of the sky, and disaster lies in wait, especially around here.”

“Why here?”

“Well, we’re in a geological vortex, a high-intensity meridian. Do you think that I would have packed up and moved here from Amsterdam over anything short of cosmic guidance?" He frowned, thinking his next words over. "If you’ll pardon the crude comparison, think of Ferncomb, Virginia as a cosmic G-spot. And everything will combine when it comes into perfect alignment…” Sigma hustled back to his desk to run the final calculations, before his eyebrows flew to the top of his head. “Oh, my. Today.”

“But why is this affecting everyone?” Moira ran a hand through her hair, trying to smooth it back into her preferred style.

“Well, some people more than others,” Sigma conceded. “On the whole, relationships are going to be... rocky." He winced, flashing a sympathetic look Agent Ziegler's way. "Significant dates can also exaggerate the effects.”

Agent Ziegler unexpectedly gasped, her eyes widening at that. “What if today was my birthday?”

“Then I would say happy birthday. Unless, of course, you were born eighteen years ago, in which case I would call the police. But luckily for me, here you already are!”

“But why?” Moira and Agent Ziegler asked at the same time.

Sigma let out a huff, like he was dealing with two particularly unruly grandchildren. “You would have a Jupiter-Uranus opposition, forming what’s called a grand square, where all the planets align into a cross." Slowing his speech, he spread out his arms against the backdrop of the star chart. "Any and all the energy you can think of – living, dead, cosmic – would be focused on you. Why, a person could do just about anything short of breaking reality as we know it, if they so set their mind to!”

Chapter Text

"Saint Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes, please give me the power to crush this bitch."

Bobby’s American Diner, Ferncomb, Virginia

“Hey, Hana? We can’t keep doing this.”

Hana looked up at Brigitte from across the table of the diner on the outskirts of town, which they had retreated to in the wake of their cut-short birthday party. Her eyes narrowed, the hot pink liner she had so precisely applied hours earlier now smudged at the corners. “You can’t mean that, Brig. Just – I don’t know, eat something. We both need to.”

“You know what?” Brigitte’s voice was terse as she planted her hands on the booth, ignoring the slice of pie in front of her. “I think I need to be alone right now.”

“Nobody is going anywhere alone right now!”

“What’s happening to us, Hana?” Brigitte struggled to keep her voice low. “We weren’t like this when Yuna was here!”

“Don’t talk about her like she’s not!” Hana swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her jean jacket, and a shadow in the silhouette of a teenage girl momentarily filled the booth seat beside her before flickering out again. “Come on, Brig. What have we always said? Three girls born on the same day in the same town. What are the odds? It’s like the universe meant for us to be friends. Through anything.”

Brigitte blinked, deflating as she heard Hana’s words. “Yeah… Friends.” She wrapped her arms around herself, not looking at Hana or the empty space beside her. “It’s just – I’m not so sure anymore that’s Yuna. If it ever was.” She pushed out of the booth, ignoring Hana’s gape.

“Brig.” Hana made to follow her, leaving the tab for their milkshake and dessert unpaid. “Brig!” The distinct aura of a brewing fight between the two girls turned several heads in their direction as Brigitte pushed out the doors of the diner.

“Did you hear me, Brig? Whatever happens tonight, I said we need to stay together!”

“Hana, what do you think this is?” Brigitte rounded on her at the edge of the parking lot. “Some kind of movie where we’ll get away with it all at the end? I was okay with the first three, the ones we knew hurt Yuna. But all this – it’s not you! It’s not us! I care about you too much to watch you get swept up in whatever that thing whispering in your ear is!” She fished in her pocket for her car keys, hot tears welling in her eyes.

A shocked sputter of a laugh came from Hana. “What? Are you just going to blow me off now?”

“Back off, Hana!”

“Happy birthday, best friend!” Hana glared at the keys in Brigitte’s hand, and before Brigitte could react, they went flying into the grip of Hana’s open fist.

In that moment, of realizing what Hana was doing, Brigitte remembered the day months earlier when they had first discovered their shared powers, only hours after Yuna’s memorial. They had made a promise – that they would use them to do whatever it took to get justice. But never on each other.

It looked like all bets were off on that.

“Oh, yeah?” Brigitte countered. “Right back at you!” They were standing at the edge of the woods, and she reached out, grabbing onto the first thing her mental hands found. She didn’t even have to blink as, with a splintering crack, a jagged tree branch came soaring out of the dark towards Hana. “I always knew you cared about Yuna more than me! Have I just been stupid this whole time?”

Hana threw herself to the side, staring at Brigitte in shock as a thin line of blood began to trickle from her nose. “You’re – Brig, you’re bleeding.”

“So are you!” Brigitte brought her hand to her nose, holding her fingers out in front of her several times until her brain processed the sight of the blood on them. Then Hana started screaming.

“You just tried to kill me!”

“What do you mean? You stole my car keys! You said we would never use this on each other!”

“I didn’t know what else to do! Brig – Brig, come back!” Hana ran after Brigitte down the road, but in her heeled boots, she quickly fell out of pace with her best friend. She felt Yuna’s presence without needing to turn around, darkening her upset into something more sinister. “She’s abandoning us, Yuna. And for what?”

“Stop… her…”

Hana squared her shoulders into the night, letting her power levitate her ever so slightly off the ground as she glared in the direction where Brigitte had run off. “Maybe she’s right. It’s just you and me, after all.”

******

The drive back into Ferncomb was spent in stony silence between Angela and Moira, broken only by the reminiscent disco ballad currently playing on the retro hits radio station that neither of them dared to reach for and change. But at the sight of something looming out of the darkness towards their oncoming car, Angela gasped, and Moira slammed on the brakes – a moment too late, as a loud splat impacted against their windshield.

Opening the door, Angela walked around to the front of the car. It was a bird. From where she mirrored Angela on the other side of the hood, Moira cleared her throat, pointing at the stretch of road illuminated by the headlights. Angela swallowed down the swear that rose in her throat.

All along the road, it was as though an entire flock of birds had simply dropped dead out of the sky. Angela looked to Moira, not entirely sure if she wanted to know her take on this, but Moira was now answering her ringing phone.

“Yes. Hello – how did you get my number?” Angela looked back down the road as Moira kept going, “Where are you? Tell me,” ignoring Angela’s attempts to direct her attention to the group of people steadily advancing on them.

Angela met them at the edge of the headlight beams, recognizing several figures from the mass grave hysteria. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” she began, staring down the father of Kenny Edison, “but I suggest you put that blaster down now, sir.” Americans, she mentally swore.

“We’re not standing around anymore, waiting for answers!” Mr. Edison raised his fist with the crowd. “We’re taking this situation into our own hands!”

“Well, be that as it may, I don’t believe it’s legal even here for a civilian like yourself to go walking down the middle of a street with a blaster in hand.”

“Not if I’m hunting, it’s not!” Mr. Edison had a frenzied look in his eyes, and Angela understood it without wondering why as the first warning to step back. “Hunting cultists!”

Angela fought the urge to roll her eyes. Still with this? “There are no cultists here.”

“Then who killed our boys? And who killed all these birds?”

A panicked shout echoed from the road behind them. Angela, Moira, and the citizens of Ferncomb all turned their heads towards the dark beyond the Blackwatch agents’ car – the dark that a bleeding Brigitte Lindholm stumbled out of.

“Somebody, help me!” She ran in a beeline towards Angela. “I know who the killer is!” She threw her arms around Angela, the gesture perfectly choreographed to make her look defeated despite the height she had on the blonde agent. “I know who did it all! All the murders!”

At the same moment, Moira, who had ducked back into the car, said into her phone, “Hana, where are you?”

“She killed them!” came Hana’s cry from the other end.

“Who?”

“Brigitte, she killed all of them! The boys from our school, and Daisy, too!”

Moira didn’t hear Brigitte’s accusation outside, but she looked out the window in time to see her fall against Agent Ziegler. Moira kept her voice steady as she asked, “How did she do it, Hana?”

“I think she’s possessed or something,” Brigitte moaned to Angela and the onlookers, unaware how perfectly identical of a tale that Hana was weaving for Moira mere feet away. “She killed Daisy at our birthday party tonight. I don’t know how she does it, I think she – in the gym, when all the lights went out and she knew that Gavin was trapped under the bleachers, she could hear him screaming and she wouldn’t make it stop!”

“Why didn’t you stop her, Brigitte?” Angela had to ask, trying to keep the girl grounded. “Why didn’t you tell anybody before now?”

Brigitte froze, but seeing the look in her eyes even as she accused Hana Song of all this, Angela understood why in that same instant. “Because…” Brigitte trembled against Angela. “Because I was afraid of her. Because she’s… my best friend. We’re supposed to stick together, right?”

Moira chose that moment to lean out of the car window. “Agent Ziegler?”

An incredible range of emotions flickered across Angela’s face in that half-second before she climbed into the passenger side beside Moira. “What is it?”

“I believe I have a lead on these deaths.”

“I’m ahead of you there, Moira, if you’ll pay attention. I already have the suspect I want to bring in.”

“And who might that be?”

“Hana Song.”

Moira froze for a beat, her eyes flicking past Angela, to Brigitte and the mob still outside the car, and then back to Angela. She lifted the phone to her ear long enough to say, “Hold on one moment,” to whoever was on the other end before questioning Angela, “Hana Song?”

“That’s right. Brigitte Lindholm just told me right there.”

Letting out something between a huff and a laugh, Moira leaned back into the driver’s seat. “Well, Ziegler, it would seem I am actually the one ahead of you. Because I am currently in the midst of a very illuminating conversation with Hana Song, who has given me a statement implicating her best friend.”

“Who?”

“Brigitte Lindholm.”

Angela blinked, once. Twice. “So, if I’m hearing this correctly, I’ve got your suspect and you’ve got mine. Why does that make sense to me at this point?”

“I think we are finally in agreement on one matter, Ziegler – this has nothing to do with any red herring of a cult. I’ll have Agent Maru pick up Hana. I want to get them both in and get formal statements. Perhaps then we can clear all this up, if that suits you?”

Angela was staring through the windshield, voicing no response, but slowly bringing her fingertips to the temples of her forehead.

“Ziegler?”

“Sure!” Angela chirped out, far too high-pitched for Moira or anyone else to believe sincere. “Fine. Whatever.”

******

Agent Maru escorted a scuffled, but overall no worse for wear Hana Song into the Ferncomb police department several minutes shy of midnight, still making a remarkable effort to look anywhere but at Moira. “Wait right here,” Moira instructed Hana. She sighed as they awaited Agent Ziegler, until she heard a dreadfully familiar conversation echoing from the holo-screen on the wall – Lizzy Bennet giving her thorough first rejection to Mr. Darcy.

All at once, everything in the police station began to shake, Moira and Agent Maru pitching on their feet as they threw themselves out of the way of rogue furniture. Agent Ziegler shouted her name from outside in the hallway. Brigitte Lindholm stormed into the room, her eyes only for Hana.

“Hey, girlfriend,” she snarled, the word dripping condescension.

Hana was silent in her own rage at the sight of Brigitte, the two girls still beacons at the center of all their chaos. “Hey,” Hana breathed. Moira’s eyes widened as the shadows thickened behind Hana into a skeletal shadow of humanity. Agent Ziegler stumbled into the room at that moment, and Moira knew by the look on her face that she saw it too.

“Get her out of here!” Moira pointed towards Brigitte, just as Hana collapsed and the shadow figure swooped down on Brigitte. Agent Ziegler threw herself in front of the girl, and a high keening filled Moira’s ears as the lights in the room flared out one by one. And yet – for the one second that Agent Ziegler needed, the shadow figure stopped in its advance on her.

Angela grabbed Brigitte’s wrist, hauling her up and back into the hall. The instant they were out of the same room as Hana, the world stopped quaking beneath their feet. Throwing open the door to the first office she saw, Angela shoved Brigitte inside and took her face in her hands, the time for niceties past. “Brigitte, listen to me. I need you to tell me everything, in the time we have before it’s too late!”

Brigitte’s breathing came fast for real this time, and she kept looking past Angela and back into the hall. Towards where Hana was. “Yu – Yuna,” Brigitte gulped. “Our best friend was Yuna. She k – killed herself a few months ago. The boys – it was because of them. She was dating one of them, and she sent him some pictures, but then – after it was all over, her ghost came back to me and Hana. It gave us powers. And we’ve been doing all these things, but it hasn’t really felt like us, and now I don’t even think that shadow back there was ever Yuna at all!”

“Out of my way!” the voice of Hana Song bellowed from down the hall, although it was layered with some darker undertone that Angela had heard from no human’s throat. She risked a quick look out the door, and her blood ran cold.

Hana’s body hung suspended in the air as she floated like a wraith towards Angela and Brigitte, her hair floating around her rage-twisted face. But she was clearly being controlled by the shadow figure she had thought her friend, towering over her and pushing her forward.

Angela didn’t know how to fight that. She didn’t even know what it really was, beyond that sense she was beginning to suspect was her mother’s within her, telling her that this creature’s magic could sing in harmony with Angela’s own if she so willed it – or send its melody hopelessly out of tune. No, Angela didn’t know what to do here. But Moira came running from behind Hana, ducking under her arm and shoving Angela out of her path.

Sure enough, Hana changed targets immediately. The shadow puppeteering her body jerked it into a turn, and the door to the office that Brigitte was still inside slammed shut on her and Hana. The building began to shake again, even more violently than before, and Angela and Moira had to hold on to one another for lack of anything else.

“What the hell is going on here?” Angela shouted over the world coming apart at its seams.

Moira pulled them both to the side, just as a glass window shattered over where they had formerly been standing. They landed close enough together for Angela to hear her mutter, “Something cosmic,” before the roaring built to such a peak that Angela could remember hearing no other sound in her life but that all-consuming fury – and then it stopped.

Angela’s eyes fell to her watch. It was midnight, exactly.

