Chapter Text
It was Sombra herself who arranged their first meeting.
It all began with what happened in Brazil. She recognized information worth digging when she saw it, and that was the case when she first laid eyes on the news about the Rio fire. Press claimed it to be an accident, a gas explosion that began on Calado’s headquarters and quickly spread over to the nearby slums, leaving thousands homeless. Fortunately, Vishkar so happened to be around, ready to step in for the good of the poor and give them fresh new houses.
Sombra knew better. She was very much familiar with corporations and how they worked. It took her three seconds to find out Calado and Vishkar had been competing over contracts. It took her another five to learn that the company’s offer to rebuild the slums into popular housing spaces did not come out of the goodness of their hearts.
She flicked her wrist and projections spun in the air around her. The hacker’s body modifications allowed her a constant interface with the network, so much that the projections had become an extension of her body and the browsing had become an extension of her mind. She skimmed over three, four, five documents at once.
Vishkar’s history was not a good one – no surprises there. Its projects in hard light were famous, truly wonders of technology, yet it all came with a bitter price. Control, oppression and exploitation of slavelike labor were the rule whenever the corporation was involved. She was familiar with the procedure, back in Dorado. Different companies, same story.
The Mexican closed her hand into a fist, shutting down the projections which surrounded her. She’d seen enough. She knew, however, that it was still too soon to lash out. Sombra was a patient woman, and knowing when to strike was just as important as knowing how to do it. For now, she’d wait. She’d let Vishkar rebuild what they destroyed. Then, she’d act.
She’d done it before – a few leaked documents here, a prototype weapon dropped into the hands of the people there, a couple public disgraces on the CEOs and bam, the corporation would be out faster than she could say hasta la vista. Yes, she’d hold her ground until then…but that didn’t mean she had to stay idle meanwhile.
She clapped twice and the holographic screens reappeared.
Time to have some fun.
While the big fish would be left alone for the moment, Sombra knew a company as complex as Vishkar was composed of layers upon layers of corruption and selfishness, of people waiting for an opportunity to benefit on someone else’s misery. She had plenty of smaller subjects involved on the fire to take down, plenty of appetizers to rip to shreds while she waited for the main course.
The Interface reacted to her excitement, and purple hexagons materialized beneath her fingers. She smiled, kicked her legs up the desk and turned her attention to Vishkar’s mainframe.
Hacking was, as always, absolutely delightful.
Each of her movements was followed by feedback from her implants. Zeroes and ones covered her vision; she understood them as easily as she understood the words on a child’s book. Lines and lines of code projected around her, strings turning red whenever she spotted a weakness. She fit them together like pieces of a puzzle, knowing exactly where to push and where to break.
For every firewall taken down, a satisfying jolt would run from the base of her neck to the tip of her fingers. The opposite was also true, of course. A failed attempt hurt more than just her pride, it was physically painful. It made the entire process twice as thrilling. She licked her lips.
Getting into the files she needed was a walk in the park; their defense system consisted, as with most companies of their stance, of a semi-sentient AI responsible for constantly changing the security protocols. It was no match for Sombra’s human-and-digital mixed interface, and she took it down without breaking a sweat.
The information she got only confirmed what she’d expected: the fire had been an intentional attack, meant to pave the way for Vishkar’s invasion of Rio. She skimmed over the details: how many tons of dynamite, where they had been planted, the number of expected dead versus the actual result –
She paused at that last bit. They were working with a rather wide margin of human life.
Repulsive.
A dozen documents unfolded under her vision. Sombra looked for names, and she found them. The order had ultimately been given by Sanjay Korpal, a high-ranked “negotiator”. She blacklisted his name and kept on reading that report, until she came upon someone else: the lead architect of the reconstruction project, someone who went by ‘Symmetra’.
Information on her was highly contradictory, and it gave her pause. She flicked her index finger in a ‘come forward’ gesture and the projection zoomed in, the others fading into a blur.
“Operative Symmetra was responsible for the infiltration of the Calado building. Upon finding no information that could be of use, Official S.K. proceeded with the backup plan.”
She highlighted that string of text by tapping on one of her virtual hexagons.
“…bear in mind that despite her crucial participation, Operative Symmetra must not be informed about the nature of the explosion…”
She picked that bit apart as well, and the Interface immediately put them side-by-side for comparison. She bit her bottom lip, thoughtful. It was the kind of data that did not make sense together.
Sombra closed her eyes.
The projections remained, of course – they were wired directly into her brain. Still, she found that removing the background of her messy bedroom helped her think. She focused her trail of thought so that she could interact directly with the system. It had been tricky at first; her implants read the commands from the area of her cortex responsible for language, and for a long time, she had to imagine herself saying what she wanted it to do. But both she and her tech were highly adaptable, and practice had indeed made it perfect.
> Query: Operative Symmetra.
> ….
>….[data found]
And there she had it: a name and a picture. She also had everything else she could possibly want to know, but those two would suffice for what she had in mind.
Sombra was not an impulsive woman. She planned ahead, and she planned well. Those who deserved it would feel the sharp end of her vindictive fury, but sometimes she had to check out what exactly she was dealing with, by herself.
She opened her eyes. Around the room, her digital footprints were displayed as purple wisps of smoke. She dispelled them with a movement of her hand, and then plucked a particularly crude and well-guarded bit of data. It made noise when it was ripped from the system, ringing the alarm that would call the attention of the security AI.
The implants on her hands grew warm enough to be unpleasant. A frame appeared over her vision and it blinked red.
“I know, I know,” she muttered when the alarm grew more urgent.
