almightythirst | Open Post

It’s like old times: enemies on all sides, angry monsters not even a few feet away and hungry for his blood. Jesse hunkers down behind the containment unit and, for a moment, just takes it all in. The sound of bullets ricocheting off the walls. The snarling of the wolf. The sense of urgency that he’s quickly realizing means there’s more danger close by. The how or why matters less than the fact that it’s there and quickly getting closer.

Jesse straightens his hat with a grin that threatens to spill over into a laugh. It’s only during moments like this, with the promise of true death on either side and the chances of escape close to none, that he truly feels almost alive again.

A man has to get his thrills where he can. But fun as this is, he doesn’t have a death wish. He straightens up and takes a deep, steadying breath out of force of habit. He’d always needed it before when he did this.

The world is washed in red, and all the sounds around him become long and drawn out. Slow. He has seconds to take advantage of that, get into position, aim, and fire. As he scales the containment unit, a warm breeze shifts his serape around his shoulders. The heat of a sun he hasn’t seen in over a year now kisses his skin, just like old times. Such a pleasant harbinger of death this is.

He barely has time left to scope out the room from the top of the cage, but it’s enough. Helps that his night vision kicks serious ass nowadays. One by one, Deadeye locks onto each of the guards in turn. They’re all spread out, but none of them are obstructed.

Four. Five. Six. He can practically smell the dry, hot air of the desert as he breathes in. Peacekeeper is hot as a brand as he steadies it on his prosthetic arm and aims.

”It’s high noon.”

His voice echoes with the sound of two voices speaking in unison, and six shots fire off simultaneously toward their respective targets.

It's strangely quiet after, save for the snuffle and scrape of the wolf, still trying to rattle its way loose. But the guards? The guards drop to a man, every last one, and the sound of firing weapons falls away.

That pressure in his chest grows closer, still. It could be just behind that door, for all he knows. Just a sheet of reinforced metal to separate them. One second longer and that familiarity might find itself a face, a name.

But the door doesn't open.

Instead, it locks down with a hiss. And the other doors in the room soon follow suit.

His sense of accomplishment is short-lived with this feeling of the other behind the door both stronger and more familiar than before. He drops nimbly back to the floor, his feet taking him almost automatically to one door in particular. Once he opens it--

And then they lock. Shit.

Jesse grits his teeth and glares at the metal, like his annoyance could penetrate clear to the other side. Too afraid to face him head-on? They must be relying on backup on its way.

"Son of a bitch," he mutters, turning from the door and it's strange pull. It's a tricky position, but he's been in worse. Dying puts a lot of things in perspective.

He surveys the room, quickly moving from door to door. No give in any if them. Unsurprising. Next, he tilts his head up. Air ducts, loose ceiling tiles... he could do with either.

Fool. It comes through not as a voice but a feeling.

Jesse could still wriggle his way free if he tried, he simply had to think. And there was only so much delay he could offer him without appearing to be actively aiding him. Sending exactly six men? Blocking the path to him for anyone else on the base? It could still be rationally explained away.

But it would only work for so long. Especially once the order came to cover all possible exits from the roof. There's a long quiet before he replies in affirmative, picking up his bow, and heading for the stairs.

Meanwhile, inside the room, there are a number of walkways, stairs, and platforms surrounding the area where the wolves are being held. The alarm, however, has just gone off, and the floodlights switch abruptly, plunging the room into deep red.

The feeling is enough to make him stop short. Hanzo isn’t the only one to consider Jesse foolhardy, but he has a specific way of expressing it. And out of all of them, his is the only mind Jesse has ever even briefly delved into.

He looks back over his shoulder with the first pang of uncertainty he’s felt since arriving at the base.

“… Han-?”

Before he can even finish the name, the alarm starts to blare and the room turns red to match the blood of the men at his feet.

Hanzo.

He’s here. But that doesn’t make sense, why would he be at a Talon base? Unless he’d been caught, but then he wouldn’t be moving. And he is moving, Jesse realizes. If he concentrates, he can feel the presence shifting away from him again. Going upwards. What a coincidence that he had been thinking of doing the exact same thing.

Could be a trap. That’s the most logical conclusion, but he doesn’t have any other options but to follow its trajectory. Jesse starts maneuvering up the walkways, sometimes running, sometimes jumping and climbing to save on time. Before he kicks in a grate and shimmies in, he looks back down at the room and memorizes what he sees. The number of units. The guards and their weapons. The tech involved in all of it.

