STTA 8: Dinner and hope

[moonshadows]

The mission would have been a big one – loud and messy. Target holed up in an armed compound, hadn’t moved in weeks. Talon had been waiting him out to prevent losses, because attacking with anything less than a small army was suicide.

Reaper walked up to the front door, laughed, and poured through the cracks as smoke to re-form on the other side.

No one survived.

He was in a much better mood when he returned to his suite, and Sombra being busy in her room only helped that.

“Don’t worry, Boss,” McCree drawled without looking up from his pad. “She ain’t gonna bother you with any questions, but she is gonna track both of ‘em.”

A bit of tension bled out of his shoulders. “Good. Nothing changes.”

And it didn’t – not on that front. Sombra still sat and stared at him, working on screens or on a pad. But she started sitting on the couch with his cowboy, talking quietly with him, as well. It was a good thing, Reaper told himself. The boy needed more social interaction than one surly, faceless mercenary could provide. They occupied each other while Reaper designed and created a mission outfit for the hacker, who proved to be a much more valuable asset in the field than he’d anticipated she would be.

Days turned into weeks. Quiet talking on the couch turned into Sombra joining him for his little excursions out into town for food or entertainment. Joking in the kitchen while McCree cooked. Both of them vanishing into her room for hours at a time. All fine, as far as Reaper was concerned. He had more important things to worry about, like finally being able to take action against the politicians he’d identified as being most responsible for the policies that had caused so many arguments between him and…Morrison.

He refused to even think the man’s first name.

---

In the weeks since she’d learned Gabriel was alive, Angela had lost a good deal of sleep working on a solution between her other projects and responsibilities, but to no avail. The vial of blood she’d drawn – and oh, how glad she was that she’d thought to do that – should have been the key, but all she managed to do was cause it to multiply until she had several liters of healthy, nanite-seeded blood. While it was a remarkable breakthrough for blood transfusions, it wasn’t nearly as useful as she’d hoped it would be for restoring Gabriel’s body.

Then she got a message.

It was anonymous, a live chat with no chat client and no usernames, and it just appeared on her screen at a late enough hour that she was tempted to write it off as a sign she needed to get some sleep.

It said, simply, I need your help.

Angela stared at it for a long minute, considering and discarding responses, before finally typing her reply. With what?

It seemed like forever before the person on the other end settled on an answer.

Building a body. From scratch.

The late hour combined with the arrogance of invading her privacy for such an inane reason left Angela irrationally furious with whoever this was. Apply sperm to egg, she typed, fingers driving down on the keys much harder than necessary. Incubate in living womb for nine months.

The response came back after a brief pause. I deserved that. Let me start over. I want to use a swarm of nanites to rebuild the body of their host.

“Gabriel,” Angela breathed. But she thought carefully before she typed – no reason to tip her hand with a stranger. Why come to me?

Because you created the nanites and there’s nothing left of his body but ash.

It had to be Gabriel. How exactly do you think I can help? she typed grimly, thinking of the vat of useless blood.

I can reprogram the swarm to build something other than ash, but I don’t know the medical terminology that would tell it to build a human body, much less his specific body.

Hope. For the first time since she’d learned that her attempt to save Gabriel’s life had cursed him to a hellish existence, Angela felt a spark of hope in her chest. It wasn’t strong enough to be even a feeble flame; this was nowhere near an actual solution. But it was a start.

You are aware, she typed slowly, that even having his complete DNA sequence will not restore his body as it was.

The stranger typed back, I know. I’ll have to tweak things until they look right, but I got Papi Gabriel’s medical files and you’re very thorough in mapping a patient’s body so…thank you for that.

Angela stared at the screen, uncertain if she was infuriated by the breach of patient confidentiality or elated that it was Gabriel they were discussing.

Jesse says he’s sorry he didn’t tell you.

Anger that Jesse had known warred with relief that he was apparently alive and well. Does he still insist on smoking those cigars?

A brief pause.

He says he gave them up. Lost their appeal after what his dad did.

Well, at least some good had come of that nightmare. She pressed her lips together unhappily. I want proof that by helping you, I am not helping an enemy.

Almost instantly, the stranger typed back, And I told Jesse that his dad’s two closest friends visited you. He wants to know how his ‘other dad’ reacted when he found out what happened in the bathroom.

Well, that certainly sounded like Jesse McCree. Angela sighed. He vomited out of guilt for having driven his husband to… Her fingers faltered, and she took a deep breath. …to take his own life.

