Wading into the serene blue liquid, Dr Angela Ziegler approached her mark. It was a body long past the point of saving, but that didn't matter to her. She wasn't knee-deep in this iridescent liquid to mourn the loss of a soldier. No, she was standing in the middle of a containment chamber to inspect the rate of decay. Or rather, the rate of reversal.

Yes, Dr Ziegler, aka Mercy, was perfecting her art of resurrection. She could revive a severely wounded soldier, but what about a soldier who perished minutes before she could arrive? What good was she if she couldn't keep Overwatch's brightest and best alive? What good was she if she arrived a second too late and couldn't do a damn thing about it. They were at war. Sure, peace was all around them. It had been for years. But peace doesn't exist without chaos, without war. She had to be a step ahead. Proactive, especially in light of recent news...

The lose of Ana took its toll on her. Never again did she want to hear that someone so pure, so good had been taken from her. She would push everything into this project-the Lazarus Project-to ensure good people didn't die because she wasn't fast enough. Because she wasn't strong enough.

For the past few months, Angela had been tweaking the Valkyrie suit. It could fly faster, further. It could withstand more heat, more bullets. Why, she even enabled a bio-metric reader. No one other than those programmed to utilize the suit could enter it for the research behind the suit was too impressive. One wrong signature, one wrong password, and the suit would self-destruct, completely erasing all research and knowledge tied to it. She couldn't have it fall into enemy hands. She couldn't let it fall to the corrupt, especially with her forthcoming modifications.

Resurrection.

True Resurrection.

A body laced with a specific sequence of code could be brought back to life with the warm glow and power of the Valkyrie suit. Only specialized personnel would qualify, people like Jack Morrison, Lena Oxton, Ana Amari. True heroes, the heroes that knew the different between right and wrong. Life and death. The kind of people who could make a difference in the world. The kind of people who could fight the tough battles typical soldiers couldn't. And when all the fighting was done, the kind of people who would be completely okay with having the code extracted. To go back to being 'normal.'

She was close. Oh so close to a breakthrough! Just a bit more testing to go and she could final have the serum to give her trustworthy comrades. The serum that would allow the Valkyrie suit to pick up their signatures and allow her, Mercy, to fly to them to aid them in battle. And, should they be shot down, killed, bring them back into the fight.

Edging closer to the floating body, she slipped a tube with a glowing yellow material into the barrel of what looked like a pistol.

"In three..."

She pulled the weapon up, readying it. Steadying it.

"Two..."

She released the safety. Thumb falling against the trigger.

"One!"

PLINK!

A dart rather than a bullet flew from the gun. True to its mark, it impaled the corpse square in the leg. In previous attempts, shooting the chest would just cause the body to implode.

"Readings?" She stepped back, forcing the curve of her back against the wall. "I need readings!" she quipped again.

"Vitals are spiking, Doctor!" A voice called over the loud speaker in the containment chamber. "This could be what we... no... No someone stabilize it! More liquid! N! M! More! Q- shit."

While the voice relayed what happened on the medical devices, Ms Ziegler's eyes were glued to the spasming body that flailed in the water. With each passing second, the body jolted and jerked, as if it were seizing itself back to life. She could have swore she saw the green of his eyes enlarge, encasing the once dull, lifeless eyes of a dead body.

And then, just as soon as the body zapped to life, it fell limp. Cold.

A liquid started to taint the glowing substance it floated in. As it seeped into the water like a freshly brewed cup of Earl Grey tea, the buoyancy of the liquid shifted. In seconds, the once floating body fell to the chamber's floor. Whatever chance they had of saving this specimen was long good; it had passed the point of no return (no pun intended).

"Mercy," the voice above caused her to flinch. "Get out of there! We're reading high levels of radiation!"

"R-radiation?" She didn't need to be told again. She made a bee-line for the exit.

The once blue water started to swirl black, flicking here and there with flecks of purple. It was unlike anything she'd ever seen before. Clearly they had messed up somewhere!

Fist slamming into the door that kept her locked within the testing chamber, she grunted. Now was not the time to be sloppy! Hand fishing for her badge, she pressed that plastic card against the glass. A second later, the door opened and she fumbled through the clearing. Whirling around, her card was pinned back against the glass. Only, this time, she closed the chamber. That tight, comforting moan of pneumatics greeted her ears.

"Initiating flushing," she stated plainly while moving with quick steps toward the decontamination shower. As she moved, she unzipped the skin-tight suit that protected her from whatever contaminants might have laid within that chamber. Sure enough, around the edges of the ankles and knees, were burn marks-marks caused by yet another unsuccessful test.

"Dammit," she whispered, peeling the last of the suit off and tossing it into an incineration tube. "What the hell went wrong this go around?"

Into the shower she went. It's dull gray walls boring into her as she lost herself in thought. She had to run over every inch of this case. Something just wasn't adding up. They had it perfect. It had worked before it failed, miserably.