Then he’s gone, making his way through the ducts and vents until he can get to another hallway. It takes no time at all to take out the few guards he finds along the way. The door to the roof, it turns out, isn’t even locked. Probably because he can feel that tug again like a rope trying to pull him through to the other side. Someone or something else is there, waiting.

He readies Peacekeeper, kicks open the door, and moves out into the night.

It's like remembering the steps to an old, familiar dance.

Jesse kicks open the door, brashly announcing his presence, and leaves his back open to attack. And instead of an arrow in the back for his trouble, one goes whizzing past his ear in warning. It lands just in front of him, wedging into the roof itself with a heavy 'thud', and the shadow that had been lurking above the door nocks another arrow.

It's Hanzo, of course. Unmistakably so. Though the lower half of his face appears covered, as is the dragon tattoo on his arm. But there's no mistaking that pull, not when he feels it in his own veins, a heady chat of Jesse, Jesse, Jesse that reminds him how sorely he's missed seeing the other vampire.

Not that he can let an ounce of it show, lest those ever-present eyes remain on them even now.

Jesse spins on his heel and turns Peacekeeper towards his assailant, judging accurately where he stands from the trajectory of the arrow.

Now that he’s looking at Hanzo straight-on, he doesn’t know how he could have mistaken this feeling for anything or anyone else. It's like a puzzle piece that fits perfectly in a gap unable to be filled by anything else. But there’s no ignoring that this is very deeply wrong. Hanzo looks like one of them. He’s firing as if at an enemy. And unlike his sire, Jesse hasn’t made any effort to hide his defining features.

His aim never wavers, but the conviction on his face does. This can’t be what it looks like. He knows Hanzo better than that.

“What the hell are you doin’?”

It’s one last chance to explain. One last out.

That incredulous look, the desperation in his eyes, twists something painfully tight in his chest. If only it were as simple as explaining.

"You should have laid down your weapon," comes the response instead, cold as ice.

It is all the answer he gets, before that arrow flies. No more pulled punches, no more near-misses. Jesse's gotten all the chances to get the Hell out that he can be allowed. There would be questions of loyalty, and where Talon is concerned those questions are dealt with in the harshest possible manner.

So of course Overwatch sent Jesse. Of course this is how it had to happen. But the situation is not salvageable, not yet. So long as Jesse leaves alive...or rather, in one piece...

Hanzo had been the one to give the order the guards had died following. His disbelief is less overwhelming than the crushing weight of dread that hits him, right before he has to move to avoid being struck in the heart by an arrow a second time. He rolls to the side, Peacekeeper still in hand, but he doesn’t fire.

He doesn’t recognize the feeling rising up in him as rage until he opens his mouth, his voice rough and almost shaking with the force of it.

“What did they do to you?”

Because Hanzo wouldn’t choose this. Jesse knows it. Genji knows it too, because nowhere in their few conversations about Hanzo has he ever mentioned this possibility. He’d even defended his brother to other members of the team more than once. Talon must have done something. Captured him. Tortured him or used some spell or brainwashing technique.

Jesse’s hand tightens on his gun, his eyes flashing crimson as the warning lights lighting up the compound.

He’ll kill them. He’ll kill all of them.

What he'd been expecting to feel was the cold disappointment of betrayal. Not...this. A wildfire that spreads, burns under his skin as it washes through him unexpectedly. It's anger. Not at him, but at Talon.

Oh. Jesse. He'd never deserved him. Not for a second, certainly not for the night they'd had. But if it's vengeance he wants to unleash against Talon, so much the better.

He just can't be allowed to stay long enough for reinforcements to find him.

So he doesn't waste words, instead snapping forward, the movement near soundless in the night air even when he lands and tumbles forward. A sweep of the bow follows, this time aimed at Jesse's ankles.

Fight, damn you.

Jesse has had time with Overwatch to train with his new speed and strength. While with Hanzo, he’d still been adjusting to it all at once. It hadn’t even occurred to him at the beginning to hone his skills, not when he’d been so sure he’d turn into a soulless, murderous monster.

It’s different now. He moves with a new surety, his training as a hunter melding smoothly with his vampiric skills. He jumps back out of the way of the bow, eyes no longer red but still blazing with anger.

