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solivar · 6 months ago

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Annual Repost: I Heard the Bells

It's Christmas Eve and the former members of Overwatch celebrate as only they can: with unexpected gifts from lonely exiles, assassination attempts, and world-hopping heroics.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old familiar carols play And mild and sweet their songs repeat Of peace on Earth, good will to men

The packages arrived within hours of each other, in cascading order, earliest time zones first, on Christmas Eve. And, for a miraculous change, nothing -- no deficiencies of local air or ground mail delivery, no perfidious intent-thwarting issues of back-ordering or selling out, nobody failing to be where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there -- managed to screw a single solitary bit of it up. He watched it all come together as the delivery notifications popped up on his tablet, from the vantage of a cheapass hotel room in Fredericksburg while he waited for it to get dark enough and late enough to complete the last stage of his self-chosen mission.

Within sixteen minutes of the first delivery, his phone chimed with the tone he’d assigned to Genji the very instant he’d found out his former partner in twentysomething angst had shacked up in a Nepalese monastery with an omnic spiritual adviser. It was a gong. The most obnoxious gong available in open source sound files. Hearing it now brought an extremely satisfied little grin to his face, a grin that stretched a fraction wider with each new, unique text notification tone.

Really. It was almost as good as being there.

***

Dr. Angela Ziegler desired nothing more than sleep. She longed for the soft, cool embrace of her pillow as she desired absolutely nothing and no one else for years. The terrible, heavily bleached hospital sheets she and everyone else slept on called to her with the sweetest of siren voices. The door to the suite she shared with the two other doctors -- an infectious disease treatment specialist and an epidemic disease control specialist -- with whom she was coordinating the establishment of the world’s first teaching hospital interfacing all of their disciplines lay but a few feet away and she had, at that very moment, been awake so many hours in a row that she was perfectly willing to abandon a lifetime of heartfelt pacifism if someone would try to prevent her from reaching it. So close.

“Angela!”

And yet so far.

“Yes, Kate?” Katherine Solaja was an amazingly gifted young woman, afire with the desire to help others, a quick study and a steady head under pressure, and generally Angela was grateful to have such a talented young physician working with her. At the moment, however, she was firmly resisting the urge to introduce her resident to the truest meaning of the term ‘defenestration’ and then offer the last fifty-two sleepless hours as her defense when someone came to arrest her. Perhaps they would be kind enough to handcuff her to her bed and wheel her out that way.

“You have got to come down to the office. Something just arrived for you with the late mail drop-off.” Angela found her hand in Kate’s uncompromisingly energetic grip and, before her weary brain could formulate a coherent objection, she was being pulled down the hall and into the elevator.

“Kate,” Angela began.

“I know you’re tired, Angela. But I’m serious. You need to see this.” Kate was grinning, dark eyes shining with glee.

“What could possibly be so -- “

“Trust me. You’re going to want to see this.”

The elevator doors hissed open and Angela again allowed herself to be dragged along, into the labyrinth of offices that occupied the hospital’s lowest floors, her own inclusive, which seemed to contain entirely too many people for that time of day. Entirely too many, and most of them loitering in the vicinity of her own neatly arranged workspace, which at the moment contained a desk, three floor to ceiling bookshelves, a potted ficus, a tiny holotank in one corner, approximately the entire senior medical advisory staff, and a cylindrical object approximately three feet around and four feet tall, wrapped in silver paper neatly stamped down its side with air mail shipment codes.

“What in the name of God is that?” Angela asked, completely flummoxed.

“That’s what we’d all like to know.” Kate nudged her gently forward. “Like I said, it came in with the late mail. Go on, Angela, open it open it open it.”

“It’s -- “ Slowly, Angela’s weary mind put the pieces together -- the lateness of the day, the lateness of the year, the unexpected late delivery. “Oh, dear. It’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it?”

She found herself collecting a series of pitying looks and, gathering the remains of her dignity about her, she stepped forward to examine the object. Not just silver paper, clearly -- it was a far heavier gauge than simple paper, wrapped in an overlapping scallop design that came together at the top beneath a medallion of what was probably not sealing wax but which artfully resembled it nonetheless. Fortunately, she had absentmindedly stuck a clean scalpel into her pen case earlier that day; it slid beneath the edge of the seal and disengaged it without damaging the seal itself. She palmed it into the pocket of her lab coat as the wrapping unfolded itself, expelling a burst of intensely cold air and releasing a genuine flurry of impossibly tiny snowflakes as it did so, glittering briefly in the artificially dry air of the hospital complex’ air conditioning. The entire assembly took a sudden breath, some ooohed, others ahhhed, there was at least one squeal that Angela suspected came from Kate.

The little Christmas tree contained inside the package was utterly perfect in every way, its blue fir branches glittering with a hint of frost, strung with beaded golden and crimson garland, hung with impossibly tiny and perfect blown glass ornaments, the angel atop it bearing a rather suggestive resemblance to her Valkyrie suit as occupied by she herself. Piled at its base were a selection of equally tiny and perfect individually wrapped presents, all of them tagged with her name in a hand she knew well.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” Kate murmured as Angela bent down and retrieved one, opening it to reveal an orb of dark chocolate molded in the shape of a Christmas ornament. “You do have a secret admirer.”

Angela handed her the tiny gift box. “No...not an admirer. A brother.”

At that moment, her phone buzzed for the first time, and continued to do so steadily for the next three hours.

***

WickedCuteButDeadly: Oh my God. OH MY GOD.

DeathFromAbove: Are you kidding me? You too? Is is a tree? He sent you a tree, didn’t he.

WickedCuteButDeadly: HE DID. IT’S SO CUTE I WANT TO DIE. AND -- look, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t have a good number for him, the last time he called me was, oh, maybe three months ago wanted to be sure he had a good snail mail addie for me, and I spent two hours chewing his ear about Em and how we met and how wonderful she was and how happy we were AND HE SENT US A PREPAID RESERVATION CARD FOR A COUPLES WEEKEND AT THIS SWANK SPA HOTEL IN PARIS AND THE NUMBER I HAVE FOR HIM IS NO GOOD ANYMORE AND I KNOW AT LEAST ONE OF YOU HAS TO KNOW HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH HIM. Ange, it’s you, isn’t it? It has to be you, you’re his DOCTOR.

DeathFromAbove: My tree is covered in miniature planes from the dawn of aviation to the present. I’m afraid to open any of the boxes. My heart can only take so much.

WickedCuteButDeadly: Do it. You know you want to, Fareeha.

DeathFromAbove: … DeathFromAbove: … DeathFromAbove: …

DeathFromAbove: This is not okay. I can’t stop crying.

WickedCuteButDeadly: ????!!!!!!

DeathFromAbove: You remember that huge old erector set I had as a kid? The one my father got me for...I want to say my tenth birthday? I lost it in one of the moves sometime before I went away to college and I swear I only told him about it once and he found it HE FOUND IT. I’VE GOT IT SITTING IN MY LAP RIGHT NOW. I don’t even know how he knew I was going to be in Vancouver for Christmas this year, I only finalized my plans two weeks ago!

WickedCuteButDeadly: Angie, please.

DeathFromAbove: Angela, you have GOT to tell us.

SantasLittlestHelper: I don’t know how he remembers ALL THEIR NAMES and all their favorite candies. I’m their FATHER and I don’t remember all that at the same time.

***

Angela fell asleep with her phone still vibrating next to her on the bed, having given away far more of Teuscher’s wonderful champagne truffles than she actually ate herself and without receiving a reply to the text she sent to the one contact number she had.

***

The inner rooms of the monastery were, it was generally agreed by all residents and visitors, far warmer than the outer chambers -- the milled stone walls were paneled in ancient, fragrant wood, hung with the heavy woolen draperies woven in the radiant iris pattern of the Shambali order dyed in brilliant hues of saffron and emerald. They captured the warmth of strategically placed high efficiency solar powered ceramic heaters and the more traditional charcoal braziers and the banks of votary candles in the memorial shrine dedicated to Tekhartha Mondatta, kept it close for the succour of the monastery’s handful of entirely human residents. Most were postulants to the order, men and women who had come from all corners of the Earth, drawn by the offer of all-encompassing inclusion and acceptance that lay at the core of the Shambali philosophy. Some were tourists -- the monastery opened its doors to the curious as well as the dedicated, provided they were willing to respect the customs of the order during the course of their stay. Only one was a professional assassin.

The assassin occupied one of the outermost of the inner chambers -- it was cooler, markedly so, but also significantly less likely to result in being forced to interact involuntarily with another human being, particularly the sort of human being likely to seriously strain his minimal tolerance for idiocy. (There were a number of wealthy tourists on hand at the moment, forced by the weather to wait for the next stage of their pre-packaged Journey Of Enlightenment, and they were growing gradually less enamored with the pursuit of spiritual evolution and union in the soul of the world with every passing day, most of which were exceedingly cold. The monks tolerated them because the tour companies always donated generously on top of the standard fees, the novices tolerated them because they could always claim to be functioning under vows of silence in order to escape unsatisfactory conversations, and the assassin tolerated them, barely, because there were simply not enough places to hide all the bodies -- the snow piled at the bottom of the cliff would, after all, melt eventually.) He had arrived at the end of autumn, just ahead of the first snows, greeted with an excess of enthusiasm by his brother -- a student of Tekhartha Zenyatta -- that many considered equal parts ill-advised and adorable, and, after a lengthy private interview with the elder sibling serving as abbot that season, was permitted to stay. He selected a room on the same corridor as the chambers his brother and the mendicant Zenyatta occupied when they were in residence, and thereafter he was an enticing mystery to the rest of the monastery’s inhabitants, a phantom within its walls, nearly invisible unless he chose to be seen and he almost never allowed it. The cooks saw more of him than the monks, for he would occasionally take his meals in their company, and the security team that patrolled the plateau on which the monastery sat, who occasionally witnessed the feats of physical prowess he indulged in during his personal exercise regime. The best chance anyone else had of seeing him was on one of those rare days when he made use of one of the public chapels or meditation rooms, rather than retiring to the privacy of his own chamber.

It was therefore a matter of some note when, one morning just at the edge of dawn, when no one but the earliest-rising novices would be stirring, he emerged from his quarters dressed in a manner that would not have looked out of place in a painting of the Heian imperial court, carrying a small rolled silk case in the crook of one arm. Word of this astonishing sight -- rendered even more astonishing by the sharp contrast with his decidedly untraditional hair and even less traditional piercings -- made the rounds from novice to support staff back to novice and from there to more than a few monks while he was still crossing the courtyard to the dokhang. By the time he set foot on the first of the five staircases he would thereafter climb, the prayer hall was at least half-full of novices, monks, and three sleep-groggy tourists, most of whom shamelessly watched him in his progress, for reasons ranging from wildly irrepressible curiosity to absolute prurience, for no one could deny the sight of him at that moment was one of the most glorious to be found on the mountain. At the top of the fifth and final staircase, he retired to one of the uppermost meditation chambers, politely declined the offer of a senior monk to bring him anything that he might require to effectuate his devotions, and slid the door shut.

***

It took twenty minutes to grind the ink to his satisfaction and another twenty to make certain that it was warm enough in the vicinity of the plate for his chosen medium to remain in its liquid state. The upper meditation rooms were, in general, fiercely cold at the best of times and today the cold was particularly penetrating -- the wind was light but constant, dry enough to suck the last lingering traces of moisture out of any exposed skin, and with a certain cutting edge to it that suggested the weather might be about to make one of its unpredictable high altitude changes. The pass leading up from the next nearest village had only just been cleared enough to allow passage the evening prior; below in the courtyard, the tourists were making good their chance at escape. At the moment, the sky was a pure and perfect shade of blue that reminded him of his dragons’ scales, the snow-capped Himalayan peaks that ringed the monastery’s high plateau shone savagely in the thin winter sunlight and undulated away in a manner that reminded him of their coils as they flew, and he wanted nothing more than to capture the image in silk and ink. The exceedingly traditional multiple layers of heavy winter clothing simply meant he could do so without freezing to death while in the best painter’s vantage point in all of Shambali.

