|
Portrayed By |
Jennifer Connelly |
Sex |
Female |
Status |
Registered Evolved |
Ability |
Forcefield Generation |
Age |
34 |
Date of Birth |
January 18th, 1985 |
Occupation |
Fugitive |
Significant Other(s) |
James Silver (deceased?) |
Introduced |
When Lightning Strikes, Part III |
April Silver is a prisoner of the Moab Federal Penitentiary ten years in the future who travels back in time to change her fate.
Character History:
Moab.
It's where they put the worst of the Evolved criminals. The ones they think are dangerous. They're right, of course.
They made us that way.
I used to be a Company agent. It was my job to monitor and catch dangerous Evolved. Put them in holding, where they couldn't harm anyone. Or put them down, if there was no other alternative. Ironic, isn't it? Here I am now, in just the same sort of place I put so many others, once upon a time. I won't stay here, though. I'll get out. And then I'll get back at all of them — Pinehearst. The Petrellis.
You can't regenerate if you've been diced into a thousand little pieces.
It's a very satisfying thought. It won't happen that way, of course. I'm neither stupid nor suicidal, though there was a time… well. Honestly, after staring at the same four walls for seven years, you run out of things to fantasize about. Eight walls, I guess, if you count the cafeteria; there's also the exercise yard. The corridors are all the same, and it's all dreary. Old. Rundown. Not even so much as a coat of fresh paint, ever. Not to mention spending all that time with the same group of people, where nothing ever changes except the reasons for arguments…
It's worse than suburbia or small town syndrome. I grew up in one of those, so I should know; bitty little place called Skykomish, Washington. Lots of snow in the winter, pretty scenery, grand total of a couple hundred people. Lots of trains. I used to make up veritable novels about the trains — what they were carrying, who was on them, where they came from and where they went. When I left home, it was on a train. Went to Seattle for college. I was young; it felt like a long way from everything I knew.
Little did I know things were going to get even stranger.
My first clue arrived that November, when I woke up at home with no recollection of the past two days. My roommate told me some guy had brought me back the night before, passed-out drunk. It was the first time that had ever happened — and the last. I didn't touch alcohol again for six years. Not even when I found out what really happened and the true meaning of the lines tattooed on the side of my neck.
It was my second year in college. My second year as a professional dilettante; couldn't figure out for the life of me what I wanted to do. Psychology, history, English… I took a bunch of general courses and worked the rest of the time. Until I met him. Joshua Thibeau. For a couple of months, it seemed like he was there every single time I turned around — in the library, the coffee shop, playing frisbee on the lawn below the dorms… we never had a class together, though. He wasn't actually a student.
He was a Company agent, and he could make your blood boil. Literally. He could also suck all the heat out of things until they froze and spontaneously shattered. I found that out later, right after he showed me what I could do. He offered me a job, a chance to make a difference. Joshua was my friend, and he had just showed me the coolest thing in the world; of course I accepted.
Better than forgetting. Or — being locked up.
I spent two years training with Joshua and his partner, Valerie; first they helped me learn about my ability, and then they started teaching me their work. Agent work. In 2006, I became an agent; they partnered me with Faith Hunter, a Seattle native. I was thrilled.
Three months after, Manhattan Island exploded.
New York City is major everything. Major metropolis, major financial and trade center, major Company branch. They lost a lot of agents when Midtown went up. We were among those transferred over to fill in the void. It was… it shook me, to see that huge city suddenly truncated, a massive section excised from its center.
This is why we do it. This is what we're supposed to prevent.
I did nothing wrong.
I did nothing wrong!
Not that it really matters. I'm not here for what I did then. For all the Evolved I helped identify, characterize, and then either release or imprison depending on the risk they posed. Most of them aren't, you know. They're not a threat, and we treated them accordingly. People don't think about that. They don't think about all the Sylars and Ted Spragues we stopped. Just that we acted in secret and did things they're too holier-than-thou to dare sanction.
They say a good civil servant never gets mentioned in the papers. And what we did, we did for the good of everyone.
