#caveira.

to be born seventh in a family of ten in rinópolis, são paulo, is to arrive already drowned in noise. her father died before she was born, leaving only a pension and a mother too exhausted to keep pace. by the time taina was six, the family had been forced into a poor neighborhood in rio de janeiro. survival meant raising yourself just as much as being raised. her grandmother stepped in, a sharp-eyed woman who could slice through any lie, teaching discipline where fatigue had hollowed her mother. it was from her that taina first learned the power of interrogation, and moreover how silence, pressure, and the right question could make the truth spill out. her grandmother was even the one to place her first knife into her hand. but poverty bred defiance. at sixteen she vanished, slipping away from home until her mother reported her missing. by seventeen she was under arrest, picked up on robbery charges far from rio. she stood calm before the judge, poised even in chains. he saw potential, and offered her a choice: a juvenile reformatory, or to work with the polícia militar’s elite bope unit as an informant. taina chose the latter, instinct guiding her every move. protection lay in power, and power meant embedding herself among the very gangs that had shaped her streets. the years that followed sharpened her into something otherworldly. undercover work taught her to slip through walls, and to draw confession from even the hardest men. she trained through the pacification units, through bope, through live operations like the complexo do alemão assault. when her mandatory service ended, she re-enlisted, unable to imagine any other life. service became a way of life, as no other profession matched the rush of danger. she learned confined-space tactics, sabotage, extraction, and made herself the operator commanders called when others had failed. but the leash of institutions never sat comfortably on her. team rainbow tried to recruit her, and for awhile she played along — global missions and invitational tournaments aplenty — but hierarchy grated. every rule was a chain around her throat. so taina slipped away, as she always had. one day captain, the next gone. some say she sells her skills now to cartels or private contractors. others claim she drifts from border to border, appearing in one interrogation chamber, then vanishing before the report is written. what is certain is that she answers to no one.