The AI materialized itself right in front of her: a huge three-headed digital dragon, all claws and teeth, so close she could smell its foul breath. The hacker rolled her eyes.
The Interface would often personify threats into monsters so that she could better seize up the danger. Sombra appreciated it; it gave her something solid to serve as an anchor in an abstract world of software and immaterial enemies. Yet sometimes it could be just so damn cheesy.
“Boop,” she said, poking at the air.
And then she was offline.
Satya Vaswani was weird.
There was no better way to put it. There was something off about her, as if she was never fully there. It sounded somewhat hypocritical of Sombra to think that, considering she was the one whose brain was plugged into the web, but Satya passed her a persistent sense of aloofness that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was stiff, all the time. Her body language was off. And she hardly ever made eye contact, either.
They stopped at the doors of True Steel, Inc, where they would break in to find and destroy compromising information on Vishkar. Sombra had stolen and planted that information, of course. She had also announced herself as the one person with knowledge to break into the company’s mainframe. Incidentally, Satya was the only operative available to tackle the mission – all the others were either busy or had been relocated to solve one problem or another.
The two hadn’t exchanged a single word beyond introductions. Now, with the objective ahead of her, Sombra crossed her arms over her chest and struck up conversation.
“So…” she began. “Vishkar, huh?”
Symmetra turned and stared at her in silence for so long, the hacker wondered whether she had something on her teeth.
“…how do you like working for them?” the Mexican eventually asked. “I’m… uh…considering employment.”
Seems legit, Sombra.
She resisted an urge to slap herself on the forehead. How the other managed to simultaneously stare at her and avoid her eyes was a mystery.
“I do not believe they would hire someone with such shady history.”
The hacker frowned. Had that been an insult? The words were offensive but the tone in which Satya had said them did not convey arrogance or spite. She spoke it as if it was a statement of fact: ‘the sky is blue, night comes after day, Vishkar wouldn’t hire you.’
Did she actually believe I’m looking for a job –
“We should proceed with the mission.”
“…right.”
She typed on her invisible keyboard. A couple seconds passed, then the doors whirred into life, opening just enough to let the two sneak in. The warehouse was empty, as expected, and it was a smooth walk to the terminal. She hacked the elevator that would lead them to the offices and the two went up in silence. When the doors opened, however, she knew she was in trouble.
Two men walked the corridor in their direction, talking loudly. Sombra could smell the alcohol on their breaths from meters away. She cursed. It was past eleven and no one was supposed to be there, but she couldn’t have accounted for a couple idiot workers who had decided to stay in for a beer. She pulled her gun from her belt. The Interface sensed her agitation and clicked into life, words blinking over her vision.
> Initializing Combat Augmentation…
> Detecting Targets…
> Detected.
> Threat level estimation: Low.
> Nonlethal approach viable.
The men’s bodies glowed vivid red. Over their heads floated their distance to her, in meters. Her trajectory was calculated in a split second and she readied herself to move, knowing that her implants would correct her movements if necessary. She ducked to the side, pulling the other by the arm, and they went out of the men’s field of vision. She could still see them via infrared and so she waited for the precise moment to jump them.
Before she could act, however, a red arrow flashed, pointing to her left, and she turned to see Symmetra pull out a weapon of her own.
Shit –
She didn’t bother trying to stop the architect, because she knew they would be seen and there would be no point in holding Symmetra back only so she could shoot them herself. Instead, she watched with mild horror as the woman released a large ball of light. The men didn’t stand a chance, and as soon as they were hit by the projectile, they fell to the ground, whimpering.
> Target neutralized.
> Estimated regaining of consciousness in six minutes.
Wait what
“We should move quickly, before they wake,” Satya stated, already three steps ahead.
“You didn’t kill them,” Sombra pointed out. “I thought you would.”
The other frowned. “There was no need. I don’t kill if I don’t have to.”
But somehow blowing up a building and setting a slum on fire is okay?
Just like with the information obtained from hacking, Symmetra’s behavior didn’t fit, and it irked her that by meeting with the woman, she seemed to end up with more questions than answers.
They reached the office and Sombra pretended to hack. There was no need – she’d left the stolen packages of data where she could quickly get to them. Annoyed, she grabbed the file and disconnected. The two men were an obstacle in her plan of getting to know the architect, and now she had to rush to get out of the building. The Interface was kind enough to let a countdown on the corner of her vision. With four minutes left, she figured there was enough time for one final test.
“I’ve got the files,” she voiced.
“Excellent. Delete them and we can go.”
“You’re not curious to take a peek? It must be some serious stuff, if Vishkar has us going all the way here to get rid of it.”
Satya tilted her head, as if the possibility had never crossed her mind. “There is no need for curiosity. Sanjay has informed me of the contents.”
“He did?”
The architect nodded. “Forgeries and lies, meant to stain the reputation of the people who are making the world a better place.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She had the entire thesaurus available with the blink of an eye, and she was still speechless.
She can’t seriously believe that.
The Interface beeped to alert her she was running out of time. She didn’t have to, but she still turned on the monitor in the room, only to make an exaggerated show out of deleting the files.
“Done and done,” she said, making a big ugly “FILE DELETED” pop on the screen. “I didn’t take any copies, so that should be the end of this issue.”
“Perfect. Let us head out.”
…seriously?
“No copies,” she repeated, coating her voice with so much sarcasm she could almost taste it. “None at all.”
“As instructed,” Symmetra replied. “Is there anything else or may we leave?”
“…no, nothing else. Let us be out.”
Satya nodded and led the way. Sombra followed, bewildered.
La puta madre, she thought as they took the elevator down. She does seriously believe that.