Inheritors

by mlle_danglars

Summary:

Cole Cassidy is an Inheritor—in this case, a man who Inherited the ability to shoot out a man’s eye from a hundred yards away without aiming. Most people aren’t a fan of this.

However, when Cassidy’s hand gets cursed by another Inheritor, he knows the cure won’t be free. He begins his highest-paying, highest-risk bounty yet: the bounty on Venice’s Heritage Necklace. As he reunites with old friends and shoots even older enemies, his mission begins to unravel. How deep in enemy territory is this bounty going to lead him?

How far is he willing to follow?

(This story is COMPLETE with about 90k words—I’m just posting it chapter by chapter.)

Chapter 1: Everything I Got - The Heavy

Venice, Italy. 2070.

Cassidy figures he should invest in a glove for his left hand. He looks at the paper with the address on it again, frowning at the soot marks in the corner from where he touched it. The side and ends of his hand look like they’re made of coal, cracking every time he moves his fingers. He’s tried in vain to wipe the curse away; of course, that was before he figured it was a curse.

The rest of the card is thick, pristine paper with a metallic blue border and a tiny insignia in the middle. No map, though. He’s in the right part of Venice, but the twisting layout doesn’t make a lick of sense. He’s used to cracked-dry highways and endless flat deserts, where the only way to get lost is on purpose. Venice proper seems to want him to get lost, and it doesn’t even have cars. A left, a left, then right at the bridge.

He shoves his left hand in his pocket before trying to reorient himself. The streets around him are empty—the places tourists frequent are a little nicer than this. Cassidy makes his way over uneven pavement and skinny bridges until he sees a squat, teal-painted building ahead. If he remembers correctly, it’s the right number.

A bell above the door rings quietly as he enters, as if it’s scared to upset the peace of the room. It’s a bakery, cramped with mismatched tiling and low lights overhead. The stuff in the display case looks delicious, but he doesn’t have time to sit around eating pastries. The young woman working the counter has ashy brown hair and rings made of some sort of animal teeth. Anti-Inheritor charms in a place like this? Cassidy wonders. Maybe she’s a new hire.

“Hello, sir,” she says, avoiding his gaze. “What would you like to order?” He appreciates the hospitality here—at least, the fact that he gets called ‘sir’ instead of kid or Deadlock scum. He puts his hand in his pocket.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any apple pie, would you?” he asks. The woman looks like she’s trying to hold back an eye roll.

“No, apologies.”

“You absolutely sure?”

“Yes.” She twists one of her rings. Cassidy looks around the bakery and finds it mostly empty. He slides the address card across the counter. 

“Why don’t we check the back, just in case?” he asks, smug. The cashier snatches the card from him, tensing up. She turns to the side to look at the card so she doesn’t face the door. The blue insignia shines under the warm lights, and the cashier mouths some of the digits to herself. The insignia changes every month—as do the bounties. 

“I suppose we can.” She beckons for him to follow her behind the counter.

A narrow hallway lines the back of the bakery. One of the three bare lightbulbs is burnt out, and the floor has a thick coat of dust and grime. The woman winces at the state of the place.

“I must apologize for the mess. I was transferred here recently.”

“What were you doin’ before, reconnaissance or grunt work?”

“…I was a baker,” she admits. Cassidy’s eyes widen.

“And now you’ve gotta work for a bunch of Inheritors. Shit, that’s a career change and a half.”

“They are not all Inheritors.” She pulls a ring of keys from her pocket and goes to the end of the hall.

“You’d be surprised.” Cassidy follows her there as she opens the door for him. He tips his hat at her, which only makes her more jittery. Through the door it’s dark and musty—in her haste to get away, the woman basically slams the door back in his face.

The back room is the same size as the bakery, but stripped down to bare wood and concrete. It’s packed with people holding conversations in whispers and side-eyeing every speck of dust out of place. Judging by their looks, they’ve come from all over the world to check the new bounties. Cassidy bets the only person in the room who isn’t an Inheritor is the glowing-green omnic brooding in the corner—it’s not like they have bloodlines, after all. He wishes that the old chalkboard of bounties hadn’t been replaced. It was ineffective, but had a certain charm. He walks up to the digital bounty board, pushing past the crowd of Inheritors.

Cassidy’s last bounty up in France was a bust—he clenches his left hand in a fist—and the Venice connection was dropped by another bounty hunter. She was the one who actually killed the target, and she didn’t seem big on charity work. So, when the address card fell out of her pocket, he took it and ran. Big bounty networks like this are breeding grounds for liars and cheats, but after the failure of his last bounty, he’d like some kind of recompense.

The board is a holoscreen, glowing blue with bounty listings. It has everything from Roman artifacts to petty thieves to rogue Talon agents; anything with a need comes with a price attached. Cassidy tips his hat a little lower. Wonder how high my bounty’s gotten.

A woman next to him enlarges one of the pop-ups for a bounty, sending a blue glow across the room. The price tag attached to it has enough zeroes in it to make Cassidy salivate. It’s not a picture of Venice’s most wanted criminal or anything, but a simple-looking artifact. A blown-glass teardrop on the end of a rusty chain, making a necklace. Inside the teardrop is a pool of red.

Heritage Necklace. Return with keys to contact listed for reward.

He turns to the Inheritor beside him, a girl with choppy dark hair and a tan bandana covering her face. She’s looking at the Necklace like it personally wronged her.

“D’you have a pen I can take?” Cassidy asks. Her head snaps to him, and her pupils are pinpoints after staring at the screen.

“No. Sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry. He almost turns back around, but he hears the clack of heels behind him. Unlike the girl with the bandana, this woman looks better dressed for a business meeting than a bounty hunt. She’s older than the girl and probably a bit older than him.

“I’ve got one for you, there,” she says, pulling it from her front shirt pocket. She gives it to him with a flourish, and Cassidy digs in his own pocket for paper until he finds an old receipt for—he squints—chips, a lockpicking kit, and disgustingly expensive green tea. The girl glares up at him.

“You’re starting the bounty for returning the Necklace to this company, right?” she asks. “The LumeriCo shareholder.”

“Yeah.” Cassidy tries not to roll his eyes, expecting some hippie moralizing with a side of conspiracy. The girl only stares at him, past his eyes and into where souls are probably supposed to go.

“As expected.” She vanishes back into the crowd, her dark hair blending in with the dark room. Cassidy and the older woman both look at her, the former with his lips pursed. The room itself feels like it’s stopped breathing, and he can’t figure why.

“I do hope these young hunters realize wearing a mask doesn’t make you mysterious,” the woman says, looking down her nose at the crowd around her. The tension in the room breaks.

“For sure. None of ‘em need to hide their identities—no one wants them dead that bad.” Cassidy finishes writing the listed phone number on the back of the receipt with the knowledge that it’s probably part of some obscure telephone chain.

“It’s rumored most of the keys to the Necklace’s vault are near Venice.” She pauses, then glances at Cassidy. “Do you know who moved the bounties here?”

“Nope.”

“Damn it,” she says. Cassidy folds the receipt back into his pocket. Near the entrance, he can see the masked girl from earlier talking with two people, also wearing colorful masks. If the masks supposed to hide the kids’ identities or help them blend in, they’re doing an awful job of it. He scoffs. It would be one thing if the mask was to hide some kinda facial deformity, or scar—

The three masked hunters leave the back room, shutting the door behind them a little harder than necessary. The Inheritor woman examines her nails like they’re the most interesting thing her line of sight.

“Did you see the news yesterday?” she asks. Cassidy shakes his head, and she continues. “A group of Inheritors went after the first key last night. All from the same bloodline, I think ice powers, although I forget the family name.” Cassidy pales—the hunter he took the “bakery’s” address from had an ice Inheritance.

“Whaddya mean, ‘first’ key? Does the order matter?”

“Is this your first time on a bounty? Lord.” She minimizes the bounty tab for the Necklace. “You need the first key to unlock whatever holds the second, and the second to reach the third.”

“Where’s the first?”

“You’d love to know, wouldn’t you?” She giggles. “It’s publicly available info, come on.” Cassidy frowns at her tall heels and string-thin jewelry, deciding not to take the bait. As much as he likes to start fights, he can do that somewhere a little more useful and a little less outnumbered. Although…

“What happened to those Inheritors?” he asks.

“Hm?”

“The ice ones you were talkin’ about getting that first key.”

“Oh, them!” She laughs again, a grating sound. “They didn’t even get the key! No, Talon downed them very easily.”

“…I’m sure.” Cassidy reaches for Peacekeeper at his side. Some of the people nearby look up from their conversations to him. The woman hums.

“You know, one of them said she’d given two people the new address for this lovely bakery. It took a bit of coercion to become the next, but I’m glad I did. That Necklace is worth a pretty penny. So, out of curiosity…” The hairs on Cassidy’s arms prickle, and the woman’s veins start to glow blue-white. “Who did you come here with?” 

As he tries not to imagine the kind of ‘coercion’ the other Inheritor must’ve been hit with, Cassidy racks his brain. The informant had been quick with her info; that is, she had dropped the card by accident, and Cassidy had snatched it before it had time to hit the ground. Who else could she have talked to?

“No one,” he says. The woman’s irises gleam in the low light, and the people around them are starting to gravitate towards her. She raises her hand.

“Liar.”

A lightning bolt flies at Cassidy, and the people around him scatter. He rolls to the side. Energy fries the bounty holoscreen as he slams into the opposite wall. He bounces back to the middle of the room and tackles the woman to the floor. As he tries to pin her, lightning strikes his good hand. Pain crackles through it, bursting through his joints. Peacekeeper falls—she catches it midair. Before he can recover, the woman is kneeling over him, and his own gun is in his face. Cassidy twitches.

He grapples with her, wrenching her arm forward. The woman elbows him in the face, but he grabs her arm and yanks her forward into a headbutt. Dazed, she drops Peacekeeper, sending it spinning across the concrete floor. He scrambles towards it, but the woman takes the opportunity to stand back up and dust off her sharp blouse. Her whole body crackles with electricity when she points up.

“Lights out.” Lighting cracks up toward the ceiling.

Cassidy’s vision goes black. Without the ceiling lights, the only thing keeping him grounded is the cold metal of his gun, and it’s not like he can aim the thing in pitch blackness. There isn’t any light in the room except for the glow of phones, some watches, and the errant omnic. The omnic who’s walking calmly toward the fight with a longsword in hand... Wait, what?

The lightning woman whips around to face him, then curses. She aims her Inheritance at his metal frame, and the omnic snaps his longsword in front of the lightning strike. What would’ve been enough to kill most men bounces off the blade and back to her, hitting the wall beside her head. Her allies, who were closing in on Cassidy a second ago, are now paused in confusion. The newcomer gives him an opening. Cassidy raises Peacekeeper, energy coursing through his blood from the fight.

“Funny how you think you can ambush me that easy, miss.”

Cassidy calls upon his Inheritance. Energy coalesces around him in a red veil, blurring his vision. People try to find cover, but the room has next to nothing to hide behind. They must know what he does. What he’s Inherited. Inhale, smell the dust, exhale. Don’t aim. Your aim’s shit without it. Shoot.

A revolver has six bullets. Twelve people fall to the floor in eerie synchronicity. Cassidy stands in the middle of the room, swaying. Tired after a dozen kills? I’m losing my edge, he thinks. 

The lightning woman crawls out from beneath a pile of bodies. It’s macabre, but it kept her safe from Deadeye. He sinks to the ground as she stands above him triumphantly. Black dots float in the corners of his eyes. His left hand shakes. She stomps down on his chest, her stiletto heel nearly stabbing him.

Green light streaks across the room. 

She falls to the floor with a shuriken sticking out of her throat and crumples beside Cassidy. The collar of her blouse is pinned against her neck, and both are stained red. Cassidy’s mechanical savior looks down at him, blood splattered against the side of his body armor. None of it’s his blood, and he doesn’t look half as shaken as Cassidy feels. If anything, he seems annoyed. The man pulls him up to standing with a metal hand and gives him a long look, green visor glowing harshly against the dark room. Cassidy knows this is a man, not an omnic. After all, there’s only one man in the world who uses shurikens with that much style. He blinks slowly.

“They’re Talon. You need to leave,” the man says. Talon. Violence and bloodshed power Inheritances, and Talon agents are some of the most powerful Inheritors in the world. The fact that war can turn a profit is merely a bonus for the organization. Cassidy shakes his head, trying to line up the man in front of him with…

“Genji?”

The man doesn’t respond, only sheathing his sword and turning to the exit. Cassidy puts Peacekeeper away and walks towards him, because he knows that voice well enough to pick it out of a lineup—or a shiny new suit of armor. The bounty room’s door slams shut in front of him. Cassidy’s eyes narrow, and his walk turns into a run.

“Genji!”

-

Cassidy can feel the cashier’s stare against the back of his head as he bursts out the front door. He remembers the corpses of the Talon agents he just left to lie in that woman’s bakery. They were all Talon—Deadeye only targets the folks Cassidy wants dead—but it’s gonna be tough for her to clean. He looks around the outdoor seating, but Genji’s already gone.

He takes a deep breath and holds it, letting the sounds of Venice wash around him. Squawking birds, chatting tourists, and flowing water. He tries to hear past them. Finally, he hears that clink sound. Metal on metal. Cassidy releases his breath and jogs to his left.

The alley he finds himself in is dim, and the bricks in the walls on either side are weathered smooth. His footsteps echo as he runs. Without anyone watching, he begins to sprint. He sees a flash of grey fabric around a corner a few yards ahead of him and grins.

He gets spit out in the middle of the historic district, surrounded by beautiful marble structures and less beautiful tourists. His eyes scan the horizon for a flash of green again. Nothing. The plaza is baking under the morning sun, and the other people milling about make for perfect cover. Cassidy checks Peacekeeper again—it doesn’t need a check, he just likes to be reminded of its presence—and shoves himself into the crowd. There aren’t enough mi scusi’s and sorry’s in all of Venice to make up for the fact that Cassidy isn’t exactly an inconspicuous guy. People stare at his getup as he crashes into them.

An unremarkable fountain sits in the middle of the plaza and spouts opaque water. The more time he spends looking around the people here, the further away Genji’s probably running from him. Knowing him, he’ll be halfway back to Japan before I leave the plaza, he thinks, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t know if Genji even came this way from the bakery, and every unfamiliar face and non-metal body convinces Cassidy he’s off his trail. Still, he’s not leaving until he sees that green slash of a visor. He sits on the edge of the fountain, staring at the coins piled at the bottom. Some say tossing a coin brings good luck, while others say it wards off dangerous Inheritors. Cassidy doesn’t believe either of those. He frowns at the water beneath him. One of the coins isn’t on the fountain floor.

It’s floating on the water.

Cassidy plucks the weightless coin off the water’s surface, squinting at it because he knows for a fact that euros don’t float. On one side is a simple “1” with sparse text above it. He flips it over to look at a picture of a young tree, geometrically perfect, with even more text. All of that text is in Japanese.

Cassidy scrambles up from the fountain, pocketing the yen. It could’ve been tossed by anyone who’s Japanese, or even anyone traveling abroad, but this doesn’t feel lucky. It feels auspicious. He stands and looks around the plaza for a new route. There are only two paths—the way he came from, and a westward exit. He starts running again.

Cassidy’s breath starts to heave while his mind runs itself ragged. Genji left the Shimadas, then left Blackwatch, then left Overwatch years before it blew up and floated away on the wind. He never stayed in one place longer than he needed to. So, why would Genji have arrived in Venice first? Cassidy rounds a street corner, and the parking garage—Pizzale something, he remembers—looms ahead, casting a sharp shadow over him and ignoring the beautiful architecture around it. He scans the crowd again.

He sees a glint of steel. Genji runs down a small street while tourists part around him. He’s pulling away from Cassidy and approaching a thin canal. With a ducked head and a running start, Genji leaps across it. Cassidy shoves someone aside to get to the water, but he can only watch as Genji dashes further away. He slows and looks back at Cassidy, green light reflecting across the water. He lifts his arm and waves.

Cassidy scowls. He’s not going to let Genji get this close only for him to escape again. He’d rather have Genji be a stranger than a ghost. He looks both ways across the water, but doesn’t see a bridge anywhere—only an approaching one-man boat. Cursing his luck, he leans on his back foot. The man on the boat gives him a weird look.

Cassidy jumps.

He rocks the boat back and forth, sloshing water into it and nearly tipping both him and the boater into the drink. His jeans are soaked from the shin down. The man yelps as Cassidy holds his arms out, trying to balance himself. He ignores the blackened tips of his fingers. He crouches down as the boat approaches a bend in the canal.

He jumps again, barely managing to hold onto a short fence around the canal. He propels himself up and rolls over it, landing awkwardly on the pavement. Looking up and refocusing himself, he sees that flash of metal vanish behind the parking garage. It’s next to a long bridge back to mainland Venezia Mestre—Venice itself doesn’t allow cars within its bounds. He stumbles over himself while making his way to the boxy building. The shadow over him grows darker and darker.

Slowing down a little, he listens to the sounds around him. There’s the sound of cars, of course, along with quiet chatter echoing from upper levels of the parking garage. He doesn’t hear anything that would lead him to Genji. He starts toward the ramp to the second floor.

In the little space behind the elevator and the floating map of Venice, he sees a green glow. It isn’t moving. Cassidy’s footsteps grow quiet as he turns back to the elevator. His heavy breathing slows. He rounds the corner.

At the same moment, Genji draws his katana.

Cassidy rests his hand on Peacekeeper. The blade shines directly in his eyes, too bright to look at. Still, Cassidy can’t look away. Genji scoffs, holding the katana in front of himself.

“If you try to shoot me, your bullet will return to hit your skull,” he says. Cassidy goes completely still when he hears that voice again. The voice with the clean accent and the cold, familiar bite of someone who almost wants him dead. In spite of the sharp blade in front of him—or because of it—he smiles.

“I ain’t scared of no threats.” He takes his hand off Peacekeeper's handle, crossing his arms. “Been a long time since I’ve seen you, anyhow.”

“I would not be so flippant, if I were you.” Genji points the sword a little closer to him.

“We’re evenly matched,” Cassidy says, smug. “I wouldn’t hate a fight that was fun for once.” Genji pauses at this. Slowly, cautiously, he lowers the katana to his side. Cassidy can hear his breathing from the faceplate, tinny and slow.

“You are not trying to…” He makes a little finger gun. Cassidy chuckles.

“Why would I?”

“I have an unfortunately large bounty.”

“…Me too.”

They stare at each other for a second, almost daring the other to throw the first punch. Genji sighs and sheathes the katana. The space behind the elevator gets darker without it.

“What brings you here, if not my bounty?”

“Awful self-centered of you to think that, if you ask me,” Cassidy says. “Ain’t it enough for a man to wanna see the sights?”

“In the city that led to your downfall?”

“Chasin’ a lead, then,” he sort-of admits. Genji tilts his head, skeptical. After a too-long moment, he beckons for Cassidy to follow. He doesn’t think twice—although he probably should.

“You are much slower than you used to be,” Genji comments, walking up the ramp of the garage with a light step.

“I got old, what can I say?”

“Barely older than me.”

“Oh, the metal’s younger than you, you cheater,” Cassidy complains as they round a corner. Genji elbows him in the side; it hurts quite a bit, given the metal, but it’s familiar in a way that sends a shock through him. All those years and he’s back annoying the hell out of Genji.

“It’s been so long since we have crossed paths that I nearly forgot the incessant talking.”

“Your fault for savin’ my sorry ass.”

“It is.” Genji starts toward one of the cars. “I should have left the moment I saw you.” He cuts their banter short in a sharp, clean slice. Cassidy hums.

“Force of habit?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Genji opens the driver’s side door of a cheap-looking grey sedan. 

“Absolutely not. Do you remember how often I left you for dead?” Genji doesn’t add during Blackwatch to the end of that sentence, because Blackwatch is less of an era and more of a thing that hangs over people’s heads like a guillotine, daring them to forget what Inheritors are really like.

“Ha! Only when you were mad at me,” Cassidy says, climbing into the passenger’s seat.

“Which was most of the time.”

“Most.” Cassidy leans back in the cloth seat, feeling the whole day’s worth of exhaustion at once. He’s not on his deathbed, but there’s definitely some bruising. It’s still eerie to see the car lit up in green by Genji’s new visor. It betrays nothing about him. At least, during Blackwatch, Cassidy could see his eyes.

Genji starts the car—it’s cheap but modern, Cassidy’s two least favorite traits, and starts with the press of a button—and checks behind for other vehicles. Or Talon agents. Cassidy drums his fingers on the dashboard, but stops when he sees little black soot marks left behind. Genji snaps his head over before he can shove his hands back in his pockets. He freezes.

“What happened to your hand?” Genji asks. His voice is a little quieter than usual.

“Cursed.” Cassidy doesn’t elaborate. Genji doesn’t look away.

There’s a thermos in the car’s cup holder and a map of Venice on the dashboard screen. The silence hangs over Cassidy like smoke, and not the good kind. Genji shifts the car out of park and drives out of the garage. The needle of the speedometer jitters around the speed limit like Genji’s barely holding himself back from flooring the gas. Once they’ve rolled out of the garage, Cassidy looks out of the window at the sand-and-sea colored city around him. After traveling so long, it’s hard to be impressed by the scenery, even on the Mediterranean. He looks back at Genji, squinting through the sunlight.

“What do you got in the thermos there?”

“Nothing for you.” Genji takes a sip from it, making a point. Cassidy used to bother him in Blackwatch with this exact question to pawn a drink of some weird, fancy tea off of him. Genji used to over-brew it strong enough for his taste buds to sense it, since the damage to his body ran too deep to imagine, and then add a packet of shitty sugar-free sweetener from the Blackwatch cafeteria. Does he do the same thing now?

“Aw, you sure?” Cassidy pesters.

“Yes. This,” he shakes the thermos, “is tea I have not had since I was a teenager. Difficult to find, even in my… Extensive travels.”

“I ought to look for some of those good Cuban cigars, sometime.” He raises his eyebrows. “Usually I ain’t searchin’ for much more than targets or cash.”

“A bounty hunter at heart, no?” Genji’s taking them a ways outside of town now, and streets turn to roads turn to gravel paths.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!” Cassidy’s tempted to collapse in the passenger’s seat and nap until he reaches the mystery destination, but he’s also tempted to talk Genji’s ear off. He’d rather not wake up with a surprise blade to the throat, anyhow. He leans back.

“Where were ya before Venice?” he asks, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt.

“Hm. You first.”

“France, ‘fore I got cursed. Now, where were you?”

“Hanamura. Got bored. Who cursed you?”

“Talon.” Cassidy tries not to look at his hand, and fails. He pauses. “How’d you get bored halfway across the world?”

“The world changes, and I do not.” Genji turns away from him, looking out the driver’s side window. Cassidy scoffs. Genji carries himself like a machine now, ramrod straight, and someone’s cleaned up all that exposed wiring. Hasn’t changed? Cassidy thinks. He’s damn near unrecognizable.

“Wanna tell me where I’m gettin’ taken yet?” Cassidy leans across the dashboard, looking at the mini-map. According to their GPS, they’re leaving Venezia Mestre for some countryside.

“To fix your hand.”

“I said where.”

“What, do you think I am trying to kill you…” Genji hesitates. “Again?” Cassidy laughs.

“If you are, you ain’t succeeding. Minute you actually try something funny…” Cassidy makes a finger gun and imitates firing it at Genji. He only shakes his head.

“Bounty hunter and Inheritor at heart.”

The drive’s minutes feel like hours, melting into each other in the almost-summer sun. The car’s AC is shot, and dust swirls in the air. The situation starts to clarify in Cassidy’s mind—he’s in a car with a man who’s a stranger to him now. A very heavily armed Inheritor stranger who’d just pointed a katana at him. The buildings start to turn into grassy fields outside, and the Sun lowers closer to the horizon. Genji hasn’t moved a muscle the whole time. He’s always like that, only moving if it’s absolutely necessary. I guess gettin’ rebuilt for a utility makes you pretty damn utilitarian, Cassidy thinks.

Then, he thinks: What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Notes:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/33NxcVXETzyx10pDlkHF42?si=HSWTeHa3R7ij7j2W8Iv8Xw&pi=Lct5PNzGSUKUk the music that made me write this damn book. Formatted on mobile so I’m not sure if it will open… correctly.

Chapter 2: Matador - The Buttertones

An hour passes in near silence. Cassidy pokes Genji a few times to try to bother him, but he stays robotically still. Back in the day, one jab from either of them could turn a whole day into a fight. Now, that space is only filled by the sound of cars passing and Genji tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

The smooth, uninterrupted countryside is broken by a boxy house on a distant hill. Cassidy looks down at the map in the center console, and sees that the navigation system is pointing towards the building. It’s still a few miles of stretched-out plains and flat grass away.

“Awfully remote,” Cassidy mutters.

“Hm?”

“You heard me.” He rests his arm by the window. “If you did all this just to shoot me and leave me to the vultures, I’d be pissed.”

“I do not know if they have vultures on the Mediterranean.” Genji sounds more relaxed than Cassidy feels. “We are going to a safehouse—safe for you as well as me.”

“Better be.”

Genji shrugs and looks at the road again. The house—the safehouse—is getting closer as Genji speeds up to it. It’s old but tidy, with a gravel driveway smoothed over by time. Rose bushes line the front porch, trimmed into perfect boxes but wilting along the edges. There’s a light on inside.

Genji pulls into the driveway without checking his surroundings. Cassidy cringes. No traps or mercenaries pop out of the bushes, but he stays on alert. He climbs out of the passenger’s side and puts his hands on his hips, scrutinizing the cream colored siding and tiny garden for some kind of catch.

“This really the place?”

“Yes. If she cannot help you…” Neither of them finish the thought. Genji shuts the car off and gets out in front of him.

He strolls up the door, familiar and comfortable. Genji’s reaction be damned, Cassidy still doesn’t like the place. He doesn’t like most places, in fact. There’s a doormat with “Welcome!” printed on it in cursive in front of the door. Beside it is a potted plant, which Cassidy squints at. On one of the larger leaves, pointing at the front step, is a nondescript fly. He pokes the leaf, frowning. The fly doesn’t move.

“This is probably a camera,” Cassidy mutters under his breath. Genji ignores him, crouches, and lifts the doormat. Sure enough, there’s a nondescript house key beneath it. He picks it up with a little flourish.

Then, instead of just walking in, he rings the doorbell.

Cassidy snaps his hand back to Peacekeeper. Every muscle in his body tenses up as he listens. Footsteps pad across the house on the other side of the door, then abruptly pause. The sound of locks and bolts opening lasts for a few seconds. Slowly, carefully, the door opens.

The woman in the doorway has white-blonde hair, sweatpants, and glasses that she pushes up her nose as she opens the door all the way. Thin frown lines are etched across her face. The look is a far cry from her old makeup, superhero costume, and halo, but Cassidy knows her.

“Genji! Oh, what do you need this time?” Angela Ziegler asks. “And who—wait, Cole?” Cassidy relaxes the hand on Peacekeeper, still not removing it entirely. Ziegler was never one for fighting, but Cassidy’s mistaken other people for pacifists before; a few of them beat him into the next month for the mistake.

“The one and only,” he responds. Somehow, he sounds relaxed.

“It’s been years now… Small talk won’t cover it all, now.” The reality of the situation seems to set in for her—that is, having two armed Inheritors on her doorstep. “Though I assume this isn’t a social call?”

“When is it ever?” Genji asks with a sigh. “I will try not to keep you long. May we come in?” Ziegler looks him up and down, from his casual clothing to his sharp armor plates and soldier’s bearing. Cassidy wonders how long it’s been since Genji's seen the doctor. She finally steps to the side, holding the door open.

The inside of Ziegler’s house is just as neat as the outside, if a little cozier. A small window in the kitchen, across from the front door, gives Cassidy a distant view of the Mediterranean. Ziegler pours herself a cup of coffee that smells too black to drink.

“So. What brings you and the cowboy here? You must know I’m retired, Genji,” Ziegler says. Genji pauses as if he’s about to say something. After a beat, he just grabs Cassidy’s left hand and holds it up to show her. She squints, then pokes Cassidy’s pinkie finger. A wisp of black smoke trails from it. She furrows her brow.

“An Inheritor’s curse on someone outside of their bloodline? They would have to be a serial killer or something to make their Inheritance this powerful.”

“Cursed by someone outside of your bloodline?” She holds Cassidy’s hand up. “Someone with an Inheritance this powerful has to have blood on their hands already… Quite a bit of it.” She shudders.

“Yeah, I coulda figured the guy called ‘Reaper’ was a fan of murder. Got me just a couple days ago,” Cassidy replies. Ziegler drops his hand like it’s on fire.

“The Talon agent? Oh, what have you gotten yourself into?” Ziegler stands from the counter and goes to the front windows, looking through them suspiciously before shutting the curtains. “I wonder if letting you in here was a good decision.”

“Angela, please,” Genji interjects. “You have worked miracles before.” Ziegler narrows her eyes.

“Do not bring your cybernetics into this. I cannot reverse a curse, and the Inheritors who could would charge you a fortune. I do apologize.” For someone who’s worked with Inheritors for most of her career, she still seems scared by them. Cassidy drums his fingers on the table with his good hand.

“Would they take a couple million dollars and change?” he asks. Ziegler takes a long drink of coffee and rolls her eyes, knowing exactly what he’s after.

“Do not tell me you’re chasing another bounty.”

“Heritage Necklace. Three keys to unlock its vault, three-bajillion reward,” Cassidy says. She hesitates. She’s probably thinking about how stupid it would be to give an Inheritor that much power. After some deliberation, she slumps her shoulders.

“It’s a big risk, getting entrenched in Inheritor business like that.” She pauses. “It’s also a big payout. I… I’m afraid it may be one of your only options.” The clock behind her reads eight PM. Her eyes avoid Cassidy’s.

“‘Only?’ Didn’t think we were in dire straits yet.”

“I mean…”

“C’mon, Angie,” Cassidy says, trying his hardest to sound nice. It doesn’t work. Ziegler breathes in like she’s about to dive into cold water.

“Curses like these never stay stable,” she says, voice low. “Without treatment, this will spread up from your hand, to your arm, to your shoulder. From there, it can go to your chest, and…” She trails off, settling on tightly squeezing her fist next to her heart. Translation: nothing good. The silence of her kitchen becomes overwhelming, the cool kitchen lights a spotlight on Cassidy. Genji snaps shurikens in and out of his arm, fidgeting.

“How much longer does he have?” Genji asks. Ziegler picks up her coffee and stands. She doesn’t push in her chair when she starts to walk away.

“There are two guest rooms at the end of the hall. Be gone by morning, for all of our safeties. I keep some basic supplies in the guest room closets in case of emergency—help yourselves.”

“Angela.”

“I hope you find the Necklace, Cole.”

“Mercy,” Genji snaps. She pales, stopping on the way to her small living room.

“Don’t call me that.” She turns around slowly to face Cassidy, eyes narrowed, posture slouched and helpless. She exhales. “You, Cassidy, have about one week.” With that, she spins back to her room, plain cardigan whipping behind her. Cassidy looks at the soot smudges on her white countertop from where his fingers had been. He forces his legs to move, then starts toward the guest room.

He’s dizzy on the way there, and he has to wonder if it’s from standing up too fast or from getting an ultimatum. As much as he was one of the crew in Blackwatch’s shitshow, he always thought he was safe from harm. There was red tape surrounding him, people protecting him, and a gun that never failed him. Now he has a deadline and a useless hand to remind him of it. Functionally, he’s alone. May as well lay down in Ziegler’s guest room for a week and let the curse take me, he thinks. Sleepin’ in a real bed and gettin’ high off her painkillers—there are worse ways to go.

He hears quiet footsteps ahead, where Genji’s checking one of the guest rooms. He sighs, shaking off the morbid thought. Cassidy misses some obvious stuff sometimes, but he isn’t going to miss an opportunity. Especially not one of this caliber.

He joins Genji in the room on the left. The walls are the same blue as an empty sky, but the rest of the room is a testament to Ziegler’s poor decorating skills. Genji is crouched in a corner, making himself small as he searches a cabinet. There’s a pile of junk behind him, half of it useful and half of it impossibly dusty and moth-eaten. He doesn’t acknowledge Cassidy at all. He lightly kicks the pile of supplies.

“Earth to Genji. How’s it going?”

“There are some basic toiletries, clothes, and a biotic field here,” Genji says. “It makes for a decent resupply.”

“I’m talkin’ to you.” Cassidy crosses his arms. Genji stands, posture straightening back into aloofness.

“Yes?” he asks. Cassidy pauses—he didn’t think this far ahead. He only wants to fill the post-death-sentence silence.

“You ever chased a bounty before?” he decides.

“No.” Genji starts putting some of Ziegler’s supplies into a bag. Cassidy’s own bag is sitting in Genji’s car, an impossibly ancient leather thing. He sits on the bed behind Genji, swinging his legs back and forth. He coughs.

“I assume we’re sticking together,“ Cassidy continues, forcing his voice to be casual and easy. He still kicks back and forth. Genji picks up the bag and takes uncomfortably long to think about it. He glances back at Cassidy.

“I was hoping Angela would cure you.” He doesn’t look away. “This Necklace’s bounty is not a mission I can afford to waste time on.”

“Ain’t like you’re the one who’s on death’s door.”

“There are other things at stake,” Genji says coldly. He turns around again, breaking Cassidy’s gaze. Cassidy’s hand drifts to Peacekeeper, more as a comfort for himself than a threat to Genji.

“So you’re leavin’ me to die.” He chuckles softly. “Hell of a reunion.” 

“That is no longer an option,” Genji says, sounding disappointed by the fact. “Without a cure, you would actually die. I cannot let you rot here, alone and unarmed, while I still have debt to pay.”

“Debt? Hell did I do for you?” Cassidy presses. Genji doesn’t answer properly, only throwing the back of restocked supplies onto the bed.

“Do not push your luck, Cassidy. Besides, more eyes will make an easier search.” He shrugs. “Or that is wishful thinking, and we will both die. Less boring either way, no?”

“You know, Genji, I feel so appreciated.” Cassidy snorts.

“Would you rather die in a week?” Genji asks. Cassidy raises his hands, not feeling as insulted as he should. Arguments like this used to last for hours, all of them comfortable. Genji doesn’t so much as look at him now.

Cassidy checks his new burner phone. The first thing he sees is the bounty collector’s information, highlighted in his document app. From what he sees, this guy’s a millionaire from savvy trading and not much else. It doesn’t matter if he’s a stock broker or a secret hitman—as long as the bounty’s paid, Cassidy’s happy. And alive.

“You wanna be credited for the bounty later? It’s a lot less formal with Inheritors, so you won’t end up on any side of the law if you don’t want.”

“No. This is not something I am proud of.”

“Oh, like you’re so highbrow.”

“Compared to you?” Genji asks, effectively shutting him up. It’s getting darker outside, but Genji’s still full of energy. He never seems tired—even back when he was on the verge of passing out from Inheritance overuse in Blackwatch, he never looked like he’d quit. He was too busy to be tired. What does he want with the necklace money, anyway? Cassidy yawns.

“I’m gonna hit the hay on this one. Not really energized after nearly gettin’ struck by lightning.”

“At least none of her attacks hit.” Genji taps his finger against the blade still strapped across his back, smug.

“Yeah, yeah, thanks,” Cassidy says. “G’night.” 

He leaves for the guest room across the hall, silence trailing after him. The moment he’s alone, his mood gets heavier. Cassidy has one week left to live and no plan to get the first key. He almost slams the door behind him. The bed squeaks when he collapses onto its gray duvet. The room is more comfortable than anything he’s seen in a few months and change, but he can’t relax. He still can’t feel his fingers. He begins unlatching his body armor and hoping he can pretend to rest.

-

The next morning, Cassidy walks into the kitchen and sees Genji and Ziegler sitting in silence. A now-cold plate of plain toast and fruits lies untouched on the counter. Sunlight filters through a window, shining on swirling dust motes. Ziegler’s head is bowed like she’s praying. You know it’s dire straits when the angel’s prayin’, Cassidy thinks.

