Brynn Ferguson was born March 17, 1999, to high school sweethearts who were in no way ready for a baby. Especially not a special needs one - Brynn was born profoundly deaf. Although her birth mother tried to keep her, she came from a very blue-collar family and they were not equipped to help her either. And so Brynn wound up in the foster care system. In the early years, she didn't bounce too much from home to home because despite her handicap, she was a sweet, easygoing baby. New York City had a number of resources to help a hearing-impaired child, and she was taught American Sign Language as a matter of course.
In 2006, when the Bomb went off in Midtown, Brynn was living in a foster home on the outskirts of the blast radius. The concussion wave collapsed the structure around her and those in the house. Two days later, when she was pulled from the rubble, she was injured badly enough to require hospitalization for some time, finally able to write her name for the nurses when she woke up. When it the nurse realized that in her sleep when she was having nightmares the sheets on the bed would have splotches of colors — reds, oranges, blacks, greys — she quietly made arrangements for the little girl to be sent 'away.'
She moved around a lot for the first couple of years, culminating in the most terrifying night of her life in 2009 — she was at Beach Street when it was raided by Humanis First. This was the first time that her power kicked in fully. She was loaded into the truck, things were exploding all around, the chaos was confusing, everything was moving too fast and she couldn't understand what anyone was shouting, so she crouched down in the truck and essentially hid in the shadows like a chameleon. One of the older children literally tripped over her, kept close to her and made sure she wasn't left behind anywhere, and once they were clear of the chaos, Brynn was taken to the Lighthouse. Here, life finally settled into SOMETHING of a routine, some kind of normal, where she was getting as much teaching as could be obtained for her in ASL, reading, writing, math. In addition to 'proper' sign language, the Lighthouse Kids, over time, developed their own 'cant' to signing — a private language all their own. Later, Adel would add to this cant with Wasteland Cant as well.
Brynn was very much an observer of people. Somehow in the midst of all of the terror, she managed to keep that sweet demeanor about her that had marked her as a young child too. But she's also figured out that the appearance of being sweet and innocent and helpless was a very very good defense against other kids because there was always someone, wherever she went who would step up and 'take care' of her, make sure no one harassed her. This behavior persisted to the Lighthouse, but several of them picked up on the fact pretty early that although she was a quiet girl/young woman, there were plenty of thoughts going on behind those eyes. She just kept most of them to herself, much of the time. And would occasionally pop out with doozies.
Often she would play small pranks — turn someone's hair blue while they slept, make the babies green with pink polka dots. Images decorated walls and cabinets EVERYWHERE all the time. At least it wasn't crayons, right? Though the smaller kids would often copy her when they did have crayons.
She was one of the luckier victims of the 2011 Evo flu. Her small group of sick children had been moved from the Lighthouse to Pollepel. It took a long time, but she finally recovered from that, and she was among the children evacuated from Pollepel before it was attacked. She was just 12 years old, and heading once again out into a world that seemed a never-ending round of fighting.
The years from 2011 to 2013 were hard. News would come from the US to the Canadian safehouses about friends lost in the Second Civil War. The news was often fragmented, distorted. No one really knew what was going on — and although the adults knew the kids had seen plenty, they still tried to keep some of the worst horrors from especially the smaller children. The older kids, though, were determined to know what was happening and would eavesdrop relentlessly, asking her to try to read lips. In addition, when the kids would want to go hunting out in the woods or the fields, she would practice her ability on them, creating stunning camouflage patterns for the woods or grass hiding. Brynn didn't really know that they were also training lessons. There were also lessons in self-defense and in firearms, because they could then help hunt food when it was needed but also so that if push came to shove for them, they wouldn't be helpless. Brynn did not like those lessons. Though she couldn't hear the report of the weapon, she'd already seen what they could do and she held a healthy respect for the guns. She learned enough to at least hit what she was aiming at if she had to, but it was only for necessity.
Brynn tended to fall into the middle of the kids — some would totally blame things on her (snd get in trouble with Brian for blaming her), others just stayed out of the heckling. She never really stood out; she didn't overly excel at any one thing, she just kind of went along to get along. Brynn always covered for people when they blamed her for stuff, and took the lumps when no one figured out she was lying. And then she'd take subtle revenge later on in a variety of ways. But the one thing the Lighthouse Kids were was close to one another. No matter what was going on, they understood very very young who the real enemy was. Although she was trained to defend herself, Brynn generally stayed out of the combat zones, her disability making her a significant liability in the field unless they needed her ability to camouflage.
When the War finally ended, the oldest kids — some who had already left the Lighthouse and some who were just about to do so — talked a lot about going back to New York. Recovery efforts there were beginning, and many of them seemed to want to get out there. For a long time, Brynn had no interest in being part of all of that, just surviving and trying to put behind her the things that she remembered seeing. She spent the years from 2013 to 2018 basically doing the things that one does when they are one of the older children in an orphanage — helping with the younger kids, doing school work, taking her turn in the massive garden that helped feed them all, doing her artwork. She was content for the most part, but as she reached the end of her school years, she too started to look toward the city. They'd all come from that place. And there were plenty of horrors in the world; she'd seen and lived through a lot of mayhem and gore. She wanted the chance to spread beauty into the world with her art. So New York City was the place to go — there were friends there.