Skill Specialties:
Computers (Information Security), Firearms (Handguns), Athletics (Sprinting)
Assets:
High-performance computer (Custom-made; +2 (?)), broadband Internet access (+1), athletic shoes (Reeboks; +1)
Background:
Charlene Tanner, preferably Charlie, is an information security specialist. She has a sleek runner’s frame, obviously built for speed more than anything else, and this, combined with a pair of light amber eyes, long blonde hair, a penchant for laziness, and a similarity to the name she prefers to go by has earned her the nickname of ‘Cheetah’ among her friends and family. Charlie was and still is delighted with the nickname, and, though generally unconcerned with fashion of any sort, has filled her relatively meager wardrobe with a large number of brown/yellow clothing spotted with black as a result. She is moderately attractive, with slightly tanned skin, long legs, small breasts, and a bright, though oddly secretive smile.
Charlie grew up as a military brat, moving from place to place and school to school until her father retired, finally letting them settle down permanently in a city called Modesto, California. Belonging to the standard American nuclear family, with a quietly-supportive stay-at-home mother, a loving, if domineering, ex-Marine father, and two burly twin brothers with a penchant for climbing things, Charlie lacked for little in her life. She managed to coast along grade school through sheer intellect, and even breezed by college at MIT with minimal effort. She had few friends throughout her childhood, mostly by choice, and remained largely a loner even as she moved into adulthood, relying on cunning and her natural good looks rather than social skills to get people to do what she wanted on those rare occasions she was forced to rely on others.
When she graduated, Charlie applied for a job with a security firm as a tech specialist, and spent several years setting up cameras and secure computer networks, as well as indulging in a little covert hacking, for the firm. She eventually left in order to start up her own security programming company with two friends and former classmates: Aurel Richthofen, a rail-thin German who dropped out of medical school in Germany to follow his American girlfriend back to her home country and later chose to pursue a programming career instead, and Anna “Annie Oakley” Yarborough, a sunglasses-wearing sports fanatic who spends many of her weekends whitewater rafting and cliff diving with a group of like-minded adrenaline junkies and most of her other weekends at a shooting range or paintball arena. The company enjoyed moderate success, allowing Charlie to live comfortably in the middle class region of society.
A few weeks ago, just shy of twenty-six years of age, Charlie saved enough money to move out of the apartment she shared with Aurel and Annie and into a small house of her own. Though she loved them just as much as she loved her blood family, she was relieved to finally have a little privacy. So, to celebrate the move (and ostensibly her coming birthday), she treated herself and her two friends to a night at a local nightclub. For a few hours she let herself go, drinking, dancing, and just having fun. Then, as she moved to leave the dance floor for another drink, an odd feeling raced down her back. It wasn’t a new thing, this odd prickling of her spine (she’d felt it many times during her childhood, and was told by her father with a chuckle, “Someone must’ve walked over your grave!”), and she dismissed it- or she would’ve, had her eyes not locked on a pair of slitted, unnaturally violet eyes at the opposite end of the floor just moments later.
A wave of sheer, inexplicable terror drowned her in ice, freezing her limbs and rendering her unable to move. All she could do was stare into those eyes, held down by the hands of fear and unable to do anything but wait to be devoured. Then, the eyes turned away, and instead of the terrible monster Charlie had expected to see, she saw the back of a raven-haired head, attached to the body of a curvy, obviously well-endowed woman. Any other time Charlie may have been tempted to try for a tumble based on the rear view alone, but the programmer was deeply shaken by the experience. Instead, she sought out her two friends and asked, nearly begging, if they could leave. Recognizing her distress, the two plied her with concerned questions, but Charlie refused to answer, merely repeating her weak, white-faced pleas to go home.
Finally, they agreed, and Aurel (relatively sober compared to the other two) drove them all home. Charlie, drunk and exhausted beyond all measure, gratefully collapsed in bed and passed out immediately. The next morning, when she woke up, Charlie had forgotten all about the incident, too preoccupied with the pounding in her head and the buzzing in her ears. What she didn’t know at the time was that the buzzing was not a result of her drinking. As she haggardly went on with her morning routine, it slowly grew louder, until it grew loud enough for her to realize that it wasn’t merely noise in her ear, but a voice, muttering lowly under its breath, the words garbled and meaningless to her untrained ears, yet less sounds than the shape of sounds, less words than the way the lips moved as they were spoken. It grew louder and louder in a fell crescendo, until it peaked in a deafening shout that had her curled up on the floor of her shower, hands clapped futilely over bleeding ears and mouth open in a silent scream of pain.
After a few moments, Charlie recovered enough to pick herself back up. Afraid that what she had experienced was a schizophrenic hallucination, being predisposed to the mental disorder as a result of family history on her mother’s side, she immediately scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist. Upon describing her symptoms, the psychiatrist told her that they didn’t match the description of schizophrenia, but offered to prescribe her medication if the symptoms persisted for more than a month. Still unsettled but a little more reassured, Charlie went home and moved on with her daily life.
It has now been three weeks, and the symptoms have, in fact, persisted. While it didn’t happen every day, the muttering voice came back several times a week, each time ending in Charlie being reduced to a quivering wreck curled up on the floor for at least fifteen minutes. Being self-employed made it easier to hide her episodes from friends and family, though she has been unable to escape her weekly outings with Aurel and Annie, and was forced to leave several times, abruptly and with flimsy excuses, as soon as she heard the buzzing begin. Once, Charlie was unlucky enough to have it happen twice in one day, though that fortunately had been on a Tuesday, when she usually stayed at home anyway.
Not only that, but Charlie has slowly become convinced that she’s being watched. She walks down a street and men dressed in trenchcoats, or hoodies, or some other concealing clothing follow her- always in pairs, always disappearing just a block or two away from her destination. She stands at the checkout counter in a grocery store and the clerk will stare at her strangely- not in the way she’s used to, but in a way that seems almost predatory. Even the internet isn’t safe- usernames she’s never seen before have begun to pop up at every site she visits regularly, and attempting an IP trace reveals their addresses to be fake. Charlie was initially afraid that she was schizophrenic, but is now genuinely convinced there's a target drawn on her back- she’s just not sure what’s being aimed at her. While not quite to the point of paranoia yet, the programmer is suspicious of every stranger that passes by, carefully scrutinizing their lips for any sign of the muttering voice that in just three weeks has practically taken over her life.
Other Information:
Charlie learned how to handle guns (and knives) from her father, but didn’t learn how to really shoot until she met Anna, whose skill with guns and penchant for Oakley sunglasses led Charlie to give her the nickname ‘Annie Oakley’.
Charlie is single, and in fact has never actually been in a relationship that lasted longer than an hour at most. She came to the realization that she was bisexual sometime around her junior year of high school, but wasn’t particularly affected by the revelation, as she had never been interested in the idea of a long-term relationship anyway. The greatest effect it has had on her life so far is that it doubled her pool of eye candy and widened her choice of potential one-night-stands, in the rare few cases she’s been in the mood for one. However, Charlie is careful not to mention anything about her sexuality to her father, who has casually expressed prejudice against homosexuals throughout her life. In fact, she chose MIT mostly because it was at the exact opposite side of the country- the only way she’d be able to experiment with her sexuality safely. |
