Name: Wenling "Wen" Lai
Age: 26
Nationality: The Regime of Asia
Ethnicity: Chinese
Sex: Female
Appearance: Wen is seldom seen without a severe expression on her face, exacerbated by the heavy, blunt bangs that nearly obscure her brown eyes. She is far from being the most physically capable in the group, instead used to having others watch her back, but she can run and defend herself if need be. She tends to wear light clothing due to the heat and for mobility purposes, usually in shades of white or grey, with a light canvas jacket and leather ankle boots. She owns a lab coat, mainly as a means of identifying herself. Her long black hair is often tied back in a tight bun, leaving out just her bangs and a few strands of hair on either side.
Job: Lead Botanist
Disabilities: Suffers anxiety/panic attacks on occasion, usually from loud noises such as close-range gunfire, explosions, and thunder. These attacks may render her unable to move without some kind of assistance.
Biography: Wen was born 4 years after the outbreak, to confused and fearful parents who were lucky and wealthy enough to survive. With most of their money gone by the end of 3010, they found themselves demoted to regular citizens and forced to struggle along with everyone else. To their dismay, their young daughter took an early interest in plants and picture books related to farming. As she grew older, her parents realized that it had become the burden of the young to find the courage and ambition to put a stop to the destruction that they had been born into. Wen, now a teenager, knew this as well, and desired to become useful in the fight against the virus in the only way she thought she could -- through science.
Wen and her parents traveled together, to get to the next safe place, one after another, but it was getting to be too much on the aging couple. Wen had the knowledge and the drive to try and help the situation, and her parents wanted anything that would keep their only daughter out of direct danger, but unfortunately, things just didn't work out that way; Wen wanted the deepest understanding possible of a field that had become unexpectedly crucial, and thus found herself in the newly-built community called "Refuge", working with established scientists. A couple years ago, she began accompanying hunters on expeditions to take photos and samples of mutated plant life back with her. One such expedition ended in near failure, a traumatic ordeal that left Wen terrified of the sound of explosions and other loud noises. Despite this, she gradually grew more consumed with her work, and in the months that followed, both of her parents passed away. She still blames herself for putting so much stress on them. Following their deaths, the senior botanist was killed in an unexpected, tragic accident in which he grazed his hand with a mutated thorn. Wen soon became the de facto lead botanist of Refuge.
Her passion mainly lies in finding a means of eliminating potential viral infection from plant life, and with a team of fellow botanists, their efforts have resulted in some successes, the biggest by far being the synthetic solution "Purge", which allows treated plants to be safely handled and consumed. Wen believes they have found a way to produce a plant germinated from seed that can stave off direct viral contact for the earliest stages of its growth cycle, which she considers to be a great development in their testing. Meanwhile, she has taken a secondary interest in gardening; she finds it sad that once-prized "organic gardening" will likely be a thing of the past until the virus is completely eradicated. One of her pet projects is cross-pollinating plants to mix and isolate desired properties, but the effects thus far have varied wildly. At the very least, she has been able to sustain a safe nursery of different tea leaves to flavor slush.
Wen takes her job incredibly seriously, and always wishes that there was more that she could do to help. Even if she doesn't show it, her actions make it abundantly clear that she cares about the well-being of others as well as the entire world itself, and is still recovering and grieving from the loss of her parents. She enjoys having time alone to think, and has little patience for idle chitchat if she doesn't know a person well. This means that she can come across as blunt and overly professional to some, but to a perceptive person, it becomes clear that she is overcompensating for many deep-rooted issues (pun slightly intended), including fears of abandonment, death, and loss of control.
Skills and Talents: Attention to detail, plant identification, basic first aid, good memory, hiding, knowledge of phytochemistry and plant reproduction.
Primary Skill: Botany; studying plant matter and performing tests in the hopes of reverse-engineering plants that utilize only the useful effects of the virus, or are completely immune to the virus altogether.
Hobby: Sketching plants and occasionally animals for study, gardening, yoga.
Talent: Understands spoken Chinese, artistic talent.
Negative Trait: Afraid of many loud noises, low pain tolerance, physically weak, vulnerable to threats/torture.
Backpack: Lab coat, bulletproof vest (only worn in more dire situations due to weight), small first aid pack (bandages of multiple sizes, antiseptic wipes, isopropyl alcohol, packets of aspirin), two bottles of slush, three cans of food.
Cross-body bag: Weapons, supply of Purge, small pocket tablet for notes/sketches, 30x hand lens, dissecting tools (needles, forceps, razor blades, scissors), plastic bags, plastic vials with screw-on lids, steel case for vials and other samples, gloves, rubber bands, disposable fabric face masks, goggles. [Note: Her botany tools can double as medical supplies.]
Gun: 4-shot Derringer, .357 Magnum bullets. Full chambers, no extra bullets on-hand.
Knife: Small razor blades, 5-inch utility knife with sheath.
