byenycfm

[byenycfm]

App Count +1

Please remember that acceptances will resume on March 19th for current members.

OC - Halsey FC

[byenycfm]

Aspen Anne Horowitz || 28 || Ashley Moore || N/A

Personality:

Aspen is... energy. She never likes to stop, she never likes to sit. She doesn't like silence and she loves to talk. She loves to smile, she loves to make friends, and she loves to ask questions. What she doesn't have, is impulse control. Like at all. The moment something pops into her head, the chances are good she's going to act on it before consequences can even become an abstract thought. She's not violent to be cruel, not really, she's violent because that yelp of pain was really funny. Just because she stabs you with a pin, doesn't mean you're not her best friend, it's just what she wanted to do. She doesn't know shame, and has very little grasp on empathy. Her attention is ever fluid, and never held long on any singular thing, person, or conversation and she tends to becoming exhausting fast to those around her. On the odd and very rare times she actually gets upset or angry her violence can be explosive, but it's only happened once or twice, the last time being the one that got her put away.

Biography:

Aspen was a preemie. Born to a single mother who was involved in a car accident and died from her injuries not long after giving birth and naming her daughter, young Aspen was in the system from the moment she left the NICU. Curly headed, and always smiling from the moment her tiny body could, no one really questioned why she didn't cry very much. It also didn't take her long to be adopted, coming home in the loving arms as the last child of The Hororwitz family.

For many years, things seemed okay. She was doted on, the princess of her family and she could do no wrong. When she stole things or lied her parents would cover for her, or laugh it off as childhood fantasy and hijinks. She still never seemed to cry, or really get upset, and for a long time a lot of her less savory impulse driven actions went under the radar, painted over with her bright smile and bubbly personality. When she stabbed her best friends with a pin just whenever she felt like it, that went on for years before the other girl had finally 'drifted apart' from her.

By the time she was finishing grade school, she didn't have many close friends but many fair-weather ones, but it didn't matter because the only friend she needed was her sister. From the moment she came home from the hospital as an infant, Aspen had been obsessed with her Anora, and as she got older that never changed. She'd follow her around like a lost puppy from the moment she started walking, and their parents used to joke that she'd skipped crawling altogether just so she could follow her sooner.

She'd follow her into trouble, and she'd follow her out of trouble. Where Anora went, Aspen would do anything and everything to go as well. Up to and including trying to break her out of rehab. Even if she annoyed her older sister, and even if they fought all the time, it was usually more Anora yelling at her and Aspen smiling at her, because even when she was mad Anora was the coolest.

Once their dad moved them from California to Jersey, though, Aspen truly thrived through middle and high school there. Daddy paying for everything he could to keep her energy released into outlets. Dance classes, sports, karate classes, gymnastics, beauty pageants. Her bubbly personality endeared her to people quickly, and she found that if she was popular enough it didn't matter what she did on impulse. The kids at school, like her parents at home, would excuse it and down play it if not ignore it altogether. She even managed to work her way up to assistant captain of the cheerleading squad despite absolutely abysmal academic scores.

Once out of school and onto college thanks to their father's generous donation to NYU and one of the sororities there. Just like high school, Aspen thrived socially despite sleeping with all of her friend's boyfriends just because she wanted to, or breaking their things, or pulling their hair. The sweetest, nicest, mean girl. And through it all she still stalked her sister whenever she could.

After graduating and without the future being a thing that mattered to her when she lived so completely in the here and now, the past meaningless as soon as it became the past and the future so abstract a concept that she only understood that it meant tomorrow or later, Aspen moved home for a while before their father finally bought her a cute little apartment just down the street from her sister, pawning her energy and problems off on her.

Now, with nothing to take her attention from Anora, her impulses started to take over there and just because she felt like it, one day she tried to sleep with her sister's new boyfriend. For the first time, though, she found herself rebuked no matter how hard she tried. A strike not only to her usually perfect score of getting what she wanted, but also a blow to her ego. There'd been no warning when she'd hit him with her car outside the bar, and she hadn't even tried to run but stood there in the street laughing at him for how silly he looked now.

The footage of her singing Britney Spears' Hit Me Baby One More Time in the back of the police care was shown to the jury at her trial for his murder, paired with her clean blood toxicology and an extensive evaluation by court appointed professionals who deemed her a bunch of stuff with letters for names, or names that were too long to hold her attention. At the very least in Jersey the case was widely media represented as she sat and smiled, waved, and danced in her chair through the proceedings. In the end, she was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

The sentencing was handed down three days before the outbreak started, and by the end of the first week she'd helped a woman in her pod who reminded her of Anora take it over. With no way out, the doors remaining locked even as the power cut, and the windows too high and narrow on the walls to offer escape, the women of pod 4 started to starve. Once the first one died, it hadn't taken long before the dead started to sustain the living, who at that point were surviving on the occasional rat.

Thankfully they still had running water and sewage, the worst part was the boredom. In the end the woman who she'd helped take over the pod had tried to kill her, annoyed at her antics to keep boredom at bay, and Aspen had killed her instead. Finding herself in a strange sort of leadership position after that, she'd taken to harassing and torturing the few remaining women just for some form of entertainment while she waits for her sister to come and get her.

Anora would always come and get her.

Special Skills:

Good dancer, skilled driver, strong swimmer, athletic endurance, tumbling/acrobatics, hand to hand combat (karate), figure skating

Connections: 

Anora Horowitz - Sister

Judah and Jonah Fisher - Her sister's boyfriend and his younger brother. She only met them a few times, too involved with her own social crowd back then. Chances are good she doesn't remember them.

[byenycfm]

Scout Van Der Rohe || 26 || Sophie Thatcher || Engineer US Army

Personality:

discipline, discipline. that was the way, the only way, the van der rohe way. scout was a third generation architect, taking classes in the building that was named after her grandfather, walking through the halls her father built. they only knew one way: brutalist. though it would eventually be changed to modernist, the concrete walls accented with soft wood and wide glass panes. if there is a lesson to learn from such a softening, scout has yet to understand. all she does know is that it changed her from the inside out. a change so gruesome it left her with a scar across her throat and an inability to talk about her mother.

all that rests on her shoulders, and yet she comes across as quiet, collected, and calm. there seems to be nothing that can truly ruffle her, belayed by moments of complete outburst and meltdown. the world caves in when not properly regulated, medicated, or ordered in the particularities that the van der rohe inheritance has aligned. for scout it is an internal violence, something that turns completely inwards and implodes, it finds outlets in ways that people disapprove of. they cannot imagine it might have been external violence, she too does her best to ignore if it might be one day.

Biography:

scout van der rohe was born to name alone, and alone she would be for her entire life. the only child of elias junior and noemi van der rohe, she was beloved for what she meant to the arts community. her father was a second generation architect, with a firm niche in the world of architecture. and her mother had worked up from pianist to conductor of the toronto symphony orchestra, spending her entire career on the grandest pieces to be brought to stage. only those two could produce a child with a natural predilection for the humanities, a perfect blend of all of the arts. each child was intended to be a genius just the same as their parents. but there was only scout, there was never a second. not even the son which might have carried on a name so beautiful, so crucial. each person had their ideas for why it might have happened, but they didn’t say, not in the presence of the little girl who had to shoulder it regardless of the answer.

what others assumed had to be generational wealth was nothing more than history, pushed along by completed jobs and the naming of another center. her grandfather had famously shirked his salary rather than let his designs be altered, and he demanded the same level of commitment from his son. it left them with a legacy, a loyal following, with nothing more than recognition alongside a handful of other innovators in the field. what was an art exhibition to a month’s rent, who could dictate eternity in dollar amounts. they were about more than that, and she had to be greater than the sum of humanity’s parts. her relationship to this idea, and her grandfather was tense at first. he remained hesitant to see if she had the talent that had been so wrought from nothing in his own lifetime. he had come up from a few buildings in europe to this grand moment, where he looked down at cherubic cheeks and wide eyes, and had to decide if it would be enough. but once she had her grandfather’s blessing and more— far more than she wanted from him, she was let in on the secrets that made them so great.

she remembered the day that her mother woke her to tell her that elias senior had passed, the relief that flooded through her. to know she would not have to spend any more time in his cold home, his sparse drawing room. but her life did not change drastically enough, the path was set for his son, his tiny granddaughter even after he was in the ground. they moved into that cold home, the pine drawing table became her father’s to finish all the creations that needed a brutal touch. their only reprieve was travel. the residencies and the galas, the opening nights and six-month stays in towns that respected art and culture. scout became well-travelled quickly, vying for her own hotel rooms and her privacy in the small towns of germany and italy which requested architects and conductors for their legacies and renown.

her father had always known that there was only one way to keep a roof over his family’s head, no matter how small the project. but more importantly, he knew there was only one way to make sure that the history books never forgot the contributions he and his father made for this great nation. the buildings would stand long after all of them had gone to grave, and he refused to let a single one be unlabelled. here is the bank that elias van der rohe designed, here is the community center that the junior supervised brick by brick. here are the floors made up of bones and blood and sweat and tears. and here was the body, cast in concrete, buried and hidden away for those not clever enough to know where to look. an old trick, passed on from father to son— and eventually to daughter.

