Color Readings

[Brittany]

The character was named Cornelius Grey. His last name was originally Shepard, but then several movies/video games came out with characters whose last name was Shepard, so I changed it. He was raised in a military family and became a career military man himself, eventually making it into the Navy Seals. He was a very "by the book" sort of person, somewhat rigid in his thinking and lifestyle. Then he met a woman and fell hopelessly in love with her, and all his plans changed. They got a little house out in the country and were happy, but she couldn't have children. She eventually convinced him to adopt, and then got attached to a troubled 12-year-old girl she found through a foster program. Cornelius (who always just went by Grey) wanted to get a baby instead but his wife was so insistent he eventually relented.

The little girl had a lot of behavioral problems and would throw violent tantrums and it stressed Grey out a lot. He started spending more and more time at work, distancing himself from his family. Along with the tantrums, weird things started happening in the Grey house. Whenever the girl got upset pictures would fall off the wall and the lights would flicker. Beyond being stressed, Grey was scared, and he didn't know what to do about it.

One day he came home to find his daughter sitting in the front yard sobbing. When she saw him she told him "I didn't mean to!" and then started crying too hard to say anything else. Grey ran inside to find his wife dead on the floor. There were no marks on her body, and the doctors couldn't figure out what had happened. It was as if the life had just slipped out of her. Grey went into something of a vegetative state after that. He stopped eating and talking, his daughter was taken away, and he eventually wound up in a mental institution.

Eventually a mysterious man visited him and told him that his wife had died because his daughter had dangerously powerful psychic abilities. There were children popping up all over the world with these abilities, the man told him, and he belonged to an organization dedicated to tracking them down. Normally they would be glad to let a loose end like Grey rot out of public sight, but due to his impeccable service record, they wanted to recruit him. So Grey became a part of a secret government branch that called themselves ARTEMIS. (Originally they were called ORION, then I started reading Ra and decided to change it.)

Grey became one of their best field agents. He would track down the people who displayed unstable abilities and bring them into custody. Often the children were locked in underground facilities and experimented upon to the point that they died, but he had become too dead inside to feel any sympathy. Every time he looked at one of these children he just saw his wife's dead face. His job and a steady consumption of alcohol was how he numbed out the pain of his loss, and the pain of realizing that if he had been a better father and been there for his family when they needed him, his wife would probably still be alive.

He saw his daughter one last time, in the depths of an underground lab. By that point her mind had been bent to the point that she didn't recognize him, and was barely capable of sentient thought at all. He left her without shedding a single tear, but after that moment his mood became even darker and he withdrew even more from the public. His squad mates nicknamed him Raccoon because of the dark circles under his eyes- the result of years of stress and nightmares.

He was 52 when he got put on Marion's case- a grizzled old veteran with not much left to live for. Marion was a teenage girl who had supposedly been hit by a car without getting a scratch. Eventually it was deduced that she had run in front of the car in an attempt to flee the scene of her senior prom, where the lifeless body of one of her classmates had been found in the bathroom. ARTEMIS suspected Marion displayed similar powers as Grey's daughter. By the time he showed up at the hospital she had been taken to, the staff were freaking out about the lights flickering and objects moving around on their own. As soon as he saw her, Grey was instantly reminded of his daughter. It took everything he had to not have an emotional breakdown on the spot, but he held together and prepared to escort her to an ARTEMIS facility while some of his co-workers made up acceptable lies to tell her family and friends gathered in the waiting room.

Grey saw Marion dropped off and returned to his mediocre life, but strange things began happening to him. Every time he went out in public he was sure he would hear voices. He was sure people were talking to him, only to find out their mouths were closed. Eventually he realized he was hearing their thoughts. In truth, beyond her psychic powers, Marion possessed a very special ability. She unlocked the hidden abilities of those she came in contact with. Grey had had great power in himself all along yet never known it. Yet he was terrified of what would be done to him if ARTEMIS found out he'd become psychic, and for the first time in a long time his conscience was burdened by what he was doing. How could he ignore the suffering of the children he put away when he was being forced to walk in their shoes?

Eventually he couldn't take it anymore and plotted a way to help Marion and the other children in her facility escape. Part of his plan backfired, and he stayed behind to sacrifice himself while they escaped into the woods. No one is sure what happened, but as soon as Marion and the others were out of the facility, the entire place blew up, the explosion shaking the ground for miles. It is assumed that Grey was killed in this event, though who knows how far his abilities truly developed. He very well could have survived.