He rendered the faint, nearly invisible filaments of windbourne snow curling away from the saw-backed ridge of the mountains in the palest, pearlescent shades of gray, the bones of the mountains themselves in a darker wash, a wider stroke. The snow itself was nothing more than the pure white of the silk on which he painted, it existence delineated in washes of ink that established the shape of the snow line, the jut of stone and ice in slightly darker shades. It was soothing, to create so, allowing the brush to dance and the ink to sing in a way that he had not for years, having neither the leisure nor, if he were being honest with himself, the desire. Painting had given him great peace and joy as a child, and even as a young adult; as an adult, with violence and death as his closest companions, it seemed nearly obscene to engage in such pleasures, the perversion of an art of which his hands were no longer worthy. He still did not feel worthy, precisely, but now his own absence of virtue seemed to matter somehow less, enough that he could lose himself in the serenity of drawing his brush across an unblemished length of silken canvas, allow his thoughts to vanish into the concentration needed to compose each stroke, to contemplate nothing but the image taking shape before him. His spirit was as still as the surface of a lake on a windless day, tranquil enough that, when the dragons stirred within him to watch what he was doing, it disturbed him not at all and, for the briefest of instants, his awareness became theirs and theirs became his --

Something sent a ripple of dissonance through them -- through them and into him, jarring his concentration and, very nearly, his arm, and it was only intensely disciplined reflexes that saved the stroke from complete ruination. For an instant, the insides of his skull were a jumble of perception and emotion not his own -- a flash of something silver, a flash of something green-gold-crimson, a breath of cold, surprise childlike delight a sudden stab of sorrow so intense it brought involuntary tears to his eyes and made Tombo keen softly --

Hanzo blinked the tears -- not his own -- out of his eyes, set his brush carefully aside, and briefly considered the stairs before deciding that swinging over the window ledge, sliding down the secondary roof, and climbing down the side of the dokhang was altogether more efficient, particularly once he shed a few layers of clothing. Fortunately, most of the tourists had already departed the courtyard; also fortunately, those that were left contented themselves with gawking and did nothing to impede him as he crossed the distance between the prayer hall and the monastery’s living quarters at a dead sprint. The cluster of human and omnic novices gathered in the dormitory’s central common hall was too small to be called a crowd, no more than a handful really, but they effectively screened the source of the distress that had cried out to him. Fortunately, they also knew, to a being, that it was generally best to get out of his way.

“Genji?”

His brother sat cross-legged in the middle of the common room floor in front of what looked, to his eye at least, like a fully decorated albeit miniature Christmas tree -- branches somehow frost-coated despite the relative warmth of the room, tiny ornaments glittering and, unless he was seriously mistaken, that was a Pachimaru sitting on the top, where an angel or a star ought to be. It was. A Pachimaru. Genji’s head was in his hands and his shoulders were quivering silently and there was a box sitting open on his lap. And not a single one of any of those things made the slightest trace of sense, taken individually or together, and so he knelt, and carefully placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, firmly resisting the urge to shake something resembling an answer out of him before he was ready to provide it on his own.

It took some moments before Genji was ready to speak and, when he did, his voice was not steady, synthesized or not. “I -- My apologies, aniki. I did not mean to disturb you. But I...was not expecting this, in any way.”

“You did not disturb me.” Softly. “What has happened? Why -- “

Silently, Genji showed him the package. Inside, nestled carefully in a mass of impact-resistant wrap and neon green tissue paper, were a pair of hand-held game machines, one black with green fittings, the other black and red. Perplexed, Hanzo looked up and found his brother’s eyes swimming again with unshed tears and, before he had even the slightest chance to construct a reasonable interrogative about either, Genji’s head was resting in the crook of his neck and his shoulder. He did, at least, know what to do about that, and wrapped his brother close. It seemed to be the correct choice, for shortly thereafter Genji began to speak again, softly. “When I was...first recovering...the initial neuromechanical attunement was...complex. I could not walk reliably for weeks. I was confined to the medical research complex at Watchpoint Geneva for much of it. I was losing my mind from the boredom -- I was not yet allowed access to anything and then...one day...someone found out about it and decided enough was enough. And brought me these.” A pause. “Well, probably not these particularly since these are much newer but...the same thing. Something to distract me. To help with something that...simply made me feel better.” He could hear the smile, tremulous though it might be, in his brother’s voice. “I can imagine that Cole would think a monastery on the top of a mountain in the middle of the winter would be the very definition of madness-inducing boredom.”

“Cole?” The word itched at the back of Hanzo’s mind, familiar for no good reason that he could name.

“Cole Cassidy.” Genji pronounced that ridiculous surname with the ease of long familiarity. “A comrade in arms and a very dear friend.” A flicker of expression crossed his face, a welter of emotions mostly visible in his expressive eyes. “I have often wished -- “

“Cassidy.” Hanzo knew he was mangling it, and the uncontrollable twitch at the corner of Genji’s mouth confirmed it. “Are you certain this came from him?”

“It is extremely likely. He knew that Zenyatta and I would be here through the winter and his Christmas gifts in the past have been…” Genji gestured eloquently. “Not quite as elaborate as this, but always well-meant and heartfelt. He cannot be with us, and so instead sends the best that he can give.”

“Why?” Hanzo caught the tiny package Genji tossed at him and opened it to find it contained higashi, carefully shaped in the form of snowflakes, tinted blue and silver, and he decided in that instant whatever faults the absent friend might possess, bad taste was not among them.

“Not all of us joined, or left, with a clean slate.” Unspoken: Overwatch. “Cole attempted to wipe his clean but circumstances conspired against him, then and now. He -- “

It clicked into place then -- suddenly and all at once, he knew where he had heard that name before, and in what context, and he forced his face empty of expression. “Genji.” He reached into the innermost pocket of his clothing and drew out his tablet, thumbed open the lock, scrolled through the most recent half-dozen of his contracts, made his selection, and handed it to his brother. “Is this your friend?”

Genji’s brows knit momentarily. “How -- ?” He looked, and read, and the last of the color fled the scarred skin of his face.

“Someone attempted to hire me to kill him before I came here.” Hanzo replied.

***

GreenCyborgNinjaDude has joined the conversation.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Does anyone know how to contact Cole?

DeathFromAbove: LET ME GUESS. He sent you a TREE and EVERYTHING UNDER IT made you cry like a two year old?

WickedCuteButDeadly: I DID NOT CRY. We both cried, it’s not the same thing if everyone’s crying all at once.

DoNotHassleTheHoff: A case of the finest Schwarzbier, a currywurst sampler, and two tickets to the Hasselfest tribute concert next year. Tears were shed. MANLY TEARS.

SantasLittlestHelper: He remembered the names of all my children AND my wife AND somehow knew that I needed a new portable thermal anvil. I suspect a conspiracy.

DeathFromAbove: And Angela isn’t answering her phone --

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: My friends, please. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Do ANY OF YOU have good contact information for him? The number I had now belongs to a very pleasant young woman who did not appear to speak any of the languages I know.

DeathFromAbove: Not I.

SantasLittlestHelper: Alas, no, or I’d have used it.

DoNotHassleTheHoff: Nein.

WickedCuteButDeadly: I was trying to get someone to cough it up earlier. Still think Angie’s our best bet but she’s not picking up or answering texts.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: This is bad.

WickedCuteButDeadly: What’s the ish, Genji?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I have unfortunately excellent reason to believe that he is in danger. MORTAL danger.

DeathFromAbove: … WickedCuteButDeadly: … DoNotHassleTheHoff: … SantasLittlestHelper: …

WickedCuteButDeadly: SPILL IT.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: An...acquaintance...here in the monastery witnessed the arrival of my present and recognized Cole’s name when I spoke of him, and indicated to me that he was offered a contract on Cole’s life before he came to Nepal, but ultimately declined.

DeathFromAbove: An ACQUAINTANCE? At the MONASTERY?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: It is a very long story. But I have no reason to doubt him or consider his information in any way not credible. The request came through a contract broker my acquaintance has worked with more than once in the past -- I have seen enough of the negotiation to know that, whoever made the request, they knew enough of Cole’s service with Blackwatch to extend specific warning of his abilities. And they seem to know where he is going to be tonight.

WickedCuteButDeadly: TONIGHT?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Yes. The contractor seems to believe he will be at Arlington National Cemetery tonight.

WickedCuteButDeadly: IT’S CHRISTMAS!

DeathFromAbove: I’m pretty sure anybody willing to put out a hit on someone isn’t really going to care about that, Lena.

WickedCuteButDeadly: I KNOW that but -- it’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing! And at

DoNotHassleTheHoff: Gabriel’s grave. He is going to visit Gabriel’s grave.

DeathFromAbove: I’m trying Angela again. Is there anybody in the eastern United States right now? ANYBODY?

WickedCuteButDeadly: If we took off from Gibraltar RIGHT NOW it would take us at least eleven hours to get there -- we couldn’t cruise at commercial air altitude -- and we can’t take off right now, I’d have to fuel up for a long-haul flight and run preflight checks and

DeathFromAbove: I’m closer and I’m still not close enough, Lena. It’s not your fault. Angela, please, please pick up.

***

Genji was distraught. That, alone, was astonishing -- Genji, as a young adult, had been charismatic, effortlessly charming to all except the eldest and most hidebound members of the clan, almost casually lethal with everything from blades to the edge of his tongue, and as utterly self-absorbed as it was possible to be. Hanzo, then, had thought he could count the number of people his brother actually cared about on the fingers of one hand, if that, and rarely considered himself among the number.

Hanzo, now, had more than one reason to reevaluate his judgment. He had not anticipated, when he made his decision to follow Genji to Nepal and make the attempt to reconcile all that had passed between them, that he would witness his brother in fear for the life of another. It occupied the precise space between bewildering and heart wrenching and Hanzo, for the first time in a long time, had no idea how to react.

“There must be something that can be done,” Genji muttered, on his sixth pass around the perimeter of the dormitory common room, now cleared of random bystanders by the order of the abbot, who had sent senior monks to shoo them back to their own neglected tasks. He was dialing another number that could, in theory, be used to contact Dr. Angela Ziegler who, it seemed, could be anywhere from Zurich to some godforsaken war zone without even the most basic communication service; the woman did not, apparently, even take holidays off and she was, in the estimation of all, the most likely to know how to reach Cole Cassidy. Thus far, no one had managed to raise her.

His brother was, at most, sixteen seconds away from literally climbing the walls in his anxiety, for which Hanzo could not at all blame him. A discreet nibble around the edges to his intermediary had yielded the information that the contract was no longer available -- not cancelled but accepted and closed to further interested parties. That was, in his estimation, no good news whatsoever, given that he had been directly and personally approached for the matter. His particular skills, areas of expertise, and reputation placed him among fairly rarified company in the loose and not especially friendly society of freelance killers-for-hire; he could think of three who could reasonably be considered his equals and only one his superior and none whom he would wish to bet against in matters of life or death.

Genji uttered a number of uncomplimentary things under his breath in Japanese and came to a halt, folding into a place at his side, deliberately and carefully setting down his phone between them. Hanzo rather thought he wanted to throw it, either against the nearest wall or off the side of the mountain, and that impression was confirmed an instant later as Genji flexed his hands, his wrists, flicked weapons from beneath the armor his forearms, between his fingers, and then back into their housing, nothing about the gesture bleeding any tension from the set of his shoulders, the length of his body. “Hanzo.”

“Suzume.” He rested his hand on Genji’s shoulder and could not miss the shudder that passed through him.

“Please tell me that he will survive this.” It emerged as a whisper, barely given voice at all.

It was on the tip of his tongue to utter a comforting lie. He was spared the necessity of making it sound convincing by a soft chiming, almost as of bells, and an equally quiet voice. “My apologies, Shimada-san. It was not my intention to interrupt.”

Genji took a ragged breath. “Master.”

“Tekhartha.” Hanzo inclined his head slightly in greeting. “No apology is necessary, and your company is welcome.”

It was only a slight overstatement; Genji found his deepest comfort in the companionship of his mentor, and comfort was what his brother needed more than anything but a solution right now. Tekhartha Zenyatta, hovering in the doorway yet, bowed from the neck and floated to Genji’s side. In his wake, the senior Shambali monk acting as the monastery’s abbot also entered the hall and, if it were possible for machines to look thoroughly and utterly uncomfortable, Hanzo would have used those words to describe his posture, the set of his spine.

