NAME: Adora Elmwood Ellora Park
GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cisfemale & she/her
AGE AT TIME OF POD EMERGENCE: 17
LENGTH OF TIME IN ROSWELL: 5 years at Caulfield, 1 at Roswell.
POWER: Electromagnetism manipulation
OCCUPATION: Server at the Crashdown Cafe
when it feels like your ship is sinking and you’re too tired to play the game, you’ve just got to stand up alone and dig in your heels and see how it feels to raise a little hell of your own
Adora was only seventeen at the time of her emergence. She doesn’t remember anything from before the pod, only the crippling, piercing cold of the night when she awakened, the blinding flashlights shining on her pale face, and the stern grip of what she would later find out were military men. From the beginning, she knew they were not to be trusted. It was all in their stoic stance and belittling grim.
Sure enough, one bumpy and mysterious road trip later, she was again put at the mercy of unknown people, just as menacing as before. But those wore white, long coats, gloves and masks. They wouldn’t even touch her at first. Was she poisonous? Dangerous? At that point, she didn’t even know. She couldn’t remember who she was, or what, or why she was there, or where they were. And then, one day they assigned her a name, and started touching her. In ways she had never felt before. She wished they would stop touching her again, but it only got worse. The violence grew and grew, getting more brutal and excruciating every time. All in the name of science, the white jackets would say. She could tell by their tone that they thought it was all in good measure, ripping her soul and body apart piece by piece “for the greater good”. And their delusions only made her angrier. And vengeful. And it started to consume her and make her blood boil, every time someone would come close again, with a needle, or an electroshock machine, or gods know what they were holding this time to hurt her. Sometimes, she wouldn’t even remember, even if they didn’t sedate her - she would do it herself - to survive.
At nineteen, she was becoming a ghost of herself. An empty shell, ready for their handling and poking and torturing, an instrument for the greater good and progress. She had found out she was an alien, but rather, she was becoming an unknown species to herself. And one waterboarding session was what it took to make her crack under the pressure, and explode. The room was filled with monitoring equipment, all the stats and graphics and beeps making her want to blow the place up. And after several minutes of drowning and grasping for air, she did. She knew others had powers, she could hear all the whispering and see the startled looks around the sanitized, bleach soaked halls. She just didn’t think she had it in her. Well, she did. And she made the whole place explode, her veins filled with electricity, all the machines in short circuit, smoking and sparkling. It was magical. It was like fireworks. And better yet, everything was soaked in water. Her aggressors were quickly electrocuted. It was the first time she had felt peace inside that hell whole. She would forever cherish the smell of the burnt flesh, the drawings of lightning engraving their skin. Now, they too had felt her electricity.
After that, she was exhausted, and passed out barely escaping the room. She woke up restrained, now branded a dangerous specimen. They kept her sedated most of the time, and although before the injections hit she could see the fear inside the eyes of the doctors and researchers, she would still wake up hurt, bruised, and broken. The little time she had conscious was spent entirely thinking about leaving that place, and vengeance. She would secretly try to control her powers whenever she could, during showers, downing her food as fast as she could and moving things behind the guards, gathering energy, tainting with machines. This went on for months, even years. Until, one day, when she felt strong enough, she finally put her plan to work.
First, in the middle of the night, just waking up from sedation, she managed to use her powers to distract and sedate the doctor instead. One scream for help and a guard came, which she quickly knocked out, too. She put on the doctor’s clothes, and stole the guard’s key card. Once out of her containment, she was strong enough to take out the power from the entire facility, giving another inmate the key card, ordering him to escape and take as many as possible with him. After that, she cruised the long, vast halls, unnoticed in her mask and white jacket, right to outside the gates of Caulfield.
She was shaking the whole time, crippled from using her powers so much, her nose bleeding and bruises aching more than ever before. But the adrenaline, the longing for freedom kept her going. She ran until everything went dark, lost in the middle of the desert. But anything was better than that hellhole and their fucking science. She was not a specimen, a lab rat, an experiment. She was not theirs to take, to test, to hurt and to break apart, body and soul. Not anymore. If she were to die then and there, she would die happy, and free.
Fortunately, that is not what happened. After escaping and passing out from her efforts and strain, she woke up on the back seat of a moving car. On the driver’s seat was a beautiful girl, who told her everything would be ok. With her trusting nature being long gone, Adora was set to use her last drop of energy to kill that girl. Instead, she showed the escapee that she was like her. And explained that after she saw the Caufield generator aflame from a distance, she knew it could only have been the work of someone like her. They never make mistakes, she said. And that was how Adora got to the town of Roswell, New Mexico. The girl quickly told her that there was a good life to be lived there. There were others like them, that could help and protect each other. But danger was also everywhere, and one could never even dream of being careless. With every menace and complication, that town still made Adora’s heart beat faster and louder. It meant freedom.
Now, recently arrived in Roswell, she made up a new identity - Ellora Park - and got a job at the crashdown cafe to support herself. It is still a difficult way to live, since she hasn’t ever lived in society - that she can remember - and never really had the chance to truly know herself, her personality, wishes, pleasures and fears. But it is all new and exhilarating, and she would not trade it for the world.
