WAR MACHINE

Marlow C. Maskwa was born in a very small town in Manitoba, Canada. Beginning in their early years their family life was rocky at best, and not long afterwards, when Marlow was about five, did their parents divorce. The two worked best as friends, they had decided, and their relationship remained cordial; though the constant butting heads that had been a staple of their relationship at the time coloured many of their future interactions. Marlow and their mother remained in Manitoba while their father returned to his childhood home of Haida Gwaii; while Marlow attended school in Manitoba during the academic year, they spent their summers in Haida Gwaii with their father, chaperoned by their paternal aunt. Their relationships with their parents they often describe as "complex", as despite their many flaws and their now-lack of contact with them, for very different reasons... they still loved them a lot.

Marlow was known as a rather prodigious student, being incredibly intelligent and very passionate about learning; however, while given the opportunity numerous times to skip grades, they refused on the grounds that they wished to remain on equal - relatively speaking - footing with other students, perhaps as to not draw their ire. Around eighth grade, Marlow's mother departed from small-town Manitoba, moving their small family of two to the continental U.S. in order to pursue the advancement of her career. Marlow continued to visit their father in the summertime throughout the years, even post-moving. In this unstable transitional period, Marlow met Sebastian - both of them in the same grade - and ended up becoming friends. Relatively close friends, too, but not best friends, at least in Marlow's eyes - given the fact that, to be fair, they were never really sure about their friendship status with anyone. They generally had few friends, something they were okay with, even if they often felt lonely; they didn't plan on living very long anyway, as they had decided early in middle school, thanks to their generally poor mental health, among a myriad of other things.

Their issues with relationships were compounded by their parents' relationship struggles, as well as the fact that, in general, their parents were both strange, in their own ways. During their summers up in Haida Gwaii, Marlow's father often espoused the virtue of independence, and how they didn't really need anyone except themselves (this opinion of his softened in later years, but by that point, the damage was done). He was a damn good teacher at a lot of practical skills, though. Their mother, on the other hand, was a bit of a volatile woman, switching between a kind and nurturing role model and a raging bull of a human being at the drop of a hat, being incredibly argumentative and unwilling to really hear out their child, though frequently bemoaning their isolation from their peers.

Marlow passed through the school system with few issues, aside from a few disciplinary incidents here and there, typically involving physical conflict with other students. However, these grew increasingly infrequent as they matured and instead turned to verbal confrontation to settle their scores; though one common thread throughout all their school years was the fact that they were pretty well known as being an incredibly eristic individual, which may explain their relative isolation from their peers. Marlow was a good student, if not slightly neurotic and quick to stress or outright anger - though in becoming the silent type they would typically sit and stew on their emotions rather than make them explicitly known. Post-high school they didn't really keep any of their friends, as the few they had either moved away, or explicitly moved on, or even simply fell out of contact with Marlow for one reason or another, with some more obvious and marked by spectacle than others.

They obtained their degree in zoology without further incident or much notice in general, the fervor of their teen years burning off to a quiet disdain for life and the system beneath their skin, and only their mother and father attended their graduation ceremony. Marlow was soon noticed and considered a person of interest by Urbanshade officials for their frequent and often heated online arguments and debunkings of zoological misinformation as well as their recreational habit of publishing incredibly detailed and well-backed research papers at their relatively young age out of sheer love of the subject. They particularly interested themselves in the field of genetics — and was quickly brought into the fold, being assigned to Project "Basilisk". Marlow was, among other things, afforded a deal that included major student debt relief (among other forms of debt relief, and general help) as well as the "Work opportunity of a lifetime" in apparent aid of their goal of working as a geneticist. They soon became one of the Hadal Division's most valuable employees, rising through the ranks at an expedited rate thanks to their work ethic and invaluable aid on "Basilisk"... and a fair amount of meddling and favouritism, among other things, by the project lead - Dr. [REDACTED].