she went to college as dictated, a few years where she did not walk the white halls of the family home. she hand sketched each design with pencil and ruler as her grandfather had done for years as she watched, sat on his knee. she graduated with honors and an internship at the one place that she knew she must accept. after all, the company would be hers one day, and there was plenty left to learn that a college degree could not show. her father was sure to teach her quickly what it really took, after all this time there would be no one left to show.

it was lockstep with each design, the need for control, perfection, balance and symmetry. those who were in the way must be adjusted or removed completely. she couldn’t say when she knew that the legacy of a van der rohe was not merely in architecture but in murder. there was suddenly just a day when she saw her father push an intern into a closet for later, and a day when he asked her if she really knew what it meant to inherit the family legacy, all of it, unending in responsibility. of course, one it was there, she could see it everywhere. each sharp edge and unpolished step was made for injury just as much as it was for function. the buildings were built for so much more than she had considered, and so much more than she wanted in this life. she didn’t let the secret go, she held tight to it, but that didn’t mean that fate was done with the knowledge.

the fbi found the first body in the first presbyterian church in new hope pennsylvania, as it was undergoing renovations to make office space. interpol found the last bleeding out on the toronto philharmonic stage. it had seemed for days like the walls were closing in on them all, a tension at the dinner table of performance anxiety, and was in fact much more. her mother had asked her to join her at the dress rehearsal of the latest concerto, a residency that had been years in the making, and finally would come to fruition. and there, elias van der rohe jr. had charged on stage with the knife outstretched and stabbed his wife of twenty years. there he stood in crimson glory before anyone could claim to know what he did or didn’t do, what he wanted with the world writ large.

she wished she could have saved her mother, but she was barely able to save herself. the violence had left her paralyzed, a dawning connection between each and every. her father called her on stage, and she had a fleeting moment of the spotlights her mother so loved, the attention that her father craved. and then the knife was at her neck, her blood covered the stage in a stain that they wouldn’t be able to completely scrub out. even now, after everything, there is a pink tinge under the hottest lights. but she survived somehow, her neck held by an officer who didn’t let go until she was in surgery. she survived, on kindess she couldn’t extend another, on something she didn’t even fully understand.

once she was cleared from physicals and therapy, when she had moved everything to a storage unit, unable to sell what one day might be evidence, she only knew she wanted to get out. she had to. there was some way to step away from this lineage of the brutal, the triaged. with a high profile in art circles, and a lack of funding throughout, she only had a few options to consider. and finally, it seemed possible through the military. who could deny service to the country that had taken them in all those years ago. and the write-off on the degree that would have otherwise taken her years to pay off if she had stepped into something other than her father’s legacy. the army called her a civil engineer and refused anything other than the most practical solutions to their problems. of course, those somehow also ended up being brutal, in the most roundabout of ways. still, service was good for her in as many ways as it was bad. the order, the discipline, keeping her focused on the task at hand and not the bloody past or the stormy future. it came with the nicknames, the jokes, the tasteless photos, and those who wanted to test if she was her father’s daughter.

she’d been in canada when the outbreak hit, sending a ripple so far up the region that it had been it was lucky that santiago was as close has he had been. he’d given her a point man in the sudden chaos. otherwise, scout would have just been a gun and nothing more, a loose cannon of confusion and misdirection. she didn’t even think to try and make it back down to the united states until he set the course. this last drastic shift in her life has left her unsettled, unable to logically think through a daily schedule unless she’s given direction. luckily for her, her family made sure that she had skills which would be indispensable to a world that had crumbled. only she was capable of rebuilding from scraps and the most basic of ingredients. only she could hang on to the last of her sanity with white-knuckled fierceness. 

Special Skills: 

architecture, civil engineering, electrical wiring, infrastructure maintenance, basic water resource management.

Connections:

gray gardner: the two of them don’t know, but they’ve got quite a lot in common including half of their dna. while noemi’s first family was but a brief detour on her path to orchestral success, she did give birth to gray. her parents were quick to annul her marriage and move the baby to a different home before she had a chance to decide for herself. it was only a few years later that she was married to elias, and the rest is history. though, there would forever be the lurking reminder of the son she had given up, the one person in the world who might have understood her little daughter. 

santiago diaz munoz: when the outbreak hit in canada, she knew a little about how to survive. but she knew nothing about direction or duration, or how it would even be possible. santiago pulled her from the ruins of the philharmonic building and the two of them made up the foundation of the group that would eventually make its way down to new york. she trusts him with her life, although she’s unsure exactly how long they should be staying in this building. 

anora horowitz: she’d always been cautious of romantic relationships. when she was younger, it had been a matter of scheduling. there was no way to keep track of everything that she needed to do (needed to be) if there was love on the line. but once her parents were dead, she’d been searching for something to tether her to this reality. and it turned out anora was looking for something fun to poke at: a serial killer’s daughter in the palm of her hands. needless to say, the relationship didn’t last. 

[byenycfm]

The Morning of April 20th without warning, all hot water is cut off to the third floor and below, including Rosie's Diner. A water boil advisory is pasted up along the atrium without any real pomp or explanation along with new assignments and plans:

Atrium level wall sconces will be turned off at 10pm to conserve power. (Pease remember there are no overhead lights, only wall sconces and emergency lights over stairwell doors. Lamps and various light sources are plugged into working outlets throughout the area.)

@viesanders, and @insainted (Mal) have been put in charge of construction to turn the common room into two separate areas. Butcher (npc) is around as a pair of extra hands and guard. The tower will be converted into a tailor for @odiedotdottieodette to maintain and design needed items. Everyone is free to trade/barter with It for It's labor but any tasks needed from Sada's crew are It's top priority.

The remaining area in the Common Room is to be turned into a library. The Good's Store will be cleared of all it's books and shelving to be used for this, as well as the libraries of uninhabited apartments, with a focus on Sub-Penthouse 11B.

The tower off the media room will be converted from storage into the daycare for the children, the responsibilities for this will fall to @birdiedrake and @hannahxinterrupted.

@ziggyturner, @beauclary, and @aggieturner's have an additional task of hanging laundry lines to dry clothes on the roof for the upper residents.

All Penthouse Laundry duties will fall to the shoulders of @pxtitxrosx until she gets too heavily pregnant.

Laundry for those who live above the third floor is the responsibility of @w0manstand1ng and @sarahshercohen. There are clotheslines throughout the Atrium to hang laundry out to dry.

Laundry for residents of the third floor is their own responsibility but there are extra clotheslines strung across the pillars in the atrium for general use.

@survivalxofxthexfittest(Oscar), @rioreeve, @lindsohalloran, and @santiagodiazmunoz are tasked with coordinating runs for vials and supplies with orders to take everything. James, the penthouse chef, gets first look at all food stuffs that come in.

@judahfisher and @jonahfisher will be assigned to the parking garage to reinforce vehicles there for future longer distance runs using Nik's car as a template to build off of.

@insainted (Gray) Is on tower defense, re-enforcing the streets around the building.

The Games tables in the Games room have been moved out to the Atrium to create a public square type space with the pool table in the very middle. The Games room is locked up in preparation to be converted into more useful spaces.

The Media room Theater screen and projector has been moved to the Ballroom to be set up for the guards and higher floor residents.

All exess guns and ammunition have been moved to Sada's Loft which is heavily locked down as armory. Only she and Jeremiah have the keys.

Please Familiarize yourselves with the new Atrium lay out and updated FAQ (Please disregard the Map as it needs to be updated still to current lore). If you have any further questions, or suggestions to be added to the page, please let us know! Happy Dictatorshipping, guys and gals!

[byenycfm]

For the next 30 days there will be a pause on new character acceptances from existing members. This will give everyone time to catch up, and get familiar with the previous influx of new characters. Please feel free to send them in, but acceptances for them will resume March 19th at the earliest.

[byenycfm]

Petronella Lovelace || 28 || Maika Monroe || N/A

Personality:

Electric, techno, punk rock, bubblegum, pop, evil. And crazy to boot.

Biography:

 If you asked Orion or Ophelia Lovelace about Beau and Blair Mongomery, they would wholeheartedly tell you they died years ago. The truth of the matter was that The Starlight Oasis, free as they were, had rules and the very first one was to fully give oneself over to The Family - new identites given to each member with their rebirth into the cosmos (really just a drug fueled trip through Lucerne Valley California 'supervised' by the benevolent leader, Auron Grail)

February 29, 1996 The Lovelace family was graced with a beautiful demon of a child daughter. Petronella Lovelace was yanked from the pits of Hell, but her parents will say the Heavens opened to deliver the most perfect child to their loving arms. (Second only to their son Knox.) But the signs were there if they'd only looked a little harder. She was born already teething, a sharp canine a lone tooth she bit her mother with every time she was being breastfed. Not to mention the grip she'd had on her own umbilical cord, biting down on it as if she was trying to cut it herself. The real tell however was how instantly close the Lovelace children became and the chaos that followed their every move - a love for violence practically seeping through their every pore.  If the constant fighting (filled with love of course), mischievous pranks, or aversion to every teaching The Starlight Oasis tried to inflict upon wasnt enough of a sign, the moment the two came home begging to keep a found and already beloved pet, a Mojave Green Rattlesnake they'd named Noodles, should have enough of a warning that these two just weren't right.

