You'd think after a few hundred years, the pacific northwest would drop their antisemitism. They never did. Felicity grew up not really knowing much about where she came from, not really knowing why she got made fun of so much in school for her big nose and curly hair. She didn't know it was something to be ashamed of. The Hitler Youth never really stopped being a thing, despite all the predictions of the American left in the early 2000s. When it came down to it, the left was weak, and the Neo-Nazi movement never slowed down. Even in a more "liberal" part of the country, existing as someone who was obviously Jewish... it was hard.

Her parents were another source of trauma. Again, you would think that homophobia would be less prevalent, almost 200 years after the Stonewall riots... but it's not. She was kicked out at a young age for being unable to hide her feelings for other girls, and was forced to stay with her grandparents. They were almost worse, but more quiet about it. They "tolerated" her, but only so long as she didn't make it obvious that she was gay. Her parents weren't actually religious, but her grandparents were, shoving their 'culture' down her throat despite her constant protest.

She became a radical leftist pretty early on (encounters with the Hitler kids will do that to you) and embraced an ideology of anarcho-communism. She went to protests and enacted anti-right-wing demonstrations in her youth. When she was 15 years old a cop ran over her leg with a truck, leaving it completely crushed. They left her there like that for over 2 hours, screaming until she passed out in pain. In the end, it had to be amputated. The cop was "reprimanded" and sent on paid vacation for 2 months.

At 18, she was participating in a counter-protest against the local Neo-Nazi group. Someone threw a rock at her group; they threw rocks back. Rocks escalated to bottles. It wasn't very clear what exactly happened next, but someone from one of the two groups had brought a molotov and let it fly. Their toss went wild, though, and the bottle ended up flying straight into the air, landing right in the middle of the two crowds. Several people were burned. Two died of their burns. Four more died from being trampled by the scattering crowds. Felicity was relatively lucky, all things considered; she lost an eye to a combination of glass shrapnel and the screaming, tumultuous crowd.

She's experienced more pain and trauma in her short time as a political demonstrator than most people get to see in their entire lives. She likes to consider herself as someone who is soft and caring, but it is difficult for her to trust others when she has been through so much hurt. She lives with no one, instead crashing at friend's houses or staying out on the streets through the night. She sometimes visits her grandparents at their house in Eugene still, with their small plot of land and their quaint garden. She lives mostly on the charity of others; what she can't get through charity she gets through theft. She learned to steal and to sneak and to not get caught young. When even the cops side with the Nazis, you don't really have much choice.

On the day of the fall, she was on her way to Eugene to beg for a meal and pick up some clothes. She knows that the American military has committed atrocities in the name of "riot containment" multiple times over the past year. She knows she stands against them. She doesn't know about the Blackwater infection.