Junkrat
Jesus, it was quiet.
The klaxon had stopped going off a few minutes ago. It had been almost soothing, in a way - the sound of destruction and mayhem still lingering in Jamie's mind. Music to his ears.
He was annoyed with the corridors, though. He'd need a thermite mine to get through all of that metal if he had to force his way into anywhere and it irked him. There'd never been a problem one of his concussion mines couldn't solve.
That was until he'd met Isabell, and a whole host of new problems that concussion mines didn't fix turned up. At first, he was just surprised that he'd actually made a friend. With a head like his and the shit that had everyone after his blood, friends were hard to come by out here. But Isabell understood him straight away - and she didn't want the information he had, so she'd just clicked with him real fast. It also helped that her old man got along well with his family before that bloody explosion came and ruined everything.
Then the problems started cropping up when Tayanna appeared. Jamie started wondering if he could trust Isabell, because she was with those dipsticks so often that they would have had an influence on how she acted. So she was pretty likely to ditch him, send him to jail, take Tay away from him when he'd just found her. When Tay had been captured, of course that had been his first line of thought.
Then, after she'd saved his life time and time again, understood when he couldn't talk about some things and when he needed to talk about others, when she noticed that there was more to him than explosives (although there were a lot of those)...
That was when the real problems started appearing.
He started caring. Too much. He cared what happened to her, cared that she lived through this, and he cared that she was alright. He was genuinely scared that if she lost it again, she might never be sane again. He had more worries about her than he had about the rest of the world's population combined.
Jamie opened the door. Another empty room. No Talon, no Tay.
The worst part was that he cared if she was happy. The worst part was that she was going to have to choose, when this was all over, between him and Overwatch.
And he knew which one would make her happier, and he hated himself for wanting her to pick the other option.
Next room. Still nothing.
Then again, Jamie hated himself a lot already. For being the only blasted one to see that dumb thing that had everyone after his blood. For being right there at the facility and not having done anything to stop the explosion that destroyed his home and his life. For being a helpless kid who watched as his sister broke the laws of science and physics and was taken away from him. Yeah, there was a long list for why Jamie hated himself.
Going insane had been easier than facing that list.
"Jamie, stop being a dipstick," he told himself, opening the next door.
Out of nowhere, a dizzying shiver went down his spine and his hand instinctively went to his riptire. He had a creeping feeling that something wasn't right; something had changed the game. Like a sixth sense - Even I know when the shit's about to hit the fan.
"Get your shit together," he growled at himself, and opened the door to the next room. His eyebrows lifted as he beheld the scene before him - not an ordinary room.
Half of the room's equipment was smashed up. There were deep scratch marks in the floor, like someone had carved them out with something sharp, and perfectly circular dents in some of the metal walls. The tang of Tay's radiation-energy-whatchamacallit was lingering in the air, but most interesting of all was something glinting in the corner of Jamie's eye.
Smashed green shards of glass.
"McFrogNugget," Jamie murmured, leaning down and picking them up. It made sense now - the deep scratches in the concrete were where his skates had gouged into the concrete. From the pattern, he'd probably been caught in a stranglehold or headlock of some kind. The perfectly circular dents had to have been from his boop-gun, and these shards of glass, they were where someone had smashed it and hadn't cleaned up after themselves carefully enough.
Someone had gotten to Lucio.
Talon was on his back.
"Fuckin' hell," Jamie growled, throwing the shard away. Something was wrong indeed - this had to be what he'd been all heeby-jeeby about. He had to signal Isabell, let her know that Froggo was down. Screw the plan - they were better off together.
Before he could even take out the flare, the smoke alarms went off. He was confused for a second - the tips of his hair weren't even flaming at the moment.
That was before he realized. It was either Froggo or Isabell - and they'd either been attacked by Talon or found Tayanna. Maybe McFrogNugget had been able to get out a flare while being taken hostage by Talon. Either way, Jamie was fast when he wanted to be.
Bloody long legs, he grinned. And he started sprinting.
He headed down a new corridor, his grenade launcher reloaded and at the ready, concussion mine already in hand in case he ran into trouble on the way. Look at him, thinking ahead like a sane person. Isabell would be proud.
But he couldn't swallow the feeling that he was more alone than he thought.
The tang of Tay's energy grew stronger as he ran, concentrating hard on keeping balanced with the longer strides he had to take to sprint and the slightly different length of his mechanical leg to his ordinary one. One of them must have found Tayanna if it was this strong.
He sprinted past the open door, before backtracking and holding his detonator at the ready, back pressed against the wall. Like a spy, maybe. Or a soldier. Neither of which Jamie was very good at being. He took a deep breath and quickly snatched a glance into the room.
It was a massive round chamber, lined on one wall with a long console dashboard thingy that matched the contours of the room. It was covered in levers and switches and buttons that Jamie instantly wanted to press, and it was lit with an ethereal blue glow from inside. In the center of the room was a tall glass box in the middle, containing five plastic pipes - three extending from the roof and two from the floor. Their tips were coated in blood, slightly dried. There was no sign of Talon in there.
