Chapter Text
Once with a population of around eighty-five thousand people, the Isle of Man now held two. The drone factory upon Snaefell Summit had made sure of it. Shortly after the crisis, when boats began to go back to the island, most of the drones had been deactivated from afar and left to rot in the wind, rain, and eventual snow in the years which followed. When Cole and Hanzo set foot on the island, a dreary, unpleasant rain, fine enough to sieve the weak from the strong, fell down in sheets. It hadn’t stopped on the way over, and hadn’t stopped since they had arrived in Port Soderick three hours earlier.
The rocky beach foamed with the sea lapping at it. Inside the derelict building they sheltered in, the wind sounded like a low, pained moan of a creature much larger than themselves, and the smoke from Cole’s cigar drifted from his mouth to the empty hole of a window, before it got whisked away.
“Well,” Cole said and pulled the cigar from his mouth, “this is a real shithole.”
Hanzo snorted but kept looking out of the doorway. There was no door in the frame — he had seen it further inside the building, smashed to bits — but he needed to keep an eye out for drones. While most had been deactivated, or assumed to have been deactivated, the last people on the island had reported seeing some further north, near to Snaefell Summit. Their lodgings would be in Injebreck. Maps from before the Omnic Crisis indicated that Injebreck was a blackspot, so none of the drones went there. Now, it was a matter of finding their way over there.
“How far was this car Lena mentioned?” Hanzo asked.
“In Ballaveare. Just up the hill.”
“Ah yes.” Hanzo nodded sagely. “Past the archaic steam railway.”
Cole chortled a little, like a horse, before he sat down on the cleanest bit of concrete he could find. Outside, the sea sprayed up the tidal wall and Hanzo stood back.
“We’ll hear them before we see them,” Cole said. He took off his hat and pulled a bag out of it. “There’s no point looking out for them while we’re in here. I don’t think the drones will give a damn if we wait an hour or all night before we get moving.”
“I would rather see them coming,” Hanzo said with a frown. “How many have been reported?”
“At peak production, the factory was automatically making around ten a day. It went unchecked for roughly a year after everyone on the island either died or escaped, and the British government says they’ve deactivated at least three thousand. I’m expecting there to be at least another two-hundred or so airborne or land-roaming drones on the island.”
“The factory made both?”
“Naw, only the flying ones. The land-roaming drones were imported from Ireland, but weren’t able to be deactivated remotely. Morrison said in his brief that they imported around five hundred, with many of them being broken in the crisis.”
“Why were some of them left active?”
“The earlier models weren’t controlled remotely. They were all on a set path to patrol. Major roads, certain routes across fields. They had to be shut off manually.”
Hanzo nodded and looked out to sea. The sky and the ocean had merged to become a similar grey colour, so that if a boat passed by it would look like it was floating. On a clear day, could he see the UK? Perhaps if they were really trapped in Port Soderick until the storm stopped, then he’d have the chance to.
Cole pulled his hat off his head. He opened the bag which he’d pulled from inside it and fished out a shower cap, and he pulled it over his cowboy hat. Hanzo scowled at him.
“What—?”
“I saw the Vietnamese do it with their rice hats. Keeps the hat dry as much as it keeps them dry.”
“You look ridiculous.”
“You always think I look ridiculous.”
“Perhaps, but I did not expect you to increase your… ridiculousness with a single item of clothing.”
“Would you rather me wear it on my hair and put the hat on top?”
Hanzo snorted. “No.”
Cole put the hat back on his head. “Is it clothing? Or an accessory.”
“It is a crime against nature.”
“Ain't anything natural about a plastic shower cap, I hate to tell you.”
Hanzo sighed and stepped back from the doorway. He approached Cole and sat beside him, almost in his lap as he tried not to get his clothing dirty on the dusty floor. Regardless, he slipped out of Cole’s lap and cursed when he got covered in a fine layer of concrete dust.
“My apologies.”
“There's nothing to be sorry for. My lap is more comfortable than the floor, anyhow.” They sat in silence for a few minutes before Cole spoke up again. “At what point do we ignore the storm and high-tail it out of here? If we walk it'll only be a few minutes until we get into the town.”