Across from the kitchen is a living room with a fireplace. Pinned above the mantle, where some people would put old rifles or taxidermied deer heads, there’s a pair of metal wings. The yellow panels of not-quite-feathers are the brightest things in the house. Her Overwatch days—to some, her glory days—immortalized. A medic with angel wings makes for a great mascot, at least. Cassidy looks back at the real Ziegler in the kitchen. Despite it all, she still has anti-Inheritor charms on her fingers, tiny rings of bone and feathers. Cassidy takes a seat.

“Why’d you pick Italy to retire to, anyhow?” Cassidy asks. Ziegler looks up. Her blonde hair is tangled, and there are deep bags beneath her eyes. She picks up a piece of toast, less to eat and more to keep her hands busy.

“It’s a beautiful place. Right on the coast, with pleasant weather. Quiet.”

“Oh, like base was just bustling,” Cassidy says, rolling his eyes. He takes a strawberry from the breakfast platter, even though it looks a little old and squishy. Ziegler frowns.

“It was.”

“Huh?”

“On Overwatch’s side, ‘quiet’ was barely a word,” Genji says to him. “Not ours. Blackwatch had more responsibilities, and less time to chat about them.”

“What do you mean, ‘ours?’ You did join Overwatch—and I’d say you had plenty of responsibilities there, too,” Ziegler says.

“Sure.”

Ziegler stands up to refill her coffee, holding a little yellow mug that looks handmade. She shakes her head, eyes a little distant. Cassidy zones out looking at the sea through the window.

“I never liked the Blackwatch side of base,” she admits. “I swear Reyes kept the lights dimmer for a spooky atmosphere! I would not put it past him.”

“Oh, he did that whenever one of the suits tried to bother our side of base. You fell for it?” Cassidy raises an eyebrow while Ziegler shakes her head.

“I didn’t fall for anything. I had just know Inheritors back home. They were strict about being peaceful, not letting their natural tempers get the best of them. They’d never gotten into so much as a schoolyard fight! When I met the members of Blackwatch…” She trails off, sipping her coffee. Genji’s face is hidden, but he may as well be staring at her.

“Go on,” Genji says, voice low and tempered. He leans forward.

“Your Inheritances were strong enough to destroy armies. I know firsthand that Inheritance doesn’t strengthen without bloodshed.”

“What’re you implying?” Cassidy asks, hoping he’s wrong. Ziegler takes a deep breath, mulling her words over. The ceiling light seems to make a spotlight over her.

“I’m only saying I’m glad Blackwatch had their own medic,” Ziegler finally jokes, trying to break the tension. “As much as I hated to have half-decent people around a woman like O’Deorain, I never wanted to be there alone.” 

The kitchen falls into a thick silence, and Cassidy looks down at his hand. Her words sting, as a respectable Blackwatch member, but he doesn’t blame Ziegler for being a little spooked. The fella who cursed me was from the same bloodline as… The thought trails away like smoke, and he frowns. That’s not a man he can think about this early and this sober. 

Genji used to fall into the same category. Cassidy’s never been very organized, but he learned how to partition his days into pieces he could live with after the fall of Overwatch. Wake with the sun, whenever that was. Pack his things, swap locations, and make sure he was never there. Hunt the target until either they were dead or the sun came back down. Sleep as long as he could stand to.

Those little moments between a dead target and a new day were what got him. He’d have a half-crushed beer can in hand, take his hat off, and stare up at the ceiling fan as it spun. He rotted on sheets that always smelled like bleach and starch. In these moments, where there was nothing to do but sit and wait for life to keep moving past him, he had time to think. His thoughts returned to one man.

He’d think about their fights. He’d think about how they were always next to each other, but couldn’t tell if they were close. He’d think about arms around his waist, a head against the crook of his neck, still under lowlights so he couldn’t see Genji’s face. The ceiling fan spun on, and Cassidy got lightheaded from the daily routine. Could either of them have said more? Where was Genji, anyway? Was he still alive—

—then, it’s the next day, and the cycle repeats.

“Hello?” Ziegler asks him, snapping him out of his thoughts. Cassidy blinks. Genji is next to him right now. He’s alive, mostly healthy, and a different man entirely.

“Zoned out, I think. Sorry ‘bout that.” 

“Clearly.” Genji sounds amused. “We are taking our leave soon, no?”

“Mm-hm, let’s get our stuff. Thanks again, Doc.”

“I’d like to say it’s no problem,” she says, “but I am a doctor. Being paranoid is my life’s work!” She chuckles. Cassidy laughs along, half-assed, and excuses himself from the kitchen.

Even with his things in it, the guest room feels empty. Cassidy hopes Ziegler’s room is less lifeless, but the state of the house doesn’t give him any hope. He adds some of the old Overwatch supplies back to his bag, filling it nearly to bursting. Sunlight filters through the blinds at the perfect angle to burn his eyes, so he walks to the window to shut them. Outside, the country hills protect Ziegler’s house from the world, and the Sun shines in a picturesque sky. From here he has a good view of the driveway, main road, and rolling fields. 

As he looks over the horizon, a tiny shadow passes in front of the window. Cassidy snaps the curtains shut.

“Dammit all,” he mutters to himself. It might be an animal. He sits beneath the windowsill, dread clinging to him in a film. In the corner of the room sits a floor lamp, which Cassidy drags over, keeping his head below the window. This isn’t the first time he’s dealt with trouble, but he’d prefer to know what kind it is. He gives himself a count of three, then shoves the lamp against the curtains, rustling them open. A shot cracks through the air from nowhere. The lightbulb in the lamp shatters, and a bullet lodges itself in the guest room wall. Cassidy grins—there’s a sniper outside, and they’d taken his bait.

Cassidy regroups in the kitchen with his bag over his shoulder and his head on a swivel toward the windows. None of the kitchen windows have curtains. Genji and Ziegler are hiding behind the counter, Genji snapping his shurikens in and out of his arm. Cassidy tries to crouch and walk over, which is only a little embarrassing to attempt in front of an actual ninja.

“Talon caught on fast, huh?” Cassidy says, huffing. “Sorry, Doc.” Ziegler rubs her eyes.

“Inheritors. Is trouble a part of you, or does it just follow you everywhere?” 

“‘Trouble’ is what Talon’s sniper is about to have when I get my hands on them.” Cassidy cracks his knuckles.

“We need to focus,” Genji snaps, “and get out of here without their attention.”

“Sorry, but I reckon they’re gonna pay attention to my bullets.”

“That is your death wish, not mine.” He snaps the shurikens into place a final time before crouching as low as he can and sneaking forward. He moves toward the front door, then pauses.

“Cassidy, the shot came from the guest room window, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“I have a plan. I will warn you, though, it is far from sophisticated.”

“Like that’s something I care about.” Cassidy laughs. Genji doesn’t react.

“The sniper should still be on the other side of the house. We will run to the car, drive fast, and pray.”

“Damn, sounds like a plan I’d make!”

“Shut up,” Genji says. He turns to Ziegler. “Will you be okay? I assume you do not want to tag along with us.”

“Not really,” she admits. “I have a cellar I can use to hide in the meantime, and I believe Talon’s more concerned about you two anyway. If you aren’t an Inheritor, you’re dirt beneath their feet.” Her laugh is light but bitter. Cassidy frowns, scratching the side of his head.

“I’d hate to leave you in danger like that, Doc.”

“If you want to keep me safe next time, do not show up here unannounced,” she says with a wry smile. “But in a pinch, I can handle myself. Good luck and godspeed.” With that, she inches toward the end of the hall, away from the kitchen. There is, in fact, a cellar door built into the carpet. Cassidy joins Genji by the door and prays the sniper hasn’t thought to move to the front of the house. Genji rests a hand on the doorknob and turns to him.

“Ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

Genji cracks the door open, scanning the area. He steps back, nods, and dashes through. Cassidy barely keeps up his mad dash to the car, boots slipping on the gravel in the driveway. He throws himself in the driver’s seat, while Genji is already slouched forward in the passenger’s side. For a moment, the only thing Cassidy can hear is the sound of both of their breathing, heavy and panicked. He glances around, and Genji lifts his head. They don’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

Crack. There’s a hole through the windshield. A bullet lodges in the back seat, and a wisp of smoke rises from it. Cassidy shifts the car into gear and floors it.

Making his way up the backroads, he sees a car parked across the middle of the drive. There’s a group of mercenaries in front of it—Talon cronies, judging by the uniforms—surrounding a woman. Not a hostage, technically, but a mercenary in her own right. A woman with fragile blue skin and a visor like a twisting crown that Cassidy’s only ever seen over the news. Widowmaker.

Cassidy fumbles around his hip, trying to unholster Peacekeeper. He speeds up, but the sedan is painfully slow and Talon’s car is already starting. Wind whistles from the hole in the windshield. He’s close enough to look Widowmaker in the eye. He braces himself and swerves.

The car bumps through the tall grass, poorly equipped for off-roading. Cassidy looks back and tries not to think about how much faster than him Talon is closing in. He presses the button to roll down the side window and leans out, Peacekeeper pointed behind him.

“What are you”–Genji draws the shortsword–”Just drive!” Cassidy filters him out, trying to lock his vision on the tires of Talon’s car despite the bumpy driving and the out-of-control gas and the shouting and the shooting and the–

Bang. Bang. Bang. Three shots kick up dust next to the speeding car. He’s close enough to see the driver. He looks to the front again; the wild grass is about to turn back into pavement. The car jostles as it gets back to the road, and Cassidy turns sharp right. Someone yells from Talon’s car, but he’s not paying any attention. His eyes focus on the front left tire.

Bang. The tire blows out. The car starts to spin.

Cassidy knows he could keep driving. It’d be very easy to keep driving. But the feeling of a fight’s stirring behind his temples and mist is starting to form around his hands. Genji stares at him, blade gleaming in the morning light. Cassidy slams on the breaks.

He steps out of the sedan, slow but not calm. Mercenaries tumble out of the car behind him, looking downright murderous. Good, he thinks. Could use a little excitement around here. A big man with a bigger gun lumbers toward him. Widow stays in the car, blue face shaded black by the tinted glass. Cassidy takes another step forward, kicking up dust from the pavement. He curses when he hears the other door open behind him.

Genji’s only halfway out the car when the mercenary meets Cassidy there, holding a machine gun up to his face. Hell kinda Talon mission needs a machine gun? Cassidy thinks first. I’m dead, he thinks second. He still holds Peacekeeper, letting instinct guide him. His vision blurs–it’s not like he needs it, anyhow.

Both guns fire. His shot is the only one that hits. He knows the shot hits, because the blood is the easiest thing to see, and he feels fine. But if both guns fired, how isn’t he mincemeat? Cassidy blinks. Genji’s holding his shortsword up, blade glowing green, stilled in concentration. He lets out an exhale that wracks his whole body. The other mercenaries are overcoming their shock quicker than Cassidy is. Genji’s unscathed save for a scratched-up shortsword. Deflecting bullets. Christ alive.

“Run.” Genji grabs him by the wrist, snapping him out of his reverie. “We can’t stay.”

The two run back to the car with mercenaries on their tailpipe. Cassidy ducks and rolls to avoid a wide spray of bullets, taking Genji down with him. He stands, wiping blood and dirt from his mouth, and holds up his revolver again. Talon’s his problem to deal with in the first place. He’s been fighting this whole time, building Inheritance energy, and now it’s burning behind his eyes like a headache. He steps away from the car and yells back at Genji.

“Drive!”

He doesn’t look away to see what Genji does. The Inheritance is already starting to take over, frenetic and painful and the most fun he’s capable of having. Something grazes his shoulder—he gets shot, barely. The pain is sharp, his mind is disjointed, and there’s only one thing he can do. He lets all the mercenaries become one, piecing a target together from overlays of the real world. It’s a blur of blood red. His head hurts. It’s all one target, he tells himself, an old mantra of his. It’s why I only need one bullet.

He fires.

The target cracks from one back to five, five mercenaries fall to the dirt, and Cassidy snaps back to the real world. He doesn’t see Widowmaker among the dead, and he doesn’t have the time to check. Genji didn’t leave—the car’s still idling behind him. Even the engine sounds impatient. Cassidy runs over, collapses into the passenger's side, and lets Genji drive. He melts against the pleather seat, the painful graze in his shoulder coming back into focus.

“Told you to drive earlier,” Cassidy says with a smile. He’s not sure why he’s smiling.

“I considered it. Both of us were nearly killed. You were wasting time showing off.”

“Showin’ off? I killed”—Cassidy looks through the rearview, back to where he left the mercenaries’ corpses—“five o’ them! And neither of us died!”

“We were almost killed by one man with a machine gun.”

“You didn’t have to jump in front of the guy like a shark to bait.” Cassidy says. Genji goes silent. The country roads are starting to go from gravel to pavement. The car’s going 80 where it should probably be near 40.

“It would be a waste of resources to let you die so soon,” he says frankly. “Besides, I am confident in my abilities. I would not have died either way.”

“You wouldn’t have died either way,” Cassidy repeats, incredulous. “And you say I’m showin’ off?”

“I will leave you on the side of the road.” Genji takes a turn, and Venice is back in their sights. “Do not pull a stunt like this again. You are only one man.”

“Sure, but I’m a hell of a guy.”

“Hmph.” The silence in the car isn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s a little easier to take. It doesn’t feel like a weight in his chest. The dashboard has a minimap pulled up to a new mystery location. Cassidy finally takes a look down at his shoulder, and pales. His jacket is stained an even darker red than usual, and he finds it’s still wet to the touch. He takes it off and holds it against the wound as tight as he can. Genji glances over.

“What did you do to your arm?”

“I didn’t do anything, I got shot!” Cassidy looks out the window onto the city, hoping no one’s looking back at him. It’s not every day you see a cowboy bleeding out in the front of a crapshoot SUV. Genji sighs and changes the subject.

“The first key will be easy to get. It’s being auctioned to the public tonight at…seven in the evening?” He zooms into the map.

“An auction? Who the hell would let a bunch of Inheritors into their classy charity event?" Cassidy asks, gritting his teeth against the pain of his—extremely minor—wound.

“Someone who doesn’t believe in superstition.”

“Someone stupid, then.” Cassidy scratches his beard. “And where’s this at?”

“You did not do your research, did you?” Genji asks with an accusatory tone. Cassidy tips his eyes beneath his hat and shakes his head.

“I know the museum, but the name’s escaping me.”

“National Archaeological Museum of Venice. Where have you been?”

“Not Venice!”

“Of course.” Genji turns at a gentle bend in the road. “I cannot be surprised, given the circumstances of your arrival. I am driving us to a library. Some parts of this mission are unknowns even to me.” Cassidy groans loudly, too disheveled and badass and actively bleeding to look in-place in a library.

“Hell are we goin’ to a library for? Can’t we just look up this Necklace trivia from here?”

“With what, our phones?” Genji scoffs. “Even with the security measures I have, a modern phone is just a tracker to the right people.”

“Like people from Talon looking for a key to a Necklace,” Cassidy finishes glumly.

“Exactly. Now all we must do is plan a mission on the museum—focus on stealth first.” He glances around before parking the car on the side of the empty road. He looks at Cassidy. “A gaping bullet wound would probably attract attention.”

“Oh.” Cassidy looks down at his shoulder again, lifting the jacket. Blood wells back up at the wound. He feels a little lightheaded, and presses the ‘bandage’ back into place. Genji gets out of the car and loops back around the side, opening his plain duffel bag. He rummages through it, blindly feeling until he pulls out a first aid kit. He taps the plastic cover with his metal fingers. Cassidy has to peer over the car seat at an odd angle to see him.

Genji climbs in the driver’s seat, opening the first aid kit. He hands a disinfectant spray, a little pack of gauze, and a stretchy bandage to Cassidy. Cassidy tries to take them all in one hand, but fumbles the gauze. He sets it all on the center console instead, then waits a moment. Genji tilts his head.

“You know how to do all of this by yourself, yes?” he asks, chuckling. Cassidy sighs, all drama.

“Yeah, alright.” It’s awkward trying to do first aid on himself, but Genji’s clearly still a little mad. He rolls up the bloody sleeve and sprays on the disinfectant, wincing at what feels like a cleansing burn. He puts gauze over it, and relaxes once the blood’s let up a little. Finally, he wraps the bandage over the gauze, keeping it in place. It used to be routine stuff for a Blackwatch mission—it’s almost nostalgic. At his side, Genji’s fiddling with the switches on a canister the size of a pill bottle. A miniature biotic field, Overwatch standard-issue.

“Hell’d you get that from?” he asks, finishing clipping the bandage.

“I did not leave Overwatch without a few souvenirs,” Genji says, amused. He turns the field on and hands it to Cassidy. He takes the canister, holds it next to his shoulder, and sighs. The light from the field acts as an instant balm, cooling and softening the pain. When he was still fresh out of Deadlock, Overwatch’s healing technology (and resident doctor) all seemed like God-given miracles. At least, it was easier to call them that then let someone explain the science to him.

“Thanks for all o’ this.” The wound barely feels like a scratch anymore.

“Repay me by fighting smarter. These idiots are not worth either of our lives.”

“Ah, I don’t think all that, then. Just if a fight starts, I wanna finish it.”

“Not exactly a noble goal.”

“Pretty noble for an Inheritor,” Cassidy jokes. Genji looks away. Cassidy realizes he hasn’t seen Genji’s Inheritance this whole time. Once again, the car falls silent. Genji grabs his duffel bag from the back and his thermos from the cupholder.

“I have to start driving again. I’m sure Talon is not going to forget about us anytime soon.” Cassidy’s shoulder aches, but his hand is numb. He nods and looks away, out the window. Genji doesn't talk, and the silence is stealing the air straight from his lungs. Cassidy tries to admire the deep blue sky and golden hills, but all he can see is Genji’s sharp, grey, impenetrable mask.

Chapter 3: The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven - The Black Angels

Notes:

posted this late, so I’ll be double-posting chapters

Genji didn’t seek out a library to safely use their ancient computers—he did it to find some actual books. After dropping the car off outside of Venice proper, Cassidy follows wherever Genji’s going, scanning the area for a building tall and imposing enough to be a library. The sun is starting to shift over into the afternoon. He looks up at the small, clustered buildings lining the cool alleyway.

“You sure you got the right address?”

“Yes.” Genji keeps his faceplate straight ahead. “…I think.” Cassidy glances down the path. Ahead lies what looks less like a door and more like a dark tunnel, lined with colorful walls and guarded by rotating book racks. As they move closer, the colorful walls become floor-to-ceiling stacks of books. A few people trickle in and out of the building, lazy and content in the mid-afternoon.

Genji and Cassidy slip through. The inside air is warm, but it’s a dry heat that’s more familiar to Cassidy than the hazy European summers he’s had to travel through so far. Books cover every surface, stretching high above his head and smothering too-small side tables. There’s a refitted canoe filled with books in the middle of the front room. Cassidy frowns when he notices the people at the front—cashiers.

“Thought this here was a library,” Cassidy mutters.

“It is close. Most of the libraries in Venice are religious archives, and most of Venezia Mestre is too nice to deal with Inheritors.” Genji picks up a random book from a table, inspecting the back.

“So we’re stuck with…” Cassidy looks around, “the book junkyard?”

“They must have some kind of organizational system.” Genji sounds less like he’s telling Cassidy and more like he’s reassuring himself. 

They start combing through the piles of books. Cassidy finds a stack of ten books on naval history offset with a single middle-grade fantasy novel. Genji picks out the largest books from the piles around him, then immediately discards them. The bookshop falls silent save for the sound of rustling paper—and the sound of Cassidy throwing a book once out of frustration. An elderly woman standing behind the cashiers glares at him for that, her eyes obscured by wire-rim sunglasses. The owner of the store, maybe, Cassidy muses while trying not to leap out of his boots. Genji taps him lightly on the shoulder.

“I have hit… What is the phrase?” Genji gestures for Cassidy to come over—he peers over Genji’s shoulder. “Oh, right. I have hit the jackpot.” Genji points at a pile of books on a chair. The Encyclopedia Britannica series, updated for 2060. Cassidy squints at them.

“I don’t know a whole lot, but I probably know more than the lil’ blurb in there.”

“Think of the index.”

“Sources.” Cassidy grabs the nearest book and opens up the back cover. Genji follows suit, starting with a volume near the other end of the series. He moves a few of the books aside to sit in the chair, while Cassidy crouches down next to it. He’s hitting ‘H’ for ‘Heritage,’ ‘N’ for ‘Necklace,’ ‘I’ for ‘Inheritors,’ and more. He’s close, but no cigar.

“Why didn’t you research the Necklace in advance?” Genji mutters, more at the encyclopedias than Cassidy.

“Found out about it yesterday,” he says anyway. “If you couldn’t tell, I was a little busy.”

“I have known about the Necklace since I was young. I began research the day the bounty was announced.” He sets aside another book.

“And when did they announce that bounty, there?”

“…The day before yesterday.” Cassidy snorts. Genji ignores him and leans closer to the index for volume seven. He sets a finger on the page, tracing down the ‘H’ section. He stops. The paper is thin and smooth like a magazine, but Genji flips back to the middle of the book with ease. Cassidy leans closer to read as Genji flips just one more page forward. The page spread is taken up by an image of a helicopter, H, but the opposite page is covered in pictures of lower quality and smaller print.

One of the pictures is warped by a printing error. Despite the blocked out shading, Cassidy recognizes the thin glass shell and pool of red at the bottom. Under H is the Heritage Necklace. The description reads as follows:

The Heritage Necklace is an artifact that grants increased energy and power to Inheritors. It was probably created in the fifteenth century, although some date it to 900s BCE with the creation of the first Inheritors. It is now in a vault that requires three keys for entry; the vault and keys have all been lost.

“Lost,” Cassidy says, eye twitching. “Of course it’s lost. ‘Course we have to be the first idiots to find it. Can we leave now? When’s the auction?”

“It’s in four hours,” Genji responds drily. “We will be staying.”

“I can just go there myself.”

“Who does that help?”

“If my aim’s any good?” Cassidy squeezes his left hand, letting black ash crumble from it. “It helps me.”

“I will not swoop in to save you again,” Genji warns. “Once was plenty. Let us stick to the plan.”

“Who needs a plan? I have a gun and a Deadeye.”

“And no sense of self-preservation, clearly.”

“If I die, give Angie my cigars. It’ll piss her off.” Cassidy starts stacking books back on the chair. “Then… I dunno, you could probably pilfer the rest.” Genji pauses for a fraction of a second, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hesitation. He stands from their corner of the bookstore, trying not to tip over a nearby bookshelf.

“I will not be taking any of it.” He walks away without looking, and Cassidy scrambles to tail him. He weaves through the shelves for a few seconds before Cassidy realizes where they’re going—to talk to the owner.

The back of the store smells like sea salt and dust, and Cassidy holds back a sneeze. There’s an exit straight to a canal with no door, and a warm breeze wafts through. Water laps up at the entrance, but never enters the store. The storeowner stands at a counter that looks like it’s made of driftwood, refined just enough to have a flat surface and not much else. Genji drops the encyclopedia on her desk with a thud to get her attention. She tilts her head and smiles. Her smile has thin lines around it like cracks in stone, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s genuine with those black-tinted glasses.

“What are you after?”

“Do you have…” Genji leans over the encyclopedia. “The Heritage Necklace: Academic Perspectives on Spirituality?” The owner puts a hand in front of her mouth, trying to hold back a laugh. Her fingers are covered in rings, but they aren’t the typical boney anti-Inheritor charms. They’re thin, and almost look like silver lace against her brown skin.

“That book is a bunch of hogwash, and I don’t sell hogwash.” The owner turns to the stacks of books behind her, running her fingers over them. “Come back here, won’t you? And for chrissake, don’t talk so loudly about this stuff!”

She walks with practiced confidence to the back corner of her store. Long braids swish behind her, adorned with the same silver charms that cover her fingers. Cassidy follows her, hand poised to draw Peacekeeper, while Genji stays behind the counter. She puts her hand on top of a wooden lockbox, then turns her head to look at Genji.

“Come on. We don’t have all day—you two only have until, what was it, 7:00?” she asks. Genji balls his right hand into a fist; the hand that connects to his shuriken.

“What makes you believe that?”

“You were just discussing an auction. Unless you’re trying to buy corner-store antiques, there’s only one auction any Inheritor would be attending tonight.” She grabs a key from the front pocket of her blouse. “You’re lucky you’re in good company.”

“I don’t know if good’s the word,” Cassidy mutters. The woman opens the lockbox, then stands again. She puts one hand on Cassidy’s shoulder, then uses the other hand to tip her glasses down. Cassidy stiffens. Where a human would have two eyes, the owner has two clusters. Each cluster has over a dozen eyes, crowded and squeezed together like soap bubbles. A single eyelid blinks, barely the size of a fingernail.

“It’s better than the alternative,” the old Inheritor counters. “A human would’ve driven you out by now.” She turns back to her little box, leaving Cassidy a little stunned. Genji doesn’t relax, but he steps up next to Cassidy. The woman takes a stack of papers from the box and hands it to Cassidy.

“My, ah, eyesight isn’t the best,” she says. “In exchange, I can see back. Wish I could see into the future, too. I’d make a killing as a fortune teller!”

“I’m sure.” Cassidy flips through the papers. It’s all research on the Necklace in nearly illegible handwriting, scrawled with a messiness that shows more than just blindness. There’s a photo included, too, of three people from behind. They’re entirely hidden in shadow, cutting a sharp silhouette against a dark street.

“Before this job, I was on after that Necklace like a hound dog after blood,” the woman continues. She pauses. “Or like a hound dog after the Necklace, considering what powers it.”

“What?”

“The legends say one of the first Inheritors spilled his blood into it before it was sealed. Undiluted Inheritance would make for a mighty fine power, no?” 

“It’s undignified,” Genji complains.

“So was most of your career,” she mutters. “Wait. I looked too far back, didn’t I? My bad.” Genji huffs. The woman takes a few of the papers back from Cassidy and sits on the floor, legs crossed like she’s more of a shaman than a historian. Cassidy shrugs and joins her, while Genji crouches.

“It's the keys you need, yeah?” She takes a page back out, running a hand over it. “I had them all narrowed down to Venice. The idiots who hid them didn’t travel far.”

“And one of them was found by… Some museum curator?” Genji asks, skeptical.

“Even better. It was put there on purpose so the museum could protect it. On an unrelated note, quite a few security guards retired that year.”

“And the other two?” The woman sighs at Genji, pinching the bridge of her nose. As her papers surround her, Cassidy realizes that this isn’t an academic interest. At some point, she needed the Necklace.

“The second key was buried with an Inheritor—probably one with fire powers in their lineage, unless the young man I interviewed was lying.” She picks up a miniature map of Venice. Under the glasses, Cassidy can see hate in her two-dozen eyes. “I had the third key pinpointed three years ago. I packed my bags and moved to Venice to get my hands on it. When I got there, the box was gone.”

“Gone?”

“You heard me.” She looks up at the ceiling. “Nothing was left but graffiti. A fucking smiley face. I was ready to kill whoever did it.” Cassidy looks down at his left hand, turning it and watching threads of smoke rise from it.

“Can I ask why?”

“I wanted to be able to see again. See the things here and now, in full color and clarity. And yes,” she rolls her eyes, “I’ve tried glasses.”

Cassidy’s struck by the statement, as if it’s pressing on an old wound and not letting up. He looks around the store until his eyes catch on the exit to the canal. The memory comes back, biting at his heels.

He reloads Peacekeeper, exhaling as slowly as he can. He needs his heart to pump a little slower before the next wave of attacks. At his right Genji crouches, looking physically no worse for wear. Cassidy asks him, after some unbearable pause, why he allowed himself to get turned into a cyborg. A weapon for Blackwatch.

“I wanted to be able to walk again.”

Genji in the present looks stiffer and more uptight than usual, which is saying a lot. Cassidy shrugs, hoping the motion will expel his own nerves. It’s just an auction. He chuckles.

“The first key’s for sale, second’s underground, and third’s not our problem until later. Gotcha.”

“You make it sound like a walk in the park.” The woman puts her papers back together and drops them in the lockbox. Cassidy can’t help but stare at the key as she re-locks it—what do the Heritage keys even look like? he wonders. Genji stands to leave in a snappy motion, but the Inheritor woman tugs on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“You. I’ll have you know,” she leans closer, still kneeling, “that the fable is true, and it’s about the Necklace. Don’t be the King.” Genji pulls his hand away and walks to the other side of the store in barely five strides.

Cassidy meanders after him, a frown etching his face with lines. Genji’s mask, of course, can’t show a single emotion. Still, he’s sitting up against a stack of books and staring into the middle distance.

“You were about to ask me what fable,” Genji grumbles. “Sorry, you would have said, ‘Hell kinda fable was that lady talkin’ ‘bout?’” The impression of Cassidy is scarily spot-on, and he was about to ask that.

“Uncalled for,” he says, sitting beside Genji. He stays silent for a few moments, not moving a single half-inch. Does he still need to breathe? Cassidy wonders. Finally, he shifts, picking at the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Okay.” Genji breathes out, tinny through the mask. “The Necklace was a magnet. Whenever Inheritors appeared, this thing followed. It passed from hand to hand, empire to empire, leaving bloodshed in its wake.” The way he speaks sounds memorized, like some kind of script from long ago. He hesitates.

“A few centuries later there was a king—no one knows where the kingdom was—and an advisor. The advisor had been an equal of his in some long-ago war. Even when he became ‘advisor,’ he was given much more leeway than he had any right to. Armies of his own.”

“Then it went to shit somehow?” Cassidy guesses drily. Genji doesn’t look him in the eye.

“Of course. Because none of this was enough for him. See, the king had the Heritage Necklace under lock and key, never using it. The advisor dreamt of using its powers for good.

“That’s not what he did, though. The king, once an equal, became an obstacle to him. Years of dissent and tension built between the two, as the kingdom was plunged into ruin around them. The advisor finally snapped. He killed the king.”

Genji’s voice descends into a monotone, like it’s a story he’d rather not be there to tell.

“With the Necklace aiding him, the advisor destroyed the entire kingdom along with its ruler. There aren’t any archaeological records of the place—some say that’s proof it’s a fable. Others say there’s no records because the entire kingdom turned to ash.”

It’s a tragedy. It’s a fight with no winners being turned into a battle between good and evil. Greed being turned into righteousness, Inheritance being turned into a blight. It’s a shotgun blast to the skull, too much red tape, an explosion—Cassidy rubs his temples. It’s just a fable.

“Hell of a story,” he says, looking out onto the dark water.

“I had no clue it was about the Heritage Necklace before now,” Genji admits. He brings his knees closer, resting his arms around them. “…My brother just used to tell me this story for its morals.”

“Don’t destroy kingdoms for fun?”

“Do not trust anyone. No matter how close they are, act as if they are a potential enemy.” Genji chuckles, bitter. “It is rather fitting that Han—that he was the one to tell me that.” Cassidy frowns, realizing how little he does that’s worth trusting. He tries to think of things he holds against Genji, but all he can do is replay that moment where he swooped into the bakery with his shuriken drawn, ready to fight Talon single-handedly. He cracks his knuckles one by one.

“…You wanna quit talkin’ about it?”

“Yes, please.” Genji slides his legs down again, relaxing. Cassidy stares at the unorganized book titles ahead, only a little more interesting than reading the ingredients list of a soup can. He reviews his muddy mental plan for the auction. His eyes widen.

“How’re we betting on that key without any money?” he asks, getting the feeling that he could’ve asked this a lot earlier.

“We aren’t doing anything. Talon is going to do our dirty work. We will jump in, ‘expose’ the villains, and save the day.” If he had to guess, Genji’s raising his eyebrow at him from under the visor. Cassidy flushes red.

“So, no shooting the shit out of anyone?”

“Probably not. And do not look so disappointed,” Genji says. “A stealth mission will be much safer.” 

“You’re telling me the ninja wants a stealth mission? I’ll be damned.” Cassidy grins as Genji stands and picks up a random book. He turns his visor to him, chin held high. It occurs to Cassidy that he still has two more hours to kill here, and Genji looks like he’s thinking about killing him. Genji crosses his arms.

“Shut up.”

-

The auction is technically a public event, but only a select few will actually bid—the filthiest of the filthy rich, that is. A curious crowd lines in the doors to the museum, murmurs rising in a mix of English and Italian.

Even the folding chairs are fancy in the main hall. There are more paintings than blank spaces on the walls, and the ceiling is lined with a grid of paintings in intricate circular frames. Sunlight shines through sheer curtains on the windows, reflecting warm light off of gilded walls and checkered tile floor. The place doesn’t feel like a museum—it feels like a photoshoot.

Some people sit in the rows of folding chairs set up for the auction, but many more are standing for the spectacle. The people bidding are supposedly well-known faces in the business world. Ain’t classy enough to know a single one of them, Cassidy thinks, almost smug. Genji’s wearing his “omnic” visor, though there are few other omnics in attendance. That’s okay—there are probably even fewer cyborgs. Cassidy, sadly, had to ditch the hat.

“I might move up a bit, can’t see a goddamn thing from here,” Cassidy says.

“We cannot draw attention. If someone catches you…” he trails off, looking around the crowd. A few uniformed security guards stand at the back of the hall. A man in a too-tight suit walks to the front of the hall with the artifacts to be sold, standing in front of a tall box with a cloth draped over it. He taps on a tiny microphone in the front.

“Hello? Yes, hello. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s auction is a special one for the Museum. An assortment of pottery from the ancient Greeks, a bust statue of an emperor, and more. But we all know the star of the show, yes?” The crowd breaks into excited mutters as his voice echoes through the hall.

The host steps to the side of the covered box and whips the cloth off with a flourish. Unsurprisingly, inside the plexiglass box, is the first Heritage Key. It’s just as gilded and intricate as the hall it rests in, and it’s set with a jewel darker than blood.

“The first Heritage Key!” The people around Cassidy are restrained, with just enough polite oohs and ahhs to seem interested. A few people are standing instead of sitting, ditching the conservative cream-and-gold trappings of the other bidders for plainclothes. Cassidy knows the look, knows that every single one of them has a weapon hidden on them. Bounty hunters.

“This key is the first of three needed to get the elusive Heritage Necklace,” the host continues. “It’s made of solid gold with a beautifully cut garnet center, and is sought by collectors worldwide.”

“And Inheritors,” Genji mutters under his breath. Cassidy stifles a laugh. In his finest flannel, jeans, and weaponry, it’s clear which group he belongs to.

“Of course, you didn’t come here just to hear my beautiful voice,” the host jokes, stepping aside to reveal the first item for sale—an old statue. “The starting price for this thing is ten thousand, so ready your cards, and let the bidding begin!”

Cassidy had wondered earlier if the auction was a scam—if it is, then everyone’s falling for it hook, line, and sinker. It’s probably legit, given the official museum endorsement and lack of “silent bidders.” The host starts the auction off on a bust of some unknown ancient Roman. Despite his missing marble nose and lack of identity, the bidding starts to climb. Most of the people raising signs to make bids are the ones sitting, not the standing crowd. 

“I’d bet ten kajillion euros for a real piece of Roman history!” A person in a yellow sweater and tan jacket’s talking to an elderly woman next to Cassidy. The woman laughs.

“I don’t think we have that much money,” she says. The rest of the crowd is alive with similarly random chatter. Genji is entirely silent. As bidding continues, the evening becomes a blur of hunks of ceramic and marble.

“Probably saving the best for last, huh?” Cassidy remarks. Genji just shrugs, and Cassidy can’t help but feel high-strung. For an event that’s paying towards saving his life from a curse, there’s a whole lot of nothing happening. A man in the main crowd is given a vase in rust-orange and black. 

“Yeah, and they’re really taking their time,” a woman says beside him.

Cassidy looks to his left. A young woman in an oversized sweatshirt and beanie is giving the host a surly look from across the hall. Genji leans forward to get a look at her, the fake-Omnic mask glinting dully off the lights in the hall. His sweatshirt looks like it’s the same brand as hers, if not the same make.

“I assume you are here for the same thing as…” Genji looks around, “a third of the attendees?”

