Join me as I recap all the information I've been dropping here and there about my reagent.
Let's start with his origins. Abel was born as a little girl in a working-class family in Argentina. His mother was a craftswoman who made folkloric garments, and his father was a neighborhood doctor with a small practice; both were fervent left-wing political activists. His parents made sure that their then-daughter was educated and prepared to push back against the obstacles society would put in his way simply for being born a woman.
He grew up as a free spirit, eager to try new things and learn. He was especially drawn to the performing arts; he loved circuses, loved watching trapeze artists swing through the air, acrobats jump, flip, and climb. So great was his passion that his parents didn't hesitate to focus his studies on theater and ballet, which was the closest thing to acrobatics they could find at the time.
His life was good, even after his younger brother was born and his parents separated. Abel never stopped learning or doing what he was passionate about; his mother took care of that.
In his pre-adolescence, Abel was fortunate to experience a positive political climate, where workers' rights were being prioritized. Thanks to the influence of the First Lady, women's suffrage was legalized, at 14, Abel was able to see his mother vote for the first time. This was a turning point for him and his worldview; things could change for the better, even though he didn't yet understand the magnitude of it.
Three years later, there was a military coup, there was political persecution, people could not meet in houses in large groups, they could not walk in the street without being questioned, everyone was a suspect, everything was a reason for legal repression.
Artists, intellectuals, scholars, teachers, doctors, thousands of professionals went into exile on "The night of the brain drain", seeking refuge wherever they could find a place in foreign countries. Abel's father was one of them.
Since then, Abel had no news of his father, who had completely disappeared off the map. The only information he received sometimes came from a family friend who received letters from him every so often.
It appears he found asylum at the home of some Mexican friends living in the United States who were helping him build his life there.
The last thing he knew was that he had been offered a job opportunity; he mentioned something about not being able to talk about the company through letters due to confidentiality issues. Since then, radio silence.
Meanwhile, Abel was becoming an adult, moving out on his own with some friends at the age of 18 and joining a small theater company that did circus acts, as an acrobat and actor.
Everyone thought he was a teenage boy because of how he looked, masculine, but with soft features typical of someone young; he didn't deny it and in fact the confusion made him feel a certain way, as if people were seeing in him something that had not yet blossomed.
He began to hide his biological name and call himself Abel around people who were just getting to know him.
He took on the role of an inexperienced but talented young man, until the role suddenly took hold of him and became his true self; more than putting on a mask, it was as if he had removed one that he didn't know was already beginning to weigh on him.
Along the way he met people like himself, who, spreading the word from friend to friend, managed to find people who brought medication from England to undergo hormone therapy, and he met a medical student who was willing to masculinize his chest.
Abel became one of the first almost fully transitioned trans men in his country by the age of 22; no one outside his personal circle and those involved in his transition ever knew.
The bug of curiosity bit Abel. He reached a point in his life where he felt fulfilled as a person, but his father's abandonment left him with insecurities and doubts. What would his father think if he saw him now? Had he realized his peculiarity prematurely and abandoned him because of it?. He needed to see his father again, to hear from him.
Based on the information that the family friend had given about his father's whereabouts, Abel traveled on what was supposed to be a vacation to reunite with his father.
Upon arriving in the United States, he sought out the Mexican family he was staying with. When he found them, they told him that his father had left for a job opportunity. His father did tell them which corporation he would be working for: Murkoff Corporation.
With this new information, Abel continued his journey, finding very little about the corporation his father was getting involved with. Barely scratching the surface of where his father had ended up.
His search would have come to a dead end if it weren't for a pink propaganda poster that caught his attention, glued to the window of a cafe where he was having lunch.
"Are you lost? Lonely? Poor? Confused? WE WANT YOU!!!"
-Murkoff corp. Charitable outreach
That sign alone screamed sketchy, but it was what he needed to move forward with his search, a specific place to ask about his father.