“It was not my intention to interrupt,” Zenyatta continued in that same perfectly modulated voice, the one that he adopted when he was strenuously controlling the urge to allow the direction of his thoughts to show in his tone, “but I feel that I must do so. It has been brought to my attention,” out of the corner of his eye, Hanzo swore he saw the omnic abbot actually flinch slightly, “that we have at our disposal a means of reaching your friend more swiftly than we thought.”

Tekhartha Zenyatta turned what had to be the most heavily weighted look Hanzo had ever witnessed between two omnics on his brother, the abbot, who responded with a low, deep bow -- to Zenyatta, to Genji, and, peripherally, to himself. When he spoke, his voice was also a carefully expressionless tone. “Some months ago, after much discussion among the elder siblings in residence here in Shambali,” the faintest hint of reproach colored residence, Hanzo thought, “it was decided that we required a more reliable method of transport into and out of the monastery in the event of an emergency -- physical danger to the community in the form of attack, or an inability to resupply by our ordinary methods due to weather. We therefore entered into a contract with the Vishkar Corporation to meet our needs in this regard.”

“What Brother Dzasatta is trying to say,” Zenyatta cut in, coolly, “is that the monastery is now equipped with an active short range telestation.”

“What.” It was not actually a question and Genji surged to his feet in a sinuous motion that, only barely, remembered to turn into a bow. “Brother Dzasatta, may we -- “

“Yes. Yes, you may.” The poor abbott sounded as though it gave him enormous pain just to say it and Hanzo could not help but wonder how many arms Zenyatta had to twist, and with how much enthusiasm, to achieve that permission. “We have already calculated your route. Our telestation is not powerful enough to reach the United States directly -- you will have to transit in stages, from here to Tehran, Tehran to Istanbul, Istanbul to Madrid, and Madrid to Washington, DC. The arrangements have already been made but you must depart soon.”

“Thank you, elder brother.” Genji bowed again, lower this time, and then turned to him. “Aniki, I must -- “

“I know.” Hanzo rose. “Give me a moment to change and retrieve my case and I will -- “

The force of his brother’s embrace lifted him entirely off the floor.

***

Columbarium Court Nine would, in any other place, have been a cemetery all by itself, a long fully walled quadruple rectangle of elegantly designed and expertly tended landscaping, the perfectly flat-cobbled lanes between the niche walls kept clear of snow in the winter and leaves in the autumn and blowing blossoms from the flowering trees in the spring, the marble benches discreetly placed just so in the central memorial garden, around the fountain, for mourners to sit and collect themselves, before or after or both. Since it was sitting in Arlington National Cemetery, it just happened to have the distinction of being the largest of several of its kind, originally part of an expansion intended to extend the useful life of the cemetery, and then expanded twice more in the years since its construction, home to sixty thousand inurnment niches, about half of which were in use. By day it was the very image of martial, commemoratory solemnity, row upon row of variegated gray stone walls faced in gleaming white memorial plaques, surrounded outside in row upon row of headstones and monuments and, in at least a few places, something vaguely resembling a serious attempt at security fencing, mostly around the places where, paradoxically, people were supposed to enter the grounds.

Cole Cassidy had been to Arlington National Cemetery exactly once by daylight and the occasion still resided under the heading of the Worst Day of My Life in his memory, only dragged out and examined under duress or too much terrible whiskey in the middle of the night or some combination of the two. Subsequently, he kept his visits confined to those hours when he was distinctly unlikely to encounter another living being -- well after official closing time, far after dark, and he never bothered hopping one of the more properly fency fences while it was possible to jump off the top of the last metro train of the evening, over the significantly lower backend fence along the tracks, and walk the rest of the way under the cover of night and the thin copses of trees still left standing along the perimeter. It was particularly possible that night: bitter cold and dark, the moon a brushstroke crescent hanging low in the west, the rest of the sky an empty arch of light pollution that offered no help to unenhanced eyes. He had a flashlight clipped to his belt for the parts of the walk that lay outside the nimbus of the security lamps scattered along the main thoroughfares, routes he generally avoided, in any case -- the grounds weren’t patrolled, but there was always a full guard complement on station, rotating on and off watch at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier through the night. And, once he was inside the outer wall of the Columbarium, through the arch of the ungated gate, he had no need, could find his way to where he was going without eyes if necessary.

Overwatch had its own monument, plunked down on one of the plots set aside for the memorialization of future disasters, immediately next to the significantly larger one dedicated to all the victims of the Omnic Crisis, civilian, military, and otherwise. One of them was, in fact, a columbarium in its own right, laid out in the form of the organization’s insignia, Morrison’s nonstandard gravestone beneath which his ashes were interred dead center, and every former member of Overwatch who had also first been a member of the American armed forces had the at least theoretical right to be buried there. In practice, “anyone” included a specific exclusion, for the obvious reasons, particularly when the six layers of international and domestic bureaucratic fuckery involved in the decisions related to who got to rest where could veto each other and reject requests for reconsideration until Hell froze over solidly. The Marine Corps, by way of contrast, had authorized Silvia Reyes’ request on behalf of her late brother without hesitation -- Major Gabriel Reyes had, after all, saved the entire goddamned world while still technically under their colors and, even if the rest of his service record was so classified God himself wasn’t rated high enough to access it, that was something they never forgot for one minute.

Gabe’s niche was in the newer segment of Court Nine, in one of the alcoves at the far end of the whole structure, a quiet and secluded little spot equipped with its own sculpted marble bench and a little patch of garden around the base of a wide-spreading sakura, currently winter bare, a bit of ice clinging to its corners. The plaque wasn’t quite centered in the back wall but it was at least still mostly aligned with the bench, more or less at eye level, polished white marble incised with his name and final rank, Omnic Crisis, two dates nowhere near far enough apart, You Are Not Forgotten. Silvia and Lorena always came in the summer, on his birthday, to make sure the plaque was tended and to lay flowers; he always came at Christmas, by mutual agreement, to lay the wreath.

The wreath, this year, was tiny, a braided confection of evergreen and holly made by the same former client who’d constructed the trees, strung through with strands of beaded garland in black, white, red, and came with a hook small enough to hang on the lip of the plaque. He fussed with it a bit until it looked just right. “Been awhile, shizhé’é’. Got quite a bit to catch you up on.”

The glass and the bottle wrapped up in his pockets had come through the jump-off-the-train-and-roll routine without a scratch, fortunately, though both were warmer than they’d been when he set out. He cracked the seal and a scent more in common with summer filled the cold air, cherries and almonds, the liquor clear as it poured, the kirschwasser he’d developed a taste for while living in Switzerland. It wasn’t sweet, which Cole had always thought completely defeated the point of drinking something that tasted like cherries, and he had never gotten even slightest buzz from it, because there wasn’t a booze on Earth strong enough to overcome his super-science-enhance metabolism, but he’d loved the flavor and thus the cemetery caretakers had acquired an encyclopedic collection of fine European lifewaters over the years. He left both the glass and the bottle sitting on the bench next to him.

“You remember how I told you last year that Ylva was pregnant out to here and we were all making bets on when she’d pop? Well, she didn’t make it two weeks past New Year and guess what? They finally did it. Gabriel Matthias Lindholm.” A smile curled one corner of his mouth. “I understand he’s already a precocious little troublemaker who escaped his bassinet Mission Impossible style before he was eight months old so your legacy is in good hands.”

Somebody wasn’t moving as quietly as they could have -- that was an unmistakably distinct scrape of boots on stone. Cole reached down and unclipped his spurs, tucking them into a pocket.

“Lena finally stopped dodging long enough to actually get asked on a date -- they moved in together last month. And, yeah, it was the one Angie spent two years trying to set her up with. Two years. You’d think she’d have eventually given up but noooo.”

He unclipped a stun grenade from his belt, thumbed it over to maximum yield on the flash, minimum on the bang, and deactivated the micro electromagnetic pulse generator entirely, because he didn’t need even minor twitch issues with his arm right now. The yahoo -- or, more likely, yahoos -- dithering on just the other side of the alcove wall weren’t likely to dither for much longer and so he set the timer for fifteen seconds, boosted himself up the outside wall with just a slight gravity anchor assist, waited for them to round the corner, dropped into the alcove they had just vacated, and shielded his eyes. The detonation wasn’t quite as impressive as it would have been if he’d left everything cranked as high as it could go and, even so, it was more than sufficient for the purpose to which he’d put it -- the pair of would-be assailants, one big, the other bigger, staggering around the alcove in visibly disoriented anguish were wearing night vision gear. Cole indulged in an infinitesimally tiny amount of pity for perhaps a tenth of a second before he introduced Big’s head to the edge of the alcove partition wall with force sufficient to break a few of the more delicate bones in his face and robbed Bigger of the remains of his senses and the free use of his jaw with a firmly to-the-point left. The echoes of the grenade’s sonic component were still propagating across the rolling fields of the cemetery as they hit the ground and if that didn’t poke a stick into the honor guard relief quarters and swish it around a few times, nothing would, and that gave him little time to work.

Big was carrying a heavy shock baton, one of the new school tasers hung heavy enough to work on an omnic or a cybernetically enhanced human, and a pepper-box muzzled sidearm whose ammo looked more like a reinforced hypodermic needle than a standard flechette. Bigger had one of those, too, and another baton, and a couple cylinders he knew for a fact were area-of-effect neurodisruption ordnance. “This is a goddamned cemetery. And it’s Christmas. You couldn’t wait for me to walk out?”

He tossed both the flechette guns and their extra ammo over the far wall, with the hope that they would meet their end under the wheels of a passing truck or at the very least not end up pointed at him. He slid both shock batons through his belt, the taser in the pocket not containing his spurs, and briefly considered the neurodisruptor grenades before the quiet hiss of static caught his attention. Bigger had a still-active comm in his ear and a bit of attention lent to it gave him the knowledge that his present companions were not alone (too much to ask for), there were at least six other teams of two positioned at strategic points (the entrances/exits, the major cross lanes), and two of them were being sent to investigate What the Hell That Was. Cole cheerfully decided he knew what he was going to do with the neuro grenades.

The best and worst aspects of the Columbarium were one and the same. The pathways were wide and open, particularly the main thoroughfares running through the midline and up both sides, easily traversed when searching for a grave, obstruction-free fields of fire in the admittedly not planned for instance of the place turning into a combat zone. The niche walls themselves varied in altitude, from little more than waist high (good enough for cover in a pinch) to the overhead gate caps at least ten feet off the ground (perfect platforms for enfilading fire). Staying low yielded some advantages, but not enough. Cole detached the night vision goggles from Bigger’s face and used the last of the charge in his gravity anchor to retake the high ground, hugging close to the outside wall as he put healthy distance between himself and the initial point of contact, scanning across the visible territory through the night vision goggles, careful not to look directly at any of the security lights.

There was the team he arbitrarily chose to call Dumbass One and Dumbass Two, approaching from the central memorial garden in staggered order. From what he could see, hunkered down in the shadow of one of the enormous memorial trees growing along the Columbarium perimeter, Dumbass One was carrying a flechette gun at the ready and Dumbass Two had a taser in hand, both had a baton, arguing for organization and standardized equipage, and yet no recognizable insignia. He swept the upper levels, found no one hanging out up top with him, or at the very least no one visible. He moved, quickly, because D1 and D2 were about to discover the present he’d left sitting on the trussed-with-their-own-MOLLE-webbing colleagues in Gabe’s alcove. The subsequent involuntary screaming was, indeed, music to his ears and also helped cover the largely unintentional noises he made jumping between outer wall and niche wall and then scrambling up to the top of the gate.

Something was going down at the far edge of the enclosure beyond the central garden -- he caught a flicker of movement between the walls, there and gone again before he could properly focus on it, a strangled, choked-off cry in the distance. Beyond that: headlights coming down one of the internal access roads, a hoverjeep no doubt carrying a team of honor guards off rotation coming to investigate the brouhaha, which officially made cutting and running the least morally defensible of his options -- if he hadn’t been there, neither would Dumbasses One through Twelve, and whoever was in that vehicle would be spending a long, boring winter’s night freezing their asses off or recovering from the same, not in danger of strolling into the middle of a fight with opponents armed to, at the very least, mess their central nervous systems up good and proper.