“Uh-huh. Once they clear out all the nerd shit and auction the Key, there’s gonna be a frenzy bad enough to make piranhas jealous,” she flicks her card with a black-painted nail, “and I wanna be there to see it.”

The next item, some old manuscript, gets handed off to its new owner. An elderly woman with pearly white teeth and pearl earrings snatches the manuscript, crumbling one of the edges. Cassidy isn’t an archaeologist by any stretch of the imagination, but he has to wince. When the next item is presented to the half-asleep crowd, the woman in the hoodie has to stand on her toes to see. She curses, walks in front of Cassidy, and settles into a clearer spot beside Genji. The host starts to wax poetic about a single pottery shard. The woman lightly elbows Genji in the side, a smile forming on her tan face.

“How much are you willing to bet his talks are all scripted?” she asks, snickering.

“All the money I own. Look at him.” He points. “I doubt he knows anything that doesn’t lead straight back to his checkbook.”

“Checkbook! Oh, you’re funny.” She shakes her head. Her beanie covers all but a few strands of dark hair. The bidding starts on the pottery shard, but Cassidy’s focus is far from it.

“Where’d you come out here from?” he asks, making a stab at some small talk.

“My home.” She smiles, and it’s a sharp little piranha grin.

“What for?”

“Oh, I’m just a tourist. All this stuff about a reward sounds nice, but I don’t think I have the chops to get it.” She chuckles. Cassidy raises an eyebrow, shoving his cursed hand further in his pocket.

“Look, this ain’t exactly Kansas anymore. I’m sure there are better vacation spots than,” he glances around at the poorly disguised bounty hunters, “this auction.”

“Do I look like I’m from Kansas?” 

“Ha, ha,” Cassidy deadpans. The woman hums, eyes caught on Genji. He doesn’t seem to notice. The hall itself is growing darker from the slow sunset outside.

“Now, who would you be?” she asks, looking into the fake eyes of Genji’s visor. Genji stiffens.

“Um.” His voice is strangled. “Benjamin.”

“Sofia. It’s really nice to meet you.” Cassidy has a feeling neither of their names are real ones. He makes a mostly successful effort not to laugh.

“Thank you. Is there anything you need?” He’s absentminded as he asks, always keeping at least one eye on the auction in front of him. A woman in a headscarf and long gloves is given the pottery shard. Sofia scrunches her nose, studying Genji’s faceplate.

“You don’t look like any omnic I’ve ever seen—and my job’s repairing tech.” She looks up at Genji through her lashes. “Do you mod or something?”

“…Yes.”

“That’s so cool. I got a new piercing last month, but you can barely see it. Someday, I wanna have so much metal on me that I look like a cyborg!” As she laughs at her own joke, Cassidy stares into the middle distance. He manages mot to sigh. The woman in the headscarf is gently stepping through the crowd to put her newly bought relic somewhere safer than a pristine white purse.

“I’m sure it will suit you,” Genji says slowly. Like hell it would, Cassidy thinks. I wouldn’t wish being half-metal on anyone, especially not… Sofia pulls out a phone from her back pocket, a plain black thing with a plain black case.

“Hey, why don’t we chat sometime after this?” She unlocks her phone and holds it out to Genji, who stands stiffer than a lightning rod trying not to get struck. She’s standing awfully close to him for a stranger. Cassidy coughs just a little too loudly to be polite, and she looks up.

“What?” Her frown cracks her cheap lipstick.

“Nothin’.” He looks at the scene, with Sofia close enough to breathe the air out of Genji’s cooling vents. Her eyebrows arch up like she’s realizing something, and she snatches her phone back.

“Ey, I didn’t know.” She chuckles, swinging her arms. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” She lightly punches Genji in the shoulder, overly familiar, before walking back toward the woman in the headscarf. He rubs the shoulder plate of the exact spot he was punched in. The green lights dim, flicker, then solidify again. Still, they don’t seem as bright. One of them flashes purple. Genji crosses his arms and huffs.

“I have not been approached for years,” he complains. “Then, when I am, it is in the middle of a mission to save our lives. It is only my luck.”

“Hey, it’s alrigh—wait, our lives?” Cassidy looks over at him with worry in his brow. “I thought you were only after this Necklace for the money.”

“Technically, you only need the money, yes?” He sidesteps the question gracefully, completely unlike the social brick wall he used to be in Blackwatch. Cassidy’s still trying to get over the fact that he isn’t dead in a ditch somewhere; he can be nosy about why Genji’s sticking with him later.

“I guess.” He looks away, scratching his neck. “Sorry ‘bout your, uh, prospects.” 

“You were not much help.”

“Excuse me?”

“You were…” Genji makes some vague hand gestures, trying to think. “You were looming. I think Sofia was tired of getting glared at.”

“I wasn’t tryin’ to mean-mug her, I swear it!” The host hasn’t spoken for a while now, and the hall is growing quiet. “Not worth gettin’ pissed about. Was she even your type?”

“Not in particular.” He sighs. “I am being grossly sentimental, apologies. Strangers have barely spoken to me for the past decade unless it was to give me orders.” He doesn’t sound apologetic at all. Cassidy has the trump card of bringing up what happened four years ago in Blackwatch, after the party to celebrate Genji’s move to Overwatch, but that’d be inconsiderate. He doesn’t know this new Genji well enough to be an asshole to him yet.

“Then it’s only uphill from here?” Cassidy asks, nudging him in the side. Genji only shrugs. He glances around the room and taps his foot, waiting for something to happen, but he pauses. He taps Cassidy on the shoulder, startling him, and points toward the bidders in the chairs. All he sees is a crowd of men in navy blues and women in pearls. Nothing new.

“What am I lookin’ at, Genji?” he asks, squinting.

“The woman with the headscarf.” 

Cassidy scans the room until he sees her—the headscarf seems to be for fashion rather than religion, seeing as long hair flows from the bottom of it. She’s wearing a dark trench coat and thin black gloves. Cassidy’s about to ask why Genji’s pointing her out before she turns her head. He catches a sliver of blue skin and an amber-chip yellow eye. Widowmaker.

Cassidy’s first reaction is to reach beneath his plain flannel jacket for Peacekeeper. Genji grabs his wrist before he can and vigorously shakes his head. Cassidy opens his mouth to say something, but Genji’s visor is still trained on the auction. Cassidy turns to watch it.

“Here we have this lovely collection of Roman coins from Emperor Nero’s rule, granted to us by the Pizarro family a few decades ago. Your starting price will be £6,000.” As the host drones on, Widowmaker raises her card.

“£7,000,” she says with that unmistakable French accent. The chattering crowd goes silent. No one else dares to even think about lifting their cards, feeling the ice in her voice spread across the room. The host begins his customary countdown, but the only sound in the room is that of breathing, and even that sounds like it’s trying to hide from Widow. Most of the upper crust here have probably never heard of her, but every bounty hunter in the world is acquainted, one way or another, with Talon’s star squadron.

“And sold to the woman in the front row with the scarf! Come on up and claim your prize—Old old money.” The host giggles, and Widow’s in the front of the room before he even stops. She takes the handful of coins gently before hurrying back to her seat. Cassidy can’t see any more items on display. Then, there’s a rolling sound.

On a metal cart in a Plexiglass container, draped in gold lace patterns like a bride, is the first Key again. The crowd gets just as loud as they did the first time, talking about the impossibly beautiful Key and its rumors and excitement. The outside ring of bidders holds its breath.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present our final item of the night—the only known Heritage key!” The starting price for the key is declared to be over five hundred thousand. Widowmaker raises her card.

“Six hundred,” she says in a thick accent.

“Six-fifty,” one of the other bidders says. Genji snaps a shuriken into his hand. The swords had to be left in the car.

With this, the bidding becomes a frenzy. People try to slow its pace with odd numbers, 655s and 702s, but Widowmaker stays unrelentingly aggressive. Genji looks back at Cassidy.

“Keep my place.” Before he can get a word in, Genji shoulders through the crowd toward the center, leaving Cassidy stunned and alone. Widow doesn’t notice his presence yet. Cassidy tries to keep up with the crowd’s bids, but his attention is split between the numbers and Genji.

Someone in the crowd drops their card, and the crowd goes pin-drop quiet all at once. Cassidy peeks around shoulders and heads to see the commotion, eventually stepping forward with a stream of “excuse-mes” and “pardons.” The first thing he notices is that the front of the room is dim.

The light of the evening is already low, but the shadows in the front seem deeper and darker. The shine is stolen from the golden walls. The darkness starts to condense to a point, and Cassidy starts with recognition a second too late as shadows become swirling smoke. He looks down at the smoke from his own bad hand. Reaper.

Smoke starts seeping through the seams of the plexiglass box, bloating its sides. The inside of the box is black, the key invisible. The box shatters, its panels flying across the room. The smoke condenses into the form of an arm, then a head, then an entire man with a heavy shotgun in each hand. The weapons are a cruel replica of Blackwatch’s glory days. Judging by the power, Reaper has to be from the same bloodline as–as his old Commander. He can’t invoke his name right now.

Either way, it’s a fucked-up thing to make your signature.

Reaper fires at him with the false Commander’s guns. The crowd has long since filtered out the door—‘security’ included—so he knows he’s the target. Again. Cassidy rolls to the side, straight into a spider-shaped mine. One of Widowmaker’s things, Cassidy thinks. Fits her whole schtick. He coughs as smoke surrounds him—it’s more than just the mine would emit. Reaper materializes from the smoke beside him and swings a spike-covered arm at Cassidy. He ducks, grabs Reaper’s arm, and flings him forward into the wall. Reaper partially disintegrates before impact, softening the blow and reappearing to Cassidy’s left. Cassidy pulls a stun grenade from his belt and throws it at his feet, leaping out of the way. He’s halfway hit by the blast, ears ringing. Reaper follows it up with a sharp blow to the face, sending him spinning to the floor. While he’s helpless on the ground, a blur of green passes him.

Widow has her signature rifle out—how did she sneak that inside?—and is trying to put distance between herself and Genji. Every time Genji advances on her, she takes a leap away. Every shuriken thrown at her ends up stuck in a painting on the wall, probably destroying thousands of dollars worth of art. Every shot of Widowmaker’s rifle is deflected back to her with electric speed. She fires another desperate spray of bullets at him. Genji holds up his sword again, readying to practically cut bullets in half with inhuman speed. The bullets come.

Genji freezes. The bullets whiz by, and he’s just as still as the statues.

Even Reaper pauses to watch Genji. Widowmaker moves her face away from the scope and slowly lowers her rifle like she’s trying not to startle a rabid animal. She brings it down all the way, standing it on the ground and lazily holding it with one hand. Genji still doesn’t move. She takes a step forward, frowning, then clicks her fingernails against Genji’s faceplate. Nothing. She reaches under her headscarf and presses something by her ear.

“It has worked,” she says. “Perfectly.” The green lights in his faceplate bleed into a sickly violet. Cassidy looks up at him from the floor, still dazed. Reaper hasn’t turned around yet. If Cassidy left to help Genji, he might not notice until it was too late to stop him.

He tries to stand, putting weight on his left hand. It phases into smoke, scattering across the floor, then reforms. There’s a cold pain all up his arm, and one of his fingers reforms wrong before snapping back into place. The burst of pain is chased by a burst of rage, and his heroic plans turn to dust in his head.

Who is he kidding? He and Genji are both Inheritors, and Inheritors fight their own damn fights. Cassidy’s not good at being a teammate—hell, it’s why he never left Blackwatch while Genji got promoted to the shiny new strike team. As his arm throbs, his sights latch on Reaper. His Inheritance draws him closer. Genji can handle himself, but Reaper’s not gonna shoot himself, Cassidy reasons. I ain’t that lucky.

Cassidy scrapes himself off the tile and stumbles to standing, nothing in his head except the hope of seeing this apparition really bleed. Smoke rises around Cassidy, obscuring his vision, and he tries not to think about the fact that it’s made of human cells. 

“Show yourself, you son of a bitch!” Cassidy yells. He clenches his aching left hand in a fist and waves Peacekeeper around wildly with his right. There’s nothing to aim at. He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling strains of Inheritor energy in his bones from the fight. It’s not enough for a real Deadeye; it’s barely enough for a gunshot. He digs deeper, stumbling again. Peacekeeper is the connector. All the rage in his heart, all the energy in his Inheritance, all the violence Cassidy was born for and will die for, channeled into six bullets.

He shoots into the air.

With Deadeye, every bullet on target is a bullet replaced. Bullets fly around him in a storm of shrapnel, hitting bits of smoke and coagulated flesh. Cassidy sinks to the ground, still pulling the trigger. Click, click, click until he hits something solid. Anything. He’s seeing stars again. He looks up at the bright sky—when did he hit the ground? The smoke is gone. Reaper is gone. Instead, a dead woman’s ghost stands over him, crossing her arms and frowning. The frown distorts the mark of protection under her all-seeing eye.

“Nice crutch, that Deadeye,” she says. He’s heard these words before, this has already happened. “Your aim’s shit without it.” Cassidy giggles.

“Heya, Captain,” he says.

“Get off the ground. Job’s not over yet, but you’re about to be,” she reprimands. 

“That’s a low blow. Ma’am,” he adds as an afterthought. His arm still aches.

“The targets are still trying to put a bullet between your eyes, and they’re about to have your friend there, too.”

“He’s always handled himself,” Cassidy mutters. “Both do. Don’t need no goddamn intervention.” The late Captain Ana Amari crouches down beside him, flashing in and out of his vision.

“I will not tell you again. If you do not wake up now, you will both be dead.”

He nods, leans on his elbows, and reopens his eyes. He looks around the hall, chasing the image of her stern expression and warm eyes. Obviously, she’s not there. Nothing left but a headache. He squints, then looks up to the hall ceiling. 

In front of him shines a green sun. Wait, no, not the sun. He hasn’t seen it in years. The thing he Inherited. The Shimada Dragon.

Cassidy can’t see Genji—only the faint outline of a man. A dragon made of light surrounds his steel frame, swirling and refracting across the polished hall. It dives at Reaper. He turns to smoke, but the dragon keeps moving, scattering light across the hall. Cassidy shields his eyes. The dragon snags something in its white teeth and returns to Genji. The key. Black smog disperses across the hall, burning as it tries to escape the dragon’s wrath.

Genji walks to where Cassidy is still sitting on the floor. He looks like a puppet pulled along divine strings. Cassidy upturns his palm for the key.

“Damn lucky, aren’t you?” he says. Genji looks at the ornate key in his hand, brushing his thumb over the gemstone that looks like a drop of congealed blood. Instead of handing the key over to Cassidy, Genji opens up the panel in his right arm that holds his shuriken. He shoves the key awkwardly into one of its compartments, then snaps his arm shut.

“You had gone…” Genji starts. He stumbles, and the dragon’s light flickers. “I should have expected this sooner.”

“Genji, what’re you talking about? Expect what?”

“Inheritors never…” He sways again, head slumping before he can finish the sentence. The dragon dissipates, his legs give out from beneath him, and he crashes to the ground.

Despite the dragon’s escape, not everyone left the hall. Other bounty hunters and, unsurprisingly, uniformed Talon agents are starting to shake themselves from their stupors. Cassidy sits up further, shaking Genji by the shoulders. The adrenaline is starting to wear off. More agents line through the front door like ants.

“Come on, we’re leaving,” he says, trying not to sound worried. Why bother? It’s not like he can hear me. The Talon agents let Inheritance energy shimmer around them, fresh from the fight. A crackle of electricity flies toward him, hitting him in the bad hand. He doesn’t feel a thing. He lifts Peacekeeper and shoots in the right general direction, more to scare and maim than to kill. His hand’s shaking too much for a kill, anyway. He bites his lip.

“Damn you, Genji.” Cassidy hauls him up, ignoring the constant ache of his left hand, and looks around the hall one last time. He’s creeping toward forty, but being a bounty hunter and Inheritor keeps one fairly fit. Half-supporting and half-carrying him, he runs like the devil’s on his tail. Reaper weakly reforms behind him.

Scratch that—he runs because the devil’s on his tail.

He reaches the parking lot with a crowd of agents and unfriendly powers on his tail, weaving through tiny exhibit rooms and crashing into pillars on his way out. When he getsoutside, he’s never been happier to see the shitty rental car parked along the street. He haphazardly tries to get an unconscious Genji into the back seat—more room—and leaps into the driver's seat. The minute he puts the car from park to drive, he floors the gas pedal and doesn’t look back.

 

Chapter 4: Getaway Car - Audioslave

It’s been about six hours since the Shimada dragon left the auction destroyed, and Genji hasn’t moved an inch. Cassidy had pushed their shitty rental car to its limit to make it to a safe haven: namely, the worst hotel room tourist change can buy.

The room is, thankfully, on the first floor. Cassidy had muttered something about a drunk omnic friend as he’d half-supported and half-carried Genji inside, too stressed to properly laugh at the situation. His lie has more holes in it than a target on a shooting range–can omnics even get drunk?–but the receptionist had just waved them through.

Now, Cassidy sits on a floral-patterned couch next to a dubiously white bed, waiting for Genji to wake up. It’s nearly midnight and he’s running out of things to do, but it feels like bad luck to sleep just yet. He stands from the couch and checks again for bugs or cameras. Inside the closet, in both lamps, in every corner of the bathroom. It’s the fourth time he’s done it, and nothing’s changed since then. He’s checked every channel on the TV, too, and using the internet would be a dead giveaway of his location to anyone with a little technical know-how. He’s not quite to the point of reading the ingredient labels on the toiletries, but it’s close.

Genji lays flat on the bed like a corpse on display, and Cassidy does his best not to look at him. The visor glows the same green color it always does, but under the low light of the TV and lamps it seems sickly. Cassidy wonders if Genji would breathe easier without the mask on, but he abandons the thought. He’s never seen Genji’s full face before. Without his mask, sure, but only under the cover of night, only in dire straits, only with the expectation that he wouldn’t really look. Only conditionally.

The sheets rustle the tiniest bit and Cassidy snaps to attention. Genji pushes himself up by the arms, slipping a bit. Cassidy feels fixed in place, even when Genji slowly turns to him, as if his speaking will break some sort of balance.

“Where did you take us?” Genji asks. His voice is still low and tired.

“Shit motel. How’re you feeling?”

“…Like shit.” Genji looks back down at the bed as if thinking about laying back down, then sighs and stands. He stumbles to the couch and starts unzipping the pillow covers.

“What’re you doing?”

“Checking the room for bugs.” Genji yawns. “If someone knows where we are, I would not put it past them to try something.”

“I already checked, the room’s clear,” Cassidy dismisses. Genji stops mid-search, then sits back on the bed. Cassidy looks up at him from the short couch. Genji flicks shurikens in and out of his arm holster, back and forth, still in a stasis.

“Did you kill him?”

“Huh?”

“Reaper,” Genji says, voice level like a sea before a storm. “Did you kill him?” Cassidy sighs, laying down across the couch. He wants to put his hat over his eyes and shut the world out. 

“I was close. Not my fault the fella’s made of smoke.”

“If he is made of smoke, then let him slip away. I was fighting a losing battle, and…”

“And?” Cassidy taps his fingers against the arm of the couch.

“And nothing.” 

There’s no sound save for the AC rumbling beneath the window. Cassidy gets up off the creaking couch and goes to his bag. He rummages through it until he finds what he’s after—a half crumpled carton of cigarettes and a lighter he got from a gas station. Genji leans back on the bed and turns on the TV. It fades into background noise as soon as Cassidy stops paying attention. He needs his focus gone right now. He cracks the hotel window, starting to shiver from the too-high AC, and lights a cigarette.

It’s a poor substitute for a poorer vice. He hasn’t gotten his hands on a real cigar in years—he’s been on the run the whole time, and he can’t exactly keep a humidor in his back pocket. This isn’t even satisfying. He blows a puff of smoke into the lukewarm night anyway. Genji switched the channel to some Italian news channel, a boring to tears stock market tracker.

“Ain’t even sure why you’re worked up about this. You held your own, mostly.” He inhales, slow and stinging.

“I did not use the Inheritance of my own volition. The dragon simply… Broke out. That is the cost of letting energy build without an outlet. I usually pay that price in private.” Genji switches through the TV channels absentmindedly, and Cassidy imagines him letting the dragon go in private, letting it run free if only so it leaves him alone. Trying to purge it from himself in an empty room or field before returning to normal. As if his Inheritance is any goddamn mystery. 

“It worked, didn’t it?” Cassidy asks. Genji doesn’t say anything for a few moments, and Cassidy looks away from the window and back at him. The visor hides any hints as to what he’s thinking.

“I did not want it to.” Genji sighs, gets up, and turns the bedside lamp off. “We used to fight together. You had my back.”

“I didn’t have jack shit back then, and I probably still don’t.” Cassidy takes another drag from the cigarette. “It’s funny how high you think of me when you aren’t callin’ me a moron.”

“Shame.”

“What?”

“I had hoped you were wrong on that count,” Genji says, voice barely breaking through the night’s silence. Cassidy takes his flannel off, leaving a shirt and jeans that aren’t the best for sleeping. Then again, he’s slept in worse conditions. Experimentally, Cassidy puts the cigarette out against his cursed hand. He feels nothing, and huffs an empty laugh. He collapses on the couch.

“G’night,” he says under his breath. There’s no response from Genji, and Cassidy gets the sinking feeling he’s broken something.

Cassidy drifts in and out of dreaming. The couch is scratchy and smells like disinfectant, and the room is freezing. A faint green glow reflects off the window. The skyline looks a little less impressive through blurry eyes and a half-awake mind. He almost jolts up at the sound of a phone ringing.

He keeps himself completely still, pretending to sleep as he watches Genji’s reflection in the window pick up the burner phone. Genji sits up a little. Cassidy notices he’s not wearing his visor, but it’s too dark to see his face. He presses the call button.

“Hello?” Angela Ziegler’s voice is fuzzy and quiet on the other end of the line.

“Good evening, Angela.”

“How did the auction—“

“Straight to business, then?” Genji interrupts, leaning back against the headboard and running a hand through his dark hair. “I got the key. There were minimal Talon casualties, none civilian.” Ziegler pauses for a moment.

“You needn’t be so curt with me,” she chides. “We both know that wasn’t what I was asking about.”

“‘Curt.’ How else would you like me to speak?”

“Genji, please.” Ziegler’s voice is either sweet enough to sway him or commanding enough to force his hand. Cassidy still has his left eye cracked open, and he can see Genji’s silhouette from the faint light of the city outside. He’s hunched over in bed.

“The Dragon escaped.” He laughs quietly. “Unused Inheritance builds pressure on the body. I usually release the Dragon to roam for a few minutes at a time to keep the feeling at bay. You never saw me do it during Overwatch; I always went out to the practice range. Without that placating… That pressure explodes.”

“And you can’t let it fly in Venice,” Ziegler concludes. It’s only a statement of fact, but she sounds horrified.

“Absolutely not. If I were to do so, the media would be on the ‘deadly Shimada Inheritor’ like a vulture on carrion.”

“That sounds like something Cassidy would say,” Ziegler comments with a giggle. Cassidy, to his credit, doesn’t move an inch. Dread builds at the bottom of his ribcage.

“Shut up.” His joking tone vanishes, leaving absolutely nothing. “He was here for that, actually. I let loose a full-force Dragon on an auction full of civilians without any control over it, and he saw every second.”

“Oh.”

“He’s worse with his own Inheritance, I know he would not judge me.” He sits up a little further. “The Necklace is the only thing that can give me enough power to kill the thing. I only worry that he will still try to stop me.” Cassidy freezes. The thing? He can hear Ziegler’s sigh on the other end of the line.

“Just keep your head down a little longer, okay? Get the keys, get the Necklace, then make the ritual fast. I’ll help you recover. It’s dangerous, but…” She exhales slowly. “I trust your judgement. The dragon will die.” Cassidy stops breathing. 

Ziegler says it so gently, like she’s describing a cure to a terminal patient. Cassidy can almost imagine her white-toothed, professional smile. The dragon will die. Destroying your own Inheritance, however, cures nothing. Twisting part of your soul out of your body like it’s some kind of tumor—it would kill most men. Genji looks toward him, so Cassidy closes his eyes and poorly pretends to sleep. In the dark, he can’t tell what kind of look Genji’s giving.

“Time is not the problem. I have all the time in the world. The problem is that he suspects I am here for more than the bounty money. Either he will realize my true intent, or he will think I want the Necklace’s power to myself. I am not sure which is worse.” As Genji fidgets with the edge of his thin sheet, Ziegler quiets for a moment. 

“Are you sure you cannot tell him?” she asks. “He seems… He’s a little stronger-willed than your usual allies.”

“But he is an Inheritor. If I killed the Shimada bloodline, it would be ‘wasting’ my potential to kill.” He scoffs. “As if I would struggle to kill afterward. It was what you built me for, no?” Ziegler coughs on the other end of the line, and Genji leans back, satisfied off of his bitterness. Cassidy holds back a cough of his own, scratching at his throat.

“Are you not also an Inheritor?” she asks.

“If I succeed? I will not be one for much longer.”

“Hm.” Ziegler sighs. “I have been doing some research to prepare for your little homecoming. To kill your Inheritance specifically, the weapon needs to be significant to the same bloodline—“

“—and cannot be ceremonial,” Genji adds. “It has to have seen combat.”

“Now, how did you learn that tidbit?”

“I have heard myths about it ever since I was young. Ever since my death, I longed for it.”

“Don’t call it a death, Genji.” Ziegler sounds stern, but there’s an exhausted ‘I won’t tell you again’ sadness behind it. “You are still here, alive and well.” Genji holds the phone between his head and his shoulder, looking down at his metal hands. They glint in the light of the barely-there moon, and he slowly flexes each joint.

“That is a big statement coming from the woman who had to rebuild my corpse into something like a man.”

“Genji…”

“Angela.” He pauses, and the AC sounds louder than a jet engine. “You built me to be optimal for combat. Fighting the dragon will be the first combat situation I enter willingly. I must end this bloodline.”

“I assume ‘don’t have children’ isn’t good enough advice for you,” Ziegler jokes. The joke, of course, falls flat.

“No. I cannot let a single trace of this power survive.” He breathes, deep in and deep out. “The last time I left it, I was killed. Family is nothing.”

“I know you despise your Inheritance—honestly, I’ve never been a fan either—but it’s quite a process. You could get hurt, or…” she sighs. The thought is left to sit in their minds, unfinished but final.

“If this is how I die, it will at least have been noble. That is more than I can say of the rest of my life.”

“But,” Ziegler starts, “what of Cassidy?”

“He can sell the Necklace once my business is done. I do not plan on leaving him for dead.”

“But you plan on leaving,” she says. Genji pulls the phone away from his ear, looking at the phone. He’s perfectly still.

“It would not be the first time,” he murmurs.

“I don’t… Okay.” She sighs. “I wish you the best.”

Silence. Genji nearly responds, but pauses, then hangs up instead. The beep of the phone is excruciatingly long, and the silence afterward even more so. Cassidy shifts, trying not to toss or turn.

An Inheritance is a piece of the soul, if you believe in that crap. Or a web of connections in the brain. Or, at least, something that can’t be removed without sending the whole tower down. People have been trying for years, and most of them don’t live to tell the tale. It’s only something you do if you’re desperate.

(Genji never ate in front of others. He kept the lights off in Cassidy’s room. He endured round after round of tests on a body that wasn’t all his.

All for a brother who shared his Inheritance. Who killed him with it.)

Cassidy’s drifting back to sleep. The room smells faintly like cigarette smoke now—oops—and his head won’t stop replaying that moment. I will not be one for much longer. If Genji uses the Necklace for something like that, in his opinion, he won’t be alive much longer. Cassidy taps on his left hand with his right, watching flakes of black skin fall away like ash. Dire straits for both of them. They still, at least, have a week.

He doesn’t think about him leaving. He still has a week.

Having slept in worse conditions with worse people keeping watch, Cassidy falls into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of iridescent dragons, of bloody Inheritances, and of a metal chassis and a human body.

-

He’s in Blackwatch, sitting on the Swiss base rooftop under a smoking sky. Smoke from his cigar, one of the good ones, rolls up to join the smog from burning buildings and burning people. Attacks haven’t been this bad since the actual Crisis, and he can’t do a goddamn thing about it except sit and wait. He breathes in, unclean. There are footsteps behind him. He doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is.

“What’s the phrase? ‘Smoking kills?’” Genji asks, sitting beside him, uninvited. He’s a ghost half the time, but he isn’t timid. Either he’s off in the distance or he’s already beside you. Never asking, only taking or leaving.

“It won’t. If my death ain’t at least a little badass, don’t bother givin’ me a funeral.”

“There is no way you enjoy being shot.”

“You’re one to talk, walkin’ up to fights like it’s a goddamn meet-n-greet.”

“Because I know I will win.”

“Hm.” Cassidy takes another drag of the cigar, looking out into the distance. Another fire. “Them’s fightin’ words.”

“I have spent all day fighting, Cassidy. I refuse to spend a single second training tonight.”

“And you’ll spend all next day fighting, and the day after that. All we can do, yeah?” Cassidy debates for a moment before holding his cigar out to Genji. “Welcome to Blackwatch,” he says, sarcastic. Genji accepts it, slowly.

Genji never carries himself like a human. On the battlefield, he doesn’t wear much of anything except that sharp, black plate armor. It’s impossible to tell how much of it is metal and how much is flesh, because he moves like it’s metal all the way down. Every movement has a purpose, every breath on an invisible cadence. A perfect soldier, better than the perfect soldiers before him.

Yet, Genji takes off the visor and turns away, setting it between them. Cassidy knows better than to try to look at his face. Genji’s curled in on himself, slouched over the base’s roof. There’s nothing to fight here. Every seam between metal and skin curves with millimeter precision, even though Genji’s arm is covered in nasty looking scars. He looks like a statue who decided to come down from his pedestal and be human for a day with the dregs. A cloud of smoke blows up from beside him as Genji holds the cigar to the side. He rolls his head—every muscle and every plate moves in tandem, interlocking like gear. It’s a pattern, it’s almost easy. Cassidy scoots closer.

“How’s your day been?” he asks.

“I killed five targets today from one summoning of the Dragon. A new record, I believe,” Genji replies, destroying any illusion of small talk. It’s the closest to content Cassidy’s ever heard him.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side, huh?”

“It would be too much effort to kill you.” Genji’s already right there, looking away, and he only has to lean back a little. A head against Cassidy’s shoulder, metal pressing dents into his arm, surprisingly warm. Not too surprising—machines and people alike are rarely cold unless they’re dead, and Genji’s a live wire, an explosion waiting to happen. He takes a second to remember that Genji has shurikens in his arms and knives in his legs. Cassidy’s in murdering distance, not getting murdered, and it’s a goddamn treat. The moment’s a bubble to him, like he can’t breathe too hard without breaking it. It’s a while like that, making an awkward silence comfortable by sheer force of will.

Genji still doesn’t turn around when he hands the cigar back. Cassidy takes it and looks at it, spinning it in his fingers, while Genji stands.

“I suppose I will see you tomorrow.”

“Yep,” Cassidy sighs. “What’s the mission s’posed to be?”

“We can discuss it later.” Genji latches his visor into place. “I’d prefer not to end the day with semantics.” I’d prefer to end it like this, Cassidy thinks.

Cassidy wants to respond, even with a simple good-night, but he looks away and the man’s already gone. There’s a boom in the distance—another fight that Overwatch can’t dirty their hands with. Cassidy still feels the weight of Peacekeeper by his side, and Genji has blades built into his legs. He’ll be shooting until he gets shot, even if that’s the rest of his life. He doesn’t think about that right now. He swears his shirt smells like metal.

-

Cassidy is never the first to wake up. Even during Blackwatch, Reyes would have to all but drag him out of the barracks. Now he squints his eyes open to a dead room. The TV’s off, and it’s silent save for wind streaming through a crack in the window. Cassidy sits up all the way, frowning. Now that he’s looking, he sees the curtains are wide open. He’d assumed Genji was getting breakfast, but he looks closer. His duffel bag is gone, but he didn’t take any of the room keys with him.

Wherever Genji is, he clearly doesn’t plan on coming back,

Cassidy lies back down, replaying that phone call with Mercy in his head. An Inheritor at heart. It’d be nice if he were wrong. He wants to get out of this stuffy hotel and Deadeye the first guy he sees. He wants to close the curtains. He wants to curl back onto the couch because, God, isn’t this just his luck? One bad day and the whole thing’s like sand between his fingers. He stretches his leg, which is cramping, and helps himself off the couch with his left hand, which is cursed. He can still search the rest of the place. He ignores the fact that Genji’s probably already gone like a bird on the wind—he can still search the rest of the place.

First things first. Usually he tries to save his cigarettes, but extenuating circumstances get to him sometimes. He goes through his bag, ignoring the empty spot next to it. There’s supposed to be a carton next to his toothbrush, wherever the hell that is. Another minute and there’s nothing. He starts taking stuff out of his bag, leaving a circle of plain clothes and weapons and rolls of quarters around him. Still nothing. It hits him—Genji must’ve snagged them on his way out.

Cassidy shoves his stuff back into his travel bag, haphazard. It used to be just like this, even a few days ago, wandering alone. Any time he thought of Genji, of both of them leaving Overwatch, of something severed, he’d get a feeling. Dreading, yearning, he couldn’t tell you. He’d folded up the feeling and pressed it against his ribcage—not near the heart, Lord knows he doesn’t use that thing—until he couldn’t see it anymore. Cassidy picks up both the room keys with a sigh. At the very least, it’s a bad idea to work on an empty stomach.

Cassidy walks into a hallway that he thinks is supposed to look elegant, with dark red carpet and geometric wall-lights. It’s mostly gross, smelling like cleaner even though it’s definitely not sterile. Cassidy can’t help but feel at home. Maybe these last couple of days will pass until they’re a memory. Maybe he can pretend the memory’s just a distant dream.

The dragons. Cassidy makes his way to the hotel lobby, putting on his meanest look to avoid the random tourists. Hurting an Inheritance is hurting yourself, and killing it usually does the same. Cassidy’d thought he was leading a good old-fashioned bounty hunt, not a suicide mission. Maybe I should leave him to it, he thinks, bitter.

Genji, however, has the key. Without the key or the Necklace or the cure, Cassidy isn’t making it to the end of next week. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t leave. He imagines Genji in that first fight, sharp green glowing through the crowd of Talon cronies, and wishes that he wanted to.

The hotel lobby looks like any other hotel in Venice, if you only count the ones Cassidy can afford. Sunlight streams through the front windows, struggling against a light grey sky. The breakfast bar is a half hour away from closing, and uncomfortable chairs are filled by uncomfortable people. He’s not particularly hungry, but picks an apple out of the bar anyway. What he’s really after is another cigarette, but Genji took that with him, too.

With this free time, Cassidy thinks. It’s all ruminating that’s already worn dirt down into a path in his mind. He’s an Inheritor at heart, and he’s never been good with keeping his earthly attachments, anyhow. One place to the next. Shooting Reaper instead of helping Genji while he was… Well, it’s not unreasonable that he gets an Inheritor’s fate for that one. He bites the apple—its flesh is crisp and flavorless. He doesn’t sit down, instead gearing up to go to the main hall. He’ll check every inch of this shithole if he has to.

There are little TVs around the lobby, playing news channels with rapid-fire voices rattling off doomsday news. Nothing out of the ordinary until he sees the word erede across one of the headlines. Italian for heir. Most of the time, for Inheritor.

There’s a video feed of an office with an imposing desk that the man sitting at it definitely didn’t buy himself. The man looks familiar, even though he’s backing against the windows behind him with fear in his eyes. Cassidy squints at the screen, then—shit. That’s the bounty collector who’s supposed to be paying for his life.

A shadow looms over the desk, as the bounty collector tightens his suit jacket around him. The shadow has a sword in hand, green light stretching over the penthouse office.

