Few children were as wanted or adored as tiny, premature August Lindsey Yeats, born to a hardworking nurse in Richmond, Virginia. He was a welcome surprise that came out of a tryst with a visiting doctor; Diane didn’t know she was pregnant until he was gone, and she embraced single motherhood completely.
The first few years of August’s life were wonderful, but Diane was killed suddenly while bicycling to work when August was 5. He was placed in his aunt Maureen’s care, only to be removed again within a year due to neglect after the neighbors called to report her for leaving him on his own for hours on end. The little boy entered foster care, and was placed at an orphanage run by nuns where he lived between stints at foster homes — though he was sweet and precocious, he was already at the age where long-term placements are rare, and adoption even rarer. A quiet little boy, he was always a compassionate sort, the sort to take in strays or take a bug outside rather than kill it. This made him a target for some of the kids, but others looked out for him.
As August became a teen, it was clear he had a gift for academics, excelling in science. In addition, he had a strange sense for what was bothering people. Near perfect scores on his SATs and his status as a foster youth earned him a full-ride scholarship to Georgetown University for biochemistry. He was in his second year of college when an explosion rocked both Midtown Manhattan and the world at large with the knowledge of the evolved, a few months later. August felt both curiosity and compassion for those who were SLC-E (“evolved,” in those days), though some fear of those with dangerous abilities — like all people, there were good and bad. Eventually, he began to wonder if he might himself be evolved — the strange empathy he felt for anyone in pain seemed to grow stronger, to the point he felt not just a sense of what was wrong with someone physically, but their actual pain to a lesser degree. It was tolerable — and he felt he could help people with it, so August aimed his sights on a medical profession.
August returned to New York in 2009 to attend the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. It wasn’t long before forced registration occurred, and he found that what he suspected to be true was — he was “evolved.” The exact nature of his ability still seemed mysterious to him — it wasn’t something he could turn on or off, and he couldn’t “do” anything with it but sense pain, as far as he could tell. When he began clinical rotations at actual hospitals, assessing patients with very real, very acute pain, August realized his empathy was quite a lot stronger than he anticipated — if he touched a person in pain, he felt the entirety of it. If he was near many people in pain, he felt some of all their pain. Devastating in the short-term, he decided it was still an incredibly useful gift — and if he was a surgeon, at least they’d be anesthetized when he “fixed” them.
The US government decided that he wasn’t useful or gifted but dangerous, however; it was only after a few months of rotations that the relocations were announced. August ran — intending to help serve as a medic in the war effort. When the US government attacked a warehouse where he and other rebels were living, August was suddenly surrounded by people — friends — in pain, begging that he help them. He tried his best and helped some of them. And when he couldn’t save them, he felt firsthand the agony of dying, without dying himself.
After that first attack, he stayed as far away from everyone as he could, for as long as he could — stealing and foraging throughout the rest of the war to survive.
Eventually the war ended. August found a place working as a vet tech in a small town in Vermont almost untouched by the war. He steered clear of people who were injured and in pain — even dulled without a direct touch, it all seemed too much for him, and so many people were hurting. August took to some bad habits to keep himself distracted — drink, drugs, sex. Talkative when under the influence, he told a few people of his traumas. In 2014, he was approached by a man who promised August he could “cure” him. The Mazdak recruiter Jakob Tafero led August to an offshore lab where he was stripped of his ability — August had no idea who the group was affiliated with — he was just happy to be free of the power. Unfortunately, the memories of the pain remain, often waking him with nightmares.
When the Safe Zone opened, August returned, living in the resettlement camp for some time, but found that so many people so close together was triggering in some ways — while he couldn’t actually feel their pain, he felt the anxiety of anticipating it, nonetheless. He moved to Staten, where he has become a bit of a back-alley doctor for those living on the fringes of society there — including a few augmented types when they need help with their prosthetics. Eventually putting his bio-chem skills to work as a back-alley pharmacist as well, August has become the go-to as well for those who need an anti-rejection serum but can’t or won’t go to a licensed doctor for the prescription — so long as they help him in procuring the ingredients, usually through illegal means. The downside is that his version may have a few side effects.