While in the R.A.I.D facility, the subject showed the true extent of his power through what has been dubbed as “Bloodlust.” Security camera footage has shown the manner in which he easily cut through the scientists and guards experimenting on him, unfazed by bullets as his flesh regenerated and pushed out the offending projectiles in mere seconds. It should be noted that during this time, Mr. Foley lost all consciousness, and was driven purely on primal rage and survival instinct. While he states he vaguely recalls the incident, he had no control over his actions within the facility. Safe-guards should be put in place should this incident occur again.

Roran’s story begins with his Mother, Caitlyn. She had married an English businessman in a spur of the moment fancy, much to the ire of her parents – however, she remained happy enough for a year or so, up until the marriage grew sour. It was no surprise, really – they hadn’t known each other very long before becoming engaged. He began taking longer and longer business trips to try and avoid her, and she wasn’t all that bothered at it – when he was at home, all they did was argue, and then sleep together before awkward silences the next morning. It would have been an endless cycle, what with Caitlyn being a devoted Catholic and therefore firmly disagreeing with divorce, but it came to a shocking end when her husband died. An IRA bomb at the London Stock Exchange in 1990 – he had been caught in the blast, and killed.

Caitlyn didn’t have time to be grief-stricken; she had a job, being a Botanist at the local University, and also quite pregnant. She had planned on telling her husband when he returned, but now that he was dead, she was to deal with it herself. Being a very practical woman, she didn’t dwell on the fact. Her parents – despite having disapproved of the marriage to begin with – aided her during her pregnancy, and all was going smoothly.

‘Til the vampire attack, that is.

Walking home late from work – maybe two months pregnant at this point – Caitlyn was attacked by a vampire. Some random dude just jumped on her and started biting at her neck, so she wasn’t particularly pleased at this. However, for all her fighting, it wasn’t enough to drive off something as strong as that creature; and so, she thanks God everyday that Hannibal King was in the neighbourhood.

It wasn’t by accident, him being there. He’d been tracking this specific vampire for months now, chasing him first across America, and then across the Atlantic into Europe. He’d killed and turned many, and King was always one step behind. He could have chased after his quarry in this instance and perhaps caught him, but King instead got Caitlyn to a hospital. After all, what was the point in all his work if he didn’t save the victims of his kin?

While Caitlyn recovered quite nicely from the bite – she hadn’t lost enough blood to lose the baby, nor had she been injected with enough ichor to change her into a vampire – unbeknownst to anyone, the bite was affecting the baby; her Roran.

The ichor – while not potent enough to change Caitlyn into a vampire, made its way to her womb and genetically altered Roran while in utero. Technically speaking, Roran is more mutant than vampire, what with his genetic material being altered from such an early stage in his production. Further evidence towards this is that he did not begin displaying symptoms of vampirism until he reached puberty, much like many mutants whose mutations are triggered by the sudden increase in hormones that comes with that stage in life.

As such, Roran was quite normal as a kid. He got colds, played football with his friends at school, got in trouble at school for watching football rather than listening in class, went to Church every week with his Mother, swam in competitions, and spent a lot of time gardening with his family – it seemed having green fingers was in the Foley family blood.

However, when he turned 12, Roran fell ill. It was a strange thing; fevers, restlessness, increased heart rate. After a few days of being bedridden, Caitlyn finally called out the Doctor to see to him, and when he arrived, the Doctor too was perplexed to what ailed the young lad. It was only when the Doctor nicked his finger on a bit of paper did a change occur in Roran – the smell of the blood hit him, and suddenly he had thrown the Doctor to the floor, latching his teeth on the arm thrown up in defence and drinking from the blood there, locked in place by a ferocious hunger. After a few moments, Roran realised what he was doing and backed away in horror, terrified and confused as to what he had just done, and what he was.

Thankfully, the Doctor had hit his head in the fall and was knocked unconscious before he even knew what was going on, so when Caitlyn came upstairs and saw what had transpired, she cleaned both her weeping son and knocked-out Doctor up, phoning an ambulance and saying that the family dog had attacked him. When the Doctor came to, he was so befuddled that he just accepted the story and apologised for causing issues before being carted off to the hospital, never even questioning the fact that the Foley’s didn’t own a dog.

Straight after the incident, Caitlyn sat her son firmly down and told him that he was not a monster, and he was not to feel guilty about what had happened. He could not be blamed for something he could not control – and this is when she told him about the existence of the supernatural, and her experience with it 12 years previous. From there, both she and Roran made their peace with what they couldn’t change, and adapted to deal with it.