The video’s blurry, but the man isn’t exactly hard to recognize. Genji walks across the office with a sword in one hand. He looks, oddly enough, relaxed. Cassidy doesn’t know why this is the detail he catches on first. Genji always carries himself like he’s trying to keep his metal frame from collapsing beneath its weight, like he’s Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. On the news, however, he’s got a hand in his pocket and a playful tilt to his head. The bounty collector says something in Italian, crunching through the CCTV. Other people in the lobby are watching the TV, leaning forward and dead silent.

Genji doesn’t respond. Instead, he pulls his hand out of his pocket and holds up a little ring. It’s a key ring, and he shakes it in front of the bounty collector. He says something, but Cassidy can’t hear it, even though he’s straining to hear even a trace of the man who—

Shape up, Cassidy tells himself. He left less than a day ago. Acting like this in a city full of people who want you dead’s gonna guarantee their success.

There are two keys on the key ring. Two Heritage keys. The first is the same one from the auction and the second… Cassidy tries to look at it with a clean head. As much as he’d missed the guy, it wasn’t mutual. Two keys means Genji had to have gotten the second recently—to get to the second, you need the first, to the third you need the second, and so on. He hates to suspect duplicity, but how else is Genji so far ahead in one night?

Did he lie about that, too, or did he just work faster without distractions?

The hotel’s become pin-drop quiet save for the running news. There’s a young man in the corner taking notes, of all things, on a hotel scratchpad. Compared to everyone else here, he looks distinctly Western, with dark curly hair, tan skin, and a leather jacket that makes him look a decade older than he is. He looks at Cassidy, then does a double take. Cassidy wonders if he’s supposed to know this guy.

The news clip ends, switching to some other disaster; even though it’s in Italy, it’s a world away from Cassidy’s mind, and his attention drifts off. Breakfast, right. He isn’t hungry, and he’s sure he isn’t missing out on much, but he’s still human. He stands to make himself a plate.

The food looks fine. Pastries in a clear case, half of which look like unwrapped Little Debbie snacks, sit next to a big pan of scrambled eggs and sausage links. He doesn’t think about his old team sharing horrible breakfasts during long missions, of Reyes telling him not to devour the entire pan of hash browns, of Genji sneaking a single black coffee to his room like a guilty pleasure. He just fills his plate and tries to sit back down, scanning the lobby. He puts his hands on his hips as he walks over, looking to intimidate, to look unshakeable. The man in the leather jacket took his seat. 

“Who’re you,” Cassidy asks, “and why’d you take the chair?” The man leans back in his chair, bored.

“Name’s Mason. And I didn’t see anyone sittin’ here.”

“Maybe you oughta work on your eye.” Cassidy takes the chair across from him, his morose attitude drying up like a desert mirage.

“I know you don’t have to,” Mason says, smirking. “Deadeye, yeah?”

“…Who’s askin’?”

“You’re the dude on the dartboard. Pretty sure Ashe wants your head on a spike.” Cassidy wonders how he didn’t figure it sooner. Just another Deadlock kid, trying to make a name for himself. He’d feel bad for the guy if he wasn’t already moving his hand back toward Peacekeeper. 

“Any way I can keep that head on my body?” Any way I don’t have to waste bullets on a kid who’s wasting his time?

“I’ve got info an hour fresh on a new bounty, and I heard you’re the best sharpshooter in the world,” Mason replies. Cassidy resists the urge to correct him to second-best—the former first is dead, now. His eyes widen a bit at ‘info,’ though.

“Yup.” He sounds cool and casual.

“It’s my last hurrah ‘fore I get to settle down a while,” Mason continues, light in his eyes. “But I ain’t got the manpower to back me up! If you come with me, then I’ve never heard of a ‘Cole Cassidy.’ You get a cut of the bounty, too, if you’re lucky.”

“If I’m lucky. You sound confident,” Cassidy says, chuckling. “Is this bounty for a ‘who’ or a ‘what’?”

“A who.” Mason points up at the TV behind him. There’s a few reporters arguing, words darting around each other, but Cassidy’s eyes snag on the face in the blurry photograph in the corner. That is, the visor.

Mason has info on Genji. The thoughts are wiped out of his mind—he doesn’t care that Mason might be tricking him, or that Genji’s bounty in the seedier networks only gets the first half of “dead or alive.” This is a lead, even if it’s thinner than the spiderweb Cassidy might be leaping face-first into.

“Well, I’m about ready to take my leave. Never liked hotels.” Cassidy stands, looking down at him. “You comin’ along?”

He stands, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket. Sure enough, he has the classic Deadlock tattoo. The same one on Cassidy’s arm is about to be covered by that wispy rot, and he’s not going to try too hard to miss it. Cassidy stands to join him, readying his gun just in case.

Chapter 5: Beat the Devil’s Tattoo - BRMC

Cassidy follows Mason without a clue where he’s heading, every second bringing him closer to thinking this is a horrible idea. The morning is pleasant enough to piss Cassidy off; The sky is a cloudless, blinding blue, and grassy weeds and golden drops line the little downtown road. Despite the ache in Cassidy’s head, the world keeps spinning. Mason is kicking a pebble down the sidewalk beside him.

“You got a plan of how to find this fella?” Cassidy asks. He puts a lot of stock into ‘fella,’ like he’s searching for no one in particular.

“Even better! C’mere.” Mason opens a caseless phone, a burner if he’s got any brains, and scrolls through a set of messages. He taps on an image, expanding it. It’s a picture of Genji, in the background of the photo but still surprisingly clear. Cassidy raises his eyebrow.

“You take this?”

“Nah, it’s from an informant. He didn’t say who he—or she—was, but the photo looks legit, and it’s from an hour ago!” Mason holds the phone out to him, and he takes it with his normal hand. A freeze frame of sunlight makes Genji’s shiny chrome faceplate blinding white against the unremarkable crowd. His visor in Blackwatch was always a little dull, never polished unless Mercy or someone got on his case about it. He’s in front of a rust-red building, and there’s some kind of grand hall in the distance. Cassidy almost wonders if the informant is a photographer—for a split-second thing, this is composed like art.

“Alright, s’pose we can head wherever this is, then go from there,” Cassidy says, making it final. Genji’s sun-white visor is burning into his eyes.

“Ah, that’s the problem.” Mason takes his phone back. “I don’t know where this was taken.” Cassidy can only stare at him. He thinks he blinks at some point.

“I agreed to hunt with you for information, not a goddamn guessing game.”

“At least I have a clue, man! You wouldn’t be here without my help, and we won’t get anywhere if we don’t keep walking.” Mason pockets his phone and puts his hands on his hips. Cassidy can only sigh and follow, looking for any rust-red buildings.

As it turns out, that’s a popular choice of paint, and Cassidy swears they’re passing places twice as they walk. Cassidy and Mason eventually look over the picture again—it looks like a storefront, even though the name is blocked, and there are planter boxes in the windows. The front window has a sign advertising the types of credit they accept, right next to Genji’s wanted poster.

“They got on him fast, huh,” Cassidy mutters.

“Don’t sound so mopey about it, dude,” Mason says, still scanning the street. “Just because official authorities are involved doesn’t mean we can’t get a cut of this pie, yeah?” Cassidy lets him think he’s sad about the police meddling. He’s hardly sad anymore. He has something to work on, a proper mission, and you can’t mope on a mission (thanks, Commander.) He’s lived so long without seeing Genji, and he figures he can last a little while longer. It’s just peachy.

“Yeah.” Cassidy turns to shortcut through an alley, just because. “How’s Ashe been? Missin’ me?” Mason laughs, and Cassidy smirks.

“If she missed you, she wouldn’t be the best sharpshooter in the West,” Mason jokes. “I don’t think you’re on her mind much.”

“I thought I was the best sharpshooter.”

“She told me you used to be in Overwatch—I bet shootin’ eyes out next to those all-tech no-skill rich guys just puffed your ego!”

“I was halfway in Overwatch.” Cassidy puts his hands back in his pockets, quieting. “And not everyone there had a horrible aim.” Mason shrugs.

“Whatever you say.”

The Sun is still obnoxiously bright. Cassidy walks, stumbles, and falls into reminiscing like a bad habit. He remembers metal whizzing past him and lodging in the wall next to his ear. Pulling it out and lobbing it back, believing that Genji probably didn’t mean to hit him. He only wanted to land the shuriken a hair’s breadth from Cassidy’s head and watch him squirm. He remembers asking to play pool afterwards, because it’s the only thing he knows Genji’s atrocious at. Every action Cassidy takes is a question, and Genji’s a mystery man in a metal lockbox, refusing to say where that scar came from or look Cassidy in the eye. Avoid the question, avoid the answer. It’s a game they’d be horribly bored without.

Cassidy digs his nails into the palm of his left hand, all of which is decayed by now. He can’t even feel the press of nails, just the sharp ache of skin crumbling. The pain snaps him back to the present with barely a wince. At the same time, the alley leads them to a different section of Venice. 

“How’s Deadlock treatin’ you?” Cassidy asks. Mason either doesn’t notice it’s a subject change, or ignores it. He doesn’t want to think about Ashe this early in the morning. I’ve got a bit of a thing for living, walking mysteries, don’t I?

“Damn fine!” Mason grins. “Just got a payout from them for an older bounty. Got myself a nice little place up in New Mexico. And, I tell you, ain’t nothing in the world like biking with them.”

“Oh, the hoverbikes?” Cassidy laughs. “Did they ever fix ‘em up? When I was in, those bikes were slower than takin’ a stroll.”

“Hell no. We had unbelievable stacks of cash after this one heist, and Ashe got new bikes for the higher ups. She even let me ride hers!”

Cassidy scoffs. Of course Ashe wouldn’t think of trying to fix the bikes herself—if it’s broke, why fix it? She’s always had money. Cassidy used to see her like some kind of princess who only happened to be down here with the rough-and-tumble, a former socialite with a voice meant to be listened to. Without his rose tinted blinders, he sees a plain thief. Just like he used to be, before he got thrown away for a shit Inheritance and shittier disposition.

“That’s a shame. Her old bike had a name, y'know. Thought it was somethin’ special.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, ‘Sand Burner.’ Nothin’ creative, but I could’ve sworn she loved the thing.” 

They’re angling towards a red building as they walk, Mason’s brow furrowing. He gets his phone out again, but Cassidy knows it’s not the place, since the windows are empty. He looks around, overwhelmed by the city pushing down around him. Behind him, he sees a tall building. A look at the phone, and Cassidy can see it’s the same one that was in the background of the photo. It’s diagonal to the right on the screen, while it’s to Cassidy’s direct right. He turns slightly right, trying to make up the difference. 

“It’s gotta be this way,” he says, almost excited. “No time to waste.”

Mason tries to keep up with him through cramped alleys and over tiny bridges. If downtown is a maze, Cassidy’s a sledgehammer, correct routes and politeness be damned. As he sees a distant flash of red, the taller building comes into clearer view. He stops in his tracks, looking up at the ornate windows. Sure enough, one of them is broken.

“C’mon, what are you lookin’ at? We still have a runaway ninja to find,” Mason says.

“I know this place.” Cassidy stays stone-still as Mason follows his gaze.

“Well, yeah, we’re in Venice.” Mason keeps walking toward the suspected building, and Cassidy drags himself along. He rips his eyes away from Antonio’s old base of operations—the one that became his tomb.

They approach a little shop in front of them. It’s painted rust-red, with planter boxes hanging overhead and a few little signs in the windows. Cassidy tries to squint through the window, but sees nothing but normal people. He supposes it would be unreasonable for Genji to stay in one random store for an hour. It looks to be a jeweler’s, but not a fancy one. Mason sees an anti-Inheritor charm in the display window, a bird skull on a necklace, and frowns.

“In a regular jeweler’s, too. Damn.”

“What, are you an Inheritor?” Cassidy crosses his arms.

“Yeah!” Mason looks around him before speaking. “Just a fire thing—big bloodline, I know, basically everyone knows a fire Inheritor. But mine’s the best around!”

“You take a lot of pride in that,” Cassidy says, cautious.

“No shit, man, that's the best thing about me!” Mason looks back up at Cassidy. “Guess yours is cool, too.”

“…Thanks.” Cassidy can’t help but be sad for him. Cassidy has a great Inheritance, sure, but it’s not his best quality. He’s an alright shooter in his own right (but never the best), great at cards (usually solitaire), and extremely loyal (to a fault.) Cassidy blinks. Turns out, he can’t think of much better than Deadeye, either. Maybe he’s sad for both of them.

He hears dress shoes clacking against the road and looks back. There’s a man with a flat face and a long coat power walking toward him with no signs of slowing. Cassidy tries to look natural as he rushes up and slips through the door of the jeweler’s. Mason has enough wits about him to follow. 

It feels like a cold shower in winter, shocking without being refreshing. The anti-Inheritor display case is trying to sap his Inheritance right out of him. The bird skull necklace is a popular pick, although the window display also shows off a bracelet of serrated shark teeth and some spinal disc turned into a ring. Macabre stuff, but not superstition. Inheritance feeds off of violence, bloodshed, and hurting the living. It has a harder time with things that are already dead. At least the jewelry looks pretty.

The store itself is nearly empty. The walls are plain, save for an abstract painting in the corner, and the man working the counter avoids looking at the pair. The jewelry itself isn’t exactly luxury, with most of the pieces being simple things with thin chains, round stones, and middling price tags. There’s one, a little ruby in a gold chain, that nearly looks like the Inheritor necklace. There aren’t any tall shelves, and the lights above are pure white. It’s not the best hiding spot.

“What’re we in here for?” Mason asks, loudly. Cassidy shakes his head, then flickers his eyes towards the man from earlier.

The man’s long coat stays perfectly stiff, despite the breeze outside. He’s on the phone with someone, standing up pencil-straight. He looks more like a shadow than a man. Cassidy turns back around to a normal jewelry stand, away from the anti-Inheritor stuff. Mason doesn’t move.

“Mason.” He doesn’t respond, still watching the man. Cassidy punches him in the shoulder—not lightly—snapping him out of his haze.

“What?”

“Don’t stare.” Cassidy crosses his arms as Mason joins him. If he saw someone dressed like that, he’d usually suspect them to be plainclothes Talon, but Talon would already know about Genji’s new key. Why would they waste their time on Cassidy when he’s got nothing but a pistol and a bad plan to his name?

He looks down at a jewelry rack, keeping the mystery man in his periphery. He’s up at the window, looking at Genji’s bounty poster. Not a customer, then. Mason taps his foot, impatient.

“You used to work with this guy, yeah?” Cassidy keeps his eyes away from the bounty poster, while Mason squints at it from the wrong side of the window. The man outside has moved further up the sidewalk, inspecting something in his coat.

“Yep.”

“What’s he like? I keep hearing he’s some kinda murder machine!” Mason sounds almost excited about this. Cassidy remembers that he’s supposed to be allies with this guy, and he’s supposedly ‘hunting’ Genji, but Mason isn’t the first person to call him that. He keeps his expression as level as he can. I’m not going to Deadeye this random kid. I’m better than that.

“He’s going to be a hard man to find,” Cassidy finally says, “and a harder man to catch.”

“No shit, he’s a ninja! Man, I’m glad you’ve got a gun. I’m damn good with a knife, but what’s a knife to a bunch of metal?” The man outside is starting to walk away, but Cassidy can’t make himself move.

“So, the bounty’s on his death?”

“Sure thing. You didn’t know?” Mason crosses his arms. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of killing. Thought you had Deadlock in you.” 

“I’m not.” His brain’s trying to piece together new plans, built hastily and falling apart just as fast. “I just didn’t think to ask.”

“Fair enough. I think a little less around dollar signs, too!” Mason chuckles. “Now, how long are we hiding out in this place?” Cassidy takes as deep a breath as his lungs will allow. He didn’t ask about the type of bounty because he wasn’t taking it. Because he forgot that as fun as Deadlock seems to be, at its core, it’s as ruthless as the woman who leads it. He needs something to do with his hands before he explodes. Genji took his cigarettes. Cassidy lets his breath go and steels his expression. He’s a bounty hunter. He kills for a living. Pretending he wants to kill can’t be hard.

“Let’s go. If he–” Cassidy points to the man outside, now walking away “—sees you, we’re probably already dead. Okay?”

“C’mon, we don’t even know what he wants!”

“Okay? ”

“Yessir,” Mason says, giving him a sarcastic salute. It’s exactly what Cassidy used to do with Reyes. He opens the door, and the bell above jingles like it’s laughing at him.

The mystery man walks with a perfect cadence about ten paces ahead of Cassidy. He keeps opening his coat to check something, but Cassidy can’t tell what it is from here. Mason keeps trying to get a better look at him, but Cassidy doesn’t bother. They all round a corner, and it’s as if they’re crossing a line to a richer part of town. The buildings are all tan stonework, intricate but worn by time. A few haggard gargoyles watch over their mission. The roads are smooth, and even the water of the canals looks clearer. Now that they’ve turned, they’re facing straight towards Antonio’s old base of operations.

Across the street, a woman shoulders through crowds of tourists with the precision of a scalpel blade. Cassidy watches her from under the brim of his hat. She tries to hide it, but she sneaks a glance at the man in the coat. He nods. Both of them are heading toward Antonio’s hall.

“Be ready for trouble,” Cassidy whispers, keeping his head still and looking away from Mason. “This fella has friends, and I can’t figure how many.”

“Got it!” Mason stuffs his hands in his pockets and glances around the street. He sticks out like a sore thumb with his tacky leather jacket and uncontrolled movements. Cassidy walks a little ahead of him and levels his expression into that of a stranger’s.

There’s an alleyway ahead, marked by a pathetic attempt at a street sign and cracking brickwork. The man in the coat takes a sharp turn, disappearing behind a storefront. Mason walks faster, brow furrowed, and Cassidy tugs on his sleeve. The woman from earlier isn’t looking at them, and they’d better keep it that way. He sees a few others in the afternoon crowd walking with that single minded purpose and almost military step to Antonio’s. Definitely not Talon, then. 

Cassidy rounds the corner, right hand itching for the grip of his pistol. Mason’s right behind him. The man is facing the end of the alley and standing still, coat casting a long shadow on the two bounty hunters. Cassidy takes a cautious step forward.

“You’ve been following me for the last three blocks.” His voice is icy.

“Who’re you? Who do you work for?”

“I am no one, and I work for no one. Leave.” His coat shifts. Cassidy lifts Peacekeeper out of its holster, its weight comfortable. He holds his hand in front of him a bit, out of sight of the main street. Mason looks behind him, almost worried.

“‘Fraid I can’t let you do that. Now, who do you work for?”

The man turns his head and scoffs at Peacekeeper. A tiny scar traces through his buzzed hair, and his smile is grid-straight. He raises his hands, mocking.

“You can waste bullets on me if you want. My body armor won’t complain.” He turns around fully, revealing a plain shirt and jeans beneath his long coat. The coat itself is lined with wickedly gleaming knives. Cassidy only steps closer, unwavering.

“You won’t talk, will you.”

“I can talk. I’m after the bounty on the Shimada for multiple counts of murder in Japan. None of them had witnesses left, but he wasn’t solo. I hear there was even some kind of organization.” The man laughs, deep and unfriendly. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Cassidy banishes Hanamura from his mind, wiping up blood on the way out.

“No.” Another step. “I hear that’s old news, anyhow. You’ll never catch him.”

“I’m en route right now. We’re going to need him alive.” Cassidy pauses. That has to be for the keys, right? Or is there something else they want?

“Who the hell is ‘we’?” Cassidy asks instead. The man curses and pulls a small pulse pistol from his coat. High-tech, low-skill.

“Nice chat, but I think we’re done here.” He lifts the pistol to meet Cassidy’s own.

It’s a classic standoff. Wind whistles through the alley, carrying the smell of saltwater and too many people. The man across from him holds his pistol with two hands, trying to aim with precision at Cassidy’s skull. Cassidy holds his own gun lazily, because he knows he doesn’t have to aim at all.

He’s rolling before the bullet leaves the barrel. His hat flies off his head as he rushes toward the mystery man and kicks him in the shin. Drop in, heavy blow, drop out. Cassidy’s movements are sluggish—he didn’t sleep at all last night. He needs to remind himself of why he’s here. The man elbows Cassidy in the ribcage, sending a sharp wave of pain through his bones. He stumbles back, and the man points the gun right as his head.

A blur of black dives from the side, knocking the man to the cobblestones. Mason leaps back as Cassidy keeps his pistol trained on him, inches away from his head. He waves it around a little, just to be mean. The man looks up at him, seething mad.

“Wasn’t even a proper gunfight,” he says, coughing. “You two better head somewhere else. Hunt a different bounty. The kid can go work at a food joint or something—what’s he even doing here?” Cassidy shrugs. Mason stands at the entrance of the alley, silhouetted by bright afternoon light. He’s holding something.

“What did you say?” he sounds as casual as usual.

“You heard. This isn’t your business, anyway.” Cassidy steps back and lets the man stand up, brushing off his coat. Then, Cassidy grabs the side of his head and fishes something from the edge of his ear. An earpiece. Cassidy drops it to the pavement and crushes it beneath his boot heel. The man scowls at him, while he just shrugs.

“Just in case.”

“You’re stretching my patience,” the man grumbles. “If I weren’t busy with a real target, you’d be dead. You and your little friend need to go.”

Maybe it’s the words ‘little friend.’ Maybe it’s the condescension. Maybe it’s just plain old Inheritor instinct. Mason leaps forward at the man, stealth abandoned, and Cassidy finally sees what he’s holding. A hunting knife.

They grapple on the ground, Mason looking like a feral animal. The man tries to hold his hand back, knife shaking above his chest. Cassidy tries to pull the kid off, but he only struggles more. He slips. Mason never hesitates.

He goes under the coat and stabs.

Mason takes a few deep breaths. His jacket is stained with the man’s blood—hard to notice on the black leather from a distance, but harder to get out permanently. A giggle escapes him, somehow. He puts a foot on the man’s bleeding chest and pulls out his knife with both hands like it’s Excalibur. Cassidy can only stand there, even as Mason raises an eyebrow at him.

“Sorry if you had a plan, man.” He wipes the blood off on the inside of his jacket, gross. “He was being a dick, and kinda looked like he was gonna kill you.”

“That's all it takes?” Cassidy asks. He can’t look away from the man’s body. There's a nearby dumpster, and he sighs to himself. At least he usually wears gloves.

“Don’t talk to me about restraint,” Mason says, darkening. “You helped make Deadlock.” He sees what Cassidy’s doing, anyway, and opens the dumpster for him. A wave of stench, predictably, rushes out. This isn’t a permanent solution. If anyone finds this, they’d better not be able to find him. He feels around the man’s coat pockets and makes a tally. There are a few tiny knives he wouldn’t be able to throw, although someone more skilled could, because what’s a knife to a throwing star? There’s some cash, which gets pocketed instantly. Finally, in a deep pocket, is a business card. Cassidy takes it out and squints as Mason handles the body. He seems completely unfazed.

The business card has some random corporation on it, a subset of LumeriCo, along with a generic name and a phone number. Cassody frowns—it seems familiar. He reaches into his travel bag, feeling around until he finds it. An old receipt. On the back, sure enough, is the same number from the business card, the bounty collector’s number. His face drops.

“Hey, what’s up?” Mason asks. Cassidy laughs, dazed.

“The guy you just killed works for my bounty collector.” 

“Ah, shit.”  He frowns, then shrugs, because it’s technically not his problem. Mason really is Deadlock, through and through.

The bounty collector’s security. On the news, he had seen Genji with two keys, and went into panic mode. If he let Genji get away alive, that was company secrets and the keys gone. The collector sees him as a liability, while Cassidy doesn’t. Simple as. He stands up, the man’s body somewhat disposed of. He’s thankfully not very squeamish.

“Let’s get out of here. I reckon Genji’s still holed up in Antonio's building, and if we’re lucky, the bounty security team won’t realize they’re down a man.” Cassidy rolls his eyes. “Thanks to someone.”

“I said sorry!”

“You killed a man after he surrendered.” Cassidy turns away, walking out of the alley. “Screw your head on straight next time.”

“You’re one to talk,” Mason mutters, looking at the ground.

Cassidy doesn’t look back, only holstering Peacekeeper. Antonio’s hall takes up the entire sky ahead of them, bathing the pair in shadow. There’s an obvious mass of people—the collector’s security detail, headed there right alongside him.

Cassidy’s pulled that kind of move before. Kicking a man once he’s down, shooting him halfway out the door. A fair fight is a fight you can lose, he was told, rolling to avoid his Commander in the practice range. He’s never put stock in honor. There was just something about how that man looked in the alley, face in shadow, bloody wound in light. His hands still feel unclean, and it shouldn’t faze him, because when has he ever been clean? He tips his hat over his eyes.

“It’s just one more block to the base,” Mason says, cautious.

“Good.” Cassidy walks a little faster, hoping to God there’s no blood in his footprints.

They’re about to cross a street to the building’s entrance when Cassidy holds a hand up, blocking Mason. He looks down at the cursed left arm with morbid curiosity. The two stand still as security pours toward the front door. The door itself is a grand thing with carefully stained glass made to look like a night sky, with flecks of gold shining out from murky blue. As most of the security team makes it through the door, two stay outside to watch the streets. Cassidy picks a random direction and keeps walking, hopefully naturally.

“That’s an entrance off the table. Too crowded,” he whispers.

“If the Shimada’s even there.”

“He’d better be.” Cassidy eyes the guards before crossing the street. He curves over to the left, sidestepping a few cones and a small pile of rubble. The man in the alley flashes in front of Cassidy’s eyes every time he blinks. He shakes his head—he just can’t let Mason win.

Along the left side of the building is a fire escape., and Mason’s already on it. He always seems to move fast, two steps ahead of everyone else and one step ahead of himself. The stairs of the fire escape are corrugated steel, half-rusted and covered up by caution tape. Cassidy raises his eyebrows and follows.

“Don’t think fire escapes open from the outside,” he says.

“This place has windows all over,” Mason reassures. “We’ll climb up here, then do some ninja shit to get inside. Ha—if he weren’t the target, we could’ve used a ninja!”

They used to spar every day, and Cassidy was able to hold his own a little better against the cyborg. They used to watch each other’s backs in fights while insulting the other’s aim. They used to share the world’s shittiest cigarettes over a sunrise pink from pollution and smog.

“Coulda.”

They reach the top of the stairs, and Cassidy shakes the door handle. Predictably locked. The windows next to it are plain and completely closed. Nothing to hold onto. Cassidy scoffs.

“You wanna try climbin’ first?” he asks. Mason shifts his weight to the side, and the ground creaks below him. This might’ve been covered up with caution tape for a reason. Cassidy looks up, shielding his eyes from the Sun. The roof is just a floor up.

“Boost me up there, will ya?” Cassidy asks. “Might be a rooftop entrance.”

“Do I have to?” 

“Or you can just head home.”

“Tellin’ me to get lost already?” Mason gets down on a knee anyway, grumbling the whole time. Cassidy awkwardly clambers up.

“I’ve been tellin’ you.” He’s got one foot on Mason’s shoulder and another on the paper-thin windowsill. His boot slips against the windowsill, leaving him hanging with both hands off the edge of the stone roof. He regains his footing, goes from his hands up to his arms, and heaves himself up onto the roof. The sky is beginning to yellow, but it’s not quite sunset. Cassidy looks down at Mason.

“There’s a door up here, and I reckon they don’t bother to lock it.” Cassidy looks around. “Not like there’s anybody here.”

Mason squints at the edge of the roof, a long slab of concrete. He backs as far away from it as he can, pressing against the metal railings of the fire escape. Cassidy holds back a laugh as he realizes he’s going for a running start. Not much of a run.

Mason runs a step forward, crouches mid-step, then jumps. His fingers brush up against the roof before he falls. He crashes back to the metal platform of the fire escape, sending a thunderous clang down the street. When Mason stands, dusting himself off, Cassidy’s already holding his hand out.

“Jump again, I’ll help you up,” he huffs. Mason ignores him and goes for another jump. Run, leap, crash. Just as fruitless as the first time. Cassidy’s hand slowly lowers.

“C’mon,” Cassidy continues. “You’re being stupid.”

“Don’t call me stupid.” Another missed jump.

“Never said you were stupid, said you were bein’ stupid.”

Mason scowls, turning away to look out at Venice. He puts his hand on the railing and shakes, finding it close enough to sturdy. Cassidy debates leaving Mason behind now, but then he wouldn’t be able to stop him from trying anything. From collecting the bounty. Mason crouches, concentrating, then jumps back.

As Mason crashes into metal, about to fall through, Cassidy realizes he was trying to propel himself off the railing. Cassidy drops into a kneel and thrusts his hand out to catch Mason’s wrist. He jerks forward, and doesn’t resist as Cassidy pulls him up. When he gets his hands on the roof, he pulls himself up the rest of the way. He raises his arms in celebration, sways, then has to steady himself against the rooftop escape doorway.

“I coulda made it.”

“By yourself? Neither of us are all that agile.”

“How old are you, again?” Instead of answering, Cassidy punches him in the shoulder. He storms off to try the door, then grins. It swings wide open onto a dark, freezing room. More importantly, onto the building were Genji’s supposedly hiding out.

“After you,” he says, holding the door. Mason rolls his eyes as he walks through. Cassidy checks Peacekeeper, counting four bullets in the chamber, then taking a deep breath. He enters Antonio’s base.

Chapter 6: The Distance - Live

Cassidy can’t hear anything except his own shaky breathing. The attic he’s climbed into is dusty and plain, and Mason’s already trying to leave. 

“Where do you think you’re headed?”

“Out.” Mason’s hand rests on his hunting knife. “I only need one more bounty ‘fore Deadlock and I are rolling in riches. So far, it’s looking to be a clean job.”

“You killed one of the security fellas.”

“Yeah, only one!” Mason opens a trapdoor in the floor and lets down the built-in ladder. “Ain’t used my Inheritance yet, either. It’s all under control.”

“That means you’ve got a plan, then?” Cassidy follows Mason down the ladder into a dark, carpeted hallway. Lights are hung on the wall with latticed metal shades that probably used to look elegant.

“I did have one. You’d shoot the security guys, maybe send a couple strays at the Shimada, then I’d sneak in n’ stab him. This was before I learned you’re too goddamn chicken to shoot.”

“Shut your trap.”

“What, you wanna do the work yourself? Or are you gonna get sentimental over any old coworker?”

Cassidy technically doesn’t need Genji back—only the keys. Keys that Genji somehow got without him. He doesn’t imagine himself holding the knife or pulling the trigger, because what use is it getting that close? Mason wins, Cassidy wins, both go their separate ways. He saves himself. This is just a mission, and that’s supposed to be his specialty.

Then, he remembers: A slash across a Talon agent’s throat in a seedy bounty room. Bullets meant for Cassidy bouncing off of Genji’s blade. The attempts at conversation that make some part of Cassidy ache for simpler days when the visor didn’t hide Genji’s eyes. If this is about saving himself, he’s got an awful track record at doing it alone.

So, he ignores Mason and heads to the stairwell at the end of the hall. It’s a spiral staircase overlooking other floors of the building as it goes from the lodging upstairs to the grand lobby below. A row of chandeliers hang next to Cassidy’s head. The railing is covered in a thick layer of dust. As he goes down, he hears a crash. His walk turns into a jog. Another crash, this time with a burst of light.

On the bottom floor, there are intricate, ugly tile patterns. The building’s exterior is historical, but the inside was renovated by a man with nothing but time and money to throw around. He remembers when it used to be an art gallery. Part of that tile floor is shattered, and in the middle of it is a body–one of the bounty collector’s men.

“Little late, huh?” Mason whispers. Cassidy shakes his head, eyes wide. He crouches and starts advancing around a corner to the main hall.

The hall is dark save for the center, a whirl of gunfire and green light. Genji dashes through two of the security guys, but one of them fires on him. He’s gone before the bullet can hit, before Cassidy can even see him. A third circles behind him, her hands glowing. Inheritor. Genji spots her and kicks her in the chest, hard. She flies back against the wall where Cassidy and Mason are hiding, and they both flinch away.

He gets one of the other security guys in his sights and throws a shuriken, sticking it straight in his throat. Blood splatters across the tile, turning the mosaic into an abstract. The now-dead man’s friend points a pistol at Genji. The Inheritor woman gets up behind him, unnoticed. Genji deflects a bullet from the man, but it lands in a distant window. The woman’s hands glow even brighter, and there’s a dagger in one of them.

When she steps forward, her shadow peels itself off the ground. It becomes three dimensional, a thing with form. It’s holding the same knife as the woman who conjured it, and it takes a running leap at Genji.

He gets knocked to the floor, a stray shuriken clattering away toward one of the little couches in the lobby. It’s close to Cassidy’s hiding spot, but not close enough to risk fetching it. He stays behind the poorly papered wall, hoping to God that Genji holds his own. He knows Mason is hoping for an opportunity to do the job himself.

Genji stays on the ground, trying to get up but stumbling over the blood on the floor. The Inheritor woman stands above him while her shadow kicks him, hard, sending him back to the ground.

“We know you have the keys, and have reason to believe you are holding vital company secrets,” she says with a smile that gleams by the moonlight outside. “You’re only making it harder for yourself.” Genji tilts his head up, rolling it a little.

“Then it will be very hard for you.” He points up, waiting for a second. Cassidy follows his finger, but sees nothing above them but the vaulted ceiling. Then, a flash of purple. Looking back down, purple sparks across Genji’s visor. A signal, Cassidy thinks.

Genji gets up, rolls his shoulders back, and draws his katana. The green blade still has a purple tinge around the edge. The woman snarls, gripping her dagger tighter. The shadow is still trying to get a hold on Genji. He puts his stance forward like he’s about to attack and—

—he’s already gone, and the Inheritor’s shadow is lying on the floor in two jagged halves. The top half slides toward Cassidy, looking up at him. He gets back behind the wall, clutching Peacekeeper with both hands. He’s never seen Genji move that fast. Mason slides down against the wall beside him.

“This is above my paygrade,” Mason whispers, hand on the hunting knife in his belt.

“Don’t be stupid, you don’t have a paygrade. You took this bounty on purpose.”

“Maybe I should get one…”

“That’s not how—“ A shadow passes across the far wall, away from the fight. Cassidy stands, pointing his revolver into the shadowy corners of the lobby. Mason joins him as he inches forward, trying to keep his eyes in every direction. Maybe it’s the sounds of fighting behind him or the cover of night, that does it. He doesn't notice anything wrong until Mason’s being dragged back by two sets of hands.

Cassidy leaves stealth behind as he sprints after the new targets. Mason slashes wildly at them, but can’t land any hits. Cassidy doesn’t have a scrap of Inheritor energy in him. He runs straight into the fight.

Blows and cuts come from all directions, disorienting him. His eyes water, and half of his body aches—his left hand, especially. He flails more than he punches. The only part of him that feels good is that little place right behind his eyes where he can feel Inheritance energy gathering like a headache. He rolls to the side, avoiding another blow, and kneels with his gun up. One of the targets drops Mason and runs as fast as they can. They must know me, he thinks. The other stares at him, dumbfounded at the gathering red mist.

There’s a bullet through the man’s eye before he can blink.

The man slides to the ground, dragging Mason down with him. He manages to get out of the dead man’s chokehold, and Cassidy helps him up with a scowl. His hands are shaking, and he’s never felt more alive. This is what he was always meant to be.

“Think I’m chicken now?” he asks. It’s petty, and he couldn’t care less. Mason shakes his head.

“I think you’d have a chance at Ashe’s good graces.”

“That’s cute.” Cassidy checks his revolver off instinct—of course, there are still six bullets. “She still spout all that bullshit about family to the new guys?”

“It’s not bullshit.” At that moment, Mason sounds completely earnest, like a child. He looks like he’s eighteen or nineteen, but could very well be younger. Cassidy looks down at him, mood sobering. He was bragging about shooting a man while Peacekeeper’s barrel was still hot.

“I didn’t think it was bullshit at your age, either.” Cassidy starts back toward the main hall, slowly. Mason storms ahead of him, pulling his knife.

