Also at https://archiveofourown.org/works/47065192/chapters/118573420
“Back During the Omnic war,” Angela Ziegler started, flipping through paperwork. Gibraltar Base was a very paperwork heavy place. Due to the presence of the launch pad on the base. The last Doctor, either in paranoia, or foresight, had kept basic hard copy dossiers on everyone, and at least until now, Angela had held to the tradition – or renewed it, a decade after the offices had been abandoned.
It was just as well, as the proper digital copies were still on servers encrypted by the UN’s encryption worm. Even if the base’s AI, Athena, had mostly saved itself, the rest was still more easily restored from a backup a decade later, rather than decrypted.
“Back during the Omnic war,” There it was, Mei-Ling Zhou’s record. “Early versions of Omnics were captured and studied, to find they had set up their own nanite microbiome of sorts, to aid self repair… healing.” The glanced up at Mei, “No change?”
“I am still fine.”
“Desperate to stop the loss of soldiers, Overwatch reverse-engineered a dumber version of the nanite – the caduceus swarm. They avoided saying the ‘swarm’ part in public, but it’s buried in reports. They were injected into operatives, soldiers. Only registered devices could activate them. My staff is one of them, but hardly the only one. They can be activated in the field, even automatically trigger a… well, I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘ragdolling’. Stopping movement when a soldier is hurt, but unwilling to stop themselves – that’s something doctors have wanted since field medicine began. No more heroic last stands when you’re savable.
“You-” Mercy pointed to a part of the documentation, “Got a second set, meant to function while frozen. During your hibernation.“
“Yes, my ‘Ice block’ triggers them.” Mei stated this factually. Each time she entombed herself, it was a chance they would fail and she’d just… die. It felt right given her past. But she just kept flipping ‘heads’.
“I’m just glad we finally got the low temperature ones to work with the standard set. Give a redundancy… but that’s not a ‘why’.”
Angela circled her desk.
Mei was there, but not standing. After locking the office door, she had slid easily into a side split, and maintained perfect contact with the floor while Angela had done her file pull – keeping hands on the floor to prop herself up. “Then why? I’m telling the truth, last week I couldn’t hope to do this.”
“This is colloquial, but there’s a short time between when the swarm Can disable, and when it Does disable – overcharge, we call it. If you happened to meet enough stressors during this period, it’s possible the *laxity* of your muscles is a result.”
Angela slipped out of her shoes, and slid her feet wide, matching both Mei’s split and natural line of sight. “And by colloquial, I mean I’ve met a lot of medics from the war days that kept their caduceus controls on low, just for an extra bit of safety, and ended up getting the whammy.”
Mei was trying to maintain some professionalism, but gasped despite herself. Angela maintained her balance without lowering a hand to the floor, while Mei was forced to prop herself up, afraid of pitching forward any moment.
“Oh, you think that’s bad?” Angela pulled back her lab coat and shifted her pelvis, effortlessly sliding between middle, left and right splits without a hint of raising from the floor, “Mind you, I’ve had *multiple* incidents to get here. But I’m guessing yours was during last week’s assault mission. You were out for a while, and had to be resuscitated, according to Brigitte’s notes.
“I… I was.” Mei tried shifting to a left split as Angela had shown. It wasn’t nearly as fluid as the medic’s, but entirely possible. She was hit with a new set of stretching sensations.
“Oh,” Angela crossed her arms and held her chin, “this is in no way your fault. That girl needs some proper medical training. But she’s got it in her mind she’s a ‘squire’. Ugh.”
“I should get a full physical.” Mei suggested.
“You should.”
“You have a subject to study the progression of caduceus healing-based flexibility on.”
“Do I, now?” Mercy made a show out of considering it, “I suppose I could put a training regimen together after the physical.”
The hacker known to the world as Sombra got thousands of pings for “Omnic” on a weekly basis. “Caduceus” was significantly rarer. This was the first, though, that contained both from the old Gibraltar base. Someone, while trying to refurbish it, had picked up one of the old storage drives she had infected. She had already looked through it’s systems and discounted the locked Overwatch data stores – there were so many backups, and some had been partially cracked years ago, they were not very interesting – but she knew she’d have a buyer if this conversation led anywhere.
> Hey girl I got some OW tidbits I’m following up on. You might be interested.
< That relic?
> You were part of that relic. My notes are underlined and flashing. Don’t deny.
< I’m qualified to judge it
> Your qualifications inform you about suspiciously boneless field medics?
The reply was not immediate
< They might
> Ooh, that sounds like a bluff to me. Would would you like to renew your retainer, or send an advance?
There was a ding. Not from an app – another script had detected an account had received some coin. If she hadn’t secured that bank herself, it would have been wiped from the planet years ago.
> Retainer, then. Well, the price for full disclose goes up from here.
< Convince me it’s worth it, and T can pay your price. Just make sure you get ALL the raw data.
> Aye aye, always a pleasure.
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