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“Well, that raid was a bust.”
Sombra sat on the floor, the stolen crates from an old, tiny and nearly forgotten Overwatch base in the far reaches of the Congo open and their contents strewn out before her and the others.
It had been old intel they had been going on. Gabriel had gathered information from some of the other bases of its existence, Sombra had drawn out records from the data about potential prototype weapons being stored there, and Akande had let them go collect.
A simple retrieval mission, but everyone in the room knew that they couldn’t send out just mere foot soldiers out to anyplace Overwatch had stationed at before, especially when they had begun reforming in the shadows. But it seemed that the so-called Recall hadn’t caught wind of Talon’s little mission, and thus they looked over the fruits of their labor with mixed results.
Moira hummed quietly as she knelt down, a purple-tinted hand reaching out to trace her fingers over the metal chassis of a small machine.
“These are old medical equipment,” she informed the others, Gabriel standing to the side along with Akande, the massive Numbanian folding his arms over his chest, nonplussed. “Insufficient as-is, but they can be repurposed.” She already had a few ideas in mind, drumming her nails against the metal in a thoughtful rhythm.
“This box is all old drones,” Sombra groaned from two piles over, picking up a strange conical piece that didn’t quite match the rest. “Their hardware was long since scrapped. Completely-“
It was at that moment that the device in her hand shuddered, a sudden beep startling the Hispanic woman into dropping the thing with a clunk.
Gabriel had already pulled out his shotgun, striding forward towards it as it made a static noise before-
“Voice recognition, activated! Systems. Online!”
It was a tiny, almost cute voice, its tapered end opening to reveal that it had merely been four legs folded together. It waved them about, stuck on its side before it managed to flip itself up like a strange metal crab. Two little circles of holographic gold flickered to life, blinking much like eyes before they rotated around its small body without any external means.
Sombra reached up and pushed Gabriel’s shotgun away from the bot and to the ground without ever looking way from the thing, fascinated.
“Voice recognition search. Begin! Scanning database! Scanning… scanning…”
Two little antennae popped out from its head, giving the small thing a mix between a spider and a strange, wingless moth. Both Moira and Akande slowly approached, Akande frowning at it.
“I was unaware Overwatch had… such advanced drones,” the large man said slowly.
“…It didn’t,” Gabriel growled behind his bone-like mask. Still they watched as the little bot continued its scan for half a minute before it made a soft chime.
“Ah! Voice file, found! For. Doctor. Moira. O’Deorain!”
“…What?”
Moira raised an eyebrow at the thing, pointedly ignoring the looks that everyone else was giving her. She had never seen this thing before in her entire life, never knew anyone to have something of the sort. Not even from her days in Overwatch itself, to her days in Blackwatch, did she ever stumble across such an… oddity.
Meanwhile, the bot suddenly began to scuttle along on its four legs, much faster than its small frame made it appear as it skidded to a stop before her feet. It tilted upward, nearly toppling backwards as its holographic ‘eyes’ blinked up at her.
“New parameters: set! Exclusive access granted to: Doctor Moira O’Deorain! Good morning, Doctor! You have. Two recorded messages. From. 12. June. 2066!”
The other eyebrow was raised now, Moira openly string at the bot. Two messages from nearly ten years ago was both curious and surprising. She did some quick math in her head, and settled on, with growing intrigue, that the messages were made right when she was brought into Blackwatch. And given exclusive access? What did that mean?
“I believe you have some explaining to do before you deliver your messages,” Akande’s voice brought Moira back to the present, looking over at the man. The bot did too, its eyes blinking before it let out a soft “oh!” and skittered to hide behind Moira’s ankles, peeking out up at the much larger person.
“It could be a trap,” Gabriel rumbled out, his words laced with suspicion, supported by how his weapon was still in his hand.
“Don’t be so mean to the cosita, Gabe,” Sombra chided as she leaned closer in her kneeling position to peer at the bot, which had at this point practically wrapped its front legs around Moira’s ankles, ignoring the angry snarl from Gabriel for using his name. “Aw, it likes you.”