The sounds of more people storming down the hallway came from the building’s entrance, and Angela and Moira barely had a chance to climb to their feet before coming face to face with Mr. Edison’s mob. “Where is she?” he barked.

Moira raised an eyebrow, smoothing a hand through her mussed hair. “Who?”

“The girl, the guilty one!”

Glancing to the still-shut office door, Moira offered, “They’re both in there.”

“Well, I think we’d like to see for ourselves,” Mr. Edison huffed, only for Moira to step in his way. Agent Maru chose that moment to shove through several other townspeople and join them, gritting her teeth and she looked from Angela to Moira.

“Agent O’Deorain – I have to ask you to open the door.”

“You don’t want to go in there.”

Agent Maru took another step forward in a challenge, but Angela matched her, joining Moira in blocking the townspeople from advancing any further. “Excuse me,” she said, resting a hand on the door handle.

“Gladly,” Moira nodded.

Angela opened the door, bracing herself for anything to be on the other side. It was only Brigitte Lindholm – and Hana Song. The real Hana Song. The girls had thrown their arms around each other in the corner, and they were both crying.

Moira and Angela looked to the girls, then at each other. Somehow, Angela just knew there would be nothing else for them here.

******

The next morning, Moira was quick to pack what little evidence they had gathered into the car beside her and Agent Ziegler’s suitcases, slamming the trunk shut just as Agent Maru exited the police station with a weary sigh. She would be staying behind long enough to keep Hana and Brigitte under her protection while Blackwatch relocated them out of Ferncomb. Moira felt glad that Agent Ziegler was, for the time being, inside the car.

“Agent O’Deorain, I -” Letting out another long breath, Agent Maru looked up at Moira. “There’s no proper apology for whatever came over me last night. But I know there’s more explanation for it than what happened to Hana and Brigitte. I just want to say -”

Moira cut her off, resting her hands on the younger agent’s shoulders. “Listen to me well, Agent Maru. You do not hold any sort of romantic feelings for me. You admire me, and the sooner that you learn the difference between those two things, the happier you will be. I am nothing you should aspire to.” Agent Maru stared up at her, dumbstruck, and Moira realized she wasn’t very good at ending these sorts of conversations. “Best of luck,” she decided upon, brushing off Agent Maru’s jacket before walking back to the car.

“Are you ready?” Agent Ziegler called to her – from the driver’s seat, with a smug grin. Moira wondered how far she had needed to push the chair forwards.

Sighing, Moira walked to the passenger side, climbing in beside Agent Ziegler. “I suppose so.”

“So, what do you make of last night’s events?” Agent Ziegler approached as they left downtown Ferncomb behind them. Something about her tone made Moira feel like there was a deeper question being asked, but she couldn’t quite ascertain what. Moira had never liked that feeling.

Still, she turned down the radio, realizing their departure from this cursed place was the most like herself she had felt for days. “Well, Agent Ziegler, I believe that most of us take our presence on this plane for granted, refusing to believe that any outside force could have an effect on us. Any answer that I could theorize for what fell upon Hana Song and Brigitte Lindholm… one that would satisfy me lies frustratingly beyond my grasp.”

Agent Ziegler tilted her head to the side as she mused on that. As they reached the intersection marking the edge of Ferncomb’s limits, Moira straightened in her seat. “If I’m not mistaken, Agent Ziegler, you should be making to turn left.”

“I’m hungry,” Agent Ziegler declared with conversation-ending finality. “And this time, you will be eating something with me. You can brood on that theory over a hot dog.” She pulled into a parking space in front of Mustard’s Last Stand with frightening excitement. At the sight of Sigma’s dimmed sign next door, Moira remembered the vow she had oh-so-cockily sworn to herself about astrology. It seemed that now, she was about to quite literally eat her words.

“Sure,” Moira sighed, climbing out of the car and opening the restaurant door for Agent Ziegler. “Fine.” She breathed in the smell of frying food and roasting beef, told herself it was really no different from a chippy back in Dublin. “Whatever.”

Chapter Text

“Careful the wish you make – wishes are children. Careful the path they take – wishes come true, not free.”

A Blackwatch shuttle, somewhere over Germany

“Last year’s conference honestly gave me a revelation! We were doing this team building exercise, where we were given two minutes to make a tower out of ordinary office furniture…”

Angela tried very hard to stare directly into the empty space in front of her and block out Agent Fio’s recollection. It wasn’t that Angela didn’t care, it was just… well, she didn’t think she knew the Italian pilot well enough for her to not take the laughter that Angela felt on the verge of breaking into too personally. And, alright, maybe she didn’t care too much for the destination ahead of them, either.

“When I stood on Agent Shimada’s shoulders and put that electric pencil sharpener on top of the pile, we all knew, none of us could have done it alone,” Agent Fio finished with a grin on her face.

Moira was feeling less generous about the situation than Angela. “Kill me now,” she muttered, loud enough that Angela suspected she had been meant to hear it.

Angela concealed her smile behind a feigned cough as Agent Fio continued, oblivious, “Have you ever been to one of these Blackwatch seminars, Agent Ziegler?

Shaking her head, Angela found herself glad for the distraction, even if the question was a grim reminder of the weekend ahead. “Ah, no, I was only reassigned to Blackwatch a few months ago. But there was a constructive problem-solving course that Overwatch made me attend when I was first recruited.” She forced her lips into a smile she hoped wasn’t toeing too close to a grimace. “And I am just so excited about this!”

“Oh, did you play that game where you can’t use any negative words? I couldn’t believe how hard it was to not use ‘but’!”

“Would you believe it, I’m having that same problem right now,” Moira forced out through gritted teeth, looking very much like she viewed the interior of the Blackwatch shuttle transporting them to Stockholm as her personal circle of hell. Angela tried again not to make her smile too obvious.

“What about you, Agent O’Deorain?” Agent Fio switched gears, undeterred.

“Just once. Unfortunately, around this time of year I always seem to develop a perpetual migraine.”

Angela supposed she looked on the verge of choking.

“It builds muscles you didn’t even know you had!” Agent Fio kept right on beaming. “Communication, that’s the key.” Angela and Moira exchanged a look at that, one spared too much of Agent Fio’s scrutiny by the sudden pinging of the holo-map by Moira flaring to life.

“Well, that’s odd,” Moira remarked, nevertheless accepting the comm as Angela and Agent Fio flanked her on either side. “We haven’t even been in the air an hour.”

A few seconds passed, longer than it should have taken for a normal comm on a Blackwatch network to patch through. Angela’s face finally fell as the attached sender’s name and call number flashed up.

“Oh,” Agent Fio echoed Angela’s thoughts well enough at the sight of it. “I… think we had better make a call to Captain Amari or Morrison.”

For once, nobody was quicker to pull up Captain Amari’s contact than Moira. Angela could have sworn she heard Moira whisper under her breath, “Thank you, universe,” before she announced with more volume, “Agent Fio, reprogram the shuttle to land here. There’s no time to waste if this is a lead on Agent Reinhardt’s whereabouts.”

Angela’s frown deepened as she zoomed in on the coordinates his message had supposedly been sent from. Wilhelm Reinhardt was Overwatch, one of the oldest field agents remaining active - prior to his disappearance several days earlier. Angela still had enough connections down the Overwatch grapevine to know it was too early for them to officially call anything or release a statement, but given the nature of Agent Reinhardt’s mission, hopes hadn’t been high after he failed to report from Kaiserslautern.

He had gone into the Black Forest with the intent to check on the remaining Bastion units scattered through the woods from the battle of Eichenwalde, reporting on which ones had deactivated and which might still be in need of future neutralization. Truth be told, the Eichenwalde region had been regarded as a no man’s land ever since the Omnic Crisis, and the mission hadn’t been at the top of anyone’s list other than Agent Reinhardt’s. If it had been, Overwatch might have sent him in with some backup.

But the possibility of confronting a rusty and crosswired Bastion unit wasn’t the greatest worry that Angela held of this forest - or the abandoned town at its heart.

Kaiserslautern, Germany; the edge of the Black Forest

There was something to be said for Overwatch’s efficiency. Once Moira sent the call out, several more agents were quick to mobilize, a rapidity of response that Moira was unaccustomed to being granted. She couldn’t help but wonder if the same urgency would be afforded to a Blackwatch agent compromised in the field.

“Excuse me, are you part of the search and rescue team?” a uniformed woman asked her at the edge of the city square, which had rapidly cleared out upon the descent of the Overwatch shuttles. Moira eyed her up, deciding to take her chances. Anything was better than Stockholm right now.

“I suppose so. Allow me to fetch my-” Moira caught sight of Agent Ziegler already making her way over, the usual worried expression on her face she thought she was so skilled at concealing. “Well, there she is.”

Agent Ziegler joined Moira, exchanging badges with the Overwatch agent. It was fortunate that Agent Ziegler had never gone in to have her physical identification switched from Overwatch to Blackwatch. Was that an indication of laziness or shrewdness on her part, Moira wondered?

She let them do the talking, staring up at the marvelous church in the heart of the city square until Agent Ziegler was back at her side. Not that Moira was much on the organization the church represented, but only a blind fool could dismiss the aesthetics of the architecture as anything short of remarkable. “Would you believe this has been here since the 13th Century?” Moira marveled.

“Agent Fio won’t stop going on about how we’ve already missed the welcome reception,” Agent Ziegler muttered in response. “You don’t have any intention to hand this off to Overwatch, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.” Agent Ziegler pulled up a projection of the notes she had been taking earlier. “They haven’t been able to search too far into the forest, but they’ve already found a bloody jacket that looks like it belonged to Agent Reinhardt. There’s also a boy from the city who went missing on a solo hike into the woods several weeks ago.”

“If all they have is a jacket, those could both be chalked up to an animal or Bastion attack,” Moira pointed out, although it was clear Agent Ziegler didn’t believe that any more than Moira did. For starters, they had both met Agent Reinhardt in all his hulking size before, and Eichenwalde had become a battlefield specifically in the fight to prevent the Omnics from gaining ground on Kaiserslautern. According to Overwatch records at least, there were no Bastions to be found this close to the city.

Agent Ziegler’s expression remained grim. “Oh, there’s more. They did find tracks leading deeper into the forest. They couldn’t identify them.”

Now, that got Moira’s interest. “They couldn’t identify them as Agent Reinhardt’s?”

“They couldn’t identify them at all. They clearly aren’t an animal’s, yet the tread supposedly isn’t right enough to be a human’s either. There are also Overwatch-issue blaster marks that would indicate Agent Reinhardt firing on something. The problem is rather that nobody can determine what.” Agent Ziegler bit down on her lip as she finished this summary, a notable tension held throughout her body. Moira knew she hadn’t been that close to Agent Reinhardt. Was there some other reason for these nerves?

They joined the rest of the search and rescue team that had gathered at the edge of the city, preparing to strike out into the forest. “It looks like we might want to find some lodgings in Kaiserslautern,” Moira remarked to Agent Ziegler. “I can already tell you this won’t be over by tonight.”

Agent Ziegler raised an eyebrow at her, so clearly trying hard not to smile. “But Moira – we’ve got the Blackwatch conference. Agent Fio is waiting for us.”

“Oh, yes. How do I say this without using any negative words, Agent Ziegler?”

Crossing her arms as she thought for a moment, Agent Ziegler ventured, “You want me to tell her that because of my preexisting working relationship with Agent Reinhardt, my insight was viewed as too valuable to this operation, and owing to the fact that you are my current partner, we sadly won’t be able to make it to this year’s Blackwatch teamwork seminar?”

A less refined woman than Moira might have laughed out loud. “Why, don’t you see, Agent Ziegler?” she said as it was. “We don’t need that conference. We have that necessary communication, unspoken. It seems you know quite well what I’m thinking.”

Agent Ziegler shook her head, but it wasn’t enough to be convincing. “This isn’t going to be like our last case with the killer hamster, do you think?”

“Well, don’t get your hopes up so high. Whatever could top that?” Agent Ziegler did laugh at that, before forcing her face back into one of disappointment long enough to deliver the news to Agent Fio. Moira didn’t think she had tried particularly hard to look it, though.

Chapter Text

“Careful the spell you cast – not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last - past what you can see, and turn against you.”

Moira had a hunch. Perhaps not regarding what should have been the most pressing concern, but it concerned her and Agent Ziegler, nonetheless.

Flexing her right hand for relief from the stiffness that still crept into it, despite the efforts of so many med-patches, Moira combed back through the files that Sombra had sent her during Agent Ziegler’s mysterious coma. Despite the clear picture continuing to elude her, Moira didn’t think even Sombra would be able to get her anything more. Eichenwalde, the disappearance of Wilhelm Reinhardt, Agent Ziegler’s own murky ancestry… it was like staring at a body that Moira knew she couldn’t yet dissect, even as the answers she sought lay so tantalizingly beneath just one layer of skin.

Was she overthinking this? Not this hunch of hers, but the concern that she couldn’t simply ask Agent Ziegler? There was a rare question that Moira hadn’t often pondered.

A familiar knock sounded on the other side of Moira’s hotel room door, light yet decisive. Even on that dreadful first night in London, Moira had sensed more than panic in that knock, a certainty (if not an entirely conscious one) of its destination. It eased Moira with its reminder that she was not the only one seeking answers in this world.

“It’s open,” Moira called, closing the file of Sombra’s documents as Agent Ziegler entered the room with a bottle of wine and what appeared to be an assortment of cheeses. “Who ordered dinner?”

“I figured since we won’t be making it to the conference…” Agent Ziegler set the cheese on the desk beside Moira’s computer.

“Well, now it’s a party.”

Deftly inserting a corkscrew into the bottle of wine, Agent Ziegler continued, “Although I feel obligated to cover our bases for Blackwatch and hold you to the promise that no unprofessional consorting is to follow.”