The fighting’s still going on. The woman from earlier and the man who ran away from Cassidy’s Deadeye are teaming up against Genji. He holds them back at the end of his katana, but his movements are getting sluggish. If Genji’s going his speed, at least, he knows it’s a problem. The woman’s shadow Inheritance had squished itself back together and joined the fight again. Mason taps him on the shoulder.

“Alright, plan. You distract, I act. We both profit. Any questions?” Mason doesn’t particularly look like he’s taking questions. Cassidy peeks around the wall again.

“Just one.” He steps out into the lobby. “Where’s Genji?”

The two mercenaries and their shadow are scattering in different directions. Genji himself is nowhere to be seen, and Mason crosses his arms.

“We gotta find him. Can you go hunt down the security dudes for me?”

“Hell no,” Cassidy says, somehow keeping his voice even. “Need as many people looking for him as possible, with a guy like that in a place like this.” One of Genji’s shurikens is still lying on the ground. He picks it up and pockets it.

“And you used to work with this guy?” Mason asks. “Must’ve been… Interesting.”

“It was something.” He can’t think about it. “You check the left stairwell, I’ll go right.” He takes off at a clumsy sprint before Mason can respond—if Mason gets to Genji before him, that’ll be that. A dead friend, if they were still friends. One of the greatest Inheritor bloodlines of all time, ruined. He said he wanted to kill the dragon, Cassidy thinks. This is one hell of a way to do it. 

He runs up the stairs, ignoring every side hallway and letting the spiral staircase make him dizzy. Genji always used to sulk on the roof of the Blackwatch base. Even when they made it inaccessible for “safety reasons,” he found a way up. After a while, he even tolerated Cassidy joining him. His heart pounds at the same pace as his boots against the carpet. The stairs take him back the way he came, and he opens the attic trapdoor. He’s on the ladder before it has time to lower all the way. Up through the attic, up the stairs, rooftop exit. He cracks the door open just enough to see through.

Genji’s flashing purple all over and scrapping with the Inheritor woman. He won’t use his Inheritance, but he isn’t getting tired anymore, either. His movements are imprecise but whip-crack fast, and the moonlight turns his silver armor white.

Behind the fight is a third person. 

She has dyed purple hair with wires running across her head, and some incomprehensible holo-computer setup at her fingertips. Her face looks familiar, though Cassidy can’t place it. Thin purple light lines connect to the seams in Genji’s body armor, stretching like taut rubber bands. She frowns.

The Inheritor’s shadow grabs Genji from behind him and throws him to the ground. The bounty hunter kneels and puts a knee on his chest as she pulls something from her jacket pocket. Handcuffs. If Genji has information, the bounty collector’s company would want to keep Genji alive for… A little while.

He squirms beneath her, and Cassidy thinks about interfering. Then, there’s a flash of light from the second woman’s miniature computer. Genji spasms. Before Cassidy can so much as see the blade, his shortsword is sticking straight up through the mercenary’s ribcage. Blood splatters onto the door Cassidy’s hidden behind, and he winces. The bounty hunter slips, coughs, then falls to the side, leaving blood on Genji’s visor. The other woman closes her little hologram computer with a flick of the wrist and a lipstick-toothed smile.

“My part’s done! You just need that next key, yeah?”

“Next two.” Genji inelegantly cleans his blade on his undershirt. He twitches again.

“Alright. This won’t be the last you hear from me, Shimada,” she says, sending playful sparks of purple at him. Cassidy pales, realizing just who this hacker woman is. That lady at the auction, what was her name..?

“Thank you, Sofia,” Genji says, sounding not at all thankful.

“Ah-ah, you owe me!” She giggles. “Also, you’re a ninja, right?”

“...Sort of, yes.”

“Yeah, use those stealth skills to not get followed. There’s someone lurking right…” She points straight at Cassidy’s hiding spot. “There.” He swears. It’s too late to not get caught. He slams the door behind him, turns, and runs.

Sofia’s computer had been sending something to Genji. It made him do things he wouldn’t have wanted. A pit forms in his stomach when he realizes where else he’s seen this purple light; in the auction hall, when Genji was brought to a total standstill. He shudders and keeps running.

After a minute and a few floors, he doesn’t hear footsteps behind him. A quiet dread starts seeping through him. Genji never tries to be stealthy around him–only around people he’s trying to kill. Across the hall, he sees a glimpse of a leather jacket. Mason. It might be the first time he’s glad to see the kid.

“Where..?” Mason asks.

“Behind.” Cassidy points up, breathing heavily. He needs time to regroup, time to keep Mason thinking they’re on the same side. Time before he sees Genji again, this time with literal strings attached.

“Security?”

“Dead.”

Mason nods, hands sparking at the edges. Cassidy remembers too late that he’s a fire Inheritor. Real Inheritors don’t need time for anything. He smiles, checks down the hallway behind Cassidy, and runs.

Cassidy curses and spins on his heel. Mason’s shorter, but runs faster than Cassidy ever could. He turns into the main stairwell and slams the door behind him. Green light starts to fade in from under the door. Cassidy rams into it and shakes the knob—locked tight. He pounds on the door.

“I’ve got this!” Mason shouts over the sound of metal on metal. He’s trying to prove himself, Cassidy realizes. Wrong place, wrong time, he thinks, and absolutely wrong guy. Cassidy remembers being eager-to-please during Deadlock, all for a woman who did nothing but steal away people’s pleasure. He sighs.

The sounds of fighting are moving down and out of earshot. Cassidy glances around. Across the hall, loathe as he is to use it, is an elevator. He mashes the button a few times, willing it to move faster, eye twitching. There’s a ding, and the ancient elevator doors creak open.

It takes nine seconds for the elevator to reach the bottom floor. Cassidy taps his boot to time it out, buzzing with frenetic energy. Inheritance is starting to build again, but, for once, he ignores it. The doors open and Cassidy stumbles out, Peacekeeper up.

The hall is lit in a wash of blue, and everything smells like smoke. Mason’s surrounded by almost-white fire, his veins glowing like his blood’s been replaced with the stuff. Genji dashes around it, but he’s slow without Sofia’s ‘assistance.’ His clothing’s torn, his visor’s scratched, and he looks like he’s barely holding himself up by the wires.

Mason looks back at Cassidy with white eyes and a manic grin. He throws a wave of fire; Genji ducks, and it hits the shelf behind the front desk, engulfing it. Mason’s serrated hunting knife glows with heat as he emerges from the fire. He slashes forward. Genji jumps back, but Mason meets him there, kicking his legs out from under him. He flicks a shuriken up at Mason, but it only catches in his jacket. He stands over Genji, more Inheritor than human. Cassidy gets closer, trying to walk across the shadowy parts of the wall. Genji’s still laying down, head lolling to the side. Mason crouches down in front of him, twirling his knife between his fingers, a little Sun blasting the hall with light.

The air around Genji begins to swirl with green.

Mason scrambles back from Genji, skidding across the tile. The dragon isn’t fully forming, not even close, but Mason knows who he’s hunting. He looks at Genji the way most people look at rabid animals. Genji leans his head forward, trying to seem lucid. The green in the air crystallizes into scales and fangs around him.

“Who are you?” Genji muses. “Clearly not security, by the outfit…”

“You shut up, there. We’re here on your bounty.”

“My bounty! I had forgotten about that.” He giggles, delirious, then the frowns at Mason. “Who is we?” The tired wisps of Genji’s dragon float up to the ceiling, weaving between the crystals of a massive chandelier. Mason looks up.

“No one.” He looks over at Cassidy, up at the chandelier again, then makes a little finger-gun motion. Shoot the chandelier. Cassidy nods, not wanting to give his position up.

“I don't…” Genji coughs. “I do not appreciate being lied to.” He tries to pull himself up on the shelf behind him, but his leg slips out from under him. A fake potted plant falls and shatters. Despite the overwhelming Inheritance filling the room, it’s the loudest sound there. Mason takes another step back, real fear in his eyes for once as he looks at the Inheritor before him, even as battered and beaten as he is.

“Alright, you’ve caught me,” Mason says, sounding not at all caught. He turns to Cassidy. “Come on out, now. We can all chat peacefully.”

Every step feels like he’s got lead in his boot heels. He’s not in Genji’s line of sight yet, and he’d prefer to keep it that way. His breathing is shallow and measured. It’s one of the spurs on his boots that eventually makes that tell-tale jingle, echoing through the building. Genji’s head snaps up.

“Cole?”

“Hello, Shimada.” Cassidy keeps his face neutral, ignoring how this is the first time in years that Genji’s called him Cole. Ignoring how he has to use Genji’s last name instead of his first, the name of a shameful lineage instead of that of a proud, badass cyborg. Genji looks between him and Mason, posture stiffening.

“Ah. I see how this is.” Genji puts his hand on the shelf again, pulling himself up by one arm. He’s able to stabilize a foot beneath him. “A shame.”

“Shame ‘bout what?” Cassidy asks, sweat gathering at his forehead. Mason is giving him an odd look.

“I had planned on finding you before you found me. Having you on my side would have been a bonus, too.”

“You could have any ol’ Inheritor on your side, Genji,” Cassidy says. It’s a throwaway line, more instinct than thought, but his heart isn’t in it. His gaze is flicking over all the possible exits, chaining together haphazard exit strategies and leaving them all over his mind. Genji huffs, bitter.

“If you say so.” He’s fully standing now, and the dragon is almost a fully formed creature. Mason’s eyes flit between the two of them, trying to connect dots that aren’t there anymore. Genji takes a step forward—as does Cassidy. There’s about two feet between them when Genji draws the katana. A dragon’s tooth materializes near Cassidy’s neck and disappears in the next moment.

Then, something’s grabbing Cassidy from behind.

Mason drags Cassidy away from the dragon, brandishing his hunting knife with his free hand. The half-made dragon is flying towards them in pieces, green light like comet streaks. Flecks of light start to hit him, each one stinging. Mason curses, grabs Peacekeeper from Cassidy’s holster, and shoves it into his hands.

“Now!” he shouts.

There’s a world where Cassidy shoots out the chandelier. It would tilt, creak, and fall to the tile. Glass would shatter over Genji, the expensive metal behemoth crushing his metal body. Cassidy would get however-many thousands of dollars (God, he never thought to check Shimada’s bounty, he’d never wanted it) and be on his way. His home would be motel rooms and planes and trains and the cracked asphalt below him.

Cassidy isn’t going to be in that world anytime soon.

He turns toward Mason. No Deadeye, no tricks, and definitely not a clean shot. Gunfire cracks through the air, and the bullet grazes Mason’s leg. He stumbles back, his jeans staining red-black with blood. His eyes widen.

“You missed.”

“Get out of here,” Cassidy warns. The air around Mason is still burning hot, a remnant of his Inheritance.

“Fat chance. I don’t care what you need this guy for, I need the money.”

“For what?”

“Whaddya think Deadlock thinks of me? Ain’t particularly good at anything except hunting, and the desert’s slim pickings.” Mason giggles as he shifts his weight off his bleeding leg. “A few thousand’s enough to change an opinion, but this?”

“You’re dirt beneath their boot heels, no matter how much you cozy up. Don’t forget it.”

Mason and Cassidy stand across from each other, errant flecks of green falling around them as Genji struggles with consciousness. Blood stains the mosaic tiles between them, and Cassidy’s still letting Peacekeeper cool off. He remembers owning a tacky leather jacket almost exactly like Mason’s, once.

Cassidy rolls to the side. A ball of fire rushes past him, and Mason quickly follows. Cassidy sticks out a leg to trip him, but he haphazardly leaps over. On the way down, Cassidy punches Mason in the gut, and he doubles over. As Cassidy approaches, Mason runs forward and headbutts him. He looks up with a bruised face and a smile.

“Lotta effort for one cyborg,” he says. Cassidy’s vision is going fuzzy around the edges. The first time, he’d planned to spare him by aiming at his leg. He lifts Peacekeeper up again, this time at Mason’s head. He won’t have to aim at anything.

“You’ll eat your words, kid.”

“Not a kid.” Mason stands in the middle of the hall, stiller than a deer in headlights, afraid of the gun but unmoving. What’s his knife going to do at this range? Cassidy smells smoke from beside him, frowns, and looks over.

Mason’s fireball didn’t vanish. The shelf behind Genji is burning from the bottom up. The flickers of dragon scales are gone now, leaving nothing more than a man passed out in a fire. Genji tries to inch away, but he’s getting nowhere fast, and the synthetic flesh beneath his armor is starting to crackle. 

Mason is trying to walk toward him, even though his leg looks worse for wear than before. His knife is in a death grip, blade gleaming in the light of the fire. Any of the childishness and fun he used to have is burned away, leaving nothing but a killer. An Inheritor. This’ll be what makes Ashe like him, Cassidy thinks. Maybe the money, too.

Cassidy’s still holding Peacekeeper up, Deadeye pushing up against his temples and his eyes and the ends of his fingers. It tells him to ignore the smoke choking his lungs, ignore Genji in the fire, and only see the boy in the oversized jacket in front of him. It curls around his hands and turns them into an extension of Peacekeeper’s handle. He isn’t Cole Cassidy, through that haze. He’s a gun with a target.

He hears a scraping sound to his side and turns, still operating through that Deadeye haze, not all there. Genji’s dragging himself away from the fire, determination through every struggling movement. Parts of him are charred black, and Cassidy can barely see him through the flames. The sight wakes him up, Deadeye leaving his brain in a vacuum rush. Cassidy holsters Peacekeeper and doesn’t spare Mason a glance as he runs—Genji needs help again, and he isn’t making the same mistake twice.

“Hey, Genji.” He kneels beside him. “Don’t mean to rush you, but we need to be outta here, like, yesterday.” 

“Hello?” Genji chuckles, a rare occurrence. “You’re still here.”

“Yeah. I am. C’mon.” Cassidy tries to help him up by the hand, but he won’t budge. He’s more beat-up than he looks, Cassidy thinks. He moves to slip his arm under Genji’s shoulder. Genji’s pulled to half-standing, half-leaning against Cassidy’s side. The exit’s only a few yards away. In front of it, of course, is Mason.

“Too chicken to even try killin’ me?” he taunts. Cassidy just stares.

“What, do you want me to?”

“Nah.” Mason holds his knife up, admiring the sharpness. “Just surprised.”

It’s harder to dodge when you’re supporting someone else. He swerves a few clumsy jabs from the hunting knife, pulling Genji along with him. All of his attacks are one-armed, and Mason’s whittling him down as they approach the doors with stained glass in the windows. He’s mostly aiming for Genji. Cassidy dodges another slash of the knife, winds back around, and lands a punch on Mason’s jaw.

As Mason spins away, clutching his face, Cassidy takes off. He doesn’t have time to look behind him. He shoulders through the doors hard enough to leave cracks in the glass and opens onto the cool night. The breeze isn’t enough to relax him—if Genji weren’t half metal, he’d probably be bleeding out on Antonio’s ugly tiles. Footsteps still pound behind him, but Cassidy never quite stopped believing in the principle that if he can’t see something, that thing can’t hurt him. He speeds down the sidewalk and into an alley.

The alley turns into a twisting maze of painted brick and sandstone, and Cassidy couldn’t be happier at first. If it’s easy for him to get lost in, it’s easy for Mason, right?  But bootsteps grow louder behind him, and he’s getting a little too lost.

Cassidy rounds another corner and sees Mason. He looks older than his years, face lined with bitterness. Cassidy hears a mechanical click by his side as Mason approaches.

Then, there’s a shuriken lodged in his leg. Mason collapses against the wall with curses flying out of his mouth.

“Oh, you son of a whore, this is why you sold me out?” he yells, half-incoherent and losing blood fast. “No man’s ever gonna be worth more than his bounty. You’re all just numbers! It’s why you gotta think about the long run, Cassidy.” Cassidy’s legs are tired, and he elects to walk a little slower out of the alley. Not like there’s danger to run from. Genji’s lucid enough to throw a shuriken, but still isn’t talking, which is enough to make anyone wonder about Overwatch’s priorities.

“That’s how she always says it too, ‘lahhng runn,’ all slow-like,” Mason mutters, nearly out of earshot. “Ashe… I wanna go home.”

Cassidy and Genji are almost out of the alleys, leaving Mason behind. It takes everything Cassidy’s got not to look back.

-

The arch of Rialto bridge shades Cassidy and Genji from view—a good thing, considering Cassidy’s carrying a variety of weapons and Genji looks like he’s been spit-roasted. Genji collapses against the sandstone wall, sliding down to sit. Cassidy joins him, then winces.

“He got you pretty good, didn’t he?” he says, looking at the patches of red and spots of charring across his synthetic muscles. Even his armor looks worse for wear.

“Why was he with you?” Genji’s voice is completely level, despite the pain he’s probably in. Considering Blackwatch, that’s nothing new.

“I didn’t know where you were at, and he did. Even though he was aimin’ to kill you…” Cassidy shrugs. “Clearly worth a shot.” Genji looks straight at him, and Cassidy imagines his visor glowing a little brighter than usual.

He reaches into his travel bag and blindly feels around until he feels cool plastic. A medkit he’s been holding on to since late into Blackwatch. Most of the supplies are halfway full—the painkillers are mostly full, because he saves them for bullet wounds he can’t tough out.

“Where does it hurt?” Cassidy asks.

“The burns on my right bicep and forearm range from 2nd- to 3rd-degree.”

“I asked where it hurts.” Genji sighs and points at a small spot on his upper arm where the ‘skin’ is blackened and dry. Everything around it is red and shiny. Cassidy lays the medkit on the pavement beside him and finds a water bottle at the bottom of his other bag. He cracks it open and starts trickling water onto the burn, not wanting to run out too soon.

“Can’t do much about a third-degree, there. I ain’t a doctor.”

“It is alright.” Genji puts his knee up and rests his hand on it, giving Cassidy space to work around the whole arm. He scoots closer, trying to see the burn despite the starless night. He resists the urge to whistle an idle tune while the authorities are still onto both of them.

“Did you take my cigarettes when you left?”

“They were cheap and unrefined.”

“Yes, then,” Cassidy says, putting the cap back on the water bottle. “Can’t say I missed ‘em much, if we’re goin’ by comparison.”

“Comparison.” Genji huffs, and Cassidy can only assume it’s a laugh. “That is a high bar for me, no?”

“Of course,” he says. Cassidy avoids the green line of light, not quite a gaze, as he searches for the miniature biotic field. He eyes the tin of antibiotic ointment—can cybernetics get infected? Probably not, but Genji still has a decent amount of flesh and blood. He looks properly at the arm. There are third degree burns, sure, but Genji’s skin is some synthetic stuff that can’t scar. Before the collapse of Overwatch, he was set to be their last-ditch poster boy. The reformed Shimada, the recovering murder victim, the heartthrob assassin. For that to work, he’d have to look shiny and spotless.

“I did not think you held me in… Well, any esteem.”

“Huh?” Cassidy opens the antibiotic tin.

“You left me at the auction for your revenge on Reaper. I left you for my mission for those keys. It only made sense.”

“Not exactly pragmatic, if I chased you all the way back up here.” He puts on an unreasonable amount of hand sanitizer before scooping out some of the antibiotics. When he presses it to one of the charred spots, Genji winces, clutching his knee so as to keep his arm still.

“Tell me why, then,” Genji says. It’s probably through grit teeth, but he somehow still sounds teasing.

“Bein’ considerate.” He flattens his voice. Cassidy uses his other hand to hold Genji’s arm in place as he looks at the other burns, cringing at the sight of the curse eating at his own hand. He can’t properly feel anything with it, only the impression of silicon skin beneath. Every burn gets treated with equal care, even if his skin is technically fine. Cassidy still doesn’t—can’t—linger. Genji goes stone-still while Cassidy sets up a biotic field in one hand next to a wall covered in thinly-carved graffiti.

“And this is just consideration, too?” Genji asks, looking down at his burned arm and turning it. It glows in the light of the field. “Can a weapon consider things?”

“Can a human hit six targets with one bullet?” Cassidy retorts. Genji silences for one, two, then too many seconds. The stars above glitter like distant fireflies, impossible to catch. The night is cooling quickly, and Cassidy wraps his serape tighter around himself while watching the water beneath the bridge. Back to business, he gets a roll of gauze and a clip from the medkit, with the former in dangerously low supply.

“When I left, I did not think you would find me,” Genji admits. “You would get out your violent tendencies, and I would kill my curse. Straight to the start again—two Inheritors, two strangers.”

“You wanted t’ cut your losses,” Cassidy murmurs, raising an eyebrow. Years ago, Genji left Blackwatch in the middle of the night. He left nothing behind but a thick stack of medical records for Angela, a single scratched-up shuriken for Cassidy, and memories like bruises for both of them. The night before, he’d talked to Cassidy, calmer than he’d been in months. Peaceful. Then, too, he said he planned on cutting his losses.

“I did.” He lifts his arm as Cassidy begins wrapping the roll of gauze around it, treating the wound as gently as any outlaw Inheritor ever could. “In reality, there are no losses to cut. You are still here.”

“…Huh.” Cassidy finishes wrapping, clipping the bandage to itself. His hand lingers there for a moment, comfortable, but the sight of his curse makes him draw both hands away. Shame-faced and tired, he turns away to close the medkit and put it back in his bag. Genji leans the slightest bit closer to him, woozy. Cassidy lets him do it, while it’s still night and they’re too tired to pretend they didn’t miss the feeling. The night wind brushes against him, gentle and sweet. He unwinds into the pavement, 

Genji’s visor buzzes.

It’s a faint sound, but it’s enough for Cassidy to sit up, frowning. The light across his visor is a faint teal instead of green, and he groans. With his uninjured arm, he fumbles towards the faceplate latch where a left ear should be. When he presses it, the light flashes off. Cassidy inches further away as it turns back on, washing the underside of the bridge in bright purple light.

“Hey, Genji. What’re you doing lurking in an alley?” a feminine voice asks, coming through a tinny speaker in the visor. “It’s creepy. Probably not comfortable, either.” Cassidy swears. It’s the voice of ‘Sofia’, calling through Genji’s visor. Cassidy didn’t know that even had a microphone.

“Just who the hell do you think you are?” he asks, aiming to intimidate and hoping Sofia can hear him. A muffled laugh comes down the other end.

“Oh wow, Cole Cassidy’s here? Genji, why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve had a real surprise.”

“I did not know he would be at Antonio’s,” Genji says quietly.

“Outlaws drop in and out like that, don’t they?” She can’t keep the smile out of her voice. “I’m Sombra, by the way. Nice to meet the man himself.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cassidy grumbles. Sombra sounds like a more fitting name for someone who can knock a man out with just a few lines of code than Sofia.

“Touchy! Genji’s files always describe you as a lot nicer, y’know.” Cassidy’s about to get up and probably do something stupid when Genji cuts in.

“What are you calling about?” 

“Oh, I just wanted to tell you that Antonio’s base is clear. Compared to the alleys of Venice, this is a five star hotel.”

“I went in that building,” Cassidy says, “and it was a three-point-five at best.”

“Very funny. Your little friend from earlier tried to burn the place down, no?”

“If I ever see his face again…” Cassidy tries to follow up with a sufficient threat, but it jumbles in his head. He can’t pick between burning or flaying as a threat, it’s nearly one in the morning, and he can’t help but think of all the dumb bounties and dumber deals he himself took in Deadlock.

“He will be dealt with,” Genji completes, probably raising an eyebrow from under the visor.

“Good, good!” Sombra says. It’s still eerie to hear her from Genji’s visor. “Look, you guys get to the old hideout, okay? Once you’re all cozy and settled, I have some juicy intel for you.”

“Intel? Hell kinda intel do we need for—“ Cassidy’s interrupted by a brief click as Genji’s visor goes back to fully green. He stands, unbothered, while Cassidy scrambles to meet him. The bandage around Genji’s burned skin is already damp from what Cassidy can only assume is blood or coolant—he’s not a cyberneticist.

“I meant to tell you about Sombra later,” he says, nearly apologetic.

“That woman was talking inside your mask!”

“She is a skilled programmer.”

“A hacker, then,” Cassidy says. He starts back through the alleys, trying to remember the way to Antonio’s.

“Slippery and untrustworthy, but a potential ally.” Genji speeds up to walk at Cassidy’s side. Without any street lights nearby, he’s navigating by the light of his cybernetics. Cassidy nudges his hand. Genji hooks his index finger through Cassidy’s in response before walking faster, pulling him along.

“How’d she get in your head, exactly?”

“My visor, not my head,” Genji corrects. “Although calling me is not the only thing she did.” 

“…Like what.” Cassidy’s imagination starts filling in some worrying blanks.

“Altering the flow of cortisol and adrenaline into my cybernetics during a fight, apparently,” he says. “I know I felt some difference. Optimization, I suppose.” The pair turn another corner, Cassidy stumbling over the shallow step of the alley as it turns into the main road. There are finally street lights overhead.

“Just controllin’ your circuitry like that...”

“I was not being controlled. Inheritors wear out just like anyone else, and I need the advantage over everyone else.” The shadow of Antonio's building blocks out the stars above as Genji walks, carefree.

“Hmph.”

Cassidy swears he can still smell smoke from the doorway to Antonio’s abandoned base. He pushes the door open with a groan, passing under the too-grand archway. All around him is the prickling feeling of being watched—by this ‘Sombra’ woman, by Reaper, by Genji himself. It’s not an uncommon feeling. He never just remembers things; rather, he’s haunted by memories, by all the ghosts of his past gathering for a pity party with their gracious host passed out drunk in an alley. Worrying about real people watching him doesn’t help.

Genji walks ahead to the receptionist’s desk, next to the burnt shelf that nearly crushed and killed him just an hour earlier. Once he’s behind the desk, he crouches in search of something. As Cassidy’s leaning on the desk, he stands back up with a holo-key in hand. He tosses it to Cassidy, who barely manages to catch it.

“That is the key to the employee lounge. I assume they have couches.”

“And a working lock on the door.” Cassidy sighs. “Closest thing a wanted man can get to lodging ‘round here, I s’pose.” He tries to forget the curse on this building—first the mission with Antonio, and now Mason? He’ll be sleeping with both eyes open, with or without the lock.

“Indeed.”

Neither of them are going to admit that they have no idea where the employee lounge is, so they set off down a random hallway. Most of the doors are labeled, but they’re in Italian and aren’t readable by the sliver of moonlight outside. Cassidy nearly trips over a toppled potted plant in the middle of the hallway.

It’s another few minutes of Genji trying the holo-key on every door and Cassidy failing to read the signs before a door a few paces ahead clicks open. The ‘lounge’ is, to give it credit, better than Overwatch’s sterile rec room. The walls are a deep emerald color, and the couch and chair set are trying very hard to look like real velvet. He flicks on the lightswitch in the corner, illuminating the room in a soft golden color. His eyes lock on something on a nearby table.

“Coffee maker. Thank God.”

“You sound like it’s an addiction.”

“Coulda sworn I saw some tea bags over there, too,” Cassidy says, hiding a laugh behind his hand. Genji crosses his arms.

“Only in bags?” he asks. 

“Snob.”

“Slob.”

Cassidy only laughs, putting an instant coffee pod next to the machine for tomorrow. Usually he’d complain about it, but he has a point to prove and no shits to give. Genji collapses on the couch behind him, propping his injured arm up on the back of it.

“Now, when I wake up tomorrow, you’ll still be lurkin’ around, yeah?” Cassidy asks.

“You have better things to worry about.”

“C’mon, Genji.” He sits next to him, leaving his hat on the ottoman across from it. Genji leans back, relaxing.

“I will.”

“Never thought I’d see the day.” Cassidy yawns, then smiles lazily. Genji’s visor is pointed towards him with laser-focus, green light washing over the room. Who knows, though? he thinks. He could already be asleep. Cassidy stands up to turn the lights off before going to the couch. He spares a glance at the chair, but he doesn’t particularly need pains down his spine from sleeping all curled up like a cat. He’s a little old for it. Besides, the couch is a mile wide and twice as long. Genji is already slumped over on one end, and Cassidy grabs his hat before he cozies up on the other. He puts it over his face, more out of habit than to block the light. That’s how he still hears the little click, and sees the purple glow following it.

He sits up, hat tumbling to the ground. Genji’s cybernetics are shining brighter than usual, so bright that it hurts his tired eyes to look at him. His visor is off, but his face is turned away, showing nothing but wild black hair and the edge of his jaw, lined with a thin metal frame. There’s even purple beneath his skin, as much a part of him as the synthetic. He’s seizing up, his cybernetics are emitting a strained buzz, and Cassidy reaches a hand out. 

With as little warning as it started, it stops. At least there’s no phone call this time, he thinks. Genji slouches forward, breathing heavily. It’s the first time in ages he’s actually heard him breathe. The lights dim again. Genji keeps his face turned, but doesn’t cover it.

“Hell, Genji, what’re you n’ this hacker doing?” he asks. “Are you alright?”

“I appreciate the concern,” Genji says. Again, clear and unobstructed. “I am not injured, though.” His accent clips consonants off the end of every word, and he talks like he’s got somewhere to be. The last time Cassidy heard his voice without obstruction was years ago, when it was too dark for either of them to see each other and too late for them to feel ashamed. When Genji was spending his days with Overwatch proper, and supposedly wasn’t on speaking terms with his old teammates. Supposedly too good for them.

“If you’re fine, what was all that fuss?” Cassidy asks. They’re sitting inches apart. For once in his life, Cassidy can’t make himself sound calm.

“Sombra was.. giving me the info.” Cassidy tries not to think about how the info just got uploaded straight to his brain.

“…Such as?”

“The location of the second Heritage key.”

Notes:

sorry for the wild n wacky posting schedule, I started writing a whole separate fic for a whole separate thing and keep forgetting to update this regularly 3

Chapter 7: They Never Got You - Spoon

Four days left to live. It’s the first thought to cut through the morning fog in Cassidy’s mind. His arm is blackened and cursed all the way up to his elbow, and although he can’t feel anything there, it manages to sting. He’s been wearing long-sleeved shirts more often, because he can’t stand the questioning about it—or the pity. He wonders if that’s why Genji wears his mask. It’s a little redundant, considering neither of them have ever pitied the other. Cassidy still pulls his sleeve down.

Genji’s in the lobby of Antonio’s building with cleaning supplies lined up on the reception desk. He’s on the other end of the room, shurikens at the ready. Cassidy opts not to disturb his miniature ‘shooting range,’ standing in the doorway of the side room.

Genji sends a shuriken soaring with a flick of his wrist. It lodges itself in the side of a wet-floor sign. He throws the other two from his hand, landing them in a bottle of Windex and a mop bucket respectively. As Genji goes to get his shurikens back, Cassidy figures he shouldn’t be lurking in the doorway. He doesn’t want to leave—it’s always alluring to watch someone good at what they do. 

Genji’s always been a kind of mix. A steel-plated cyborg in plainclothes, a dull voice with fire behind the eyes, a dangerous weapon and an impossible man. Nowadays, the edges blend a little smoother. Genji’s polite distance is a far cry from the way they used to fight every day. Cassidy remembers the way Genji’s voice would get low right before a spar in the practice range, smug like someone who’d earned it, up in his face telling Cassidy how absolutely screwed he was.

He was probably right.

“Hope none of those are aerosols, there,” Cassidy says. Genji finally looks back at him.

“Hm?”

“Stick a shuriken in one and you’ll send the thing flying.”

“Ah.” Genji reloads his shurikens. “This is a problem because..?”

“Could hit somethin’, someone, I dunno.” Cassidy walks over to look at Genji’s target practice. Genji huffs.

“I am sure you will survive…” Genji squints. “…lemon-scented Lysol to the face.”

“Forget I said a thing, then.” Cassidy pulls the rolling chair from the receptionist’s desk over next to Genji. Genji looks down at him, tilting his head, expression obviously unreadable. He shrugs and throws another round of shurikens. One of them sticks in the back wall, and Genji sighs at the missed shot like he’s mad at the shuriken for curving.

“Had a setup like this of my own, back when I was learnin’ to shoot,” Cassidy says.

“What, you shot cleaning products off of a desk?”

“Empty beer bottles off a fence. Who do you think I am?”

“I cannot imagine a time where you did not know how to shoot.”

“Me neither,” Cassidy jokes. Genji’s gone to retrieve his shurikens again. 

“I see the appeal of such a setup. It has less… Pressure, than real fights do,” Genji muses.

“Ha!” Cassidy touches Peacekeeper at his side. “I said when I was learnin’ to shoot. My skills got a little more hands-on in Deadlock.” Genji taps his fingers on the table, still standing.

“I met you when I was twenty, and I believe you were twenty-two or so. And you had been in Blackwatch for five years.” Genji tallies it up. “You were seventeen when you joined. When, then, was Deadlock?”

“You don’t wanna know. Young,” Cassidy mutters, bitter. “I didn’t find out what the word ‘Inheritance’ really meant ‘till Blackwatch.”

“No?”

“Yep. ‘Fore that, all I knew was it made me a natural-born killer.” The room’s silence is stifling. Genji flicks the shurikens in and out of his wrist.

“Do you want to try the shuriken?”

“What? Why?”

“You would not be a natural,” Genji says. “You would have to practice. It is almost meditative.”

“You just wanna see me fail all my throws, don’tcha?”

“Maybe.” Cassidy wonders if he’s tricking himself into hearing a smile in Genji’s voice. Genji hands him a shuriken, and Cassidy takes it. At least I know to hold it by the flat end, Cassidy thinks wryly. He holds himself straightforward and curls his wrist in, looking at the mop bucket across the hall. He throws.

It takes him a second to find it. Far to the right of the target, lying sadly on the carpet. Genji laughs, an honest-to-God laugh, before going to retrieve it. He pulls Cassidy’s hand up and presses the throwing star into it.

“You know I was going to teach you how to throw it, yes?” he asks. Cassidy crosses his arms, face going red.

“Sure.” Genji looks him over for a moment, scrutinizing.

“The easiest way to start is by standing sideways to the target.” Genji’s voice becomes methodical. He faces Cassidy, looking to his right at the mop bucket.

“You don’t do that.”

“I do not need the easiest way to start,” he says sardonically. “Now, hold it between your thumb and your pointer finger’s knuckle. Curl in your wrist, then your arm.” Cassidy looks at his stance, squinting, trying to copy every detail. Upright posture, curled wrist, cutting one hell of a silhouette against the morning light through the dusty windows. He’s seen pictures of what Genji used to look like, and can’t imagine that face on the man before him. Focus.

“Wrist, then arm,” he mutters.

“Yes. It is like skipping a rock, almost.”

“I ain’t ever skipped rocks,” Cassidy says. “Too busy livin’ in the desert.” Genji sighs.

“Then, you snap.” Genji flicks his arm and hand back out to a straight line at the bucket. The shuriken sticks into the side with a thunk. Cassidy narrows his eyes, determined not to make an absolute fool of himself. Wrist, then arm. He exhales, and does his best to take aim. Flick! The second throw.

Cassidy walks over, debating if this is any better. It’s still off, but it’s off by a little less, and it’s stuck in the wall instead of the carpet. Genji follows behind him to get his blade back.

“Oh, you hit right in the center of this stain in the wallpaper.” Genji crosses his arms. “Perfect aim, I would say.”

“Shuddup.” Cassidy can tell Genji’s having way too much fun here. He grabs the shuriken from the wall himself and holds it out to Genji with a flourish. 

“Decent for a first try,” Genji says. He claps Cassidy on the shoulder, patronizing, and snatches back the shuriken. Cassidy rolls his eyes, but can’t keep the small smile off his face. It’s a back-and-forth—get a rise out of one, back down, get aggravated, repeat. It’s the rhythm to Cassidy’s favorite song. If this is them being fond now, it’s a miracle neither of them ever stabbed the other during Blackwatch.

Wait, fond? Cassidy wonders. His stomach drops. He squeezes his left hand into a fist, digging his nails into his palm and letting the cold numbness sober him. He’s got bigger, Talon-flavored fish to fry.

“When are we gunning for that next key?” Cassidy asks, stumbling over the words. “We’ve got a bit of a deadline here.” He holds his hand up, waving his smoking fingers. Genji snaps his shuriken back into his arm, all business.

“As soon as you would like to,” he says. “I know where the key is, but it’s deep underground. The entrance to its chamber or what-have-you could be anywhere in the city.”