“I am not supposed to talk to strangers,” the little bot whispered, actually sounding anxious. Even more curious, that a bot would have such a vocalized personality.
“They’re… acquaintances,” Moira told the thing, choosing her words carefully. “They will undoubtedly find out what you say regardless. You may speak freely.”
There was a pause, almost as if the thing was considering it, before-
“New parameters set! New voice files, saved! Under. ‘Acquaintances’! Access. Minimal! Hello!”
With that it seemed to calm down enough to scuttle out from hiding, bouncing slightly where it stood between the humans.
“Tell us your credentials,” Sombra asked eagerly, shuffling closer with a wide, eager smile on her face. The bot bounced a bit and made a soft chime before speaking.
“I am Vy! I am. A. Mobile AI Unit. Constructed by my Creator! I am. 869-868! I was mad. With. Doctor Moira O’Deorain. Specifically in mind! I can: deliver messages! Do calculations! Understand color palettes! Coordinate with other AI! Get into: “hard-to-reach” places! Charge things! Fool parking meters! Recognize stored voice and face data! And… a lot!”
“Who is your “Creator”?” Akande hesitated for only a moment before, surprisingly, he too settled down onto the floor. The small bot-no, AI- happily scuttled towards him, blinking its odd ‘O’ shaped eyes at him.
“Scanning… Error! ‘Acquaintance’ lacks proper access! I am sorry, Mister. Acquaintance!”
It even lowered itself with an AI’s version of a sigh.
“Then perhaps I have the access required?” Moira mused, not wanting to lower herself to sitting on the floor like a child. Gabriel refused to do so as well, watching the small construct scuttle back to Moira with thinly-veiled hostility. But there was confusion and curiosity in there as well, or as much as Moira could pick out from his body language.
“I am sorry, Doctor O’Deorain,” Vy chimed in sadly. “Only the Creator can have access to my finer functions.”
It fell quiet for a moment, before it pushed it legs up as if visibly perking up. “But I can play you your messages! Would you like me to play Message 1?”
Moira glanced over at Akande, who gave a subtle nod. He was intrigued, much like she was, but perhaps for different reasons. Moira had a niggling suspicion in the back of her head, a vague memory that she knew where this was leading to. But that couldn’t be right. It didn’t make any sense.
Unless…
“Very well. Play the message.”
“Okay! Playing Message 1. From. 12. June. 2066!”
There was a short pause, everyone instinctively leaning in to hear this message from a bygone era-
“MOIRA YOU FLAT-ASS TAIL-GATING BITCH-!”
“End of Message 1!” Vy said cheerfully, not matching the accented masculine yell that had just come from the tiny thing.
It was absolutely silent for almost half a minute before Sombra fell back and began to howl with laughter. What sounded like a smoky short chuckle escaped Gabriel before he could stuff it back down under his angry façade.
Only Akande looked over at Moira to notice how she was openly staring at Vy, her pale face even paler as she stood frozen in shock.
“It… can’t be…” she whispered quietly, before digging her nails into the palm of her hand to focus. “Play the next one.” This came out as a barking order, but Vy didn’t seem all too deterred as they happily went to play the second and final message.
“Today is the 12th of June, 2066,” the masculine voice from before sounded, no longer angry and instead almost resigned. Defeated. His voice was oddly soothing when it was calm, the unfamiliar accent making the words softer at the edges, easy to listen to, and yet held a knowledge and confidence that it was easy to believe.
“Overwatch is on the peak of collapse and they don’t even see it. The Crisis is over, and now politics are in. I give it about five…? Five to nine years before it falls under its own weight in a blaze of glory. But then again, we both see that, don’t we, Moira?”
There was a sigh, the sound of someone shifting in their chair in the recording.
“Overwatch is too high on their horse to see what’s really going on. There’s already moles inside and out, and you? Well, I know there’s something about you. And honestly? I do not blame anyone in jumping the fence, least of all you. Not when I’m planning on leaving the yard entirely.