There are at least three chances in those mere seconds for him to fire off a shot. He takes only one of them, aiming so far to the side that he clearly hadn’t wanted to hit Hanzo anyway. He does hope to get his attention to his left, maybe get him to flinch. It would gain Jesse a few precious seconds to toss a flashbang with his other hand. Only one of those left now.

There it is. He's found his focus, if not his will. That furious flare of red, however...

Had that just been Jesse? Or that other side of the coin, finally slipping?

Questions for another time. For now there's only this, a midnight duel on the roof of the Talon base. The sharp crack of Jesse's gun and the instinctual slip to one side. Not that he'd needed to, the shot was clearly wide. Over the mask, Hanzo's dark eyes narrow, and he closes distance again.

It's not his usual fighting style. Too close for bow use. But he instead attempts to latch hold of the front of Jesse's shirt, heels digging in, attempting to hoist and fling him towards the roof's edge.

Jesse skids across the roof and rolls to his feet with his heels just off the edge of the roof. He wouldn’t have anticipated Hanzo throwing him like that, but it has worked out to his advantage anyway. He can’t get Hanzo out of here now. Not without better planning. But he’ll be ready next time. His last, lingering glare at his sire promises as much.

Just before he tosses the flashback and slips over the edge of his own accord, something goes amiss with his eyes once more, or… rather, just the one. It widens a fraction and burns with a deeper, darker shade of crimson than before.

At the same time, there’s a shift in the bond between them. Another frequency cuts in, rough and sharp. Jesse hasn’t perfected listening in like Hanzo has. Hasn’t even tried. But even if he had, the message isn’t for him. It rings solid and clear for just a moment, full of amusement and malice in equal parts.

Thanks, partner.

Then it’s gone, along with Jesse as he scales the wall down to the ground.

The light flashes and Hanzo averts his eyes with a snarl. Expected or not, that still smarts, eyes too sensitive to the light to stand trying to stare through it for too long.

But there is palpable relief when he turns back and sees that Jesse has disappeared, even as he moves to activate his com to report his failure to apprehend him. It won't be pleasant. But he's long grown accustomed to doing unpleasant but necessary things. He wouldn't be here otherwise.

And Jesse carries the proof. There, when he reaches the ground, tucked into the front of his shirt, is a small data chip. Jesse isn't who he was expecting to attempt an infiltration tonight but...in a way, this might be better. In his hands, this information could be trusted to be given to the right people.

Thankfully, he had the good sense to retreat from a fight. Maybe he's learned something from Overwatch, after all.

Jesse makes his way back to his and Ana’s designated meeting place, and they spend the rest of the night in a safehouse before going back to Overwatch. It gives them time to make sure they aren’t followed.

In the time it takes them to return, several things become apparent. The guards had known Overwatch was coming. Either Jesse had been spotted going in, or they had been expected from the start. And Hanzo Shimada is somehow central to it all, whether by choice or coercion of some kind. The chip Jesse discovered in his flannel was met with a chorus of responses from the team at the base. Disbelief. Distrust. Grudging respect.

Jesse’s anger no longer threatens to consume him, but he doesn’t know how to feel without it. Had Hanzo joined Talon with the express purpose of being a double agent? Or is he a pawn for Talon even now, laying some sort of elaborate trap?

Should Jesse have tried harder to make him come back with him? Would it have mattered?

Whatever answers the chip might hold, it will take time to decode the contents. A day at least. Jesse sleeps restlessly through the day, his rest plagued by one of his first nightmares since being turned.

Hanzo on his knees. Bound. Defiant, but helpless in a sea of jeering, shadowed faces. A taloned hand closing around his neck—

Jesse wakes with a start, fingers clutching at his sheets. He’s hit with two unfamiliar feelings at once: being too hot, almost fever-hot, and a pounding headache concentrated behind his eye like a migraine. He frowns up at the ceiling for a minute before forcing himself to stand.

Time to see what they’d found on the chip.

Winston's clearly not had much in the way of sleep, working all night and all day along with Athena to decode the information on the chip. His glasses keep slipping off his nose, but despite the AI's insistence that he take a break, he's there to present the information to the team when Jesse rouses from his sleep. Holograms and data sheets spring to life over the table in luminous outlines as they piece together what's been gathered on the chip.