Then Pinehearst came along. I'm still not sure of all the details; most of what we got was from the public media, and they never get the story straight. But they reached out and just toppled the Company — and those of us at the bottom had to scatter like rats if we wanted to survive it.
I was engaged, by that point, to the very best man in the world; James Silver. We'd met one time when I was at the library, staking out a target's place of work across the street, and things just somehow developed from there. We were going to get married in October 2009.
In August, I told him I had to leave the city. I couldn't give him a reason; he had never had the faintest clue what I really did. That, sure, Primatech works with paper… but I don't. I couldn't explain. But he was prepared to pick up everything and leave — just because I needed him to. Just for me.
He died for me.
I stopped one last time to pick up some last-minute supplies. By the time I got home… there were two others. Pinehearst agents, I imagine. I didn't stop to find out; as soon as I walked in the door, he charged them and they shot him. They died six seconds later. There was so much blood.
I ran away. Hopped a train to Jersey and then cleaned out one of our accounts. Then kept running. I took his name, like I would have if… I became April Silver. And I went to ground. Just… not well enough. I think they'd been watching the house, or something. I never quite shook them off my trail, but I managed to stay free. Always running. I'd stay in a place for two months, four; sometimes not even that long. They probably would've let me go if I hadn't killed the first one who came after me, and then the ones after that.
That's why I'm here. It was two years before they could throw enough agents at me to actually stop me, to make an opening for a dart and eliminate my power. Without it, I was just another lost kid; cakewalk, from there. I guess they felt vindictive, after the trail of blood I'd left behind me — or maybe the serial-killer theories the media love so much were cause enough to plunk me down in Moab. Or they just didn't want to risk me killing anyone else, as if I were some sort of wild animal who had to be contained.
That might've been true, after he died. When they were chasing me. But I'm not. I'm human, just like everyone else. I'm sane, which is more than some people here can say.
They feel safe, now. I'm locked up in a nice, sturdy cell; I've even been well-behaved, since there's no point in starting fights or causing problems. You just get put in one of the lower levels and don't even get what excuse for sunlight Green Level is allowed. The semblance of human company.
Maybe it'd be better not to remember there's anything else to the world. Everything that I've lost. But I've been promised. Promised a way out. And it starts with me getting my power back.
Sometimes I sit here in the dark and stare at my hands, wondering if it can happen. If it isn't gone forever. Sometimes, I think I even see a flicker, just a little glimmer of silver, and I ask myself…
…is it for real…
…or am I finally going insane?
Timeline:
April to June 2008
04/07 |
Eight people hijack a time-traveler, transport themselves back ten years. |
April, Doyle, Edward, Hiro, John, Nathan, Niles |
04/16 |
April and Reed start digging for information on their own initiative. |
April, Reed |
04/16 |
Edward gives April directives to pass to the rest of the group. |
April, Edward |
04/17 |
April plays message-relay. |
April, Doyle, Nathan, Niles, Reed |
04/18 |
Two outcasts agree that the end justifies the means. |
April, Nathan |
04/19 |
April pays her younger self a visit, without actually doing any visiting. |
April, April |
(2) |
April listens to a sermon at the Guiding Light. |
April, Cardinal, Joseph, Raquelle, others |
04/24 |
April can't not assist in a Company operation, which has the side effect of revealing her presence in this timeline. |
April, Felix, Minea, others |
04/29 |
Doyle drops by while April is assembling her information and plans. |
April, Doyle |
05/03 |
Oh, by the way, Niles may have outed us all. |
April, Reed |
05/04 |
Which isn't going to stop April from doing much the same thing. |
April, Minea |
05/09 |
She also assists in deposing the duly elected President… in favor of himself. |
April, Doyle, Nathan, Nathan |
05/10 |
And then turns plans into action, springing 2009-versions of certain timetravelers from Company custody. |
April, April, Edward, Len, Niles, Reed |
05/12 |
April contemplates such philosophical questions as do dopplegangers have souls? |
April, Joseph |
05/18 |
April doesn't have to help her cohorts. She doesn't have to help anyone else, either. |
April, Gabriel |
06/06 |
Two Company agents ask for information. April provides. |
April, Curt, Veronica |
06/14 |
April Silver is informed that her alterego has been killed; the Company offers to let her take Bradley's place. |
April, Curt, Len, Veronica |
06/16 |
Curt bribes April to learn about what happened in the future. She doesn't know much — but it wasn't much of a bribe, either. |
April, Curt |
06/18 |
April's work pays off when Curt and Veronica end Doyle. Or — one of him, at any rate. |
April, Curt, Doyle, Veronica |
Evolved Ability
April has the ability to create forcefields. These barriers may be selectively permeable to various phases of matter, blocking solids, liquids, gases, or even energy from passing through at her discretion. The more permeable a field, the more transparent it is.