Fortunately, it looked like D1 and D2 had been the team assigned to cover the central garden, with its low enclosing wall and an exit into the rest of the cemetery on each side, and no one else had moved in yet to replace them. Or, if they had, that team hadn’t made it yet; he waited, tensely, feeling acutely exposed in his present perch while he watched for his most recent victims’ backup to arrive and received nothing for the effort. Whatever was going on at the far side had migrated to the east, close to the furthest gate; he could hear, just at the edge of range aided by the Columbarium’s acoustics, the faint thwipthwipthwipthwip of semiautomatic flechette fire. Running footsteps, approaching quickly, and he dropped flat against the top of the gate, watched arbitrarily assigned Dumbass Three and Four running down the narrow corridor between the outer wall of the Columbarium and the inner wall of the garden, foregoing the exit and sprinting almost directly towards him. He unclipped a second stun grenade and lobbed it as they came in range, flash and sonics both fully engaged, pulled off the goggles and covered up.

Dumbass Three was having trouble keeping on their feet, blind and deaf and off-balance after catching a face full of less-lethal ordnance. Dumbass Four was clinging helplessly to the edge of the garden wall. Cole dropped off the side of the gate, landed in a roll, came up swinging with one of the shock batons, and caught D3 under the chin; the impact was almost disconcertingly satisfying as was the solid thud as they landed in a senseless heap. “Seriously. Christmas. In a cemetery. What is wrong with you people?”

D4 collected a sharp blow to the gut and folded, which he found somewhat surprising, before he realized they were already wounded, ballistic armor smeared with tacky blood and something long and thin jutting out of the shoulder joint. An arrow. An arrow that had cleanly pierced armor specifically designed to prevent just that eventuality. Of all the evening’s surprises that was, he decided, probably the most surprising thus far.

The distinctive pop of military standard-issue small arms fire joined the second round of echoes and the ongoing flechette thwipping and he filed armor-piercing arrows, provenance unknown under things to investigate once he was closer to the action. He took a moment to make certain D3 and D4 wouldn’t get back up without assistance and ducked into the garden corridor, keeping low and moving quickly. Up ahead, the sound of caps popping grew more frequent and more widely spread. On the far side of the cemetery, the Old Post Chapel’s belltower began sounding the hour in low pealing tolls and, beneath it, he heard the sharply echoing bark of a rifle firing, from above and behind.

***

“That may have been one of Cole’s stun grenades,” Genji remarked in an undertone, as they crouched together in the deepest available pool of shadow, watching as armed and armored individuals took up station at strategic points throughout the cemetery.

A moment before, an intensely brilliant flash lit the far southern end of the Columbarium and a not insignificant portion of the sky above it; even as far away as they were, Hanzo was still blinking after-images out of his eyes after a single unwary glance. More worrisome were the echoes of the detonation, which would no doubt be audible for some distance. “I suspect, then, that he has made contact.”

“No doubt.” Once again, he could hear the smile in his brother’s voice and it was not a kindly one. “Shall we make the odds somewhat more even?”

“A moment.” Hanzo closed his eyes, pressed the tips of two fingers to his brow, and silently bespoke Zentatsu and Mizuchi, where they coiled within his flesh and soul, begging the aid of their clarity of vision. When he opened them again, it was as though the night had fled, replaced by a flat and shadowless stormlight that dispelled the advantage of darkness. He murmured his thanks and turned an unkind smile of his own in Genji’s direction. “Right or left?”

“Left.” Genji was up and over their concealing wall with a speed that exceeded even his own dragon-enhanced vision, little more than a flicker of motion briefly silhouetted against the sky.

He waited for the soft but unmistakable sounds of Genji introducing himself to the pair guarding the southern entrance before leaving the alcove himself, clinging close to the outer wall until he drew even with the next team, one to a side along the midline thoroughfare, crouched and waiting for something to come in their direction. Neither saw him, dressed to blend into the darkness and indistinct in a way that deceived the eye, even one equipped with night vision enhancements; he climbed the wall and slid forward on his belly to observe them at closer range. Ballistic armor, including what looked to be a military-grade helmet, night vision gear, communication equipment. Their sidearms looked too boxy for a silencer or flash suppression, and they were both carrying a baton of some kind. His curiosity itched, and he scratched it by firing a scatter arrow directly between them, flechettes radiating out from the point of impact in multiplying waves. The one closest to him fell with a howl of anguish, pinned to the ground; the further fell silently, with at least two slender shafts jutting from their throat. Hanzo dropped behind the howler and gave him peace and the world silence. He gathered up the gun and the baton and made good his escape before the running footsteps he heard approaching could reach his position, retreating to a spot atop the outside wall where he could both watch the pathways and examine his acquisitions.

The gun was a flechette pistol, which explained the boxy design, but the entire thing felt heavier than the weapons of that type with whom he was acquainted. He ejected the magazine and then a clip of the darts, found them to be substantially beyond standard, a projectile hypodermic flechette, reservoir filled with a clear liquid. He snapped a picture with his phone, making certain to catch the serial number engraved on the side of the dart, and sent it to Tekhartha Zenyatta, on station with their getaway vehicle. Tekhartha, please identify if possible.

The baton was also modified -- weighted normally enough, sufficient to break unenhanced bone and pulverize unenhanced flesh, but also equipped with a shock generator heavy enough to overcome omnic, or cybernetically enhanced human, neuromechanical surge protection. He reached up and keyed the comm. “Genji, be careful. At least some of these creatures are armed with weapons that can harm you despite your armor.”

“Thank you, aniki.” Genji sounded slightly breathless and Hanzo glanced back in the direction he had come, concerned. “Be aware that our friends have brought more reinforcements than we originally suspected and also a team from Fort Myer has arrived to investigate.”

“Do you require my assistance?” Hanzo tucked the pistol into a jacket pocket and slid the baton into his belt, half-turning as he did so.

“No.” And now it sounded as though he were breathless with laughter. “I have the situation under control. Find Cole -- if any proper soldiers reach him first, we may have to do something...regrettable.”

“As you wish.” He slipped his bow off his shoulder and nocked an arrow, arming the scattershot as he did so, and sped along the top of the outside wall as quickly as he could without compromising his balance. To his right, the midlane remained clear as he passed a second set of internal gates, to his left, something flickered in the corner of his eye, movement.

Hanzo stopped, spun, and snap-fired -- connecting, to his annoyance, with nothing. The arrow passed cleanly through empty air and came to rest somewhere amid the field of gravestones opposite the Columbarium and the access road running between. He remained in place for a moment, intensely still and watchful, waiting for whatever he had glimpsed to show itself.

Behind him, someone screamed. It was a brief, abortive, choked off thing followed shortly thereafter by a storm of semiautomatic flechette fire -- it sounded like more than one gun -- and running footsteps rapidly approaching his position. He nocked another arrow and waited, drawn to the ear, and loosed the instant the first target crossed into view. The arrow punched cleanly through the shoulder joint of their armor and they stumbled, half-falling and half-dragged by their partner as they both fled. A gust of something, a dark mist moving against the faint breeze, flowed down the midlane in pursuit and Hanzo followed as swiftly as he dared.

Ahead, the night dissolved into another intense burst of light, one he was spared by the grace of the dragons, and far more intense burst of sound -- loud enough to make his ears ring, even at a distance, not enough to affect his sense of balance. He leapt across the outside lane to the top of a niche wall, ran its length, and dropped into the midline, attempting to get a better look at what was going on up ahead. The garden wall was low enough to see over, barely, as he ran in that direction and he caught intermittent glimpses of a scuffle taking place before the gate that opened into the southern end of the Columbarium, someone ducking into the corridor passing the front wall of the garden, the muzzle-flash from atop the gate and the report of a single high-caliber gunshot.

Hanzo went over the garden wall even as the shooter dropped from the gate, its form slim and sleek and dark in a manner that suggested engineering rather than armor. He crossed the garden at a dead sprint, arrow already on the bowstring, and as he came through the gate, he fired point-blank at the shooter’s center of mass, once, twice, before he rolled out of the immediate line of fire, explosive heads that knocked it back and forced it to give up the shot it was about to take. Its target lay in the garden corridor, a pool of blood spreading across the paving stones, shuddering helplessly in a way that suggested a seizure in progress. He came back up over the wall, the last of his explosive arrows nocked, just in time to find the shooter regaining its feet -- an omnic most definitely, nothing purely human, even an armored human, would have shrugged off those hits that quickly -- reaching for a cylinder at its hip, hurling it at him. Hanzo fired to intercept it at the peak of its arc and dove flat; the neurodisruptor pulse spent itself on nothing as it triggered in midair and he rolled to his feet, reaching for a scatter arrow.

The shooter fled across the narrow court separating the garden wall from the gate, and regained its previous perch in a single prodigious leap. To his surprise, it did not turn back -- did not even attempt to do so, leaping to the top of the next niche wall and sprinting across the rows in long, loping strides. He watched until it vanished out of immediate view, dropping below the level of the walls, and then turned his attention to its target.

He was scruffier than the pictures in the file sent along with the contract information, his beard and hair longer and less tamed, but still recognizable as the man he had nearly been hired to kill. His upper left chest was a mass of blood-soaked cloak and shredded outer jacket, the wound itself concealed in layers of clothing, but the shooter had clearly not missed. And he was seizing, his muscles spasming convulsively, the tension half-lifting his back off the ground, face contorted with pain, desperate sounds that were almost words coming out of his mouth. Hanzo knelt at his side, caught his face between his hands, and, with an effort that he felt in his own flesh, Cole Cassidy forced himself to meet his gaze and rasped out, “Arm.”

Cassidy’s left arm was a known cybernetic enhancement and at that moment it lay at his side, unmoving, fingers locked in an involuntarily contorted claw. He felt along the edge of the skull plate and found the switch concealed there, popped open the diagnostic panel, reading red across the board with multiple neuromechanical system failures, and pressed the emergency disengage switches in sequence. The joint sealed and locked, the arm itself disengaged with a series of audible metallic clicks, and the muscular convulsions slowed almost immediately, finally stopped entirely as Hanzo lifted him, gathered him around the chest, and bodily pulled him into the garden, behind the fountain basin. It wasn’t the best possible cover but it was still better than none and it allowed him to prop Cassidy up as he sliced away the blood-soaked over-cape and the heavy suede-and-fleece jacket beneath. With both gone, the blood flowed freely across the ballistic armor he wore under them, armor that had been broken from beneath by a high caliber, high velocity armor-piercing round that punched through it completely, taking a divot of flesh and bone and muscle the size of a large man’s fist with it. Hanzo saw, amid the mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone, strands of broken neuromechanical control wire, the feedback from which must have caused the seizure. Cassidy coughed, and wheezed, trying to draw enough breath to speak and another pulse of blood flowed out of the wound, frothed with air bubbles. Hanzo hit the disengage switches on the remaining shoulder joint and both side panels, lifted the armor away as gently as he could; the sounds that escaped his patient were completely involuntary.

Hanzo reached up and activated his comm. “Genji, I have him but he is badly injured. We are in the central garden.”

Cassidy’s throat worked silently for a moment as Hanzo opened the pouch in which he carried his own medical supplies, inadequate though they might be to this task, and began searching for something large enough to serve as a proper compression dressing. A little sound escaped him as Hanzo pressed one of the sleeves of his own jacket over the site and bound it as best he could with knots and a length of sterile bandage wrapped around to keep it in place.

“Genji?” He croaked.

“Yes.” Hanzo slipped out of his own coat and wrapped it around Cassidy as best he could -- the man was broader across both chest and shoulders than he, but he had no other means of warming him, and silently cursed the lack of an emergency blanket among his gear.

“Shimada.” It took all of his breath to properly aspirate the syllables and Hanzo pressed a hand to his chest.

“Yes.” Gently. “Be still. Save your strength and your breath. He will be here soon and we will...make certain you are properly cared for.”

He was in no way certain that was true. He knew, from many years of long experience, what a sucking chest wound looked like, suspected mordantly that the heavens would not favor making this one clean or uncomplicated, knew that the longer it took to bring him comprehensive medical attention the greater the chance of his death from shock or cardiorespiratory collapse. Knew also that saving this man’s life greatly exceeded his skills. He pressed close to his unwounded side, the best to share body heat, resting one hand against the curve of his throat to monitor his heart-rate (high, fast, with pain and adrenaline), watched the shape of his chest for signs of a collapsing lung.

