Hannah Amiee Emerson was born in Brooklyn, New York to Nicolas and Lidia Emerson, the second of what would become four children. At the time, her family consisted of her father, the owner of the family wine business, her mother, who briefly served in the United States Air Force and later as a military consultant, and her 2 year old sister Karen. A year later, Hannah would gain a younger brother named Ashton.
It became evident early in Hannah’s life that she had a tomboyish streak in her. While never prone to much unsavoury in her young age, be it with her siblings or otherwise, she took an early interest in more physical activities – sports and the like, in contrast to her sister and brother’s more academic pursuits. Childhood was largely uneventful, with a second younger sibling being born when Hannah turned ten, a younger sister named Elena. Even when at her young age, Hannah proved very protective of her young sister, particularly against the not-always-so-nice machinations of her brother Ashton.
High School was when Hannah’s future slowly began to come together. These years found Hannah’s parents having to constantly deal with their second daughter being involved in various disciplinary measures for everything from back talking to teachers to getting involved in fights with some of the school’s bullies and boys – of particular note was a time when she was 16 that she got suspended for week for breaking a boy’s nose with a mean right hook after he made some unsavoury comments about her older sister, who attended the same school as Hannah.
It was also during these years that Hannah began to take an interest in her mother’s time in the Air Force and as a consultant, often listening with rapt attention to the stories she would tell, often against the wishes of her father, who would rather keep his sons and daughters away from such terrible things. Both her sisters and her brother often shied away from their mother’s stories and lessons, instead learning about teh family business from their father, or as much as they could at their various ages.
Hannah spent most of high school studying history and participating in sports at her high school – track, soccer, field hockey, and swimming were among her favourites, when she was able to participate and not in some sort of trouble that prevented it. Her grades were middling most of her years, though they picked up dramatically in her senior year, perhaps due to to the fact that Hannah had finally decided what she was going to do with her future – she was going to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
She was going to enlist in the military, and come that fall, she was attending Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, rather than attending West Point in New York for unknown reasons. It was here that the next several years of her life were spent. While at VMI, she performed admirably at her academic pursuits, studying chiefly in History, with a minor specifically in military history. Where she really excelled, however, was in her military studies and in VMI’s various sports teams – particularly the women’s track and country team, where she was consistently one of the team’s top performers.
Though she didn’t graduate with honours, she graduated with modest marks, and immediately following her graduation in spring 2004 she enlisted into the United States Army. Almost immediately she was sent on a four year tour of duty across Afghanistan and Iraq. The disallowance of women serving as infantry did not prevent Hannah from seeing combat by any means, and when engaged during transports or while engaging in searches, she was known to actively participate in combat, something which was often met with mixed reaction from her superiors.
The combat she saw in her tour of the Middle East was at times bitter and brutal, and the nights rarely restful. Over time she grew to be known in her squad for her tenacity, for her confidence, and on several occasions how she had performed when forced to take a leadership role in the middle of an operation or firefight. She received a few promotions, as well as sometimes acting above her pay grade eon account of temporary field promotions.
It was in the middle of 2006 that Hannah believes she first manifested, though she was largely unaware of it at the time. Steadily, she noticed herself becoming less and less fatigued, less tired through routines, exercises, and general activity, and after being shot in an ambush that resulted in an hours long prolonged firefight slash standoff, found herself at times hardly even noticing that she had actually been hit by stray gun fire. Hannah didn’t really thing much of it, really, believing simply that she was becoming more physically fit, if usually so, and accounting for her sudden pain tolerance through using adrenaline to push herself through her injury.
It is perhaps fortunate that Hannah was not living in New York at the time the bomb happened in November, 2006 – Her apartment stood right on the fringes of the blast radius. It was a day that had Hannah frantically panicking to get back in contact with home, worrying about the safety of her family. Much like herself, it was luck that got her entire family through the entire event intact. While the family’s residence was likewise within the blast residence of the bomb, Her older sister and her brother had just left home back for school, her younger sister was off at school herself, and her parents were off tending to business. Relieved, Hannah continued on as normal, knowing that whenever she returned home, she was going to have a lot to help with.