Sighing, Moira flipped open a Swiss Army knife from her jacket’s inner pocket, cutting into a sample of what looked like butterkase and spreading it across the provided bread. “Are you going to let that misunderstanding go anytime soon? You walked in on a cosmic misdirection, nothing more. Now, here’s a question for you. What sort of animal will attack the strongest, as Agent Reinhardt would have undoubtedly come across?” She bit into the bread, letting the flavors spread across her tongue before continuing. “The answer is none. Not a single species of fauna native to the Black Forest will attack the strongest when a weaker or more vulnerable target is surely the alternative.”

Agent Ziegler frowned. “I’m not seeing what exactly that has to do with this yet.”

“It gives me reason to believe that we are dealing with no ordinary predator.”

“Oh, so you’re genuinely invested in this?” Agent Ziegler leaned against the wall, popping a square of cheese raw into her mouth. “Here I thought you were just trying to get out of the conference.”

The lightness of her voice carried just enough weight to betray its forcedness. Carefully, though, Moira knew she had to proceed. “I think that what we’ve stumbled into here is something more than Overwatch realizes. The scene they found Agent Reinhardt’s jacket at betrays signs of technique – a sort of primitive culling, if I had to classify it.”

Agent Ziegler scoffed as she poured herself a glass of wine. “Moira, we’re in southern Germany. The closest thing to ‘primitive’ in these parts is an Oktoberfest celebration three sheets to the wind.”

“That forest is older than any manmade object surrounding us, and there’s 2,300 square miles of it to cover. There’s no telling what exactly is alive – or dead – within those trees.”

Agent Ziegler’s expression momentarily froze, neither angry nor saddened, but disturbed nonetheless. The wind picked up outside, rattling the window of the hotel room. Deciding not to push any further, Moira got up to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“To follow up on a hunch,” Moira answered. “You can let yourself out.”

Agent Ziegler followed on her heels. “You know, Moira, maybe some work on your communication skills wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

Before closing the door on her, Moira faced Agent Ziegler again long enough to remark, “I’ll be back soon enough, and then we can build as large a tower of furniture as you would like. Is that satisfying?”

Agent Ziegler pursed her lips, settling on a long sip of wine rather than granting Moira any verbal response.

***

Moira heard the distinct whir of security cameras turning her way as she entered the perimeter that Overwatch had established at the edge of the forest. She briefly wondered if it was wise to let herself be captured on camera, but so far, nobody had outwardly questioned her and Agent Ziegler’s presence on this operation. Walking up beside the two agents currently on watch, Moira tapped the one nearer to her on the shoulder. “They sent me over to relieve you.” She flashed her badge quickly enough for him to see the credentials, but not the Blackwatch identification. It was astonishing how easily Overwatch believed anything of someone wearing their colors.

“Have they found anything else yet?” Moira asked her new watch partner.

“They’re not sending in a formal search party until it’s light,” the agent responded. “But if anything comes out of those trees tonight, we’ll be on top of it.”

As if on cue, a rustling too loud to merely be the wind began to sound from the forest – although the wind picked up again, too.

“Who’s there?” the Overwatch agent tensed. Nothing good, Moira more than suspected.

To say that whatever came out of the trees ran at them wouldn’t have been quite right, but it rushed them all the same. It bore down on the Overwatch agent, Moira feeling the slice of the unnatural wind it heralded through the air. The Overwatch agent gave a shout of alarm, one hand waving her blaster at whatever was attacking her in vain, the other trying to protect her face. Moira moved forward, hoping the Overwatch agent’s cries for help would be heard, because Moira hadn’t thought quite so far as to how to actually combat… whatever this was.

Perhaps she needn’t have bothered. For a strange thing happened when Moira’s body pushed against the invisible force attacking the Overwatch agent – it stopped, upon the awareness of Moira’s presence. A pair of burning red eyes shifted to her in an instant. A silhouette outlined in lightest gray against the night took shape in Moira’s view long enough for her to take in it as it swooped towards her, for Moira to feel the cold almost like a kiss at her neck (was it smelling her?), for her to realize that even with only that instant of seeing its features, it looked familiar.

The rare instance where Moira wished she wasn’t right was upon her.

She heard a hissing sound in her ear as the specter realized she wasn’t who it was searching for. But for it to have grown so brazen, to leave the woods now, the timing was too perfect. It surely knew that Agent Ziegler was nearby, and that Moira was the closest link to her.

Lights went off in the corner of Moira’s eye as several more Overwatch agents ran her way, and the specter seemed to realize that it no longer held the advantage. The air around Moira softened with the specter’s retreat, only a violent rustling of the bushes at the forest’s edge betraying where it had fled. “What’s going on?” one of the other agents asked.

“Was all that recorded?” Moira answered.

***

Dawn broke over Moira, Angela, and the Overwatch search and rescue team trying to make sense of the recording’s account of the attack, which only showed Moira and the other agent seemingly being assaulted by the night air.

“How’s the other agent you were with?” Angela asked Moira from where they hung back.

“I imagine beginning to realize she’s as in over her head as the rest of us are. Unless there’s any insight you would care to offer into this invisible assailant?” Moira’s dual-colored eyes flashed as she threw the question Angela’s way, and Angela hated not knowing she seriously she ought to take its nature. Almost as much as she hated not knowing how afraid she ought to be right now.

“No, I can’t say I have any,” she played it safe.

“Then let me show you something.” Moira led Angela back towards where the attack had occurred. “We couldn’t see them until now, but there were tracks left behind, going to and from the forest.”

“How do you know those weren’t made by any of you last night?”

“Look closer.” Angela and Moira knelt at the stopping point of the tracks, Moira outlining with a manicured fingernail what she saw. “Do you see the ball of the foot? I count five distinct toes. Our attacker was barefoot.”

Remembering Moira’s earlier observation, Angela frowned. “Wait a minute, I thought you said it wasn’t human.”

“I never said it was. The weight distribution is all wrong. Humans like ourselves walk heel to toe. Whatever this thing is, it walks on the ball of its foot.”

Angela bit down on her lip. “This isn’t the time to be having a go at me, Moira.”

“Why would I ever? You don’t know what sort of knowledge I’ve picked up in my line of work.”

Shaking her head, Angela’s fingers went to the well-worn pendant around her throat. “So, if it’s not human, but it’s not animal either, what on Earth is it?” Oh, she had suspicions, but unlike Moira, Angela had no desire to see them proven.

“That, I have yet to discern.”

“What have you got over here?” came the voice of the Overwatch agent supervising the rescue operation. Angela remembered her from training – Commander Rammstein, that was it. Hopefully, if she remembered Angela, she hadn’t heard about her reassignment.

Angela and Moira swiftly stood, Moira answering, “Just some tracks, same as before.”

Commander Rammstein didn’t look reassured. There was more gray in her dark hair than when last Angela had seen her. “Well, whatever it is, it’s attacked three of our agents, still largely without detection. And it wasn’t shy about coming out of the woods.” She paced closer to the tracks, glaring down at them. “I wouldn’t say it’s a Bastion, but make no mistake, what we’ve got here is a predator with low visibility and high motivation. It has the advantage on us, too – the entire Black Forest.”

Angela heard the unspoken admission of failure behind those words. It was Overwatch that had let charting this region slip through the cracks, wanting to push the bitter memories of Eichenwalde and the Omnic Crisis into the past, among the darker shadows of the forest. “Then how do we stop it?” Angela breathed.

“By identifying it,” Moira answered. “By finding it – before it finds someone else.”

***

Within an hour, they entered the forest proper, setting off on the same hiking trail the teenager from Kaiserslautern had last been seen venturing down. A fourth agent by the name of Barnes had joined them, fiddling with a tracking device. “This should detect any body heat within 300 yards,” he explained. “It was developed specially for Overwatch rescue ops.”

“We’ll appreciate all the help we can get,” Commander Rammstein grimaced. “Are we ready to go? Before we start, it’s worth warning that comms will get patchy. Not even Overwatch networks are reliable in the thick of this growth. Stay close, and maintain visual contact. If you get lost, shout, and if nobody responds, don’t move. I will find you, don’t come looking for me. I know it all sounds obvious, but I’ve had agents get lost on me before.” As they began to walk off the trail, she placed small white pebbles to mark their path along the way.

Angela hung back with Agent Barnes. He looked about as young as anyone could possibly get tapped for Overwatch at, younger than even Angela had been. “Are you picking up anything?” she asked.

Agent Barnes shook his head. “No, nothing at all. Not even wildlife.”

“Isn’t that a little strange?”

“Yes. This forest should be alive with sound. I’m not a biologist, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Breathing in the familiar trees, Angela sighed, “Well, it certainly is beautiful.”

“That’s what happens,” Agent Barnes frowned. “People get to looking around, and the next thing they know…”

Yes, that was right. This was no longer the forest of Angela’s childhood.

None of the agents saw the invisible force that pushed the last pebble laid by Commander Rammstein behind them off the path. When something did ping on Agent Barnes’ tracker, it was ahead of them. “Hold on,” he warned in a soft voice, causing all four agents to halt. “About twenty yards ahead.”

“Where?” Commander Rammstein asked, looking over her shoulder. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s just sitting there,” Agent Barnes frowned. Angela saw a vaguely human silhouette flash on the screen – then run off. “It’s on the move!”

They began to give chase, a feat easier said than done while trying to keep track of each other in the thick of the growth. “It’s moving fast!” Agent Barnes continued calling out. “It’s going to the right! I don’t know how it’s changing directions so quickly, but it's about forty yards ahead of us now!”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Moira snapped, falling in beside him. “I still don’t see it!”

Agent Barnes stumbled to a stop, his legs trembling from an equal mix of fear and exhaustion. “Now it’s… gone. I don’t know where it went.”

Several yards away, Angela had wound up with a similarly perplexed Commander Rammstein. “What is it?” Angela asked, seeing the troubled look deepening on the commander’s face.

“I fought omnics programmed to do this during the Crisis. It’s trying to separate us,” Commander Rammstein looked in every direction for Moira and Agent Barnes. “It wants to pull us farther away from the others. We need to go back.”

They started retracing their steps slowly, walking back to back with Commander Rammstein in the lead. As they passed an old tree, Angela felt it – that familiar shudder of cold she had come to associate with danger. As she opened her mouth to warn Commander Rammstein, the other woman seemed to drop into the foliage. No, not drop. She had been dragged down.

Commander Rammstein let out a shout, and Angela called her name, trying to reach out a hand. “Moira, I need help! Moira!”

The sound of footsteps came rushing towards them, thankfully the ones that Angela had been hoping for. But in just the second when she looked up, the force with its hold on Commander Rammstein gained the advantage, pulling her deeper into the forest. But Angela did see one feature vanishing into the growth – a pair of burning red eyes.

“Ziegler, what happened?” Moira panted.

“Where’s the commander?” came from Agent Barnes. “I’m not getting a reading.”

“She was walking right ahead of me. She was right here, and then she was just gone!”

“It separated us,” Moira confirmed. “And it did it on purpose. It divided us so that it could go after her. She was in the lead, and presumably the strongest. It takes the strongest first.”

“Takes them where?” Agent Barnes’ voice broke, clearly on the verge of panic. “That doesn’t make any sense! Even out here, you can’t just disappear like that!”

Moira nodded. “You’re right. We have to find her.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“I don’t know!” Moira’s voice was harsh, but Angela knew her irritation wasn’t so much at the younger agent as it was the fact that Moira had to admit this. “We’ll form a line and beat the bushes. Maybe you’ll be able to pick up a signal.”

“No, we need help,” Agent Barnes shook his head. “We’re not Blackwatch. We need to call in backup, and comms aren’t going to work out here. We need to go back right now.”

“The longer we wait, the less chance we have of finding her.”

“But this is crazy! We have got to get out of these woods before it gets dark!”

As Moira and Agent Barnes fought, Angela’s attention was drawn back to the tree where she had felt the warning. It was her magic, inherited with the rest of her mother’s legacy, as unsure as Angela remained what to make of those facts. She drew up close to the dark bark, running her hand over the moss and vines clinging to the trunk. Something was carved into the wood. Angela’s blood ran cold all over again at her recognition of it.

“You go back, then,” she heard Moira continue behind her. “You leave us the tracker and go back. We have to find her.”

“What we have to do is stay together. And if we stay here, they may not find any of us.”

Moira looked to Angela, clearly expecting her to take her side. But she hadn’t seen the carving on the tree, wouldn’t know what it meant. “Moira, he’s right,” Angela tried. “We weren’t prepared for this. We have no way of telling anyone where we are, we don’t have any food, and Commander Rammstein had our water. I’d like to find her too, but the risks of that are too foolish.”

Glancing between the two of them, Moira remained still for another moment. “Alright. We’ll all go,” she finally consented. “Lead the way, Agent Barnes.”

As they walked back though, Angela had to murmur her doubts to Moira. “I don’t have much faith that this brand-new Overwatch tech will do us any good at this point.”

“So far all it’s done is split us up,” Moira agreed.

“Whatever it is that we were chasing did show up on it at first.”

“What does that tell you?” Moira looked down at her again, chasing something more than she was voicing.

“Nothing,” Angela fibbed. Moira didn’t look convinced, so Angela offered, “Except that we were going in the right direction.”

“Maybe it can regulate its temperature,” Moira wondered. “Do you know of any animal that can?”

“Ticks,” Angela grimaced, glad that her clothes covered her up to her neck out here. “They can essentially go into suspended animation until something warm-blooded comes along.”

“That’s interesting.”

“When you say it like that, I know you have your own theory you want to put forward.”

Moira spread her hands, guilty as charged. “There’s a town in America called Point Pleasant, in West Virginia. It was terrorized at a point in its history by something that would carry off livestock, and in certain accounts even people. Witnesses described it as a primitive-looking humanoid with glowing red eyes. It became known as the Mothman.”

That was a bit much for Angela to swallow. “What would that be filed next to in your office, the cockroach that ate Cardiff?”

“No, ‘the cockroach that ate Cardiff’ is in the Cs. ‘Mothman’ is in the Ms.”

Angela let out a laugh halfway between exasperation and acceptance. The smile fell from her face just as quickly as Agent Barnes piped up, “This isn’t the way.”