Cassidy took three ragged breaths, in and out, and rasped, “Who?”

Hanzo glanced up, found dark eyes hugely dilated with pain fixed on his face. “Hanzo. At your service. Please, do not speak.”

He looked, for an instant, like he might try to argue that point -- and then his gaze shifted upwards, and his lips parted in a pained, more than slightly bloodstained smile. Genji landed almost precisely at his side, soundless and apparently none the worse for the evening’s exertions. “Cole.” “I just told him to save his breath,” Hanzo remarked, with some asperity.

“Heya...li’l brother,” Cassidy wheezed. “Long time...no see.”

“Perhaps I should save mine.” Hanzo flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Pursuit?”

“Napping.” Genji held up one of the flechette pistols with the tip of one finger, the gesture a thing of ineffable disdain. “Experimental sedation rounds -- the serial number you sent my master matches a lot stolen from a cargo hypertrain last month. I summoned assistance for the soldiers, at least, and my master should be here -- “

A sleek, nondescript sedan pulled up immediately opposite the garden entrance, the rear door cycled open, and the driver’s side window came down, Tekhartha Zenyatta peering owlishly out at them. “Please hurry. Another group of soldiers has been deployed and I suspect we should make good our departure before they arrive.”

Together they lifted and together they carried, Cassidy biting down on his gloved right hand to hold in any sounds of pain, and in such a way did Hanzo find himself sitting in the car they had stolen upon their arrival at Vishkar’s Washington DC telestation with a bloody cowboy propped against his chest. Fortunately, there was an emergency blanket in the vehicle’s First Aid case and, perhaps even more fortunately, the wrapper was large enough to lay over the worst part of the wound with enough whole flesh around it to tape it in place. One of Zenyatta’s spheres joined them in the back and hovered over Cassidy’s chest, shedding warm and soothing golden radiance as it did so. The desperate edge to Cassidy’s breathing eased somewhat, his head fell back against Hanzo’s shoulder, and his eyes flickered shut as exhaustion claimed his senses. Hanzo kept a hand wrapped around his wrist, fingers on the pulse-point. “Where can we take him?”

He could feel the helplessness in Genji’s gaze as he looked back at them. “I...do not know. If we take him to the hospital…” The thought trailed away into things that they both knew would happen. “I am going to message Lena for their ETA and then we can -- “ “My student,” Zenyatta was behind the wheel of the vehicle, carefully navigating them through Christmas Eve traffic. “Something is...happening.”

“Master?” Genji looked up from his phone, perplexity clear in his tone.

“Something is attempting -- “ A pause, a brief burst of sound that Hanzo was tempted to call a gasp. “Something has ejected me from the vehicle’s control systems.”

Hanzo’s hand flew to the manual door latch, only to find it locked. Genji swore, short and explosive, as he made a similar discovery, and all of Zenyatta’s spheres chimed a single high-pitched tone of alarm. Then, the vehicle’s onboard sound system activated itself, and the console navigation panel flickered, flashing a lurid electric purple overlaid with a stylized white skull icon, its nose an inverted heart; the voice that came over the speakers belonged to the vehicle’s GPS navigation system. “Whatever you do right now, do this one thing: do not panic.”

“Who are you?” Hanzo demanded, reaching up to steady Cassidy’s head where it rested, as the vehicle maneuvered through traffic at a rather higher rate of speed; a sign for hyperlane access sped past on the right.

“Consider me a contractor.” A warm little chuckle in the navigation system’s sexless contralto. “I’ve been hired by a not exactly neutral third party to make sure you and your cargo make a clean getaway and reach a place where you can hunker down in reasonable safety. So, if you want my advice -- and, I assure you, you want my advice -- don’t entertain any heroic foolishness for the next couple hours, sit back, and enjoy the ride. So long you make sure the dumbass vaquero doesn’t bleed to death or hack out a lung, we’ll be golden, and the rest will be up to you once you get where you’re going. Agreeable?”

“If it were not agreeable?” Genji growled.

“Oh, well, in that case,” The navigation system replied cheerfully, “I’d pulse some sonics through the vehicle’s entertainment system that would render you all unpleasantly senseless and you’d still go where I’m taking you, only you’d get there with a skullfucking headache and maybe a dead cowboy. Seriously, the speakers in this thing are incredible.” Hanzo felt one, just behind his back, vibrating at a decidedly threatening pitch. “Your pick.”

“Agreed,” Hanzo snapped, before Genji could intervene. “Where are you taking us?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. Seriously...just relax, and make sure he doesn’t die. All I ask.”

The vehicle peeled off onto the hyperlane, headed west.

*** GreenCyborgNinjaDude: We have him but he is severely injured.

DeathFromAbove: HOW severely? We’ll be leaving for the airport in a minute, btw, might be without good service for a bit while Dad and I are on the road.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: It would be best if my master describes it, he is monitoring Cole’s condition.

PeaceLoveAndBalance has joined the conversation.

PeaceLoveAndBalance: Greetings and thank you for permitting me access.

ATHENA: You are entirely welcome, Tekhartha.

WickedCuteButDeadly: What’s the word? Winston, Em, and I are inbound and we’ve got one of those mobile life support pods loaded in the passenger compartment. Incidentally, I hope nobody’s carrying too much gear.

DeathFromAbove:...Weren’t those experimental?

PeanutButterIsLife: They’re significantly less experimental than they were. Tekhartha?

PeaceLoveAndBalance: Briefly, he was shot from behind by an individual using a sniper rifle, firing high caliber, high velocity ammunition. He was hit between and to the left of the first through third thoracic vertebrae, just above the upper edge of his ballistic armor. He has suffered significant injury to both the trapezius and pectoralis major muscle groups, the brachial nerve plexus including the neuromechanical attachments to his left arm, the left scapula, the left clavicle, the left acromioclavicular joint and ligament, the glenohumeral ligament, the second rib and costal cartilage, and the upper left lobe of his lung. He was respiring abnormally when we found him but has responded well to our efforts to treat that particular injury and his lung is not in danger of collapsing at this time. He has, however, lost a great deal of blood, which we have no means of replenishing, and he is still bleeding internally -- slowly, I can personally assure that much. But we are maintaining him in a state of shock, at best, and he requires more care than we can provide in our current circumstances.

WickedCuteButDeadly: I hear you. What’s your present position?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: That...is an excellent question. We are not entirely certain ourselves.

WickedCuteButDeadly: What.

DeathFromAbove: I’m with Lena. What?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Our vehicle has sort of been hijacked.

WickedCuteButDeadly:... DeathFromAbove:... PeanutButterIsLife:... ATHENA:..

DeathFromAbove: Explain this to me using small words and diagrams.

PeaceLoveAndBalance: As we were departing the Washington DC metropolitan area, an external force ejected me from our vehicle’s navigational systems and seized control. It was not...violent, per se, but it was extremely swift and thorough and brooked no resistance on my part. We have been proceeding under its control since.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: We’re travelling through the mountains west of the city, heading south.

WickedCuteButDeadly:... DeathFromAbove:... PeanutButterIsLife:... ATHENA:...

PeanutButterIsLife:...Are you saying that, in addition to everything else, you three have been KIDNAPPED? By parties unknown? Is that what you’re telling us?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Sort of? Whoever they are, they helped us get away -- in fact, they told us they were hired by an interested third party to make sure we got away and would reach a safe place for your arrival. Admittedly, we do not know where that is yet.

WickedCuteButDeadly: OKAY, THEN.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I am so sorry, Lena.

WickedCuteButDeadly: No no no, don’t be sorry. I made certain all the fuel tanks were loaded to capacity before we left and the backup solar cells are fully charged. Just...lemme know your final coordinates as soon as you’ve got them out and we’ll...figure things out from there!

DeathFromAbove: You are going to owe her all the booze, Genji. The GOOD stuff. And me. All of it.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I am poignantly aware of that, yes.

MercyMercyMe has joined the conversation.

MercyMercyMe: I’m sorry, everyone, I just woke up -- it has been a terribly busy last few days. What is going on?

***

In the front seat of the car, Genji uttered a sound that, even synthesized, could not be mistaken for anything but a moan of absolute despair. Zenyatta reached over and laid a comforting hand on his student’s shoulder; he leaned into the touch in a manner that suggested he had forgotten, for at least a moment, that they were not alone in the vehicle.

Hanzo declined to remind them, partly watching the scenery as it passed, mostly attending to his charge, who was drifting in and out of consciousness and occasionally making sounds that were almost words. Cassidy was, at the moment, still and silent and the view outside the window consisted entirely of dark, dense forest with occasional glimpses of overcast sky, the leading edge of a storm according to his phone’s weather app. Even more occasionally he caught a glimpse of ruddy light pollution staining the bottom of those clouds, though at present is was oppressively dark, the road lined in stands of enormous evergreens that screened the view as effectively as a wall. A glance at his phone showed him they were still heading generally southward, now tending somewhat more west; the road wended along the side of a heavily forested mountain, one of a dozen twisty lanes they had followed since leaving the hyperlane an hour before. They had, in fact, only remained on the high-speed, fully-automated-vehicles-only interstate long enough to put a hard burst of distance between themselves and the city and turned off as soon as pragmatically possible -- not the least, he suspected, because the hyperlanes were heavily monitored by law enforcement.

Their navigator had, in general, declined to explain their thinking, ignoring questions in general in favor of switching through a series of radio stations exclusively playing Christmas music and actively refusing them access to a newsfeed. Hanzo managed to find one on his phone, displaying luridly melodramatic streaming text suggesting that a left-wing domestic terrorist cell was clearly responsible for desecrating America’s most hallowed cemetery on the very eve of Christianity’s most important holiday, and he clicked it off, satisfied by the lack of immediate association with Cole Cassidy’s rather too notable name.

Cassidy chuckled softly, the sound more cough than laughter.

“You should be resting,” Hanzo murmured against his ear, and slid the phone back into his jacket pocket.

“Ears...popped.” Several slow, shallow breaths. “Woke me up.”

They were, Hanzo had to admit, changing altitude, climbing higher into the mountains and, it seemed, slowing as they went, as though their unseen navigator were searching for something. They found it quarter of an hour later, the vehicle slowing almost to a stop, then turning off onto an unmarked side road that went deeper into the forest and higher onto the hill. The antigrav generators whined in protest, the entire frame shuddered the incline steepened and in the headlights Hanzo could see that the road itself was entirely unpaved. Cassidy’s body tensed with every jolt, and Hanzo held his arm and head as steady as he could; even so, by the time they reached their destination, he was soaked with pain-sweat and shivering uncontrollably, tiny, choked off sounds clawing their way up his throat.

“And we are here.” The navigation system informed them. “Wait just a moment annnd…”

In the forest ahead, lights appeared -- low-power security lamps, lining a path through the woods.

“Follow the path. Your destination is at the top. I’ve unlocked the doors and turned on the power. Once you’re inside, I’ll activate the security perimeter.” The door locks disengaged. “Rápidamente.”

It took some time and quite a bit of careful maneuvering to get Cassidy out of Hanzo’s lap and into Zenyatta’s, the monk more than capable of holding him and floating at a decent clip despite their differences in size. Hanzo took the lead, bow in hand and at the ready, and Genji took rearguard, covering their tracks as snowflakes began drifting through the winter-bare canopy. It was, fortunately, not a far or strenuous climb, the path opening into a small clearing, the bulk of which was taken up by a compact two-story cabin. A light burned on the porch next to the door, and in the window athwart it; as promised, Hanzo found the door unlocked and a puff of air warmer than that outside greeted them as he opened it.