But there was a nineteen-year-old holding up a flare to the smoke detector, waving it desperately to get out the last of the smoke. Her circlets were glowing brightly, and she turned as she saw Jamie.
"Thank fucking God," Jamie grinned with relief and ran over to her, enveloping her in a hug. She hugged him back.
"Jamie! God, I thought I was dead," she told him, exhaling. "Talon showed up. They have a fifth member."
Jamie pulled away and looked around. "Well shit. But why'd you pull the flare? Tay's not here, and neither is Talon."
"No," Isabell said. "But this looks like where she was kept. But I need some parts from Lucio's boop-gun to build something that can sift through the system and see what we need to keep Tay stable."
Jamie shook his head. "McFrogNugget is compromised." He paused and grinned. "I knew I wasn't the only one who called his gun that."
"I'll bet," Isabell said quietly, avoiding his gaze.
"You been battling someone?" Jamie raised an eyebrow, glancing at her brightly glowing circlets.
"No," Isabell tilted her head. "What makes you think that?"
"Your circle thingies," Jamie answered, pointing finger guns at her neck, where her choker circlet should have been. But she'd pulled her jagged collar up, obscuring her throat.
"Oh," Isabell said. "Probably from breaking out Sombra."
Jamie nodded. That made sense. He was about to ask, 'what now?' when Isabell ran over and hugged him again, burying her head in his chest. He was taken by surprise, but hugged her back all the same. "What's wrong?"
"She's sorry," she whispered. "For everything."
"What? She?" Jamie blinked.
That was when he looked down and saw the slightly green glow coming from her neck.
The glow that should have been blue.
"She's sorry," Isabell whispered. And slammed her nunchucks into his ribs.
Jamie staggered backwards with the force of the blow, his lower rib screaming in pain as he did so, and crashed into the console. "Isa--"
She crunched her chucks down onto the console and he barely dodged in time. She was strong, stronger than she should be--
"Isabell, what the fuck..."
The words died on his lips.
A beautiful green light was pulsing from her throat. She cracked her neck, moving her head from side to side, and pulled down her collar.
Her blue choker circlet with her insignia on it was snapped. Shards of electroconductive glass stuck haphazardly from each half, and the skull was split in two. In its place was a jade-green stone collar, pressing deep into her skin, two semicircles of stone hovering just above each other in the center. Pulsing with power. Blocking the Isabell he knew.
"Smile for me," she purred.
Jamie couldn't breathe. Not his Isabell. Not her. Anyone but her.
She frowned. "Dead people look prettier when they're smiling."
There had to be a way to get that thing off. He tried to remember what she'd said on the flight back from Junkertown about the readings Lucio had gotten from them, anything, something to tell him how to fix her.
Block sentient thought and conscious decision patterns
Cutting it off would kill the person wearing it - like a short-circuited fuse
Can't be removed
"She's sorry," Isabell's face twisted into a smile. "She's sorry."
"Don't be sorry," Jamie growled. "Fight it, dipstick."
"You can't fight science, Jamie," Isabell said sweetly. "This isn't a movie where the power of love and sheer will can fight mind control. She can't physically form the thoughts that free the people in all the TV shows."
"Then how come she keeps saying she's sorry?" Jamie snapped.
"She doesn't," Isabell smiled. "That was the last thing she thought."
The last thing she thought.
And then her circlets started glowing brighter.
Jamie lifted his grenade launched as she started. The nunchucks smashed into his side, again and again, and he kept trying to fight, to launch a bomb - but every time he did, Isabell's smile caught him off-guard and he couldn't do it. His vision danced with black dots and his head exploded in pain as metal smashed into his skull. He barely stayed conscious enough to scramble out of the way as she whirled them back down again.
Once, being insane had been an escape from losing the people he loved.
Now, it didn't help. No matter how crazy he went, no matter how badly he broke his own mind, he couldn't escape this. For the first time, Jamie had no way out.
"Stay still," Isabell muttered, annoyed. "I can't hit you if you keep moving like that. It'll take so much longer."
Before he could even try to move, both nunchucks descended on his leg and smashed down, metal on metal. It shattered his mechanical leg completely.
"Now you can't fly away," Isabell smiled.
Not his Isabell. His Isabell didn't smile like that when she hurt people. His Isabell smiled like that when he smiled at her - his Isabell smiled like that when he did something stupid and she knew he'd done it on purpose.
But his Isabell was gone now.
He reached for his grenade launched, stretching with his mechanical hand, but Isabell kicked it away, the grenades spilling all over the floor like deadly marbles. Her circlets flared and her nunchucks charged with bright blue. The telling sign of her radiation beam. She pressed the tip against his head, and leaned down, whispering in his ear.
"You can't get her back now," Isabell murmured softly, and stroked his hair with her free hand. "But that's okay. You can still see her smile."
And then the nunchucks smashed into the side of his head.
And everything went dark.