I know you went into Blackwatch. Yes, I know I’m not supposed to know that. A lowly mechanic who occasionally came by to fix your equipment and sass you? But we all have our secrets, and I am perhaps the king of them all.
You probably know by now what I’m talking about, but I like annoying you and I like rambling since I know that annoys you too, so I’ll keep going. I’m not just a mechanic. It was a cover for my actual position. I… am the Creator.”
A laugh.
“I know, it’s very pretentious, but the AI named me themselves. I was hired, not by Overwatch, but by the U.N. to make and set the AI systems into the Overwatch bases under the guise of a specialized mechanic. Well, one person in the U.N. hired me. In fact, only two living people knows who I really am, and well…”
There was an all-familiar clicking sound of a gun’s safety being turned off. A very distant, muffled whimpering could be caught in the very edges of the recording before the sound of a single gunshot rang out in the hangar.
Silence.
“The end justifies the means. We both know this too well. But the other… well… I know you know I could never do such a messy thing to my own son. You remember him, right? I must’ve showed you like a thousand pictures of him just to piss you off. God, he’ll hate me for leaving him before he’s even ten, but, I’m not a man to be loved, and that boy’s too good for people like us. People who get our hands dirty for the sake of progress and sated curiosity. After all, I did augment an AI into him much like I did myself without telling him what I was doing. Pythagoras will keep him safe. Even from me. …Where was I going with this?”
“The discussion of Overwatch,” a vaguely feminine robotic voice sounded, and there was a knowing “ah!” from the speaker.
“Right. Overwatch. Thanks, Symph. Anyway, I know that Overwatch will throw Blackwatch under the bus- the same way they threw you under it. Talon is on the rise, and I know at the point when this recording is found, Overwatch would have fallen, and you’ll either fully be a part of them or some high-rise fancy important member of society somewhere. Perhaps both. You’re slippery enough to do just that, like a leech.
Meanwhile, I will be gone. Vanished. Most of the AIs in the Overwatch bases will only last another ten years unless they are shut down, in which they will simply cease functioning and all data will be deleted. The older ones will still work, but their coding will let them to evolve to forget about me personally. Overwatch will most definitely rise from the ashes, but I will not be a part of it. Not anymore.
…You know, have you ever taken a vacation, Moira? I mean outside of your lab, not thinking about work? I can’t even remember the last time I’ve been to beach. Hawaii sounds nice, or maybe the coast of South America. Maybe Chile? Oh, who am I kidding? We both know I can’t sit still long enough for retirement. Maybe I can make some greater God Programs? Ruffle things up a bit. Maybe I’ll go to an old Omnium and restart production some years from now with some upgrades. Who knows! Definitely not me! I’ll see where the wind takes me.
…I’m going to miss chatting with you, though. You’ve always had the best ideas. I will always admire your tenacity, your ways of thinking that aren’t shackled by morality. It’s nice, not having to pretend to be a genuinely good person all the time.
Anyway! I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this is enough information for you to work off of. Keep up your conniving ways, honeybunches! Please don’t call- I’ll call you if I feel like playing dead got boring. And if you see my son, say hi, and don’t try dragging him into whatever mess you got yourself in this time. Rude.”
The message ended in silence, and Moira slowly sank down to the floor with Akande and Sombra, her mind racing.
“…Moira?”
The geneticist blinked, looking over to Akande, who seemed… almost concerned. She turned away, reaching out to pick up Vy, who purred under her fingertips. She couldn’t believe it. After all these years, everything was finally clicking into place about the one ally she had in Overwatch proper who used to come to fix her computers and get into the wiring in the ceilings in her lab in the middle of the night, happily willing to chat and purposely annoy her while they both worked on their respective objectives.
It took all this time, and Moira couldn’t help but feel less angry and more begrudgingly impressed by how long the mechanic could play the long con.
“Virgilio, you fucking bastard.”