The Birth of Emission

Catherine York was a child of the Rogue Isles. An orphan, she bounced from one orphanage to another, sometimes being temporarily placed in the "care" of a family, but usually not. Eventually she wound up with a couple who cared more for the assistive living Catherine brought with her than for the child herself.

Shortly after adoption, her new parents divorced. Both parents continually told Catherine that the divorce was her fault, that she was the ruination of their lives. Catherine then became a pawn in her parent’s war between each other. Her Father retreated into a bottle, and was a mean drunk. Her mother survived on the generosity of her numerous, short term boyfriends, most of whom had no use for a young girl other than using her as an ashtray.

Throughout this nightmare childhood, Catherine's one solace was school. She had several teachers who seemed to truly care about her wellbeing, and put a lot of effort and caring into this brilliant child.

Quiet, shy, and plain in appearance, high school was simply a continuation of the ostracism Catherine was quickly growing accustomed to. She had no friends, was never allowed to participate in any school activities, and no boys ever showed an interest in "the girl next door."

After High School, Catherine's life seemed nearly at an end. Her parents still paid no attention to her and made it apparent that when she reached the age of 18 she was on her own. There was no way they would help her with attending University, and she could not afford it herself, nor did she have any particularly lucrative job opportunities.

Then she found her answer. The Gossamyr Project was accepting applications for medical experimentation. This privately funded Project was secretly continuing the military project that resulted in the creation of the Freakshow. Catherine was quickly accepted into the project and began her first round as a test subject. While participating in the project, Catherine began school online, and received additional tutoring from the some brilliant but anonymous scientists who worked for the Project. Catherine began focusing her studies toward Physics, a subject that had always fascinated her, and one that the Project fully supported her learning.

Eventually, The Project implanted into Catherine's brain an Interface Chip. Based off of Rikti technology, this chip allowed Catherine to directly interface with machinery or computer systems and control them directly, as though they were an extension of her own body. Catherine spent some time learning to operate simple machinery, working her way up to controlling a small test factory where she was the only person working the entire factory. She spent a deal of time working with being directly linked to a computer system controlling far more delicate things as well, such as particle generators and force fields. Her physics knowledge was being put to good use, but there were still problems with the interface for such delicate systems.

While the project worked on ironing out those problems, it was decided that Catherine should fine turn her abilities with interfacing directly to a complex computer system, so she was transferred into the Virtual Reality division.

In this division, her consciousness would be periodically downloaded directly into a computer, where she was able to act as an independent entity within the Virtual Reality world. As the Project's successes grew in this respect, they soon opened a commercial establishment to showcase this new technology: The Pleasure Dome. Paying clients could rent the use of a booth that simulated the effects of the Interface Chip, allowing them to access the virtual reality and interact with Project personnel such as Catherine directly. The possibilities of the Virtual Reality were endless, and Catherine's future with the Project seemed bright. It was discovered that some skills and knowledge could be downloaded directly into the memory banks of the Interface Chip, which Catherine could then access directly – giving her a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of a multitude of subjects that increased her versatility in acting out roles within the VR world.

However, the darker side of the Project continued in reality while Catherine's consciousness was confined within the machine. This darker side of the Project was two fold. First, while the Interface Chip could hold knowledge for Catherine to access, it was also building an electronic copy of her consciousness, and learning how to make slight changes and adjustments to the consciousness. The result was that over time, the Project began to tailor Catherine’s very personality to fit their desires. The second part to this was a secondary nervous system that was implanted into her body, the first attempt to do such a thing to a living body after the Project had been reverse engineering Dr. Vahzilok's work. A resounding success, Catherine’s body could now be controlled by the machine directly, even as Catherine could control a machine directly. Her body could now react instinctively even while her mind was not directly controlling the body. With this type of access, the Interface Chip was able to begin reprogramming Catherine’s subconscious. Perhaps even more sinister was the possibility of downloading a new consciousness into Catherine's body, though the technology of the project had not yet reached that level of control.

All of this was done without Catherine's knowledge or approval. To this day she has no idea of what her body was used for while her consciousness was acting out her various roles in the VR world of The Pleasure Dome. She knew that during long periods of being jacked into the system her body was “exercised” to keep her muscles from atrophying. Since this resulted in her body becoming even more fit and somewhat less plain, Catherine simply enjoyed the side benefit of working in the VR world.

Finally the project had reached a critical stage in their development. Their computer control systems had advanced dramatically and they were ready for a real-world test. Catherine was by this time their best operator within complex systems, and she had focused her schooling in the area that this test would best fit: physics.

The test was a front-line control system of the Terra Volta reactor, monitoring and managing power flow, reactor input/output, balancing the system, and fine tuning the process of powering the city.

Catherine was elated at the chance to participate in the venture and arrived bright-eyed and bushy tailed on the big day. Little did anyone know that this was also a big day for Arachnos. The test began smoothly – all systems functioned as designed and Catherine was able to improve reactor efficiency by nearly 10%. It was a strain however, for this system was the most powerful and complex system she had ever had to work on, even in a simulation. After a few hours, her body was shaking with the strain, dripping with sweat, and her nose began bleeding. While the representatives of the Project had no problem with allowing her to continue under these circumstances, the Hero overseeing the process demanded that they end the simulation to give Catherine a break. When she opened her eyes in the physical world, Catherine saw the most beautiful sight of her life; the angular and sleek form of Positron, his helmet reflecting the lights from the control panels like Christmas lights. He lifted her out of the control harness and carried her to a medical station.

