Adjutant

Zara Skenn, alias Adjutant, is a cybernetically-enhanced metahuman capable of interfacing with any technology. At the time of Shades of Gunmetal: Born In Fire, she is loosely affiliated with the Last Watch.

Origin (1998)
Project: Adjutant was a Stark Technologies endeavor, commissioned with the goal of enabling human beings to interact with technology on an intuitive level. Headed by Josef Lawson, Adjutant focused not on the machine or its user interface, but the human making use of it; specialized cybernetics were developed and implanted in the brains of volunteer participants. 80% of the project's volunteers died shortly after the implant process; their neural pathways were unable to handle the influx of data, causing stroke and lethal electrical feedback. Those that survived the initial experiments exhibited bizarre and violent behavior, and were euthanized or sedated and studied.

Adjutant did not experience a breakthrough until Lawson posited using a brain which could still develop new neural pathways- specifically, that of a child. This information was not shared with Tony Stark; Lawson feared that the nature of his experiments would force Stark to shut down the project before it could achieve success and validate the deaths of its earlier participants. Given society's prejudice against metahumans at the time of Project: Adjutant, Lawson had little difficulty acquiring a "mutant" child for the purposes of his research. Per his expectations, the cybernetics integrated well with a developing brain; though the subject's limbic system sustained damage during the operation, she did exhibit the desired results.

Before this information could be brought to board, however, an anonymous member of the research team forwarded Lawson's plans to Stark, who immediately ended all support for Adjutant. Unaware of Lawson's success, Stark ordered the labs and all equipment and research related to the project be mothballed. When confronted by Stark Industries security, however, Josef overpowered the guards and made an escape with Zara- at this time, referred to only as "the Adjutant." For the next eight years, Lawson would continue to experiment on Skenn, improving her cybernetics as technology advanced.

The advent of Zara's metahuman abilities- the foremost of which being electrokinesis- served as an unexpected Achilles' heel for Lawson's work. As her powers fluctuated and wreaked havoc on the lab, Skenn managed to incapacitate Josef and escaped the facility. Alone, unaccustomed to other human beings, and with absolutely no resources to her name, she subsided on food she could scavenge from dumpsters for the better part of a year.