“What do you mean?” Angela and Moira moved forward to join him.

“The commander was marking our route with those little white stones. I haven’t seen one of them for twenty minutes.”

“This is the same path,” Moira tried to insist. “This is the way we came. You only think otherwise because you’ve had your nose glued to that tracker this entire time.”

Agent Barnes began to breathe heavily again. “I’m telling you, we’re on the wrong trail! Somehow, we got even more off track. Oh, this isn’t happening…”

A flash of movement in the trees caught Angela’s eye. “Everybody, stand still,” she ordered. “There’s something out there.” She and Moira both drew their blasters.

“Where?” Moira asked.

“About... 40 yards out?” Angela guessed, trying to focus on where she had seen the movement. “Agent Barnes?”

“N – nothing,” he said, checking the tracker.

“I saw it,” Angela insisted. But the woods had gone silent again.

The silence – that was it.

A rustling from behind them made all three remaining agents turned as Agent Barnes cried, “I got it! I got it on the tracker!”

“Where?”

“About 30 yards ahead now. It’s just sitting there again.”

Moira’s eyes narrowed, and she pushed forward into the trees. “What are you doing?” Agent Barnes called after her.

Angela swore. “Talk to her.”

“This isn’t a good idea!” Agent Barnes tried to warn Moira as they followed her. “It’s to your right!” They fell into a triangular formation, each at the other’s shoulders. “It’s… disappeared again.”

Moira saw the flash of those eyes near a log, the outline of a shape taking off again. She let loose her blaster in its direction. “Don’t lose it!” she called.

Angela ran forward, aiming her own blaster in the specter’s direction and firing off another round of shots, for all the good it would probably do. “Did you hit it?” Moira asked beside her.

“I don’t know. It just stopped.”

Moira looked back over her shoulder. “Where’s Barnes?”

Angela took in with her the emptiness around them. She couldn’t answer Moira, and that was the worst response of all. Moira saw the expression on Angela’s face and grimaced. “How many shots did you fire?”

“And did you not bring an extra reload?” At that, Angela raised her eyebrows back at Moira. “Well, that makes neither of us. Don’t fire again unless you’re certain you can hit it. It may be trying to spend our advantage. I still don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s smarter than us out he-” Moira was jerked downwards by the same force that had taken Commander Rammstein before she could finish her sentence.

“No!” Angela shouted, reaching out towards where Moira had been standing. Without meaning to, she felt some invisible pulse fly from her fingertips, imagined in her mind’s eye like a ripple of gold. “Moira!”

And mercifully, a strained voice responded, “Ziegler!”

Angela saw the specter properly illuminated for the first time, as it wrestled with Moira among the forest floor. She didn’t have time to think about how human its features truly were, or more than that, how eerily similar to her visions of her mother they resembled. Angela only fired off every last shot her blaster still held. Whether any of them could strike home was unclear, but it was enough to run the specter off. Angela raced to Moira’s side the moment it was gone.

Moira was bleeding from her right shoulder, but at a glance, Angela thought she could patch it up. Angela stood over her another moment with her blaster drawn, hoping the specter couldn’t tell it was now useless. “Are you alright, Moira?”

Nodding, Moira’s jaw tightened as she sat up. “I’ve been through worse. Although I need to stop wearing my favorite jackets out into the field.”

***

Angela sent out a distress signal (using the same frequency that Agent Reinhardt’s had been picked up on, which wasn’t exactly reassuring), but there weren't many other protocols she could follow afterwards. She patched up Moira’s shoulder as best she could with their limited resources, and they moved into a clearer grove of trees with enough space for them to risk lighting a fire as night began to fall.

Of course, the first part of that assumption was that Angela would be able to light a fire.

“Maybe you should run to the store and get some matches,” Moira said from where she was leaning against a log, her good hand held over the makeshift bandage that Angela had fashioned out of Moira's former jacket.

“Well, I would, but I left my wallet in the car.” Angela gave the rocks she had found one more strike over her pathetic pile of sticks. This had seemed so much easier in Overwatch basic training. Angela even went so far as taking out her blaster again, pumping the trigger in the hopes that any stray burst might ignite the kindling, but it was all for naught. As if to further mock her, the unmistakable rumble of thunder echoed above them.

Moira verbalized at that several words in Gaelic that Angela didn't think were too flattering. “Leave it be, Ziegler.”

“You need to keep warm, Moira. Your body is still in shock.”

Tilting her head back, Moira rolled her eyes. “You know, I once read that the best way to regenerate body heat was to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with somebody else in a similar state.”

“Well, maybe if that oncoming storm makes it rain sleeping bags, you’ll get lucky,” Angela grinned. What else could she do?

Several hours later

“Moira, have you ever seriously thought about dying?”

“Once, I suppose. When I was in secondary school, a classmate of mine invited every girl in our year to her birthday party at an ice skating rink. To this day, there are few activities in the world I loathe more. Your turn.”

Angela slumped against the log beside Moira, risking the small illumination her otherwise useless comm provided to give them a little light as the dark deepened. With the onset of night, staying awake by any means possible had become the name of the game.

She weighed the possible responses to her own question, but the answer her mind immediately went to was nothing that Moira didn’t already know. “When my parents died, it wasn’t that I wanted to join them, so much as… I was angry. At the injustice, and the meaninglessness of it. But then I realized that was what I was really struggling with - trying to give it meaning. I had to make sense of death alongside life. So I started going to temple with my aunt. And I started thinking about becoming a doctor, like my parents.”

“I think that nature is supremely indifferent to whether we live or die,” Moira countered.

“How scientific of you.” Angela took another go at the kindling, still to no avail. “Your turn. Nothing is off limits or too existential.”

“Could you ever cannibalize someone?” Moira came up with alarmingly fast. “If you really had to.”

Breathing in the night air of the forest, Angela tried to ignore the gnawing in her stomach. “Well, I find the idea abhorrent. But, under certain conditions, if it was necessary to survival… I suppose I would resort to the same measures as anyone else.”

Before Moira could respond, the sky opened all at once, dropping what felt seasons worth of rain upon her and Angela. And it was all that Angela could do to laugh.

“This is crazy!” she shouted as the cold droplets splattered against her skin. She tilted her head upwards, leaning into the storm, letting it soak through her clothes and skin down to her bones with no care for the next instant beyond this one. The rain and the forest and Moira beside her and that specter surely stalking just out of her sight – it all blurred together, the manifestation of the dizzying madness that she had been hurtling through ever since first knocking on Moira’s office door. She was going to die out here in these woods, but hadn’t she known as much all along? Hadn’t that premonition of a dream haunted her for every night since her mother had left her, with powers she didn’t understand and a legacy that none could explain to her? All she really felt bad for was that Moira had been dragged into it…

But it was a quick spring storm, its fleeting moment of credence evaporating with the rain in a matter of minutes. And with it came Angela Ziegler, back to the surface, hunching her shoulders and shivering in her drenched clothes. She couldn’t yet look at Moira as she asked, “Mothman? Really?”

Moira sighed beside her. “I don’t think so, no.”

Clenching her teeth, Angela shifted closer to Moira, leaning against the other woman. “Don’t get any ideas. We need to try and keep warm.” Moira’s wince at the gesture, though, Angela realized too late had come from the fact that she was pressing against Moira’s wounded shoulder. “Oh, sorry!”

“No, it’s for the better,” Moira forced out. “One of us has to stay awake.”

“You sleep, Moira. You’re worse off than me.”

“I won’t argue that, but if you get tired, you have to wake me. It’s not a matter of pride right now.”

“I’m not going to get tired,” Angela insisted. “How on Earth could I?”

Even in the dark, Angela could tell that Moira wasn’t convinced. That couldn’t have prepared her for Moira’s suggestion of, “Why don’t you sing something?”

Angela bolted upright. “Moira… not only no, but no.”

“Well, if you sing something, I’ll know that you’re awake.”

“Moira, you don’t want me to sing. I can’t carry a tune.”

“All the better. Talent shouldn’t matter in these circumstances.” Moira cast her eyes down to Angela in the darkness. “Really, Ziegler. Just sing anything. I think it safe to say we have reached a point beyond judgement.”

There was a long pause, during which every song that Angela had ever heard of course vanished from her mind. She felt Moira’s growing impatience, and Angela forced her mind to go blank, to think of simply the first lyrics that came to her from the very core of her being…

“I’ve been cheated by you since I don’t know when…”

Another pause, during which Angela felt certain without having to look at Moira that the other woman’s opinions on her were going through a drastic shift. Still, she kept going, if somewhat deadpan, “So I’ve made up my mind, it must come to an end…”

“Truly, Ziegler?” Moira interrupted her with a slightly stifled voice, almost as though she had clapped her good hand over her mouth. “ABBA’s greatest hits?”

“It was my aunt’s favorite music to play whenever we cleaned her flat!” Angela snapped. Taking a deep breath, she continued with more gusto, if not pitch accuracy, “Look at me now, will I ever learn? I don’t know how, but I suddenly lose control. There’s a fire within my soul…”

As Angela thought she couldn’t possibly take any more of this, though, the most unexpected thing happened; more than Angela once more seeing her mother, or Moira once more seeing her love who she was beginning to accept might be truly lost, or any other supernatural force attacking them – Moira joined in.

“Just one look and I can hear a bell ring,” Moira grudgingly picked up.

“One more look and I forget everything,” Angela continued, not sure if she was beginning the hallucinate. “Whoa, oh…”

They joined together for the chorus, neither of them anywhere near the original key but with the most remarkable enthusiasm they could find for each other’s sake. “Mamma Mia, here I go again! My, my, how can I resist you? Mamma Mia, does it show again? My, my, just how much I missed you!”

And in the dark of the night, in the heart of the forest so very far from where they had started out, Angela Ziegler and Moira O’Deorain kept singing, horrendously out of tune with heads tilted back like humanity first discovering that their was so much more their voices could be used for. Like they stood any chance in the universe against all the horrors waiting just beyond their found and forged sanctuary of this clearing.

“Yes, I’ve been broken hearted! Blue since the day we parted!” Angela half sung from memory and half bared her soul to the night sky above.

“Why, why, did I ever let you go?” Moira joined her in lamenting.

“Mamma Mia, now I really know – my, my, I could never let you go!”

They fell back against each other, because what else was there to do? Sleep came for them both within minutes, in one sense meaning that their plan had failed. But the specter waiting just out of sight among the trees had been content all along to only watch. Until it could better understand why the power from the woman who had halted it that day felt so similar to the power of the woman who had summoned it centuries before.

Chapter Text

“Careful the tale you tell – that is the spell. And children will listen.”

Moira woke to the dewy smell of the forest in the morning, and the less calming realization that she was alone.

She bolted upright, ignoring the outcry of pain from her bandaged shoulder. “Ziegler?” she called through the dryness that had settled in her mouth, before the realization that she needed to be quiet could also set in.

At the sound of Moira’s voice, Angela immediately looked up from where she sat several yards away, picking some berries off a bush. “Over here.”

A rustling sound came from the direction of the clearing as Moira joined her. “What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I figured one of us should go looking for food – and more than that, I found some. I hope you like blackberries.”

“You know full well what I mean. You shouldn’t have left.”

Angela sighed, kneeling to re-tie one of her shoes. “Moira, you were never out of my sight-” But practically the moment she ducked her head down, the undoubtedly same invisible force from the day before grabbed hold of her, scattering their would-be breakfast across the ground.

Both Angela and Moira let out shouts of protest as she disappeared into the growth of the forest. Moira felt an iron grip close around her own ankle, pulling her down with superhuman force.

“Ziegler!” Moira shouted, clawing at any dirt or plant she could hook her fingers into. When the force continued to pull at her with increased determination, she tried to at least move her body in the direction that Agent Ziegler had been taken. Moira fought her panic, analyzing her invisible kidnapper even as it dragged her deeper still into the Black Forest. It did look to be following Agent Ziegler’s trail, which seemed a confirmation that the forces were working in tandem, but what then to make of that development?

Suddenly, the force pulling Moira ground to a halt, the inertia flinging her body against a nearby tree with an impact that knocked what little breath remained in her lungs out of her. Shuddering an inhalation of air back in, Moira forced herself to climb to her knees and looked around for any more sign of their attackers. “Ziegler?” she called again.

The other woman’s voice answered from a copse of trees slightly further ahead, “I’m over here!” A pause. “But – Moira. You’ll want to see this.”

Moira once again climbed to her feet and pushed forward, sensing their attackers’ focus remaining on them, trying to calculate any possible way of keeping herself and Agent Ziegler one step ahead. “What is it?” she asked, catching sight of both Agent Ziegler staring at something at her feet, and the lake that they stood at the shore of. That seemed strange on its own – Moira had examined multiple maps of the Black Forest, and the nearest lake of this size in proximity to Kaiserslautern was still dozens of kilometers from the city. Assuming this was even the nearest one, for them to have still been brought all this way could only mean…

“I think I found where Agent Reinhardt and the others wound up.” Agent Ziegler pointed at the entrance to a hollow in the earth about three meters deep. “And I’m alright, thank you for asking. But I’m not sure I can say the same for them.”

Ignoring the jab, Moira knelt, peering into the murky shadows of the hollow. “What exactly is down there?” She had no doubt that Agent Ziegler’s bizarre sixth sense was in play here, but there would be time later for Moira to question the specifics of that.

“I’m – well, I’m not exactly sure,” Agent Ziegler conceded. “Beyond that I know I saw bodies. And I know that it’s the other agents.”

Wishing she had thought to bring any kind of sight-enhancing gear, Moira narrowed her eyes, straining until she could make out the silhouettes of several human-sized somethings cocooned about the cavern. “Do you know if they’re alive?”

“Not for much longer, if I had to guess. Moira, we have to get them out of here.”

“Is there a way out?”

“I don’t know!” Angela grimaced, holding her hands to her forehead and closing her eyes. The contours of the cavern revealed themselves to her once more, unfolding like some kind of supernatural sonar. “There’s… it’s like there’s a network.”