As tensions escalated following the bomb and the belief that it may have been some sort of aggressive nuclear attack, Hannah watched with rapt attention as the events that followed unfolded, culminating in the revelation to the world of the Evolved. At the time, Hannah didn’t really know what to make of it – the idea that some people were potentially simply better than others wasn’t an idea she was unfamiliar with, but having it be to unusual superhuman abilities – it sounded like something out of a bad movie or some of the TV shows her she and her younger sister had watched while they were growing up.
For a bit, really, Hannah didn’t make much of it at all. As far as she was aware, she had never actually had any contact with any of these Evolved folks, though once news of the evolved came she began to hear more and more, particularly among those stationed where she was in Iraq. It was only after a little bit of time had passed and Hannah was beginning to enter the last six months of her tour of duty in the Middle East that she began to question if her still recently discovered ability to push herself further than anyone else she knew could possibly be the result of some sort of Evolved ability, an idea only further pushed by the advent of the Linderman Act and the registration measures attached to it.
What Hannah felt she was uncertainty, of how she would be treated if it turned out that she did happen to be SLC Expressive, to be one of the Evolved. The military was the one thing she really had going for her, and not knowing how being Evolved might effect that was giving her bouts of anxiety and doubt – something, she noticed, was leaving her much more tired than she had been over recent months. It was only when she was distracted from her thoughts, back out in the field and doing her job that she felt her strength return to her.
Keeping her suspicions about her possible Evolved status to herself was no easy task for Hannah, but at the very least she managed to do so until January 2008, when it came time for her to end her current tour of duty and return home to New York City. By the time it was her time to return home, she had only a short time before been promoted to the rank of Sergeant, but it had none the less provided her with a wealth of experience she would surely bring back with her both to New York,a nd when she returned toa ctive duty. Her family had done much to recover from losing home and possessions in the bomb, but there was still much to do, and so as soon as Hannah returned home, she set out to help her family however she could.
It wasn’t until the SLC test kits became available – and Hannah was brought to a police station after ending up in a bar fight – that her status as an evolved human was confirmed, something that briefly left Hannah very disappointed and in a bit of a rut. As someone who as always strived to be the best she could be, knowing that her above average performance over the last year had been more easily credited to an Evolved ability than her own sweat and hard work was disheartening. Still, now registered as having “Heightened Pain Tolerance”, there was little that Hannah could do about it, and instead she was left to wonder how this would affect her military career.
The next two years became the slowest years of Hannah’s life as she worked to help her family business – something her father had always wanted – and kept an eye on Elena as she finished her senior year of high school and moved on the college, tutoring and helping her as best as her non-military learnings would allow her to, despite the fact that like her brother and older sister she was being groomed into helping with the family business when she got older.
Come 2009, Hannah was afforded the opportunity to join the newly forming FRONTLINE squads in New York City, but turned down the offer in favour of continuing to help her family and sister, and for the the time, the year continued as normal. It was 2010 that brought the most change for Hannah, starting in early in the year when she found out she would be returning to the middle east by the end of the year. Things changed, however, in June of that year – when the wave of prophetic visions washed over the city, she experienced one of her own younger sister caught in the crossfire of a riot suppression gone terribly wrong. Frightened by this possibility, even if it was initially brushed off as a hallucination, as November creeped closer, Hannah made an effort to make sure her sister was out of the state at the beginning of the month, particularly as the violence began to escalate – even if it meant she was missing numerous classes.
And it couldn’t have come at a better time. November 8th came, and the riots broke out just as predicted – with her sister safely out of the city, it seemed that Hannah had avoided the worst, but the face of the entire city had changed into something almost recognisable.
And that’s when the call to join FRONTLINE, in the wake of numerous losses leading up to and during the riots, came once more. This time, Hannah would not turn this opportunity, quickly and enthusiastically agreeing to join FRONTLINE, for better or worse, to serve and to protect Evolved and Non-Evolved alike…