He approached the volunteer center, only asking about his father, explaining that he had heard he had gotten a job at the company and was looking for him. They treated him like a confused fool, assuring him that there was no Ivan Herrera working there, that he had probably gone to the wrong company.
Their evasiveness only deepened his suspicion and determination; he was sure of where he was.
He ended up volunteering for the therapies, seeing it as the only way to take a step forward in his search; maybe someone had seen him working there, maybe he could question the patients if the security guards didn't want to tell him anything. Of course, he obviously had no idea of the horrors that unfolded within those walls.
Abel entered the facilities having recently turned 23. During his time in the trials, he was marginalized by the vast majority of American reagents. The problem wasn't how he looked; he struggled speaking English and had a strong accent. Because of this marginalization, Abel sought to join with other immigrants within the sleep rooms; groups were formed, they met and accompanied each other as a small community within the facilities.
There were more immigrants than Abel could have imagined; it made sense, foreigners were among the most vulnerable groups in America. People fleeing dictatorships, seeking a better life for their families, following a dream, a love, a promise; A large portion ended up in a vulnerable place, and consequently, here.
After almost a year of suffering and enduring, he reached his breaking point; He was responsible for the execution of countless people. Their screams, pleas, insults, cries, and their frantic attempts at negotiation for their lives still echoed in his mind.
One day he simply couldn't go on, and decided he was gonna do something different; he was gonna free the victim, or die trying.
He shared his frustrations with his people, presented his idea to them, and convinced them to mutiny against Murkoff. They trusted Abel's judgment and shared his weariness, guilt, and anguish. They all wanted to live, but by this point, they were merely surviving.
The next trial they had was Kill the Snitch. At first, they followed the instructions trying not to arouse suspicion. While doing what they were supposed to do, they observed their escape possibilities.
Once they decided to try to escape through one of the doors the ex-pops come out of, they freed the Snitch thanks to one of their teammates who was an ex-convict, a professional at picking locks.
Two of his teammates sacrificed themselves so that Abel, the Snitch, and one other teammate could escape.
Once inside the trial walls, they slipped through ducts, accidentally ending up in abandoned mines deep within Sinyala. There, they ripped off their goggles and threw away their ESOPS, as a final gesture of liberation. They then tended to Danny's wounds as best they could with what they had taken from the trial and rested for the first time outside Murkoff's eye.
Exploring the mines, they found mass graves with thousands of corpses scattered across the floor; the smell was nauseating. Further on, following the train tracks, they saw light at the end of the tunnel, and after almost a year of captivity, they felt the warmth of the sun once more.
Danny and Abel's teammate took the opportunity to escape; Abel stayed behind, for a conviction had been born within him.
He had no way to return to the sleep rooms, but he had a connection with the trial environments. By leaving messages within them, he let his people know that he was still alive and had achieved his goal, that he wasn't going to stop, that this was just the beginning.
He got more people to follow his idea by leaving instructions and markers that only people in his community could understand in order to find him.
They became a sort of small mole community living deep within the facility. Not all of Abel's followers stayed; he gave them the option of staying to help him with his work or simply showing them the way to escape through the desert. Others remained in the sleep rooms and trafficked supplies for them.
If you made it this far, congratulations, you survived a lore full of plot holes and delusions of grandeur. Now I'm going to add some fun facts and extra nonsense that I want to include in this post just cuz
-For some reason, people see Abel as a confidant and tend to talk to him about very personal things, entering into a kind of one-sided emotional bond. This helped Abel to more easily convince his people to follow his ideas.
-He's been nicknamed Argie in the sleeprooms, and Coyle has called him Sport a couple of times.
-His father was in charge of giving medical checkups to some prime assets, and that's why Coyle sees Abel's face as familiar. Abel is almost a carbon copy of his father.
-If he has to explain why his genitalia is the way it is, he attributes it to a birth defect. (More on that, Coyle touched him inappropriately once, at first he thought he had been castrated, then that he had been surgically given a vag as some kind of twisted experiment. )
-He never met Amelia, but perhaps their paths will cross someday.
