Chapter Text
Olivia always had a gift for technology. She’d get into her father’s gaming account no matter how many times he changed the password, disassemble phones and other equipment only to reassemble the parts into something that worked. The only chance of stopping her was to place the electronics where she couldn’t reach them. But even that didn’t work for long. Not because she was growing up, but because she learned how to utilize chairs and spatulas to extend her reach when her parents weren’t looking. And if something broke after falling from a high shelf, she’d learned put it back together even better than it was before.
It was inevitable that she’d get into her teacher’s computer. It was confusion that led her to telling her parents about what she found. It was justice that saw the teacher in question sentenced to jail. It was care that had Olivia’s parents take her to therapy.
She didn’t really understand what she’d seen on her teacher’s computer. But she understood that it was bad. She knew her parents took her to Miranda every week to help her, even if she wasn’t sure what she needed to be helped with. And when her parents died, she kept up the weekly visits. It helped to have someone who cared about her. Someone she could cry in front of without having to worry they’d take advantage of it.
The first few weeks after losing her parents were the hardest. Not just because of the grief, but because she struggled to take care of herself. Thankfully, someone noticed the usefulness of her little homemade gadgets, and offered her protection in exchange for her work. It was a good arrangement. She thought it was odd, how so many parents warned their children away from gangs when joining one was the safest she’d ever be.
As she got older, she got better. Soon sneaking on a teacher’s computer in class when he wasn’t looking became breaching the security of government websites from her desk at home. She got confident, slipping in and out of networks, leaving backdoors and making copies of all that caught her interest.
Too confident, as she found out when she was caught in someone else’s interest.
It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to hack her back. Even whole groups had tried, but she beat them. If she’d noticed them getting into her computer, tried to keep them out and lost, perhaps she would’ve been able to tip her metaphorical hat and accept that someone more skilled existed. Not that such a defeat wouldn’t encourage her to grow, but she’d be able to accept the defeat.
But that wasn’t what happened.
She hadn’t noticed them getting into her PC. None of her programs had picked up on it, and she herself hadn’t noticed until the glaring red eye overtook all her monitors and rendered her hardware useless.
She didn’t even have the excuse of not having been at her PC. She hadn’t gone out that day. Started her morning by doing a scan of her systems, as she usually did. Found nothing. Then worked on some minor, more local things as she was asked to do. Nothing big. Nothing to warrant such an attack. Not unless someone had noticed her movements on the web over the course of months or even years.
How long had they known? Was it just one person or a group? Omnic or human? Maybe it was both. Which would rule out the sole person option. A single person could not be both omnic and human. Sure, cyborgs existed but replacing a limb was nothing like the intricacies involved with turning metal, plastic and silicone into a functioning brain. There was no way to attach a computer to someone’s brain like that.
Or was there?
Once every few years scientists would make yet another statement of how the human brain is x times more powerful than a computer. If she could find a way to connect her brain to a PC, she’d be the fastest hacker in the world. Sure, some programs might be faster than having to do things from scratch, but reaction speed would be nearly non-existent. And she’d have another advantage. Biology could not be hacked. There had been attempts, of course. The mind could be programmed, but it had more to do with repetition than writing code. DNA could be altered and manipulated, but it was unrealistic to do so on the scale of an entire human being. Much less for a resisting adult.
She laid low for a while, chucking out her corrupted PC and staying as far away from hacking as she could. She even wrote down her ideas on paper. Paper!
But after two months she couldn’t take it anymore and snuck into some stranger’s apartment while they were out, looking for someone who might be able to help her refine and install her idea.
She found a surgeon offering her services on the black market. The woman, Katarina, had once been one of the best cybernetic surgeons in the world, but had lost her licence when it was discovered she frequently stole from the hospital to fuel her gambling addiction. Olivia doubted she’d find anyone more qualified whilst still keeping her upgrades under the radar.
So she booked a plane ticket and hotel room under a fake ID, and was off to visit the woman in person. That way there would be no evidence left behind for anyone to find. They combined their respective fields of expertise to design something never seen before. It took a few months, since they could not afford to make mistakes, but eventually Olivia was hooked up with an internal computer.
