The Mastermind, alias Cameron Marx, resembles Chris Evans. He’s thirty-five [35] years old and was born on March 8th, 1979. Cameron identifies as pansexual panromantic and is a cisgender male. The Mastermind has been a member of Alpha Squad Midnight since July 2014, and he is currently taken.
> Impulse Control
> Strategy Planning and Coordinating
> Well-Traveled
> Flexible and Thinks on Their Feet
> Problem Solving
> Critical Thinking
> Zealous
> Masochist
> Remorseless
Cameron was orphaned as a small child—he doesn’t remember it. He was only four years old when his parents died in a car accident while he was at home with a babysitter. With no immediate family on either side—both of his parents were only children whose parents had died of old age—he was put into the foster care system.
In California, where the state was already pretty broke, foster care was a far from perfect system. For Cameron, however, who managed to grow up with very little resentment, it wasn’t as tumultuous as it could have been. Of course, as a white kid who kept his head down and laid low, he wasn’t victim to as much violence and discrimination as a lot of the people he lived with growing up, and for that he was eternally grateful.
He used that to his advantage for his teen years. Always willing to take charge, he taught the younger kids how to stay out of trouble with gang violence that happened on the street each day, how to stay out of the way of the kids in school who would cause them trouble, and even how to cause a little trouble back if someone needed to learn some manners. Cam was always a natural born leader, and that earned him the respect of his peers.
When he left foster care, even as a dedicated, hardworking kid, he didn’t have many choices. Cam, despite working since the age of fourteen, couldn’t afford college. He didn’t receive any scholarships big enough that he could pay for the other part of college as well as his own living expenses. At this point, he could either go to living on the streets like too many of his foster siblings had over the years, or he could join the military. Cam, who had a deep sense that he was always destined for more, chose the military.
He seemed to be a natural at this as well. During basic training for the marines, Cam showed all the signs of being a tactical mastermind and a strategic whiz-kid. Not only did his superior officers see this in him, but Cam also saw it in himself. He felt that he found his calling by joining the military, and thanked his lucky stars that it had been the right choice (for it had been his only choice). He moved through basic easily, passing with flying colors and moving on to overseas missions.
Cam first served in Kosovo. His actions there got him a Marine Corps Commendation medal, all based on his quick-thinking and ability to problem-solve. The more time he spent overseas, the more he learned about how people ticked and the more he learned about military strategy, making him a better leader by each passing tour, even though he was just a rookie.
He went on to serve in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan—he traveled all over the Middle East because of it, and he learned more and more about not only how others worked, but about himself as well. During this time, Cam received a Purple Heart, a Marine Corps Medal and a Silver Star for his actions. He also rose through the ranks, and by the time the year 2014 was rolling around, he was a Gunnery Sergeant, on his way to become Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps if he kept on the path he was going.
That was when calamity hit.
Due to a mix of misinformation that was fed to him and a risky decision on his part, he lost the lives of ten people in the squad he was leading. Even though through all investigations he was deemed free and clear of any misconduct, Cam still felt personally responsible. That was why he personally told each family what had happened, then requested to be discharged from the military.
Of course, this discharge was granted—honorably, even, and he was released from the military with no other skills. Cam wasn’t sure what he was going to do at that point, but he couldn’t stay in the marines with the guilt weighing on his conscience.
That was when ADDT found him. They hauled him out of the hole he had been digging for himself, reminded him of his considerable skills, and Cam found himself back in the same place he was before he had left the military—it’s just that this time, he was determined not to royally mess up, like he did the last time.
// PERSONALITY & APPEARANCE
Cam is a genuinely nice person. He can be serious at times—as he should be—but he does care about each member of his squad. He would rather put himself in harm’s way rather than see any of them get hurt because of him, and this is something that he makes known to them every time he debriefs them on a mission. He wants them to know that he’s never going to ask them to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself, and that is an absolute promise.
He’s sort of like a big brother—he’s very protective and loyal to those who he considers his own, something that he’s sure every shrink would tell him stemmed from protecting his younger foster siblings when things got hairy, and was the very reason why he joined the military. He doesn’t take kindly to people messing with those he considers to be in his inner circle, and he’ll do anything to make sure that they are all safe.
Cam does tend to seem a little indifferent at times. He can be very cold and detached, but that isn’t necessarily because he wants to be that way, but because he has to. He knows that to make tactically sound decisions, he sometimes needs to make an unpopular decision, and Cam has long since made his peace with that fact and he understands that it’s all being part of leader. Sometimes he takes that impartial and cold nature too far, however, making him seem erratic (since it’s such a dramatic shift from how he really is as a person) when he’s really just being pragmatic.
Cam dresses very simply most days—you can often catch him in just a t-shirt and jeans, or even sweatpants, when he’s wandering the headquarters. He has a tattoo on the inside of his forearm of a really beautiful piece of art—a moonlit lake surrounded by pine trees that was actually made from a picture from the woods near his hometown. He also has a tattoo on his torso that covers a long scar from a knife wound—it turns that scar into one of the ridges on a sprawling oak tree. He has another tattoo on the side of his right hand, by his pinky, of a cross. He has yet another tattoo on the inside of his bicep that says “And this too shall pass.” He has a grouping of scars on his chest from getting hit with shrapnel when he was overseas, a scar on his shoulder and hip from getting shot on two separate occasions and a scar on his hand from a pretty bad burn—pasta can be deadly if you drop it right.
> Cam has made it his job to know everyone on the squad even better than he knows himself. He knows that if he can understand them on a deep level he can lead the team like a well-oiled machine. He also knows that if he doesn’t lead them well, people will lose their lives.
> He was always a bit of a fitful sleeper. Cam, ever since he was a kid, never got to sleep early or easily, and that tendency has only increased as he has gotten older. With other people’s lives in his hands, with so many things to organize and plan and strategize, he finds it harder and harder to sleep each night until he crashes and sleeps for a day and a half. It’s not healthy, no, but Cam has been trying everything to get his body to schedule itself properly—so far, nothing has worked.
> As a kid growing up in the foster system, he saw his fair share of substance abuse, whether it was from his peers or his foster parents. Cam saw it wreck people’s lives at the drop of a hat, and he’s not interested in going that way or seeing anyone else go that way at all. He’ll do anything to stop anyone he cares about from going down that path. For this reason, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke—he doesn’t do anything that could lead him that way.
> Cam knows six languages—Spanish, Russian, Pashto, Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. He learned Spanish as a kid, growing up in California, but all the others he learned as a member of the military. All of them have come in useful in his time serving, and it took him a long time to learn them properly. He can’t read Russian very well, and his Hebrew can be downright atrocious at times, but he’s fluent enough in them with an authentic enough accent that he can carry on a conversation with a native speaker quite easily.
> Cam got his Purple Heart for the same action that awarded him a Silver Star—after an IED went off under the first jeep in their convoy, enemy troops opened fire on on his squad. Despite being wounded by shrapnel, Cam went into the line of enemy fire over and over and dragged other members of his squad who were wounded out of the line of fire while they were waiting for air support. He has a large group of scars on his chest from where the shrapnel hit him, but he rarely talks about it—he rarely talks about any of his military commendations.
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