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To say that Satya Vaswani ever lost her arm would be inaccurate, because it would imply some kind of accident. She’s not the kind of woman who ever leaves room for accidents, and she’s been that way for as long as she can remember. Even as a child who ran barefoot through packed streets, with nothing but the cacophony of panic filling her head and powering her legs, she would always stop to make sure she never ran into traffic, even though she felt like the universe was simultaneously exploding and collapsing inside of her and wanted nothing more than to get out. She walked on the safe side, she didn’t have accidents.
She didn’t lose her arm, per se, because it was a decision she made.
“Do I have to?” She asked. Satya was, at this point, precisely fifteen years, nine months and twenty-one days old, and in front of her was a consent form to have her arm surgically removed and replaced with a prosthetic, with a blank line at the bottom for her to sign her name. It didn’t make sense and she didn’t understand, and the fact that they had sent Sanjay with the form put a bitter taste in her mouth. They knew she responded best to Sanjay, and she hated how he always knew what to say to win her over. He was always sent to coax her into what she would otherwise do reluctantly, and she supposes that this procedure definitely makes the cut.
“No, you don’t have to.” He said, seating himself at the bottom of her dormitory bed, crinkling the starch and impeccably made sheets. Satya hated it when people did that, especially without asking, but he’d always insisted that they were friends and she had nothing to worry about. It didn’t endear her towards it any more, but she did want a friend and Sanjay seemed to be the only willing candidate, so she held her tongue and didn’t shift from her spot, cross legged on top of the pillow. His smile was amiable nonetheless, however, and there must have been some shift in her expression despite her attempts to hide her distaste, because he smoothed down the sheets with his hand in an attempt to pacify her. “It’s completely your choice, Satya.”
She studied him with a keen eye, the eye of an architecht who’s spent years studying the subtle mathematics of the world around her. It was an eye that could detect any shifts in expression, even if she didn’t understand them at fifteen and still struggles at twenty-eight. Satya couldn’t decipher his face then, but there was already a conundrum. Because obviously, in any situation, if one was faced with the choice of keeping their arm or having it removed, it was most likely that one would keep their own arm. She knew it was risky to leave herself open to persuasion, because Sanjay’s words could be honey-sweet when he wanted them to and she could hardly remember a situation when he hadn’t won her over in the end, but it was a paradox too confusing for her to not pry further.
Satya looked down and avoided eye contact with him, instead reading over the fine print of the contract. Agreeing to have her arm removed. Agreeing to a standard issue Vishkar hard light manipulation facilitator as a prosthetic replacement. Agreeing that this prosthetic was not to be replaced with any other, or altered or tampered with in any way, without the express approval of the corporation. That the owner of said prosthetic would be entirely responsible for its upkeep and maintenance; that any damage or malfunctions were to be reported immediately to Vishkar, and its owner would be considered culpable. The document covered all possible bases, left not a room for doubt. Satya normally preferred such matter-of-fact communication, straight to the point, but now it just felt cold and it bred an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The first clause – arm removal – was so brief, so nonchalant, and she could hardly believe it.
“Why would I say yes?”
Sanjay shifted on the bed, making himself more comfortable. Satya wished he wouldn’t. She also wished that he wouldn’t invite himself into her dormitory and ask her to sign over a limb.
“It’s what all the best architechs do.” He said. “It connects you more to the light – makes it easier. It makes you a true creator.”
In years to come, many years, an older and wiser Satya would finally be able to see the real reason, connect the dots of each clause. A Vishkar-standard prosthetic that only the corporation were allowed to fix was like an extra tie of dependence; one that intrinsically linked her to the company no matter how far she travelled. It was as much a tool as it was a patent, a mark of ownership that she would never be able to rid herself of. But at fifteen years old, before she was given the moniker of Symmetra and sent across the globe to do their dirty work and stain her hands red in the name of harmony, for the greater good, before her sleep was disturbed by dreams dominated by the smell of smoke and burning favelas and the cries of a mother cradling her mutilated child, Vishkar being anything but a benevolent entity was a prospect that Satya had not even entertained.
Still, she was a cautious creature by nature, and so she remained rigid. “That’s what the gauntlet does. It is perfectly functional.” And it was. It had never failed her. She’d risen to become the academy’s greatest with it; as far as she could see, it was not a limiting factor.
“But Satya,” Sanjay stood up now, trying to make her look at him directly. But her gaze remained cast downwards; she didn’t want to leave herself any more open to persuasion than she had to. “Creation comes with sacrifice. You’re special. You can do things that nobody else can. It’s your choice, but if you do it you’ll become a true asset to Vishkar. You’ll be committing yourself to creating an ordered world.”
Order. He knew she was vulnerable to that world. The speech sounded contrived, like he’d already written it and was just reciting the lines, but she felt a sense of purpose swelling within her. Harmony was her calling; Vishkar was her place in the world. She wanted to be a valuable asset, an advocate for order and reason. And she would go to any extremes, make any sacrifice for it – she had known that ever since they took her out of Hyderabad and gave her something to strive for besides getting clean water and her next meal. Despite her apprehension, the deep need within her to mean something and to do something for the sake all the other starving children in slums was stronger than any of her other instincts. And Vishkar would help her to do it.
She took the pen from her night stand, paused to re-read the terms and conditions, then signed.