“How did the car get onto the island?” Hanzo asked.
“Lena said she and Jack ditched it when they started to have a collection of drones shoot at them. I suspect with the storm that most of them will be lingering around Snaefell Summit, seeing as that’s their previous protocol.”
“Ah, yes.” He had forgotten about Oxton’s loud rambling about the Isle of Man the month prior, seeing as he hardly listened to her when she was talking about something important. It stung a little that he and Cole were second choices, but then again, Oxton and Morrison weren’t exactly stealthy or built for long-distance drone destruction. Hanzo felt his lip twitch upwards at the thought of one exploding. It would serve them right for blowing up half of Sapporo, back in Japan.
The rain eased for a second. As soon as Hanzo leaned forward, it grew heavier. He leaned back again.
“I’ll go get it and bring it here,” Cole said, moving to stand, but Hanzo clasped his arm.
“It’s dangerous to go alone.”
Cole sat back down again. The rain grew heavier still, and Cole put his head in his hands. “Ain't your spirits water-based? Can’t you tell them to knock this off?”
“‘Water based’. They are not moisturisers.”
Cole chuckled. “I was thinking of lube.”
Hanzo smacked him in the arm and stood up.
“We will get wet,” he decided. “My spirits may be similar to a raging river, but they do not contend with unstoppable forces.”
“They are an unstoppable force, though.” Cole stood.
“An immovable object, then.”
“What are you insinuating is the immovable object here? Or unstoppable force?”
“The British weather. Do we run or walk?”
Cole stared out at the sea, or the weather. It was hard to tell when they both looked the same and blurred into one.
“Walk.”
Hanzo stopped in the doorway and looked back at him, his brows furrowed. “Why?”
“I don’t give enough of a shit about getting wet to run.”
Hanzo looked back out at the sea. “Well,” he said and paused. “I do.”
Cole cursed as Hanzo began to run. He ran — or jogged, really — to try and keep up. The inclined road was filled with ruts from tree roots and was slick with water flowing down it, but Cole somehow managed not to slip. Leaves were on the edges of the road, covering it, and if it hadn’t been for the obvious difference between the road and the hedgerows beside it, he might have run straight into a ditch. Hanzo was further ahead of him, passing an old road sign which warned of the tight turn ahead, and then ducked beneath a bridge to wait for Cole.
At one point, there would have been a steam railway going over the bridge, but everything was quiet until Cole managed to catch up. The shower cap on his hat did seem to keep the material dry, but the rest of him was dark and damp with the rain. Hanzo stepped to one side as the wind blew the rain in.
“Halfway,” Cole panted.
Hanzo corrected, “More than halfway.”
He waited a minute or so for Cole to get his breath under control. For someone that regularly joined Hanzo on his evening jogs, Cole was still unable to keep up with a full sprint. Perhaps when they were back in Gibraltar he’d take it upon himself to train Cole further.
“Ready?” Hanzo asked.
“Ugh, I suppose.”
Hanzo started to jog again. This time, since he wasn’t running properly, Cole could keep up. The hill ascended further, past a farmhouse with its windows smashed in, and Hanzo could look at the overgrown fields they passed. Most of them had returned to the heath and moors which had once made up the whole island, but some had shrubby trees littering them. They reached a single carriageway road with a pair of road signs, but the lettering had been filed away with time. Only a faint impression of the letters remained. To their right, a bus stop and an abandoned car held promise.
“That’s the one,” Cole said, and jogged towards the car. He fished the key out of his pocket and pressed it, unlocking it.
“How did Morrison have the time to lock it if they were being shot at?” Hanzo wondered. Cole laughed and opened the passenger side door. Then he swore and walked around to the other side so that he could get into the driver's seat.
Hanzo dumped his bag into the back seat and fished out Stormbow and some arrows. “In case of drones,” he explained when Cole raised an eyebrow at him.
As soon as Hanzo snapped his seatbelt into place, the rain stopped.
“Oh, come on now,” Cole muttered.