The cold, harsh hissing of water pelted into her like hail. It burned her skin and created little welts. But those little welts were what would keep the foreign materials from entering her world-the real world. What happened in the testing chamber stayed in the testing chamber, it was the only way.

Water splashing over every inch of her, she heard the faint murmur of the fans. Without warning, the water disengaged and the humming whirl of a fan distorted the shower. The outer layer of her skin, the dead skin, flaked away. Her once wet hair was now dry-frayed and a mess but dry, just like the rest of her. The blowing portion of decontamination always sucked for it felt like a piece of sandpaper was rubbing over every inch of the body-even the tender parts that risked little to no exposure while in the chamber.

Hands wrapping around her nude form, she shivered. She always hated this part of her research. The actual researching, testing, injecting, that was all fun. The mad rush to the shower, to get quarantined, that was a bitch.

A vacuum sealed around her. It purged all the could-be contaminated air from the room before a rush of fresh, clean oxygen allowed her to breath again. With a sharp inhale, she felt her lungs burn. Air so fresh it could kill.

Door opening, she stepped into the women's locker room.

"Doctor Ziegler," her assist with the glasses rushed up to her, "are you alright?" Her deep chocolate hair was pulled into a sloppy bun as her worrisome eyes tried to avoid staring at Angela's nude form.

Three steps forward and Angela was at her locker. Fetching a fresh pair of underwear, she put them on first. Then her bra. Then she addressed her assistant.

"Yes, I'm fine. But what the hell happened?"

"Mingal thinks we had a slight hiccup..."

"Clearly," she scoffed while worming into a pair of white dress pants. Tugging on an orange sweater, she reached for her lab coat. Tossing it over her shoulders, it hugged her thighs before coming to an end just below her knees. "So what went wrong?"

Her assistant, Rachel Lin, chewed her lip. "The body might not have been ideal." She kept in line behind Angela as the blonde doctor left the locker room. Her steps were far apart, making it hard for the shorter 4-foot, 8-inch assistant to keep up.

"How so?" Ang quirked a brow. It was a rhetorical question.

Standing before a massive screen, she pulled up the case file on the soldier they were experimenting on. "Christ," her hand pawed lightly at her mouth. "How did no one notice this?" Her blue orbs immediately panned over to her safe. "How did no one notice this!"

"We," Rachel lowered her head in defeat, "we didn't have clearance. We were told it was a cleared body but none of us could actually pull his records."

"Well then how am I looking at his records," she wasn't trying to be a bitch, she was simply trying to get to the bottom of this should-have-been catastrophic incident.

"We just got the records." Her analyst, Mingal, stepped forward. "See this time stamp?" He approached her screen and tapped lightly at the number stamped in the corner.

Angela read the numbers. It was literally just three minutes ago. "H-how is that possible?"

"I," Mingal's hand rubbed his face, "I don't know ma'am."

With everyone falling silent, Angela took a seat on her stool. "This... this just doesn't make sense."

"Seems... fishy," Rachel rested her rump against the desk Angela sat before. "I've been telling you this place has been acting wonky since you arrives from the State about a week ago."

"You're just lacking nutrients," Angela tried to force a smile but was still beyond peeved that they nearly caused a meltdown in the labs.

"Ang," Mingal was moving away from her to pull up something else on a screen opposite her. "You need to c-"

"Doctor Ziegler," a voice called from behind. It was someone from security based on their uniform and badge. His presence silenced the gossip of the lab.

"Yes?" Her head swiveled over her shoulder. It wasn't like security to come here. At least not the main lobby security, which is what this officer was.

"Your 11 o'clock is ready for you in the main lobby."

"My 11 o'clock?" Pulling up her schedule, she saw nothing penciled in for 11 AM. "Did you catch a name?"

"Classified, ma'am. Afraid I don't have the clearance to ask that."

"How... odd."

With silent bows and head nods, Angela rose from her stool. Her crew knew exactly what to do. Document the incident but keep the records offline for a bit. Unexpected visitors usually didn't bode well. And with how the morning had already panned out, Angela wasn't going to take any changes. If something was afoot, she wanted to have the jump on it. And there was no way she wanted her success turned failure due to radiation poisoning to get leaked beyond these walls. She trusted her staff. The rest of Overwatch? Well, she still wasn't sure if all could be trusted, especially not after the forming of Black Watch.

Compliantly, she and Rachel followed the officer out of the restricted medical offices and into the main hallway.

"I'm telling you," Rachel whispered, "something fishy is happening."

Angela rolled her eyes. "I'm sure it's just a mistake," she hushed back. Though both of them knew mistakes like this didn't happen. No random person could waltz into the Swiss Headquarters without an appointment. Whoever stood in the lobby waiting for her, well, they head better be a UN official or she was going to turn right back around and initiate a complete lockdown of the facility. With what happened to Ana, she wasn't going to risk losing anyone else.

The security officer broke away, already creating a red flag in Angela's mind.

"Get to an alarm," Angela instructed Rachel. Depending on the face she saw in the lobby, she would demand her assistant push that button.

Lump in her throat, she exhaled. It was now or never.