A 3-d forcefield 'bubble' may take any shape April wishes - spherical, cubic, cylindrical, or otherwise, limited chiefly by her imagination. It may enclose up to 100 cubic feet of volume without any strain on April's part; larger volumes come with correspondingly greater difficulty. April may also create 2-d forcefield 'planes' with length and width but no measurable thickness; these fields have a monomolecular edge which can slice through any physical material without effort. A plane of 100 square feet is the upper bound of what April may create with ease, although she can create larger 2-d structures with effort. Smaller ones, perforce, require less effort.
April may create and hold multiple structures simultaneously, up to quantities matching the limits described above (e.g. two structures with a total volume of 100 cubic feet, or three with the same total volume, etc.). Again, larger is possible but requires more work. The forcefields, however, last only so long as April is able to concentrate on them; the more there are, the more her focus is taxed and the less versatile her implementation. April may move her forcefields as she pleases, within reasonable line-of-sight range; the rate of motion is limited only by the speed of her thought.
Similarly, forcefields may only be created in areas she can clearly see; they also cannot be created through something, i.e. materializing a forcefield that bisects a fencepost. She may take a forcefield 'blade' and cause it to slice through said fencepost, but the initial creation must occur in open air. Additionally, because a forcefield is impermeable to solids at the very least, it does an excellent imitation of the irresistible force or immovable object. April can expand a forcefield into something (or out against it) and cause the 'something' to give way (e.g. creating a forcefield inside a car and then expanding it to make the car shatter into pieces, or expanding one against a wall and causing the wall to crumble). She can also cause a forcefield to collapse and crush whatever it surrounds.
Personality
April is not someone most people would be quick to describe as 'the sharpest crayon in the box'. This isn't the same as saying she's stupid, however. April is in many ways blinkered by her own steadfast beliefs and preconceptions; one of that sort which is able to convince themselves of something and then believe it is certain fact despite any evidence to the contrary. In 2009, she believed her little corner of the world was neat and perfect; that everything was in place and no wrong could happen. This blinded April to the first clues that the Company was in trouble; even when she learned otherwise, she was that little bit too late to act, to realize her world had turned entirely upside-down.
In 2019, April has spent seven years in prison, and while some things have changed, others haven't. She still believes your average person is decent and good; that she herself is just a normal person who wants only to be left alone and live a normal life. Oh, but when the opportunity affords itself, she'll definitely make the effort to bring Pinehearst down — because in April's view of the world, Pinehearst is as black as black can be. She's spent nine years indelibly etching that principle in mental stone. April remains dedicated to her now-idealized vision of the Company — that the Company is all things good and right. For the time being, at least.
What April has yet to realize, in the microcosm of Moab facilities, is that while her ideology hasn't changed, she has. Nine years have passed since her world went topsy-turvy, and between being on the run and festering in a prison cell, those nine years have afforded her no real chance to heal from that. Where once April was interested in 'making a difference', in helping humanity as a whole, her first concern now is her own survival as a free woman. She's not cold-blooded; not yet. But her personal code of ethics isn't what it used to be; surely the ends justify the means so long as Pinehearst falls, the Company goes on, and her fiance survives this time around… right?
