Charlotte St. Claire

Background

Charlotte is the only daughter to Lucas and Cecilia St. Claire, a wealthy family residing in western Washington. From an early age, she participated in gymnastics and performed well enough in competitions to earn a spot on the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Women's Gymnastics team at 16. She retired a couple years later, but continued physical training and inadvertently became a skilled parkour traceur. Unbeknownst to anyone outside of the family, Charlotte also possessed a special gift.

Though she lived a privileged life, Charlotte had a terribly lonesome childhood. Her father was the high-powered head of a giant pharmaceutical corporation and remained at the office late into the night. Her mother was frequently several time zones away for she traveled around the world as a leading fashion designer. Charlotte ended up being raised mainly by a nanny, the household staff, coaches, and tutors.

When the Morrow Project was still in its infancy, Lucas was approached by Bruce Edwin Morrow to help fund the project. After a lengthy deliberation, he agreed to invest under one condition: Charlotte was to be one of the participants of the project.

Training Journal

At Dad's insistance, I have signed up to be a participant of the Morrow Project where I was assigned to Recon Team: RTH. We have been undergoing training for several weeks. My team is made up of five other people; Steve Wilson, Dave Monroe, Amir Rosenblatt, Marcus Meyerbos, and Pi Heinzen. In the beginning, I was not taken very seriously at all. In fact, I caught several looks of disdain. They must have thought that the only reason why I was there was because of Dad and that I would bring the team down. Mom taught me early on that the way you win people over is to show, not tell, so I seized my chance during an urban recon mission.

We were surveying the area looking for our target amidst several tall buildings blocking our view. I hung back towards the rear of the group and climbed up a wall to the roof of one of the buildings. I kept up with the team hopping from one roof top to another and could clearly see the target from my vantage point. When the team finally noticed I was gone, I called down to them saying that we were headed in the right direction and that our target was about three blocks north. I admit that their looks of confusion as to how and when I got to where I was was pretty amusing. Marcus stepped forward and shouted for me to come down and to "leave the scouting to the adults." I shrugged with a smile and leapt off the edge of the building. With a few quick maneuvers I honed from parkour, I bounced in between two buildings to make my way down safely. Marcus was a bit dumbfounded, but after regaining is composure, he gave a slight nod and said, "you're not bad."

Ever since then, the team treated me like an equal.

One night close to the end of our training, Pi and I took a breather from our studies and spent the night at a local pub. The food was surprisingly good there and it was crowded. Through the noise and the haze, I felt tensions slowly building from the pool table in the back. Given that Pi didn't know of my ESP, no one outside of the family does, I kept a calm exterior and hoped that it would dissipate. When the internal dialogue of one of the players kept repeating that he was going to bash his opponent's head in, I grabbed Pi by the arm and hastily told her that we'd better go. She was confused, but as soon as she was about to protest, the long brewing fight broke out.

When we were out of the pub safely, she asked me how I knew what was going to happen. I told her that I'd been studying psychology for a long time and became really good at reading people... which wasn't too far from the truth. She didn't need to know just how I read people.

Journal

Originally I had intended to keep a detailed account of everything in this journal when I was put in stasis as part of the Morrow Project. Seeing as how it looks like we have overslept by several decades, I needed to get my head straight before settling down to write.

A lot has happened over the last few days.

When I awoke and the hibernation sickness started to fade, I knew something was wrong for it looked like the power in the bolthole was very low and there was earth and vegetation everywhere. It looked like the place had been ransacked. Half the team had perished, but the other two survivors Marcus and Pi, were taking stock of what survived the raid and were making preparations to leave the bolthole. Something obviously went wrong, but there was nothing we could do from here anymore.

When we got out above ground, some trees that were planted as a marker back in 1996 were far more developed than four years. Marcus estimated they were 175 years old or so. I did not want to believe what I was hearing and admit to being in a slight state of denial.