Primary Vera

VERA | EARLY 20S/CHRONOLOGICALLY 1-6 | PROBABLY A GEMINI | SHE/HER | NEK0 | STUDENT | REMEDIAL/COLLEGE |

Unlike the standard NEK0, Vera was not made to be a child or teenager, she still looks fairly young for an adult, maybe somewhere in her early 20’s. Vera stands at 5’6, built to be toned and curvy. She has pale olive skin with no notable scars or blemishes. Vera has red eyes with slit pupils and a particularly sharp quality to them. Besides her eyes and the piercings on her cheeks, her face has otherwise round with soft, non-threatening features.

Her dark green hair is worn in two loose braids with two pointed buns giving off the impression of horns or cat ears. Underneath the buns are her actual cat ears. As a custom model, her ears and tail do not match her hair color, they are instead white with a calico pattern. Vera’s taste for the finer things in life is very much apparent in her clothing. She wears upscale and tailored clothes that hinge on the more revealing side. .

Vera can be summed up as just misguidedly evil. Built specifically to rat out other NEK0s, it would be counterproductive for Vera to develop much of a proper conscience. Vera is intensely competitive, her only goal was self preservation and that meant outlasting and outranking the rest of the prototypes. Sabotage and manipulation are not beneath her, she quite enjoys it and it’s the reason she’s still standing. Like any NEK0, she was still designed to please, but in this case, that’s solely reserved to those she perceives to be in high positions of power. What sets her apart from the rest is that she lacks the vulnerability to persuasion without a special phrase, which she gets quite a kick out of using against other NEK0s. Most of what she does is out of her own free (albeit not developed) will, Vera just wants to own more things.

At a first glance, Vera actually seems kind of sweet, and maybe under different circumstances, she probably would be a half decent person. Her polite facade cracks pretty easily, but she’s still fun at parties. She’s materialistic, but also legitimately knowledgeable and passionate about what she invests in, whether it’s fashion, guns, instruments, or the stock market. Vera’s clueless about the world outside of the lab, much more naive than she lets on and struggles to understand the motivations of others if it’s beyond survival or climbing ranks. She comes off as insensitive, partially because she’s a bitch, but also she genuinely does not know better. While what very limited experiences of life she’s had have shaped her into a questionable person, Vera’s not entirely a lost cause.

Tattle-Tale: Vera has incredible control over her vocal cords, allowing her to mimic sounds and voices with enough practice. In addition, her memory has been enhanced with specialized technology that allows her to "save" dialogue that she hears another person speaking. She can have a single recording at a time and can only record about three minutes of it. While she has a recording stored in her brain, Vera can 'replay' it, repeating the recorded dialogue verbatim and perfectly mimicking the voices that had spoken the words originally.

Polyglot: Vera understands and can speak all human languages known in the narrow reality

Tell Me Something I Don't Know: Vera can learn many things 6 times faster than a human would, quickly picking up on new concepts and easily remembering them. However, this only applies what she learns through audio, whether it is someone telling her, a recording, a piece of music, etc. She learns through visual information at the same rate, if not slightly worse than the average human.

Enhanced Endurance: It is very difficult to tire out Vera. She has 3 times the endurance and stamina of a physically fit human. Vera can also stay awake indefinitely, and she requires very little nutrition every day, but if she wants, can eat or sleep more.

Eavesdropper: Vera has a very keen sense of hearing, about twice as sensitive compared than the average human and able to pick up on ultra sounds. She has the ability to filter out unwanted noise to focus on a just what one to three person are saying in a noisy room. Her range for this ability is about twenty feet, but is not limited by barriers such as walls as long as they are capable of transmitting sound, aka not soundproof. The quieter and further away the targets are, the more difficult it is for her to pick up on what they are saying, for instance someone quietly whispering in another room fifteen feet away would be pretty faint.

Unaging: Vera does not physically age. She still might die of old age eventually, though one usually can't be certain of when this will happen.

Password Protected: Unlike other NEK0s, she is not vulnerable to persuasion. She is only compelled to take orders from those who know a specific string of words and numbers from several different languages. Once the phrase is spoken to her, she has an almost inescapable compulsion to do as they command.

Feline Diet: Vera's diet is about as limited as a cat's would be. Caffeine, chocolate, and many types of spices can make her very sick, as can most processed foods.

It was inevitable that as NEK0s became more widespread, the more likely there would be a few odd cases of runaways, and that’s why Vera’s project was created. Her model began development in 2014 alongside NEK02. Throughout the years, the design, name, and amount of Vera has changed to avoid any outsiders from catching on. About nine of them would be made at a time and then pitted against each other in the lab to determine which model was the most successful. By the time all was said and done, only three would be left standing and the rest would be scrapped for parts to be used in the next batch. Rinse and repeat. Though she has a vague idea of what went on, most memories from the trial were wiped. It’s hard to say whether she won more than the final round.

After the first siege in 2019, the lab caught wind and ended the trial prematurely to send the final nine into the narrow reality to do work. Vera spent the next year and a half doing her intended purpose. She infiltrated trading posts, posing as a NEK0 scheming to escape, waiting to see who took the bait and then rat them out, then in some cases exterminate them on the spot. As a reward, she was given hefty amounts of cash to go out and buy her own possessions.

A few months ago, Vera fucked up. She was preparing to order a hit on a scout who was infiltrating a trading post for opposite reasons, but the scout caught onto her scheme and called her out on what her actual job was. Another NEK0 who had a similar job to Vera overheard scout and acted according to protocol, activating her kill collar to avoid her from leaking any information about the lab. The kill collar malfunctioned and while it still inflicted plenty pain, it didn't kill her on the spot as intended. Instead it was a signal that she fucked up real bad. She was now between the two choices, either kill the scout and wait for the lab to pick her up or let the scout live, neutralize the other NEK0, and take down the whole post. Vera scrambled for her gun, but then realized if she returned to the lab she would definitely be scrapped. So she helped the scout.

In exchange for walking free on Manta Carlos, she had to sell out some information on the lab. The other NEK0 from the incident was brought to the island as well, along with at least another handful from the trading post. In the present situation Vera is taking remedial classes and job hunting, but lives with the looming threat that there is most definitely a hit on her for snitching for the opposite side.

Vera's somewhat loaded from her previous job, enough to live more than comfortably, but tends to splurge too much.

Collects and is proficient mundane weapons from the narrow reality, hand guns, taser, knives, etc. Nearly all of the ones for personal use are bedazzled and pink.