Chronal Disassociation Ch. 52

They were sent back to London soon after it was clear that Talon had completely vacated the area. ‘They’ meaning everyone, except for Captain Amari. Or rather, Lena should be calling her Mrs. Amari now.

The reason was both sad and understandable. Without her memory, the Overwatch legend couldn’t exactly perform her job, so she was, temporarily, removed from the roster. What’s more, the commanders had pulled some strings and basically put her into witness protection, for fear that Talon might come back to finish the job.

For all the public knew, Captain Ana Amari died shortly after being brought into the hospital, despite the doctors’ best efforts.

It wasn’t hard to fake the tiredness that the pilot felt as soon as they touched down in London. Particularly because only Archer and the commanders were the only ones that didn’t feel tired. Regardless, they were explicitly told that, in order to make things safer for the former captain and her family, everyone had to put up a face for the cameras.

And there were a lot of cameras.

As soon as they arrived back in London, dozens of reporters, somehow even more than when Null Sector attacked King’s Row, were already waiting for them.

Frankly, Lena couldn’t be bothered and quickly slipped out of the spotlight. Commander Morrison can take care of things. For now, all she wanted was a good night’s sleep with her wife.

Archer, worryingly enough, was nowhere to be found. Lena shrugged after a moment. The Spirit could take care of himself.

…

Emiya found himself with another restless night of working through the Overwatch databanks. He had thought that he had finished with this, that he had found everything that he could, and what he couldn’t just wasn’t there.

Obviously, he was wrong.

Nothing of what he had found in Overwatch’s archives before even hinted that an Outer God could have been involved. Then again, maybe the signs were there and he hadn’t noticed.

Or cared to notice, at least.

“Anything?” Emiya asked the other person working with him.

“Nada.” Sombra shrugged as she herself flipped through more holographic screens. Unlike him who had to physically interact with the computers, Sombra was still able to access them remotely, even though Overwatch had said that they had protected against it.

Not much you can do against someone like the hacker next to him, though.

“You know, it’d go faster if you told me what I was looking for.” Said hacker rolled her eyes at Emiya.

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“Pendejo.”

“Language.” Emiya snorted as he continued to look through file after file.

In reality, he knew he was being unreasonable. Sombra could probably break into every secure network she gets her hands on - literally in some cases. If he left it to her, he’d have a whole mountain of data to work with.

However, she was a loose cannon still.

While she was working with him for now, the keyword was just that. For now. Sombra had her own goals that didn’t necessarily align with Overwatch’s core tenets. Primarily in the ‘not be a criminal’ part. And while she hadn’t technically crossed that line yet, it was only because he was shielding her from being found out.

Well, not like she needed anyone other than herself to cover things up.

Paper trails when it came to her were non-existent. Not only because nobody used printed documents anymore, but also because Sombra had taken great lengths to erase just about everything that existed before she became who she was. Nothing could be traced, nothing could be found.

Nothing, except for that small pocket knife that she had been using since she was a child.

When Emiya went to deal with the hacker that had compromised Overwatch, he was expecting a fight to break out. Nothing he wouldn’t be able to deal with. The main issue was making sure that the hacker wouldn’t escape, or take anything with them.

He wasn’t expecting a cybernetically-enhanced Mexican girl to roll up to him and threaten him with a knife. Even though she already knew that Emiya was a Heroic Spirit from her spying.

He had to admit, that took a lot of guts. It reminded him of Fujimaru, somewhat. Of course, his attention was drawn towards the weapon she held in front of him.

To anyone else, it would have been nothing more than an old, if well-maintained pocket knife.

To Emiya, it told everything he needed to know about Olivia Colomar.

He could have said anything to her. How he sympathised with being an orphan. How she could use her abilities for something other than hacking. How she was probably right in thinking a shadowy organisation was running the world.

Instead, his snark came through and he said the first thing that came to mind.

“You have a gun right there, you know?”

He covered his snort as the memory of Sombra’s face came to mind.

“Oi, what are you laughing about?” Sombra immediately narrowed her eyes as she caught Emiya. He said nothing and instead gave her a smirk.

She opened her mouth to retort back, only for one of her screens to flash purple. The two of them immediately snapped to attention. Quickly reading through what she had found, Sombra’s lips turned downward in confusion.

“Okay, guapo, you might want to check this one out.” She said as she passed it over to the Heroic Spirit.

“...This is…”

On the screen were three things. The first was a biography. Not of a human, but an Omnic. The first Omnic to gain true life, Aurora.

From when she was born, created by Dr. Mina Liao. The controversies that surrounded the idea that Aurora deserved the same rights as humans. The travels she underwent around the world, and the people she met along the way.

Her story was quite well known, as every Omnic had apparently heard her voice at the moment of her death.

The Awakening, as it was called, was the moment that all Omnics received true sentience and sapience. Before this, all of them, with the sole exception of Aurora, were controlled by the Anubis AI. Alongside the efforts of Overwatch, Aurora had given her life to give humanity a chance to win the Omnic Crisis.

