Chapter Text
June 11, 2050
OVERWATCH REJECTED
-In a stunning turn of events, the Overwatch plan was shut down in the latest vote on the multinational initiative. The United Kingdom, surprising the other members of the Security Council, vetoed the motion, citing fears of "a lack of supervision for members of a group without sovereignty and allegiance." While the other members of the Security Council heavily disagreed with the UK's decision, members of the anti-Overwatch groups in the UK and other countries breathed a sigh of relief.
In related news, the omnics have broken through the Chinese border, the combined forces of China and the United States proving to be unable to hold them back. Additional forces have been deployed, but projected losses are grim…
“Genji!”
Genji snapped awake, his heart racing and his head throbbing as he reached up to his face and grabbed at his mask. His fingers groped for the right buttons before they found purchase and he sent his mask flying away, bouncing off of the cratered drywall. He gulped down air frantically, his heartrate refusing to cooperate as he searched the floor around his mattress, laying eyes on a crumpled plastic bag of pills. Within a second and a pang of pain, he opened the bag and pulled out a white pill, hesitating for a moment with it between his fingers. He clenched his teeth before downing the pill and sitting with his head against his knees. He focused on his heartbeat, the sound of it filling his ears as it slowed and his head fell numb and quiet, his chest dropping in temperature. His teeth were gritted tight while his breathing fell slow and relaxed. A small whimper escaped his lips as the migraine had one final say before vanishing into a cloud of drugged stupor, as certain to rise again as the sun. In the final haze, he heard a voice, something familiar and painful and as bright as the morning sun.
“Genji, I need you to be strong.”
He gave his body a few seconds to cool down, a pair of exhausts on his shoulder hissing as he unfurled and looked around the room to take in his surroundings.
His mask lay a few inches away from the drywall, which bore a slight dent from the corner of the metal plate. The mattress was shoved against a wall under a window with a pillow and a blanket, the latter used only once in a while. Through the slats of the window shone a rainbow of colors, the spectrum moving like a living oil painting across his walls. It, combined with the sound of rain, cars, and advertisements, reminded him of the world that awaited him outside. Against one of his walls rested his wakizashi, sheathed and managed far better than its owner, and a set of shuriken. Next to them sat a couple stacks of clothes, folded neatly, and an umbrella against the wall.
Genji reached under his pillow and pulled out a cell phone, flipping through messages and massaging the sides of his face by his eyes. Within a few seconds of having opened the app, a message caught his attention.
CF: meet for ramen? 10:30
The clock at the top read 9:00 AM. His reply came a few seconds later.
GJ: coming
CF: k
The rain began to pick up as he grabbed the umbrella and a set of clothes to wear around the town.
Even against the heavy rain, coming down in a deluge, the sound and smell of ramen was prominent. The ramen restaurant rested near the center of the market, surrounded by massive apartments and blasted with neon light that utilized nanobots to craft shifting, living signs and cast vibrant, swimming colors along the puddles on the ground. Tech stores had employees outside shouting their wares, ranging from the dubiously legal to the moderately illegal, while the other hawkers sat under what cover they could find with their merchandise strewn out about the ground for pedestrians to haggle for. Behind them, in the deepest corners, omnics huddled around fires, talking quietly and away from sight. While not hunted, the tension around them and unconscious avoidance was obvious.
Genji glanced under the short curtains of the restaurant, searching for someone before he stepped inside. His umbrella shielded him against the rain, but he also wore a dark green sweatshirt and a pair of khakis to keep his phone in. After finding his target, he walked in and put away his umbrella.
"Anyoung haseyo!" the cook shouted above the sound of cooking noodles and silverware clattering around. Genji raised a hand in acknowledgement before marching along the counter to stand behind a hunched over figure, slurping away at noodles. Their shaved head shone against the light from above, a couple of circular ports showing from under the collar of their shirt and glimmering from the rain.
"Is this seat taken?" he asked, pointing to the chair next to the figure that was saddled with a small bag. Without turning to face him, the owner reached over and grabbed their bag, setting it on their lap and continuing to eat. Genji sat down and raised a finger before ordering from the chef.
"Got a job for you," the woman next to him said, chewing away before swallowing and setting her chopsticks down and wiping her mouth. She didn't continue to eat, but she remained hunched over the bowl as though she were about to, like a dog guarding its food.
"Who's it from?" A second after he finished the question, a bowl landed in front of him, its contents steaming and glistening with broth. Taking a second to thank the chef, he grabbed a pair of chopsticks.
"Can't say."
Genji snorted before taking off his face plate, setting it aside and beginning to eat.
"Then I'm not doing it."
"You're doing it."
"Then tell me more about who I'm doing it for," he said as his brow furrowed and as he slurped loudly. The ramen was delicious.
"No."
It wasn't that delicious.
"Then why the hell do I want to do it?"