 It took a minute before she noticed the reply.

Okay. I’m checking your schedule for a good day to meet up with you. Me and Jesse both. Let you decide if you want to help or not.

Checking her-

Looks like next Sunday evening is going to be best for you. We’ll meet you in your home with take-out from the Greek place Jesse says you like.

Angela pressed her lips together again in annoyance. Very well. I am going to sleep now. Good night, whoever you are.

Without waiting for a reply, she shut the computer down and left the room.

Sleep, however, was a long time coming.

In the week and a half before her dinner with Jesse McCree and whoever had contacted her, she worked on transcribing Gabriel’s DNA and inserting it into a copy of the nanite programming. Admittedly, the programming aspect was not her strength, but pride demanded she proceed as if she were doing this all on her own. She had to tweak things three times before the new programming caused a test tube of replicated blood to churn as the nanites broke down blood cells and rebuilt them into a cluster of stem cells, which she promptly froze before they could get any more problematic than they already were just by existing.

One of her other projects, however, had been to develop a process by which the nanites would remove themselves from a sample of replicated blood so that it could be safely used in transfusions. In preparation for her dinner meeting, she drew a liter of Gabriel’s blood and commanded the nanites inside it to clump. The result was a marble-sized sphere of nanites, which she plucked out and placed into a reinforced container for transport before loading it with the programming she’d worked out.

Sunday, waiting for the evening, was nerve-wracking.

---

“It’s not a date,” Jesse protested yet again, feeling his cheeks flush. “I’m just escorting Sombra on an intelligence-gathering mission.”

Reaper made a skeptical sound. “And that’s why you’re wearing your favorite shirt.”

“It’s…I gotta blend in.”

“Sure.” Reaper drew the word out, teasing but not mocking. “Go. Have fun. Gather intelligence.”

Jesse hugged him. “Thanks, Dad. We’ll be back late. Sleep well if you sleep.”

One arm came up to hug the cowboy briefly before they separated.

Sombra, her distinctive hair hidden under an oversized purple hoodie, bounced up to hug Reaper briefly. “I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble,” she promised jokingly.

Then it was the two of them striding down the hall towards the garage, and Jesse wasn’t sure if he was excited, or anxious. On the one hand, possible progress on Gabe getting his body back. On the other hand, probable that Angela was going to give him hell.

Sombra seemed excited, or maybe just determined, but she didn’t say anything until they were speeding on their way in an unmarked car and she’d disabled all the tracking or monitoring devices in it.

“It can be a date, if you want,” she said in a wicked tone that did bad things to his concentration. “We don’t have to go right back.”

“You’re teasing me,” he retorted coolly. “No matter what we do or don’t get from Angela, you’re gonna be focused on the issue of Dad’s body.”

Sombra glanced out the window, and Jesse got the feeling that she was disgruntled by how that had gone. “True,” she admitted grudgingly. “But we’ll get there early. Earlier than we need to be, even with picking up food.”

Jesse’s eyebrows drew together as he watched her reflection in the window. They’d spent a lot of time together the last few weeks, but the subjects of sex and romance hadn’t come up. He’d assumed it was because, being in an omnic body, she couldn’t do anything but… “Sombra…do you want this to be a date?”

The way she shrank deeper into the folds of the hoodie suggested the answer was yes.

“You don’t eat,” he said slowly, brain racing to try to avoid saying the wrong thing and fucking this chance up. “But I do know a pretty little park nearby if you’d care to join me for a stroll.”

“I’d like that,” was her quiet answer.

Maybe she couldn’t do anything, but he’d take chaste companionship and emotional intimacy and be more than content. Lord knew he’d had enough meaningless sex to make him hungry for something deeper. Jesse leaned back in his seat, smiling in anticipation.

---

Angela had been imagining endless variants on the scenario of coming home to find Jesse and someone else in her home, but what she found instead was the cowboy sitting on the back steps, holding hands and chatting quietly with someone in a purple hoodie at least three sizes too big and black leggings with a purple skull pattern. A paper bag rested between Jesse’s feet, the logo of the Greek restaurant clearly visible on it.

“Howdy,” he said as she approached, looking like he knew she was going to give him a piece of her mind but also that he deserved it and he wasn’t going to try to get out of it. “Got the salad you like, the one with olives and feta, and fresh baklava.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t just make yourself at home,” she said sharply. “I’m sure my home security system is no challenge for your friend.”