Without warning, her magic brushed against a force far older than herself, the same force that had brought her here. The sheer scale of it cut Angela off from investigating any further. “Moira. I don’t think I need to tell you this, but – we’re not alone. And I don’t have a weapon.” At least, she didn’t think that she did. That was assuming she would even know how to use her magic on any level more than what came instinctively.

At once, she sensed that she had pushed too far, that this other force not only knew of her and Moira’s presence, but that it knew who she was. And what was more - there was something about it that Angela knew. She drew in a shaky breath, ignoring Moira’s answer of, “Don’t do anything rash,” and brought her magic in contact with whatever was lurking below them once more.

It felt human. Angela never would have mistaken it for such. It was human in the way that a petrified stump could still technically be called a tree, dead and withered in every way but at the very root. As Angela dared to feel closer still, she quickly came to understand why it was now doing nothing more hostile than obstructing her – some part of it answered to her very same magic, reverberating down the force of it and back through Angela, radiating entire lifetimes she had never dared to dream.

Angela wanted to demand the forces she had always been able to understand, to provide any kind of scientific explanation for what was happening to her at the shore of this nameless lake. But nameless was not to imply that Angela didn’t know exactly where she was. A lifetime of drowning dreams had prepared her, led her, to this very moment, and all that was left for her now was to understand what they had been for.

Devoting as much of her attention as she dared to the force occupying the hollow, Angela felt what powered it. A wish – a dying one. The force was best described as some kind of guardian spirit, summoned with an initial purpose that had grayed over centuries, until the spell had been left muddled and stretched thin.

The tinny, vengeful sound of laughter rang through Angela’s ears. Another ghost of another memory.

Without thinking on it any longer, she jumped into the hollow, barely feeling her feet hit the ground despite the drop. The doctor in her would have stopped to examine the bodies she walked past, the ones that still had hope anyhow. Doctor Ziegler was not in at this time.

Angela strode further into the black with a single-minded determination, not quite willing to call what had come over her a trance. She was answering some call far greater than herself, yes, but she knew exactly what she was doing. There was too much fear rising within her for her to have been truly unaware. She wondered now if it was time for her to grow tired of being afraid.

The sense of her magic guided her to where in the tunnel the guardian was waiting. Angela stood directly in front of where it should be, forcing her chin to remain high. Did it really think to hide from her now? Well, who was to know what it was thinking. Angela was a far dilution from the one who had summoned it centuries earlier.

A figure appeared before her with no sound of footsteps, no emergence of light ushering her forth, clad in the same black shift as before. At this, Angela did nearly break. For it had been one thing to see and commune with her mother in some half-dead dream, but here – this hollow was a realm of the magical and fantastic, but still very much a part of the real world. A corner of Ilse’s mouth twisted upwards, not quite glad for the circumstances. “Didn’t I promise you that I would meet you again?”

The specter of her mother who Angela had spoken to at death’s door was imperfect, mortal in memory. This Ilse radiated all the power she might have claimed with a different choice, and for that, Angela knew her to be a charade. The version of herself that she spent her childhood wishing to see in her mother had never been this. But the promise this magic kept resurrecting of another conversation more with Ilse had its hooks in Angela now. Their last one turned out to be the opposite of the closure that Angela had craved, and the mere sound of Ilse’s voice brought with it the promise of another try. That was all that Angela really wanted, she told herself.

“You didn’t have to go through all this effort,” she said. “I’m not hiding from you anymore.”

Ilse didn’t seem convinced. “I had to quite literally drag you here, dear.”

“Well, my memories from the last time you brought me here weren’t exactly comforting.”

“You would have learned about death magic one way or another.” Ilse’s face flickered as she said those words in a manner that wasn’t quite a change of expression, not the way that any human experienced it. Like something within the core of her makeup had to realign itself at Angela’s resistance. “You feel it, don’t you? All over those trespassers.” She grimaced again. “The one who followed you here, included.”

Moira. She must have chased after Angela into the tunnel. Angela opened her mouth to cry a warning, but quick as she had on the night of the bombing, Ilse crossed the distance between them and planted a spectral hand over Angela’s mouth. “Peace. She has her own trial to undergo.”

The touch of her specter-mother’s not-quite-skin was more than Angela could bear. Without thinking, she pushed outwards, both with her body and her magic. The sheer force flew Ilse back several meters, but she was righted again within an instant, little more than momentarily knocked off her feet.

“So, you have grown,” she nodded. “But you are still unrefined. Our gift is not a simple defense to be called upon only when you wish it. Do you truly think yourself worthy?”

Angela couldn’t answer that right away. Oh, there were excuses she could have called upon, that her line of work and the realm of science kept her from unlocking some deep understanding of her heritage on the day-to-day, but she knew that neither herself nor her mother would have believed it. She had simply traded disbelief for tolerance in moderation, and that would not be enough to pass whatever this test was.

Ilse’s lip curled at Angela’s silence. “Are you worthy?” she repeated. “Well, daughter of mine? Am I right to call you as much? Or will you let this forced isolation of yourself destroy you? You have forgotten who you are. You denied it from the beginning.”

A haze of red and black descended over Angela’s vision. To hear words this cruel in her mother’s honeyed voice was more than she would stand. If this specter wanted to see her really use her magic – well, Angela wouldn’t deny it now.

A command materialized in the most primal part of her mind, the one all her years of medical training had been for the purpose of blocking out, the place where panic and irrationality piloted the body from. Here lay the wellspring that Angela had truly never touched until now. GET. OUT.

She barely had to thrust her hands outwards for the specter to crumble before her, particles of pure magic scattering in the air before recollecting back into Angela’s own recycled energy. Nothing would go to waste in a place touched by enchantment for this long. Pressing her hand against the tunnel wall, Angela wanted to fall to her knees, to fight back the sick rising in her throat at what she had just done. She forced herself to keep walking, to see what the specter had been protecting all these years.

What she found was a book.

---

“Agent Ziegler!”

Moira would have thought that force had grabbed hold of the other woman again and pulled her into the hollow, had she not seen Agent Ziegler tense in that manner of rejecting hesitation before jumping in. Moira tried to pull her back, extending her injured arm too far.

She bit back a curse as a fresh wave of pain rocketed through her, including her hand, which had never healed quite right. It was as though this quest of hers was putting her whole body out of commission, limb by limb. Moira held still for another moment, forcing breaths in and out through her gritted teeth. This situation had been far from ideal for a while, but when the better option became chasing after one’s possessed colleague into a dark tunnel containing at least one hostile enemy… well, Moira didn’t actually have precedence to call upon. Before her partnership with Agent Ziegler, she had always worked alone, assuming her endgames were as simple as finding Amelie or dying in the effort.

The latter looked extremely possible right now. Not that she thought it would do much good, but Moira still sent out a distress call from her communicator. Then she lowered herself as far into the hollow as she could, dropping the last few meters and rolling onto her good side to absorb the impact. How they were going to get back up would have to be an issue for later.

Moira made to follow Agent Ziegler when a groan from a corner of the hollow caught her attention. She looked back over her shoulder, her eyes taking a closer look at details she shouldn’t have dismissed so quickly on entry.

Such an easy mistake might have gotten her killed, left another hollow and gray-skinned corpse stacked about the walls. Some of them looked - and smelled - to have been here for a very long time.

Following the groaning, Moira found her way to the freshest kills – rather, the soon-to-be kills. The massive frame responsible for the noise could have only been Agent Reinhardt. If these unfortunate souls were drained magically, Moira reckoned only the Overwatch agent’s hulking size was what had kept him alive this long. Beside him were agents Rammstein and Barnes, in similar states of semi-consciousness. Their condition was only going to worsen if Moira and Agent Ziegler couldn’t get them out of here.

Well, just standing over them wasn’t going to be of any help. Calling after Agent Ziegler wouldn’t be a wise course of action, but there was only one tunnel leading further into this lair. Moira had barely stepped towards it when a figure emerged to face her.

No. Supernatural forces were at play here, and this was one of their tricks. Every shred of rationality within Moira knew there was no possible way that Amelie could be standing in front of her.

“What took you so long?”

‘Cruelty’ wasn’t a word that Moira doled out lightly, but this – the sight of Amelie in the same black dress she had worn on that last night in Paris, her makeup still perfectly applied, her dark hair still pulled back without a strand out of place. It was such a horribly calculated strike at everything Moira had almost begun to believe, that her pursuits could ever be for more than a woman she had already failed.

“I knew you would find me. Eventually,” Amelie said, careful to avoid any touch from the light of the sun that made it into the hollow. That, Moira took note of. Further proof that this wasn’t the real Amelie, but some crafted illusion meant to keep Moira from Agent Ziegler. Yes, she was who this was really about.

It was as though Amelie could follow the track of Moira’s thoughts, though. “That woman you meant to follow? She is nothing. At least, she should be to you.” The accusation in her eyes was piercing, real or not. When Moira refused to answer her, she drew closer, her voice softening.

“You did it. You found me.” Still circling the edge of the sunlight, Amelie sidled alongside Moira within the shadows of the cave, snaking their fingers together before Moira even felt the sensation of her touch. “It’s me.”

Her other hand crept along Moira’s jaw, gently forcing Moira to look at her. “Your love.” Her breath was warm, warm enough for Moira to feel it against her own lips. And a traitorous part of her mind was lured enough to think, what sort of illusion breathes?

Amelie sensed that she had won. “The one you’ve been searching for is here.” Moira let herself be folded into Amelie’s embrace, to feel the familiar press of their bodies together. Enough of her wanted.

Which was why she didn’t let herself hesitate. Circling her hand around Amelie’s neck, as though to meet her waiting kiss, Moira seized her and pushed her into the light of the sun.

It wasn’t as dramatic as, say, the vampires in London had been. The illusion made no sound, didn’t even feign surprise at Moira’s own deception. It kept its eyes trained on hers, even as it dissolved into bits of gold-hued dust, and some part of Moira felt the least she owed it was to match its gaze.

Only when it had disintegrated did Moira let loose the shudder that had been building up her spine. That had been… far too personal.

The sound of footsteps echoed again from the tunnel, and Moira turned around, bracing herself for another trick. But no, it was Agent Ziegler, cradling something in her arms. Or at least, it looked to be her. She looked up and saw Moira, the wariness on her own face likely mirroring whatever expression that Moira wore. Clearly, she had encountered some mirage of her own.

Moira said the first thing she could think of to prove her reality, something she doubted any specter of this forest would know. “Agent Ziegler, your favorite food is chocolate almond cookies. You’re partial to the ones from the bakery across from the Zurich headquarters.”

Agent Ziegler’s eyes widened, but she didn’t come any closer just yet. “Moira. Apart from your dog, Cecily, you also had a pet rabbit in your childhood, named Gwendoline.”

Well. Moira had to give credit where credit was due, for Agent Ziegler to remember so momentary a detail that Moira had let slip as that.

Moira nodded, and Agent Ziegler blew out a great exhale, her shoulders slumping. She joined Moira’s side, Moira trying to get a better look at whatever Agent Ziegler was holding onto. It looked like a book. As Agent Ziegler looked up at the lip of the hollow though, frowning, Moira was reminded of the greater current problem at hand.

“It’s a pity we don’t have any office furniture,” Moira remarked.

That won a wry laugh from Agent Ziegler. “Oh, if only they could see us now.”

Looking back to where she had found Agent Reinhardt and the others, Moira led Agent Ziegler to the only three survivors within the cavern. “Do you know anything about what might have done this to them?” she pressed.

Agent Ziegler examined the comatose agents like a professional, but when the time came to offer a diagnostic, she grew more hesitant. “I’m not sure what I could-” Her eyes widened before going to the book she had set down at her side. After seeming to size Moira up, much as she had on that first day in Moira’s office, Agent Ziegler breathed in and said, “Moira, I need you to trust me on what I’m about to do.” There was no request in her words.

“The floor is yours,” Moira conceded. Agent Ziegler pulled the book, a clearly old and leather-bound tome, onto her lap, flipping through the pages with a nigh-possessed frenzy. Moira was able to catch glimpses of writing that looked somewhere between Old German and runic in structure. Agent Ziegler was skipping past many of them too quickly to be reading, but she must have understood it at some level. What about the book could have seemed so familiar to Moira, though?

Minutes or hours might have gone by when Agent Ziegler’s fingertip finally stopped on a page over halfway through the book. Still riding whatever energy had seized hold of her, Agent Ziegler turned her attention to Agent Rammstein’s form, holding her hands over her chest as though to resuscitate the commander. She muttered a chant in a rough-sounding, but not entirely unpleasant, tongue – likely the spoken form of whatever the book was written in.

The air in the hollow was stagnant, but it felt as though a wind blew through it nonetheless, momentarily howling in Moira’s ears and leaving her clinging to what little she could gain a grip on. Then it was all back to normal – save for the small patch of color that returned to Agent Rammstein’s complexion.

Agent Ziegler repeated the strange rite on their other two former companions, each time the atmosphere of the hollow retaliating like a refusal to bend before her, before being forced to give in. Moira wanted to say that she couldn’t have known this side of Agent Ziegler, whatever it was, existed – but that wouldn’t have been truthful. Every time Agent Ziegler layered over her incantation, the phantom scar that should have marred Moira’s torso flared in response, threatening to pull Moira closer.

Agent Ziegler was still at work on Agent Reinhardt when the sound of raised voices pricked at the corner of Moira’s attention. Enough caution remained about her to be wary of whatever might still be lurking nearby. But then she listened closer, realized who the voices were calling to.

“Agent O’Deorain?” came a man’s voice from the lip of the hollow. “Agent Ziegler?”

Snapping out of the trance at once, Agent Ziegler turned back over her shoulder, straining to make out in the fading light alongside Moira the unmistakable silhouettes of an Overwatch search and rescue team. “We’re down here!” she shouted, wasting no time. “There are injured agents with us! We’ll need a ladder.”

