it comes with the territory. the nosiness. let the bodies stack high enough and someone inevitably wants to knock them over. see what squirms at the bottom of the pile. she imagines that's what this visit is about. unauthorized personnel dragging contaminants into a lab that had, once, been unknown. deep, deep down in the crust of the world, marzia's gloved hands have stopped their work, though the scalpel she'd finessed through decay goes nowhere. sticky with gore, fingers don't curl, rather they tap their irritation across steel once she's turned, " don't touch anything. " as small a request as she can muster, her stool slid out from under her as she rises, " i prefer calls over visits. " she preferred silence. she preferred seclusion. she preferred the guards beyond a supposedly locked door to do their job. " if this is about the report, i'm not done yet. it'll come when it comes. "
full name : dr. marzia amina vani
date of birth : november 10th, 1974
gender / pronouns : cis female , she / her
nationality : 2nd generation american
ethnicity : french / italian
occupation : forensic pathologist , coroner
sexual orientation : pansexual
location : undisclosed
alignment : neutral evil ( by association )
height : 5' 6" ( 170 cm )
weight : 132 lbs. ( 59 kg )
hair color : sandy / light blonde
eye color : hazel
faceclaim : rosamund pike
defining markings : small scars on both hands from the clumsy use of tools as a pre-med student. a more substantial chemical burn on her right forearm, near the bend of her elbow, from the 'misuse' of caustic materials. missing the tip of her left pinkie finger. simple lobe piercings, not often worn. a very, very small tattoo ( dime size ) of an indistinguishable bird on her left wrist.
disorders : medicated for ocd , minor anxiety , seasonal depression. undiagnosed cases of ptsd & add. develops degenerative scoliosis as she gets older.
there's no sad stories or dramatics that string together marzia's early life. born in hershey pennsylvania, both her mother and father were unremarkable people. the former lived the modest life of a discontent housewife, padding her loneliness with alcohol and occasionally other men. the later ? she couldn't have picked him up out of a lineup, his career far more important that a normal, boring home life. both loved her well enough, best as they knew how, and she'd not know any better was out there until much later.
as she got older, excelling at and completing school, it became more evident that whatever relationship her folks had, it was threadbare, existing for her benefit more than anything else. not for the first time, she'd felt pity for them. wouldn't have wished such a sad farce on anyone.. it was almost a relief when she'd gotten the news that her father had passed. sudden, a widow maker in the garage, home from another weekend in the city. she doesn't remember her mother crying. couldn't say she did, either.
college was always in her future. paid for by her father's life insurance, marzia fell headlong into her studies. fascinated by the scalpel, her peers passed their judgement till the bitter end. unnerved by her steady hand or, maybe, they'd simply been jealous of it. she hadn't bothered getting to know more than the occasional lab partner — throw away relationships that didn't last once graduated. a few rungs down from the top of the class, she'd sank into the internships she scrounged up, learning from old men with poor manners, just how and where to cut a body without nicking something important. all things she'd paid attention to. made good use out of them when she'd eventually taken their jobs. one from retirement, the other from death, she'd done his autopsy with a particular level of vindictiveness.
and that was her life. toiling away among cadavers, jotting down her findings and making full the file cabinet beside her desk. a shuffle from one hospital to another.. borrowed by outlying cities because their coroner was unavailable. displaced by family emergencies or, more often, too lazy to leave their summer retreats.
╰┈➤ tldr ; tying in to the storyline of resident evil xo
asking why wasn't part of the job. the phone rang, she'd answered, and the drive from pittsburg to raccoon city was made. under two hours, but not by much, it was meant to be in and out. give answers to some questions.. identify the markings on a dead woman's throat. but that was the problem. three days in at the morgue and she'd not determined a cause. couldn't give an explanation for why some of the wounds looked canine and others— not so much. it's after marzia makes the call to jot down the alternative that the phone calls stop coming. the black van retrieves the dead. she's sat in an empty lab when the ultimatum is given, perched at the end of a barrel.
she knew hush money when it was offered. met it with scrutiny that couldn't hold steady once enough zeroes were stuck on the end of an already steep number. the hiker, the campers, the bodies fished out of the river, she'd let the evidence be seized. all proof of the arklay incident was wiped clear from her hard drive. if she suffers guilt for what came next, it's hard to tell.
she'd not been there when the outbreak started. taking the hint, she'd squirreled away, home to an empty condo where the only sight of the fires she got were from news outlets that, days later, rescinded their reports. people died. she knew why. knew who sat comfortably behind it. ought have been ashamed for how quickly she'd accepted the position when umbrella offered it. swallowed into their ranks, another lab coat that shuffled through a daily grind with the rest.
at first, the subjects were all the same. insurance claims that blamed their company for untimely deaths. none amounted to more than cash grabs and she'd etched her name on the documents that denied them that. that went on for months. years. a dull, monotonous life, wasted carving up the dead, examining enlarged hearts and livers that hinted there might have been a tap or two to point towards instead. it's when the deceased stopped being normal and average that life got.. interesting.
biologists are a different breed. their work challenges man and god and where the fuzzy line sits between the two. her role wasn't to design the viruses that stripped whole nations of their numbers, rather, it was to understand why and how those viruses had, eventually, failed. what good was a weapon that didn't work ?
important men with deep pockets have a nasty habit of shuffling their boards from time to time. when one company sank, another rose. and another after that. faithful to whomever signs her paycheck, doctor vani continues to provide feedback and intel for a number of employers. the only thing more impressive than those steady hands of hers, over the last few decades, is her adaptability. a cunning liar, she manages what would appear to be a humble life to those outside the lab. and to those in it ? she's been afforded a wide berth lately.
