Felix Sands
: Felix Sands
Age: 29
Sex: Male
Height: 1.87m
Build: Tall, relatively handsome - though not to the point of standing out in an average crowd - Felix is an athletic looking man with sharp features and a smooth, cleanly shaven face. His shoulders are broad enough that he looks like he could take a punch, and he's skinny enough that he looks like he can run too.
Style: Felix keeps himself versatile in terms of fashion, ready to blend in wherever he is. He owns leather, boardroom cotton, jeans and t-shirts - whatever he might need. In general however, he wears relatively plain clothing for comfort - just jeans or chinos, with a soft flannel shirt or a t-shirt. He doesn't usually dress to impress.
Hair, face, markings: At the part of his left ear where the lobe joins his head, there is an unusually thick scar - he twitched whilst shaving with a straight razor once. It was unfortunate. And bloody. Other than that, nothing in particular.
Concept: A 'private investigator' who had hoped Utopia would be a way out for him, his sister, and his lover. It wasn't.
Disposition: Generally cautious, he doesn't seem to trust easily and - while he's usually willing to hear people out - his primary concern is security, for himself and his party. Get to know him better though, and he's a fun, broadly smiling guy, who likes to know people well and takes care of his own.
Fears: Being screwed over by employers. Being betrayed by friends and family. Having his sister, or significant other, harmed.
Morals: Generally upstanding, but surprisingly flexible - this is a man who tries to be the best he can be, is compassionate when he can be, and cares about others... but remembers that he is a mercenary, remembers that revolution is usually violent, and understands the need for wet work in both - and who is willing to do it, too.
History: Felix Sands has served - in more ways than one.
An undecorated and undistinguished combat veteran, he once served readily and to the fullest of his capacity in someone's army, somewhere else, a long time ago now.
A deserter from an unworthy cause, he once served time in prison unwillingly and to the least of his pleasure, not as long ago now.
A lonely man in a harsh world, he now looks to serve a cause greater than himself valiantly and to the last beat of his bleeding heart, here and now.
Felix was born in another country, and he grew up there too. His childhood was fairly boring, with no great romance or adventure, but it was fulfilling enough and it was safe. He left high school with enough qualifications to get a place in college studying medicine and - when the government announced its peacekeeping mission in the poorer, less civilised nation that bordered his homeland on the south - he immediately signed up for the Medical Corps, a division that would accept him in the role of a combat medical technician when he graduated, and fund his specialisation when he returned from service. The rest of his degree went without issue, and he excelled in training after joining the army proper - nobody else was quite as fast, as bright, or as eager. He graduated training with the respect of his comrades and his instructors, and was deployed faster than most people would think wise. Sooner than he had thought possible, he saw the war.
And the war - as war is - was horrific, hellish, and a source of much grief and injustice.
It was quickly apparent to him that the peacekeeping mission was a poorly disguised invasion, played up by his home media to quicken the pulse of any patriot. They were not there to quell terrorism as much as they were to annex the damn place, police the populace, and steal for the motherland. People did fight them, yes - the sovereign nation's army for one was a source of much resistance, and when they eventually capitulated there remained pockets of organised resistance, and even worse, spontaneous agitators with no plan whatsoever - the kind of men whose actions and resources you simply cannot predict. The men he treated, the men he saved, the men he couldn't, were all - at least immediately - the victims of one of the above.
But Felix, quick and bright and perceptive, saw beyond this.
Their invasion was not simply illegal, it was immoral. They had been sent to oppress the locals at the behest of a government looking for nothing more than another place to hold power over, and even pumping the chest of a fallen brother in arms, he couldn't blame their enemy for resisting. No, it was abundantly clear who was to blame.
One day, he deserted. He was captured and imprisoned shortly thereafter - as good at hiding as he was, he wasn't as good as the military police were at following.
Three years after his dishonorable discharge and imprisonment, he was free again - only to find that much of his family had either turned on him as a traitor to their country, or been turned
on as well for being related to him. Of all the people who he had known, only his little sister and his girlfriend stayed with him when he decided to simply leave the country, and go to a better place - a place like
Utopia was.
Supposedly.
After the myths behind the place were presented as false, he forwent his idealism for a while and started looking for work. Honest work was harder to come by for a man like him than he wanted - after all, he was a foreigner, dishonorably discharged from the same foreign military, an incomplete student, and none too sociable. He did briefly have a job cooking in a fairly ass end of the spectrum fast food restaurant, but he turned out to be a pretty crappy cook as well. What he did have going for him was an analytical mind, a broad enough set of general skills from his time in the medical corps, and some skill with a firearm - and, if needs be, his fists. He started out as a private investigator for real, more often than not looking into unfaithful spouses, delinquent children, dishonest employees, and other such small fry - though there was the occasional
real case, which he would admit he enjoyed - but eventually the term 'private investigator' came to mean 'generally whatever you need done that you don't want people to know you needed done, guy'. He's done a bit of corporate espionage, he's beaten a fair few rabblerousers and blackmailers, and he's probably killed people. After all, he has people he needs to look after.
Doesn't mean he likes it very much.
Sample Post: Peering around the doorframe, Felix took in the sight of his mark's study - a warm, well decorated room with a desk, a quietly whirring computer, and a digital picture frame cycling lazily through an album of the man and his family. His overt family, at least. As was common in a city as dark and sinful as Utopia, his wife suspected that he was having an affair - a suspicion she had correctly hired him to confirm. Felix had spent the last two weeks or so generally staking out the office her husband worked at, a well to do legal firm where he was a named partner and only infrequent worker. He turned up at work on only 4 days of the week, and always the same four - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. According to his wife he was meant to be there all week including a half day on saturday, so it was needless to say that something didn't add up.