Over the years, Roran had his ups and downs with his “condition”. The pair of them worked out quite quickly that he needed blood to function properly, but with the laboratories Caitlyn worked in, it was quite easy to acquire what she needed without anyone noticing. If anyone did notice and then asked about it, she simply told them she was conducting experiments involving her plants, and gave them a hard stare until they dropped the issue. As Roran went through puberty, he had some good days and some bad days – the ichor in his genetics, the stuff that gave him his vampiric mutation reacted badly with his hormones at times, simply because it wasn’t used to it. The ichor was to deal with the dead, after all. It wasn’t used to this unfamiliar and very much alive host.
But, overall, he had a pretty good time with it. Nobody suspected anything, and he kept out of vampiric business; he didn’t go out seeking them. So, it was a complete surprise when the vampire who had attacked his Mother all those years ago, his Sire, returned to Ireland when Roran was 23.

As to why his Sire returned, Roran didn’t know. He doesn’t even know the bastard’s name, just that he was curious; curious in what he had created in Roran, and the possibilities that lay within his issue. For he had been watching Roran for some time, and with the realisation that he was a vampire that could walk in the sun without it harming him, his Sire wanted that for himself. However, that would take experimentation. Knowing that Roran wouldn’t agree to even be near him, his Sire incapacitated him and snatched Roran away from Ireland, over the Atlantic back to America.

Having ties with the offshoot group of AIM; R.A.I.D, Roran’s sire left him with the scientists there, telling them that while they searched for the key to walking in the sun in his genetics, they could do what they wanted with him.

Thus began a year of arduous and torturous experimentations to see what similarities Roran had to regular vampires. Testing involving holy water, fire, UV light, electrocution, holy symbols and silver all took place across the months, just to see how far they could go before killing him. Additionally, the scientists at R.A.I.D starved him of blood, just to see the effects and how long he could go without. And it was this omission that became their undoing.

When a scientist entered his cell to take a blood sample, she nicked her finger on the needle. She had gone in unarmed, as for the past few days he had lain in an almost comatose state, not even moving when subjected to electric shocks. But the smell of blood awoke something within him - the same bloodlust that had triggered his mutation as a child. In a blindingly fast movement, his teeth found the scientists neck, ripping out her flesh and feasting on her blood like a ravenous animal. By the time the guards got into the cell, he had drained the scientists dry, and turned on the guards.

In this mindless state he tore through the facility, killing everyone in his path while bullets and tasers did nothing to stop him. By the time he’d made his way out of the facility and into the urban wilderness of the city, Roran had no idea where he was... all he knew was that these people who had tortured him had let loose a wildness in him that had been kept quiet for years.

After a year or so on the streets, Roran was discovered by two vampires; Jubilee, and Hannibal King, the very same vampire Detective that had saved his Mother’s life years ago. The pair had joined forces momentarily to aid one of Jubilee’s friends, who had been taken by Roran’s Sire; they had arrived too late to save her friend, or catch the monster who had killed her... but they did find information. Information about Roran, and R.A.I.D, and the experiments. Naturally, they had headed there next, in the hopes of rescuing him – but by the time they arrived, the facility was already in ruins, and Roran was gone. It had taken them this long to find him again, and they wanted to help.

While King would have been happy to put him out of his misery, Jubilee preferred to give something more helpful – because in his years on the streets, Roran hadn’t taken a single life. He fed on random people, but never enough to kill or turn them, and he had always made sure they received aid afterwards. Jubilee knew that he didn’t want to revert back to the monster unleashed at R.A.I.D labs, and so, while King left once more to search for Roran’s Sire, she offered him aid.

After a great deal of coaxing, she convinced him to at least come to the hotel where she was staying to clean up and get some good, old fashioned, regular human food. Once there – and promises fulfilled (Mother of God, In N’ Out burgers chased away every bad feeling) – she told him about her story and how Xavier’s Academy had helped her. Naturally, Roran knew about the X-Men, and knew they were seen as good people by a lot. So, he went with Jubilee to the Academy in Pennsylvania, immediately being welcomed inside once the pair had arrived.

After being checked up by Jean Grey (She was far gentler than the last Doctor’s he’d dealt with, and thanked her for such – he had a feeling she was using her psychic ability somewhat to put him at ease in the clinical room, but he wasn’t complaining.), and having a long talk with Professor Xavier himself, they both came to the conclusion that Roran couldn’t stay at the Academy. It didn’t take a telepath to know that Roran still wasn’t entirely comfortable around humans, and both he and Xavier knew he was at a potential risk for “relapsing.” For the Academy didn’t have much in terms of internal security – they had enough outside enemies to deal with without having to concern themselves with potential internal threats.

However, Xavier did want to help Roran, knowing that ultimately, the lad wanted to do good rather than bad in the world. So, he contacted SHIELD, knowing that they had a similar facility, only with far more internal protection and safe-guards. It took some convincing, but SHIELD agreed to take Roran on. If not just to help, but to keep an eye on him. He couldn’t prey on the innocent with Nick Fury’s single eye glaring on down at him 24/7.