Hanzo resisted the impulse to ask his companions to wait outside while he scouted, choosing to err on the side of bringing Cassidy into the relative warmth before he lapsed even more deeply into shock. There was not, in fact, much to scout: immediately inside the door, to the right, a kitchenette and dining nook, a security panel gleaming luridly purple against the far wall; to the left, a sitting room separated from the rest by a low counter, equipped with heavy wood-frame furniture, a flat-panel holotank mounted in the wall. Down a short hallway: a bedroom, equipped with two sets of bunk beds and a single cot; a bathroom, sink, toilet, shower; linen closet full of pillows and blankets sealed in plastic. A steep, narrow set of steps having more in common with a ladder than a staircase led upwards to the second floor, which was more of a storage space, stacked front to back with storage bins, their contents neatly stamped on the the visible end: provisions, cold weather gear, warm weather gear, small arms, ammunition, medical supplies…

Hanzo seized that one and dragged it to the top of the steps. “Genji, please assist me with this.”

His brother appeared and took one end of the case as Hanzo eased it down, then carried it into the bedroom, where he and Zenyatta had already transferred Cassidy to the cot, propping him up against the rear wall with a half-dozen pillows behind him and at least two blankets thicker than reflective foil spread over his legs and chest. The lights were pale and mounted in the walls and showed all too clearly how terrible his color was under the dried streaks of blood, eyes closed and sunken into nearly bruised hollows of flesh, his chest heaving with the effort it took to breathe and fresh blood welling beneath the bandages. Zenyatta cracked open the medical supply case and began extracting useful items; Hanzo left him, and his able assistant, to the task of tending Cassidy and prowled back into the kitchen, to the security monitor.

“The perimeter is armed and active.” The security system’s voice was close kin to the navigation system, though slightly deeper. “Write this code down.” He fetched a yellow legal pad and a miraculously functional pen from one of the kitchen drawers and scribbled down the alphanumeric sequence that crawled across the screen. “That’s the deactivation code, one-time use. Punch it in when your rescue crew arrives. Otherwise, don’t touch this panel unless I tell you to do so. And, just so you know, I drove the car off the side of the scenic overlook just up the way. You’re welcome. Thermostat controls are in the hallway but I suggest you let the heater work on its own curve, it’s running off the solar batteries in the attic. So are the lights. For the time being, you should make yourselves comfortable, let me keep an eye out for any pursuit, and get in touch with the rest of your friends. Not necessarily in that order.”

Hanzo, shivering slightly from the chill in the air and covered from neck to knees in the dried blood of a man he hadn’t actually tried to kill, could find very little to argue with in that.

***

A search of the kitchen cabinets yielded both a six-cup coffee maker and a teakettle, stirring within him the hope that, somewhere, there was tea to be had. It also yielded cups and bowls and plates, the sturdy microwavable ceramic sort, wrapped in plastic to keep away dust and mice -- not that there was much evidence of either, leading him to suspect that their unseen rescuer/captor/host made some effort to maintain the place on a regular basis. A trash receptacle and cleaning supplies hid in the cabinet beneath the sink; he opened the tap and was rewarded with water that ran clean almost immediately, which he used to fill the kettle. There was no proper oven, but the microwave mounted above the four-burner stovetop, and the stovetop itself, were high efficiency models clearly designed to play nicely with a house mostly powered by solar cells.

The provisions cases were stacked four deep and contained blocks of freeze-dried coffee, vacuum sealed packages of tea bags, assorted flavors of electrolyte-replenishing drink mix, and two dozen boxes of calorie-and-nutrient dense military surplus food sachets. A canvas sack hung on a hook at the top of the stairs and to it he added a package of tea and a box of snack sachets. The cold weather gear boxes contained an astonishing quantity of clothing vacuum sealed in plastic in a variety of sizes, each individual package containing, per its label, thermal underwear, two pairs of socks, fleece lined trousers, and a hooded sweatshirt. He selected one such package in a size that seemed a reasonable fit for himself and a second, two sizes larger, in the name of hope. Further to the back were the cases he hadn’t bothered with once he located the emergency medical supplies, and those consisted of more household goods. The cases labeled bathroom contained vacuum-wrapped towels and washcloths and hospital-grade toiletries, the sort one could use with or without water, and he added some of each to his bag.

He supplied the bathroom and paused outside the closed door of the bedroom, hesitant to interrupt. The worst of the muffled sounds of pain, of Tekhartha Zenyatta’s voice modulated to a low, soothing pitch, had faded away a quarter hour before but he did not wish to distract either the monk or his brother if they were in the midst of something dangerous, or delicate.

“Damn you.” Genji’s voice, even muted through the door, was fierce, taut with emotion. “Why did you not contact me? I would have come for you, I would have -- “

“I...know.” Softly, gently, and it silenced his brother more effectively than a shout. “I...know...you would’a. You’d hide me...in the middle of a place...full of unarmed pacifist monks.” Cassidy made a sound somewhere between a cough and laugh; it was, he thought, one of the most terrible things he’d ever heard. “That’s not...taking cover, li’l brother. That’s...taking hostages.”

Hanzo made his way back to the kitchen, and turned on the heat beneath the kettle. The tea package, once unsealed, released a tolerable aroma; he placed a bag in two mugs, opened a vacuum-sealed washcloth, and ran water that began tepid and finally turned genuinely hot into the sink basin just as the kettle sang and his brother emerged into the sitting room. He applied the boiling water to the mugs and watched as Genji paced the close confines of the room, every inch of his body tightly drawn, gloved to the elbows in the drying blood of a man who called him little brother.

“Genji,” He put perhaps a bit more command in his voice than was, strictly speaking, necessary but it achieved the desired result -- his brother stopped and looked at him. “Come here.”

Genji hesitated, fractionally, then did as he was asked; Hanzo pulled out a chair for him, and went to work with the fresh cloth and the hot water and a bit of soap, scrubbing the blood from the joints of his hands and the surfaces of his armor.

“You do not have to do that,” Genji protested softly, but did not pull away, the tension in his shoulders and arms and wrists slowly loosening.

“Quiet.” Hanzo replied, also soft. “You must contact your friends. I retrieved our coordinates from my phone’s GPS system.” He dried his hands and handed the towel to Genji, slid the legal pad across the kitchen table. “Drink this.”

He set the steaming mug down at his brother’s elbow and Genji reached up, detached his faceplate for the first time since they left Nepal, and looked up at him with reddened eyes. “Is it any good?”

“It is completely awful.” Hanzo admitted, having taken a sip himself. “But it is warm.” He slid a thumb across his brother’s scarred cheek, wiping away the remnants of moisture. “Contact them. That will also help.”

And, so saying, he gathered his own vacuum sealed package of clothing and retreated to the bathroom, his eyes burning for no good reason he could name.

***

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I have the coordinates, Lena.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude sent WickedCuteButDeadly a Private Message.

WickedCuteButDeadly: Okay, you’re...on the top of a mountain on the edge of Shenandoah National Park. Lemme see if I can get a good satellite overview…It’s a cabin? A little cabin? And there’s a clearing a bit over, just big enough to manage a VTOL landing and departure, I think.

DeathFromAbove: THINK or KNOW?

WickedCuteButDeadly: Know, know, it’s definitely know, trust me I’m a trained professional.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Message me when you begin your approach. There is an active security perimeter of some sort -- I do not know precisely what defenses might exist and I would prefer not to find out the hard way.

WickedCuteButDeadly: Jeez, what is it, a survivalist bunker? We’re about five hours out, should be getting there sixish local time. Also, since it’s past midnight there, official merry Christmas, Genji.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: And to you, Lena. To all of you. And to answer your question...I am not sure? Our navigator brought us here, permitted us entry, and activated the perimeter. The storage space is full of military surplus supplies -- including medical supplies. My master managed to stabilize Cole somewhat more completely but

MercyMercyMe: Tekhartha, are you monitoring and can you give me a more complete report?

PeaceLoveAndBalance: He is resting at the moment. When he is awake, he is still mentally alert and aware of his surroundings, but he is growing more frequently drowsy. Fortunately, there were large injury biotic-impregnated bandages, air-seal drape, and a decompression catheter in the emergency medical supplies, which has helped a great deal. I think he is in significantly less danger of developing tension pneumothorax.

MercyMercyMe: Sehr gut.

PeaceLoveAndBalance: ...Unfortunately, I suspect that he may have sustained internal injuries that are beyond my ability to detect or treat. We did not retrieve the bullet that struck him, because it overpenetrated significantly, but the force of the impact shattered the left clavicle and the second rib, and I fear that their fragments may have behaved in a manner similar to a fragmentation bullet. I suspect he is accumulating blood in the pleural cavity.

MercyMercyMe: Lena, if you can fly faster, you will wish to do so.

WickedCuteButDeadly: Headwind’s working against me right now, Angie, but I’ll punch it as hard as I can. We might be coasting into Gibraltar on the fumes.

MercyMercyMe: I will be leaving the Oasis within the hour, flying directly into Gibraltar International Airport.

ATHENA: I have activated your medbay access credentials and a vehicle will be awaiting you at the terminal, Dr. Ziegler.

MercyMercyMe: Danke schoen, Athena.

DeathFromAbove: Still getting my arrangements in order, but at least I’m in the airport. And, uh, not to distract us all from horrible things we can’t do anything about but...have any of you taken a look at the news? What did you lot DO?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude:...I feel as though I should defend my honor. What is the news saying?

DeathFromAbove has posted a link.

PeanutButterIsLife:.... MercyMercyMe:.... PeaceLoveAndBalance:.... WickedCuteButDeadly:.... ATHENA:...

GreenCyborgNinjaDude:...I assure you, I did not kill eighteen people on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, and I am fairly certain that neither did Cole.

PeanutButterIsLife: What...happened to them? They look

MercyMercyMe: Withered. I have seen reports on this before.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: The ones in black were with the shooter. Guarding the entrances and exits, patrolling the paths. They were carrying flechette pistols loaded with sedative needles and shock batons -- a few had neurodisruptor grenades. Less-lethal armaments that would allow them to slow or disable him. Hanzo engaged the actual assassin at relatively close range, an omnic sniper of a design he did not recognize, nor does he know personally of any omnic

DeathFromAbove: WAIT. WAIT ONE MINUTE.

WickedCuteButDeadly: Did you just say

MercyMercyMe: Hanzo. Your BROTHER. THAT Hanzo.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude:...This is a very long story.

***

Peeling off his bloodstained clothing had the immediate effect of making Hanzo feel more human. The shower, kept warm rather than hot, helped even more and had the additional salubrious effect of waking him up. His body very much wished to believe it was still in another time zone, likely on the opposite side of at least a few hours sleep, a weakness that his mind could not afford to indulge under the circumstances. The fresh clothing completed the process of renewal and he was privately astonished at how comfortable the underclothing was, sleek and close-fitting and soft against the skin, the charcoal gray pants and dark green sweatshirt a bit loose on his frame but warm nonetheless. He tied his still-damp hair back in a loose queue, hung the towels to dry, gathered up a few items he thought might be helpful, and stepped across the hall to the bedroom, knocking quietly and opening the door at Tekhartha Zenyatta’s quiet, “Come in.”

The monk hung in midair beside the cot, long-fingered hands laced together in his lap, spheres rotating slowly around his shoulders and chiming gently as they did so. In the bed, Cole slept at what seemed to be peace, chest and shoulder swathed in bandages, each breath accompanied by a soft, high-pitched note from the decompression catheter. He was still a bit bloodier than Hanzo could imagine being comfortable.

“I have water and cloths,” He murmured. “If you think it would do no harm.”

“I think it would be a relief, when he next wakes.” Zenyatta bowed over his hands. “If you would be so kind.”

Hanzo fetched a basin of warm water, a dry towel, and a handful of fresh washcloths and set to work slowly and with care. It took a bit of scrubbing to get the worst of it out of his beard and hair and what was left of his chest hair -- they had sheared most of it away around the site of the wound to help the air-tight drape adhere more securely. The skin beneath was unhealthily sallow rather than the warm golden-brown of his files, for which he chose to blame the extremity of the blood loss, but at least his lips had backed away from the edge of cyanosis.

“Do you think he will…?” Hanzo asked, not quite sure how to phrase precisely what he wanted to know.

“Survive? It is...not impossible. Our friends are still some hours away and his wounds are grave -- but his will to live is also enormously strong.” Zenyatta replied quietly. “He has promised Genji that he will try.”

And this man would not break his word to a brother. Hanzo bowed himself out, taking the bath things with him, depositing the lot in the shower next to his bloody clothing.