Long after Sanjay had left, she sat in the same spot. Satya didn’t do anything purposeful, not really; she just stared at her left arm. Flexed. Ran her fingers over it, feeling every muscle, every vein and sinew. She’d never considered what a complex construction an arm really was – so many components, all working together in the most beautiful way. She traced the creases of her palms; she had never been a believer in superstition, but now she wished that she could read each line and interpret it – not that any of it would convince her, mind, because she was a woman ruled by reason, but she remembered that before she died her grandmother would claim to be able to read palms. Satya didn’t remember most of what she said, but she did recall her frail fingers ghosting across her skin; yours are water hands, calm and benevolent, bringing forth life.
She had been sceptical, because she knew her hands were nothing but flesh and blood and bone, but now she followed the very same creases that her grandmother did. One of these lines would tell her about how long her life will be; another about love and emotion; the other about how her mind works. But just like how others don’t understand her mind, she didn’t understand her palm – it was frustrating, and she felt like she had lost some connection to her family because of it.
Her mother’s hands had been similar, with long fingers and an oval palm. But hers had been hardened and chapped by work; nicks from blades, sores from carrying pots of water from the well. Satya’s were not like that, pristine and clean and cared for. As a child, when walking through a crowded street, she would reach a hand out to the nearest wall, let her fingers graze it and ground her to reality so that she wasn’t lost in a void of her own discomfort.
She stopped there, because it was late and she needed to have the right amount of sleep before the surgery. The history contained in her hands was irrelevant now; her family were no longer her family, and Hyderabad was not her home. Vishkar and Utopaea had taken their places, and sentimentality would not impede her. She was going to be a creator, for the sake of a better future.
When she next woke, she wasn’t in her dormitory bed. She knew that even though the room looked almost the same, clean and white. Everything was neutral and streamlined in Utopaea; there was no room, and no tolerance, for anything else, especially not ornamentation. Satya tended to like the uniformity, even if she found herself escaping to the gardens every now and then just to remember that other colours existed.
But now she wasn’t in her dormitory, and she knew that instantly because the lights were different and her desk wasn’t there and her left arm was now white and streamlined like the rest of the city.
Sanjay was there again. When she looked over to him, he smiled and ran a hand over the arm. It was smooth, she noticed. The design was intricate yet impersonal, a marriage of form and function. She experimentally tried to twitch a finger and felt it respond instantly, if stiff. It didn’t hurt.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He said. It was not a question, so she just nodded, rather than offering any other response. “It’s the latest model.”
Satya couldn’t say anything, because she was scared that if she did she might say something embarrassing and sentimental and totally unreasonable. This was nothing but a good thing, she had to tell herself. This was for the sake of order. This was a worthy sacrifice.
“You’re perfect now.” He told her.
When she was finally left alone, she wondered why she wasn’t perfect before.
“Some bloody omnic ripped it right off me. So I came back with this beauty and ripped its damn circuitry out!”
A chorus of laughter can be heard from the recreation room. Now twenty-eight years old and a continent away from Utopaea, Satya recognises them instantly. There’s the low, throaty chuckle of Jesse McCree alongside the hearty bellowing of Torbjörn Lindholm, giggles that she thinks must come from one of the Shimada brothers, and an unmistakeable cackling, almost hyena-like, from Junkrat. She has heard them laugh many times before. Even in the heat of battle, agents of Overwatch never abandon their humour, and in the base they seem to live their lives in recreation and laughter.
This is an odd collection of people, she thinks, and an odd conversation – but she is just passing by on her way to the kitchen, she doesn’t intend to get involved and only looks in briefly as she passes to confirm her suspicions. They sit in a circle, splayed across the sofas. It’s Junkrat talking now, waving his arms around like he’s trying to swat an invisible fly. Jamison Fawkes does not seem to have ever heard of the concept of an inside voice, she thinks wryly. She’d probably hear him from the other side of the Mediterranean.
“Well, uh, I don’t remember exactly but there were a bunch of ‘splosions and fire and all that jazz, and bam! It’s gone.”
“The arm or the leg?” Genji asks, looking up from his book.
“…Both, I think?”
Another round of laughter. Satya’s brow furrows in confusion. He’s awfully good-humoured about what sounds like chaos and trauma – but, then again, she knows he’s a chaotic person, unpredictable in nature and explosive, quite literally, in his trade. He probably thinks he’s describing a party.
She’s just about to move on when he calls out to her.
“An’ what about you, darl?”
Satya pauses, contemplating whether or not to correct his term of address. Probably not worth the breath. She’s told him close to a million times to refrain from setting up explosives too close to her turrets, and still he’ll accidentally shoot those blasted bouncing grenades into the room and destroy three of her creations. So she chooses not to. It isn’t that bad, after all. At the very least it's tolerable.
“What about me?”
“How’d you lose the arm?”
She is silent. Unconsciously, her hand drifts to run across the metal. Smooth and cool to the touch, her fingers run across its pristine surface easily, with next to no friction. Back in Utopaea it felt like an extension of the surroundings – now it feels like a little bit of the city is still with her. It still brings a sense of purpose, a connection to society. There’s a connection missing there, however, one she feels has permanently been severed. And mixed in with the harmony, with the sense of responsibility and value, is something else. It smells like burning. It smells like singed skin. It feels like dread and a stone in the pit of her stomach.
“A mistake.” She says, and leaves it at that.