almightythirst | Open Post

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.

She doesn't tense. Instead her eyes cut sideways towards where he stands, with an almost stern expression.

"You are late."

In a moment she's drawn away, turned to face him with an imperious look that wouldn't have looked out of place on Hanzo, come to think of it. She regards in him a brief once over before making a humming noise, and gesturing for him to follow with a mechanical hand.

"Come. Before anyone else discovers you are here."

Jesse doesn't put the gun down. Neither does he shoot like he really should have when she moved. This is so completely off-script that, frankly, he's wondering if he missed something. Judging by the look on her face, he just might have. He hadn't thought anyone could look down their nose as well as Hanzo... but she's giving him a run for his money.

"Don't recall having an appointment."

"Shall we proceed, or not?"

She regards him steadily with those unnatural eyes. There is something else within him, not necessarily of the blood. Something she does not trust. But there is little choice. He is what they have to work with.

"We have little time before you are discovered. And I would rather this be taken care of without delay."

A swipe of her card, and the elevator opens once more.

Jesse watches the stranger warily for a moment more, eyes darting from her to the elevator. Nothing in there he can see. No traps or chance of ambush. Still, he keeps Peacekeeper trained on her as he steps toward the elevator.

“Any chance you’re going to explain this before we get to the basement, or nah?”

"That would depend. How much of your association would you care for me to say out loud in this very well-monitored facility?"

She lifts an eyebrow at him, then the gun, before letting out a small sigh. As if he's chewing with his mouth open at the table and she's choosing to hold her tongue for the moment. Get in, McCree. Before she changes her mind.

"You are here, as many are in Oasis, to learn. I can take you where you need to go, to find the information you seek. Do you really require more than that? Surely you can simply start shooting if things do not go to your liking."

She knows a lot more than a random scientist or researcher should, even after Jesse had taken great pains to go unnoticed. He can’t help but be intrigued, even knowing the danger. He follows her into the elevator nonetheless.

“Fine. But shooting things is still the plan if someone makes a wrong move. Brought plenty of ammo.”

And he’s not about to be shy about that either. He’s been inoculated against a lifetime’s worth of haughty stares by now.

"Not gonna tell me a thing in the meantime, are you?"

She eyes him for a moment. Then she reaches up to her visor, taps it gently, and a light goes dim. Slowly, the elevator begins to descend, a blue light washing over both of them as the numbers tick down.

"You may call me Symmetra. For the time being. And what you need to know is that we share a common goal." Her gaze cuts sideways towards him. "Difficult as that may be to accept, for a former hunter."

So she knows who he is. That's troubling for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which being that he'd been spotted sneaking into a building again. Is he going to have to redo his basic training or something?

"Nothin' former about it," he replies gruffly, ignoring for a moment the fact that he hasn't been on a proper hunt in ages.

"But sure. I'll bite, Symmetra. And you're just going to let me leave this facility when we're done with tea and chit-chat down there."

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