Genji was still sitting at the kitchen table when Hanzo returned, this time with his head pillowed in his arms in a manner that suggested he had, recently, been banging it against a solid object. Possibly the table, in fact. He rested a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Genji? Is everything -- “

Genji wordlessly held up his phone; Hanzo accepted it and scanned the conversation still displayed. “Ah. Well. It was only a matter of time. In fact, it was only a matter of a few hours -- better they know before they arrive than have it be an unpleasant surprise once they are here.”

Genji lifted his head. “Who are you and what have you done with…” His voice trailed off and his eyes widened. “Hanzo. Where did you find that?”

He handed the phone back and glanced down the length of his own body. “One of the cases upstairs is full of vacuum-sealed bags of clothing -- I assumed it was military surplus, like the food. Why?”

His brother reached out and caught hold of his shirtsleeve, drawing his attention to the patch sewn to the shoulder. “Because that,” He replied, “is the organizational insignia of Blackwatch.” A complicated expression crossed the visible elements of his face. “This is...this must be...a Blackwatch safehouse.”

“How can you be -- “ Hanzo cut that question off before he could finish it; it was foolish, and fatuous, to question his brother’s experience in that regard. “Who could have known of this place’s existence? It has been maintained, possibly regularly resupplied.”

“I do not know -- Blackwatch functioned under...numerous layers of operational security. Its agents likewise.” Genji scrubbed a hand down his face, thoughts visibly racing. “When Overwatch disbanded, more than a few were arrested and prosecuted, even more turned to the mercenary trades -- I cannot think of anyone who would -- “ He trailed off again. “I do not know.”

“I am not certain that I -- “

The security panel sounded a rising-falling trill, and the visual display flashed luridly purple. When it spoke, it sounded remarkably human, and almost surprised. “Movement on the outer perimeter.”

They crossed to the display together, jostling one another’s shoulders as they crowded close. The inset screen flashed once more, then cleared, showing the layers of the perimeter monitoring, which fully encompassed the entire crown of the mountain: contact at the outermost edge, in the middle of the forest rather than closer to the road, and the security system voice made a sound that was almost a snort of annoyance. “Probably a deer. Or a bear. There are bears around here, right? I bet it’s -- “

The motion-activated optical scan cameras came online. The thing that crouched low in the leaf-mould was neither a deer nor a bear. Its shoulders and hips were canted at unnatural angles, its limbs abnormally thin and tipped in long fingers for tearing, long toes for gripping, its head a sleekly predatory mass of sensor modules mounted above a mandible that had more in common with an insect than a human attempt at a mouth. Its gun was not, as Hanzo had originally thought in the heat of the moment some hours before, a separate weapon, but mounted to its shoulder assembly. As they watched, it skittered past the camera into the snowy dark.

“Well.” The security system remarked. “Not a bear.”

***

It took ten minutes to screw together eight more arrow shafts from the supplies he carried with him at all times. He fitted them with his remaining four explosive heads, since the assassin had not enjoyed receiving them on their last meeting, and the rest with bodkin-point armor-piercers. He still had three scatter arrows remaining from his original preparations for the mission, and two sonics, and he debated with himself and Genji the merits of swapping them out for something more immediately lethal.

“Leave them.” The security system suggested, and in it he heard the synthesized sound of distinct irritation. “Even the motion detectors are having trouble locking on this thing and the infrared isn’t picking up a heat signature at all. Any ninja tricks you can bring to the table to help us see it are all to the good.” A mutter. “The inboard stealth rig on that thing must be insane, I just upgraded the perimeter monitor equipment up here six months ago.”

“Can you tell which direction it is moving?” Genji asked, flicking his wrists, rolling blades through his knuckles and back into their housings.

“Barely. Plotting the actual motion detector hits and the presumed hits, it looks like it’s trying to circle around from behind.” The security panel display flashed up a topographic map of the area with the assassin’s projected path marked in red, the confirmed perimeter detection hits marked with little skull icons. “Ground’s slightly higher, woods a little denser. It could squat there and just wait for you to come out.”

“Or we could, in theory, position ourselves to intercept it.” Hanzo observed, sliding the last of the replenished ammunition into the quiver.

“If you circle around the other way and haul ass, yes.” A second path sketched itself into place, this one in electric purple. “Keeps the bulk of the hill between you and easy line of sight, trees as a screen, and it’ll bring you out slightly above and behind -- unless it brings you out in exactly the same spot which, admittedly, it might.”

“Then we should make haste.” Hanzo slung the quiver across his back and tested the tension of the bowstring.

“Agreed.” Genji snapped his blades back into place and went for the door.

“Wait just one second.” The security system said.

“Were you not the one just telling us to hurry?” Hanzo asked, with some asperity.

“Yeah, yeah, I just didn’t think you’d hurry that fast. Men of action, I approve in general, but let’s think this through, okay?” The security panel flashed again and pulled up a captured image of the assassin. “This thing...doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before, which means it’s either really old and been on mothballs long enough that any extant references to it have been expunged from the entire record of human events -- not particularly likely -- or it’s so new that even my many, many sets of eyes and ears haven’t caught wind of it yet which is -- and I hate to admit it -- somewhat more likely. What do we know thus far?”

“It is not infallible.” Hanzo replied. “It missed a clean killing shot on a target whose back was turned to it. It is also willing, clearly, to disengage if it perceives the present tactical situation does not favor its success. Heavily armored and armed, but that does not appear to impede its physical speed or maneuverability and its reflexes are inhumanly swift.”

“And I can think of one person here right now that can counter all of its advantages, and you’re not him.” The security system responded flatly.

“I will not permit my brother to face this thing alone.” Hanzo snapped.

“I don’t think he should.” The security panel literally flashed in irritation. “Do you think leaving the one least capable of putting up a fight in case something goes catastrophically wrong with this plan here alone here is the best idea? With, I might add, the target who is incapable of defending himself?”

“...You have a point,” Hanzo admitted, after a long moment of silently wrestling with himself and a number of unworthy impulses, most of which involved doing violence to the security system’s display.

“Thank you.” He rather suspected that the security system was withholding the sort of commentary that would lead it to collecting rapidly propelled ballistic weapons in its display. “Do you concur?”

“My master and I have reached the point where we function well together as a unit.” Genji admitted, his tone carefully even. “And he possesses skills capable of leveling otherwise uneven fields. I shall ask him.”

His brother slipped soundlessly down the hallway, returning a short time later with Zenyatta floating in his wake. The monk examined the plotted route laid out on the screen, conferred quietly with the security system, and rejoined them where they waited in a tense and awkward silence in the sitting room. “I will join you, my student. It seems prudent to stack as many odds as possible in our favor in this situation.” Hanzo received the impression that, were the monk’s faceplate more mobile, he would be smiling a rather dry smile. “I shall leave an orb here -- it can function outside my immediate presence for some time and Cole will likely require it far more than we.”

They stepped out onto the porch together, the boards dusted with a half-inch of snow, far more piled on the steps and in the clearing and the air still full of gently drifting curtains of white. Before he could step away, Hanzo caught Genji by the crook of the elbow and pulled him closer. “There are not enough hours left in this day for me to describe all the ways in which I loathe this plan.”

“I am not surprised.” He could hear the wry smile in his brother’s voice and only barely resisted the urge to shake him. “For what it is worth, were Cole capable of objecting he would no doubt be doing so loudly and with great enthusiasm.” Genji leaned forward, pressed their foreheads together gently. “Protect him.”

“I will permit no harm to come to him.” Hanzo, with enormous reluctance, released his hold.

“I know.” Genji collected his teacher with a glance and together they vanished into the snowfall.

Hanzo watched until he could see not even a last lingering spark of his brother’s lights. Only then did he step back inside, lock the door at his back, and turn his attention to the security system. “What can be done to make this place more secure?”

“The door and the windows are fitted with blast proof shutters that deploy in approximately six seconds once panic mode is activated. The walls and roof and foundation are reinforced against impact and bulletproof within reason but I’ve got no idea how they’d stand up against whatever ammunition that thing is firing.” A pause. “There are antipersonnel weapons mounted at strategic points around the outside of the cabin -- solid light turrets. They run on their own independent power system but they have a relatively short operational life and I’m not sure how well they’d work against an omnic.”

“I...see.” There was enough warm water left in the teakettle to make one cup of weak terrible tea and so he did, in order to give his hands something to accomplish while he thought. “Is there some means that I could use to monitor the perimeter cameras from the bedroom? I do not think he should be alone and I do not wish to be blind.”

“Check your phone.”

He thumbed the screen open and found a new icon on the homescreen, a little purple skull that winked at him as he touched it. A screen opened, split, and split again, showing him six views of snowy forest, darkness, undisturbed ground cover. “...Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I didn’t even poke around. You’re welcome for that, too.”

Hanzo sighed, supposed he deserved that for even asking, gathered up his tea and gear and carried them all to the back of the cabin. It was perceptibly warmer in the bedroom than elsewhere in the building, a fact he attributed to the absence of windows and possibly to the presence of Zenyatta’s sphere, which hovered over the cot in which his charge slept, shedding pale golden light and chiming gently to itself. At some point, either Zenyatta or Genji had made both of the lower bunk beds; he chose the one next to the door, placed one of the pillows between his back and the wall, set his bow and quiver in easy reach, and turned his attention to his phone. A bit of fiddling showed him more than the camera feeds alone, returning information about the location of his brother and the monk as they swiftly made their way through the forest. The tea, as it turned out, was terrible enough to lack anything resembling soothing qualities and Hanzo found himself hunched over the phone in his lap, only barely resisting the urge to pace as the point of convergence with the assassin’s presumed route grew ever closer.

“What’s...wrong?” The sound of another’s voice, even soft and breathy as it was, startled him so badly he jerked upright hard enough to slam the top of his head into the bottom of the upper bunk. “Heh. Sorry…’bout that.”

“I did not realize you were awake.” Hanzo slid off the bunk and went to his side. “Are you well? Do you require anything?”

“Well...as I’d expect.” The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, not really a smile or anything close to it. “Mighty thirsty. Something to...drink’d be nice.”

“Of course.” It took only a moment to retrieve one of the canisters of electrolyte drink from the storage room. He found a handful of squeezable sports bottles hiding in the back of the cabinet holding the coffee cups and returned with one, juice freshly mixed, to find Cole still awake and eying his phone where it lay on the bed with obvious interest. “Here. Let me help you.”

“Much...obliged.” Hanzo, in truth, did most of the work of holding the bottle steady while he swallowed; the mere act of moving, even a little, seemed to extract a high price in pain from him and a thin sheen of sweat broke out on his brow. “Ambrosia. Thank you...kindly.”

He set the bottle aside and settled on the edge of the cot. “Are you warm enough? There are more blankets.” He paused, considered the closed box of medical supplies sitting on the upper bunk. “There may be painkillers but -- “

“Nah. Talked with...Zen.” That there and gone again not-smile. “Can’t risk...blood thinners...right now.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “What’s...wrong?”

“Nothing with which you should concern yourself.” Hanzo offered the bottle again and Cole obediently drank down a few more sips.

“Liar.” His head fell back in the pillows.

Hanzo considered, sighed and retrieved his phone. The man had the right to know. “The assassin that shot you has somehow managed to follow us, if not locate this place exactly. Genji and Zenyatta have gone to intercept it.”

Cole blinked up at him. “It?”

“An omnic, of a kind none of us have encountered before.” He opened the screen and pulled up the security display.

Genji and Zenyatta’s icons were stationary, having reached the optimal point of potential contact. Hanzo opened the camera feeds and scrolled through them until he found one that offered at least a partial glimpse of them, lying in wait, snow falling steadily around them, and showed it to Cole. “The perimeter has visual and motion detection monitors for several miles surrounding this place. If it makes it past them, I will still see it coming in time to take action.”

It was, he thought, only a small lie and hopefully a comforting one. Cole stared up at him, expression still and dark eyes unreadable, and then nodded slightly. “...Thanks.”

“You are welcome.” Hanzo stood and pulled the blankets a bit higher over him as he shivered. “Rest. If anything happens I will wake you.”

