(Player-Facing Reference; mostly intended for Donovan)
Talia Kestrel is fifteen years old.
She is not a sidekick. She is not comic relief. She is not a future superhero waiting to hatch.
She is human—which, in this world, makes her dangerous in a very specific way.
Talia has known Dr. Dark longer than the war.
She met him when she was eight, back when launch pads felt like playgrounds and science still meant progress instead of survival. She was already brilliant then—not in a flashy way, but in the relentless, obsessive way that recognizes patterns before it knows the words for them.
Dr. Dark didn’t adopt her as a project. She attached herself to him.
She challenged him. Interrupted him. Demanded explanations. Kept up more often than she should have been able to. Over time, he became a constant in her life—a presence tied to curiosity, encouragement, and the idea that understanding the universe was something you did, not something you waited for permission to do.
When the invasion came, that continuity shattered.
Her father died in orbit. Her mother died on the ground. Dr. Dark survived—and got Talia out.
From Talia’s perspective, he isn’t just her guardian. He is the last intact thread from the world that made sense.
They live small. Too small.
Dr. Dark doesn’t sleep. Talia does—but not well. She spends most days on the bed, wrapped in blankets, watching TerraFlix like it’s a window into a world that remembers how to be normal.