Chapter Text
The room was too quiet, you thought.
With omnics, there was always sound. The gentle drone of their fans, steady as a human’s heartbeat. The grind of metal when they moved.
No such sounds could be heard now.
Your pistol sat heavy against your hip; by all accounts, you were safe. Yet still you hesitated, resisting the urge to stroke the crumpled exoskeleton of the omnic slouched before you. You had never tinkered with this model before, unsure whether even the gentlest touch may rouse him. Considering the identity of your companion, it was not an irrational fear to have.
But as you took in the state of his body, that fear dwindled more and more.
Half of his face plate was missing, jagged edges rippling down to his chin as though it had been torn off. A camera-like eye stared through you, unfocused. Where his right arm should have been, there was only an empty socket. A gruesome scene of carnage, were he formed from flesh and blood.
You reached out to his thigh cautiously. Your fingers met the rough leather there, rising over the ridges of crushed metal underneath.
The reports you received after debriefings had few pictures, but there had been one that stood out to you. It was clear in your memory, the image of his silhouette. Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark cables fanning out behind him like a mane. The crook in his hand likened him to a humble shepherd, yet he stood proudly, dignified as he beckoned to his flock with arms spread wide. You remembered thinking he cut an imposing figure then.
Seeing him like this now felt… strange. Wrong, in a way.
Your nails caught on a spot on his hip, halted in their path up his broken body. You peered closer, seeing the small imprints of numbers—his manufacturing date. It was scratched out, something else carved beneath it.
You tested the name in your mouth, letting it roll over your tongue.
Ramattra.
It was meant to be a simple mission—well, as simple as Overwatch missions could be.
Remnants of Null Sector’s presence lingered after its attempted invasion in Gothenburg. In response, a few agents were dispatched to “clean up” the area, culling any Nulltroopers that remained. After a few days, everyone who had stayed behind received word that their fellow agents would rejoin them in Gibraltar soon.
A week had passed since then in radio silence. You could tell it worried Winston; the banana peels scattered around his office indicated as much. But suddenly, without warning nor explanation, the wayward team returned—battered, but alive.
All was well, you had thought, until Reinhardt dropped a mountain of metal at your feet, and you realized it was a miracle they had returned at all.
“An R-7000!”
From the moment you began your career as an engineer, just seeing an R-7000 in person was a dream come true. They were so scarce these days, nearly hunted to extinction. Killed at the hands of humans in retribution for the war.
You had no memories of the Omnic Crisis, born at the tail end of the war and left to clean up the pieces. Even so, you knew the stories.
R-7000s.
Ravagers.
Squad killers.
A rare class of omnics designed by an artificial mind in its first act of creation. You yearned to understand it, to witness the way a machine engineered itself. To reach that level of efficiency, no material wasted, no part unnecessary or unused. It was an ouroboros of invention, something created with a single purpose. You had no choice but to admire it.
“Impressive, ja?”
You craned your neck up at Reinhardt. There was an open gash on his forehead, dried blood painting a red stripe down to his chin. It stained his teeth as he grinned down at you proudly.
“What happened?”
Winston shuffled over, straightening his glasses. “I’m just hearing the details now. It seems they ran into him while on their way to the pickup site.”
“‘Him’?” You cocked your hip and glanced at the omnic on the ground. “Who is he?”
A pause. “The leader of Null Sector.”
Your head darted back to the mangled omnic in disbelief. You hardly even recognized him in this state. “What? Why would you bring him here?”
Winston cleared his throat. “As you can see, the encounter has left him quite… damaged.”
Damaged was one hell of an understatement. Your eyes roamed the omnic’s body, taking inventory—what needed to be replaced, what couldn’t. After a beat of silence, you realized the veiled request in Winston’s words.
“You want me to fix him?” There was an unspoken question in your tone. Why? But Winston only nodded. You didn’t press any further; his lack of an answer was answer enough.
“It might take a while. He is missing an arm.”
“Take your time. He won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.” Winston’s expression turned stern then, and you straightened up quickly. “I know this is a lot to ask, but we can’t lose this opportunity. Let me know the instant he wakes up.”
You nodded slowly. With a parting wish of good luck, Winston turned to help unload the ship. You waved over Reinhardt, who slung the omnic over his shoulder with ease and followed you out of the hangar. Danger or no, you would not let it deter you. This was the first opportunity you’d been given to work on an omnic in a long time, and on a Ravager no less. You refused to waste a single second.
Now alone in your workshop, you could admit the truth—you hadn’t the faintest idea where to start.
You knew just from a glance it would be a difficult fix-up job, and that was assuming you had the materials at your disposal. Reality was much more sobering. Ever since the recall, a free-flowing wave of supplies was a fool’s wish.
You would have to make do.
While the rest of the damage would be no easy feat, what concerned you most was the state of the Ravager’s—Ramattra’s—chest plate. His metal exoskeleton was completely caved in, likely the result of a blow from Reinhardt’s hammer. Repairing it would be invasive; you may even need to separate the cage from his body entirely.
Slowly, you placed your palm against the center of his chest, feeling the warped edges of the metal there. Looking at it closely now, it almost resembled a sternum. It fascinated you, how similar the design of Ramattra’s body was to your own. Your hand traveled across his upper chest as you mapped the parts you recognized.
Sternum, collar bone, shoulder…
You let out a quiet breath. It was no wonder Ravagers were so terrifying during the Crisis. But as you gazed at his face plate, caressing the ridge where it splintered, you couldn’t help the gradual sorrow that tightened in your chest. How many of his model had been destroyed since then? Were there even others left?
