liquidlyrium

Hanzo stared at the gleaming surface of the table. It was easier than trying to track the movement of every body in the room. There was the blond woman, the doctor, pacing slowly and thoughtfully by the window. The dark-skinned woman in the gleaming Raptora armor brooding in the corner and staring at him as though daring him to step out of line. The squat man with the claw prosthetic out of the Saturday morning cartoons of his youth, who nursed his chipped mug of coffee like a festering wound. A grizzled old soldier sat across from him, visor silently boring into him. This man was possibly the greatest threat in the room, something about the way he held himself gave it away. There was the giant gorilla—though Hanzo could not fathom why he was sharing the room with an animal over a hundred kilos in weight, unless they planned to let it tear him limb from limb for sport—the floating omnic, and most improbably of all… his brother.

Or what was left of him.

Hanzo closed his eyes and let out a sigh, trying to ground himself in the moment to be present for whatever… this was going to be. The detachment he felt was, perhaps, slightly preferable to plotting everyone’s execution and his escape route. He didn’t have the energy or the mental capacity for that kind of calculus at the moment.

They may have called this a meeting room (and the window to Gibraltar’s outdoors certainly suggested it was, in fact, a conference room), but the occupants made it quite clear this was an interrogation, nonetheless.

The giant gorilla made a surprisingly human noise, like clearing his throat. Hanzo slowly opened his eyes, his body heavy and tired. “So, uh,” for the first time, Hanzo realized that there was a set of black frame glasses perched delicately on the nose of this beast as the being adjusted them, “we, uh, weren’t really expecting you? Mr. Shimada.”

“Glasses?” Hanzo blinked slowly. He should have questioned the beast’s power of speech, but the same heaviness that had settled over him robbed him of the sensation of surprise.

“Uh, yes, ahem, don’t, uh, don’t worry about them. I… admit I am somewhat at a loss as to what to do here.” The sound of the gorilla drumming the table with his huge fingers was too much to bear, but Hanzo found himself unable to protest. “Uh, I suppose introductions are in order. I am Winston the, uh, Strike Commander for this… operation.”

Hanzo said nothing in response to the introduction. This was not a conversation he had a script for. He waited.

The gorilla seemed… uncomfortable. Another human-adjacent gesture as Winston glanced around the room nervously. “A-anyone else, want to chime in here?”

“Why are you here?” the woman in the armor bit out the question harshly. Hanzo didn’t flinch so much as lift a shoulder to try and protect himself from the sound—several seconds too late.

“Ask my brother.”