Born in the declining years of Soviet power, Dema Gataullin witnessed the collapse of a regime and an ideology. As a boy he saw the rapid changes of power in the early eighties, all under the shadow of his father's authority, a functioning alcoholic and low level apparatchik. Shortly after the Chernobyl disaster, just 16 years old, he escaped his father's influence by joining the Red Army and training to be a medic. He was stationed in Afghanistan, which was under Soviet occupation. He patched the wounds of many soldiers who were wounded by the insurrectionist forces, learning practical skills his training had never prepared him for. Dema, whose father had not managed to instill great confidence in the Party, was kept from desertion only out of a sense of duty to his fellow soldiers, and when the withdrawal began in 1987, Dema did not wait to be ordered back; he jumped ship entirely, fleeing to the port city of Baku on the Caspian Sea. As a deserter, he could not return to Russia proper, and certainly could not enter the Party, so he remained in Azerbaijan, working discreetly on the docks and lending his limited medical talents to local pimps and prostitutes.
During his time spent in the brothels, Dema first began to notice his wandering imagination. At first he thought they were fantasies he had about the working girls, but more and more he realized, as he would doze during the wee hours, that it was more like he was in their fantasies. Not an active participant, but an observer in their dreams and distractions. He would not realize that this was anything serious or important, not realize that it was, in fact, an Evolved ability, for years to come.
It was also through his connections to prostitution in Baku that he managed to get involved with the Bratva, the Russian Mob, during their rapid rise in 1990 after the fall of the Soviet Union. He was one of many disillusioned Afghan war veterans who was recruited into the rapidly growing criminal power structure, his military training and great size allowing him to deal out injuries just as effectively as he could patch them up. Essentially quite gentle by nature, he was a passive enforcer at Bratva run brothels, his stature alone keeping clients well in line. But, when his direct superior offered him the chance to leave Baku for the first time in five years. In 1992 he shipped off to the United States, New York specifically. There he learned English and, thanks to forged visa, was able to live in relative comfort as an enforcer. His skills, size, intelligence, and lack of ambition allowed him to remain on this level, trusted and rewarded but never asking for more, outliving many of his more aggressive colleagues.
When Midtown exploded, the world was thrown into chaos, and the Russian Mob was far from immune. In the upheaval, several struggles for power resulted in Dema's patron, the man who had brought him from Baku, being killed. With such a long a loyal history of service, Dema's own life was obviously forfeit. He escaped his own apartment with three gunshot wounds, wounds that would have killed a smaller, less determined man. With great effort and no small luck, he made it to an emergency room in time. Plunged into a haze of pain killers, he wandered over the dreamscapes of any number of nearby patients, including a low level Company agent who recognized Dema's prostrate form as that of the man who had stepped into his dreams. A quick report was made, and an offer drafted. As Dema lay on his bed, intubated and on a powerful narcotic drip, a Company representative approached him and offered him safe haven and a chance of careers to go with it. Even through the Demerol haze, he knew better than to refuse.
Dema worked for some time as a medical assistant in the Company's various facilities, and has learned to use his ability, hypnopathy, with much greater skill, though its applications remain somewhat limited. He cannot venture into places where he might be recognized: he is a hard man to miss. But he is used to living in this or that cage, and he remains stoic about it. At least he is alive, and long past when he expected to be.