Deep breath in through the nose, deep breath out through the mouth. Hanzo watched the rain water dribble down the windshield and leak through the cracked glass, dropping onto the dashboard before it leaked into his footwell. The back seat had a 5 centimetre hole in it from a drone’s pulse bullet. Glass was in the cupholder and their seats were sodden before they had even sat down.
“How far is it?” Hanzo asked.
“About fifteen minutes, if this thing runs and we don’t get any trouble.”
Cole twisted the key. The hovercar rumbled as it tried to turn on, and Cole had to try again twice before the magnetism caught on and it began to float. The radio came on and some British songs about typical British things began to grey the atmosphere further, and it crackled every time they passed over a tree root in the road. The wind came through the hole in the windshield. Hanzo squeezed his knees together to stop himself from shivering.
“When Jack and Lena were here, they said the drones moved in twos or threes. Hopefully we'll see them before they see us.”
“I suspect we will hear them first. Morrison mentioned that they were louder than he had expected. Now that you mention that they’re older… I suppose that tells us why.”
“Why do you do that?”
Hanzo looked over at Cole and raised an eyebrow. Cole had begun their journey and was breaking the speed limit thrice over, which would have been an issue if they weren't on a deserted island.
“Do what exactly?”
“Call Jack and everyone by their last name.”
“Not everyone .”
“Name three people you don't call by their last name.”
“Genji, Winston, and Echo.”
Cole let out a startled bark of laughter which turned into a series of chuckles. He flew through an intersection without slowing down.
“Okay, now name three people who have a last name, which isn't the same as your own, who you don't refer to using their last name.”
Hanzo thought about it for a moment, clenching his teeth together against the cold. “Satya, Mei-Ling, and you.”
Cole stayed quiet and then said, “Huh, I guess you do. It never really clicked that you stopped using my last name.”
“It was a while ago.”
“Yeah, but.” Cole twisted the car down a narrow road, one which would have troubled someone if they had been unfamiliar with the area, or if they weren't a reckless driver like Cole. “Ain't someone you call by their first name supposed to be a close friend?”
“You are a close friend,” Hanzo said. Close friend and nothing more. Definitely not anything more.
Cole looked over at him, looked out of the corner of his eye, like someone who didn’t believe what he was hearing. He swerved the car to avoid a bird — something which looked like a seagull, but less of an asshole — and pulled into a valley filled with trees. Thick ivy swarmed the road and turned the area into a carpet of green. They were probably the first vehicle to travel down the road since the 2050s.
He pulled the car into a small driveway and let it float over the gravel until they were greeted by a farmhouse with a grey exterior. On a nicer day it might have looked white, but with the weathering and cracks it looked almost decrepit. Nearby, Hanzo could see a pallet with a few boxes on it, but the aeroplane which had dropped it off was long gone. A parachute was attached to it, billowing in the wind. Other than their weapons, it would have everything they needed to spend almost a month on the island.
Cole cut off the engine. They sat in silence for a little while, listening, but when they didn’t hear the noise of drones Cole opened the door. It began to rain again.
“Damned weather,” Cole muttered, grabbing the bag from the back seat.
“Is this definitely the place?” Hanzo asked.
The building seemed fine. The windows were intact, double glazed, and in the chaos of the island being evacuated, it looked like it hadn’t been looted. It wasn’t on a major road and, if anyone had been driving past, it would have been difficult to see. The only suspicious thing was how the front door had the handle and lock removed. It was swollen shut when Hanzo tried pushing it.
“It’s the best we’ve got. Injebreck is central, in-tact, and close enough to Snaefell Summit that it ain’t a hike to get there. Or, well, for someone like Lena or Jack it ain’t a hike. For us it’s… about ten minutes in the car.”
“And walking? We do not want to attract drones.”
Cole sighed and looked up at the house. “Two hours? Maybe three? It depends on the weather.”
Hanzo nodded to himself and ignored how Cole looked crestfallen. “That is acceptable.”
“Four, if I drag my feet.”
“Ensure that you do not, or else the dragons may find it within them to encourage you to walk faster.”