#(oh AND as the nays in the commentary pointed out filling it with water that's been sitting in aforementioned extra pipe the whole time

[elainemorisi]

I consider myself a bougie snob because I am, but I am also one who lives and has mostly always lived in pretty average places among normal people, which is to say never in the sort of tech money desirable urban edge type situations that have proliferated especially in my adult life.

and may I just say

what the FUCK is a "pot filler" (built in kitchen gizmo) and who on gods green earth could stand to have one in their home would you not just die of embarrassment

[glitchinthesystemspiderbyte]

Glitch in the System - Conflict of Interests (pt. 1)

This will probably be a 4-5 part story arc. Maybe more. Who knows!

Enjoy part 1.

By E. A new adventure happens.

They sat together on the couch, Widow sipping a glass of wine as she absorbed yet another dry French novel, while Sombra went through her nightly motions. Ever the digital huntress, she checked her traps, her snares, and the usual trails, making the rounds as she did every night to see if anyone had tripped a wire. Normally it was an uneventful ritual, but tonight?

Well, it looked as though something very curious indeed had taken the bait.

“Widow, get Gabe,” Sombra said, the sharpness of her own words surprising her as she sat up ramrod straight, numbers flashing across the screen before her. It was so subtle she would have missed it but for the nets she’d put up.

“Gabe?” Widow asked as she pulled her gaze up from her book, brows furrowed. “Can you not call him yourself?”

Sombra glared hard at the screen. Dropping a token on the IP snaking through her web, she watched as it circled the globe in rapid purple flashes.

“Sombra?” Widow asked again, her book now closed in her lap, her expression indicating the ghost of concern.

“Sorry,” Sombra replied, shaking her head, keeping one eye on the screen. “Do you remember, a year ago, when we had a run-in with that group of cyborg separatists?”

“The Mechali,” Widow nodded slowly. “What about them?”

“Well, they just resurfaced,” Sombra replied, eyes darting around the screen. “And it looks big.”

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow, following it with the glass of wine to her lips. “What did you find?”

“Chatter, mostly, but the sort of chatter that precludes something serious. Won’t know the details until I hit their remote servers in person.”

“Where?” Widow asked, looking curiously over her glass of wine.

“Greece?” Sombra replied, shrugging, looking back at her screen. “Probably. The IP I’m tracking is pinging through a lot of locations, but there looks to be a spot in Athens that seems stronger than the rest. Decoys feel different than the real deal, you know?”

“No.”

Sombra rolled her eyes. “That was hypothetical,” she replied. “Anyway, we haven’t heard even a whisper from these guys since their failed attack on Numbani two years ago. Frankly I’d thought they had dissolved. Now they’re shouting and I want to know why.” Her screen flashed and her fingers slid to the bottom of the screen, pinching together to zoom in on an image. “Gabe has to let me check this out.”

Widowmaker watched her expression carefully for the span of several heartbeats before she set down her glass and reached for Sombra, taking her gently by the chin to tear her eyes from the screen. “I am going with you,” she insisted, eyes narrowed.

Sombra laughed, her intensity softening slightly. “Well yeah. I wouldn’t want you to be bored without me. Besides,” she shrugged, swiping Widow’s hand from her chin and giving it a kiss, “I’ll need someone to convince me not to join their weird mecha-human cult. I’m the embodiment of their ideals; I’ll bet they’d love to have me join their ranks.”

Widow let out a soft huff of distaste, part laugh, part disapproval. “And then your ego might finally attain sentience. I will get Gabe,” she said, long limbs unfolding until she was standing. She hesitated, then leaned forward to place a soft kiss on Sombra’s forehead. Turning from her, she left Sombra tapping away at her console.

“The Mechali,” Akande said, fingers steepled together in a typical show of removed emotion. “I had thought them history. Inconsequential history at that.”

“Yeah, well, history has a way of repeating itself,” Sombra shrugged. She was sprawled as usual over the tall meeting room chair, legs up, arms dangling in idle boredom. She ignored both Akande’s and Moira’s glare that she take her feet off the table, ignoring the impulse to kick off her shoes, considering that more than enough concession to their wishes.

“Refresh my memory,” Gabriel asked, rubbing his temples and growling as wisps of black smoke drifted from his head. “What, precisely, is their aim?”

Sombra shrugged and covered a yawn. “Oh, you know - bunch of heavily cybridized people who no longer feel fully human but aren’t ‘welcome’ within the omnic community coming together to establish their own separate group. The leader’s a real spitfire - Sasha Kuznetsov, been looking to break apart from the ‘oppression’ of humans and the ‘overreach’ of Omnics to create a real cyborg utopia for herself and her followers. She’s got an impressive history of failed terrorism and assassination attempts, from starting a fire at the Numbani consulate to a laughable attempt at converting Blackwatch’s own cyborg to her cause. Barring her general inability to follow through with her threats, you two would probably get along really well, Akande,” Sombra explained.

“I am not so certain of that,” Akande replied, lips pursed in thought. “A third party simply muddies the waters and leaves room for empathy. But as far as I can tell, they are not large enough to be anything more than a nuisance at this point.” His eyes shifted to Sombra. “Correct?”