They may have survived their attack if they had. The first inkling of the world around them falling, ironically just as Auron had always predicted it would, the two sprang into action to free themselves from the stiflingregime of The Starlight Oasis. Rules were never really her thing anyway and Petronella thrived in the chaos. Alrhough was it really necessary for all that blood. Gross. Murder was such a messy business.

With their family taken care of, the only thing left for the siblings to do was live. They packed up their meager belongings, Noodles included, and headed out to the wasteland left behind by the undead feasting on what was left of the living - their parents' parts used as distractions when things got a little too dicey. At least they were finally good for something other than all that peace and love bullshit.

What a joke.

At least now the world really was the Lovelace children's oyster and they fully intended on feasting. Look out Wexleyites. A storm is coming.

Special Skills: 

Crazy enough to survive anything, Manipulative, Chaotic, Basic to some intermediate survival skills as a side effect of living with The Starlight Oasis - although she just calls it living, Observation skills

Connections:

Knox Lovelace - Brother

[byenycfm]

Ethan Harrison || 30 || Dylan O'Brien || Trust fund kid/Serial killer

Personality:

According to those around him, those who one sidedly considered him a friend, Ethan was known as just another arrogant heartbreaker who 'needed to find the right girl' to tame him. Little did they all know he was a untamable beast waiting to be unleashed. Ethan is a sociopath, among other afflictions, who has no intention of reigning it in. Especially now. His only loyalty remains with himself and what little heart he may have had before the fall has disintegrated. Ethan has adapted beautifully to the chaos that now rules the world. He is sadistic, heartless, and cruel.

Biography:

What is there to say really? Ethan had everything he could ever want. Or need. His family came from money and it was just as one might expect - the best schools, nannies, lazy days and long nights, familial issues swept under the rug, no crime too big to buy their way out of. They had it all. They were part of the elite.  Unfortunately for them, none of that mattered to Ethan.

His mother was diagnosed with child detachment syndrome when she had him, so she wasn't very loving. Although his nanny at the time was amazing, his mother hardly showed him so much as a smile. The two of them were never able to bridge that distance and as he grew he desired affection of any kind less and less. 

However, he knew how to play the role of rich kid superbly. Even though he has yet to dirty his hands in his swirling desire to kill, he has had fun trying. Manipulating the girls around him the easiest of all his prey. They all wanted to be the one for him.  The one who could change him. Mold him into the perfect heir. And he found that they would do anything to get their foot in the door with him....and his family's fortune.

His tolerance for such vapid behavior was lower than anyone could expect and it took very nearly everything in him not to follow through with his darkest wishes.  But each and every specimen - no matter how perfect he perceived them initially - never seemed to satisfy his needs when it came down to it and he would discard them with the rest. 

Once the world fell, his first victims had been his family. He relished in the moment, finally able to rid those deemed untouchable when the world around them thrived. He methodically captured each one - in order: sister, brother, father, mother. He made each one watch as he refrained from ending them completely, letting them turn one by one until only his mother remained. She was his prize after all. Only he hadn't given her the mercy of reanimation, savoring her kill as the others ate her flesh.

He survived L.A. as long as possible before making his way across the states. He wasn't in search of anywhere specific as he traveled, staying a few places here and there as it suited his needs. He ran with some groups along the way, although even with their ruthlessness they couldn't handle his tendencies and needs and ultimately parted ways. (Imagine what you will of that.) He eventually finds the Wexley, surrounded by chompers but seemingly full of life. He's kept his distance for awhile, watching and waiting, only emerging from the shadows after the coup.

Special Skills: 

Stealth, Observational skills, Emotional disconnection, Proficiency with a blade, Proficiency at torture, Intelligence

Connections:

NA

[byenycfm]

Graham Gardner || 30 || Bill Skarsgård || Hacker/streamer

Personality:

  To say there's shit clearly wrong with Gray is an understatement. For the most part, he's quiet, calm, and can easily be confused for a dumb little puppy guy who doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. But you'll only make that mistake once. He's a Pandora's box of impulses, aggression—both verbal and, if need be, physical—and unresolved trauma, and armour as thick as the Earth's crust. Gray is the kind of person people would call “too smart for their own good"; everything he puts even an inch of mental capacity towards, he can succeed at, but it leaves life without any meaningful challenge that results in all that mental energy and capability having nowhere to go. A pressure cooker that only keeps building with a lid that's incredibly hard to crack. It's a deadly chemical mix of a personality that has seen him a large share of trouble, not in the least because he lacks the social ability to meaningfully influence anyone aside from intimidation. That said, he's not a bad person. In fact, he can be kind and gentle and loves a bit of banter, but only with the right person. To everyone else, he's a knife covered in knives that shoots knives.

Biography:

  His parents weren't love at first sight. Gray was born from an act of prolonged rebellion by a good girl from a good, upper middle class falling, and the working class guy who fell in love with her; it had been exciting, intense, thrilling, all up to the point where reality hit and she found out she was pregnant. It was at that point that love turned out to not be true, the thrill had worn off to make way for anxiety and regret. They'd eloped before the baby was born, and they'd tried to make ends meet until her family had said enough was enough, arranged something with a well-to-do family who would still take her, and she left her two year old with the man who had thought she loved him.

  So Gray grew up with the resentment of his father and the face of his mother—another trigger point for his father. From an early age, Gray learned that he wasn't wanted, and anything he did was wrong, any word would be met with pain and aggression; taught as a child that no one is safe, no one can be trusted, and if you had to take what you wanted to get by and to stay sane. For him, the library's computers were the solution for the longest mind. With a minimum amount of latency between mind and reflexes—something that would come to cause multiple problems later in life—Gray took to the mental challenge of video games. Anything solo and puzzle based first, before quickly moving on to competitive shooters.

  It took him a few years to gather enough parts to build his own computer in his room, one he had to hide from his father to make sure it wasn't sold to cover gambling debts. From that point, everything sparked in his mind. Before long he was knee-deep in programming, something that he found gave him a kind of access into other people's shit that he wouldn't have thought, as well as a following on Twitch for the level he played the games he did at—of course, only when his father wasn't home. Without a parent showing up at any parent-teacher conferences, his teachers spoke to him directly at the possibility of graduating early. So at 15 he applied to MIT, as a joke, and at almost 16, he started his first year there. His first time away from the abuse of his father.

  But Gray had never been an academic, never been one for rule-following, or getting up on time, or writing papers, or even class-based learning. He learned what interested him and what he needed to know to get further, no more, no less. And so at 17, he dropped out due to lack of interest; back in the balled fists of his father. A few months later, his father disappeared under mysterious circumstances, with no one caring enough about the man's whereabouts to raise any red flags.

  It's this that set off a spiralling period in his life; for all the evil that his father embodied, a fear of the belt, of fists, of beer bottles to the head, it had kept him on a gnarled, jagged rails, but rails nonetheless. The realisation that he could get away with solving his own problem, that the nightmare he'd feared for so long was a mortal, middle-aged man, and so were plenty of others, turned a switch in his mind. Take what you can and fuck all the rest. The substance abuse destabilised his Twitch career until in the end, hacking was what kept the food on his plate, the drink in his cup, and the drugs in his veins. For the longest time, it was a rut of excitement, of challenges, of close calls with the law—he figures at this point he must be on a watch list of sorts.

  The only thing that mattered was Gray Gardner and the next sunrise, the next hit.

  That was until the “giggle possum era”. A name that popped up in a game once, a name that had made him snort, and a name that not only had a higher KDA in that one game, but one that kept fucking killing him. His first interaction with its owner was one of antagonism, competition, annoyance. But it was this name that kept him straightened in his seat, fully engaged, and substances stopped being the next important hit; it was giggle possum. Her, it turned out.

  Every game, every conversation had him falling deeper and deeper into it, and even between the periods of its absence, it'd never be far from his mind. He'd always respond to her name on the screen, even in the middle of the night, even after days, weeks. Even after months. Even after months. Months. Months.

  She'd told him some of what she'd been dealing with, and while her prolonged absence was not too unusual—but still incredibly painful—it's that last time that he did the work to figure out the location of its last connection point, and that was the end of it.

  He never found it, of course. And thus ended the “giggle possum era”.

  The road beyond that was… empty, hollow, boring. Substances became his go-to again, and much of this period is a bit of a blank. He could not tell you how he ultimately ended up in the mental institute, certainly against his will, but he does know that after surviving the hell of his withdrawal symptoms, he had half a mind to end it all—all that restless pressure building infinitely without anything or anyone to release pressure. No psychologist or psychiatrist would get him to talk, even the threat of jail time wasn't enough to make him cooperate.

  Then one day, a few weeks into his stay at the institute, Gray heard a voice that made his heart skip a beat, his adrenaline pumping. His mind calm. It was the start of the “Odette Winters era”, one that has yet to end.