“Then let’s not waste daylight,” Cassidy finishes. “Key three, here we come!” Genji tilts his head, letting silence stretch thin over them. A pause.

“We are looking for the second key.”

“Thought you misspoke yesterday,” Cassidy replies, narrowing his eyes. “Why would you get the location of a key you’ve already got, yeah?”

“Why would I have the second key?” He sounds genuinely confused. Cassidy wants to trust him, especially after last night, but the wary Inheritor in him still itches for Peacekeeper.

“It was a big enough event that you got on the news,” Cassidy says darkly. “Taunting my bounty collector in his penthouse office with two keys looped ‘round your index. Why else do you think his private security team was after you?”

“I—what?” Genji takes a step back. “I have never stepped foot in that man’s office. I do not even know what he looks like.”

“Clearly you do. At least cough up the second key—even if you don’t wanna say how you got it, I’d like to know if my life’s still on track for bein’ saved.”

“I cannot show you what I do not have,” Genji snaps, starting out the door ahead. “You can check. Every inch of the building, every compartment of my cybernetics. Disassemble me to scrap metal if you would like. I am not lying.”

“Disassemble—? Genji, I’m only tryin’ to figure out what was on the news, if it wasn’t you.” He follows Genji. “Not searchin’ you like a goddamn suitcase.”

“You would not be the first to do it.” Genji snaps a shuriken in and out of his hand, fidgeting. “I was built to be easy to repair—and take apart. Not every Blackwatch agent was a doctor.”

“Or a mechanic.”

“You barely knew how to put a car together,” Genji teases, a little cooler now. “Much less a machine as sophisticated as I.”

“I’d need to be a mechanic and a doctor, then, and that’s above my paygrade. You ain’t as simple as a car.” Cassidy tips his hat over his eyes, trying to block the sun. Genji looks at him from the side, slowing down a bit.

“I suppose I am not.” He snaps the shuriken back into his arm a final time before rolling down the sleeve of his hoodie. “Although I would hardly call a car simple. It is—hm. Let us just find the second key.”

“Supposedly second,” Cassidy says. His heated temper evaporates, leaving nothing but a determination colder than his decaying arm.

The air outside is still slow-burning, though, stifling the way a desert summer is. It doesn’t seem characteristic of Italy in the springtime. Suppose I ain’t a climatologist or what-have-you, Cassidy thinks. Genji leads the way down the road, disguised visor in place and bag in hand. The walkway has spring weeds growing up between the stones tiling it, and gaudy, touristy gondolas circle lazily around the canal. Genji ignores them, walking with purpose.

“How’re you tracking this key, anyhow?” Cassidy asks. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a GPS in your visor.”

“No. Just a feeling, a sort of pull on my circuitry. I am still not sure what Sombra did to me. Whatever it was, it is as precise as it is helpful,” he says sarcastically. Cassidy hmphs. The bridge ahead, Antonio’s building behind, Genji beside him… it’s horribly familiar. He wishes he could hate Venice, hate what Blackwatch did to both of them. However, even with his hatred, it’s in his blood just as much as his Inheritance. The rush of adrenaline, the hail of bullets, the glint of metal in the shadows. The late nights.

“Why’d you pack up and head for Venice in the first place?” Cassidy asks. Genji stills.

“I needed the Necklace. Still need it.”

“Enough to leave your old life behind?”

“What life?” Genji asks, blunt. “There was Blackwatch, then there was nothing.” Cassidy doesn’t mention life before Blackwatch—he knows Genji would never mention Deadlock. It’s a back-and-forth.

“Didn’t expect a guy like you to be in the same straits as me,” Cassidy muses.

“Like me?”

“Sure. Figured you’d be off doing something badass a world away instead of gettin’ stuck with me here.” 

“You are the least of my problems,” Genji says quietly. He sounds almost fond—and completely unfamiliar. Cassidy stares at him for a moment. Genji stops in front of one of the shabby wooden docks by the bridge, holding his hand up. Cassidy stops behind him, but the silence grows awkward.

“I don’t know if we’ve got time for a pit stop.”

“The key is directly below us,” Genji whispers. “No idea as to where the entrance is. It has to be that tomb, right? We are so close.”

“Hey, cool your jets. Still got all day to search.”

“Your arm is decaying from a curse—I do not know how you are the calm one here.”

“Usually I am,” Cassidy says with a smile. He ignores the arm.

“That is a bold-faced lie if I have ever heard one.” Genji scans the area around them, and Cassidy decides to try and look. He has no idea what he’s looking for—he’d figure the entrance to an entire tomb would be pretty obvious. People crowd around the docks, so Cassidy takes a step back. Rialto Bridge has some tiny pieces of penciled-on graffiti, hearts around initials and “blank was here.” While Genji looks across the canal, Cassidy walks to the side of the bridge.

Not everything is pencil or marker. Low on the stones, near Cassidy’s feet, is a carving. He squints, feeling like it’s something he recognizes. It’s a little teardrop shape pointed to the right, with a darker carving inside of it. Next to the teardrop is a circle with a squiggling line sticking from it. Wait, no, rewind.

Next to the teardrop is a key. And the teardrop looks pretty much—no, exactly—like the Heritage Necklace. Cassidy takes a step back, as if the carving’s going to do something to him, and taps Genji on the shoulder.

“I think I’ve found us a clue.” He points at the carving, and Genji crouches down for a closer look. He brushes a finger against it.

“It does not look recent,” he says. “If this is a prank, it is a very old one.” His voice upturns like a question, like he doubts it’s a prank at all.

“Unless you’ve got any better leads, this thing points right.” Cassidy looks to his right and sees an alley snaking through tight-knit red and tan buildings. “And patience ain’t either of our strong suits.”

The alley is barely big enough to fit both of them, and probably not made for walking through. Cassidy sweeps his eyes back and forth—the last carving was barely bigger than a quarter, and he can’t miss a thing. He slows in the alley, unsure about the ‘clue,’ until he spots it. Hidden by a cluster of drying weeds, a circle with a squiggle. Another key, pointing him forward.

The spaces between buildings start to feel like a maze. Genji catches the carvings sometimes, stopping him from going too far off-track. They get close to a real sidewalk once, and try to sidestep the sounds of tourists who’d ask questions. Eventually the alleys widen to paths, and the key carvings grow further apart. The last alley spits them out near the intersection of a canal. The far end leads to the bottle-green ocean, and the other leads too far away to see. The area is, at least, remote. Cassidy looks around. There’s a small fountain back here, part of a tiny courtyard. The last key he sees is the one at his feet.

“This oughta be it, right?” he asks, looking around. “Pretty nice place, considering it’s empty.”

“There is a chance the route we took is the only way here,” Genji says. “The implications there are… Interesting.” Cassidy looks at the fountain. It’s a quaint sandstone thing with old water pooling in it—the actual fountainhead doesn’t work anymore. The middle isn’t a normal fountain, but some abstract sculpture.

“Think this is it?” Cassidy asks.

“You tell me.”

Cassidy walks around the fountain, searching for another carving, for anything, along the sides. None of the cracks or crevices reveal a thing. Cassidy leans forward on the thing to look deeper. He hears footsteps on the stones behind him as Genji joins him. He stops a ways behind Cassidy.

“Come here.”

“Huh?” Cassidy looks up from his search and sees Genji just before he grabs his shoulder and pulls Cassidy back. Cassidy stumbles to where Genji’s standing.

“Look at it,” Genji says. Cassidy doesn’t notice much difference about the fountain’s sculpture from here. Genji takes his shoulders and moves him slightly to the left. The angle of the statue shifts, and it’s as if pieces are clicking into place. The statue isn’t abstract at all. From this exact angle, reaching out to him is a limestone hand. On the tip of the ‘pointer finger’ is a keyhole.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cassidy says. He tries to reach for the finger, but due to the illusion, the keyhole’s set further back in the statue than it seems. Genji still has a hand on his shoulder as he opens a panel in his other hand. He flicks the first Heritage key from his hand into his fingers and clambers to the keyhole. Cassidy’s not sure he’ll ever get used to the casual touches like that—during Blackwatch, Genji looking at him wrong was enough to make Cassidy jump out of his skin. He’s not sure what he’s feeling now is any better. Cassidy snaps out of his thoughts with a click. The key turns.

The statue begins to rumble, and Genji leaps back. It rises from the fountain on a cylinder of stone. As the cylinder grows taller, Cassidy can see it has an opening set in the side. Beneath the statue itself, an entrance. Cassidy laughs. It’s really here. Genji puts the key back into his hand.

“After you,” Genji says. He sounds unbelievably smug, but Cassidy can’t blame him. He steps up to the side of the fountain and pokes his head through the tiny doorway. There’s no floor, only a wooden ladder down. Cassidy tries to maneuver himself around, wishing Genji had gone first, and tests his weight on the old ladder. It holds, despite looking like driftwood, and Cassidy descends into the dark.

Chapter 8: My God Is the Sun - Queens of the Stone Age

The ladder takes them down a drafty tunnel, where he can nearly feel the wind whistling through his bones. He can feel that the walls are stone as they scrape against him, but he can’t see a thing. Cassidy feels at his own bag for the zipper, wanting a flashlight. He fumbles a bit as Genji leaps off the ladder behind him. Cassidy smiles thinly at him.

“Hey there, can you look at my bag for a second?” 

“Why?”

“Uh. Your visor glows,” Cassidy says. Genji stays silent. “It’s just to light this up for a second, I’m gettin’ a flashlight!” Genji sighs, all dramatics, and looks at Cassidy’s bag with the omnic disguise visor. Cassidy rifles through his bag and finds the flashlight under the cool green glow—he rarely uses the flashlight, but spending years as a lone wanderer makes one prepared for anything. He switches it on, illuminating the tunnel. It’s just as cold and stony as it felt before, nothing to write home about. He hears a click from beside him. Genji’s hands are by his visor.

“This disguise is useful, but I can barely breathe,” he says. Cassidy focuses the beam of the flashlight away, knowing how Genji is about his face. He hears a soft laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“You are so adamant!” Genji says. “I appreciate the privacy, but there’s no need. I would not kill you for seeing my face anymore—it’s hardly a sight.” Cassidy turns the flashlight back, slow, not even focusing on him. He’s not sure why he’s antsy.

Genji looks at him.

Straight nose, sharp eyes, wry smile. There’s heavy scarring on his nose and the center of his face, tinted a faint blue. Weren’t Hanzo’s dragons blue, there? The lines trail out like rivers on a roadmap. Cassidy’s technically seen his face before—at least, he’d seen pictures of the wayward Shimada heir before his ‘death.’ But Genji doesn’t look at all like the old picture. He doesn’t look like the vessel of a dangerous dragon god. He doesn’t look like the robotic soldier Blackwatch was supposed to make of him. By God, he just looks like a man. Straight nose, sharp eyes, wry smile. He wants it committed to memory, branded on his brain.

“Didn’t you have red eyes before?” His voice is too quiet to echo down the tunnel. He’s frozen on the spot.

“Yes.” Genji isn’t looking at him. “Dr. Ziegler was tasked with giving me enhanced vision. It was later scrapped.”

“What, they scrapped your eyes?”

“Only parts of them.” Genji side-eyes Cassidy like he’s in on some kind of joke. “My whole body is basically a scrap heap.”

“If it’s that or death, then you’re the best damn scrap heap I know.”

“Against the crowds of other cyborgs you keep company?” Genji asks sarcastically. He’s still smiling, too, he hasn’t stopped, and he doesn’t know how badly it’s scrambling Cassidy’s brain. Cassidy almost wants to take a picture. The thought’s disgustingly mushy, and he pushes it aside.

“You breathin’ easier now?” Cassidy asks, keeping his own breath level.

“Yes, thank you. Shall we?” Genji gestures forward down the tunnel. The beam from the flashlight doesn’t reach the end of it.

“A lot more walking. Thrillin’ stuff.”

“Would you rather be getting shot?” Genji asks, crossing his arms.

“I’d rather be shooting first,” Cassidy says, defiant. Genji keeps walking forward, shaking his head. Cassidy can see his side profile from here, washed out in the cold light of the flashlight. He has some sparse facial hair, too, that Cassidy never would’ve noticed before. He’d never seen anything but those eyes. 

The tunnel walls were plain and weathered earlier, but deeper in, two things start to happen. First, there are forked paths in every direction that Cassidy resists the urge to explore. Second, the plain walls give way to small carvings, which give way to probably-ancient murals.

The mural in front of him portrays a woman shooting something from her hand—lightning, he thinks—at an advancing army. Sharp, jagged lines are carved to represent lightning, arcing over the soldiers’ heads. The woman’s face is obscured. Similar murals line the walls ahead.

“Carvings of the first Inheritors,” Genji says, awestruck. “They must be. There is no reason to depict Inheritors outside of your bloodline in your own tomb unless you are somehow… deifying them.”

“People knew the first Inheritors?” Cassidy asks. He starts walking forward. “Also, which way are we headin’?”

“Left. And supposedly they did, if one is to believe the myths. Have you not heard of them before?”

“Wasn’t exactly academically minded back then,” Cassidy says, looking to the side. “What myths?” Genji’s staring at the murals like the first Inheritors are going to leap out of the brickwork at him.

“There was an ancient war where both sides’ soldiers were given mystical powers by the gods. Neither side was given an advantage, but both thought they were. They pulverized each other in a blaze of magic.” Genji takes another random turn in the tunnel—what seems to be a maze. “Their descendants inherited their powers. As they were strengthened by death, they inherited their bloodlust as well.”

“If you believe the myths,” Cassidy says.

“My family did,” Genji comments. “It was a point of contention.” Cassidy’s tempted to say it was more than contention, judging by his half-metal body, but decides to be courteous.

He doesn’t question where Genji’s going, seeing as the key’s location is somehow embedded into his brain. It’s definitely a maze. They walk in comfortable silence—Genji’s silence used to be menacing, but now it’s just a sign that he’s present. After a few boring minutes, Cassidy picks up that Genji is specifically following the Inheritor murals through the maze. Other branching paths have had more nondescript carvings. He’s not going to break the silence by mentioning it, though. He’s beginning to feel the weight of the art on the limestone around him, untouched by time. It really is a tomb.

Cassidy’s eyes snag on a mural in the corner of the next turn. It’s a little more faded than the others, painted in rusty oranges and clay browns. The man in the mural wears a massive animal skull over his head, some kind of goat or bison, and points a crossbow to the other side of the mural. Crossbow bolts pierce the faceless crowd in front of him, all at once. In the skull’s eye socket is a tiny bead of gold, glinting under Cassidy’s flashlight. The infinite ammunition, the mural of the desert, the all-seeing eye. Cassidy puts a hand on Peacekeeper.

Is this man the first Inheritor who… Cassidy’s thoughts trail off. Is this an ancestor? Genji comes up behind him to see what he’s looking at. He looks at the mural, then at Cassidy.

“Deadeye,” he says, almost reverent.

“That’s me.” Cassidy stands in front of the mural, looking up at his masked ancestor and copying his stance. Feet wide, standing sideways to his target. He matches flush with the mural behind him as he holds up a finger gun at Genji. He ‘fires,’ and Genji covers his mouth to laugh.

“I can’t believe you would kill me!” he says, raising a playful eyebrow. “You think you know someone…”

“You’re the one who trusted a former gang member,” Cassidy retorts. Genji looks at the mural again, seeming like he can’t tear his eyes away from the thing.

“Would they have known you were descended from this?” Genji asks. Cassidy leans against the wall. ‘They’ were a bunch of sleazy nobodies, himself included. Cassidy had never learned all of the history and lore behind his Inheritance, only how to shoot with it without passing out. It’s a rush of reminiscing—the shitty, ancient jukebox at Panorama crackling out half a song before dying. A runaway socialite reviving a gang started a century ago out of pure spite. The smell of gunsmoke never leaving either of their clothes. A clumsy hand on a grimy face.

“We didn’t know a goddamn thing about anything,” he says fondly.

“Hm. Figures."

“Hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m teasing,” Genji says, raising his eyebrow. Cassidy looks away, turning the flashlight beam to the rest of the maze and hoping he’s not red. He and Genji walk together. Genji knocks into him from the side. Cassidy knocks back, and neither of them say anything, but Cassidy’s sporting a foolish grin and he’s sure he can see Genji smiling, too. They pass more murals, but the tunnel’s starting to straighten out.

Cassidy slows when he sees a mural of a man lifting a sword. In bright jewel tones, a dragon wraps itself around the blade. Genji stops, his hands curling into fists. Before Cassidy can say anything about it, Genji keeps walking, almost too fast for him to keep up.

A few minutes later, Genji puts his arm out, stopping them both. Cassidy’s flashlight can’t illuminate the space ahead. When Genji puts his arm down, he takes a cautious step forward for a closer look. A dark chasm yawns below them, messy brickwork on either side and wooden pillars stretching to the ceiling.

“Least we found the end of the maze, huh?” Cassidy asks. Genji crosses his arms, unimpressed.

He walks to one wall and holds a brick jutting out from it, testing its weight. He shrugs and swings onto the wall. It’s almost eerie to watch him cross the chasm wall, moving from brick to crumbling brick as if he were feather-light. Cassidy tries to follow, but chickens out as soon as he touches the first brick. It’s sticking out less than an inch from the wall. 

Cassidy isn’t going to embarrass himself by admitting defeat in front of a random pit. He’s a cold-blooded killer for a living, goddammit. He looks around the room, his eyes eventually falling on the wooden pillars. Inside the pillars themselves are small, patterned planks of wood, just as tall but much thinner. He crouches to take a look at the bottom of the pillar, clenching his flashlight between his teeth to keep his hands free. Whatever nail or screw once keeping it in place had long since rotted into uselessness. He snaps it out of place. If he can get the top of the plank detached, it’ll stretch the entire chasm.

“Genji, can you lob me one of those shurikens, there? Trying to cut this pillar.” Genji looks up to the top of the pillar, flicking a shuriken from his arm to his hand. He leans his head down and his arm forward, gauging the distance, and throws. The shuriken arcs to the top of the pillar, severing the plank from it. When it falls, it bridges the gap, making a loud crashing sound as it leans on Genji’s side. Cassidy steps on it, and it only creaks a little bit. He walks across.

“You took your time.” Genji pulls his shuriken from the edge of the petrified wood and wipes the dust off on his hoodie.

“What? No congratulations for that fine piece of ingenuity?”

Genji laughs. “I’ll congratulate you when you find the next key.” 

“Fair enough.” Behind Genji is another ladder deeper into the tomb. Cassidy descends first this time.

The air feels thick and oppressive here, like summer air without the sunlight. Genji climbs down behind him. The flashlight beam falls on bumps and horns—anti-Inheritor charms, although the word “charm” feels like a weak one to describe these. These are full size animal skulls with jutting teeth and curling horns, protective sigils of some kind carved across them. Definitely not any old piece of jewelry. Cassidy feels vaguely nauseous from the anti-Inheritance measures. Definitely not snake oil. Above the skulls, caskets are inlaid in the walls. There are nameplates, but the names have worn away with time.

“Ironic,” Genji says beside him. “A tomb is built to immortalize the memory of their bloodline, and no one remembers them.”

“Time gets its share from all of us, I s’pose.” Cassidy shines his flashlight further. A straight hallway with a vaulted ceiling and once-elegant arches lies ahead. Genji takes his hand with the flashlight and aims it at the floor ahead. Pulled taut across the hall is a tripwire. More wires lie ahead, and at the end of the hall is a wrought iron door, half-rusted.

Cassidy keeps his eyes firmly on the floor as he walks down the hall. If he sees a brick so much as a shade different from the others, he avoids it. He starts to trip at one point and steadies himself on one of the skulls in the wall. The energy is sucked from him in a cold rush—he takes his hand off of it. Genji reaches the door first. He flicks a stack of shurikens into his hand, almost looking like claws. Cassidy draws Peacekeeper and presses on the door. It swings smoothly on its hinges, completely unlocked. 

The central chamber of the tomb is grand and empty. Dark gems are inlaid in the limestone walls, surrounded by intricate carvings. Cassidy’s flashlight doesn’t reach the ceiling. In the center of the room is a waist-height pillar, and on the pillar is a dark wooden box. Genji steps toward the box, running his thumb along the keyhole. Cassidy leans in.

“You wanna do the honors?” he asks. Genji nods and opens the panel in his hand. His face scrunches in concentration as he pulls out the first key. They’re both holding their breaths as he unlocked the box—it’s the kind of moment Cassidy feels should have a score behind it. The box clicks open and the lid swings back on a hinge. At the bottom of the box is a rusty silver thing that looks like it’s destined for a trash heap. Cassidy would doubt that it’s the real key if not for the fact that it radiates Inheritor energy like a tiny sun. Genji picks it up, holding it with the first key.

“Now, the paranoid bounty collector is correct.” Genji inspects the keys.

“Huh?” 

“He believes the second key is gone, and that your mission is compromised,” Genji says. “He may not even pay for the Necklace if he thinks I am involved.”

“What about it?” Cassidy asks.

“Well,” Genji flips the keys up between his fingers, “now I’m involved.” Cassidy’s about to come up with a smart retort when he hears thudding outside the main chamber. Footsteps. He looks behind him and sees a row of three figures approaching the main room. He puts a hand on Peacekeeper as they get closer. Genji closes his hand panel and draws his shurikens. The closer they get, the worse the dread tightening his throat becomes. It’s Talon.

Cassidy raises his gun first. Reaper vanishes in a column of smoke, and Cassidy loses precious seconds trying to search for him. He reappears behind him with a shotgun in hand. The cold metal of the barrel digs into his temple as Reaper holds it to his head. He stills, hesitating to breathe. The other two Talon agents walk into the chamber, and if it weren’t for the gun to his head, Cassidy would already be strangling one of them. Moira O’Deorain walks up to Reaper with a sphere of light in her hand.

“Hello there,” she says. “I was going to ask you to deal with Cassidy, but it seems you have everything under control.” Reaper doesn’t move a muscle. Cassidy wonders if he has to breathe anymore, ever since Moira’s experiments. The only thing her Inheritance is supposed to do is strengthen and weaken other’s Inheritances. Reaper’s Inheritance is just like his old Commander’s (god damn you) was—the ability to turn into smoke. Now, he can’t turn back into a man. Moira sighs.

“I see today is a low-activity day for you, hm? I’ll have to up your dosage.” With that, Moira steps back. Cassidy can feel the tip of the shotgun start to shake. He looks over at Genji and figures he’s not faring much better.

There’s a third Talon agent, and she’s advancing on Genji. Her Inheritance wraps around her hands in a web of purple lines. Side by side with society’s dregs is Sombra.

Of course a Talon agent would have their Inheritance permanently locked and loaded, Cassidy thinks. Without an Inheritance, you’re dirt beneath Talon’s boots. The lines of light start to draw forward, and Cassidy almost moves. A cold hand on his arm holds him back—Reaper.

“Truly, I’m impressed,” Sombra says, pushing violet hair behind her ear. “I don’t think we could’ve found these keys without you two!” 

“What?” Cassidy asks. He knows exactly what happened, how badly they’d been played, but he won’t be the one to say it.

“Really, I didn’t have a clue. Although the hologram of Genji paying your bounty guy a visit with fake keys was all on me!” A hologram. Cassidy berates himself for not thinking of it sooner. If the collectors were too busy trying to kill Genji, they wouldn’t spend any time looking for the actual second key. If there was any security on the tomb prior, they’d since left for the more exciting hit.

“This seems awfully roundabout,” Moira says, wrinkling her nose. “Could you not have killed the cyborg earlier if you wanted?”

“I couldn’t get to the second key without the first. Why would I make more work for myself when I can just send them down here for me?” Sombra pouts. “Besides, these guys are chill! I don’t have to listen to your sociopathy just because, Moira—go back to taking it out on your rabbits.” Moira looks like she’s about to take it out on her.

“Are you not in an active alliance with us?” Moira asks. Genji hasn’t moved this whole time, and Cassidy mentally urges him to run or fight or do anything. Then, he remembers the shotgun aimed at his head. He’s scared for my sake, he thinks, incredulous.

“I’m an independent contractor.” Sombra turns back to Genji. “Sorry about her—I know you don’t like her, either, ever since Blackwatch.”

“What? How do you—“

“How do I know!” Sombra laughs. “People ask me that about everything, I swear. Inheritance. Hacking. Come on, I know you aren’t stupid.” Sombra clinks a fingernail against the plating on Genji’s arm. Cassidy hears a rumbling sound overhead. It sharpens briefly into the sound of footsteps before quieting again.

“How close are we to the surface now?” Cassidy asks. Everyone’s attention turning on him is nerve-wracking—even Reaper seems to listen in.

“Not very. But the bounty collector and his army-sized security team are pretty close to us.” Sombra looks at the ceiling. “Ever since I made the hologram of your guy—you’re welcome, by the way!—every bounty hunter and collector in Italy’s been gunning for you.”

“I know that. I’m just wondering how they found this ancient shithole,” Cassidy says, wishing he were pointing Peacekeeper.

“The authorities were given an ‘anonymous tip’ yesterday, and no one’s closed the fountain entrance.” The footsteps are growing louder, accompanied by faint voices. Genji flicks a shuriken to his hand.

“I am not letting you leave without giving me some answers.”

“You’re not letting me do anything,” Sombra says with an empty smile. “If you’re lucky, I’ll let you out.”

“…Of what?”

“This.” Sombra takes the Inheritance in her hands and threads it out to him, violet lines connecting mid-air. A line touches Genji’s shoulder pad and it sparks violet-white. The purple spreads, giving him a sickly glow. His face goes blank and pliant, and Sombra furrows her brow.

“I don’t like you looking at me like that, man.” She waves her hand, the lines connecting like marionette strings. “Now, put the mask back on.” Genji doesn’t say anything, just unzips the bag at his side and gets his visor. His movements are jerky, like someone learning the controls of a car for the first time, and Cassidy takes a step back. He’s being controlled. He’s… Reaper presses the gun harder when Cassidy moves.

“Don’t move until I say so,” Reaper whispers, smoke drifting out of his owl-skull mask. He seems a little more lucid than he was earlier, but Moira doesn’t notice anything, still watching Genji. He puts his visor back on, the usually green line across it shining violet with Sombra’s Inheritance.

“Awesome!” Sombra says. She holds a hand out. “Now, give me the Heritage keys.” Genji struggles against the Inheritance, sparking green. His hands are clenched in fists at his side, and his visor is ever-impartial. Sombra huffs.

“Will you do it if I say please?” she asks. Footsteps in the hall grow louder, and Sombra’s Inheritance gets brighter at the same time. Slowly, like he’s moving through spiderwebs, Genji opens the panel in his hand and holds it out. Sombra takes both keys and closes the panel for him, tapping it afterward. Cassidy can’t stand how playful she is about the whole thing.

“Once I have the Necklace… No more grunt work. Only the real stuff. Only the truth !” She giggles. “Who knows, Genji, if you prove a decent fighter, I might have to keep you around.” Genji’s statue-still.

“You won’t have the Necklace. Talon will,” Moira says, self-satisfied. “Give it to the Reaper. Unlike you, he won’t get any bright ideas.” She sighs.

“He doesn’t have ideas at all,” Sombra complains. She walks over to him and Cassidy and presses the keys into his hand. “You’re so boring with Moira around, you know.” Reaper doesn’t respond. Cassidy remembers him talking earlier—was he not supposed to?

Before that train of thought can go on, it gets derailed; the bounty collector’s security team rushes through the door.

Reaper lets Cassidy go and turns into smoke once more. He appears in the middle of the security team, shotguns firing before he’s even fully solid. Sombra goes to join the fight, but something whizzes past her ear. A shuriken. Genji draws his shortsword. The last thing Cassidy sees is Moira trying to beam him down before a guard punches him hard in the jaw.

Cassidy stumbles back, clutching the side of his face with one hand and drawing Peacekeeper with the other. He pistol whips the guard, rolls back, and shoots. Straight through the skull—the man collapses. There’s more people surrounding him, although they seem a little more interested in Genji. In shooting him, that is. Cassidy scowls, shoots some scattered potshots, and runs out of the chamber and into the hallway. Thankfully, the guards leave Genji alone and follow him as he reloads, hands shaking.

Reaper is mowing down the guards in the hallway, but more are replacing them. Cassidy closes the chamber door behind him, just in case, and runs toward Reaper. He has the keys.

A guard crashes into him from the side, and Cassidy kicks him in the shin. He rolls to avoid a spray of bullets. The fighting’s charging his Inheritance, even with the anti-Inheritor charms in the hall. Reaper keeps disappearing and reforming, exhausted. The crowd is a swarm of grey uniforms, with Reaper like a pillar of fire in the middle. He rushes further down the hall, back to the trip wires. He stomps on one with a metal boot. The ceiling opens, and boulders crash down in front of the guards. Screams rise from the crowd, but they’re still shooting. Reaper looks more dead than usual as he stumbles back.

“Cole, Deadeye!” The voice is harsh, sounds like a smoker’s lung and a half, but he swears he knows it. Cole. It can’t be him. Cassidy takes a few random shots at the trapped security, building up Inheritance. He might be getting shot, too. It’s hard to tell with all the adrenaline replacing his blood. The skulls in the room make it hard to hold onto more than a scrap of energy. The minute he feels he won’t pass out, he raises Peacekeeper. Energy courses around and through him. Another shot toward him. He doesn’t aim—his vision burns—he fires.

Cassidy props himself up on the wall, stars in his eyes. The skulls around the room weaken his shots. He weakens his own shots. You’re out of practice, Cole, shape the fuck up. Not his voice. A stray bullet cracks through the air and directly into his left arm. 

He looks down, making sure it went through. He doesn’t feel a thing, except a little sick as he watches his blackened skin knit itself back together. The bullet falls out of his arm and clinks to the ground. Bang. A second gunshot from across the hall. The final security guards fall, the ones who took the brunt of his good-for-shit Deadeye, and Reaper’s shotgun is smoking.

How is Reaper untouched?

Deadeye takes anyone in his sight who he wishes harm and sends them to high hell. Even if it doesn’t kill, it never misses. Reaper could have dematerialized around the bullet, but he had already been phasing in and out too much to keep up. The only other possibility is that Reaper, the Inheritor who cursed his arm to a smoking mess, isn’t someone he wants to harm. The chamber door is still closed. Reaper turns back to a man-shaped monster and walks towards him, unbelievably calm. He’s holding the keys.

“What the hell is your angle?” Cassidy asks, voice low. He thinks he knows—but it can’t be true, he died in the explosion, he died without ever telling Cassidy—

“I’m trying to cut a deal here, kid. I’m not usually this lucid.”

“That’s real comforting.” Cassidy raises Peacekeeper to Reaper’s head. “Now, does this deal involve me shooting your brains out of your skull? ” Reaper makes a choking noise, smoke pouring from his mask. It takes a few seconds for Cassidy to realize it’s supposed to be a laugh.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Cole.” Cassidy freezes. Reaper pulls his hood down and reaches to the back of his head, unlatching the mask. He pulls it away, and the man beneath it looks him straight in the eye. His eyes are black. His graying skin looks like it used to be brown. The same beard, the same buzz cut, the same frown lines deep in his face. Peacekeeper falls from Cassidy’s shaking hand.

Commander Gabriel Reyes, former mentor and savior, stands before him.

Chapter 9: gun-shy - Grizzly Bear

Notes:

this chapter is extra short, might double post!

Cassidy takes a step back, almost scared of the apparition in front of him. This can’t be real, can it?

“Gabe?” Cassidy’s trying to superimpose the picture of his old commander over the thing he’s become. It fits perfectly.

“Hey.” His voice is a little lower, a little calmer. “You want to hear the deal or not?” Cassidy nods, still dazed. Reyes pulls the keys from his pocket.

“With the Necklace, Moira would have enough power to undo my curse. If you let me have it later… I’m sure she could do something about that arm,” he says with a shrug.

“The one you cursed?” Cassidy asks, cautious.

“I already told you, less lucid. If Talon had their way, I would’ve killed you.” Reyes looks to the side. “I’m not going to do that, Inheritance be damned.”

“You think Moira’s gonna agree to any of this?”

“A shotgun to the head makes most people pretty agreeable,” Reyes jokes. And God, maybe neither of them have changed. Reyes takes more from his pockets—two pieces of paper and an earpiece. He holds everything up to Cassidy, even the Heritage keys.

“Whaddya want out of me for this deal?”  Cassidy asks.

“Info on your whereabouts any time I ask. Try not to kill me.” Reyes pauses. “Any other favors I think of later.”

“Vague, huh.”

“I’m covering my bases.”

“And if I refuse?” Cassidy asks.

“You walk out of here with no keys and die before the week’s up.” Cassidy pales, and Reyes huffs out a sigh. “Yeah, I wouldn’t like that option either.” Cassidy reaches his hand out for the keys, but pauses. Reyes drops them in his hand anyway, takes his other hand, and shakes it. Cassidy had to shake hands with all the UN folks at Reyes’s funeral—the only proper funeral he’s ever attended. He had to rent a suit for it. Now, Reyes is looking at Cassidy like he’s some kind of idiot, and Cassidy wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Deal.” Cassidy pockets the keys and the papers. He puts the earpiece into his ear and starts to walk toward the main chamber door. He needs to get Genji and get out. Reyes puts a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“What?”

“If you walk free with the keys, they’re going to know I handed them over. That’s my head on a spike outside Talon HQ.”

“I ain’t letting you hold onto these,” Cassidy says. “You can keep ‘em once I’m off my deathbed.”

"Oh, you can keep them. It just needs to look like you won them. Like you kicked and clawed and tore the keys away with your bare hands.”

“And how am I supposed to make it look like we fought?” Cassidy asks. Reyes raises his arms in the air, deceptively casual.

“Just shoot me.”

Cassidy freezes. Peacekeeper still lies on the floor where he dropped it earlier. The metal doesn’t shine at all, blending in with the stone. The air in his lungs goes still. Burning under Reyes’s impatient gaze, he crouches down and picks the gun up. It’s never felt more unnatural to hold than now. He lifts it to Reyes, straight at the chest.

“Come on, kid, we don’t have all day,” he says. “You know you won’t kill me—just get me in the knee, and I can say I was incapacitated long enough for you to snag the keys. Once you shoot, you need to run.”

It’s a logical solution for something thought up on the fly—Reyes’s specialty. It’s logical. Cassidy tries to make his right hand stop shaking. His left, at least, is unresponsive. He points the gun down a little at the knee.

“You’re being dramatic. Shoot.”

“Sorry if I’m a little hesitant to shoot my old Commander,” Cassidy says. Commander is a loaded word, and he’s holding a loaded gun. He’s known this man for half of his life, and this is how they reunite?

“I thought I trained you better. What’d I tell you about Deadeye?”

“Be ruthless.” A mantra he’d almost forgotten.

“You’re not a child, you’re a grown-ass Inheritor. Take the shot.”

“I don’t—“

“And don’t give me any fucking excuses!”

Cassidy doesn’t think. He does what he does best, and shoots.

Reyes stumbles back, but stands his ground. Smoke rises from the fresh wound, and it’s oozing something that could almost be mistaken for blood. Reyes grins. Cassidy’s almost forgotten how sick the guy’s sense of humor could be.

“Was that it?” he taunts. Cassidy’s finger moves before his brain can.

One more shot in the leg, one in the side. Three in the left arm. Muscle memory he’ll never be able to erase or replace. Cassidy’s gun clicks, empty, and he lets out a heavy breath, snapping out of the haze of cracking gunfire. Reyes sways and stumbles against the wall, black pouring from him like a smokestack. He slides down in a puddle of black against the wall. Cassidy puts Peacekeeper back in its holster, ignoring how searing hot the barrel is. He doesn’t want to see it right now.

“Good job, Cole. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Reyes says with a bubbling cough that’s somewhere in the ballpark of a laugh. Cassidy clenches his hand in a fist, still shaking from adrenaline. There was a time when Cassidy would’ve killed to hear Reyes tell him he did a good job. He sounded like a teacher instead of a Commander–maybe like distant family. As it stands, Cassidy’s just low on ammunition. There’s a loud bang from the chamber door.

