Growing up and being raised in New York City isn't really unique or different. Millions of people have that distinction. Corbin Ayers carries such a distinction. Born in 1975, he was one of three children of Nathan and Rebecca Ayers. A younger brother and sister followed not long after him. Cooper Ayers, his rival younger brother who would eventually move off for schooling and career and never come back, and Moira, who inspired to be a Broadway actress, but never made it much closer than extra parts in off Broadway shows.
Like most children growing up in the city, private school was the best option for education (assuming they had the money, which his parents did). Same for his younger siblings. Graduating in 1993, he enrolled in NYU, after getting rejected by his first choice school at Columbia. At NYU, he would get a B.A. and an M.A. in Journalism, focusing on General and Investigative Reporting (print and online) as well as reporting within the confides of a major city. Intern work gave him a foot in the workplace, though no one could claim he was the best in his class.
His college years got sprinkled with various events, including meeting the woman who would become his wife. Getting married in college may not always be the best idea, and it wasn't in their case either. His marriage to Sharon Marx (temporarily Ayers) only lasted three years, ending without children but with a great deal of drama that delayed his graduation from the Masters program by a year.
Almost as soon as he finished school, he came to the attention of Primatech (actually they had probably had an eye on him for some time). They came to his attention then, though. They saw benefit in a having a trained journalist. Thanks to them, a new world he'd never dreamed actually existed unraveled before him. Instead of being tempted to make it known to the world, he saw value in keeping it from the public. This attitude helped get his foot in the door, as they'd probably been testing to see how he'd handle it for a while before approaching him. For a year, while out of work, he trained as a field agent, with focus on intelligence and cover-up. As a reporter, he could handle cover stories for various activities, which helped keep the existence of Evolved secret.
This would lead to a lot of behind the scenes works. In 2001, he got paired with Hokuto Ichihara, an Evolved dreamwalker who worked primarily with the archives. As she had already been with the Company for five years as a full agent, she also served as his final trainer. Someone who would get him used to One of Us, One of Them rule. And someone with a few years of experience who could keep an eye on him.
The two of them maintained a close partnership, mostly in the waking world. He knew her best as a soft-spoken and passive woman. Often he would tease her, something he couldn't quite help, but he also praised her for her hard work both awake and asleep. The teasing mostly consisted of her personality shifts between dream and awake, her friendship with an old lady (and boss) and occasionally her name. It wouldn't be uncommon for him to call her Hokie. The few times he interacted with her dream persona, her assertiveness and confidence took him by surprise. Her dream self certainly would've been more his type.
Even with a divorce under his belt, he still tried to date when he had the time. None of his female companions knew of his secret career behind the scenes. As far as anyone was concerned, Corbin Ayers was just a journalist, one who mostly worked online. After some maneuvering, he got to work with the New York Times, mostly online once again. He'd worked with them for half a year as an internship. In many ways, he knows the Company had everything to do with his positioning. In order to do what they'd trained him to do, he had to be in a position to supply stories, and to catch stories.
By speaking with other reporters, he helped find evidence of Evolved activity, along with Hokuto's help. She would often scout the dreams of coworkers, to get scoops on what they were involved in, and to find out if odd incidents lead to non-normal things.
As he came close to being in his fifth year as Hokuto's partner, things changed rather abruptly. Her mother died and she decided to retire from the Company. Long talks went into this decision, and while he was not in favor of the idea, he never outright told her what to do in the matter. Losing his partner was just the beginning. Finding a good fit for his particular set of skills wouldn't come easily. The next few months he bounced between partners like he might have girlfriends, never quite finding a relationship that worked beneficially for the both of them.
And then 2006 got a lot worse. After November, the nuclear explosion in New York set everything into a spin. Unaware of what hand the Company may have had in the incident, he only saw years of hard work shoved down the drain. Spinning a nuclear explosion couldn't possibly be as easy as spinning a much smaller disaster. And, like so many other New Yorkers, he lost people in the blast. Many coworkers died, including his mother and younger sister. (But not his ex-wife, unfortunately).
Like others in the city who'd suffered great loss, he found his dreams changed, shifted. Only years of experience gave him the slightest clue of what had happened when he woke in the morning, refreshed and with a better peace of mind. An old friend had tried to take his pain away. Occasionally, though not often, he would stop by the bookstore she'd holed herself away in, to buy books, share stories, and converse. It became an odd habit of his to bring a copy of the newspaper when he went to see her, selecting one of the fluffy stories and cutting it out. Stories about pets found still alive after the explosion, stories about people doing things for others— basically the nice stuff in the series of terrible things.
Remaining to the Company, later incidents, such as Evolved becoming known to everyone made his job even more difficult. His initial job of spin doctor would no longer his main source of stories, yet his cover in the New York Times remained intact. He'd still be useful where he'd been positioned, especially at getting word on what other people are covering. Spin doctoring still needed to happen to protect the identity of the Company and other agents, who remained out of the public eye.
In the years following 2006, though, he's yet to keep a stable partner, for one reason or another. Maybe this will change?