The man who had been speaking to them gestured to his companions, and Moira heard several shouts directing who was to go where. Incredible. But then again, were she to compare coordinates, Moira speculated that this was where Agent Reinhardt’s own distress signal had been picked up.

“What do we tell them?” Agent Ziegler asked from beside her. “No matter how we try to spin this story… it’s going to seem impossible.” Her grip was white knuckled around the book, Moira noticed, not having to suspect why Agent Ziegler might not want it to fall into official Overwatch evidence.

Moira held out her hand. “Give it here. I’ll make sure they don’t learn of it.” Agent Ziegler looked between her and the book with nervousness, but at the sound of a clamor near the rim of the hollow, she pressed the book into Moira’s waiting palm. Moira smoothly tucked it into the inner pocket of her jacket. She doubted that Agent Ziegler would let her keep hold of it for long, but all she needed was a few minutes to cross-check it with some of her findings…

---

“There were two of them,” Agent Ziegler repeated once they were safely on the ground in Kaiserslautern. Moira’s shoulder had been properly bandaged, and if the medic had noticed her difficulty flexing the attached hand, he hadn’t made not of it. Whether that was grace or carelessness, Moira didn’t see a need to question.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t find the second,” Moira said. Neither she nor Agent Ziegler had been entirely forthcoming with their individual experiences, only that they had experienced similar illusions. But from what Agent Ziegler had told her, Moira didn’t think whatever had pretended to be Amelie was enough to match what attacked her in the forest.

Leading the way back to their hotel, Agent Ziegler kept speculating, “But why go after anyone who so much as entered this neck of the woods? I can accept that they were attached to the lake, but according to the map on the shuttle, we were dozens of kilometers within the forest. Far further than we could have traveled on foot.”

“Perceived encroachment on their territory.” Sometimes, Moira’s initial theories wound up being not as far off from reality. “Though of course, that implies they would come after any one of us who set foot in those woods.”

“I’d like to see them try and make their way to Zurich,” Agent Ziegler scoffed. “I don’t intend to stay a minute longer here than we must.”

“We’re on the next shuttle out with the rest of the reconnaissance team. I only have to pack my bags.”

Grinning as they walked through the doors of the hotel, Agent Ziegler stretched her arms over her head. “Well then, I’ll see you in a few minutes. And for what it’s worth, I’ll pay for your next jacket.”

The one that Moira still wore was indeed in a sorry state, likely beyond salvaging. The interior pockets had fared better than the exterior fabric – and speaking of which, there was still a very curious piece of cargo tucked inside one. It wasn’t as though Agent Ziegler had directly asked for it back. What was the saying – better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Although, asking forgiveness wasn’t quite Moira’s style, either.

She had barely unpacked upon their arrival in Kaiserslautern, so repacking went even quicker. But after waiting several minutes in the hotel lobby for Agent Ziegler to return, Moira began to feel a gnawing shred of something akin to worry. Their previous conversation echoed in her ears. Who was to say the remaining spirit wouldn’t be so bold as to go after one of them here?

Moira bounded back up the stairs of the hotel, a faster route than waiting for the elevator. Better safe than sorry, she told herself. Better safe than –

Agent Ziegler opened her room’s door no sooner than when Moira raised her fist to knock. Taking in Moira’s newly-flushed state, she asked, “Moira? What’s going on?”

Smoothing her hair back into place, Moira shrugged it off. “Nothing. I’m just eager to get out of here. Are you finished packing?”

“Yes.” Agent Ziegler met her in the hallway, and they walked side-by-side out the doors of the hotel lobby, well past ready to leave whatever still lurked in the Black Forest behind them.

Their timing was quite fortunate. Neither woman saw the pair of glowing red eyes look out from beneath Agent Ziegler’s hotel room bed as the door closed, burning with fury at the escape of prey so close.

Chapter Text

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”

It might have just been Angela’s imagination, but the Blackwatch basement office felt more sullen than usual this morning. She had arrived at work ahead of Moira after a previous night’s stakeout of indeterminate success – Moira went home convinced they had recorded an interview with a credible witness to vampiric activity, but Angela wasn’t so sure. Not that Moira had been interested in hearing any of those doubts, of course.

Angela pulled up her spare chair to the other side of Moira’s cluttered desk. She wasn’t so different from this chair, she thought grimly. Moved down to Blackwatch with little more than an afterthought, serving to satisfy someone else’s wishes. Really, she was growing more and more convinced that this “temporary reassignment” over the last few months had become more of an indefinite exile, for reasons still unknown. Captain Amari had barely even seemed to express concern for Angela’s wellbeing after she went missing in action in the Black Forest, for goodness’ sake!

She sighed, running her finger along the worn nameplate bearing Moira’s name that had been shoved dangerously close to the edge of the desk. As if on cue, she heard the door open behind her, Moira rounding into Angela’s sight to drop into the chair opposite her. The previous night’s lack of sleep didn’t seem to be lagging her whatsoever – if anything, Moira looked in a hurry.

“I made a last ditch effort to get out of it, but Blackwatch is holding fast to its employee vacation policy,” Moira said, somewhat disgruntled, opening one of a multitude of filing cabinets that Angela still hadn’t figured out the Irishwoman’s organization system for. “Never mind that science never takes a day off – either I take a week’s vacation now, or they start cutting my funding. I don’t enjoy either prospect, but I have to accept the former. Even I must eat. Part of me cannot help but think, though, that this is just a way to get me out of this place.” Only now did she look up, visibly acknowledging Angela’s presence. “But it is only a week, and you’ll be here to keep an eye on things for me, Ziegler. Here are a few choice files to monitor while I’m gone.”

“Why don’t I have a desk?” Angela blurted out as Moira made to push several stacks of disorganized papers her way.

Moira paused. “What do you mean?”

Angela held up Moira’s nameplate, gesturing to the singular desk between the two of them. Moira didn’t look fazed, nodding in return to the open space behind Angela. “I always assumed that was your area, Ziegler.”

“Oh, back there?” Angela clarified, trying to rein in the overt irritation in her voice. Flies with honey, and all that.

It was enough for Moira to seemingly take the hint, even if she still acted oblivious to why this might have been a source of ire for Angela. “Alright, Ziegler. We can have them send down another desk. Bear in mind that there won’t really be any room to move around it, but perhaps we can put them together face-to-face. Start having our dinners down here, while we’re at it.”

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Angela looked back at the pile of files. “So what was it you wanted me to keep an eye on?”

As quickly as that, Moira dropped right back into business mode. “Primarily, that contact we met last night. That is, until you abandoned me halfway through the questioning. In the future, I can make certain that all the sources we interview provide you with a multi-media laser show to keep your interest maintained.” When Angela didn’t rise to the bait, Moira once again smoothed her expression and continued. “In any case, his name was Jean-Baptiste Augustin. He and several other contacts worked at a clinic in Haiti that was shut down immediately after a girl with bone-white skin who was drained of nearly all her blood and scarred with unmistakably human bite marks briefly came into their care.”

“Is this the same source you had to pay out of your own pocket for that information?” Angela remarked. “I don’t suppose he was willing to confirm the identity of any of his coworkers who could validate this story, or even the clinic’s existence, for that matter?”

“That’s your assignment while I’m gone.” Angela opened her mouth to object, but Moira clarified, “I want you to run as comprehensive a background check as your means will allow you. I’ve also made arrangements for travel so that you can administer physical surveillance on Augustin’s current activities.”

“Will you listen to me, Moira?” Angela snapped, standing up. “I never said I wanted to do this!”

“What do you mean? What might be your basis for refusing this assignment?”

At that, Angela couldn’t stop the guffaw that burst from her. “Refusing this assignment? That makes it sound like you’re my superior, Moira, and not just another agent who was shoved down here because Overwatch didn’t want to deal with her!”

Moira’s face hardened into something unreadable, and she smoothly set the file back down on her desk. “Well then, do what you want. Don’t go after Augustin. But let me remind you who put her career on the line to get these files reopened. You were just assigned. This work is my life.”

“And it’s had to become mine,” Angela shot back.

“Did you not want it to be?” Moira leveled a knowing stare at Angela, the uncomfortable reminder between them that Angela still hadn’t properly answered for what had happened in the Black Forest, or even before that, with Mako Rutledge. Angela had foolishly hoped that no such incidence would need to re-occur, but now it was clear that this was the root of the newfound wedge between them.

“This isn’t about you,” Angela dodged the unspoken question. “I just… I feel like I’ve lost sight of myself, Moira. It’s hard to see, let alone find what I really want, when all the places I ever travel to anymore are covert locations.” She felt the weight of Moira’s dual-colored gaze upon her as she admitted, “I wish I could dismiss this all as us going in circles, but we’re not. We’re going in an endless line, three steps forward, yes, but then two back. Meanwhile, every other part of my life is at a standstill.”

Not that this was exactly true, of course. But Angela still wasn’t sure that she could call her continually developing magic her own.

Moira digested this confession for a prolonged moment, making no move towards Angela. “Well, then. Perhaps it would be good for us to get away from each other for a while.”

“Where do you plan on going?” Angela asked as Moira made for the office door.

“Am I not allowed to have a personal life?” Moira said. Relenting at the tired slump of Angela’s shoulders, she offered, “It’s a place that I’ve always wanted to visit. I anticipate it to be… a journey. I hope to discover something there, at any rate.” She placed her hand on the door. “Perhaps you should consider doing the same, Ziegler.”

But as Moira was about to leave, the door swung open from the hallway. Standing on the other side was an Asian man who looked vaguely familiar to Angela, although moreso to Moira, whose eyes narrowed. “Agent Shimada. Do you perhaps have the wrong office?”

Genji Shimada? He was one of the few Blackwatch agents whose work Angela had been aware of prior to her reassignment. In fact, his track record was the main reason Overwatch had been recently willing to hand so many riskier assignments to their covert ops unit. He was usually out on missions of his own whenever Angela was back at headquarters.

“Ah, good morning, Agent O’Deorain,” he smiled, either not catching the annoyance in Moira’s voice or more likely choosing to ignore it. His attention turned to Angela. “And you must be Agent Ziegler. I don’t believe we’ve properly met, which makes this a bit awkward.”

Rising from her chair, Angela cautiously shook his hand, not sure how much of her conversation with Moira he might have overheard. “It's a pleasure to be acquainted, Agent Shimada. To what exactly do we owe this visit?”

“Well,” he began, looking back at Moira. “As you are already aware, Agent O’Deorain is taking a leave of absence. But Blackwatch still wants you in the field, Agent Ziegler, albeit reporting on a slightly different area of operations.”

His grip on Angela’s hand tightened in what was probably meant to feel reassuring. “So, for the time being at least, you’ve been reassigned as my new partner!”

Chapter Text

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

1 missed message from: DO NOT ANSWER IF 4AM

Ziegler, I felt it wise to not mention as much on my way out, given the circumstances: I wouldn’t believe you’re so foolish, but Shimada is not to be trusted. In any case, do not make him aware of our current pursuit. When I return, if you so wish, we can attempt a discussion regarding our future goals.

Angela found herself nursing a caramel macchiato at a café near Overwatch headquarters, seated across from Agent Shimada and trying in the nicest way possible to shut down his every attempt at conversation.

It wasn’t that he was unpleasant. If anything, Genji Shimada was being entirely too forthcoming.

Angela couldn’t think of a way to ask if this reassignment was also an order direct from Captain Amari. Not without sounding rude. She almost wished she possessed the lack of regard for social niceties that came so needlessly to Moira.

“No, I’ll pay,” Agent Shimada waved away Angela’s hand when the waiter approached with the bill. Angela gritted her fingernails into her palm. “It’s only fair, for springing all this on you.”

Brusque would have to be the way, Angela decided. “About that,” she began. “At this point, I can’t believe Overwatch or Blackwatch would shuffle me around twice in eight months unless there was something they wanted from me. So, tell me. What’s the assignment?”

Agent Shimada’s gaze flicked down to his chamomile tea. “Right down to business. Perhaps you were meant for Blackwatch, after all.” He cleared his throat. “You might not know me, Agent Ziegler, but I know you. I asked to be your partner when I heard they were moving you to our division, but I see now they planned on assigning you Agent O’Deorain. Now, though, Blackwatch resources have been stretched thin.” He slid a file across the table.

Learning that Agent Shimada’s attention had been on her for this long was not the most welcome revelation, but Angela plucked up the file, choosing one battle at a time. “What do you mean, ‘now’?”

“You’re spending too much time in that basement,” Agent Shimada said, as though not every Blackwatch office was confined to said basement. “The number of active Blackwatch agents has taken a sizable hit over the past year. I’m not superstitious, but even I wonder if losing Captain Reyes set off some domino effect. You and Agent O’Deorain were the only previously paired agents left.”

“You say that like Moira won’t be back. Blackwatch is her reason for existence,” Angela sighed. At this point, that was her life too, and she knew she would follow whatever fantastically-geared casefile Moira would have waiting for them upon her return. “Even if the work she does can seem counterproductive,” Angela added. She might have been upset with Moira, but not enough to spill the other woman’s confessions to a stranger.

Agent Shimada drew in a deep breath, proceeding with overwhelming caution. “You don’t have to defend someone who isn’t here, Agent Ziegler. Forgive me for saying so, but Agent O’Deorain’s reputation precedes her.” He leaned in across the table. “How close do you really think Agent O’Deorain has let you get? Not how close you would like to believe you are.”

Angela pursed her lips, not savoring the prospects of either answer. Nor the surge of retaliation they stirred within her. What was his right to know?

She flipped open the file, arching her eyebrows upon reading the person of interest. “Hanzo Shimada? I didn’t realize Blackwatch was so keen to keep operations within the family.”

It might have been a low blow, but it was part of Agent Shimada’s mythos. It wasn’t every day a disgraced Yakuza heir decided to side against his family’s criminal empire. Even Angela was clued into the rumor mill that Agent Shimada couldn’t so much as hope to set foot in Japan without being targeted for his betrayal.