Marlow was never stupid, and never has been - they figured something was up from the moment they got down to the super-secret, highly-guarded base in the middle of nowhere; to this day, they aren't really sure what made them stay, but part of it was the feeling that they were already in too deep and thus they had to rationalize to themself some reason to stay. They landed on admitting that the system crushed everyone, at some point, even if it felt wrong and very much against their deepest morals to do so - and so, the guilt that would continue to plague them from then on had its seed planted in Marlow's mind. They fell into a rhythm while working on Project "Basilisk"; though its true nature was obfuscated from them, they figured it was nothing good - but they were in too deep now, they thought, and their apathy at the thought of living and the apparent futility of resisting in the cruel world in which they lived only grew every day.

At some point, they were given research access to high-level documents at the facility, though many were still at least partially redacted when presented to them. Shortly after this became the case, they ended up stumbling across Sebastian's file by accident, which was a shock that made their blood run all but cold - his case had been highly publicized and was something they'd followed religiously in its time, thanks to their own personal connection to the accused, and he had been exonerated post-death, so to find out that not only was he alive down in this place the entire time but had been used as a human lab-rat for genetic experimentation as a result of his 'undesirable' status was... horrifying, to say the least.

Gathering the nerve, they made the decision to reconnect with their former friend; their first meeting was awkward, to say the least, and not particularly pleasant, with Sebastian obviously holding a lot of anger towards Urbanshade employees in general, let alone one with whom he had some pretty complicated history with for his own reasons. Marlow, however, was not discouraged - they found that the more they tried to re-form a personal connection to someone so deeply victimized by this place, the more this fact spurred them to consider action, a kind of hope for change coming back to them which they hadn't properly felt or even entertained the thought of in years. Eventually, the two were able to eke out some sort of friendship - or working relationship - and Marlow was a frequent visitor of his, all under the guise of a particular interest in researching him to further their genetic knowledge.

The true nature of their burgeoning friendship was unbeknownst to their higher-ups, but on a surface level, it didn't go unnoticed - some people, like the researcher [REDACTED], from the Basilisk team. She had formerly been on the team working on the project under which Sebastian was a test subject, and expressed worry at their frequent contact. [REDACTED] was concerned in particular with Marlow's health and safety, since Sebastian - Z-13, as she noted - was known to be volatile post-mutation and experimentation, frequently lashing out at researchers if pushed too far and generally displaying a disdain for employees of Urbanshade. Marlow was adamant that they knew what they were doing, and that they were well aware of the risks in what they were doing, telling their co-worker that they appreciated the care either way. Incidents like these would continue to occur, though Marlow never strayed from their conviction.

In time, Marlow and Sebastian got to scheming - their disillusionment finally reaching a fever pitch, Marlow was finally convinced to start gathering documents and intel on Urbanshade in order to leak it to the public as a whistleblower, no longer seeing fit to stay silent in the face of the cruelty they'd come to find out from the company. This plan worked well, at first - too well, in fact, and after quite a while spent getting everything together, preparing to release it... they were caught at the last minute and promptly ejected from the Basilisk project, quickly being demoted to LR-P status to be used as human fodder much the same way hundreds of others had been before them and losing contact with Sebastian once more in the process. Things became a dismal blur from there once more, their grand attempt at changing something for the better for once crushed in an instant... until, finally, "Basilisk" was ready for testing and in a heartbeat they offered themselves up for the project, an endeavour for which Dr. [REDACTED] was quick to advocate for them as he still held a great deal of fondness for the young scientist.

Finally in control of what they told Urbanshade employees was their "life's work"... Marlow yet again felt into a rhythm, their will to resist ebbing away with each passing day post-surgery - in time, they too were torn apart, and put back together, mechanically enhanced with all sorts of things - from improved speech synthesis to dopamine-systems rewarding kills, all of which were tested vigorously though certainly not all of them were they told about. Their spirit was broken, their body was put to sleep when not being tested in a highly controlled environment - and Marlow wasn't even yet aware of the true strength of this body, either - there was nothing to do but acquiesce. That was how they lived their life for a long time, nearly four years, in fact - until the day of the Blacksite Lockdown arrived. Coming around from sedation and back to reality from the world they'd begun to spin inside their mind was always a particularly painful endeavour, but something about this time, even when they were too groggy to tell, was different.

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