It's the location of several bases in this particular ring. Some are meant for transport, yes, but some appear to be labs. Experimenting, training, collaring...possibly even the production of more, when their stock runs out. 'Kennels' where Talon is apparently caging the wolves together with prisoners until they die or become similarly infected, then repeating the process.

They have one of their top geneticists at the main lab in Oasis, and infiltration there is a problem. Security is high, and the code of ethics is notoriously lax. Especially when it comes to what could be seen as scientific progress.

The collars are being manufactured at a plant in southern India. Utopaea tech is likely involved. Probably some intern's side-project in order to receive funding for bigger and better things. But Viskhar is almost certainly involved, to some degree.

It's not good news. But it's all news, at the very least.

The data paints a dire picture, though not one they hadn’t already known about in a general sense before. But this level of detail is a game-changer. The only question now is what they do with it.

Jesse participates in the deliberations even knowing that he can’t, in good faith, take part in any of these operations moving forward. Not with Overwatch. This bond between him and Hanzo allows him to be detected far too easily, and there’s no way of knowing where his sire might be before he touches the ground somewhere. And they can’t prove that the man is of sound mind and unwilling to betray them. He shares the fact that Hanzo can sense him without adding details or the cause, refusing to budge when questioned further. Whatever else is there is his and Hanzo’s business, he argues, irrelevant to the mission at large.

He meets Genji’s gaze several times over the course of the night and knows he’s not the only one thinking about the elder Shimada. He’d taken the news better than expected, but still, Jesse had seen all the same pain and confusion on Genji’s countenance as he’d felt face-to-face with Hanzo on the rooftop. Not the anger though. It seems like he’s gained back his equilibrium tonight, while Jesse still feels completely off-balance. Makes him almost tempted to give that meditation thing a shot.

The meeting breaks well before the end of the night, given how most of the group is of the diurnal persuasion. Jesse spends a little extra time poring over the data from the chip before he slips out of the base for some fresh air. It’s not until he’s perched on a cliff face some distance away that he closes his eyes and, with that sense he still barely understands, tries to reach out. No direction. No way of knowing if he’s even doing it right, or if they’re too far apart for it to matter.

Just tell me you're alright.

But there is no answering call, no response. Just the wind, and that faint tug somewhere out there that knows Hanzo is still alive. Just as Hanzo feels for himself, when he chooses to focus on it.

It doesn't do to dwell. He can't appear distracted, not when he is already being chided for letting his fledgling escape. Next time, there will be dire repercussions. So on and so forth, as he maintains as neutral an expression as possible, until at last he is dismissed.

Somewhere in the course of checking his weapons, he feels...something. A pull that draws his attention elsewhere in the world, and for a moment he stills. He hadn't expected seeing Jesse again to dig quite so deeply, and how he wishes things could be different. How strange that he longs for those long open roads, just them and the night and the rolling countryside, and an easy companionship he'd never known in his entire lifetime. Undead or otherwise.

But you don't live a bad life and expect good things to happen to you. He is still a long way from deserving that sort of peace, and Jesse deserves more. He'll realize that, eventually.

Turning on that feeling pulling him elsewhere, he focuses on his bow once more.

Even when it doesn’t yield immediate results, Jesse waits. He focuses on the fact that, when he concentrates, there’s something on the other end of the line. It’ll have to be enough. When he does go back to the base, it’s with sunrise nipping at his heels.

They make it clear from the start that Hanzo is not the team’s priority. Jesse makes a case for finding him even knowing that, logically, they’ve made a decision that makes the most sense. They can’t sacrifice the intel they’ve gained for one man, who may or may not want to be rescued. If found, they agree—some more willingly than others—they will do what they can to help the elder Shimada. But that’s all they can promise.

They put their feelers out and learn as much as they can about the leads provided, then create a game plan focusing on the bases. A coordinated strike on several at once. Even as he helps them put it together, Jesse knows he’s too much of a liability to take part. He tries not to think too much about how this will extend past just one mission, and that he’s effectively unable to do anything out on the ground where Talon is concerned from here on out. All that anger and righteous fire, now with nowhere productive to go.

Still, he takes care to memorize the info about the lab and manufacturing plant.

Jesse feels even antsier in the days that follow, the base a bustle of energy as everyone prepares. He starts to wonder if the nightmares are partly to blame. They wake him every evening now like clockwork. Or maybe it’s the new knowledge of how deep his and Hanzo’s bond actually goes. What other secrets does he not know about that, or about this hidden world Hanzo has inhabited so much longer than him? If Hanzo had been a long-term goal of Talon’s, and he’s in their grasp now… what’s next in their sights?