He didn’t try to play it off. The remorse on Agent Shimada’s face was enough to throw Angela, as he said, “I asked for the case. It was the last time I spoke to Captain Reyes. He agreed I understood Hanzo in a way no other agent could.”

So, the late Captain Reyes signed off on this, not Captains Amari or Morrison. Angela ran the numbers in her head. “But that must mean you’ve been pursuing this for over a year.”

“Think of it as my side project,” Agent Shimada said. “Hanzo knows I’ll never give up on trying to stop him. He’s not going to make it easy for me. But now something has arrived closer to Blackwatch than I expected – or like.” He reached over the table and stopped Angela from flipping the first paper in the file over. “I trust you understand secrecy, working with Agent O’Deorain. You need to understand, this photograph has only been seen by Captain Amari. Not even Captain Morrison knows about it.”

With bated breath, Angela nevertheless leaned her chair back to keep the file from Agent Shimada’s reach before she turned to this mysterious photograph. What she saw was, admittedly, enough to give her pause. “When was this picture taken? And by whom?”

“Two weeks ago,” Agent Shimada confirmed, and maybe it was for the better that working with Moira had significantly raised Angela’s disbelief threshold for statements like this. “And we don’t know. It was sent to her and me by the same unknown source.”

Angela was wearing her contacts, but she still fought the urge to reach into her purse and put on her glasses. She scrutinized the two men in the picture, one of whom was clearly Hanzo Shimada - the man hardly kept a low profile, and his presence here wasn't the trouble. It was the man beside him who should have been impossible.

If this picture was taken only two weeks ago, why was Hanzo Shimada standing next to - and talking to - a very much alive Captain Gabriel Reyes?

***

2 missed messages from: DO NOT ANSWER IF 4AM

Ziegler, I thought of something else while I’ve been waiting for this blasted boat. If you can find the time to get back to my office without Shimada tailing you, I left you my contact for Augustin, but it would also be worth looking into similar medical Jane Does. Ask any doctor friends you might have if they’ve encountered, or heard of, similar cases. I suspect Overwatch doesn’t have comms established where I’m going, but I’ll do my best to remain in touch should I think of anything else. This will be my only excuse to not have to speak French.

Berlin

“This is the building Blackwatch suspects they were outside?” Angela asked from inside a parked nondescript hovercar, Agent Shimada at the wheel. Her memory of a certain remark about Angela’s tiny feet fueled the spite keeping her from answering the messages from Moira flashing on her phone.

“We have good reason to think so,” Agent Shimada answered. “My - Hanzo’s family has always done global dealings. This whole building is owned by a Shimada shell corporation. There are some legitimate offices inside to throw off suspicion, but most of it is used for money laundering.”

Well, it was no wonder Agent Shimada’s entire family allegedly wanted him dead. Angela could only imagine how much sensitive information about their operations he fed directly to Blackwatch. This was alarmingly close to Overwatch headquarters as well…

“What made you leave them, anyhow?” she asked, before biting into the doner kebab she had bought to kill time on stakeout.

“Don’t act like you haven’t heard the stories. Does the real one matter?”

Chicken and tomatoes lodged in Angela’s throat as she mentally chided herself. She had forgotten, one couldn’t be as blunt with most people as one could be with Moira. “If it helps, I don’t care about gossip. I… know what it’s like to have different ideals than what your family expects.”

After a moment, Agent Shimada seemed to decide he believed her. He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing an intricate tattoo of scales whose ink seemed to shimmer between indigo and black. “I got this on my seventeenth birthday, before I understood what I was asking for. If you want advice, always think about a tattoo before you get one. Hanzo and our father saw it as me wanting involvement in the business. At first I only dealt with the money, not having to question where it came from. But then a debtor tried to skip on his remaining payment. Hanzo told me it was time I held a gun in my hand. When I had to face that man, both of us knowing what I was there to do…”

Agent Shimada hurriedly pulled his sleeve back down, staring out the hovercar window at one of the building’s office windows. “I couldn’t pull the trigger. By the next day, I had fled the country, wondering whose misfortunes had funded my entire life. I felt Overwatch might be a way to make things right. To quote Captain Reyes, my unique background made me an asset for Blackwatch. And I think Hanzo is smart enough to know going against all of Overwatch to settle a family grudge would be unwise.”

Which still explained nothing about his seeming alliance with Blackwatch’s presumed-dead commander. If this photograph was to be believed, heavy emphasis on ‘presumed’. “But Captain Morrison saw Captain Reyes be gunned down,” Angela thought out loud.

“Did he bring back the body?” Agent Shimada asked.

“Well - no. But who would lie about that? It was an official Overwatch operation, so there’s video footage from Captain Morrison’s uniform of it happening.” Not that Angela had seen this herself, a voice in the back of her head that sounded suspiciously like Moira’s chimed in. Fantastic, there was no escaping the other woman even with whole countries between them.

Nodding, Agent Shimada recapped, “They were raiding the compound of a terrorist sect in the Phillipines. It’s possible the Shimada family helped provide their weaponry. The sect was well-armed, considering how recent its emergence was.”

This was more information than Angela had heard in the public report. Blackwatch must have deemed them a high threat, for the raid to be a joint operation. “What name did they operate under?”

“The Manananggal,” Agent Shimada grimaced. Something stirred in Angela’s mind at that, like encountering a standout phrase from a book she had otherwise skimmed through. But before she could pin down the memory, Agent Shimada leaned forward without warning. “That man, who just walked out of the building. I know him. If he’s here - so is Hanzo.”

Angela snapped to attention as well. The Japanese man standing outside the building wore a fine suit, and was speaking into his phone with clear irritation. Not giving herself a chance to think twice, Angela slid out of the hovercar with her own phone in her hands, ignoring Agent Shimada’s beginnings of protest.

As she walked past Hanzo’s man, he quickly glanced her over while continuing his phone conversation, but even in the field Angela’s preferred clothing maintained an air of professionality. A button-up shirt tucked into fitted trousers could have been the outfit of any woman working in one of this building’s “legitimate” businesses - or so Angela had to hope. She made herself take another bite of the kebab as she passed him, although she couldn’t quite enjoy the taste under the circumstances.

This seemed to do the trick. Convinced she was just an office worker returning from her lunch, Hanzo’s man turned away from her, and Angela finished off the kebab in a few messy bites closer to the building’s doors, anything to catch more of his conversation. Tossing the wrapper in a trash bin, Angela strode inside fully intending to walk right back out once the coast was clear -

And was promptly overwhelmed by a force threatening to reverse the very recent course of her lunch. Angela staggered back, bracing her hand against the wall. The lobby was entirely unremarkable, but it was like a black hole had opened around her, crushing Angela in its mass even as it tried to sweep her off her feet. Angela gasped for air, her eyes wide. The closest she had felt, which even now seemed like nothing, to something like this was - the Black Forest, in that hollow by the drowning lake.

What the hell was inside of this place?

“Miss, are you alright?” she heard a voice asking her in German. Angela forced her eyes open to see the building’s receptionist peering at her with no small amount of concern. “Do you need help?”

A low growl began to fill the space of her mind, although Angela had to be the only one hearing it. Words, what were words? “I’m sorry,” she managed to get out. “I have the most awful migraine. I - I think I might head home.” Never mind that she had clearly just walked inside the building, she realized too late.

But the receptionist seemed more worried than anything else. “Alright, if you think you can manage. Do you need help getting to your car?”

“No thank you,” Angela said, gritting her teeth. “Have a good day.” Praying she wouldn’t run right back into Hanzo’s man, Angela stepped outside the building.

The relief was so immediate, she had to wonder if that crushing consumption was some full sensory hallucination. Angela cautiously brushed her fingers against the metal of the wall, and this time she felt it more distilled - like an unpleasant static shock trying to crawl up her arm. Shaking it off with a shudder, Angela felt exposed turning her back to the building as she hurried to the hovercar.

“What was all of that?” Agent Shimada greeted her, the first time she’d seen him upset. It felt a strange victory. “If you had come out a minute later, I was about to send an emergency alert to every Overwatch agent in the country!”

“Thank goodness that proved unnecessary,” Angela said with far more steadiness than she felt. Cueing up the recording she had captured on her phone, she continued, “You’re welcome,” as a hologram of Hanzo’s man appeared in the space between her and Agent Shimada. “Unfortunately, my Japanese is rudimentary. Perhaps you can translate?”

Looking at Angela as though he was drastically re-assessing her, Agent Shimada nonetheless cleared his throat. “Let’s see.” Replaying the conversation twice more, Agent Shimada’s frown deepened. “He thinks Hanzo is making a bad deal. Someone - I assume this partner - is asking for too much. And…” Agent Shimada paused the recording. “It’s an odd choice of wording. He thinks it’s all too superstitious.”

Strangely, it was this which caused Angela to remember the book from the Black Forest, that she gave it to Moira for safekeeping. And that Moira had never returned it.

3 missed messages from: DO NOT ANSWER IF 4AM

Ziegler, I - [interference, likely from a choppy connection] -derstand we left off on undesirable circumstances, but - [interference] - you should know about this. Even that damn boat captain left me - [interference] - would be back in the morning. This place, Ziegler. It’s - [interference] - prepared for. And now I wonder if I am Van Helsing or Harker.

Since you clearly - [interference] - being stubborn, my efforts might not matter. But I do now feel it wise - [interference] - record of my being here. I would prefer you remain the only - [interference] -gardless of personal resentments. From this point onwards - [interference] - are only for your ears.

On that note. I will now be entering the abandoned estate of Chateau Guillard.

[one last bit of interference before the message ends. Clipped bursts of static like its predecessors, but the final one pitches upward as it ends, almost imitating a woman’s laugh.]

Chapter Text

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

4 missed messages from: DO NOT ANSWER IF 4AM

"It's one thing to hear some tired adage, Ziegler. It's another to walk beneath the eaves of such a place as this. [interference] pull, like a home within another life that I may have known. [a chesty expression adjacent to laughter] Listen to me, assuming you some kindred. This note, I'll expunge from the record."

[a muffled clatter from a further room, followed by Moira's anticipatory whisper]

"There waits the quarry. You've witnessed my capabilities, Ziegler, but as it stands - the record shall rest with you if this proves the foe who bests me. Let us hope that all has not been in vain."

[a scuffle of footsteps and bodies colliding, culminating in a pained cry. As with so much of the extraordinary encountered in this diary, it can't quite be placed as human. It undulates like some opera singer who's sung this song beautifully every time before it mattered, yet now their voice can only warble an imitation. It is closely followed by an exclamation of pain that Moira O'Deorain very much wishes she could desensitize herself to feeling. Something slumps, muffled, against a surface - perhaps carpeted stone. Moira picks up the recorder once more, albeit not without a prolonged pause]

"The work remains unfinished, Ziegler. So for that reason…"

[for several seconds, there is only her labored breathing. While not immediately audible, the sound of liquid dripping onto the floor can be heard upon some alarmed listener's playback]

"I will not halt here. Perhaps I may even meet her. That would be the test of what I am capable of ending."

The Drachen Building, Berlin

The plan came down to this.

With surveillance on every exit imaginable, and Agent Shimada's assurance that Hanzo remained inside the building, Angela and the man she wasn't quite so eager to think a partner had been assigned a hastily-assembled team of every nearest active Blackwatch agent. It would be preferable if they could bring Hanzo in alive, but nobody was projecting hopes too positive.

Angela felt like the van they'd all been packed into the back of was far too conspicuous, but few civilians spared them a glance. Parked on the curb outside the building, they made up some modern Trojan Horse. They waited well past business closing hours, until when even the most workaholic employees had staggered out of the front doors on weary feet. At an hour past that with no further activity, Agent Shimada gave the nod which was their signal to move out.

Her blaster was ready and loaded this time. Which didn't mean Angela wanted to use it. The instinct of self-defense her time alongside Moira had often thrown her into was one thing, but this mission was a reminder that any other Blackwatch assignment would likely end with her leveling a lethal dose of hard light at a fellow human being. That Hanzo had signed off on any number of atrocities was one thing, and Angela didn't believe he should walk free - but she did know she would endure Agent Shimada's criticism if it meant sparing a life.

Which benefited the fact that she'd been assigned her own half of the engagement squad. "Shoot only to incapacitate!" Angela ordered.

It had been so long, since Overwatch, that she'd gotten to take charge. Angela had missed the feeling more than she realized. Any question of her seniority within Blackwatch wasn't raised here, even if that was just a benefit of Agent Shimada's name being co-signed to hers. Her agents followed her every command to storm past the now-empty reception desk, up levels of staircases at a pace so merciless that she only made it by virtue of her Overwatch-encouraged fitness regimen. Their unquestioning answer to her felt almost felt too easy. What a difference no longer being at Moira O'Deorain's beck and call made.

They reached the building's uppermost levels without much racket, but Angela reckoned both she and Agent Shimada knew their presence had been noted. She proceeded down the penthouse hallway with shuffled foot-before-foot caution, her blaster at the ready (despite her hesitance towards violence, what a relief still, to know this was an enemy her blaster would fare a chance against!).

The door Hanzo held his ground behind was, ridiculously, marked with his name. The Shimada clan must have been quite confident in their control of this building. Angela jerked her head towards the half-dozen agents following her.

She heard the click of several blasters being loaded into position, and saw the answering glint of Agent Shimada's from the opposite end of the hallway. How far from what Overwatch had recruited Angela for that she'd come. But at least this felt easy. With this, she could pretend there was no chessboard she'd been placed upon.

Angela and Agent Shimada leveled their blasters against Hanzo's door. It gave way with ease. Too easily, Angela realized, before the misfortune began.

They'd expected some instant sleet of ammunition to return theirs. Instead, the moments between the door going down and the hail that fired back lasted just long enough for Angela and Agent Shimada's teams to let their guard down, against every instinct drilled into them as Blackwatch's collective firing arm.