Now, it was sunday. The office was abandoned for the weekend while its unfortunate denizens went to get fat and drunk at the expensive bars their professions afforded them, their one true day of respite from the apparent stresses of the legal profession - and that, naturally, meant Felix would be the only one at work today.
Using his smartphone's forward facing camera like a periscope, he peered into the room to check for CCTV. Finding none, he entered and went to the desk, taking care not to disturb the assorted documents, papers, and stationery scattered over the work surface. He'd been provided with the password his mark tended to use - a careless combination of his and his wife's birth dates, an ironic and fading symbol of the attraction he must once have felt. The computer chimed merrily as it accepted the code, welcoming him as "Mr Sanders". Flexing his hands impatiently as the desktop loaded, Felix drywashed them through the latex of his disposable gloves, nerves growing. He had been betrayed before on jobs like this - set up as an elaborate insurance scam. Last time that happened, he'd barely made it out without handcuffs - what was even more annoying was that he'd still have done it if they'd just been up front with him.
His mark's email correspondence was both unlocked for him to access, and entirely innocent. No flirtatious mailings from clandestine lovers, no bills of payment from women of the night, nothing of the sort. Just legal matters, inquiries from clients - that sort of thing. Hard drive was clean too, although there was a curious frequency of the name 'Léon Markant' in his client database, which was still hardly damning. Pictures library, totally empty. Recycling bin-
Oh, the recycling bin.
It was full of recoverable data, though some of it had been corrupted. Too much to look through now though, so Felix slid a USB stick into the PC, copied it over, and set the status of the bin back to how he'd found it afterwards. The documents' titles didn't reveal anything in particular, but they had all been deleted at once and they all related to the same client.
Léon Markant.
"Curious." Felix mumbled.
It was a lead, if nothing else - and indeed, there was nothing else. Some further inspection revealed that a few of the mark's meetings with Mr Markant had been scheduled for dates he hadn't turned up for work, but there was scarce all else to be found on the computer or in his desk. Felix left carefully but quickly, wiping the desk clean of any dead skin, hair, or anything else he might have left behind. No point giving anyone a lead on finding him - especially not in a world where people like him found work doing what they did. It wouldn't do for him to be 'privately investigated' himself.
On his way home via state approved routes, a fake ID card broadcasting his position throughout, he sent a quick text to his employer relating his findings and explaining the next stage of his investigation - a hunt for Léon Markant, and any link between him and Phillip Sanders. In a world as obtuse about information gathering and retention as the one he lived in, a paper trail shouldn't be too hard to find for anyone with any skill at computers.
As he approached a lonely enough stretch of approved route, he made a sharp turn off the main road and down a side alley, approaching one of the dead drops he used for fake IDs and resources - it was literally a tiny space behind a loose-ish brick in a wall at the end of an appropriately dark alleyway. Checking again for unwelcome observers, he pulled the brick out and lodged his ID in the hollow behind it - if he'd managed it just right, it should look like the person his ID was registered to was now at home in the building in front of him. After that, it was just a matter of getting home while avoiding police detection - something he'd done before and would do again easily enough.
An hour later, and he was typing up the next fragment of his case report with a steaming cup of tea at his left, and the voices of his small, bizarre remaining family from the living room, with nobody in the world but them and his employer the wiser for his actions.
Skills: Firearms - 2 - (Perception)
Melee combat - 2 - (Speed)
Medicine - 1 (Perception)
Breaking and Entering - 1 (Perception)
Stats: Reflexes - 1
Speed - 1
Strength - 0
Endurance - 0
Perception - 2
Will - 0
Resources: Felix maintains a discreet series of go-bags and dead drops throughout the city, usually in locations as seen in the sample post. They typically contain fake ID, money, occasionally stores of incriminating data for safe keeping, as an insurance policy. At least one contains a spare handgun - the USP9 compact, an identical copy of his primary weapon and former service pistol - as well as a moderate stash of ammunition, though he has only one suppressor between them. He keeps at least one disposable pre-paid phone for work purposes in addition to his personal phone. Plus, knives. On account of the unregulated sale of blades in the United Kingdom, he tries to keep a handy supply of spares - within legal limits. In particular, he still owns the straight razor he got a scar from. His regular job is as a 'private investigator', officially - in reality, this is not too far removed from a criminal or pseudo-legal handyman, or maybe a step above a lone mercenary. Income can be sporadic, but due to the nature of the work it is usually well paid.
Connections: Laura 'Sunrise' Sands - Felix's girlfriend, a qualified and fully trained doctor in her own right, far more so than Felix at the very least. When they immigrated to the UK, it was simpler to adopt their new shared surname, so they're not technically married - but the law no longer cares. She is 29 as well, having studied in the same year as Felix.
Mira Sands - Felix's little sister, a radical and outspoken person with a terrible case of a bleeding heart - she studied Journalism and Media back in their homeland before their emigration, and graduated only a month before Felix's release from prison. She now runs a moderately successful set of online blogs regarding several topics, and manages to generate a modicum of income through advertisements to help cover rent.
Theme Song: Miami Showdown - Digitalism
https://youtu.be/jfMdV-SE2bsMisc. Info: 
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