“Fuck you,” he spits.

“That’s the spirit.” Reyes laughs. “The normal Cole’s finally back.” Cassidy crouches down in front of the bleeding Reyes. He doesn’t have a clue who the ‘normal Cole’ is. He sort of liked the new things, the nicer things. 

Nicer things? Cassidy thinks. Who am I kidding? Reyes and I are the same. Reyes sits up from the wall and frowns.

“I’m healing quickly. Your window to leave is getting short. Get the hell out of my sight.” Cassidy looks at the wound in Reyes’s side, almost a perfect circle. It’s webbing over with strings of black that’ll somehow knit together into ‘skin’ later. Reyes looks up at where Cassidy crouches, still somehow smug. He wants Reyes to be proud of him. He wants to wipe the smug expression off his face in a swift, clean blow. Instead, he reaches for the half-healed bullet wound in Reyes’s side.

Cassidy digs his thumb into the wound, sharply, and Reyes has to bite back a scream as smoke rises around him and Cassidy. It’s horrifying to hear, then cathartic. Twisting the knife. Cassidy doesn’t stop until Reaper punches him in the chest, hard, sending him across the small hallway. Cassidy looks at his hand—there’s no blood on it from Reyes’s gunshot wound. It’s not exactly comforting. Reyes leans forward, curling in on the wound.

“What is wrong with you?!” His voice is a yell covering a howl.

“Payback for this,” Cassidy says, holding up his cursed arm. Reaper’s not quite hyperventilating. Parts of him are fuzzy around the edges, like his cells are trying to escape his body. It’s sick. He’d always do anything to be strong.

“Jesus. Try this shit again and you’re dead meat. Stay in touch." He pauses, trying to breathe around the temporary wound. "Don’t die,” he finally says. Cassidy grins, looking him in the eye. 

“Don’t kill me.” Then, he’s off.

He rushes to open the chamber door. His left arm would burn if its nerves still functioned. Genji is flashing violet, switching between fighting Sombra and fighting Sombra’s hacks. He never uses his Inheritance. None of his shots hit Sombra.

“Genji, we need to leave!” Cassidy yells from the entrance. Genji is still glowing sickly purple, slashing around Moira and leftover security agents but failing to kill many. Sombra isn’t in sight, but she couldn’t have left.

Cassidy takes a stun grenade from his belt and chucks it to the center of the room. Sombra is revealed, coughing in the white smoke. Genji’s visor flashes green, and Cassidy takes him by the arm. A mob of fighters follow them.

“Keys,” Genji pants, too breathless to get anything else out.

“I’ve got ‘em, Genji, don’t worry.” The whole hall is shaking again. Cassidy knows he’s tripping every wire on the way out, but doesn’t care. Rocks tumble from the trapped ceiling behind him, kicking up dust clouds as they descend on him and Genji like an avalanche. Cassidy slows in front of the doorway, panicking. It’s still blocked by rocks, and they aren’t slowing down. 

Genji pulls him to the side by the arm, slamming him into the wall. Rocks barely avoid crushing him, and dust billows into his lungs. Genji’s hand stays on his arm in a near-death grip. There’s a small gap in debris near the top of the exit. Genji ascends the rock pile with ease and tries to pull Cassidy through to the other side. He’s a lot of things, but agile isn’t one of them. He squeezes through the gap and barrels into Genji, nearly knocking him over. He catches Cassidy by the shoulders, looks him in the eye for a second, and nods. Genji breaks into a sprint.

Neither of them look back as they run through the tomb, retracing their steps as the wall murals blur by—some of them now crumbling. They can’t see or hear anyone behind them, but they never slow down. After too long for comfort, they see sunlight streaming from a gap in the stone ahead. The ladder.

Cassidy slams into the ladder and swings up two rungs at a time, following Genji. The fountain’s metal statue refracts the orange sunset across the courtyard. Cassidy follows him to the top of the ladder, and Genji pulls him up the rest of the way. They’re a conspicuous pair, still armed and covered in dust. Cassidy slams the entrance behind them. They backtrack through the key path to an alley in view of Antonio’s old building, trying not to stumble.

Genji stops, stumbles, and slides down against a colorful wall, curled up in an alley corner. His usual pride and cool air are gone, and parts of his lights still flash purple. Cassidy, dirty cobblestones be damned, joins him on the ground. He decides not to immediately run his fool mouth, and waits for Genji. Genji’s head points straight forward, and he’s tapping each of his metal knuckles in succession as a fidget. He rests his arms across his knees.

“In dreams, everything you do is normal,” Genji says, breath condensing in the cool night air. “You have neither rationality nor the real world to use as a reference point. Only after a dream do you realize you’ve done anything wrong.”

“It ain’t wrong in the dream.”

“This is how it feels to be hacked by Sombra.” Wind drifts through the alley, and the Sun is almost gone. Some of Cassidy’s minor wounds begin to ache.

“Is she anglin’ to kill you or keep you?” he asks.

“Keep.” Genji lowers his head, visor shining sickly. “I have no love for the Shimada dragon, but at least I can keep it at bay. Sombra would let it roam free.”

“I’d rather die.”

“I think she thinks she’s helpful,” Genji says.

The silence lingers for a moment, not comfortable but welcome, and Genji leans against his shoulder. Cassidy entertains the thought—he and Genji both have had so little control over things their whole life. The spare heir, the wayward outlaw. Blackwatch soldiers. The papers, stolen keys, and earpiece from Reyes burn a hole in the pocket of his jeans.

“Wouldn’t you wanna try and control the dragon first, then?” Cassidy asks.

“I want no part of that thing.” Genji pulls his hoodie tighter around himself, looking away. “Let’s go.”

The street lights surround them in a warm glow whenever they’re near the main streets, but the silhouette of Antonio’s building leaves a dark blot in the city. Cassidy’s tired, but not enough to sleep. He feels phantom presences over his shoulder whenever he isn’t looking. It’s paranoia, of course, but it doesn’t stop him from imagining that “Reaper’s” ivory owl mask appearing from the shadowed corners. Knowing who’s behind the mask doesn’t make it less scary.

Cassidy slides the base doors open as quietly as possible and lets Genji in first. It’s the last polite thing he does. He relishes in the familiarity of Antonio’s hall, turns into the employee lounge, throws his bag onto the dusty floor, and throws himself on the couch. Genji follows a little more carefully, looking down at him and tilting his head.

“You could have asked for the couch first,” Genji says, amused.

“Sorry.” He’s at least a little bit sorry. His reply is muffled by a shitty throw pillow. 

Genji looks around the room—broken ceiling light, couch, ottoman, plush chair. He drags the ottoman in front of the couch next to Cassidy’s head. He tilts his head, as if calculating distance, then drags the chair over to meet the ottoman. It combines into a makeshift mega-couch in an L-shape. Genji closes the door, shuts the curtains, and comes back. 

He lays on the new perpendicular side of the ‘couch,’ placing his head right next to Cassidy’s. Cassidy raises his eyebrow, eyes squinty from exhaustion.

“I am not trying to contort into the chair again,” Genji explains. He unlatches his faceplate. Cassidy chuckles, half-asleep.

“Didn’t know you took it last time.”

“You were hogging the whole couch. It felt rude to tell you.”

“…You’re still technically on the chair, hon.”

“Mm-hm.” He sets the faceplate aside and turns toward Cassidy. There are crows feet forming around his dark eyes next to all the scars. Genji used to be a landmark in Cassidy’s past, forever a memory, but he’s here in the metal-and-flesh now. He’s different. Cassidy lets a small smile form on his face, laying a hand on the edge of the shitty throw pillow and closing his eyes. Genji moves his hand up a bit, meeting Cassidy’s and tapping on his knuckles before going to the side of his face. Cassidy’s breathing becomes shallow while Genji pushes back the messy hair near his temple. He cracks his eyes open and sees Genji with wide eyes, almost scared to wake Cassidy up.

Straight nose, sharp eyes, wry smile. A face that Cassidy knows he’ll never forget, even if he tries.

He doesn’t let the earpiece in his pocket, the ghost of his commander, or the Talon pawn he’s become cross his mind. He only thinks about one person, and for the first time in a long while, sleeps just fine. 

 

Chapter 10: Get Lucky - Heatmiser

In the pocket with Reyes’s earpiece are two pieces of thick paper with gilt edges. Cassidy tries not to crease them as he reads them. Genji is still sleeping in the employee lounge, and he doesn’t want to bother him yet.

You are Cordially Invited to the Annual LumeriCo Charity Ball

May 5th, 2070

Time: 5:00 to 11:00 PM

The address is scrawled on the back in the world’s worst handwriting—Reyes’s—but it’s not far from Antonio’s building. Cassidy looks briefly at the couch where Genji lies before walking into the main hall, taking the earpiece from his pocket. He takes the stairwell up, getting out of earshot. Of course, he ends up back in Antonio’s office–the place where Reyes doomed himself with a single killing blow.

Cassidy wants to say he took Reyes’s deal now as some sort of counter-spying measure, but that’d be a lie. He’s still distrustful, of course, but he doesn’t see why the deal wouldn’t be legitimate. It’s a solid plan, if Moira really thinks she’s ’controlling’ Reyes the way he says she does. She’d never expect her loyal subject to rebel against her until it was too late. This, at least, is what Cassidy tells himself. He presses the only button on the earpiece and puts it in his ear.

“Cole?” He responds immediately. His voice is so much more damaged now, but it’s still him. Cassidy can’t get over it.

“Hell are these swanky invitations for? I mean, really, a charity ball?”

“A charity ball for a company with ties to Talon. I’m just a mercenary for them—I don’t know where the next key is, but I bet they do. Use your brain.”

“It’s tomorrow…”

“Would’ve caught up with you sooner if you’d stopped shooting me,” he grumbles.

“I’m not apologizing for that,” Cassidy says. “I ain’t stupid, Reyes.”

“Good. Mercenaries like you and I don’t get through the door, just their rich associates. They’ve got to pretend they don’t rub elbows with Talon. Plus, have you seen the news? Everyone knows your face by now, and the Shimada’s ‘omnic’ face isn’t going to cut it.”

“Whaddya want me to do about it, wear a mask? This ain’t Carnevale.” The earpiece goes silent for a moment. Cassidy’s about to give up and hang up on him when the line crackles.

“Old Overwatch connections are lurking all over town. Why don’t you ask them, hm?” Sombra’s voice comes in clearer than Reyes’s over the radio. Cassidy squints.

“Since when’ve you two been in kahoots?”

“In kahoots!” Sombra laughs. “Oh, you’re funny. Reaper and I just want you and Genji to survive this Necklace stint. Talon’s stupid enough to want your head mounted on the wall—waste of power, I say!”

“…Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!” Sombra says. Reyes coughs loudly enough to interrupt them.

“Look, I know it’s not ideal,” he says, ignoring Sombra’s huffy little sigh, “but she is on my side. Why do you think she gave those keys to me and not Moira?”

“‘Cause Moira’s a haggard old bitch that no one would wanna touch with a ten foot pole?”

“I’m two decades older than her,” Reyes says with a snort of a laugh. It gives Cassidy pause—as much as he lost everything, Reyes found a place in Talon. He and Sombra make jokes. While Cassidy’s fretting over one cursed arm, Reyes is strong in spite of his entire Inheritance getting twisted into a curse. If the curse hadn’t missed his heart, would Cassidy be strong enough to join him?

“Here are the terms.” Sombra interrupts his train of thought. “I’ll give you the address to an Overwatch affiliate. An old tailor—if nothing, you can get a real suit. Since I’m feeling extra nice, all you need to do in return is survive the ball and get a little intel!”

“Huh. That’s it? How’re we supposed to get in touch with this person? Will she help?”

“Codes, right! Amateur tactics,” Sombra scoffs. “Ask her for ‘pristine blue uniforms.’ As for actually helping you… Hope you’re lucky!” Cassidy curses, but repeats the phrase to himself a few times before it can slip his mind. He hears footsteps from downstairs and pales. Genji.

“Anything else I gotta get a hold on?”

“Don’t let anyone get a hold of your real name and face in that ball, or else you’re dead,” Reyes says. “Also, don’t die.”

He hangs up on him. Objectively, it’s rude, but Cassidy smiles. It’s the exact shit Reyes pulled when he was the exhausted commander of a seventeen-year-old ex-gang-member. Captain Amari would reprimand him for being so mean, and Gabe would argue that he didn’t have no respect for anybody, and Amari would make fun of him for the double negative, are you picking up Cole’s Southern swagger? And he would just grumble and smile and—

He makes his way downstairs, spurs clicking against the tile. An elegant chandelier hangs overhead, but none of the light from outside hits it. Genji is sitting at a table in the main hall wiping down his shurikens with a rag, probably from a maintenance closet somewhere. Cassidy wasn’t the one who’d searched the place.

“See this?” Genji holds up the rag, despairing. “I used to clean my equipment with a fine silk cloth and specially mixed polish.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” Cassidy says with a laugh. “Miss the silver spoon?”

“No.” Genji scrubs at a spot on the shuriken. “I want nothing to do with the Shimada legacy.” It seems like tedious work, but Cassidy’s cleaned Peacekeeper with worse over stupider principles. He puts his head in his arms, tilting it to see the green accents on Genji’s shurikens gleam in the morning sun. It’s not quite a comfortable silence, but it's hanging its coat at the door.

“Who were you speaking with?” Genji says, breaking the stillness. Cassidy pales.

“...Ziegler.”

“Try again. I swear I heard something about a charity function.” Genji puts his rag down and looks at Cassidy. 

Cassidy exhales slowly. “With the original bounty collector turning against us, I need someone who’ll actually get a cure for my arm in exchange for the Necklace.”

“A new member of our operations. Lovely. Please tell me it is not someone I know.”

“…Reaper.” Cassidy puts his hand on Peacekeeper. Genji stands and takes a step back, picking his blades back up. Dust floats on the air between them.

“I hope your explanation is stellar,” Genji says, voice darkened by danger.

“Reyes.” Cassidy tries to convey the importance of this with just his name. “Under that mask is Reyes, he didn’t die in the Swiss base explosion–he didn’t die at all.” Genji freezes, letting ‘Reyes’ run through his mind. The curse and the shotguns, Genji’s commander and Cassidy’s… semblance of a mentor.

“You call that smoking wraith alive? No matter who he used to be, I know you are not stupid, Cassidy.” Genji crosses his arms, and his voice is chilly.

“He can move the Necklace, get Moira to cure the thing, do all this—look, if shit goes south, I’ll handle it, okay?”

“I’m sure you will try.” Genji sighs. “What happens when ‘shit goes south’ and you aren’t prepared? That will be both of our heads mailed straight to Talon HQ.”

”Sombra’s workin’ with him, too. Both separate from Talon!” This finally makes Genji pause to think. Cassidy still doesn’t love how his shurikens gleam just inches from his throwing hand.

“Indubitably a trap. If there is information, we are going to have to fight for it.”

“But if there’s information…”

“One step closer to a cure,” Genji finishes. He pushes the shuriken on the table further away from himself, as if resisting temptation. “I am being far too kind to you.”

“Maybe ‘cause I’m halfway to my deathbed?”

“We can say it is because of that, yes.” Genji shrugs, and Cassidy could swear that he’s smiling. Still, he feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He feels the band-aid solution burgeoning against the threat of blood—if this falls through somehow, if they get killed, Genji will kill him first. It’s nothing new.

“If you were spying on me this morning, guess you already know about this… Charity ball?” Cassidy asks. Genji nods.

“I overheard you from downstairs—no spycraft required,” he says. “Sombra is sending an address. Her technological trickery is… Less than ideal, but she has otherwise been useful so far.”

“And now, so is Reyes. You can’t fault me for this if you’re still defending your new hacker girl.” Cassidy crosses his arms, wielding his curse like cactus spines. Genji sits back down, slouching his shoulders, and Cassidy sits beside him.

“I’m not defending her–she’s not helpful, she’s useful.” He sighs. “I only wish for you to be careful. Reyes is a dead man. Forget what you will about the mission, but do not forget this.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout me, Genji. I know what I’m doing.” He reaches out his un-cursed hand to lightly flick Genji in the arm, willing him to cheer up and forget about the whole situation. He only sighs.

“I truly hope so.”

“Truly.” Cassidy lets a lazy grin spread across his face. “Let’s get these suits.”

-

The tailor’s place is in a narrow alleyway with arching brick patterns and planter boxes by every window, filled with dying plants. The windows are all covered from the inside by thick curtains, and the door has no openings save for a peephole and a small speaker. Cassidy looks at Genji, who shrugs. He knocks. Cassidy can hear the sharp click of heels behind the door. The small speaker buzzes to life next to the doorknob.

“Hello, may I help?” asks a light voice with a thin Italian accent from behind the door. Cassidy scratches his neck.

“Got sent over for some, uh,” he tries to remember the code, “pristine blue uniforms.” The door stays silent a beat too long.

“I haven’t heard that phrase in a long time,” the voice says, polite and neutral. “Come in.”

Inside is a small tailor’s shop with warm lights overhead and suspiciously high quality clothes for a place so out of the way. A slim woman with a stern, tan face and black pantsuit waves them over, anti-Inheritor rings of animal teeth clinking on every finger.

“Welcome. What do you need?”

“Two suits by tomorrow,” Genji says, wasting no time.

“Tomorrow.” The woman scoffs and walks over to a rack of suits. “I can modify what I already have–if you were expecting something custom, tough luck.”

“Frankly, anything works, ma’am.” Cassidy browses a nearby shelf–he doesn’t know what half the stuff here is.

“Ma’am! I’m not that old, am I?” She glances at Cassidy and pulls a red shirt off of the rack, mumbling to herself. “Tomorrow… Overwatch had its flaws back in the day, but at least they were punctual.” She carries clothing in both hands, nearly enough to topple her over.

“You worked with Overwatch?” Genji asks. He had briefly joined the real Overwatch team before its catastrophic fall–Cassidy had stayed behind with Reyes and his men. Cassidy had only found out about this place today, but was surprised Genji didn’t already know her. They hadn’t talked much back then, though. “What is your name?”

“I am the tailor,” she says sharply. “You?”

“Just a couple fellas on a mission,” Cassidy says.

“Perfect.” She gestures Genji over first, tape measure in hand. The process of measuring, cutting, and double-checking every step is painfully slow. Cassidy looks at the analog clock on the wall behind him and feels a little bad. He doesn’t have time for that, though–technically, this charity ball is the first mission Reyes has given him since the fall of Overwatch, since his ‘death,’ and he didn’t quit missions.

“What’s all this on the walls?” Cassidy eventually asks, looking at shelves of canisters and strange devices. “You sell weapons?”

“Ha! No.” The tailor is rolling her tape measure back up. “Even if I did, it wouldn’t be to you. I’ve never seen an Inheritor come into my store unarmed. It’s your turn up here, by the way.” Cassidy switches places with Genji, not looking at him. She works in silence a while longer, squinting at the numbers on her tape measure. She sighs.

“I used to work with bio-technology,” she says. “I wove skin just as well as I wove fabric. Those days are long past.” The instruments on the shelves gleam silvery-white, unguarded.

“How’d you mind us taking some of those supplies off your hands?”

“Not for sale.” She makes a cut at the bottom of a dark red shirt, not looking at him, and carries her bundle of clothes and notepad of measurements into a back room. Cassidy walks past Genji to the shelves of biotech equipment.

“Do not do anything stupid,” Genji says. “We get the suits and get out.”

“Mm-hm.” A canister of pure Inheritor energy. A penlight that shoots a small healing beam. A disguise kit that–he reads the label on the back–uses artificial skin cells to change one’s face shape, disguising it. Bingo.

“I mean it.” Genji crosses his arms. Cassidy is already pocketing a penlight. Footsteps click across the floor on the other side of the tailor’s shop. Cassidy considers putting back the light and sitting down, but refrains. He’s not going to half-ass any mission under Reyes—even if the rest of his organization is out to get him and Genji. Some of the bio-tech equipment here could be life-saving. Not yet, though. They still need the suits.

Genji and Cassidy are both sent to try on their last-minute outfits. Cassidy has a black waistcoat and a blood-red button down shirt. Genji’s suit is all black with dark, metallic green accents. Cassidy does a slow spin in a panel of mirrors, while Genji only looks awkwardly to the side. All more than decent fare for something taken out of an old rack and dusted off—her old clients must’ve been rolling in cash. Overwatch really was, back then, he thinks. Some of the finer details are only ironed or painted on, though, so it’s not made for millionaires. The tailor nods, satisfied, and returns to her backroom.

“Let me get you some hangers and things,” she says on her way out, sounding only a little annoyed. Cassidy comes back to the shelves with his duffel bag at his side. Genji doesn’t leave the mirror.

“I have not cleaned up this nicely since I worked with the Shimadas,” he comments. Cassidy is opening his duffel bag to empty the shelves into it, but pauses. Worked with, as if he wasn’t related to them.

“I looked half-decent during the Rialto mission, I’d say.” Cassidy zips his bag closed, stuffed to bursting with stolen goods

“You were dressed as a waiter.”

“A handsome waiter?”

“Retire and take up customer service if you want. I can’t say you would be known for your… Social graces.”

“How dare you!” Cassidy says, faking offense. He laughs. “Nah, I’m an Inheritor for a reason. I’ll be hunting bounties and beating the crap outta people ‘till I die.” Cassidy looks at the blackness spreading up his left arm. “Hopefully that ain’t for a while yet.”

“I’ll be an Inheritor until the Shimada dragons die.” Genji shrugs. Cassidy looks back away from him, mood dropped. He pushed Genji’s personal mission to the back of his mind. Heels click across the tiles from the back of the room. Genji looks at his bag of stolen equipment, most likely scowling beneath the visor.

“I did not think you were serious about this.” He stands, clearly itching to leave.

“You don’t give me enough credit!” Cassidy draws Peacekeeper, just in case, and starts his slow walk out of the tailor’s ruined shop. It’s not an escape—it’s a taunt. The tailor sneers as she sees him, reaching for something at her side.

“God. I’m not surprised. Fucking Inheritors, every time.” She opens her sharply cut blazer to reveal rows of small canisters. Genji starts backing toward the door, all plans of paying the tailor for her efforts abandoned. She steps forward and throws a canister at him—it opens midair with a glowing wire between each half and wraps itself around Genji. He falls against the doorway behind Cassidy. If she doesn’t sell weapons, is there a chance she doesn’t have any?

Another can is rolling toward him, so he leaps to the side, crashing into a row of mannequins. As he gets out, a small sphere soars straight to him. It explodes into a thick black goo, sticking his left leg to the ground. He tries to free himself, but to no avail. The tailor walks up, calm as anything, and takes his duffel bag. She smiles when she sees all of her tech inside.

“So, Overwatch’s ruins are crawling with thieves? Shame. To pay for trying to take all this,” she shakes the bag, “I’ll just keep your bag here! Sturdy fabric, is it not?” Cassidy tries to move his leg again, straining. Genji is trying to free himself from his own trap behind the tailor, but the wires around him hold tight. Despite her anti-Inheritor charms, the small bout of fighting had built up Cassidy’s Inheritance. 

Have a plan, quick and dirty. Casualties are fine if you complete your main objective. It’s not himself in his head—it’s Reyes. The tailor wasn’t looking at him.

Cassidy raises Peacekeeper, cold steel gleaming in the lights of the store. The tailor’s eyes catch on his and widen, for the first time, in true fear. Does she have a weapon? He scrapes the bottom of his soul for energy, draining himself to get just one Deadeye up. She doesn’t move, doesn’t try to defend herself. Don’t think about the woman, think about the target. Still the Commander’s rasp against the side of his skull. Genji is free, clambering up from the floor. Don’t think. Don’t aim. His hand shakes. Fire.

The bullet never flies.

Genji dashes, the swing of his shortsword propelling him forward. He tackles Cassidy before he can pull the trigger on the tailor. She stumbles back, not a target, but a frightened and defenseless woman. The substance holding his foot to the ground has already slackened, and Genji pulls him free. Inheritance energy dissipates around him like a sigh. He looks anywhere but at Genji and the disapproving green line of his visor. His bag is on the other side of the room. The biot-tech disguise canisters and his hat—equally important—are poking out. He lets go of Genji and rolls toward the bag. The tailor stomps down, and he feints to the side, reaching for it. She yanks his hand back, heaving him backward into the mirrors across the room. They crack—she’s stronger than she looks. Cassidy ignores the sting of blood on his forehead, ignores his shattered reflection, and bounces forward again. He stumbles.

Genji chops the tailor in the shoulder with his hand, knocking her off balance. The hand holding one of her wire traps loosens, and the trap falls. Genji swoops in for it, removes the cap, and lobs it at her. The wire wraps around her, toppling her and leaving her struggling on the floor. She still finds a way to hold onto Cassidy’s bag for dear life. Genji darts in for the hat and disguise canisters, which slip out easily. Cassidy nearly goes for the whole bag, but pauses. The tailor’s eyes are wild with cornered-animal fear. A near death experience will do that to you, he thinks. He looks away, shakes his head, and starts to run. Genji grabs his hand and follows after him.

Neither Genji nor Cassidy stop running until they reach a public street. They cross it quickly, never meeting any tourist’s eyes and trying to get back to the alleys. Cassidy’s lungs ache with the effort. He’s getting a little old to be a bounty hunter. The sun shines bright overhead, and the buildings beside them are painted in candy colors with plant boxes out of nearly every window. Antonio’s old building is within view in all its dilapidated glory. 

Their frantic run becomes a walk. Genji’s hand is still in his, but he hasn’t said a word. Shame burns in Cassidy’s throat. They arrive at their hideout, and Genji crosses his arms. Light struggles through dusty windows; the door falls closed behind him. The opulence of Antonio’s building, Cassidy’s suit, even the skylights above, seem to mock him.

“I was under the impression you fought for self-defense,” he says. Cassidy sits at one of the nearby tables—one that looks like it used to be a bar. It’s a shame it isn’t one now.

“You n’ I both know that ain’t true.”

“During Blackwatch, it wasn’t true. What about now?” Genji accuses. Cassidy laughs, bitterness seeping into his voice like smoke.

“I almost murdered that tailor, and I wouldn’t have felt a thing about it. I would’ve felt the satisfaction of a job well done, for fuck’s sake!”

“Is that your own satisfaction? Or that of your Inheritance?” Genji pulls up a barstool next to Cassidy, low anger in his voice like the cold steel of his armor.

“I am my Inheritance. Not a single difference between us.” 

“If you say that of yourself, it will be true,” Genji says. “But I do not think that is the full picture.” Cassidy frowns. Why aren’t you pissed off to high hell at me? he wants to ask. Why won’t you get the screaming match over with? Is it because we both used to be so much worse?

“Nice piece of philosophy, there,” he says instead. “When did you wisen up so much?”

“I was murdered for not studying the ways of the Shimada clan. I decided to read more books afterward.” They both go silent, Cassidy looking at the ceiling. It would be rude to laugh. That ceiling has some very interesting… architecture. It would be downright impolite to laugh. Genji bows his head and lets out a small snicker, and it’s over for him. 

They’re both shaking from laughter, and Genji ends up leaning on Cassidy for support. Both of them are still wearing their suits from the tailor’s place, and probably wrinkling them. Cassidy tries to straighten out the sleeve of his blackened left arm, but he looks at Genji and starts laughing before he can. He puts his head in his arms, still looking up at Genji. Genji unlatches his visor to reveal a wide smile.

“I need to breathe some real air,” he explains.

“Enjoy huffing rubble, I guess.” They both laugh again. Genji calms down, exhaling in concentration like he’s meditating. A small smile still flits across his face. Cassidy realizes that he has faint smile lines now. Every time he looks at Genji, he notices something else. He used to have to read him by eyes alone in Blackwatch. Now, he gets to see him with a rumpled formal suit and healed scars and a flesh-and-blood smile and, God, what kind of luck does he have?

Why hasn’t it left? The tailor’s face is still fresh in his mind, and his own face falls.

“Thank you,” Cassidy says. He can’t for the life of him clarify for what.

“Don’t fuck up again.” Genji upturns his hand, a sly invitation. Cassidy pauses, then slots his hand in his and is hit by a wave of exhaustion, the past few days catching up to him. There’s a squeeze of reassurance.

Cassidy’s earpiece buzzes in his pocket. The moment dissipates into thin air.

“Gotta take this,” Cassidy mutters. He wonders briefly if Reyes would’ve killed the tailor.

Without hesitation, he thinks, a painful recollection. Killing her would have sped up the mission, and Reyes was too good of a commander to be inefficient–until he wasn’t a commander at all. Shotgun fire, music too loud, attitude too real for the Overwatch suits. A pumpkin-head costume for Halloween one month, a man flailing out of a three-story window the next.

But where the hell did that get him? It got him a cursed body and a soul made of nothing but Inheritance thanks to Moira’s experiments. He looks at the earpiece on the table, curses, and puts it in his ear.

“I’m all geared up for the ball, supposedly.” He thinks of the disguise–the only thing worth getting from the tailor–and bites the inside of his cheek. “Any last words for tomorrow?”

“I knew you had logistics down, kid,” Reyes says, tinny through the earpiece. Cassidy flinches, but doesn’t correct him. He might be 40, but he would always be called ‘kid.’ Another memory he didn’t want to shatter yet.

“Last words as in advice,” he clarifies.

“Come armed like it’s any other job. And are you still traveling with the ninja?” Cassidy looks to their hideout. Thankfully, Genji hasn’t dipped out again—they’re finishing this mission, no matter how much glue and how many prayers it takes to hold it together. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done without Genji. Died the way I lived, shooting someone stupid or doing something stupid.

“Yeah.”

“Find someone to tell you where the key is, and have him kill them. We can’t leave any loose ends here, so preferably no billionaires. I’d tell you to do it yourself, but the suits’ bodyguards would lock on you in minutes.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Boss.” Cassidy tries not to let his voice waver. Why are you so concerned about one death, Cassidy? We have killed before, Genji had said, years ago with wild eyes. He won’t make him do it.

He hears Reyes’s raspy sigh over line. “Good luck. If you play this right, the ball’s in our court.” Cassidy rolls his eyes.

“Yeah.” Reyes, of course, hangs up first.

-

The hours pass at glacier-pace. The black in Cassidy’s arm is above the elbow and only spreading. The suits are draped across the employee lounge couch as nicely as they can be, and Cassidy’s back in his days-old flannel and jeans. He’s worn worse.

He’s in the fake firing range, still set up across the reception desks. It’s like training an atrophied muscle, one that used to come to him naturally. An empty bottle of window cleaner clatters to the floor with a smoking hole straight through the middle. Genji’s either meditating or taking a nap—it’s hard to tell which—and a grand clock overhead ticks ever closer to the evening.

The canister he nabbed from the tailor is made of a light aluminum that gleams dully in the overhead LEDs. Cassidy has to squint to read the instructions (and warnings) on the side. The label says it lasts 24 hours under any ‘wear and tear’—definitely made for Inheritors and other fighters. There are illustrations below the instructions: A before-and-after showing a man with a straight nose and various battle scars gaining a hook nose, wider eyes, and smooth skin. Facial changes randomized by cell type, says a warning below. Cassidy hopes he won’t be left looking ugly.

At least the disguise kit will do its job.

Genji wakes up exactly half an hour before the ball. Cassidy wonders if he has a literal ‘internal clock,’ or just a soldier’s ability to sleep and wake on command. He wanders over to look at the disguise kit, still shaking off exhaustion. There are fresh bandages over his old burns. He leans in close to read the label, his face just a few inches away from Cassidy’s. Cassidy freezes, barely breathing, while Genji takes the canister from him.

“It looks like Overwatch’s biotic fields,” he says, skeptical. “Hopefully you did not waste time stealing snake oil.”

“You distrustin’ me?”

“I would never.” Genji leans in on purpose this time, a small chuckle coming muffled through his faceplate. “I am distrusting the tailor… That you stole from.” Before Cassidy can try anything stupid, Genji flicks him on the nose. He walks away, canister in hand, while Cassidy’s still frozen to the ground. He shakes his head. Focus.

He sets the canister on the floor and kneels down to look at the lid. All he has to do is shake it and slam the button against the floor. Genji sits in an uncomfortable lobby chair next to him, one of those with no arms and half a back, crossing his arms.

“Why this early?” he asks. “Despite the label, we do not know how long the disguise actually lasts.”

“I want some time to get used to the fake face. Gotta pick you out of a crowd somehow, yeah?”

“Just look for the best hair.”

“Ha, ha,” Cassidy mutters, shaking the canister up. Its seams light up in dim white. Genji sighs, and there’s a quiet click. Cassidy snaps his head around. It’s only Genji taking his faceplate off and setting it aside. He blinks a few times. The blue-tinted burn scars radiate from the middle of his face. Dark eyes, greyish-something that never quite catches the light. 

“Stop staring,” Genji says, raising an eyebrow. 

“What?”

“I thought you of all people would know not to pity me.” He’s quiet and dark as he says it, but Cassidy can’t help but chuckle as the canister glows brighter and brighter.

“You’ve got it all twisted, Genji. If I pitied you, I’d be dead meat by now. Besides”—he stops shaking the canister—“You’re staring right back.”

Genji tilts his head, and his face is neutral, but he doesn’t look away. Cassidy figures anyone else would find this ‘creepy,’ but he’s seen—and been hit by—worse. Back in the day, annoying Genji was a poor man’s excuse to share his airspace. Now, they’re straight across from each other, faces in full light and weapons put down. Sunlight drifts in through the giant windows. Cassidy smiles.

Then, he slams the disguise canister to the ground.

White light flashes out in unstable bursts. Cassidy shields his eyes from the can. At first, it’s a heavy mist. Then, it feels like a film all over his skin. He resists the urge to scratch it away. The light around him dims. The film of new cells sticks especially around his nose and eyes, the latter of which he finally opens, squinting.

On Blackwatch’s campaign in Hanamura, Cassidy had been given nothing but a thick manila envelope of intel, a replacement revolver, and a commander who got his kicks out of kicking him around. In that research envelope were pictures of the entire Shimada family, including the missing and deceased along with those Blackwatch wanted to be missing and deceased. One of those pictures was of a young Sojiro, Genji’s father. Genji takes after his mother, so it’s not a face he’d seen often.

The disguise makes Genji look just like Sojiro. His nose looks longer and has a bump where glasses would lay, if he wore any. His scars have been spackled over and replaced with freckles, and his jawline looks a little wider. As he looks at Cassidy with his stranger’s face, his eyes widen.

“What happened to you?” he asks, horrified.

“What?” Cassidy asks. “Disguise fuck me up?”

“No, it’s…” Genji trails off. The room stays silent for another moment, and Cassidy coughs.

“Genji.” The silence stretches longer. Then, Genji starts to laugh.

“I am only messing with you!” he says. Cassidy puts his head in his hand, sighing. “Oh, you looked so scared. No, you look like any other tourist, no one will look at you.”

“Huh. You look downright weird.”

“Are my scars visible?” he asks, a small frown across his face.

“Nah. It’s just hearin’ the right voice on the wrong face.” Cassidy reaches up to touch his own face. The film of fake skin is smooth and slippery—not quite real skin, but definitely no ordinary rubber. 

“If I had the ‘right’ face, I would not be disfigured.”

“If you had a better family, you wouldn’t have gotten murdered.” Cassidy retorts. He picks the used-up disguise canister—only good for one use. It’d better work exactly like it says on the tin, he thinks.

“When do we want to leave for the ball?” Genji asks, looking away from him. Cassidy shrugs.

“Late enough to avoid attention, early enough to gather intel. So… Whenever.” Genji smiles. His face isn’t his own, and Cassidy can’t help but try to superimpose the picture of Genji’s real face over this strange, non-mechanical man. Cassidy can’t say Genji’s scars are anything good, judging by their origins, but they’re his. 

“What’s this? You want to avoid attention?” Genji’s smile is unbelievably smug. “The cowboy wants a stealth mission?”

“Shuddup.”

“I am practically swooning.”

“We need to get intel on that third key without Talon trying to pick at our scraps. If you have a better plan, Genji, then take that liberty yourself.”