He did, eventually, rest; Hanzo took up station on the floor next to the cot, listened to the slow, labored rhythm of his breath and the small, pained sounds that escaped him when he was too unaware to stop them, cycled through the camera feeds in sequence. Occasionally he caught glimpses of foliage still in motion, masses of snow falling from branches overhead, even hints of animal life, but no sign of the omnic. Genji was circling slowly outward from the stationary interception point, while Zenyatta kept watch from there, and Hanzo activated his own comm to listen in on their quiet, to-the-point conversation, his nerves slowly winding tighter as no contact was made.

When the perimeter contact trill sounded again, it was nearly a relief. All the other open panes on his phone closed and the registering point of contact opened, along with its coordinates on the perimeter itself. It was with a jolt that Hanzo realized the contact was deep inside the perimeter, less than a quarter mile from the cabin itself, and a second, stronger jolt as he beheld what caused it: enormous, bulkier around the upper body and the thighs, with a muzzle more lupine than insectile, hands more claw than finger and feet more in common with paws than human extremities.

“Oh, damn.” The security system realized what they were looking at more or less simultaneously.

Hanzo reached up and triggered his comm. “Genji. There is more than one.”

On the screen, the omnic beast leapt away, bounding through the forest in ground-eating strides. Hanzo made certain the laces of his boots were secure, pulled on his gloves, slipped quiver and bow over his shoulder and sprinted for the door. “Lock the cabin down behind me!”

It was snowing more steadily now, the wind from the west rising along with it. At his back, the blast shutters slid shut over the door and the windows and as he swung up onto the porch roof, the comm unit in his ear crackled with the security system’s voice. “Lockdown complete. Unlock code is quarry down.”

“Understood.” The snow was eight inches deep on the flattest parts of the roof and the footing was treacherous at best but the false chimney at least provided a windbreak and a place to wait unseen for his target to break cover.

Beneath his skin he felt the dragons shiver, coils winding tight, aroused by his tension and their awareness of the storm, creatures of the tempest that they were. They gifted him with that awareness without even a plea and, for a moment, he was one with the wind as it sloughed through the pines frosting the rise, sent curtains of snow falling in waves across the clearing, dusting the metal flesh of the creature waiting in the deep shadow of the woods, falling on his own back and shoulders as he drew an arrow and set it to the string. Now that he knew where to look, he could see its contours, a mountainous shadow beneath the pines, the sensor arrays that made up its eyes gleaming redly in the dark. It was on those pinpricks of red that he fixed his focus, adjusted the arc of his fire to account for the wind, and, drawing to the ear, released an armor-piercing arrow at its head.

It sat, immobile, until the instant before contact -- and then it moved, the shot passing through empty air and embedding itself in the tree beneath which it had sheltered, breaking cover and crossing the ground between itself and the cabin with horrifyingly explosive speed. Hanzo fired again, a scatter arrow a handful of feet in its lead and was rewarded with an inhuman howl as a spray of flechettes peppered its face and chest. Significantly less rewarding was the reaction: a leap that carried it a dozen feet above the peak of the roof and sent him scrambling to avoid being beneath it as it came back down, its claws raking inches deep into the false chimney’s stonework and the solar panelling that made up the roof cover under the force of its fall and weight and strength. Hanzo skidded backwards down the steeply angled upper side of the roof, the beast in pursuit, reaching for him with taloned hands, jaws lined in metallic fangs the length of his fingers agape.

He fired directly into that yawning maw at point-blank range and barely half-draw, the armor-piercing point punched cleanly through the back of its skull even as it slammed into him, talons raking down his right side ribs to thigh, momentum bouncing them off the porch roof and over the side. The landing was not a graceful one for either of them, the beast clawing at the back of its head, clearly wounded but not mortally so, Hanzo barely managing to turn it into an impact-mitigating roll, ribs and hip and leg howling protest as he did so. Even so, the distance he gained was not enough and when the creature lashed out, backhand, it caught him in the chest with force sufficient to drive every pascal of air from his lungs and send him flying, skidding to a halt a dozen feet away, bow skidding across the snow, skull ringing from its impact with the ground. For a moment he could do nothing but lay there, chest heaving as he struggled to breathe, black explosions of pain and oxygen deprivation going off behind his eyes as broken bones ground together in his chest, his own blood reddening the snow. He heard, at a vast distance, the sound of the antipersonnel turrets firing their hard-light beams, the screech of tearing metal as its talons disposed of them, the resonant impact as it rammed its weight into the blast-shielded door. Heard the blast shield begin to bend, to fail.

It took almost all of his remaining strength to make it to his knees, to limp-crawl across the length of snowy clearing separating him from his bow, to extract an arrow from the quiver. The omnic creature had the top of the blast door bent outwards and was in the process of tearing it out of its recessed housing as he pushed himself to his feet, spat blood and dragged in a searing breath, took aim in the loosest sense of the term with shaking arms.

The shot he fired lit the sky for miles in a flare of lightning-stroke white and stormcloud blue, left partially molten and barely-identifiable bits of omnic monstrosity scattered for a quarter-mile in all directions, and swallowed down the last of his strength in mind and body, the price that neither he nor his guardians could avoid paying. In his mind, he heard them keening distress even as they killed for him, even as his knees folded beneath him and the snow-covered earth embraced him in its soothing cold. He could feel them writhing beneath his skin, trying to force his battered flesh to move, to get to his feet, to his knees, anything that would allow him to save himself. Felt their efforts fail as his battered body refused to respond; he was losing blood, too much and too rapidly, his aching bones broken in too many places to hold him up.

Felt, instead, something else moving him: strong hands rolling him over and catching him beneath the armpits, dragging him across the snow and up the porch steps, propping him against the outside wall beneath that relative cover as it completed the demolition of the blast door. He could not lift his head, or offer any meaningful resistance -- could only barely open his eyes enough to perceive, through a haze of pain and blood-loss and exhaustion, a blur of misty and indistinct darkness, coils of shadow and a smudge of bone white where a face should be, as claw-tipped hands reached for him again.

***

“Genji. There is more than one.”

His brother’s voice, in his ear, had been calm, even, not even remotely surprised and had planted a seed of fear in him -- fear that sped his heart and tightened his insides and he had been the one stalking an unseen omnic assassin through a darkened forest in the middle of a snow storm. That fear had blossomed into outright terror was Zentatsu and Mizuchi lit the heavens in a soundless burst of unleashed power that dissolved the storm above them and sent a keening wail of distress echoing through the bond they shared with their sister into the depths of his own being. The omnic assassin taking up station a half-mile away, attempting to lock onto Cole’s heat signature through the walls of the cabin, had shortly thereafter met him at something other than his most serene and merciful.

“Go,” Zenyatta told him, gently. “I will bring what is left back with me. Hurry.”

Hurrying was not the term he would use to describe the speed he made down the side of the mountain, straining his cybernetically enhanced reflexes to their utmost, barely touching the ground until he reached the edge of the clearing itself. Where there had clearly, obviously been a fight. Pieces of...something...lay scattered across a wide area, the snow around them melted from the heat that had attended their dismemberment. The front wall of the cabin looked as though it had been mauled by an angry bear with claws capable of cleaving solid stone; the door frame was twisted out of true, and the door itself damaged. The steps and the boards were smeared with blood.

His heart skipped a beat and his internal autonomic control systems activated, attempting to adjust his rate of heart and breath, even as he wanted to begin screaming and not stop. The blood trail continued inside and down the hall, already tacky and drying, into the bedroom. He followed it, fighting down the fear threatening to engulf him entirely, and opened the door, bracing himself -- for the sight of his brother’s bloody corpse, for both his brothers’ bloody corpses -- and stopped on the threshold.

Hanzo lay unconscious on one of the bunk mattresses, laid out on the floor next to Cole’s cot, wrapped in biotic-impregnated bandages from mid-chest to nearly his right knee, covered in an impressive and spectacular array of cuts, contusions, and bruises. Situated at strategic points to maximize their efficiency and power, four high capacity biotic emitters covered them both in overlapping spheres of reparative energy. Even as he stood, stunned, Cole opened one dark eye and whispered, “Don’t...know when...he got here...but I think...he won.”

Genji nodded and whispered back, “I think you are correct. Rest. The others will be here soon.” And, so saying, he closed the door.

Zenyatta was brushing the snow off his shoulders as he entered the sitting area, still feeling slightly too overwhelmed to express the storm of emotions swirling within him in words. His master, of course, understood, rested comforting hands on his shoulders and held him silently as he shook under the force of it.

“Sparrow,” His master murmured, once the worst had passed, “What is that?”

Genji lifted his head and followed the direction of Zenyatta’s gaze. Sitting on the kitchen table, next to his phone, were a number of curious objects. A potted plant, its foliage such a deep red as to be nearly burgundy and the pot itself wrapped in metallic golden paper, sat in the middle of the table. Next to it, on the right: Cole’s hat which, Genji realized with an inward pang, had not been with them earlier -- he could not remember picking it up, or even seeing it during those few chaotic moments before their escape in Washington. Next to it, on the left: a package wrapped in plain, satiny red paper and tied with a golden bow and ribbon.

“I do not know,” He confessed and, at that instant, his phone chimed.

***

WickedCuteButDeadly: You there, Genji? We’re on our inbound leg, less than an hour out. What’s the situation?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I will deactivate the perimeter momentarily. We have had, I confess, some excitement.

DeathFromAbove: Define ‘excitement.’

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: The assassins found us.

WickedCuteButDeadly:... DeathFromAbove:... MercyMercyMe:...

PeanutButterIsLife: There was more than one?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Yes. We were...not aware of that ourselves until only recently. I can, however, say with some confidence that the threat has been emphatically neutralized.

DeathFromAbove:...In a lot of tiny pieces?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Yes. But Hanzo is injured -- I do not know how severely. Someone attended him before I could arrive and...this is the strangest thing…

WickedCuteButDeadly: Come on, don’t leave us hanging here!

GreenCyborgNinjaDude:...Whoever it was left a present.

DeathFromAbove: A present.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Yes. And Cole’s hat which, frankly, I believe we accidentally left behind in Arlington.

DeathFromAbove: So, the lot of you were, as of this reporting, possibly rescued from horrible death and/or maiming by Santa Claus. This is officially the strangest Christmas ever and I remember that one time someone accidentally dropped an experimental hallucinogenic crowd-control weapon at the base Christmas party in Geneva.

PeanutButterIsLife: And I’m still sure that wasn’t any kind of an accident.

MercyMercyMe: In any case, I will automate another medical bay here at Gibraltar to receive your brother when you arrive.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Thank you, Angela.

WickedCuteButDeadly: All right, you lot, touching down in fifteen. See you soon, Genji.

***

The team completed its landing, loading, and dust off in reasonably good order -- not as good as if they’d spent a couple months running behind-lines extraction drills but faster than his most pessimistic estimation when it came to their potential level of rust. He watched from a reasonably safe distance as the VTOL fans lifted the vehicle above the treeline and then high enough that, when Oxton stood that fat-assed ungainly thing on its tail and punched the afterburners the exhaust didn’t actually light anything on fire. It arched across the sky more gracefully than it had any right to, for a plane shaped like that, and vanished into the high, thin overcast, only just beginning to turn crimson with the oncoming dawn.

Red skies on Christmas morning. It seemed, at that moment, rather fitting considering the storm that was about to break on a number of people who should have known far, far better than this.

“You are such a sap when it comes to him, old man.” A voice that belonged to neither a navigation nor a security system informed him through the inboard comm built into his mask. “Someone’s going to figure that out and use it against you one day.”

“Possibly.” Probably you, the voice of brutal honesty replied in the back of his mind. “But not today.”

Notes:

Special thanks: to JoAsakura for graciously permitting me the use of Tombo, Zentatsu, and Mizuchi; to p1ratew3nch, Katschy, JoAsakura, and smol-sarcastic-snek for cheering me on. Maps of Arlington National Cemetery can be found here: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/ I strove to accurately depict the layout of Columbarium Court Nine while simultaneously playing fast and loose with its future size. The playlist I listened to while writing it can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/user/1248796996/playlist/4V2iZNGpYfGjniPw7szR0i Reinhardt Wilhelm owns a vintage collection of David Hasselhoff albums on vinyl. Search your feelings, you know this is true. More of my fannish ramblings can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/solivar and here: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/companerosdearmas

#I Heard the Bells #Annual Repost #Overwatch

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