“Numbers have swelled since we last clashed with them. They’re big enough to claim corporate tax exemption as a private group.”

Akande frowned. “Have they?”

Sombra shook her head. “No, but they have certainly grown, and they definitely have the drive. Frankly, if they’re employing encryption methods strong enough to tip me off, they’re up to something.” Idly rubbing a thumb along her cybernetics, she caught Akande’s eyes with utter seriousness. “Something big.”

Gabriel and Akande exchanged a glance. Moira crossed her arms, and Sombra thought she looked as though she felt left out.

“We don’t need chaos we can’t control. Not right now,” Gabe said, his voice maintaining its professional gravelly snarl. “I think an investigation of their intentions is warranted.”

“Now we’re on the same page,” Sombra replied, winking. “Let me at that sweet cyborg propaganda.”

“You say you need to go to Greece to properly access their data?” Akande finished, ignoring her glib commentary.

“If we want to know what precisely those intentions are, then yeah.” She smirked. “Also the gyros in Italy are terrible, and I have a need.”

Akande looked between Moira and Gabriel, receiving curt nods of assent from each. “Go. Take Lacroix for backup,” he said. Sombra smirked at Moira’s failed attempt at not looking annoyed at their joint assignment.

“Are we going to lose you to their cause?” Gabriel asked as they all left the room, his tone mostly joking, but Sombra thought she detected a hint of worry in it as well.

She laughed. “Well I guess that depends on how well you pay me.”

“I do not know how you do it,” Widow commented as they entered a busy little taverna in a populated section of Athens. The path there was crowded with twilight tourists sneaking a last peek at the acropolis looming above them on its hill, killing time before the nightlife kicked into gear.

“Do what?” Sombra asked, holding up two fingers as the server nodded and asked how many were in her party.

“Remember everything,” Widow replied, falling into step behind her. Sombra had disembarked their small commercial flight as Selena Santiago, hailed a taxi under the guise of Camila Santos, and checked into their small hotel just outside of Syntagma Square as Rafaela Rodriguez. Sombra hopped from name to name like they were bars in foreign towns, drunk off anonymity and the freedom it afforded her.

“Change your name enough and you don’t have to remember them, cielito,” Sombra grinned as they sat down on the patio outside overlooking the street. Like most European cities she had visited, it was bustling, and traffic was especially thick during the end of the day as businesses closed and people raced to get home to their families and loved ones. It was exciting and vibrant and she watched the cars pass with interest until their server arrived.

“Wine?” he offered the women, proffering a dented copper pitcher at the two.

“Nai, parakelo,” she said with a smile, and he took their orders, leaving the copper pitcher on the table for their pleasure. Sombra grinned - she’d always appreciated the way tavernas treated wine like water, allowing patrons to fill their glasses until they’d had enough. She wasn’t sure whether it was something done traditionally or as a way to hook tourists, but since she was rarely in Greece for very long, she figured she benefited either way.

“I didn’t realize you spoke Greek,” Widow commented after pouring herself a glass, leaning back and taking a sip of her wine. She grimaced, nose wrinkled in disgust. “What is this?” she asked.

“Well it’s not top shelf.” Sombra laughed. “And I don’t speak Greek, I speak select phrases that come in handy when shopping, or eating. You know,” she continued, shrugging, “tourist book stuff.”

“I see,” Widow nodded, eyeing her glass as though it offended her. Regardless, she took another sip, this one seeming to upset her slightly less than the first. “That does seem somewhat anticlimactic for you.”

“Hey, until I can work out an instant cerebral internal translator, I’m going to have to play the language game just like anyone else.” Sombra grinned, offering an exaggerated shrug, sitting up straighter as their waiter returned.

“Epharisto,” she nodded as he set down a plate of dolmades and olives at the center of the table as well as a lamb and tzatziki gyro before each of them. It smelled delicious, but unfamiliar, and nothing like the hearty spice from back home.

“Working?” he asked, nodding at her display.

“Always,” she smiled in response, more innocent than a college student researching a paper for school. Widow watched him coldly, and he made no move to address her before scurrying off to assist his other patrons.

“I can’t decide whether you make it harder or easier for me to do what I do,” Sombra smirked, picking up her gyro and taking a bite. It was perfect.

“How do you mean?” WIdow asked, gingerly picking up her own dolmade.

“You either scare away the mark or make me seem even more pleasant in comparison.” Widow rolled her eyes and Sombra grinned. She chewed slowly as the data file her scraping program had picked up was decrypted. It was a strong encryption, but she’d cracked harder. She watched it run, periodically jumping in for a manual override, taking sips of wine and bites of food in between.

“Am I that frightening?” Widow asked after a bit, seeming less offended and more curious.

“Babe, you’re terrifying,” Sombra laughed. As she did, a sharp ping and flash of light drew her attention. “Got ‘em.”

“You have a location?”

“You bet I do.” Hovering her hand over her screen, she pinched her fingers together and peeled off a bit of hard light, absorbing it into her skin in flecks of purple data. “And you’re never going to believe where we have to go.”