  Their reunion didn't make him cooperate more with the staff, mind, although the psychs noted he was suddenly much more calm and collected and even relaxed. Like a high without the substance. But neither Gray nor Odie were birds that did well kept in a cage, and the planning for their breakout was… inevitable.

  Ultimately, it gave them a leg up when staff stopped coming in. For a time, they were just as confused as the rest of the people there; those with the clarity to notice the difference anyway. When the chompers came, the pair had already broken into the kitchen to swipe all the food they could for their break out, and while the majority of the people locked in there had tried their escape through the entrance—the perfect distraction—Gray and Odie used their break out plan to go out through a back vent, away from the chaos. They didn't look back or think twice. 

  While for the rest of NYC, the world ended, for this pair, the world finally started making sense. They quickly managed to make their way into a residential skyscraper intended for the elites and borrowed in like cockroaches. Ask anyone at all, they'd tell you winter was hell; to Gray, he was living in bliss with the creature of his dreams. He made sure to keep the generator going and keep the electricity strictly to their floor to make sure the fuel would last them for as long as possible, and the only times they would make their way down from their stolen throne was to boobytrap the place to the point that if you didn't have a map, it'd be a traumatic experience to go through. Gray had quickly figured out that noise was one of the biggest things that would get chompers on your head, and made sure that the way to the basement, where the generator was located, was clear, and then used a noisemaker to flood the entire ground floor with chompers as the first line deterrent to any fuckers who decided to destroy their peace.

  Of course, all things must come to an end. Throughout the winter, Gray had made sure to keep track of their fuel, he'd kept track of the generator's usage the very first week to calculate how long it would take until they were out, and a week before the end, he'd started getting more tense, in a way that even Dottie couldn't calm him out of with her mental zigs and zags. No, the tension building was because of it, its safety, its continued existence in this world, and his refusal to let its light go out ever.

  The solution presented itself a few days before their fuel would go. They gathered the food they still had left, and made their way down from their palace in the sky for the last time, eliminating what chompers were still left on the bottom floor after failed hits from different groups of people—some of them inevitably adding to their undead wall of defence—and made their way to the place where they'd seen people zip lining into a specific building.

  One would say, in a place full of people who don't know you, whom you don't know, the best thing to do is to lie low and make sure no one noticed you until it was too late. But hey, there was a party on and he never got to really party with his creature, did he? 

Special Skills: 

programming, robotics, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, hand-to-eye coordination, high reaction time, being shitty to literally anyone (bar one)

Connections:

Odette Winters - <3

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Zara Petrova || 28 || Adelaide Kane || Emergency Room Nurse

Personality:

compassionate, gentle, resilient, naïve, selfless.

Biography:

Before the world ended, Zara Petrova was a nurse working long shifts in a busy Brooklyn hospital. She had always been the kind of person who put others first—staying late to comfort anxious patients, bringing coffee to exhausted coworkers, and calling worried families long after her shift had ended. Helping people was all she had ever known, a purpose she never questioned. But when the outbreak began, the hospital quickly turned into a nightmare.

She was there when the first infected were wheeled into the ER, their bodies convulsing, their eyes vacant and wild. At first, the doctors thought it was a new virus, something they could contain. Then the patients started attacking. Zara witnessed chaos unfold as nurses and doctors were torn apart, as security guards fired their weapons in desperation. She ran, barely escaping with her life. She had always believed hospitals were places of healing, but that night, they became something else—a graveyard.

She spent the first few weeks of the outbreak on the move, hiding in abandoned clinics, trying to help the wounded when she could. But she wasn’t built for this kind of world. She didn’t know how to fight, how to kill, how to survive beyond tending to the injured. Every time she tried to help someone, it seemed to go wrong. The people she saved didn’t always make it. And those who did often turned on her, desperate and afraid.

By the time she found Wexley, she was starving, exhausted, and ready to give up. She had followed rumors of a safe place but was too afraid to approach at first. When she finally knocked on their barricaded door, she was barely standing. The people inside hesitated, their eyes filled with suspicion—another mouth to feed, another person to take up space. But Zara had something they needed: medical skills.

Now, she does what she can to help the survivors inside. She patches up wounds, tends to the sick, and tries to hold onto the kindness that once defined her. But this world is cruel, and every day, it chips away at her warmth. She doesn’t know how much longer she can hold onto the person she used to be. But as long as there are people who need her, she will keep going. Even if she isn’t made for this world, she refuses to let it harden her.

Special Skills: 

Medical Expertise, Calming Presence, resourcefulness

Connections:

NA

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Eloise Bardot || 26 || Kathryn Newton || Actress

Personality:

eloise is an actress and a phenomenal one at that. she might have gone on to win all manner of awards on the stage and screen if this whole apocalypse hadn’t happened. as a result, she is a natural liar and well-suited to deception of all kinds. her outward demeanor is that of a sugar-sweet girl, brave and angelic. she only wants to find a place in the building, preferably one closer to the top. she will always align herself with power but certainly doesn’t do it in an obvious way.

given her background as an ingeune actress in both film and theater, its very possible that she would be recognized by the discerning resident. but her newer history of bloodshed is hidden by a sob story of torture and victimhood. its not like aggie is going to tell anyone differently, and who would trust jeremiah after he left them both behind in the first place.

Biography:

scottsdale arizona offers nothing to the american imagination, a hot desert, and bland sand. for lindy bates, it was even worse. nothing in the world could keep her entertained, the school playgrounds were terrible, and the people were dull. she knew from her first conscious thought that she was special, she was meant to be someone. it was a shame that no one else around her seemed to see this spark, this measure of greatness deep within her. while her parents did their best to try and accommodate their darling girl, the bates idea of greatness was the cheerleading squad and the high school theater department. and while she excelled at both of these things, she was only driven by the adoration it brought her. perhaps the ache inside her for something more could be solved by just the applause of others.

although she would be remiss to say she also didn’t think it was possible for it to be solved by blood. perhaps a few family vacations had given her the idea, a festering splinter underneath her skin, reminding her there was plenty more possible than living and dying in arizona. really, anything was better so long as she was a world away from her family. she would never call her first murder hers, it had been talked through above the woman’s cries for so long it felt as though her hand moved as though they were her uncle’s. she felt a relief for a few moments as the blood pumped hot from the woman’s chest. but eventually, it gave way to the that feeling. the aching boredom.

she ended up in new york by careful planning. between her two talents, acting was the one that was going to make something of her. so lindy bates moved to california, and she never returned. eloise bardot on the other hand, well she got a spot at nyu in the stella adler institute. after a few major roles in film, her agent assured her that it would be best to have a degree on her resume. being smart was the new fashion, just look at how many starlets were applauded for their choice to go back to school. beyond that— everyone loved a pivot to the theater. it was serious, it showed how much she cared about the profession. and after a few courses of impressing professors and peers, she was finally moved over to broadway.

it was so interesting, how some people thought they could just have roles in new york. she knew the game in hollywood. there were directors and producers with talentless children hoping for this claim to last-name fame. but so rarely did they get the leads or the projects that she was interested in. they stayed in their own lanes of indie dramas and poor-me whining. but in new york everyone came together under the umbrella of giving the work to the person with the most money. it was just as well that most of those people were the same ones who went to dark clubs with loud music, and friends who couldn’t have cared where they were most of the night. she wasn’t a stalker and she wasn’t a serial killer, she was merely creating opportunities for herself. whether that be for the chanel table at that year’s met, or her big break on broadway.

performing the role of emily webb in our town was taxing, eight shows a week. but there was still something missing from her life. even the adoration of peers, teachers, audiences, and the public alike still did not satisfy whatever was missing from her life. but she wouldn’t get the chance to figure that out on her own. new york was shut down, the city overtaken by zombies, and chaos reigned. luckily for her, she was able to align quickly with the top raider group in the area. better to be among the hunters than be the hunted. given her small stature and proclivity for violence, she became treasured by the group. how could she not be, angel of death, unable to articulate mercy in even the basic sense. she was able to execute people and creatures alike without the need for justification, and she slept through the night regardless of her sins.

of course, even that sort of adoration gets boring after a time. sitting at the right hand of a devil is still not having the throne yourself. and so she moved on to the next open opportunity. that silly little building with its welcome banners and zombies crawling all around it. why she heard they even had hot water and luxury apartments still furnished for the discerning young folk. and it seemed that when each person escaped her group, they crawled back there where hearts were pure and the pickings were easy. as the rest of the world fell to ruin, they still had a working elevator and a caretaker who cared enough to keep the building in order. funny that, how touches of humanity were still enough to draw her back in. not because she needed the reminder, but simply because she wanted the lifestyle that she deserved.

if a resident or two remember her face from the days of girls in crates or amusing ploys for information, its up to them to keep their mouths shut. anyways, it seems like she’s walked into something much different than she’d been expecting— how fun!

Special Skills: 

um she’s an actress and a serial killer, extrapoliate what you will.