Nobody knew what it was that had happened. Overwatch had not given details on what it was that they did, only that it had worked. And that, following the end of the Crisis, this sacrifice gave birth to the Shambali and their ideals.

These ideals being that all Omnics already had the essence of sentience and sapience, even before the Awakening. Aurora only gave them the push to realize what they were capable of. What they have.

A soul.

That made the second file all the more important.

While never disclosed to the public, Overwatch still had internal reports that were filed by Dr. Liao and her team. Not that it contained anything other than a written report, however. According to said report, the reason for such is that, during the event, an EMP-like aura had fried any and all electronic devices on hand.

Nonetheless, Emiya continued to read through it with rapt attention.

It detailed everything that they were attempting to do. Since the Anubis AI had interfaced its signal across all known Omnics, it stood to reason that they could also do the same. Essentially, the plan was to use Aurora’s unique immunity to Anubis’ signal to hijack the signal, and free the rest of the Omnics from its control.

That was not what happened.

Instead, during the process, a ‘brilliant light’ exploded outwards and destroyed the equipment needed to perpetuate the signal. Despite this, Aurora’s voice was then heard throughout every Omnic on the planet. No further details were laid out beyond this. No attempt at figuring out what the supposed ‘light’ was, nor why it happened.

For all intents and purposes, everything was left a mystery.

Until one looked at the final file.

This one was clearly even more of a secret than the Awakening file. He knew this was the case since, even though Sombra had gotten the files from internal servers, this one was still heavily redacted. Redacted enough that there was a moment of struggle to figure out what this was about.

Of course, reading through all of the theories of religion and whatnot made things a bit clearer.

The Iris.

The ideal state of being that the Shambali preached about. Closer to Buddhism in this case, the idea that all beings could reach a state of transcendence through some unexplainable means. The Iris itself was the site of Aurora’s sacrifice, and was the ‘light’ that she had left behind.

Many think that it was a sort of electrical impulse left behind when she died. That the light was a byproduct that would eventually fade.

Certainly a weird thing to worship, but Emiya knew there were even weirder things that people have worshipped over the years.

None of this would explain why the file was so heavily redacted. Not until you pieced together that this shouldn’t have been possible.

The second file said that no electronics could get near it. That they would get fried if they were to come close. Except Omnics of all kinds have come to worship the Iris right in front of it. Not a single one had fallen to the supposed aura that it exuded. Not only that, but even those humans with cybernetics installed were unaffected. Cameras, phones, and other electronic devices though? They were fair game, and would fail the moment they came into range of the light.

One would think that the complexity of an Omnic is what makes them immune to the effects. That would be wrong, as had been proven during the Crisis. Almost any and all EMPs that affected devices such as phones were even more effective on Omnics, as their design by Omnica didn’t include any shielding. Therefore, since most Omnics didn’t have any upgrades from their original specifications, most of them should have been affected by the Iris’ supposed aura.

Therefore, what Dr. Liao had previously said that the light emitted an EMP aura was not the case. Rather, it was almost as if it was choosing to exclude these people from being affected.

And that was why this file was so heavily redacted. It doubled as a report, and a threat assessment for the Iris. Theorizing just what and why it existed. With the leading theory being the most terrifying in its implications.

Aurora had developed sentience and sapience.

The Iris was born from Aurora.

The Iris is cognizant, and is possibly even alive and thinking.

As Aurora had displayed, the Iris could possibly interface with Omnics without the need for a direct connection.

Merging all of those together, you have an eerily close description to a God Program. And that’s why this was all classified. Because Overwatch was afraid that, though they had defeated Anubis, they may have inadvertently created a natural God Program.

And that same God Program had already interfaced with every single Omnic out there, far outstripping the control that the Anubis AI had. The worst part? It had interfaced with every single Omnic to give it the same sentience and sapience it had been born with.

Therefore, the threat assessment wasn’t so much for just the Iris. It was for the idea that any Omnic could become a God Program.

Humanity had already struggled against one God Program. What more if another one, or a dozen, suddenly popped up?

Still, the Iris was seemingly quiet. Not doing anything other than being a site of worship. Content with itself. For now. Almost as if it was waiting.

Certainly, the chances of all of this was infinitesimally small. A grain of sand in the trenches of the ocean. But the same could have been said about Aurora’s personal awakening. The same could be said of Chaldea surviving the Singularities and Lostbelts.

The same could not be said of the Counter Guardian’s existence.

Perhaps he could have believed that his encounter with Oxton in his Reality Marble  really was a cosmic coincidence. A once in universe occurrence, never to repeat.

Standing here? Seeing what had been happening right in front of his eyes?

Nothing was ever ‘just a coincidence’ when it came to the Counter Force.

“Olivia, grab me everything you can find about Dr. Mina Liao. Everything.”

“Don’t call me that!” She complained, but was already in the process of typing out something on her holoscreen, “By the way, I’ve also found a couple more files you might want to look at. Not as juicy as these ones though.”

“Show me.”

A storm was coming. And Emiya knew that he wasn’t prepared for this.

…

A/N: The more I write about this stuff, the more I think about if this is going to be seen as an actual talking point in 60 years or so.