Biography:
For anyone unlucky enough to be born on Lithios, life is a dull monotony of advertisements and blinding lights. Everyone in Ethos city are subject to ads that recognize them and use their holonet browsing history to target them specifically. It was the most blatant way to say “You are being watched. Always.” Some wind up accepting the fact that privacy is a mere fantasy, never to be attained. Others, however, go to great lengths to experience the feeling of adrenaline and endorphins running through their veins. That was the case with Maxine Blair. From around the age of seventeen, she found herself always sneaking out of the high-income housing her parents owned to see the slums. It was a dangerous thing to do, since there would be nobody to help her should she find herself in a bind. That was the point. Slowly but surely, Max began to spend more and more time in the slums, meeting and befriending people of very shady persuasions. One such person was a boy about her age by the name of Jay Quinn. They became fast friends, and after a few adventures together, Max found herself falling for the boy. Maybe the feeling was mutual, but regardless they both became looser and more relaxed when talking to each other. Max revealed that she was actually from Downtown, and part of a somewhat wealthy family, and Jay in turn told her that he was involved in a gang. It wasn’t bad though, he’d said; they had taken him in very young and took care of him. Max didn’t care anyway; she told herself that she’d had more fun experiences in those past few weeks than she had her entire life.
The two continued to meet more and more often, with Jay teaching Max some skills he’d learned here and there, and Max talking about what it was like in the Downtown area. Though she insisted it wasn’t much, Jay always seemed starry-eyed by the way she described the millions of lights and sounds that he could only see hints of in the night sky. So much was his wonder that Max offered to sneak him out of the slums so he could see for himself. When he first laid eyes on the city, Jay was awestruck. He’d never seen so much life. Because he’d never been registered to the network that pumps the citizens of endless advertisements, he was seeing the city in its full splendor, no filters to dull it down. Max showed him some of her favorite spots to hang around; the merchant’s district, which sold almost anything you could think of from across the galaxy; the senate tower (she didn’t know what all happened inside, but it looked pretty at least), and lastly, her home. While she did always sneak out to be with Jay in the slums, she admitted she couldn’t ask for a better family. Her mom, dad, and older brother did their best to show her that she was loved, and their light to her shone brighter than anything else in Ethos city. A couple of weeks later, the two were up to their normal shenanigans, this time up in the downtown area, when they heard sirens. Their attention directed at the sounds, Max realized they were headed in the same direction as her family’s apartment complex. Sure, it was just a coincidence, she ran off to check anyway. To her horror, it was in fact her door that had officers and medical personnel crowded around it. Pushing her way past the small crowd that had gathered around the complex, she ran over to one of the officers, frantically asking what was going on. The apparent story was that her family had been robbed and shot down, and that the police had been specifically looking for her as a potential suspect. It turned out that her secret escapades to the slums weren’t quite so secret. As she was led to one of many police transports, she saw Jay in the crowd, his face unreadable.
Down at the station, she was asked a series of questions, all of which she had no problem answering, until she was shown a picture of Jay. He had been seen sneaking around the area multiple times, possibly scouting for an easy way in. She admitted she knew him, and from there was quickly placed into a juvenile detention center. It was then that she realized how corrupt the world could be. Because there were no other witnesses to the crime, and because of her connection to Jay, she was held responsible for her family’s death was given a sentence of six years in prison. Once she turned eighteen, she was transferred to the main prison on the moon Cyras to serve out the rest of her sentence.
Max knew only one thing in her heart: Jay was to blame for the death of her family. He may not have pulled the trigger, but she’d shown him where she lived, and he must have shown his stupid gang. She would spend the next five years of her life preparing herself to face the bastard and kill him. Whatever horrors she faced while in that cage would only serve to make her stronger, and that they did. With one goal in her mind, for five years she persevered. For five years she sharpened herself into a weapon. Those five years didn’t last long.
At the age of twenty-three, Maxine Blair was released from Cyras prison. Trashing the belongings that had been taken away from her six years prior, she marched straight into the slums with one name on her lips: Jay Quinn. Within hours, the slums were buzzing with activity. Max was shaking down every new lead that could possibly lead her to the little slime that had killed her family. It took a little longer than expected, but she had succeeded in tracking down her man. He had been huddled up in a small dwelling, shabby even by slums standards. Nearly kicking down the door, she stood face to face at last with the source of her hatred… and refused to believe it was him. Staring her in the face was a pitiful skeleton of a man, his eyes sunken, but somehow remorseful. For just a few minutes, she allowed Jay to explain himself. According to him, the gang he had been in knew about them from the start and had him keep them updated on whatever she told him. When it turned out she was from a decently wealthy family, they had him find out where she lived so that they could steal off her family. That was supposed to be all, but her father, the proud man that he was, refused to let it happen. He jumped at the gang members, and they shot him down, as well as he mother and brother so there were no witnesses. Jay had left the gang shortly after, but not before getting the beating of his life. He hated himself for what happened, he had said. How could Max kill him now, looking so weak, and pitiful, and full of shame? She couldn’t bring herself to do it, even when he offered himself to her. Instead, she walked out on him, telling him that if she ever saw him again, she would kill him, right then and there, so not to show his face in Ethos City ever again.
Max didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d spent all that time preparing herself for some climax that she knew she would relish, but now felt herself even emptier than before. She did know one thing: She was not the same girl she was six years ago. That in mind, she made a promise to herself to never use her given name again. Maxine Blair was dead. She died along with her family. Her name was Sonnie Rain.