Connections:

Jeremiah Rose - Former raider camp members

Aggie Turner - Former raider camp members

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Knox Lovelace || 30 || Pete Davidson || Cult Member

Personality:

Straightforward and rather impatient by nature, Knox won't waste time waiting for someone to make up their mind. If he wants something, he wants it now, and if Petronella wants something, it better happen even faster. Pet doesn't need a bodyguard, but that's the role Knox had adopted a long time ago, without asking. Fast and eager to use his fists, but not to apologize, he's lucky to have his sister, who knows how and when to stop him.

Biography:

From a tight-knit community in sunny California to a cold, chomper-infested island on the East Coast? Sounds like a horrible trade, but did Knox and Petronella Lovelace love how it turned out!

Born to Orion and Ophelia Lovelace – who had abandoned their old identities to start new lives with deeper meaning – Knox was unlucky enough to automatically follow the path chosen by his parents. It was yet to be determined whether he would share the values and truths proclaimed by The Starlight Oasis, and maybe, as an only child, he would have given in. Auron Grail, the cult's charismatic leader, would have become his mentor and Knox would never question a single word spoken by the wise man. Who knows what turns life would have taken, what choices the boy would have made?

Knox and his little sister, Petronella, weren't the only children growing up in this community but they certainly stood out in the peace-loving, permanently high community from day one. While most kids caught mice to have a little friend to look after, Knox and Pet needed them as food for their Rattlesnake - Noodles. Things The Starlight Oasis owned were only interesting if the leader deemed them forbidden, which is precisely why the Lovelace siblings came into possession of a VHS copy of The Fifth Element and played it on repeat. They only cared about those pages in books that had been ripped off. Rules only made sense if they could be broken.

Petronella loved chaos as long as it was bloodless (yuck!). Knox didn't mind. If Pet started a sentence, Knox finished it for her - with a punch to a stranger's face, if necessary. Getting his hands dirty was the part of fun his sister wasn't fond of. If there was any yin to yang in chaos, that's precisely what the Lovelace siblings were to each other.

They couldn't stay in the community they hated or they would suffocate. Auron Grail proved a madman could exceed his own expectations and push the limits even further. Orion and Ophelia followed him and his teachings blindly, just like the rest of the group; not a single person ever doubted his words - definitely not when one November day Auron's prophecies and reality met.

Knox and Pet had to run or else things would get ugly for them - ironically, this outbreak was their chance, the only chance to be free, and they agreed to do everything they had to run away before it was too late.

Including neutralizing the people who could and would stop them.

Special Skills: 

Lip reading, Photographic memory, High pain tolerance, Hand-to-hand combat, Shooting

Connections:

Petronella Lovelace - Sister

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Odette Winters || 34 || Fka Twigs || seamstress / thief

Personality:

ever since she was little dot’s had her head in the clouds. making up whole worlds in her head which turned into elaborate stories that she would ramble off. later these traits turned into lies she would make up with unclear intentions, be it to get people to like her (often faced with the reality that they wouldn’t like her as is) or to get some sort of attention. she’d always been a bit on the weirder side, with an overactive imagination, making her a space cadet at the worst of times. after the drugs, the multiple traumas, and miscellaneous treatments, she’s now reached a whole new level of oddity. you might find her having an argument with herself for fun, if you decide to join in she’s likely to bring up random points that have no basis in logic or reality or veer off into a story that don’t pertain to anything you are talking about. constantly uses double entendres without meaning to (or does she?). though because of her wild imagination she tends to be easily impressed.

          her speech pattern can be just as erratic as her thoughts, complete with verbal tics and makes up non-existent words to describe things. she’s been mistaken for being naive and plain dumb, which is understandable with how nuts her demeanor is. but don’t be fooled, she is quite insightful and smart, you just need to be able to sort through the madness to understand it. odie has a wide knowledge and understanding of the workings of the universe, but a poor way of communicating that to everyone else. sometimes it shines through, peeking out from behind the mask to indicate that they are much more insightful than they seem or pretend to be. either way she tries to be endearing to those friendly to her. though it can be hard for her to make friends when she consistently does strange things, while not always wrong per se, like stealing jewelry off a corpse at a funeral. she doesn’t understand what the problem is, it’s not like the dead person cares, right? basically, the things they sometimes say and do come off as weird, awkward, unhinged, questionable, outright eccentric, and goofy. she’s quite used to being overlooked and written off by now and that’s fine, she has her person and whole worlds in her head that she can escape in.

Biography:

tw: torture, drugs, addiction

odette was born in southern england to loving parents that had one of those romances you only find in romance novels or fanfiction sites. her mother, an american from a middle class family, attended university abroad and fell in love with her father, a royal marine. too bad they never tell you what happens when the story ends and the honeymoon period is over. odie doesn’t know why her parents divorced, or chose not to listen to the reasons or see the signs. all she knows is they were a happy family and she was creating fantasy worlds filled with color and mystical creatures one minute and the next minute her mother was ripping her out of her father’s arms crying to board the plane to their new home in new york city. despite the love she had for her mother, she would go on to never forgive her for that. as such, she ended up being much closer to her father, despite the distance between them.

her first brush with darkness, while mild in comparison to most people and what would transpire later in her life, was when her eyes opened to the reality around her. things in odie’s life took a turn from then on. suddenly the fantasy worlds she created were means for survival, places she could escape to get the image of her mother’s depression out of her head or wash out the cruelty of classmates at school. and then there was that void in their chest, something that was always there and just seemed to grow with odette. a terrible longing and empty feeling that left her numb at the best of times and caused manic frenzies to feed it in anyway possible at the worst of times. her mother never recovered from the divorce, at least it seemed that way to odie. perhaps the mania could be attributed partially to her genes. nevertheless, from there on out it was an endless string of partners, eviction notices, moving, and random piles of past due bills ( likely due to the hoards of things her mother would buy ). it made odie wonder if, perhaps, their mother had her own void she was trying to fill.

at first, the moving around a lot didn’t bother her, it was in the same city and she often struggled to make friends in school. as she got older, she started to use it as ways to make elaborate lies about her life or past, not unlike the worlds she would create as a child, to attempt to make herself “cooler” to the masses. embarrassing as she would find it later to admit, she spent most of her teenage years desperately trying to fit in. like everyone else, however, when she graduated and found out that none of that bullshit matters. what she did learn is that she had a knack for lying, could even be quite convincing with it and use it to her advantage when she needed to. though there were often holes that could be pointed out if anyone got close enough. the people she fell in with never cared to pay attention to such things, they were too focused on the things she was already well familiar with: drugs, alcohol, sex, and general debauchery. every time odie would try to pull away from the party scene, get back on track and fly right, she ended up being pulled right back in. cravings from the black hole within could only be ignored for so long before they started to wage war against the mind. 

eventually, odie found another outlet and someone who didn’t toss her aside when the ‘too much’ gene kicked in ( and let’s be honest, that happened rather fast when it came to dottie winters ). she’d been working as an apprentice at a seamstress shop, learning to tailor and sew and measure. the creation was lovely and while it may not be the thing people dream of being when they grow up, odie loved it. in her off time she found herself sucked into the gaming world, a past time she’d already enjoyed from her childhood but was never allowed to go online. as an adult, what was stopping her? fps shooters, mmorpgs, survival, and the like were her favorite. even the open world simulations when her brain was particularly jumbled and she needed somewhere to put the focus and calm down. the need for substances seemed to slow, though never gone completely. then she met GG ( gg2ez but gg rolled off the tongue like a delightful little vocal stim ) seemingly out of nowhere. it started with one chance encounter after another and just how fun it was to kill him over and over when it seemed like no one else on the team could. she giggled at his silly frustrations and he kept coming back, until they were on the same side wiping the floor with people together.

amidst the blossoming of this lovely friendship and gaming journey, odette ran into some trouble. she’d been invited to the owner of the shop she worked at’s house for an appreciation party. it was more of a charity dump for a powerful organized crime family that owned many businesses in the city as a cover for their real operation. of course odie wasn’t one to turn down a party, though her computer was calling her, it was an open bar in a mansion outside the city. afterwards, she wished she would’ve stayed home and played it’s silly games with that silly boy she’d met. in true dot fashion, she got bored of the stuffy conversation that she had nothing to add to and the yawn worthy entertainment early in the night. curiosity had her exploring the house (the biggest she’d seen to date besides the castles across the pond). somewhere between pocketing the worthwhile prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet and rummaging through closets, she was interrupted by an intense set of people. immediately, she slid beneath a bed to hide. 

unfortunately, when two of the men were killed right in front of them, odie had a hard time keeping quiet. both shocked and horrified by the scene ( maybe she wasn’t so abnormal after all ). they pulled her out from under the bed and interrogated her. their intention was to make her the third body to be disposed of that night, collateral damage and all that, but dot did what anyone would do and tried to bargain with them. the magic words were mentioning not only her name but her father’s who, unbeknownst to her to this day, was a known and well feared mercenary. she may have gotten her life but they chose to make it a living hell, first by several days detained while they figured out what to do with her. physical torture not doing much in way of making sure they could say they never harmed her, they chose other, more invisible methods. large doses of sodium amobarbital and hallucinogens given to warp it’s reality and cause loss of inhibition, then insulin shock therapy to knock her out, electro shock therapy when the sorted drugs they gave her didn’t promote compliance as they hoped ( primarily due to high tolerances and the barbiturates helped to correct some of the chemical imbalances already present in her head ). ultimately they invoked quite a bit of fear in the twenty something version of odette and convinced it not only not to talk to police, but to anyone about them at all and that they would most certainly be watching it at all times, and if they saw it step out of line they would be back. 