He busies himself looking into the lab and the geneticist. Chances seem slim Hanzo would end up all the way out there. And even if he has… it’s not like anyone else on the team will be in danger along with him. The day they set out for the raid, Jesse takes off for Oasis. He leaves behind anything that could tie him to Overwatch or be used to trace him, including his phone and laptop.

Oasis seems a world unto itself. A marriage of arts, architecture, and science, it flourishes as a jewel in the desert. One of the most advanced cities in the world.

Jesse is a long way from the country roads of America.

Everything exists on holographic displays, or is automated in some way. Walkways glide seamlessly along sidewalks, and most of the people here appear to be some contributing factor to the city. Scientists, doctors, and even the children that can be seen in prim uniforms from time to time are clearly here to learn from one of the state of the art schools.

But there is also an air of peace, here. There is security, without the overt presence of it. No one things twice about passing through alleys, there's no trash littering street corners. It seems almost too good to be true.

Oasis is the sort of place Jesse wouldn’t have liked even when he was human. It’s all too regimented. The lack of garbage and crime only makes him feel even more ill at ease as he assesses the city from carefully chosen vantage points on the rooftops. He’s not optimistic enough to think it’s this pristine and safe just out of the goodness of the residents’ hearts. There’s a reason people here stay in line.

So he keeps all of his senses, natural and preternatural both, on high alert as he makes his way to the research facility. There’s no way he could blend in with this crowd, so he doesn’t try, staying out of sight the entire way.

He has two goals: to gather as much information on the inner workings of this place as he can, and to find the resident geneticist. See what she’s up to. Maybe even pay her a personal call depending on how this all goes. But the reports hadn’t mentioned if she was human or otherwise, so there’s that.

Breaking in is tricky, but Jesse hasn’t found a building he couldn't sneak his way into yet. (And that last one doesn’t count, he’d have been totally undetected if Hanzo hadn’t cheated. He’ll stick by that.)

It's quiet enough, this time of night, but the lights aren't off. Some scientists remain working well into the dark hours of the night on one project or another. That means fewer shadows to lurk in as Jesse makes his way along those corridors, with the higher security projects located deeper into the facility.

Basement levels. Cut off from the rest of the building. Accessible only by elevator, with pass codes and IDs required to go any further.

He has a number of options for how to proceed. He can wait for the elevator to come up, as it surely must, and convince whoever arrives in it to take him down below. He can try to brute force his way past the machinery, though that will almost certainly raise the alarms. Or perhaps there is another option entirely.

But it does look as though the elevator numbers are rising, as he decides.

Augh, workaholics, out here making his job that much harder. Though maybe he should be thankful, seeing as he has little other choice but to use one of them to get downstairs. None of the documents Hanzo had sent mentioned passcodes. Knowing this place, he wouldn’t be surprised if each person had their own unique number to make infiltration that much harder.

Waiting game it is. He checks his on-hand supplies, triple-checks his ammo count, then settles in to wait. All the while, one hopeful-yet-paranoid part of him listens for even the faintest whisper of a connection to something-- or someone-- within the building.

No such feeling emerges. Perhaps Hanzo had done his best to put distance between himself and his fledgling, for just such a reason.

But there is someone approaching. A vampire, quite like them, and as the door opens the figure of a woman emerges from the elevator. She has a Vishkar uniform about her, though the dress is perhaps slit a little higher than is standard for such things. Black and red, with a strangely pale look to her despite a tanned skin tone.

She pauses just outside the elevator, her red eyes cast about behind the red tint of a visor over her eyes. Searching. Something is amiss here, she's sure of it.

It’s for the best he isn’t here. If Jesse were to come up against Hanzo again, he’s not sure he could make himself walk away a second time.

Thankfully, someone comes up on the elevator before his patience can wear too thin. He assesses her quickly—a vampire, no telling how old or strong. Sharp though, if she’s sensed him already. He slips out from the meager shadows beside the elevator and presses the barrel of his gun to the back of her head.

“Stay quiet now. No sudden movements either. Hands out where I can see ‘em.”

He’d taken out the closest camera just before this subtly enough that they might buy a technical malfunction, but he doesn’t want to test those odds. This has to happen fast, and it has to happen now.

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