"Because," she exhaled loudly. "You need to."
That gave Genji pause as she set her phone on the countertop between Genji and her.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked as he picked up the softboiled egg and ate it in one bite. As he waited for a response, he pulled his phone out and set it on top of hers. A small glint of light told them both the file transfer had begun.
"You'll know," she replied cryptically. She glanced quickly at the two phones before snapping her chopsticks at the last few noodles at the bottom of her bowl.
"Great." His sarcasm was thicker than the broth.
She set her bowl on top of the counter in front of her, wiping her mouth with a sleeve before getting up and pulling her phone out from under Genji's. As she set her bag on her shoulders, she paused a moment and set her hand on Genji's shoulder.
"Don't get killed."
"Fuck you too," Genji replied, slurping down a pair of noodles right after the words left his mouth.
"No, really." He raised an eyebrow and looked over his shoulder. "Don't get killed."
She left, vanishing in the rapidly moving crowd.
Genji shook his head and finished his food.
Checking his phone after leaving the ramen stop told him to go to the underpass by the edge of the market. As he found himself standing alone at the mouth of a tunnel, through which half of the city buzzed through like ants on a mission, he looked around in search for someone who might be who he was looking for.
His eyes were cast across the street, falling on the face of an omnic, their hands clenched at their sides as they stared him down. His brow furrowed as he took in the robot, standing with their body mirroring him with only a plain white t-shirt and a dark blue set of pants. In their right hand, he saw what appeared to be a small chain of beads, dripping with water. The dots atop the omnic's forehead were masked by a bandana, but the dim light shone under the cloth, casting a blue tint on their face.
Genji watched them carefully, almost drawn in by their stare. Words flashed through his head once again as his vision swam for a second, a calm voice with the sound of knowledge beyond its years.
“Open your mind.”
A car honk abruptly broke his concentration as a taxi pulled up against the curb in front of him.
"Hello sir!" the driver chirped, their face masked by a pair of sunglasses. "Care for a ride?"
Genji looked back up for the omnic, but couldn't find them in the rain and the cars whizzing by.
"No thank you," he said, drawing his attention back to the driver.
"Are you sure, sir? We are having a special offer right now if you get in."
He stared at the driver, whose face was only smiles and an almost sickly cheeriness. After a second, the gears in his mind clicked and, with one last glance around, he nodded.
"Fine." He opened the car door and got into the back, closing his umbrella and setting it at his feet. Just as he rested his head against the cushion of the car, noting how comfortable it felt after standing in the rain, the car took off, accelerating directly into traffic as a hot wave of air hit Genji. His clothes began to dry immediately, but he was more concerned with the speed at which the car was flying across the road, the driver silently smiling as he maneuvered through the traffic as though he were driving through a set of traffic cones at fifty miles per hour, except in reality, he was going sixty miles per hour and he was weaving around cars instead of cones.
"Where are we-"
"One moment, sir!" the driver said, pulling off to the side of the road in the tunnel into a maintenance lane and stopping dead. Genji braced himself on the back of the chair in front of him as the deceleration had its way on him via the laws of physics. His driver turned around and beamed wide, his teeth shining like a set of pearls against the yellow light of the tunnel. "Please scoot over, sir." He gestured with his hands to send Genji to the left seat, leaving the right seat open.
The driver turned to the window at his right and knocked on it before turning back and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
The right passenger door opened, letting in a gust of cold air, or what seemed cold against the interior of the car. A large shadow filled the entrance, wearing a suit and a tie. The woman, or what seemed to Genji to be a human woman, got inside and pulled the door closed before grunting to the driver and setting their head back against the seat. Her short pink hair was cut close on the sides of her head, framing a sharp x-shaped scar above her right eye.
Genji's back immediately straightened as he realized whose presence he had just entered.
"You are Genji Shimada?" Aleksandra Zaryanova asked, folding her hands in her lap.
"Yes." Genji had nothing else to say. He couldn't think of anything to say as he stared down the owner of one of the most prolific and respected weapons companies in the world.
"You know who I am." She paused for a moment. "Call me Zarya, please." The words left her lips like a practiced response, something that seemed to have been repeated several times in her life.
"Of course." Again, nothing to say. Although he felt that it might have been appropriate to note how easily Zarya could have crushed him if she reached over and set her hands around his head. Her muscles, which she'd initially grown famous for, didn't look as threatening as they did in the old news shows; They looked magnitudes more terrifying.
"I have a job for you." She turned to him and locked eyes with him. Some time between Zarya grunting and Genji regaining coherent thought about Zarya's lethality, the car had reaccelerated to sixty, although Genji couldn't figure out where they were driving. "I need you to infiltrate the Vishkar building in Beijing."
If Genji wasn't confused initially, he was baffled now.