after that night, odette didn’t go out much and if she did it was to stock up on the substances that eased the demons that were now working overtime in her head and the others that would help her escape reality. then of course there was the cartoons and the anime and the phone calls to her father, that helped provide their own bits of ease. most of all, she spent more and more time online, playing games and talking to gg. he was always there when she popped up. even when she wandered off or got lost for long periods of time. eventually she gave him her phone number, every time it changed and they’d talk until they drifted off to sleep. she’d never seen him but he quickly became her safe space. odie truly wished it would’ve been enough to keep those pesky demons away for good, both the real ones and the ones that now lived in her head. maybe if she’d told him everything, or her father, things would’ve been different. maybe she would’ve never been institutionalized.

now, dottie can’t tell you if it’d been locked away because of those she angered or the stealing or if it was because she tended to get too carried away with the substances and wandered off. honestly she didn’t feel she should be held responsible for mischief she created when her mind wasn’t and she still was, or perhaps it was the other way around? either way, she’d not come in on her own accord and became a regular resident in the walls after that. it’d become quite boring in those paint peeling walls with concrete floors and metal tables. the already fading light in her eyes had almost gone out completely by the time she heard a familiar voice again. if he hadn’t been arguing with the orderly she’d think it had been in her head but why on earth would she conjure him in such a way? that wasn’t her gg, that was their gg. gray. it’s gray.

it could be said that the light came back into her like fireworks. the darkness faded and, goodness, it was like she could see again. breathe. but caged birds do not sing and there was no color in those skies. it was impertinent that they be free again and this time, together. just as it should’ve been before. no time for regrets, though, no— no only time for plans. with his brilliant brain and her unique skills they were able to come up with a plan in no time! well, be it as it was, it was perfect timing because it had appeared the world had turned upside down in their time caged together. when the staff stopped coming in and those silly chompy things found their way in, the two of them had made their grand exit through vents and staff corridors, right out into the back parking lot. 

together they entered the new world, empowered and unafraid. new york city was their new playground and oh the fun they had! exploring the now abandoned buildings, picking up supplies and treasures along the way. there was nothing to stop them, not even when the cold came in. they found one of those richie rich buildings that were a million miles high and would’ve had a doorman if the world were still right side up. in there, they had their own generator and enough food, supplies, and otherwise to last them the cold months. being the avid gamers they were, they booby trapped the floors they weren’t inhabiting as security measure to keep them safe from raiders, chompers, old residents, ghosts, people, demons, and anything else that tried to storm the castle. if odette hadn’t known before, ( it certainly had of course but it was silly to fall ears over toes so terribly quick upon seeing someone for the first time, even if his voice was well memorized by then, written on that figurative heart by the very ear drums that heard them ) she was terribly in love with gray gardner. the winter months were not cold, not for her, no they kept each other quite warm. she memorized every bit about him and stitched their lives together, tailor made for each other, completely in sync. dot couldn’t remember a time she’d been so happy. perhaps never. 

together they made plans to make a new world, got their muchness back and perhaps some more muchness together. they would make the best of what was upside down and perhaps spin it round in their favor. once spring was upon them, they’d gone through their fuel and supplies. two addictive personalities tended to overindulge on everything, craving substance even though they did not necessarily need it anymore. it was time for a new adventure and boy, oh, boy did they find a fun little snowglobe to go shake. they’d witnessed the people ziplining into the wexley and noticed they didn’t bother to patch the entry up right away. that was their chance, they waited until the coast seemed clear and made their own entrance into the wexley. they found the perfect little place to call home on the seventh floor and it seemed they arrived in time for a party. oh, how it loved parties! gray appeased her for a dance or three and just like that, they’d found their new home. of course they’d been there the whole time, should anyone ask. 

Special Skills: 

lockpicking, safecracking, manipulation, beserk button, self defense, sewing/tailoring, hand/eye coordination, overactive imagination (or insanity, depending how you look at it)

Connections:

Gray Gardener - <3

[byenycfm]

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Congratulations, Jen! You've been accepted for the role of Scout Van Der Rohe and have 24 hours to send in your blog! We cannot wait to write with you! Your discord links will be sent out asap and please remember to check out the FAQ page and Building rules for everything you need to know, as well as The Directory for your room assignment. You'll be tested for your immunity results, and the roll made for who will let your characters into the building! Prepare yourself to meet with the building's leader and then you can enjoy your two day stint in one of our luxury quarantine suites!

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App Count +1

OC - sophie thatcher

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Vikram Jain || 38 || Dev Patel || Clinical Pharmacologist

Personality:

meticulous and organized, vikram has a compulsion to keep his surroundings as tidy as his mind ; nothing out of place, nothing askew. a fortuitous trait for as studious a mind as his, he has demonstrated a profound and lifelong passion not just for academics and research, but the pursuit of knowledge simply for knowledge’s sake. he is a naturally curious creature with an innate desire to understand the world around him and the exact mechanics by which it operates, a trait perhaps due in part to the distinct disconnect he’s felt from everything — and everyone — around him for as long as he can remember. this sense of alienation led him to pursue a doctorate in medicine as well as a phd in pharmaceutical science — to not only understand how people truly work when broken down to their most essential parts, but to learn how he can manipulate those basic functions through the application of very specific chemical compounds. if you can’t beat them, learn how to control them.

for as estranged as vikram feels himself to the world at large, you would never guess it to speak to him ; the mask he wears for the world is carefully crafted, a polite and professional visage modeled after years upon years of observing the social interactions of others, learning by careful scrutiny of example what qualifies as acceptable be havior  — how long to maintain eye contact, when it’s appropriate to smile during a conversation, how to sound like he cares. and he does it well ; to be fortunate enough to know only the vikram he chooses to present himself to be is to know a soft-spoken and mild-mannered man, sympathetic and polite to the degree that his manner of speech at times almost feels anachronistic. vik is intelligent and articulate, punctual and reliable ; he makes an effort to appear as such, to walk a line between unassuming and invaluable that would leave his closest friends and colleagues shocked should they ever discover what he does behind locked doors. 

in truth, dr. jain is a cruel man. he has very little regard for human life in comparison to the scientific gain that can be offered in its sacrifice. he does not wish to make people better on an individual basis — he is not a physician — but he wishes to make people, as a whole, better, and oftentimes found himself biting his tongue professionally to keep from overstepping any ethical boundaries when it came to the testing of new pharmaceuticals. but the skew of his moral compass extends beyond big pharma ; he has no qualms with torture and has, on multiple accounts, overseen and personally administered chemical compounds against the will of the recipients with the intention to reconfigure or otherwise permanently damage their cognitive and executive function.

Biography:

biography: tw — neglect / animal abuse / torture / murder / medical procedures 

even were he to truly think on it, vikram jain would be hard-pressed to procure but a single memory of a time that he did not feel estranged from the world around him ; as a child, he provided his parents more strife than he ever did pride, though not for a lack of effort on his part. vikram was a peculiar child, abnormal in both the eyes of his parents and his peers ; he was quiet and observant, with wide, owlish eyes that seemed to silently soak in everything around him. for the first several years of his life, vikram was non-verbal — in fact, he did not speak aloud until the age of four, by which time he could do so in complete sentences to clearly articulate his thoughts. and even after he did find his voice, socialization did not come easy. children could be cruel, after all, and not least of all toward what they do not understand. and poor vikram, for all that he sought after it, never truly felt like they understood him. his parents, aarav and priya jain, would protest that they did everything they could to give their son a normal childhood and that it was a fault of his own that he resisted. the unfortunate truth of the matter was that they were ill-prepared to handle the idiosyncrasies of a child such as vikram, and rather than try to address his needs and figure out where the disconnect began, they resorted to ignoring it, stifling it ; overstimulated outbursts were punished, subtle self-soothing tics scolded away. 

vikram, of course, could never quite understand what it was he’d done wrong and rather than lay himself out for continued lashing, he withdrew upon himself. it wasn’t difficult; he’d never really understood the value of such connection or emotional intimacy. what should’ve been a warm embrace from his mother only ever made his skin prickle and crawl and any attempted heart-to-hearts with his father — an emotionally stunted man in his own right, in different ways — only ever left both parties feeling more frustrated than before. the only exception to this unwritten rule of distance came in the form of a younger sister, odoti. at first, he showed apathy toward her at best — and near disdain for her constant crying and screeching at worst — but by the time she’d grown from a drooling, babbling infant into something at least resembling a small, cognizant human, vikram found himself strangely endeared to her. perhaps it was because of her own apparent fascination with him, or the resulting truth that she was, in fact, the first person who didn’t look at him like he was strange. like he was some sort of anomaly. no, odoti only ever looked toward him with admiration and curiosity and something vikram still thinks, to this day, is the closest he’s ever really felt to understanding genuine, unconditional love. or something he would think, at least, if he ever allowed himself the opportunity. he does not. 