They had of course done their best not to make the installation too invasive. Any attachment could be ripped off, as Katarina explained how she’d lost one of her bionic arms after getting indebted to a casino. Olivia really hoped no one would, but if someone did try to rip out her implants, she shouldn’t have any lasting damage, beyond a few scars.
She’d already thought that she’d need to keep the possibility for upgrades open, so it wasn’t that big of a change to her plans, but she did need to adjust the design. It couldn’t be something that fell off if she was hit once either.
They weren’t the best in their respective fields for nothing. Olivia’s vision became reality, and she’d gained a friend in the process. Or at least as much as one could be friends with someone who kept asking for more and more money. Fuelling the continued interest of a woman with a gambling addiction was expensive, and Olivia was in dire need of cash by the time their joined project came to an end.
What better way to make money than to make her mark as her new and improved self? As…
Maybe it was time to think of a hacker name. A symbol, even. And most importantly, analyse her habits in coding and change them. A good hacker was an unknown hacker. She couldn’t be an unknown hacker if she worked the same way she used to, even if now improved. There was always a risk someone would recognize her habits. So they needed to change.
She needed to be unseen. Like a shadow, always there, but only seen when emerging into the light.
Her first target was a wealthy CEO of a bank in the USA. She replaced every page on the bank’s website to detail his criminal and dubious activities, emptied his bank account into a new bank she essentially made for herself, and left a parting message under a purple skull.
Corruption will be punished.
— Sombra
Olivia was gone. Sure, there would always be people who’d remember her by that name, and she wasn’t about to change her legal name when her whole goal was to remain hidden. In fact, if someone were to research the name Olivia Colomar, they’d think she’d died. Nothing that would hold up if someone spoke to the people she knew, given that she was very much alive and loved her hometown, but it would ward off most people. Besides, Olivia Colomar had no money or property to her name, so she didn’t lose anything in declaring herself legally dead.
Sombra, on the other hand; Sombra owned a bank. And an internet security firm. Those had been a pain in the ass to set up, but she needed an easy way to make money, and a place to keep said money. So long as she made sure to upgrade the antivirus she sold at least once a month, she’d be alright. The upgrades weren’t that hard seeing as she essentially sold old versions of the antivirus she’d made for herself. No need to give other hackers access to her latest version.
With her new digital identity secured and becoming familiar with her new abilities, it was time to set her sights on her next target.
The red eye.
They were notoriously hard to get any information on, every bit the shadow she now claimed to be. But there were hints. Flickers of a trail because even the best could not hide their existence completely. Not digitally, anyway. Perhaps if they retreated to the depth of the amazon rainforest they might escape her.
Sombra chuckled at the thought.
She rifled through dozens of organisations, covering her tracks and leaving backdoors as she went. Taking note of anything of interest. Such as the plans for Tracer’s chrono-accelerator. While not quite Winston’s intent, within his plans laid the groundwork for teleportation. He was a fool not to have pursued that path, he’d be the richest ape on the moon! Not that there were that many apes on the moon these days… Oh, well. Finders, keepers. She could fiddle with the designs later until she made it work. She was quite familiar with how technology interacted with human physiology by now.
Vishkar was working on a cloaking device that would make aircrafts invisible to the eye. They were still working on it, but she could keep an eye and see if she could adjust their plans to something slightly smaller and more human-shaped. She didn’t even know what she’d need to be invisible for, but having the ability to be there yet unseen both on- and offline? Seemed fitting for a shadow queen.
And she would be a queen. Unknown to the population at large, perhaps. But once the red eye was out of her way, nothing would stop her from becoming the unseen hand that ruled all governments and megacorporations from behind the scenes. God knew her predecessors had made an absolute mess of things. She at least trusted herself not to make things worse. Although not making things worse was setting the bar a little low. She liked to improve things, always had.
And then, she found a lead. Talon. The world’s most infamous terrorist organization had some kind of connection to the red eye.
Behind every hacker sat a person. Or an omnic. A someone she could find. A someone she could meet, if she played her cards right. Good thing she played people as easy as codes.
It was time to do some field work.