"The Vishkar building?" he repeated, his head starting to swim as he tried to bring his concentration back into focus. He wasn't sure whether it was the heat, his drugs, or the idea of infiltrating the building that stunned him. On second thought, the heat was gone, he noticed, probably to accommodate for the new occupant.
"Yes. You will infiltrate, destroy their server, and probably the whole building." If Zarya's face wasn't as straightlaced as a corset, he would have broken out into a laugh. As is, he settled for leaning slightly forward and putting a hand on his head. The heat was still there, he lamented, except now it was rising deep in his chest.
"That's ridiculous," he objected. "Vishkar has top level security, there's no way I'm getting into the building, let alone into their servers."
"People said it was ridiculous for woman to head the weapons management of a company." Zarya brought her arm up to rest on the side of the car door as she looked out the window to idly keep an eye on traffic. "They also said it was ridiculous for woman to break weightlifting records while owning a company." She shrugged. "Not so ridiculous."
"Why do you want me to do this?" Genji asked, taking deep breaths as he began to regain focus. The buzz in the back of his head threatened to pull him further, but in such a significant meeting, he willed it away and turned his attention back to his potential employer.
"My informants say Vishkar is working on an artificial inteligence project," Zarya explained. "It was not concerning; nowadays, everyone is conducting artificial intelligence research of some kind to understand the omnics better. However, it seems that they have succeeded in creating a program that could potentially control all omnics in a given area."
Genji raised an eyebrow as he looked outside at the streets, filled with humans and dotted with omnics as they flew by at a breakneck pace. Each omnic had their own mind, he knew that. The concept of them being controlled by one figure, used for war in unison was....
He shivered at the thought before turning back to Zarya.
"They have not started to use it, it is still being completed. Before they do, I want you to break into the building and fry their servers to remove all traces of it. Then, blow up the building to ensure nothing survives." Zarya spoke as a matter of fact, as though the job was certain to be done and that there was no doubt that Genji would take the job.
"And how do you expect me to do that?" Genji asked, leaning forward and setting his arms on his knees. In his mind, he understood the why, but the how still tripped him up.
"Will you take the job?" Zarya looked out the window absently, her attention thrown elsewhere purposefully. With question time for the mission over, Genji turned his attention to the more significant question.
"What are you paying me to do this?" he countered.
"One trillion yen." Zarya seemed almost bored with the suggestion.
"No," Genji responded almost immediately. "It's too dangerous for that. I'm not sure there's any sum of money I could pull it off for."
"Then I will give you something that no one else can," Zarya grinned. She looked Genji in the eye. "I knew you wouldn't take the money."
"And what is that?" Genji's head throbbed once more, the only sign of the pain being his tightly clenched fists, but Zarya took notice as she turned away from him.
"Headaches?" she asked.
"Just a mild illness," he lied.
"Your mind still rejects your body, then."
Genji froze.
"How do you know that?" he asked, looking out the window as well as the headache passed slowly and painfully.
"I have read Dr. Ziegler's notes," she explained.
“Those notes were destroyed.”
His vision blurred for a second.
“Mr. Shimada, we need you to walk, the omnics have arrived.”
“Ziegler, get down!”
The embers were growing.
“In the raid that claimed the lives of the doctor and Jack Morrison? Not quite.” Zarya’s face turned grim. “The building was more reinforced than the omnics expected. My people swept the area after they had left and found the notes. Singed, but not destroyed.”
Genji’s eyes began to water as he felt his body ache as old scars and burns acted up once more.
“Then yes,” he spat, dropping a layer of professionalism. “You are correct.”
“I can fix that.”
“How?”
“This is your new body,” she said softly, resting a hand on his back as he sobbed into his metal arms.
“I can give you a new body,” she insisted, turning on him and looking him dead in the eye. “One of flesh.”
Genji lost all tension in his body as his mind turned completely blank.
“I have a more than hefty R&D department. With Ziegler’s notes, my doctors that it is possible to create you a body that can house you in a much more organic way than you are currently,” she explained. “It would take time. But likely no longer than it would take for you to finish the job.” Tapping the back of the driver’s chair with one of her hefty arms, she said something in Russian, which the driver nodded, smiled, and drove onward with.
“That’s impossible,” Genji said weakly, his mind slowly beginning to catch up with what his new employer had just said “You lie.”
“But you don’t have a choice,” she murmured softly, her words clear over the faint hum of the road gliding underneath them. “I say I, and I alone, can give you this. So you have no choice but to try.”
Genji gritted his teeth, a flood of emotions hitting him wildly. It sounded…. Reasonable. But inside, he knew that whether or not she was telling the truth, she was right. He had no choice but to try, or else he would remember this moment as the time when he rejected his one chance to be human again.
His one chance to be himself.
Defeated, he turned to her and slowly nodded, the movement feeling robotic in his neck as he exhaled loudly.
“Where do we start?”
Zarya grinned and turned back to the driver.
“To Seoul. We can start there.”