Difference between revisions of "Red Angel"

Angie was often unable to spend a lot of time outside of her home without help and her few friends were outcasts and oddballs. Throughout most of her young life she was bitter sarcastic and profoundly anti-social to anyone outside her personal circle or family. Late in her teens she mellowed a bit as her friends grew up and moved away. In addition her younger sister took to Angie and looked up to her. Advised by her other siblings; she tried to improve to be a better example to Gail.

The patients in the program were moved to an out of the way medical facility near Vibora Bay. For a year Angie and hundreds over others were processed into the program and some were tested by the program. Angie met, befriended and eventually fell for an older youth, Peter. The range of conditions being tested in the program was shocking to Angie and Peter. She was there for an obvious physical condition as were most of the others. A few like Peter were seeking a more subtle for of assistance.

The first hint that something might be amiss was only noticed by Angie in hindsight. After a year most of the patients were either dismissed from the program or moved to a lower facility called Intensive Care. Once this happened, visits from outsiders for the patients stopped. Visits occurred where the patient would go to a nearby facility to meet family or call them. Of course for the people dismissed, no visits were necessary. For people in Intensive Care it made less sense. Patients in Intensive Care rarely visited the other patients above either. They seemed drugged but not shockingly so, at least to Angie.

As the number of patients not in the lower facility dwindled Angie wondered if she would be dismissed or sent below. In the end she was chosen and never saw the world the same way again. Even in interviews with UNTIL for application to work with them long afterwards she is very closed mouthed about this period in her life. What she described was a year long set of experiments, tests and eventually more intensive physical alterations.

In short she was dissembled, while live and conscious, only medicated so far as needed to keep her alive. At some point the leader of the medical project, who called herself Dr M, asked what Angie wanted. Angie was unpleasantly flippant and said, "If I'm wishing? I want the grace and beauty of an angel" she more calmly tried to explain that she'd be happy to walk and be healthy in general but the good doctor wasn't listening anymore and was lost in thought. If Dr M had planned to use this idea prior to asking her, she doesn't know. In either case several attempts were made to remake Angie into a mockery of a celestial.

In the gaps between the tortuous procedures and rebuilds of her body the test subjects were held in prison deep below the facility. She was one among hundreds of subject. In this level Dr M's minions were heavily converted people who'd been 'gifted' in a less intensive manner than Angie. Little drips of information would slip and the enhanced senses she'd been granted let her know two things. Most of the people here felt grateful or subsumed in the process drawn into a cult like following of the doctor. She was not alone, her friend Peter was here and he was among a smaller group who were not willing to follow the doctor. Tension between the followers, the people being converted and those resisting the cult like atmosphere began to rise as the facility below reach capacity. External events were to set this potential powder keg alight.

The fact that thousands of people had been reported as missing from all over the US in the years that Dr M's facility was recruiting and operating wasn't in and of itself unusual. The fact that a few hundred of them could be traced to a medical facility near Vibora Bay came to the attention of a few heroes in the area. The fact that many of them reported back to their relatives, loved ones and friends in somewhat cryptic methods raised eyebrows. The final straw was an incident in Millennium City where a former patient who looked altogether normal but had cut all ties with family after their treatment went berserk and killed three people. What raised some alarm was how they turned into a regenerating psuedo demon. A few heroes tried to connect the dots and eventually led them to what one patient would be called "The Blender".

For Angie, her friend and other dissidents were unaware of why, but a sudden sense of urgency was palatable in the facility. Dr M had half evacuated the facility when the heroes finally arrived. In the chaos that resulted, the dissidents escaped. In the UNTIL interview Angie described it as fighting through a mile of blood. While she was unwilling to detail the events reports from authorities who investigated later filled in the gaps. The underground prison of the facility had all of the doors opened by sabotage. The bodies of dozens of people whose 'conversions' were clearly unfinished as well as the bodies of some of Dr M's soldiers showed sighs of brutal, bloody and close quarters fighting and in some cases savage postmortem attacks.

Angie and the handful of dissidents who survived escaped into the wilds outside of the facility. Most of them broke into small groups and headed out separately. The heroes who had raided Dr M's den of horrors rescued only two dozen of the people still in the upper level of the facility. The few staff and minions who didn't die to escape with their mistress were processed by the justice system and the superhuman ones were moved to Stronghold. None were able to give details on the people who were still missing or followed of their own free will. Angie and her friend Penny traveled to Vibora Bay and attmepted to fit in.

Vibora Bay became home to Angie for the next few years. She communicated with her family by phone and my email often but declined to see them on multiple occasions. Her excuse was dodging the scandal of the "Blender of Dr M" as the news put it. By her own admission she this was where a consistent drinking habit and other questionable behaviors emerged. Her erratic behavior and other personal issues caused the end of her relationship with Penny, who then moved to Millennium city. For the most part Angie kept a low profile in the superhuman world and almost never got involved in the dark and sordid matters in Vibora itself.

In her time in Vibora Bay Angie has worked at the Bayou Queen as a waitress, croupier, bartender.