as a young boy, vikram was possessed with a curiosity of his own. a morbid fascination, more like, and one he kept hidden from the likes of everyone around him — odoti included. he had an affinity for experimenting with chemicals — caustic cleaning supplies stolen from beneath the sink or shoved into his backpack from the janitor’s cart at school, various jugs and cartons of automotive fluids, anything he could get his hands on. he’d mix the solvents and solutions with food and leave them out for wildlife and feral animals, hidden away in inconspicuous places. and then vikram would do what he did best. observe. he’d take careful note of which chemicals sedated them and in which dosages, which caused behavioral changes or made them ill and which ceased vital functions altogether. when they did die, inquisitive young vikram would often inspect their corpses, oftentimes hiding them away and returning weeks or months later to collect the bones. he had quite the collection once he’d cleaned and bleached them all, and he insisted — to his parents’ horror — that it was all locally sourced roadkill to alleviate suspicion about their origins. it wasn’t that he thought what he was doing was shameful ; on the contrary, vikram saw nothing wrong with his behavior — but he expected everyone else to disagree, to misunderstand and misjudge him. he’d grown tired of being  scolded. it was easier, he found, to just be private.  

for years, vikram managed to maintain his morbid pastime. he grew bolder, mixing volatile compounds in glass measuring cups in his bedroom behind locked doors ; he fancied himself a scientist, a chemist. he was just shy of twelve years old when his experiments finally proved beyond  the realm of his control. as he would discover, it takes only moments for an open container of acetone to evaporate enough to cause a flash ignition if there is an open enough flame, even one so small as a candle, near enough by.  the curtains behind his desk were the first to catch and, for a moment, it was all vikram could do to stare on as the flames began to swallow up the fabric, lapping at the walls and warming his skin. he should’ve anticipated it — he wasn’t stupid, he’d read the warning labels on everything he touched meticulously and at least thrice over. but vikram could hear their voices as he watched the fire grow brighter and stronger — his parents, his teachers, his peers. scolding him, mocking him for being so foolish, so careless! they were screaming at him, their voices drowning out the roar of the flames and instead setting every single one of his nerves alight. 

by the time vikram snapped out of his haze, nearly half of his bedroom was engulfed in flames. and in truth, the only reason he’d been pulled from his internal cacophony was because he could feel the sting of the fire against his arms and flesh, the burn of smoldering cotton and sizzling flesh.  he didn’t tell them before he fled the house in a panic, made no effort to rouse his parents or his sister as he scrambled into the bushes  of the backyard and tried to calm down even as the blaze grew brighter. by the time he could see the glow through the kitchen windows, he could already hear  his father shouting. vikram was too far away to make out the words, but he sounded desperate, frantic. his mothers wails wove in between the curses, choked and gasping. this, vikram found, did not upset him, for they could not know that they need direct their anger at him. in fact, if only he could hide long enough, they’d never know the chance to scold him again. but odoti… he’ll never forget the sound of her screaming his name, how the sound of her fear was visceral enough to carry her plea through blistering walls. when emergency services finally arrived to put out the flames, the firefighters on the scene found him trembling in the brush with his  hands clamped over his ears and his eyes pressed shut in a pair of filthy, burnt pajamas. there were no other survivors.

with all of his remaining family residing out of the country and no viable guardians to speak of, vikram was a ward of the state by the time he reached his thirteenth birthday. he ended up in a boarding school for young men where he quickly flourished in academics but floundered socially  with the same haste. it was not the words of his peers that bothered him — vikram was used to mockery and he took no offense to childish insults and name-calling, even at the expense of his newfound scars and rumored history — but the physical harassment. that he should be intentionally injured in a facility meant for learning just or simply existing, a truth which he could not help, was nothing short of baffling to vikram. but he had a keen eye for observation  and an analytical mind and it did not take long for vikram to begin studying the behaviors of his peers, picking out details in micro-expressions and subtle changes in speech patterns and intonations as they engaged with each other. things he could’ve noticed ages ago, if only he’d bothered. things he wasn’t doing. he scrawled notes in his journal, practiced making faces back at himself in the bathroom mirror when there was no one around to see. 

slowly, carefully, he began to craft a newer version of himself based on his findings — a mask, the illusion of a more socially palatable vikram. polite and charming, always listening and never over-sharing; he learned when to smile and how to laugh loud enough to blend in but not so loud as to get noticed.  he learned when it was better to bite his tongue and withhold his opinions — in his case, the answer was often — and how to ignore the desire to crawl out of his skin at the slightest degree of platonic contact. more importantly, he learned how to wear this mask always. it helps in a way, he thinks even still, the level of control it allows him over how others respond to him, how they treat him. it allowed him the privilege of survival by means of camouflage in a cage full of predators ( perhaps maybe one day he could become the predator… ) until his eighteenth birthday, when the call of higher education pulled him beyond the walls of the boarding school where he’d spent most of his formative years. 

as it happened, vikram flourished in a different environment. nobody paid any mind to him at university and outside of lectures and labs; he spoke up enough during discussions that people knew who he was well enough, but nobody ever sought him out or made an effort to befriend him, not truly. this, he decided, was the ideal — the sweet spot socialization. it offered him a chance to observe without actively engaging. nobody could ever say who it was that invited him to parties, but at the same time, no one ever batted an eye at his presence, nursing a beer in the corner with a soft, disarming smile. the thing about college students, vikram discovered, was that they seldom had to be coerced into taking drugs. as he learned about prescriptions and pharmaceuticals in his lectures, he learned about street substances — stimulants, hallucinogens, an assortment of psychotropics — in crowded apartments and abandoned warehouses. between these parties and the lectures and his coursework and dissertations, vikram seldom had time for sleep. he adapted, swiftly learning to live without.

by the time he was twenty-five, dr. vikram jain possessed not one but two degrees — a doctor of medicine and pharmaceutical science. though he was not necessarily lacking in bedside manner, he ended up pursuing a career in clinical pharmacology that left him in a lab rather than a hospital, designing and conducting human trials for new drugs in development. and what might appear on the surface a dream job to vikram was rather a test in patience and self-control, a constant practice in biting his tongue to maintain an appearance of morality. it was a tease, is what it was, and vikram found he could only take so much before he grew bored of the limits and boundaries forced upon him by the pharmaceutical research company that hired him, of the countless medical boards churning out guidelines for ethical practices. unexpectedly adverse side effects for blood pressure pills or anti-inflammatories weren’t enough — vikram wanted more.

but the luxury of big pharma was that, at the very top of the ladder on which vikram remained perched on a relatively lower rung, were a bunch of wealthy bastards with morals just as disaligned as his own. one would need to, vikram supposed, to profit so unabashedly from such a corrupt industry. how he came to do freelance work for such individuals is neither here nor there ; a stroke of luck, a matter of simply being in the right place at the right time and being observant enough to catch just enough of a conversation to deem it worth inserting himself into. and if vikram had any woes about ennui, they vanished in the blink of an eye under the new employ of these men. he was allowed the creative freedom to explore experiments he’d only ever dreamed about under the simple condition that he’d administer very specific courses of very particular, mind-altering drugs at their beck and call. the financial compensation was alluring enough in its own right to make the offer worthwhile, but it was the true respect and appreciation for his particular skill set finally being recognized that made vikram realize he’d found his calling.

he can vividly recall the day they brought it to him — odette winters. vikram knew there was something special about her the moment he’d gotten his hands on her ; she was a fascinating specimen, reacting to his procedures in unexpected ways. her body did not take to the drugs like the others, nor did her mind ; no, it was a challenge to concoct the correct regimen to do the job, and vikram … well, he’d always enjoyed entertaining tasks that stimulated his brain. ( surely his fondness for her had nothing to do with the way her name sounded so terribly similar to the only one he’d ever missed, the way he could see a familiar spark in her eyes that caused his chest to ache. ) when it was whisked away from his lab the first time in a state of drooling half-sedation, he did not expect to miss it. he knew better than  to get attached to ferals and strays, that they never lasted very long in his hands. but she was a curious one, and his mind often wandered back to the file he’d compiled on her. a silly pastime of thought, nothing more.

until he heard a voice call out to him, shouting to him in a desperate plea one evening when he was prowling the streets of the city’s underbelly in search of something new to entertain him and suddenly vikram was taken back to 1999 — to a crisp september night and the acrid smell of smoke and the prickle of thorns in the bushes and the sound of his sister’s terrified screams. odoti. no, no, odette. it was kismet, vikram remembers thinking in that moment ; he was not a spiritual man by any means, nor did he ascribe much to the notion of fate, but there was no other explanation for why chance might have brought it to him twice unless it was meant to be there. meant to be with him. he protected it that night in the alley, and when he did, it felt like he’d been given a second chance. he brought her home, cleaned her up and tucked her in on his sofa with a heavy quilt and an even heavier dose of sedatives, their bitterness masked by the warm spice of a hot cup of chai. he wanted to keep it, in the way as a child he’d wanted to keep many of the animals he experimented on until they grew ill and perished. but this was different in a way that was unfamiliar for vikram. discomforting, even. for all that he desired to poke and prod at it — and he would — he also felt a strange compulsion to protect it. 