While Catherine was attended to by members of Paragon City Search and Rescue, The Project engineers rewired the system for phase 2. They had been prepared for the system to be too much for a single person to control, and so had planned phase 2 to be a test of a single person controlling only a section of the city. The eventual goal would be to have teams of operators jacked into the system and working in tandem to control the city’s power grid.

For this test, Catherine was wired to control only Siren’s Call. Under the limited load, she thrived and was able to run and maintain the system easily. Efficiency in that grid soared by 20%. As the celebratory bottles of champagne were being opened however, Siren’s Call suddenly ceased to exist. Sunburst had just detonated. The power surge of feedback through the overloaded War Walls surged directly into the Terra Volta main reactor… and into Catherine’s body.

While her body popped and sparked as the Interface Chip shorted out and her secondary nervous system fused into her, her mind began the process of retreating from the system back to her pain wracked body. Catherine knew that the system could not hold from the feedback it was receiving, and since this was a test project, she had only limited control over the backup systems. The power surge had already shorted out the speakers she used for communicating with people in the real world, and so there was only one way for Catherine to do what must be done – she had to force herself out of the system without the assistance of her technicians.

Unfortunately, the power surge had other ideas. A particularly strong spike flung Catherine’s body out of the control harness… before her mind had completely finished returning to her body. As a result, some of the missing parts of her personality were pulled from the damaged Interface Chip, components that were are part of the attempt to alter her personality.

While her mind reeled in shock, her burnt and battered body began operating under the strongest instinct it had – the instinct Catherine had returned to her body with: instructions to shut the breaker off to Siren’s Call. Like the Vahzilok her second nervous system stemmed from, she staggered out of the control system and into the reactor core room. Unshielded and unprotected, in a matter of seconds she had received a lethal dose of radiation. Her body mindlessly crossed the room at a fast stagger, collapsing into and pulling the switch to shut off Siren’s Call.

And just like that, there was silence.

Catherine was in a coma for nearly a year. She does not remember Positron pulling her body from the reactor core room. She doesn’t remember his tirade at the engineers from The Project for failing to build in sufficient safety systems. She doesn’t remember PCSAR attempting to do everything they could to care for her overtaxed body and finally pronouncing her dead – though it may take sometimes for the radiation poisoning to finish her off, there was nothing that could be done to save her.

She doesn’t remember her body being taken back to the Rogue Isles by Project Gossamyr, who refused to let go of one of their most promising subjects. So began her last work with The Project.

The scorched Interface Chip was removed, along with the damaged brain tissue that it was attached to. The secondary nervous system could not be removed, as it had fully fused into her system. Her burns were treated as best they could with skin grafts and dermal regenerators. But the key to saving her life was when The Project gave her over to their Gengineers who began the process genetically restructuring Catherine. Using stolen Crey research and generously donated genetic material from several mutant heroes with regenerative capabilities, The Project sculpted a new Catherine.

When Catherine finally awakened from her coma, she found herself changed dramatically. Her body, always so plain and boring before now looked like something from a wet dream. She was taller, stronger, sleeker, and rounder than she was used to. Her eyesight had improved to where she no longer needed her glasses. The most frightening thing however was her sensitivity. With the secondary nervous system having fused into her body (and without the Interface Chip to control that system), her sensitivity was increased approximately tenfold, since the implanted system was far more delicate than her biological system.

Catherine was also disturbed by the lack of some of her memories. As she examined herself and who she was, how she thought, and felt… it didn’t match up with how she remembered herself. She didn’t know that her personality had partly merged with the altered personality. The Project of course, never told her. Catherine now felt a driving need to service and help others, yet in a self-serving way.

Since her body had been saved by the splicing of regenerative mutant DNA into her genetic structure, there was a side effect that not even the Project had anticipated. The mutant DNA had indeed helped heal and regenerate her body, but it had done so by embracing the radiation poisoning within her system, binding that radioactivity into the genetic code. As a result, Catherine is now constantly emitting small amounts of radiation at all times, and can build up and focus blasts of pure radiation. She has learned to control these blasts to harm her enemies but also to help others.

Legally dead according to all international databases, the Project figured Catherine would be satisfied to remain as an employee of the Project. They figured wrong. Catherine escaped, doing considerable damage to the Project’s facilities and research in the process.

As an official non-entity, Catherine began a life of petty crime, which eventually landed her in Zigursky Prison. When Arachnos broke her out as part of Operation Destiny, she encased herself in a metal protective suit to help control her heightened sensitivity. While a normal person could feel nothing through this suit, for Catherine it reduces the sensation to about normal levels. It also shields the low level emission of radiation that constantly leaks from her body. Taking the name “Emission”, Catherine began working with Arachnos in hopes of someday sorting out the mystery that is Catherine York.

Part of her enjoys mercilessly slaughtering her enemies, while part of her takes pride in only fighting the scum of the earth. She at times enjoys the company of others, whom she can heal and help, and at other times prefers to adventure solo, consumed by a black mood during which time she argues with herself constantly. Somewhere, a dark corner of her mind screams in agony and terror at the changes that have been forced upon her. Some part of her knows that what she does is wrong, but she cannot stop herself. Sometimes, some parts of her long to see the shining, sparkling form of Positron again. But how could he possibly know of her these days, since, after all, she is a dead woman.