Damien Lawrence

Flint

Damien Rogue Lawrence, born 7th September 1991, is a master thief and former covert assassin for the British government. Formerly known and feared as the Magician in the Deep Black of British intelligence, he left the service to become the Phantom, a thief who could pull off apparently impossible heists and get away with them all. During this time, he invented both the room temperature superconductor and metallic hydrogen, starting an energy revolution and founded his multi-billion pound company, Impulse.

## Background

Damien Rogue Lawrence was born on the 7th of September, 1991 to his parents, Olivia and Reginald Lawrence. He is half English, quarter Russian and quarter Sherpa/Nepalese. From early on, it was clear he was an incredibly intelligent child and his gifts were nurtured through home schooling, which left him with less-than-ideal social skills, which he learnt to overcome in later life.

The most pivotal moment in his life was the Triple Nine Bombing in London, which took place on the 9th of September, 2009, merely two days after his birthday. When the dirty bomb went off in Central London, it killed 189 people along with his parents, who spent three weeks dying of radiation poisoning in hospital. In the period of grief afterwards, he met his current two closest friends, Aoife Gallagher and Sean Wainwright at a meeting of those who had lost loved ones in the attack.

Four months on from the attack, he was accepted through the now-expedited recruitment process into the SAS. From here, he was deployed to Gibraltar, Syria and Afghanistan, running covert wetwork missions behind enemy lines. He spent three years in the SAS, at a time when most people his age were at university, meeting Skye Keating and Ezra Wycotte before his talent was noticed by officials in highly secretive parts of the government. From his deployment in Afghanistan, he was recruited by Richard Mainwaring to become part of the British Deep Black.

During the four years he spent as part of the Deep Black, Damien was trained to become a brilliant assassin, one who could strike anyone, anywhere, no matter the circumstance. He built a reputation as being cold-blooded and calculating, with the ability to make anyone disappear from the most secure locations. This, combined with his mysteriousness earned him the moniker of the Magician, which struck fear into the hearts of everyone who had heard of his reputation. Eventually, Damien was unable to suppress his conscience from what he had done and forced his way out of the Black, leaving several bodies in his wake when he was barred.

After he had left, Damien spent a year travelling the world, learning new skills, picking up languages, and attempting to find the light inside him that had almost been drowned by his time in the darkness. During this time, he was approached by his family's lawyer, who left him a single envelope. The co-ordinates inside led to a remote spot in Afghanistan, where his father had left him an ammunition container full of precious stones that he had liberated from a warlord in the area during his time in the SAS. Using this money, Damien was able to create the start-up that later grew into Impulse, as he invented the room-temperature superconductor and brought Aoife and Sean into the fold, with a proposal.

Soon after, they became an elite team of thieves, stealing the so-called impossible for fun, and evading the most advanced security like it didn't exist. For them, it was about the challenge, not the money, which was why they donated 90% of the takings to various charities afterwards. Fast forward to the present day, and he had spent four years as the Phantom, when he received a call from an old friend and went to meet Richard Mainwaring in a cafe on the Thames.

## Family

Born to Olivia Lawrence, a Russian-Nepali gymnast, and Reginald Lawrence, a British soldier, Damien is an only child. His grandparents were only known on his mother's side as his father was put through the foster system without ever finding his real parents. His grandfather, Aleksandr, was high up in the Soviet government and met Sangmu, Damien's grandmother, on a diplomatic trip to Nepal.

Both of Damien's parents were killed in the Triple Nine Bombing, leaving him an orphan days after his birthday. Aleksandr was killed in a car accident in 2000, leaving Sangmu, now in her nineties and living in a Nepalese monastery, as Damien's sole surviving relative.

## Personality

Damien is a highly intelligent, driven and resourceful person. He has dual personalities and the ability to switch between them as he wishes, which was useful during his time in the Deep Black. One has normal human emotions, whereas the second is effectively a sociopathic side, one that can emulate emotions and manipulate people to a high degree. This latter side is essentially his 'mission' mindset, and lets him turn off his emotions and conscience at his actions at will. This ability allows him to focus wholly on the situation at hand, giving him an edge over the vast majority of the population as he can react almost without thinking to any threat. In normal life, he lives through the other facet of his consciousness, where he is deeply loyal to his friends, to the point of dying for those he cares about as well as letting his emotions take control of most of his actions. When angered, he tends to revert to the sociopathic side, giving him full situational awareness and control.

He has a near photographic memory and finds it easy to learn languages, spoken or otherwise. Although homeschooling from a young age, along with high IQ, left his social skills to be desired initially, he vastly overcame this in later life. His cover at Impulse as Head of Acquisitions necessitates he pretend to be a bored playboy who womanises and collects expensive cars, in order to divert any of the wrong attention from him. Damien is widely renowned to be a drama queen, frequently manipulating circumstances for the sole purpose of making them more dramatic, as well as incredibly concerned about the state and health of his body.

His only aim in life is to leave the world a better place than the one he was born into, which he accomplishes through Impulse, with the room-temperature superconductor and metallic hydrogen having cascading effects in the world.

## Skills

Between his time in the SAS, the Deep Black and travelling the world, Damien picked up numerous talents which turned him into an incredibly lethal assassin and brilliant thief.

He is a skilled sniper, capable of accurate shots out to a mile with normal rifles and out to five miles using his custom-built VTX44 sniper rifle.

Damien speaks eleven languages fluently, including English, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin, Nepali, Norwegian and Japanese.

He is at peak human fitness, one of the best endurance athletes of all time, capable of running a marathon in two and a quarter hours and performing at far higher altitudes than most due to his Sherpa heritage. He once entered the Olympic Games in disguise and walked away with four different medals, along with three podium finishes at the Ironman World Championships. Damien is highly proficient at most martial arts, combining many into a single form which he uses, these include capoeira, Krav Maga, eskrima, judo, aikido, Brazilian jiu jutsu and Muay Thai.

He is highly adept at all aspects of subverting surveillance and security thanks to his Deep Black training, which has served him well as both the Phantom and as the Magician, leading the reputation he was an unstoppable force for those he was let loose upon.

On top of his training, he is an accomplished businessman, having founded Impulse from the ground up, as well as a brilliant engineer through his invention of the room-temperature superconductor. Between these two, he has amassed enough money to give him a net worth of almost £300 billion.

## Physical Appearance

Damien is 5'11" with the wiry, toned physique of a gymnast and short, spiky dark blonde hair. He has piercing glacial blue eyes, slightly upturned from his Nepalese heritage and a crooked nose. During his time in the SAS and outside, he gained several tattoos, including the winged dagger of the SAS on his left shoulder, and a tattoo of the chemical formula of adrenaline on his inside left wrist. His body has amassed many scars during his career, including shrapnel scars on his right calf and across his back, burn marks on his back, bullet wounds to his chest, shoulder and thigh as well as a fractal scar from a lightning strike down his arm and a nick out of his right ear from a near miss by sniper. He is often underestimated in strength from his leanness, and can move at a speed most people will see as a blur in fights.

His physical ability stems from his Sherpa genetics he inherited through his mother, giving him larger lungs and heart, and more efficient respiration, making him naturally fitter than most athletes would be by doping. Only in SHADOW does he learn about Project Lighthouse and it's effects on his birth.