“No, I am only surprised. Getting intel! Undetected!” Genji walks over to the employee lounge, presumably to get his suit and weapons. “I do love being right.” Cassidy smiles and shakes his head, trying to form a plan. As long as Reyes is right, they’re about to be crashing one hell of a party.

Chapter 11: Various Methods of Escape - Nine Inch Nails

The small streets of Venice are lined with chattering, glittering socialites. Fog hangs low over the street, and the distant event hall is a shining beacon of opulence and excess. Cassidy and Genji aren’t the only ones walking there, what with cars not being allowed in the city proper. Thankfully, neither of them look like their wanted posters.

“In and out, find the key, try not to make it a massacre,” Cassidy thinks aloud.

“Yes,” Genji chimes in. “We cannot have a repeat of the Tailor.”

“Uh. Still sorry ‘bout that.”

“Do not be sorry,” Genji says as they round a corner closer to the event hall. “Just make that the last time.” Cassidy nods and checks his side again. Peacekeeper is still on his hip, hidden under his coat. In addition, he has a small knife. Can’t be too sure. The crowd is thicker around the hall’s entrance, necks shining with diamonds and suits ironed to knife blade sharpness.

Cassidy and Genji enter LumeriCo’s rented venue with a crush of people beside them, hand in hand so they don’t lose each other. Cassidy stays nervous about the disguise technology keeping them safe until the guard at the door checks their invitations and lets them in without a sideways glance. The ceilings are even higher than those of Antonio’s building, with the lights above like warm stars. There’s a behemoth of a chandelier in the middle, lit with crystals and precisely cut beads. The walls are covered in intricate carvings and paintings, all held up with marble pillars. A man in a black suit walks by with a plate of champagne glasses. Cassidy looks at him, thoughtful.

“I’m thinking…” he starts, gesturing at the waiter.

“Please do not tell me we could have dressed as waiters.”

“When in Rome!”

“We’re in Venice,” Genji corrects lightly. 

“I know we’re in Venice, it’s a… Nevermind.”

The grand hall has a dizzying number of people, none of them looking at him. At least one of them has to know where the key is, but he has no clue where to start.

“I’m gonna start hassling people ‘bout this key—I suggest you do the same.”

“Of course.” Genji smiles, which looks unnatural with the disguise. “Try not to be obvious. This is a stealth mission.”

“I was in Blackwatch too, y’know!” Cassidy says, indignant.

“No, really?” Genji says. Cassidy rolls his eyes, smiling just as wide, then shakes himself from his thoughts. He has a key to find. He looks to his side, but Genji has already snuck away.

Cassidy figures he’ll have better luck with the younger attendees—they’re still new to this shady business, so they won’t be suspicious about the fact that they don’t recognize him on sight. He sees a close-knit group of twenty-somethings near a tall window with even taller curtains.

“...And my lead Inheritor not only turns up empty-handed, he turns up with a hole in his hand!” someone exclaims, not sounding as horrified as he should. “And they call us barbaric… These keys need to be in the right hands.”

“What makes you so sure they’re your hands?” A woman asks.

“I’m an ‘upstanding member of the community,’ haven’t you heard?” the man replies with a wink. “You should read the op-ed from last week, it was absolutely glowing.”

“What’s this about an op-ed?” he asks, laying the charm on thick. They turn to him, all smiling with chalk white teeth at the sight of a new face. They introduce themselves in a confusing line of Johns and Janes, with last names they clearly expect him to find important. He doesn’t remember Inheritance lineages half the time, much less business lineages. He fiddles with the collar of his shirt as the man starts bragging about his publicist again.

“You hear anything new about these Heritage keys, miss?” Cassidy asks the lady on the right. “None of my men are turning anything up.” She laughs, her statement earrings reaching down to her shoulders.

“Miss! I’m flattered,” she says, condescending. “No more than anyone, I’m afraid. I have a few people from my own team working on it, but to no avail.” She looks mock-sad as she takes another sip of champagne.

“Mine too,” says a second man in a suit and garish tie. “I’ve tried contracting elsewhere, too, but they haven’t even picked up the phone.” Are “they” Talon? What happened?

“I don’t like outsourcing bounty hunters,” the woman decides. “I love a powerful Inheritor, of course, but if you want something done right…”

“Do it yourself?”

“Yes!” She laughs, high-pitched, her smile cracking her foundation. Their conversation turns away again, the faceless new guy all but forgotten, Cassidy extracts himself from the conversation and rolls his eyes. He bets none of those people have ‘done it themselves’ in their life. He has bigger problems—namely, the apparent conflict between Talon and its moneymakers.

Cassidy’s used to looking for a glint of metal in a crowd to find Genji, but now he’s left looking for his black and green suit—his “face” is unrecognizable. He sees a flash of pine green in the upstairs balcony of the hall and feels his breath release. Back to the mission.

He pushes through the crowd, and as he looks for someone to question, he takes note of things like the balcony or the great chandelier. Reyes’s instructions on getting the intelligence are fresh in his mind. How does one make a death look accidental in a day’s notice? The thought flits across his mind—Genji was always better at stealth kills—but he bats it away. After everything Genji did in Blackwatch, Cassidy figures he could catch a break.

A man in an all-black suit walks by, talking to a friend in white. Cassidy stills his thoughts, trying to eavesdrop from a round dining table.

“I got these mercs chasing after the key a couple days ago, and suddenly I see them back in Venice playing cards? It doesn’t make any sense!” the man in white complains. 

“It makes total sense. They don’t respect you.” The man in black takes a sip of champagne.

“These Inheritors don’t respect anyone, but they are capable of basic thought.” The man in white sniffs. “Something’s chased them away.”

“The lack of bloodshed, maybe. It’s why I rely on my own men for stealth missions.”

“…I guess that could be all. I can ask Camacho about it, if need be.”

The pair walk away, bickering about some business deal or another. Cassidy frowns, picking up a butter knife from the table. Probably not built for stabbing. This Camacho character is his only lead, but he hasn’t a clue who that is. People start trickling onto the dancefloor—right, it is a “charity ball.” Hopefully Camacho isn’t one of them. He decides to check on his other half’s intel.

Every step up to the balcony is a shade darker, the warm lights not reaching up this far. The people here seem better suited to the shadows, anyway—while the people below are all dressed in sharp whites and elegant golds, the ones up here have the odd tattoo or mean scowl. Genji isn’t unnoticed like Cassidy is here. He’s on full display, playing up the crowd with a “real” human face and charm to match. Conversation bubbles around him. His smile is wide, but his eyes are dull.

Cassidy marches up, decorum be damned, and taps him on the shoulder. Genji automatically moves his shoulder away, but sees Cassidy and stills. The people on the balcony back away, muttering about the ruined mood. Cassidy starts toward an outdoor offshoot from the balcony, motioning for Genji to follow. He does, looking part relieved and part annoyed about the interruption. Cassidy holds the door for him, relishing the wave of crisp night air.

“I assume you had a reason to pull me from my riveting conversation,” Genji says, eyebrows raised.

“Riveting, huh?”

“I only joke. I hate these people.” Genji walks closer to the edge of the balcony and Cassidy, as always, follows. “They remind me of the Shimada clan’s old associates.”

“Hm.” Cassidy looks over the balcony onto Venice, streetlights shining weakly over the canals.

“They would talk for hours around a single thought. They were careless with their money, their people, and their Inheritance.” He chuckles. “I used to be just like them.”

“Keep hearin’ from your Blackwatch files you were a party boy back then. I really don’t see it.”

“It was either that or be a Shimada. That is, be a permanent hypocrite.” Silence hangs in the air like a fog, and Cassidy moves closer to Genji. He can’t imagine the expectations put on Genji as a child—no one expected much of Cassidy back then.

“I was a restless child, and I despised my family for their honor code,” Genji continues. “Less parties. But if it is ‘honorable’ to bastardize the Shimada dragon to kill your own kin, then I’m not sure how I did any wrong.”

”I’d say you didn’t.”

A faint smile spreads on Genji’s face. It still looks wrong with the disguise cells—a softer nose, downturned eyes, unblemished skin. Completely unremarkable. Cassidy turns back to the balcony view, Genji’s real face fresh in his mind. It’s morbid to think how similar he looked to the other Shimadas—especially after Genji himself took them out. Thinking of names snaps Cassidy out of his thoughts and back to the mission.

“I damn near forgot my whole point in draggin’ you out here! Genji, Did you see a guy called Camacho anywhere?”

“I talked to a Ms. Camacho earlier. She was one of the more bearable people here. I believe she abandoned this floor for the bar,” Genji muses. Cassidy scoffs.

“Smart lady.” He pats his left pocket, making sure the earpiece is there. “We’ve still got a mission to complete, and I could use a drink myself. I’ll be back in a snap.”

“You had better be.” Genji is being tapped on the shoulder by another guest when Cassidy leaves. He takes the dizzying grand staircase to the bottom floor. The bar area is a tough-to-notice counter in the back of the hall, where people are a bit mellower than the ones in the main event. The dancing hasn’t stopped since he went upstairs, a whirl of gold and white. Cassidy weaves through the crowds of partygoers, trying not to ruffle any feathers or wrinkle any suits. 

The bar is simple from a distance, but keeps the opulence of the rest of the hall. The wood grain in the counter is inlaid with gold, and some of the drinks are served in those classy copper cups. Cassidy takes a seat a few chairs to the right of an elegant woman in blue.

Her hair is graying at the roots, her posture is high and proud, and long hair blocks any view of her profile. A tan-brown hand rests on a cup. Cassidy can superimpose a different image onto this woman at the bar. The blue dress she wears becomes a coat, the bag at her side is full of spare sleep darts, and her copper cup is full of the finest coffee money can buy. She’ll wave Cassidy over, offering him a drink and asking if his aim is still good. Berating him, then teasing him, then teaching him. He’s lost in a memory.

“Ana?” Cassidy nearly whispers, eyes wide. The woman turns and shakes him out of his reverie—her eyes are too light, her nose is too round, and her face is free of tattoos. She raises her eyebrow.

“I think you’ve got the wrong woman,” she jokes, her words a relaxed slur. “I’m Selena Camacho. Shareholder of LumeriCo, starter of shit startups, and elbow-rubber of Talon.”

“Talon?” 

“Don’t act shocked. You know where we are, yes?” She swirls her drink around its cup. Her eyelids struggle to stay open. Cassidy leans a little closer, trying not to stare. He still can’t shake her resemblance to Ana.

“Sure. Although I’ve heard some people say Talon’s flaking,” he says conspiratorially. Selena laughs.

“Talon always flakes. What’s happening now is a full migration of agents.”

“Wonder why,” Cassidy says.

“Not my place to tell. Maybe you can get me another drink… You?”

“Uh. Joel Morricone.” The fake name is one he’s used before, but it’s out of use. She nods. He waves the bartender over while Selena downs the rest of her drink. He requests another one of whatever drink she had last time—a drink the bartender thankfully remembers.

“You seem new to this business, so listen. You’re only getting tips this good once.” Selena leans in, pupils wide. “Talon’s leaving because they have the advantage here. Having to report to us regulars would be quite a dampener after they’ve already won.” 

“Won what?”

“The third key.”

Cassidy’s bad hand grips the table as the blood leaves his head. The disguise canister hid his curse earlier, but the false skin stretches over his arm. His eye twitches.

“Thought it was sequential. Get one key, unlock the next.”

 

“Sure, they’re short a key. But last year Talon built a new base right on top of some underwater ruins, and I don’t believe they did it for the scenic view.” The bartender arrives with her new drink, and she nods him a thank-you. Cassidy takes a deep inhale. We can’t leave any loose ends here. This is like any other Blackwatch mission, and Blackwatch missions mean dirty hands–they always have.

“Jesus. I could use some fresh air,” Cassidy mutters, trying to recall his strategies on old operations. He somehow plasters a charming smile onto his face. “Care to join?”

“Why, I thought you’d never ask!” Selena giggles. Cassidy stands up and walks to a side door of the hall, and Selena trails behind him. His tiny knife feels heavy in his suit pocket. He opens the door onto a garden.

The garden is dark and mostly ornamental, pale fragile flowers at their spring prime. There’s a bird fountain with no water, and the fence surrounding it is rusting iron. Selena sits on a limestone bench, yawning. Cassidy doesn’t look her in the eye. Maybe I should have made Genji do this. He recalls how Genji tenses up every time his Inheritance is mentioned, and the thought leaves his head. He flips his knife from his pocket to up his sleeve.

“I know you’re new here, and you seem very nice,” Selena says, eyes heavy-lidded. “Most people here would eat you alive for that, but I’m not most people. And you’re not half-bad on the eyes.”

Cassidy stays standing, looking sideways at Selena. She’s flirting. She’s around the same age as him. With that superimposed image, she’s the same age as his memory of Captain Ana Amari. The knife is cold against his arm and shirtsleeve. Ana would never again nudge his hands to the left as he tried to shoot a can of beer from across the Watchpoint. She would never teach him the real way to make coffee. She would never look at him with her godly tattooed eye and tell him he was worth a damn. Reyes’s instructions ring clear in his head. No weakness, no loose ends.

He sits on the bench next to Selena slowly, almost afraid. This isn’t anyone you know, Cassidy, he tells himself. Another voice: I was under the impression you fought for self-defense. Selena turns toward him, smiling lazily. The knife is in his hand, behind his back.

“I’m sorry,” Cassidy mutters, too quietly for anyone but him to hear. Selena’s sitting completely still, in that royal blue dress and royal stature. She’s the same age as Ana used to be–she’s the same age as him–she’s the same age as the memory he’ll never get back. He brings the knife up from his side. He can’t feel the metal with his blackened hand. Selena’s face among the flowers looks almost exactly like Amari’s.

He puts the knife back in his sleeve. Selena looks after him as he stands up in a hurry, blood rushing to his head. She tilts her head, hair brushing against the thin flowers next to her.

“Come on. Cold feet?” She is not Ana Amari.

“I’ve got someone waiting inside, anyhow. Didn’t think you’d…” Cassidy trails off. He’s not sure why this is his first answer. He’s not usually a liar.

“Oh, you should’ve said!” Selena laughs. She has to be in her thirties or forties, but she sounds youthful. “Good luck to the lady, hm?”

Cassidy holds in a laugh of his own. “‘Course. Nice meetin’ you.” He leaves the garden area before he can further embarrass himself. His knife is safe and clean in his belt. The only thing that got hurt was his dignity.

What if she tells other people what we know? he wonders. If she tries something, all because she survived, whose fault will that be? He’s blinded by the transition from the dark garden to the white-and-gold lights above the hall. With the disguised faces, Cassidy has a hard time picking Genji out of the crowd. He sees him by the edge of the circle of dancers. When Genji sees him approaching, his eyes have a sheen of excitement. Someone waiting inside, indeed.

“Good or bad news first?” Cassidy asks, still jumpy. Genji considers it seriously.

“Good news. I want to put off the bullshit as long as I can.”

“Real optimistic. Anyway, I found us that last key!”

“The bad news must be catastrophic,” Genji remarks with a smile. Cassidy looks around, scratching his neck out of nervous habit.

“It’s underneath a new Talon base.”

“…Of course it is.” Genji sighs. Soft music floats down from a balcony where a small group of musicians sit, some human and some omnic. Despite it, Cassidy’s never felt more tense. The info itself means more planning, more running, more time chipped off an already-impossible deadline for him to cure the curse. The woman he got the info from… He’d rather not think about her.

“We ought to make a plan for this key, then,” Cassidy says, leaning on a white table. He’d gotten a flute of champagne earlier—it’s lukewarm by now, so he sets it behind him.

“What, right now?” Genji look anxious, too, but he's better at hiding it—especially for the sake of having a good time.

“Ain’t like I got all the time in the world, Genji.”

“Of course not.” Genji loops his index finger around Cassidy’s. “But I thought you had an evening.” The center of the room is populated by half-drunk dancers, intuitively keeping in time with live strings to the side as they spiral. The only time Cassidy ever danced was in the middle of a bar in New Mexico with almost-friends egging him on; they left him on the side of the road the next day.

“Not exactly an experienced dancer,” he says lamely.

“Not what I asked.”

A small smile spreads across his face. Instead of responding, Cassidy nods and lets himself be led along. Genji weaves through the crowd with smiles and friendly waves, basking in the attention. For once, it’s Cassidy acting bashful as he walks behind. The hand pulling him becomes a hand on his waist, then another on his shoulder. He mirrors Genji—his movements are stiff and hesitant. Genji chuckles.

“We can leave if you want, but really, I do not bite.”

“Oh, shuddup,” Cassidy mutters, getting closer to Genji. They enter the dance, with Cassidy walking off-beat and hoping he doesn’t trip anyone. Genji knows what he’s doing, and Cassidy can pretend.

The space around Cassidy and Genji becomes its own planet, orbiting the center of the hall. The black accents on Genji’s suit shine green beneath the chandelier—Cassidy feels plain in comparison. He frowns, trying to tune out the chatter around him and focus on the music. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two—dammit.

“Cole, relax. No one is grading your dancing.”

“I’d like to make some kinda effort here.” 

“A pleasant surprise, coming from you,” Genji jokes. He pulls away from him, drawing them both through the crowd, then pulls back in.

“Surprised you dragged us out onto the floor in the first place,” Cassidy says with a laugh.

“While my face looks like this?” Geni points at his disguise, at his smoothed-over skin. “It would be a waste not to be sociable.” Cassidy’s smile falters. He loses track of the music, the strings slicing the air with no rhyme or reason. He trips; he falls back. Genji catches him and pulls him back by the shirtsleeve. His hand lingers there, while Cassidy moves his own hand up from Genji’s shoulder to brush the edge of his collar. A silent thank-you.

“You’ve been to one of these before, ain’tcha?” Cassidy asks, changing the subject.

“Even with all their… Flaws, the Shimadas were always gracious hosts.” Another turn around the room. “‘Business functions,’ I believe. I always tried to dance with whoever would let me, but Hanzo started cracking down on it after, you know, Sojiro.”

“Hm. Sorry.”

“Don’t say that,” Genji says, absent-minded. Cassidy chuckles and looks to the side.

“I ain’t really danced properly before,” he admits. “Line-dancing after a half-bottle of whatever, sure. But this joint’s a little classy for all that.”

“You haven’t stepped on any feet yet. Were it not for the wanted criminal aspect, you could out-dance…” Genji scans the hall. “About half of these people. At least, before my face wears off.”

“I still don’t love these disguises,” Cassidy admits in a whisper. If he’s caught talking about this at a Talon-run event, it’s gonna be both of their remains splattered on the tile. 

“Obviously you would not like a false face—you have a real face beneath it.” He chuckles at the bitter joke, the old bruise.

“And you don’t?” Cassidy inches his hand up further, along Genji’s neck. He closes his eyes.

“Do not mock me.”

“Never could, Genji. Not for real.” Another turn about the room, another song switch. “The disguise made you uglier, anyhow.”

“…You are serious.” Genji’s bitter smile falls away, leaving blank amazement. The strings grow louder, the dance gets faster, and Cassidy twirls Genji around just because. He’s sure it’s not proper dancing technique. When Genji spins straight into his arms again, he ends up closer than he was before and wearing a real smile. Cassidy’s known him for years—still, Genji’s never looked at him like he personally went up to space to hang the stars in the sky. They’re practically breathing the same air now. Genji brings a hand up to his face, and Cassidy leans in.

He feels something crackle against his forehead.

Cassidy reaches up to touch his temple, frowning. It feels as if a layer of stone is crumbling off of it. He comes to a halt. Other dancers start bumping into him and giving him strange looks.

“We gotta go.” Cassidy takes Genji by the wrist and drags the both of them out of the crowd. He makes a beeline for the shadow cast by the grand stairwell. In the process, he feels something fall from the side of his head. Genji leans on the wall, facing away from Cassidy and toward the crowd.

“How much trouble are we in?” Genji whispers.

“Look at me real quick?” At the sight of Cassidy’s face, Genji frowns, then looks around the room. The frown lines around his eyes stay there, cracked into the ‘skin.’

“Your disguise.” He reaches up to feel his own face crumbling. “They were supposed to last for 24 hours.”

“Well, that’s pretty tough luck, ain’t it?” Cassidy sees the snacks—sorry, hors d'oeuvres—on the table in front of them, and reaches to grab some napkins. In a smooth motion, he wipes the rest of the disguise from his face. Genji takes the other napkin from him and holds it near his face, but he hesitates.

“Will this disguise last any longer?” he asks, oddly hopeful. Cassidy shakes his head.

“It’ll be falling to bits the whole time the biotech’s wearing off. Not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Shame.” Genji wipes his face off, scrubbing at scarred patches of skin like he’s trying to wipe those away, too. They still have that faint blue tint from the Inheritance that caused them, lacing between Genji’s flitting gray eyes and angular face. Now, at least, he looks like himself.

“Alright, it’s a straight shot from here to the door. If we just keep our heads down, we shouldn’t have anythin’ to worry about.”

“Except Talon’s secretly stashed third key?” Genji asks.

“Anythin’ to worry about right now.” The crowd is thicker around the dance, and Genji starts toward the other end of the hall. He grabs Cassidy’s wrist like it’s some kind of lifeline and weaves around crowds of Talon shareholders, looking only at the ground and letting black hair fall in his face. Cassidy tries not to look anyone in the eye. The music from the upper balcony gets cut through with a shriek from one of the violins. Then, it stops. Cassidy and Genji make the mistake of looking up.

The musicians on the balcony are staring straight at them. Their suits and dresses are ill-fitting, and the violinist has an iron leg sticking out of the slit in her dress. More importantly, shining mist gathers around them in clumps. Others from the upper level of the hall come forward, all eyes on them. These, Cassidy realizes, are no Talon business partners.

They’re agents.

“Cole.” Genji takes off his suit jacket and hands it to him, leaving his dress shirt, and rolls up his right sleeve. He flicks a shuriken into his hand. “On my cue.”

“Yeah.” He rests his hand on Peacekeeper. The violinist starts down the stairs. Her heels have pointed blades at the ends, and she’s still staring at them.

“Now!”

A shuriken flies at the woman, slicing through her shoulder. She clutches her arm, and Genji and Cassidy start for the exit. The people downstairs are chattering and screaming, running into each other like pinballs. Cassidy shoulders past a group on them, spilling someone’s champagne on him. One of the men in front of him has a pistol raised; Cassidy punches him in the jaw.

Two Talon agents stand at the exit, pushing the doors. Genji runs faster, leaping past their attacks. He draws a shuriken between his knuckles and punches one of them, making a slash across her clavicle. She grabs his hair and slams his head into the wall. Genji stumbles back, dazed, while Cassidy pushes through the crowd to him. He points Peacekeeper at the woman. To the side, he hears a thud. The front doors are shut.

He fires a shot near the woman without looking, the sound cracking through the entire hall. People are flooding downstairs, trapping them. The woman’s metal leg has a small dent in it—that’s where it landed?—but Cassidy ignores her. He grabs Genji by the shirtsleeve, tugging. He’s still struggling to stand, and there’s black blood matting his black hair. Cassidy scans the hall. There aren’t any other doors downstairs. The only way out is up.

“C’mon,” he mutters, trying to look calm. He hits anyone in his way with Peacekeeper, trying to save bullets, but Talon is zeroing in on him. He leaps to the side to avoid a blast of light—he has no clue what kind of Inheritance that is—and makes it to the bottom of the staircase. Most of the upper level had rushed to meet them earlier, leaving it almost empty. He runs up the stairs with Genji stumbling behind him.

The landing is empty, food and drinks abandoned. There’s a small door on the left side, and Cassidy leads them both there. He shuts and locks the door behind him, then takes a deep breath. Genji slumps against the wall. The room is a glorified supply closet, full of spare chairs and tablecloths and the like. Cassidy takes one of the tablecloths, crumples it, and holds it against Genji’s forehead, trying to stymie the bleeding. He frowns.

“I thought… I could have sworn I saw…” Genji says, blinking confusion from his eyes.

“What?”

“…Some help.” He closes his eyes. Cassidy flicks him in the nose.

“Ow.”

“Focus. What’d you see?” Cassidy asks. Before Genji can answer, there’s a tap on the door beside him. He freezes. There are still people shouting commands from outside, but the silence is deafening. He holds his breath. The tapping comes again. Genji stands, trying not to sway.

“Come on, let me in.” It’s Sombra’s voice on the other side of the door. Cassidy draws Peacekeeper.

“Why should I?”

“If it’s not me, it’s gonna be someone who wants you dead,” she says. “Let me in.” Genji nods from beside him, solemn. Cassidy huffs, then opens the door.

Sombra closes it behind her immediately, barely getting through. She’s wearing a slip dress with enough rhinestones on it to make it crackle when she moves and long gloves to hide the cybernetic extensions in her hands. Still, she doesn’t exactly blend in with a crowd.

“Hello, boys.” She waves at them, ignoring Genji bleeding out. “Reaper’s trying to hold them off out there, but we’re still in a bit of a crunch. Can’t believe you morons got yourselves caught...”

“Holding off—all of them?” Cassidy stares at her. “How?”

“Ha! Don’t you know by now? He doesn’t die!” She frowns at Genji. “You might.”

“Do not say that,” Genji says. Sombra walks over to him, looking at the bloody side of his head. She laughs.

“Oh, I was joking. You’ll be fine. Head wounds usually look worse than they are.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Now, we can’t stay here forever.” Cassidy sighs, considering staying here anyway. Sombra’s already opening the door, and Genji walks out behind her with a little more pep. Cassidy reloads Peacekeeper and follows.

“How do you figure we’re getting out?”

“Join your old man down there, shoot some people, I don’t know. Just keep their eyes off us,” Sombra says, pointing to Genji. Old man... Cassidy shakes his head. He then raises an eyebrow, looking at her dress and the glowing wires in her head.

“That’s gonna be a tall order.”

“Are you saying I’m ugly?”

“No, I’m sayin’ you stick out, in that getup.”

“Red shirt, brocade vest, gold belt… I could say the same of you!” Sombra laughs, pushing her hair behind her ear.

“Hey now.”

“Real flamboyant,” she continues.

“Alright, that’s—!”

“They’re starting to close in. I will… follow Sombra,” Genji says, sounding like he’d rather walk out into the storm of agents alone than do so–Cassidy’s inclined to agree. If mercenaries “aren’t invited,” how the hell did Sombra and Reaper of all people get in? “Do not get yourself killed,” he finishes. Cassidy turns towards the stairs, snapping Peacekeeper up with a grin, trying to hide his expression from Sombra; the expression of a man who knows he’s been duped.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Reyes is yelling at one of the Talon agents downstairs, but his shotguns are safely squared away. Most of the crowd have flocked to the front windows, Cassidy squints, but he can’t see out of them from this angle. The man Reyes is busy chewing out absentmindedly looks to the stairway. He freezes when he sees Cassidy, revolver drawn.

“Get him!”

The agents turn away from the windows and look up, dumbstruck. Cassidy silently curses his lack of Deadeye, while Reyes quietly dematerializes below. Cassidy, however, isn’t aiming at anyone in the crowd. He aims straight ahead at the thin chain holding up the hall’s giant, diamond-crusted chandelier. 

He shoots.

The chandelier lets out a loud, final creak. Agents scatter, tripping over themselves to get out of the way. The chandelier falls in a blur of white before crashing to the floor. Pieces of glass and diamond burst out and litter the tiles. Cassidy leaps down off the middle landing of the stairs, dropping down in the back of the hall. He feels a rush of air, then a tap on the shoulder. He startles back.

“Christ alive, why don’tcha appear in front of me next time?” 

“I don’t have time for your shit, Talon wants you and the ninja dead. Where’s Sombra?” Reyes asks. Cassidy points up at the balcony. Hidden by shadows, Sombra is typing away at some kind of holo-screen. Genji is standing with perfect military posture beside her. Violet lines of light draw out from him to Sombra’s hand, and Cassidy’s eyes widen. He starts back toward the stairs, but Reyes grips him by the shoulder.

Reyes draws his shotgun with his free hand. “We have a plan. Mostly her plan, unfortunately, but the other option is to die here.”

“A plan, really? Remember Antonio?”

“That wasn’t clean, but it was calculated. What she’s doing now is playing with her food.” He sighs, looking up at her and Genji. “Just let her... It’s how the little sicko blows off steam–and how she stays allied with Genji.” Cassidy freezes, a million questions bubbling up in his head. About ‘playing with her food,’ about his genuine concern for her, about Antonio, about being a commander before being a mercenary. Sombra looks down at Reyes and waves, and the only thing stopping Cassidy from pointing Peacekeeper up at her right now is the threat of Talon around him. Ironically, or maybe fittingly, Reyes is once again protecting him.

Genji, in the violet haze of Sombra’s Inheritance, walks to the edge of the balcony. His hands are curled around each other strangely. It takes Cassidy a few seconds to realize he’s miming the motion of holding his katana. He looks, for once, like an actual robot. Light concentrates around his hand, but not by his own doing. The air smells like ozone, and the hairs on Cassidy’s arms begin to prickle. Reyes curses.

“We need to be up there before he…” Reyes trails off. The light crystalizes even further, and Cassidy can see the violet glint of scales. He pales.

“He wouldn’t—“

“Run.”

Reyes dissolves—God, it’s still eerie to watch him break apart— and smog floats to the second floor. Cassidy runs to join him, if only for the real fear he saw in the former Commander’s eyes. If something’s bad enough to make Reyes run away, anyone could bet their bottom dollar that Cassidy would be following him. He rushes up the stairs. The light is almost blinding now, but he can’t stand to look away.

The Shimada dragon escapes.

It’s bright violet and bloated in places from Sombra’s Inheritance, almost cancerous. Genji keeps his arm in the air, shaking from the strain. Genji can only watch with wide eyes as the dragon rears to strike. Agents and attendees alike are trying to exit through the front door in a fearful mob. Sombra’s movements match his as he sends the dragons out, like a motion-capture suit more than a person. The dragon descends upon the ball in a blaze or light.

For lack of a better word, it feasts. It flies through the crowd from person to person, teeth gnashing. People pass through its jaws and end up dead on the other side. There’s no struggle, no blood, no dying gasps. The dragon gorges itself on life and death alike. Jeweled and suited husks of people fall to the floor in waves. Letting off steam? Cassidy thinks. Final fucking straw–let’s let some steam off of Peacekeeper.

Cassidy pulls the revolver from under his coat and fires straight at Sombra’s hand, all instinct. She’s already gone—the bullet lands in a pillar across the room. An arm wraps around his neck from behind. Reyes.

“If you want to live, do exactly as I say. We’re getting the hell out of here.” His voice is dead serious, but Cassidy can’t help but laugh, even as it’s hard to breathe like this. Want to live? Genji spasms across the room. While the dragon wreaks havoc on the ball, the vessel weakens. He knows who it’s going for next. He escapes Reyes’s grasp with a twist of his arm.

Sombra has to be here, but he can’t see a thing. He holds Peacekeeper up on a hair-trigger, ready to shoot anything that looks at him wrong. The dragon slows as it loops back up to the balcony, toward Cassidy. He stays standing, looking at it in its white eyes; its open maw. It looks back.

In a closed room on a tiny balcony, where else is there to go? He loosens his grip on Peacekeeper as the dragon approaches, in all of its horrible majesty. Genji is gone, Reyes is gone, and Sombra is achingly out of his sight. His vision is blasted with light, dark spots start to grow and shrink across his vision, and a headache that is not from Inheritance forms behind his eyes. He can’t fight this being with Inheritance. Cassidy’s final, fleeting thought is how painful and how beautiful of a way to die this will be.

The dragon stops midair.

Cassidy blinks at the freeze-frame before him. Behind it is the faintest silhouette of a man lowering his hand, struggling against thin air. Cassidy takes a tentative step, waiting for it to come back to life. Nothing. He circles around it, back to where Genji stands, looking like Atlas beneath the weight of holding back the dragon, saving a single life out of hundreds. He can’t stop shaking. Cassidy reaches a hand out, then hesitates. The dragon is starting to move again, struggling against Genji’s dwindling will. A tear rolls down his unmoving, scarred face, but he holds fast.

Sombra appears behind Cassidy with a canister in her hand. She throws it at him to activate it—it’s a simple trap, wires wrapping around him and a nearby pillar. He stumbles to the ground, then looks up at her. She waves.

“Can’t have you trying shit again,” she says pityingly. “You know how it is.” If it weren’t for the trap, he’d kill her with his bare hands. Alliance and ‘help’ aside, that Inheritance wasn’t any work of Genji’s. The dragon flickers once, twice, then dissipates into mist the color of the Sun’s afterimage. Genji wavers, exhaustion and humanity hitting his body at once. He collapses to the floor. Sombra stands over him.

“As for you, I’m impressed!” she says. “Saved all our lives out there by getting all those lackeys out of the way.”

“They’re…”

“Yes, dead. They were going to kill you, Genji–we didn’t send them after you. Plus, you stopped yourself from killing the cowboy! Target selection is the kind of thing that can set a candidate apart, you know.” 

“Hell do you mean, ‘candidate?’” Cassidy asks. Even though he knows struggling won’t help him escape the wire trap, he can’t help but strain against the wires.

“Talon will hear about you showing off here sooner or later,” Reyes says. “Sure, some of their men ended up dead, but they were nobodies. Sombra can walk in there and claim she has full control over a somebody. Somebody valuable to Talon.” Genji coughs, trying to struggle to his feet.

“Where does that leave me?”

“That leaves you in a new uniform with a new boss.” He scoffs. “Better than dead. You should be thanking me.” The balcony falls silent for a moment. Cassidy looks to his side, finally getting a clear view of the front windows. His stomach drops. Right outside of the hall, in the middle of the street, is a massive Talon dropship.

“You song of a bitch, you duped us from the beginning. I knew from the beginning, and I just kept hoping and hoping that you’d changed... Some fool I am,” Cassidy spits. “I’m not joining Talon. Not after everything they did to Overwatch. Did to us.”

“Sure, you can choose not to join the most powerful Inheritor network in the world,” Sombra says. “Your other choice is running outside and getting pumped full of lead faster than I can say ‘I told you so.’”

“I just“—Cassidy looks up at Reyes’s hard mask—“why?”

“Because I want you to live.” He kicks the edge of Cassidy’s boot. “This key business was doomed to fail. It’s a good deal—Sombra gets a part-time asset, I get your ungrateful ass back, and you two get to survive.”

“Damn right, I’m ungrateful. Asset? Are you insane?” Reyes doesn’t respond to Cassidy, only crouches down next to him. He slashes the wire trap with one of the metal talons on his gauntlet, releasing Cassidy briefly before grabbing him by the arm.

“Come on.”

They leave Genji and Sombra behind. Sombra crosses her arms. Her hair looks messier, and she has a restless look in her eyes.

“Tell me you can see reason, at least,” she says, flitting her false lashes. Genji just glares at her.

“I am not so easily convinced of… Bullshit.” He takes a step back, holding a new shuriken. “You will have to drag me there, kicking and biting.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be that much work! I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to do it.” She pouts, already lifting her hand. Violet lines pull him upright like puppet strings, and all his complaining ceases. Sombra walks him out to the front door, with Reyes taking Cassidy ahead. He looks back, but can’t look too long. Genji’s face is empty. He turns back to Reyes as they step out into the cold night.

“I’m going to hate every second of this,” Cassidy mutters. Reyes’s claws dig into his arm.

“Get ready to hate the rest of your life, kid–we’re still living.”

Even the moon doesn’t dare shine over the city tonight, leaving the dropship almost invisible. It has red accents and lights with the emblem of a claw on the side. Sombra inhales, like the smell of jet fuel and steel reminds her of home. The doors of the ship open, revealing a steel interior like the inside of a lockbox. Cassidy gets dragged in last before the door shuts behind him, leaving him alone with the blinding overhead lights. Reyes adjusts his mask, while Sombra takes her gloves off. The metal pieces over her knuckles glimmer when she relinquishes control over Genji, letting him collapse into a chair. She walks toward the pilot’s seat with a small smile.

“Welcome to Talon.”