Widowmaker sighed, draining her wine glass, the smallest hint of distaste still flashing across her face, almost as an obligation at this point. “I assume I am going to hate this?” she asked.

“Sorry,” she grinned sheepishly. “Probably.”

“And where are your uncomfortable cyborgs holding out, then?”

Sombra’s grin widened. “Mycenae. Inside the cistern.”

Widow stared at her incredulously. “The cistern under the ruins?”

“Yup.”

Taking a steadying breath, Widowmaker poured herself another drink.

They arrived after dark, the ruins locked down with rope and makeshift gates that didn’t look to have changed much since the beginning of the century.

“Guess not a lot of folks are dying to get in here and cause trouble after dark,” Sombra commented, shrugging as she stepped over the pitiful barricade.

“A far cry from the Acropolis,” Widow murmured, visor in place as she scanned the area for people.

“Yeah I’ve never been yelled at for picking up rocks. Especially while watching a dog pee on the Parthenon steps at the same time.” She shook her head, illuminating the ground before them in a dim purple glow. “Preservation is weird. See anything?”

“No,” Widow replied, pressing the button at the base of her visor to disengage. Her golden eyes flashed in the light from Sombra’s cybernetics.

“Into the pit we go then,” Sombra said cheerfully as she waved Widow over to a small hole in the rock face, big enough for one person to descend at a time. She loved ancient ruins and the stories they told, but the lack of technological grid in place always made her feel a bit blind.

Which was why she was startled nearly to stumbling when she placed her hand against the wall and felt a thin, thready vibration coming from the damp rock, indicating the presence of some sort of network. With extreme caution, she connected to it, and found herself at the precipice not only of a stone staircase leading into the abyss, but a vault of data lingering just beneath her touch.

She shared this with Widow, and despite the darkness of the stairs as they slowly descended, could almost see the concerned wrinkling of her smooth brow.

“A connection,” she said, voice low but echoing regardless in the utter silence of the rock surrounding them, “in 3,500 year old ruins?”

“Hey, I’m baffled too. Best we can do is follow it I figure.” The places her fingers traced against the wall left faint glowing points of purple in their wake, like the remnants of touch witnessed through a heat sensor. It felt less like raw data and more like a guide leading to what Sombra hoped were the Mechali servers. It was the only thing that made any sense, really. If she hadn’t known they were tracking cyborgs, she’d have thought her hardware was malfunctioning.

They continued downward in silence.

The cistern itself was precisely what it said on the tin: a large body of water stretching into the darkness before them. Skirting the pool of subterranean water, she followed the lines of data to a false wall at the far end. Someone had blasted away part of the rock beneath, covering it with the hologram that was indistinguishable from the rock to anyone not approaching it with subterfuge in mind. The hard light was also modeled to feel like rock. The curators probably didn’t even know it was there.

“This is some high tech shit,” Sombra explained, awestruck as her fingers danced over the false stone. It was even damp to the touch like the rest of the cavern.

“Can you get through?” Widow asked, standing pointedly away from the walls, eyeing them with disgust.

Sombra snorted. “I said high tech, not impressive. This is kids’ stuff.” Pressing a palm against the wall, she summoned a small keypad into thin air. Her fingers danced and arcs of electricity shot from her hand into the device. There was no sound; no fanfare at all, really, as the hologram vanished from sight. It was instantaneous - one moment it was there, the next it was gone.

Sombra and Widowmaker peered into the hole in the wall of the cistern to see an unexpected anachronism: a long, sleek, metal wall, riveted together and leading down into the ground, the ceiling and ground carved from the same stone as the rest of the ancient city.

“Let’s go,” Sombra shrugged, stepping through into the hallway. Widowmaker hesitated and followed a moment later.

The metal walls glowed with internal white LEDs, making their passage comparatively easy to their descent into the cistern. As they passed over the threshold, Sombra looked back to see the hologram slip back into place behind them.

“Well done,” she said under her breath.

Widow’s frown was visible now. She activated her visor again, scanning the passage as they approached what was looking more and more like another doorway, this one made not of hard light, but of steel.

“Sombra,” she said, and her voice stopped Sombra in her tracks.

“What?” she asked.

“This place,” she said, pointing ahead of them, “is filled with people.”

Sombra stood where she was for a moment, considering the new intel. “Ah,” she replied, pursing her lips. “That makes sense. I wouldn’t leave my servers unguarded either.”

“This is more than guards, Sombra. This is,” she trailed off, peering at the door again before disengaging her visor. “This is a facility.”

Sombra stroked her chin a moment in thought. “Yeah, I’d thought that might be the case, honestly. Or at least a possibility.” Turning, she bridged the final gap to the door, reaching out to perform the same technical magic on the physical keypad as she had earlier on the hard light one.

“What are you doing?” Widow asked, standing rigidly beside her.

“What am I doing?” Sombra asked, tilting her head at Widow. “I’m going in to say hi.”

*Read from the beginning or check out our intro post! All stories tagged under #glitchfic. Table of contents located here.