Marcus MacLeod

## Overview

Renowned astrophysicist turned manic, space-obsessed and gravity controlling Director of AIM's scientific endeavours, Doctor Macleod is better known by his file's title-- **Graviton.** He occupies himself with overseeing AIM's research and spends most his time working on his pet projects which all include gravity in some way, be it firing mini-blackholes from weaponry, engineering slow-fall boots, or opening wormholes to try and send mankind into space *proper*.

## History

#### Early Life

Hailing from the lovely east end of Glasgow, Marcus was an only child with dreams of being an astronaut, and one of the rare few who had to chops to actually make it happen. He tore through school-work like a rabid dog, transitioning at 17 to male and to an early start at a prestigious university; using it as a launching pad to get into Scotland's space programme; only to realise during one of many astronaut screening tests that, in fact, he didn't want to be an astronaut *that way.* What he wanted was not just to explore the stars, but to map them, understand them, and build around them. He quickly changed tracks to astrophysics afterwards-- where he quickly (well, quick for academia) cemented himself as a free-thinking and trailblazing researcher with a heavy focus on unravelling the mysteries of the universe.

#### Research & The Incident

More importantly, Marcus' research was dedicated to fully understanding the force of gravity. Mainly just how to apply it to space-travel and how it could be easier to just 'turn' gravity off rather than trying to fight it to send a ship through the atmosphere. To get to that stage, though, Marcus had to first challenge his assumption that up is not down by opening a black hole and studying it. This was widely regarded as *huge* leap in logic and (frankly) a batshit insane move, but Dr Macleod did not care. Many colleagues told him the idea was absurd and some even assumed he was joking, so there was no way he was going to get the grant to do it legitimately. Underground secret blackhole machine it is, then.

Surprising absolutely no one, the experiment ends in a complete disaster-- with Marcus being exposed to a black hole's ergosphere just long enough to irreversibly change him, inside and out. The black hole led to the collapse of the entire facility, killing everyone but Marcus and one other, who it just sent flying to a far corner of the earth. Marcus shut down the machine before he passed out in a coma for weeks. During those weeks, strange gravitic anomalies were recorded in the area surrounding the hospital he was kept in-- only stopping when he was medically awakened by the government to answer 'what on earth happened there'. As he was being questioned, Marcus became agitated and confused, which led to another anomaly and (again) another total crushing of the building. Realising they had nothing to try and control Marcus in this state, the government called in SHIELD from overseas, who happily took their new subject GRAVITON off their hands and the good doctor was quickly written off as dead..

#### SHIELD Era

Doctor Macleod was interred in a facility not far out from Cincinnati, deep underground and under constant watch and power dampening; more or less buried until SHIELD had a use for him, which tended to be running numbers for experiments. The isolation twisted Marcus' already fragile mind into an even bigger pretzel of misfiring and confusion. He was tested lightly, but was quickly set to 'just watch him' category. Marcus didn't see the outside for years, until SHIELD's collapse and the subsequent loss of manpower at his facility allowed him to eventually escape.

#### AIM Involvement

With SHIELD gone, the equations they had him running and solving vanished too, which just left him bored after his escape; so he returned to focusing on his old research. His goal was to somehow create exotic matter that would allow humanity to open wormholes for studying the time-space relationship and all that lovely stuff, but Marcus had no money, no equipment, and most importantly, had been presumed dead for the past ten years. Unaware of the situation regarding SHIELD's dissolution, Marcus went around asking where to send his CV to be 're-employed' until AIM found him and snatched him up.

Under Mysterio's leadership, Marcus is the Director of Scientific Research and oversees, signs off on, or is directly involved with most projects in some way or another-- never anywhere outside an AIM facility for an extended period of time. If he's asked, he will (and did) go and wreak havoc for the 'greater good of science' with little care to anyone he may injure- like he did on 5th Avenue and the surrounding midtown area of New York. His personal AIM facility is located not far from the Faroe Islands and is dubbed Horizon by staff, specialised on working on quantum and gravitational experiments.

## Trivia

* Marcus is FTM.
* He has a dislike of biologists- mainly geneticists- only because it's "wall to wall" with them and their X-Gene fascinations.
* His research would go on to be fundamental in artificial gravity technology. It also earned him a Nobel Prize a year before his 'death'.