>> :// ACCESSING AGENT ORION …
GENDER AND PRONOUNS: Cisgender male, he/him
QUESTIONS. PROMPTS. TEASER.
Your first memories are of your first home: a little apartment in the city. Your mother, an immigrant, tries so hard to make your life more than the nothing you know it is. She works long hours, night and day, and naturally, you spend time with the family next door. From long days spent cooped up with them, your gift–as everyone calls it–reveals itself. Your self-proclaimed second family doesn’t flinch when their Spanish rolls off your tongue just as easily as English and your mother’s language. But your teachers have never met a kid like you, one who picks up languages better than most do English. There isn’t one who isn’t stunned when you translate your parent-teacher conferences, only a hint of an accent apparent as you switch between tongues. But, to your mother’s dismay, your interest in school doesn’t extend beyond garnering a new dialect. Your favorite class next to French and Mandarin and Latin is P.E., but in high school you even skip those more than you attend them.
Who you become is a mystery to most–but only, you think, because they’ve never really known you. To everyone–your peers, your educators, and even sometimes your mother–you’re just the kid who speaks more languages than they can count on one hand. All they want, you discover, is to control you, to fit you into a box and get you to do exactly what they think is best for you. Soon, your gift starts to feel like a curse, something that keeps you locked indoors with your head in books when all you want is to go out and explore. As soon as you graduate you vow to solely seek out what you want–only, you don’t know what that is. You hunt for it in a different city, through mindless jobs and wild parties. All that matters is having control of your life, no matter the costs. And there are costs: your family stops calling you when they’ve had enough; your relationships are all destructive or one night stands. In all your recklessness, you fail to ask yourself if you’re actually satisfied, and it only hits you that everything is all wrong when it’s too late. A call comes in the middle of the night that your mother has passed, and the guilt begins then, an instant and long-lasting regret of the past few years.
All you’ve ever wanted is to find your path, a life that makes you feel happy, fulfilled, and not controlled. Somehow, you got derailed, and you think you may never get back on track–until Hudson comes to you with the opportunity to leave the mess you’ve made forever, all at the simple cost of using your gift for the rest of your life. If only the day they come to you isn’t the same day your most recent fling comes to you crying, holding a positive pregnancy test. You never thought you would want this: a wife and a child, to give up your freedom and control. As soon as the thought enters your mind, however, of a world where you can start over and right your wrongs without running away, no other thought matters. You go to sleep that night with her in your arms and your mind at peace. You wake up the next morning in a room at Hudson’s headquarters, your arms cuffed and your mind foggy. Congratulations, candidate, they say, as if your firm declination didn’t mean anything. To them, you quickly learn, it doesn’t. Welcome to the Hudson Institute. You don’t control your life. You never will.
ECHO. Of all the people in your class, you suppose Becca isn’t the worst person you could have to work closely with. Still, they try way too hard to be your friend and thus ask far too many questions for your taste. You deflect the ones you can, but as the amount of hours the two of you sit in the library doing translations together increases, the harder it becomes to just ignore them all. Sooner or later you know you’ll have to just give up and smile back.
HELIX. If there’s anyone you’ve grown to actually trust at Hudson, it would be Luca. They’ve been nothing but friendly to you since the first day, and after long nights chatting, you’ve almost opened your mouth to tell the truth: you don’t want to be here. But, if you’ve changed at all since being at Hudson, you’ve grown to be more angry and more paranoid. What if they are listening? What if you can’t trust Luca? What might they do to your baby - beyond what they may have done already?
DYNAMO. You know exactly what Rome wants from you; you’ve been with countless people just like them. And, when you look at them, you see all your ruined relationships and one night stands, all your mistakes–the girl carrying your child you will never see again. You avoid them like the plague to escape the reminders, dropping unkind words in their direction when they get too close, and yet they can’t take a hint and just leave you alone.