Bodies began to dance in grotesque shivers against the force that entered them in the following seconds. Hard light was revered for its mercy, that it left behind none of the visceral mess old-fashioned bullets did in their wake. But any human body still responded the same way to its most vital parts being pierced through. Angela had enough awareness upon the first blast to duck behind the door's warped wreckage, and then could only watch as her team was decimated by the unceasing barrage.

A Bastion unit. Of course they would seemingly leave this level so unguarded, if a Bastion unit was protecting Hanzo.

The destruction rained around Angela with each quarter-second of gunshots. Each ricocheted in her ears, and each lined up with another member of her team being forcibly detached from their puppet strings before going down. She hadn't known most of them for a day. She felt each bullet pierce through her, and knew she deserved far more.

Some facet of her training had entailed fighting Bastion units. A leftover from the crisis, Angela was sure. Square within their firing sight. She felt sorry that this had forced her to prove her capability, even as she opened fire.She felt bullets whiz past her wrist, her forearm, tear through the fabric of her shirt. But let nobody claim Angela Ziegler couldn't aim a damned Overwatch-issue blaster. It took a whole emptied round, but she heard each delayed sound of a bullet striking home. The amount of time it took for the unit to shudder and die couldn't match the number of bodies unmoving on the ground.

Angela didn't move, until the form crouched across from her placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's now or never, Agent Ziegler," the voice of Agent Shimada said.

Agent. God, that was all any of them were. A title aspirational enough to sound worthy, while being some completely disposable piece all along.

Angela shoved off his hand. "Let's finish this," some throatier voice she barely recognized as her own said. So few assignments alongside Moira had entailed lives other than their two. Why had she never realized the blessing in that, until now?

She thought of her nanite thesis. If Overwatch had just let her keep working on her thesis, could the bodies around her now be saved?

They proceeded past the bullet-punctured corpse of the Bastion. It had stood guard at the entrance to another hallway, the ending of which marked another doorway. "Hanzo won't have put all his bets on the bot," Agent Shimada said. "Be ready for anything."

Angela didn't need him to tell her this. Everyone kept assuming she had no idea what she was walking into. Weren't they just as tired by it as she was? And indeed, when the chill crept through her veins, she dropped down.

The thing was, she could have shouted a warning to Agent Shimada. He wasn't really aware of the role he'd been cast to play, anymore than Angela had once been. She had no reason to resent the place he'd usurped. So when someone shouted in Japanese, and a blast tore down the hall like a furious dragon, and every one of that dragon's fangs and claws were primed to render them down to nothingness - Angela could have protected him.

She threw a dome of golden light around herself, her senses in a state she suspected would have been inaccessible before the Black Forest. A state that would save her life every time, but the life of anyone else would be forfeit save for the most grievous of circumstances. Was this what her mother felt on the night of the bombs? Agent Shimada wasn't someone who Angela would call a bad person. But knowing she only had one breath of life left - she realized now what she couldn't put to words before.

Goodness in and of itself was no marker. Goodness could be gauged by anyone. And maybe anyone else would have spared Agent Shimada, but Angela - for the short time she'd known him, and even felt certain that his motives were true, he still wasn't enough.

Maybe nothing ever would be.

Did that mean she would go on like this forever, Angela thought, as through her shield she watched Agent Shimada's flesh flay in every place it was exposed, his torso be separated from his lower half as far as his spine was concerned? It left a queasiness in her throat. She had spent a breath of life upon Moira in such similar circumstances.

But Moira challenged her, no matter how often it infuriated in the instant. Agent Shimada had done nothing but parrot back the answers of someone else. And only one of them gave something like satisfaction to Angela, even as she knew it a selfish reason to watch someone else burn while she held a bucket of water. The doctor within her protested, screamed, that she ought to help, why wasn't she doing something?

Only when Agent Shimada stopped twitching on the ground did she advance forward, towards what may very well be her end.

5 missed messages from: DO NOT ANSWER IF 4AM

"Can words convey the decay, Ziegler? Greatness once lounged here, gluttonous in a manner which only now betrays itself. I see a golden crossbow upon the mantelpiece, so weighted that I doubt it served of any true - [interference]"

"It grows more difficult, I will not lie. I am incapacita- [interference] brings me closer to her."

"No, O'Deorain, shake that off. You've never regarded fate with a kind eye before. [a shuffling sound, interspersed with interference that by now borders close to worrisome. Something in the audio shifts, like a great divide finally giving way]

"God, Ziegler. Do you need me to remind you what few things I would call upon that for?"

[the same dripping has continued through this recording. Occasionally, some squelching sound intercepts it, like a hand being clapped against raw flesh. Would you, the listener, wish that you could patch whatever wounds are bleeding out? Or would you let the sound fill your ears, and feel some fulfillness that when you might have finally been wanted, the moment arrived when you were far beyond any call?]

“So it’s true,” Hanzo Shimada breathed when Angela entered the office.

The golden light had realized it was finally no longer being denied, and it burned brighter and brighter from its source. It shrouded her in a mantle, cresting about her head in a silhouette that called to mind less a halo and more a battle helm.

The scales inked into Hanzo’s arms and across his bare torso shone too. Where Genji’s had been incomplete, the canvas of Hanzo’s body was entirely devoted to its portrait of twin dragons - the same ones now resettling into his flesh with their rampage completed. If the blood of Genji Shimada had sated them, or their master, wasn’t for Angela to know. She took another step into the room.

Hanzo stood his ground. “Do you know how terribly they want you?” The awe upon his face was undisguised. “You are the final answer. The light which will birth every shadow.” Laying a palm over his chest, as though to better soothe the dragons, he said, “Even their gift passed down my family shares no scale with yours. Come with us, and learn all the infinite ways to harness it.”

Something moved in the shadow behind Hanzo, was the shadow. A second figure stepped out. That same force from earlier in the day attacked Angela once more.

She wasn’t so unprepared now. Angela wouldn’t say the magic had overridden her - some extent of her powers were clearly in sync with her brain, and she needed to be aware to direct them. But a certainty rushed through her sparking blood like the tallest glass of champagne, the longest drag off a cigarette, a sensation in her mind that could only be described as a silent clamor. She was not controlling the magic entirely alone when she raised her hand and conjured a burst of light.

That black hole dragged at her, tried to crush her, turn her inside out and rip from her innards whatever fed her power. It leeched at her outline, and time wasn't something for which it had any concern. It would sand away every inch of her even if it took eons.

One would think, Angela felt, that eons would have taught it what to fear.

She clenched her fingers around the light, letting the first few beads of it drip into the air. Then the figure behind Hanzo advanced, its shadows beginning to prod harder. One slithered over the part of her mind most troubled by what and who she'd seen through the past several months. Angela yelled, tears rolling down her face as she hurled her light into the air.

For an instant, the room was lit by a supernova. It must have been a beacon through every one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, a signal to all of Berlin where the world was most wrong tonight. It spiraled around Angela, shifting through every hue of gold, and it laid bare who she stood before and had fired upon.

Both Hanzo and the shadow behind him had thrown their hands over their faces, and the hood of the shadow's cloak was blown back. He wore a diamond-shaped mask crafted finely around his features, carved from bone whose nature Angela thought it better to not question.

Her magic had cracked it. And through that crack, the hole of an eye she'd carved down his mask like a teardrop, Angela saw what remained of Gabriel Reyes.

The mission was long forgotten. She didn't care for impossibility now. Gabriel Reyes was dead, and something close enough to Gabriel Reyes was standing before her now, and the way he wanted Angela still wasn't so awful as how he had gotten every body lying behind her. She willed her light into a physical force. Let him feel it himself. With all that she had, Angela slammed that aureate wall into him with intent to render him to dust.

He vanished. She felt that she had hurt him. But he’d left Hanzo behind, and both he and Angela realized this at the same moment.

Hanzo clapped a hand over the ink on his bicep, the muscles within his neck straining as he tried to summon forth again what had destroyed his brother. Angela stepped closer to him, and the room was not so large. The phrase in Japanese that he tried to invoke died in his mouth as Angela took his face within both her hands.

In the end, it came down to remembering that day in the Black Forest when she'd been a girl. It was just as easy as her mother made it seem, to release that burst into someone else.

When it was over, the magic dissipated so quickly that it might have been choked. Angela slumped against Hanzo's desk, falling to her knees and only holding herself up with an elbow on the hard wood. She found her communicator in her pocket and selected the line only meant to be called in the most dire of circumstances.

"Captain Amari, this is Angela Ziegler delivering an update on my assignment in Berlin with Agent Shimada. It's done. Everyone but me is… I'm the only one left."

Protocol was to wait for the cleanup team Blackwatch would no doubt be sending in. When Angela next became aware of her senses, she was standing outside the lobby of the building, squinting into the neon of the surrounding neighborhood's 24-hour establishments. One in particular caught her eye.

Nothing would ever be the same again. Something about her may as well reflect that.

Message sent to: Best Beware Her Sting

[harsh breathing is all that can be heard for several seconds]

I know that you haven't listened to what I've sent you, Ziegler. It's just as well. If you had come running, what would be the point of any of these past months?

I'll make this the last note. Your release. Having played my part well enough, I'll let this be my curtain call. I'm in enough pain as is that saying this shouldn't add to it too horribly.

[Moira coughs a wet cough, one with a nauseous, greasy texture to it]

I've wronged you from the very moment that we met. This is no melodrama on my part, it was from the beginning my design. I see now what my work that concerned Overwatch enough to involve you was - a suicide letter in the guise of a crusade. And when you walked through my office door, my first thought was, how dare anyone throw me off this course.

So I undermined you. I made you question everything, even your own undeniable worth. I thought that if you, one so devoted to the promise of doing something good, would give up on the job of me and walk away - I could keep chasing the truth until it killed me. No funeral, not even remembrances for Moira O'Deorain, just whatever dark alleyway I'd chased something down and had the awful luck to be consumed within. What I've made certain that you still don't know, Ziegler, is how deeply I respect you. More than anyone else to whom I've ever afforded it.

Even now, I struggle to understand why you deny a truth that you've clearly known for all your life. But then I think that if I were born to whatever phenomenon you are, if I didn't have to learn the existence of such forces through the worst of love and loss, perhaps I too would cope as you do. What we've both witnessed is something that noone truly wishes to. Everyone wants to believe in something more, until its hand takes them by the throat. I stood by as it did you, Ziegler, and now here I lay.

[the distressed beeping of what someone such as Angela Ziegler would recognize as an expended medpatch. Moira gives a hiss of pain as she pulls it from her wound. The continued labor of voicing this confession is clear enough that she’s far too gone]

If you would want to claim my body, I lie now within the master bedroom of Chateau Guillard, the coordinates of which I've attached to this message. After hearing this, of course, know that I hold you to no obligation. You've carried that ache you wear, to return to what you once were, into every mission alongside me upon which we've ever embarked. I won't hold you back any longer. Even if, and allow me to be honest with you for the last time, I believe that Overwatch will never be worthy of you.

I'll let the last words that you hear from me be this. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

I would have asked for no greater discord than yours.

[the recorder slips from Moira's bloodstained hand. A thud of it hitting the floor, and for the most agonizing moment of the listener's life, nothing follows but the greater spaces between each of Moira's wheezed breaths]

[The creak of a door opening. The soft rustle of some creature coming to rest on the carpet where Moira lies. A woman's sigh.]

[The recording goes silent again for several minutes, until finally - Moira O'Deorain gasps like she's just learned how to breathe]

MESSAGE FAILED TO SEND. TRY AGAIN?

The Basement, one week later

Angela pushed open the door to Moira's office with one hand, rubbing at her still-sore shoulder with the other. She'd barely passed beyond the threshold before she heard Moira's droll, "Welcome back."

She took some satisfaction in Moira not looking much better. Whatever 'vacation' the other woman went on did the opposite of rejuvenating her, paling her skin even more than the healthiest of hues Angela had seen it colored. Her decision to delete every one of the unheard messages Moira had sent her was cemented by Moira's remarking, "Congratulations on your name, in my absence, making it into another Blackwatch file unrelated to the case which you were assigned. It may be a record."

Angela lowered herself into that chair right across from Moira’s. Something about the look she leveled her must have made even Moira realize that today was not the damn day, because she cleared her throat.

"I heard about what happened in Berlin. How could I not, Blackwatch is this close to being scattered to the winds, but as it is - you do have my sympathy, Ziegler."

"Your sympathy," Angela echoed. "We both know how much that means."

In the bathroom of her apartment tonight, after most of a bottle of wine, Angela would strip off her shirt and her bra and turn her back to her mirror. She would look at what she'd done to herself, at the pair of wings forever marked upon her back in shimmering black-and-gold ink. She would prod the still-inflamed skin and savor the wince. The tattoo took so long, she barely made it back across the street and up those stairs before Overwatch would have assumed her away without leave.

Now, Angela sat and held Moira's stare. Moira for once lacked the most immediate or cutting response. Until, finally - "All this because I never requested a second desk for you, Ziegler?"

Angela lifted her eyes to the ceiling of the office. A ceiling significantly more pockmarked than before, she noted. Just like how she noted that, hunched over her desk as Moira was, it was clearly in an attempt to hide the row of sharpened pencils looking like they'd been hurled upwards in a fit of ennui to see if they would stick.

She let out a low, hollow laugh. "Not everything is about you, Moira."

The Drachen Building, Berlin, one week earlier

While Angela was elsewhere, the Blackwatch cleanup team had already arrived.

The carnage left in the wake of the Bastion was gruesome, some of the grimmest work they all agreed they'd seen in years. Agent after fallen agent had as much of their bodies collected as could be into plastic bags, the assembled parts inside each one rasping against whatever remained anytime the bags were jostled.

But nobody, even within Blackwatch, wound up with this as their job from drinking the milk of human kindness. When the cleanup crew arrived at the end of the hall and saw what remained of the somehow still-breathing Genji Shimada, their leader looked up at the rest of her team, and watched each of them nod in turn before voicing her assent.

"Log him separately. We may have a candidate for Project Dragonblade."