April is not a villain in the stereotypic sense (which may make for interesting dynamics with those who are); she does fall on the darker side of gray nonetheless, a living example of what anyone might be driven to under the right (or wrong) conditions.
Skills
April was trained as a Company agent (two years' training, just about three years' field experience). This means she has basic skills in strategy and tactics, disguise and prevarication, illegal entry, following others and spotting any tails of her own, close-quarters combat, the use of firearms, first aid, and extracting information out of computers. Note the descriptor of 'basic' applied to all of these; April is a generalist, and could be easily outmatched by anyone who had a serious interest in any of those fields. Also by more experienced agents. Living on the run for just over two years did hone April's capability to spin a plausible lie, recognize when she's being followed, and elude pursuit. Conversely, as an agent she always relied very heavily on her power, which means she didn't put a lot of personal emphasis on close-quarters combat; monomolecular blades don't really require much in the way of finesse when they're used.
That said, after spending seven idle years in Moab, all of the above skills are somewhat rusty.
In college, April wandered through several fields of more or less humanities-type persuasion, including literature, psychology, and anthropology. She's since had nothing but time in which to expand her knowledge in those areas, reading being about the only thing a jailbird has to do when they spend most of the day in a single small cell. April has dabbled in poetry but gave up on her few attempts at art when they didn't turn out anything like what she wanted.
Trivia and Notes:
- April's 'maiden' name is Bradley.
- April has been Marked.
- In 2019, April was Registered as Tier 3. April Bradley was Registered as Tier 2 in 2009, and it's this record that she can be connected to now.
Music
"Sunrise" — In Tenebris
Memories fade silently
Losing continuity
It was never found in me
To comprehend eternity
Everything within your eyes
Limitless as the sunrise
Children take what we can see
We have only strength to breathe
There is one thing that I know
Far we've come and still to go
Everything I feel for you
Words cannot express it true
But to love is not the end
For in you I have found a friend
Everything within your eyes
Paint the world a new sunrise
Martyred by the world it seems
Chosen of to live our dreams
Place your every trust in me
And I'll give mine to destiny
Children take what we can see
We have only strength to breathe
There is one thing that I know
Far we've come and still to go
With each and every breath we take
We feel the limit, watch it break
And all the hopes we would fulfill
With every step we are closer still
And we shall reach the greatest heights
From the darkness to the light
And all the world within our sights
From the darkness to the light
"The Promise" — Within Temptation
On behalf of her love
She no longer sleeps
Life no longer had meaning
Nothing to make her stay
She sold her soul away
I held you tight to me
But you slipped away
You promised to return to me
And I believed, I believed
After the night he died
I wept my tears until they dried
But the pain stayed the same
I didn't want him to die all in vain
I made a promise to revenge his soul in time
I'll make them bleed at my feet
Sometimes I wonder
Could I have known their true intentions?
As the pain stayed the same
I'm going to haunt them down all the way
I made a promise to revenge his soul in time
One by one they were surprised
"Forgiven" — Within Temptation
Couldn't save you from the start
Love you so it hurts my soul
Can you forgive me for trying again
Your silence makes me hold my breath
Time has passed you by
Oh, for so long I've tried to shield you from the world
Oh, you couldn't face the freedom on your own
Here I am left in silence
You gave up the fight
You left me behind
All that's done's forgiven
You'll always be mine
I know deep inside
All that's done's forgiven
I watched the clouds drifting away
Still the sun can't warm my face
I know it was destined to go wrong
You were looking for the great escape
To chase your demons away
Oh, for so long I've tried to shield you from the world
Oh, you couldn't face the freedom on your own
And here I am left in silence
You gave up the fight
You left me behind
All that's done's forgiven
You'll always be mine
I know deep inside
All that's done's forgiven
I've been so lost since you've gone
Why not me before you?
Why did fate deceive me?
Everything turned out so wrong
Why did you leave me in silence?
You gave up the fight
You left me behind
All that's done's forgiven
You'll always be mine
I know deep inside
All that's done's forgiven
Gallery
whereabouts unknown