for years, he kept odette close ; it would come and go as it pleased in the same way a stray cat might, but he made sure she knew his door was always open — and that it was never wise to stray too far. he continued to test on it, insisting that every new session was another attempt at helping them, at making them better. he was a doctor, after all, someone to be trusted ; and more than that, he cared for it. and to a degree, vikram wanted it to rely on him if only for the guarantee it gave him that it would never leave. ❝ oh, but you cannot tell anyone what’s happened, can you? no, of course not, poor thing. they’d be so angry, wouldn’t they? so ashamed, your father. no, that simply won’t do. they don’t understand that it isn’t any fault of yours, that you’re perfect, odoti, they won’t — but i do. i’m the only one. i’m all you’ve got. ❞ whether it believed him or not, it remained close, decorating his office with its bizarre works of art and showing him affection the likes of which he’d never actually known but which felt innately impossible to refuse. for years, they existed like this. 

that is, until one unfortunate night when he’d had unexpected company in his lab in the form of a very particular set of employers. and while vikram had foreseen an unfortunate unfolding of events — he knew its mind well enough by now to expect it to react poorly to the sight of them the moment he heard the rumbling of familiar voices outside his door — he couldn’t have anticipated exactly how volatile it would become, nor how quickly. it attacked one of the men with all the blindly feral rage of a frightened animal ; a pet he’d not meant to keep, and here it was biting at the hand that feeds him! he could forgive it, of course, if only he could remove it from the man before it caused any serious damage. but, like an oiled snake, lithe and venomous and ready to strike, it slipped right through his arms. and then it turned on him. if he’d anticipated a knife in the chest from the creature he held dearest, he’d not known it would be so literal. 

the pain was searing, white-hot, as vivid crimson began to soak through the pristine white of a lab coat. but more than that, it felt almost karmic. hard-earned and well-deserved. he saw his sister in it for a second, in its eyes, and even with the hilt of a knife jutting from his pectoralis major, he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with it. not even when it yanked the blade free before he could protest. not truly. ❝ out! get out! ❞ he’d insisted anyway, his words wet and crackling but sharp as he stumbled toward his desk, one hand wet and sticky as he clutched it to his chest in a desperate attempt to apply pressure to the wound. not in an attempt to scold her, but to protect her. she needed to leave ; the man on the floor had not come alone and he expected that they’d be back for her sooner than later. that someone would be back for her. but his dot was a stubborn creature, and one of the last things vikram can recall is the sight of her tearful face and the sound of her apologies as she fluttered over him, desperate to help. ❝ do not cry, ❞ he managed to mumble, dizzy and hoarse, ❝ remember… remember what i said. ‘s not your fault, odoti. ❞

and that was the last time he would see it. when vikram woke in a hospital bed less than a day later,it was to a swift and unfortunate series of discoveries ; not only had she managed to puncture his lung, but in the process of calling for aid, she’d gotten herself detained. institutionalized. of course he had no intention of pressing charges, but they’d deemed his odette a danger to itself and others and they’d kept it, stolen it away from him as if it had not been thriving under his care before the incident. life went on for a few months following. vikram had never been the healthiest himself, in spite of his profession ; recovery was slow and unpleasant and the break from work it forced upon him was torture for idle hands and an overworked mind. and even when he could return to his day job in clinical pharmacology, it was several weeks still before he could return to his true passion. he’d only just begun to dip his toes back in when the outbreak hit new york.

a man with a skill set such as vikram’s was invaluable in a world as lawless and anarchic as his had become ; he’d been selected and sought out by one of his private clients, offered security and protection in exchange for his medical expertise at access to a camp of survivors stationed at the hotel elysee in midtown. seeing an opportunity and no reason to refuse, vikram remained at the hotel elysee for several months ; the men he chose to align with were a vicious lot, cruel and thieving, but their efforts meant that vikram lived in luxury. his suite was not a modest one, and he’d been gifted an additional adjoined set of rooms to transform into a makeshift infirmary of sorts. what he did behind the locked door of that second room was a business entirely his own. he thrived in this camp through the winter, all the way up until the moment of its collapse — a power struggle that ended in foolish decisions and bloodshed and rendered the hotel overrun by biters. it was by the skin of his teeth that vikram managed to escape, but he was fortunate in that he’d already had his belongings packed. he’d seen it coming. perhaps not to this degree, but he’d anticipated some sort of catastrophe all the same. 

it was not chance but a fortunate tip that led him to the wexley, received from one jeremiah rose — a contact he’d not anticipated coming across in the wilds of this new city, though he should’ve guessed the other man was resilient enough to survive. he does not know what to expect upon his arrival, but vikram has grown accustomed to a certain standard of living in the new world order, and he has every intention of gaining that back.

Special Skills: 

pharmaceutical chemistry, time management, keen attention to detail, sharp critical, analytical, and mathematical thinking, testing specimens and samples, excellent knowledge of chemistry and biology, medical training, expert knowledge of lab procedures, neuropharmacology, behavioral analysis, knowledge of immunological theory, excellent organizational practices

Connections:

odette - test subject ( affectionate )

[byenycfm]

Anora Horowitz || 34 || Meaghan Rath || Nightcrawler

Personality:

Illy just wants to fucking feel something, and in her persuit of that ever elusive high she’s found that violence is the easiest path to her end result. Watching teeth hit the pavement and feeling the sting of split skin on her knuckles was as good as an Orgasm. She’s helpless to the voice in her head; the deeply broken version of herself begging excite me excite excite me before the emptiness sets in again. 

She thinks there’s something broken inside of her but has no intentions of trying to be a better person. This was her fucked up life and she’s fully committed.

Biography:

Most of the head shrinks say Illy’s issues started in the delivery room. Moments out of the womb and the teenage mother who had just birthed her screaming for someone to take the damn thing away already. A traumatic birth, they called it. This initial stress can disrupt emotional stability and even impair the child’s ability to form secure attachments with caregivers. Anora could repeat it verbatim with how many times she’d had to listen to some asshole explain this to another asshole. Usually at a psych ward or probation or rehab or court-ordered treatment. 

Anora’s been to them all. And they all had the audacity to think they understood her. 

She was four when the Horowitz’s brought her home. They already had a 8 year son of their own and a year later they would take in the infant Aspen. By all accounts it was a privileged life. A two story house in the California valley, parents who were educated--a surgeon and a florist, and so much love && understanding that you could choke on it. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? You can only hold a smile for so long before it’s just teeth. 

The first time it happened it was an accident. Her brother had just made her so angry she couldn’t help how tight her hand had gotten around his little pet gerbil. It wasn’t until she heard the animals cries that she realized what she was doing and the foreign feeling it was stirring in her tiny body. She’s spent the rest of her life chasing that. 

She wasn’t always a terror. She could laugh at her dad’s shitty jokes and take out the trash and turn in her homework. But she could just as easily put antifreeze in her dad’s morning coffee, start a fire in the bathroom trash can, or make a fake police report against her camp counselor taking her virginity at 14. Her parents were the charitable kind--always turning the other cheek, giving her another chance, and it was that that pissed her off the most. This initial stress can disrupt emotional stability and even impair the child’s ability to form secure attachments with caregivers. They thought they understood her. 

They paid for her rehab and brought her to counseling and made her piss in a cup every week for 6 months to prove she was staying out of trouble. They took the sharp objects out of the house and locked up the cleaning supplies. 

She was 16 when she won. Illy found a way to piss them off so bad they couldn’t hide their anger this time. She slept with her brother, seduced him, manipulated him, all those big words never mind the fact he was four years older. Her parents divorced, mom stayed in California and dad took the girls with him to Jersey. 

None of what happens next matters. The years may have passed but Illy was still Illy; that voice was still in her head begging excite me excite me excite me. She went through life largely uncommitted and tried her hand at paparazzi, bartending, racing bikes. They were all just costumes. Daddy still paid the bills. 

Illy was always good with computers, and by now it’s no surprise she likes to stir controversy. The internet was a perfect vessel to scandalize, to share all those awful things that made her smile with the world. Momentum was slow but steady and by her late-twenties CЯUELWRLD had become a person of interest on the FBI’s watch list. Not all the videos she posted were hers, some had been carefully cultivated from non abandoned sources and preserved to share with her perverse audience. Others... Well, Illy has a talent of being in the right place at the right time to record the final performance. 

She’d never killed anyone until the world ended, but in those months Illy’s lost count of how many lives she’s ended. It just doesn’t matter anymore.

Special Skills: 

bar fighting, molotov crafting, videography, a high pain tolerance, motocross racing, butterfly knife tricks, lockpicking, hustling, coding, biting.

Connections:

JP Rose - High school ex.

Jonah Fisher - Ex who was really fun and should get over all her fuck-ups.

Oscar Lockmoore - FBI Loser who almost sent her to prison.

Aspen Horowitz - Bitchy little sister.

Scout Van Der Rohe - Ex who should really give her another chance considering how limited options are now.