He nodded to concede the point. “You’d be correct, Sombra could bypass it in seconds. But it would be rude to enter without an invitation, so we waited out here for you.”

Mollified slightly, she nodded and waited while he stood, bowed to her, and guided ‘Sombra’ off the steps. They stood there in silence until she had opened the door and gestured for them to follow her inside. Jesse immediately went to the table and unpacked the bag, salad and what looked like steak with potatoes and vegetables and the promised baklava, juice for her and beer for him, but nothing for Sombra.

She frowned.

“Sombra doesn’t eat,” Jesse said, gesturing for both of them to sit. “Her body ain’t organic, but it sure as hell is convincing.”

Well, that was something she hadn’t expected. Angela sat, eyeing the other woman curiously as she pushed the hood back to reveal cranial augmentations and a hairstyle that would make her easy to remember and identify.

“Jesse didn’t know I was contacting you,” Sombra said suddenly. “He walked in on our conversation and let me know I’d gone about that the wrong way. Dinner was his idea.”

So he agreed with Sombra’s intent, if not her methods, and had offered himself up as a sacrifice. Angela met his eyes, nodded once, and picked up her fork.

Offering accepted.

Still, Angela couldn’t help asking medically invasive questions as they ate, inquiring about the construction of Sombra’s body and the nature of her mind as payback for having had her own privacy so rudely violated. Judging by the reactions Jesse had to the answers, he hadn’t known that she’d transcribed her mind into an omnic brain while still conscious for the procedure, or that transferring her bioelectric energy into it had left her organic body lifeless. But instead of the distant horror Angela felt, Jesse’s expression reflected concern and sympathy. Angela remembered how he’d befriended Genji, but this seemed more…personal…somehow.

“Tell me about Gabriel,” Angela demanded as Jesse cleared the dishes away and brought plates for the baklava.

Sombra opened her mouth, but shut it again as Jesse shook his head.

“When I was putting the ashes in that pitcher, I noticed they were moving. Not a lot. Just trying to clump together, and I figured it was just the nanites. I holed up in a motel and dropped in some fries, and the nanites ate them. Ate burgers and egg rolls and chicken bones. And then a hit man came to make sure I was good and dead, and I figured either Dad was dead and the nanites would just kill the hit man, or Dad really was still alive somehow and maybe they’d be able to reconstruct him if they had more than just some fast food to work with. Either way,” he said with a shrug, “I’d win. Turned out that not only did I get my Dad back, but he was able to take the hit man’s identity and we went undercover lookin’ for revenge.”

Angela frowned. “And that is why you did not contact me for so long. But clearly it was not as simple as that.”

“You’re right,” Jesse said evenly. “Dad couldn’t see, or feel, or taste, or smell. The nanites rebuilt a body that moves like a human body but ain’t made of the things a human body is made of. He doesn’t bleed. I don’t think he has bones that break. Whatever he’s got instead of muscles, they don’t get tired. I didn’t talk to you because I didn’t want to tell you that Dad was alive, but not really.”

“That’s where I come in,” Sombra said crisply. She gestured, and screens opened up in mid-air to display chunks of code and diagrams. “This is the initial code I observed.” She pointed to one screen, then a second one. “And this is the modification I made to help him keep his shape. I assume the time he spent as a pile of ash scrambled their code, because it’s a mess.”

Angela skimmed the first screen, frowning. “You are correct. Fortunately, when he was able to survive a sniper shooting him in the head with no ill effects, I drew a sample of his blood to study. So we have the original programming to work with, as well as his DNA.” She looked back at Sombra, who dismissed the screens. “Until you contacted me, all I had managed to do was create liters of his blood. After our talk, I was able to alter the programming enough to cause the nanites in a blood sample to transform the blood into stem cells.”

The twin gasps that announcement got were very gratifying.

“I have prepared a second swarm with that programming,” she continued. “I will give it to you and keep this visit secret on one condition.”

“Name it,” Sombra said immediately.

“Do not use it for anything but restoring Gabriel to his own body.”

Solemnly, the hacker gave her word and Jesse swore just as solemnly that he’d hold Sombra to her promise. Angela retrieved and handed over the small container, a knot of tension in her chest loosening as Sombra checked the programming and beamed in hopeful delight. They exchanged hugs, and Jesse’s was especially comforting as he practically enveloped her in his arms. Then she was waving the two of them on their way with a flame of hope burning solidly in her heart.