Chapter Three: No

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"How you doin, love?"

"Tracer?" Isabell blinked. But it distracted her for a split second, her nunchucks faltered, and Sombra smashed a fist into her face. Black spots danced before her eyes and Isabell staggered backwards.

She had to regain her bearings fast, so she cartwheeled backwards, dodging right until her vision cleared. She brought her nunchucks down across her front and absorbed six more bullets.

"Call me Lena, love. I stuck a comm device behind your ear while I had my hand on your shoulder. I'm inside the building."

"Awesome," Isabell grinned. "You gave a piece of Overwatch technology to me?"

"Yeah. I guess I did. How are you holding up?"

"I'm hit," Isabell grimaced, looking at the blood trailing down her right arm where a bullet had grazed it. "But not too badly. I can hold her off a little longer."

"You're not cut out for this," Tracer told her through the comms. "Get out of there. You're good, but Sombra's better."

"Bull," Isabell clenched her teeth and gave Sombra a nunchuck in the gut, winding her.

Sombra punched her off the roof.

Isabell screamed and ground her nunchucks into the side of the building, slowing her descent. She hit the ground with a loud crack.

"Isabell? Isabell, love! Answer me!"

"I'm here," Isabell croaked. "She got me."

"Will you live until I get there?"

"I'll be fine," she coughed. "Just a cracked rib, I think. But she's half living tech. Just like she always says - you can hack everything. And everyone."

"You really think you can best Sombra at hacking?"

"No," Isabell groaned, getting up. "But all I need to do is compromise her without her realizing it. If I can shut her down remotely, just for a few seconds at the perfect time, I can do it."

"Then do it," Tracer told her. "I'm in. Do you know where this thing will be?"

"No," Isabell said, getting up and swinging her leg over a motorcycle and yanking out wires. "But if I had to guess, there's been a lot of secrecy around Alistair Robotics. Are you in Alistair's office?"

"Yeah," Tracer answered.

"There should be a door in there leading directly into his prototype lab. If it's anywhere, it's in there." Isabell hotwired the motorcycle successfully and it roared to life. She was off before the owners could come out and crucify her.

"I'm in," Tracer said quietly. "Someone's done her research, I see."

"I was going to do a heist of Alistair Robotics a year back," Isabell explained, wind thundering in her ears. "Because they'd stolen a piece of tech I invented. But once they triggered one of its functions, it blew up one of their floors, and I didn't feel the need. That was when I started more on the defensive side of hacking rather than the offensive side and I locked down my coding."

"Smart one, aren't you, love?" Tracer said softly, obviously trying to be quiet.

Isabell jacked her phone into the motorcycle, and linked it into her autodrive engine she'd encoded into it. She took her hands off the wheel and braced her legs tightly against it as it drove for her. "I'm headed for your location. Hang tight."

"How are you going on Sombra?"

"Good. It's slow - painfully slow - but its working." Her fingers worked rapidly across her laptop, braced on the handlebars of the bike.

"...Is that a motorcycle?"

"Yep."

"Well I'd tell you off, except that I'd do the same thing, so just... don't die."

"Aye aye, Lena." Isabell glanced up from her laptop directly in front of her, where the massive Alistair Robotics building was silhouetted against the moon.

It took her a second to see the black mist. "Lena! Hide!"

"What--"

"I'm not sure, but..." Isabell's goggles zoomed in on the black shadow and window it was headed towards, and she saw a flash of orange through the window as Tracer disappeared.

She looked to the left at the streak of black barreling for the window. "I was right! Reaper incoming from the east window, Lena. Careful."

"I can handle that smoke puff. You keep up your efforts on Sombra. Gotta go, I'm going to try to catch him by surprise."

"Don't die, Lena."

"Yes, ma'am. Tracer out."

Tracer went silent, and Isabell focused on her hacking. She was close to halfway done when she reached the border of the city, and then about two-third as she navigated the rainforest on instinct. She reached her treehouse, scrambled up and plugged her phone into her goggles. Now she could hack and walk at the same time.

Tracer still hadn't spoken. No gunshots, no sound.

But Isabell knew that many a-movie hero had been foiled when their teammates had called in on comms and been loud enough for the enemy to hear, so she said nothing, leapt onto the bike and gunned the engine.

Winston - or whoever had sent her on this mission - had been wrong. Overwatch members almost never traveled alone, unless it was considered a very low-risk operation. They must have thought that nobody from Talon would be here yet. But there wasn't one, there was two, and even though Tracer - Lena - was awesome, Isabell knew that it would be difficult for her to get in, get the object, get out and get back to Overwatch without sustaining serious injury. 

Or worse.

If Reaper broke her Chronal Accelerator...

"Hang on, Lena," Isabell whispered, and roared towards the building.

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