You searched through the mess on your workshop table. During your exam, you noticed that his chest plate had multiple layers. External armor secured at his “sternum”, four steel rods extending outward from the top, while an iron rib cage curled from the bottom. To fully assess the extent of the damage, you would need to go through the tedious effort of removing all the parts individually.
Crowbar in hand, you returned to the Ravager. You slotted the tool into the gap between his sternum and the rod that protected his upper chest, pressing down firmly. The plate gave slightly—you pushed harder. A click rang out in the silence as the piece loosened, and you smiled to yourself. Brute force was always reliable. Perhaps not the most elegant approach, but effective nonetheless.
You worked at a moderate pace, the palm of your hand aching from where the crowbar pushed against it. It wasn’t long before the last rib was released, and you could finally access his chest plate. Your earlier fatigue forgotten, you immediately set about loosening the screws that held it closed. By the end of the entire process, a thin sheen of sweat had formed on the nape of your neck.
Finally, the panel opened, fanning outward from the middle like a flower in bloom.
The inside walls of his chest were a map of circuits. Wires snaked in and out of his machinery, threaded through actuators and sensors like vines. Hydraulic cooling fans sat below a row of black cubes—multiple power units, you realized. There were so many more parts, some you didn’t even recognize, and you wanted nothing more than to stay there all day and analyze each one.
But then your eyes fell on a cylinder nestled in the center of his chest, and you realized you had made a horrible mistake.
Ravagers were of the commander class of omnics, designed with physical combat in mind. This much you knew. Omnics that were humanoid in shape had their central processors in their heads, but a location like that in an omnic crafted for battle was dangerous. Those kinds of omnics would house their central processor where it could be well protected—a place with fortified shielding and a large surface area to disperse force.
And if you were an intelligent AI focused on maximizing utility, you would have programmed those omnics with a failsafe—some method that enabled them to protect the most vulnerable part of their body, in the event their system was otherwise compromised.
A hand shot out toward you before you could even blink, seizing your throat and dragging you to the ground. You couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.
A red glow lit up Ramattra’s face plate as the once sleeping omnic rose, hauling you up with less effort than one would a sack of flour. But before he could reach his full height, his legs faltered beneath him, forcing him to sag against your workbench. You dipped lower with the movement, the tips of your boots scraping the ground but doing little to relieve the intense pressure on your jugular.
“What…” His voice came out garbled, as if run through mud. “…have you done to me?”
Your hands clawed desperately at his hold, attempting to pry his fingers away from your throat, but it was useless. All the muscles in your body could hardly hold a candle to the strength that poured from his hand alone as he squeezed the breath from your throat.
As you fought for your life against the brutal might of his grasp, you couldn’t help but wonder how many kilograms of force his grip strength boasted. 100, maybe 125? The lack of oxygen to your brain sullied your ability to approximate considerably.
He seemed to realize you were suffocating, if only indicated by the way his thumb dragged up the tender skin of your throat and under your chin, forcing your head to the side. You gasped raggedly as air scraped into your lungs, making you cough. At least you could finally breathe—all that was left to do now was grab your gun, and this ordeal would be over.
Yet your hands did not move from where they wrapped around his wrist. You knew you had to, knew that every moment you waited narrowed the only opening you had. But before the synapses could fire for you to even think about reaching for the pistol at your waist, he dug his thumb under your jaw, hard, and you yelped in pain.
“Answer me, now.”
“Repairing… you,” you choked out. “I’m… an engineer—”
“Lies!” he hissed. His hand was a vice grip now, your pulse pounding in your ears from the restricted blood flow. “My chest is flayed open by your hands. Tell me the truth, human!” He practically spat the last word and yanked you closer, forcing a grunt out of you as your neck jerked up with the motion.
Your vision went fuzzy at the edges as your hold on consciousness weakened even more. A frightening thought ran through your mind at that moment.
I’m going to die here.
With the last breath you could manage, you muttered, “Taken by… Overwatch.”
His hand loosened. You slipped from his grasp, collapsing on the floor in a fit of hacking coughs. It hurt to breathe, your body rejecting the gulps of air you forced into your lungs. You weakly pushed yourself up on trembling arms, chest heaving as you struggled to recover. You had barely caught your breath when he grabbed you by the front of your coveralls, pulling you face-to-face.
“Where am I?”
“Gibraltar,” you coughed.
He was silent, his exposed eye dilating and contracting as it studied your face intensely. You weren’t sure what pushed you to speak again. A desperate last attempt for your life, maybe?
“Your voice box,” you whispered. His eye froze. “I can fix it.”
A sardonic chuckle rumbled from his chest, scratching your eardrums. “Do you really think I would let you anywhere near me again?”
You cleared your throat, trying to maintain an air of authority and pretend that your offer was not made on a whim. “I specialize in omnics—I can help you.”
“All the more reason not to trust you.” His harsh rebuff came out a growl, rippling with static. “You know better than anyone how to kill me.”
“But I haven’t.” Well, you’d thought about it. But he didn’t know that.
For a moment, there was only the hum of his auxiliary vents—a death knell you knew you were not the first to witness. You braced yourself, waiting for him to fold your skull in on itself like it was made of paper.
The grip on your coveralls slackened. Your hands barely shot out in time to catch yourself, head immediately snapping up only to watch him sink back down to the ground.
“Fine, human. Let’s see if your words match your will.”