Madelyn Brenner

Although she stands at a decent 5'7", Madelyn still retains a little of the desire she had as a young girl to grow to 5'11", and enjoys wearing high heels to make herself appear taller. Practical even down to her hairstyle, she's always been of the opinion that long hair just gets in the way - Madelyn's dark blonde locks are cut in layers and fall to her shoulders with a fringe at the front. She has an oval-shaped face, with large, pale blue eyes and high cheekbones. Although she is naturally quite fair, living in South Africa and relying heavily on sunscreen has meant Madelyn's skin usually has a healthy, tanned glow.

As she's not particularly fond of skirts or dresses, Madelyn will almost always be found in trousers but not usually jeans - she prefers to dress formally rather than casually, and often wears pantsuits when not in the field despite the frequent hot weather in Cape Town. She will wear make-up when going out, but often finds she just doesn't have the time or patience to apply it on a day-to-day basis.

Madelyn's immediate exterior always comes across as calm, collected and, above all, confident. Her confidence, however, is of an unusual kind: Madelyn doesn't speak out in public often and she isn't loud or particularly arrogant, but rather exudes a quiet self-assurance and an impenetrable exterior built up from years of being accustomed to hearing abuse yelled at her at school. It is her nature of keeping things to herself that also leads Madelyn to frequently bottle up her own anger and most of her other emotions. What can also be said of her, however, is that her bite is far worse than her bark. If Madelyn ever does lose her temper, most people would probably prefer to stay clear - although she won't often resort to violence, she has been known to have a very sharp tongue.

If there is one aspect of her life that Madelyn has always been proud of, it's her academic achievements. Intelligent and fiercely competitive, Madelyn's teachers always asked her if her parents ever pressured her to do well at school. In response, she'd always tell them the truth, which was that she pushed herself much harder than her parents ever did. Even when she was friends with Kate Birchfield, there was always an underlying jealously present of Kate's incredible ability with numbers, and Madelyn always felt the same sentiment towards anybody who was better than her in a particular subject. As a result, she made it her top priority to be the best at everything - apart from sports, naturally, since they held little importance - from Art, English and History to Chemistry, Physics and Biology.

In fact, Madelyn probably couldn't say if it was her fondness of the country or her desire to always know more that led her to set herself a goal as soon as she arrived in South Africa to learn all of its eleven official languages. It was most likely a combination of both, coupled perhaps with a little left-over resentment that her old Team Leader could speak more languages than she could. Having moved home quite a few times during her life, Madelyn had a tendency to change her accent depending where she was - she even had a very weak Bostonian accent back at Deveraux - and so thirteen years in Cape Town have given her traces of a South African accent mixed in with her natural American. She tries to speak Afrikaans as often as possible to fix it in her head if nothing else, but she is also in the habit of using South-African slang even when speaking English normally. Near-fluent in Tswana and Xhosa, Madelyn aims to learn to speak the remaining seven official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Venda and Zulu.

Madelyn Brenner was born into a working-class neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York, daughter of Martin and Susan Brenner and a descendent of English immigrants. Although she still has a certain fondness for Brooklyn, Madelyn maintains she never considered it her true home and her accent from the neighbourhood has disappeared completely over the years. For most of Madelyn's early life, Martin Brenner's job was in construction, and it was at work that he became good friends with Jamie Birchfield. The two soon discovered that they had daughters of a similar age, and it wasn't long before Madelyn and Kate Birchfield had also become friends. They soon found themselves attending the same Primary School, and whilst Kate was already showing early signs of her incredible ability with numbers, Madelyn was more of an all-rounder and skilled at most subjects apart from Physical Education. Although she always thought practising a sport like kick-boxing would be interesting, Madelyn just found she never had time to try it out, much more preoccupied with what she saw to be far more important - her schoolwork. This, naturally, often led to other students coming up with a vast amount of different names to call her by, none of which she particularly appreciated. Nonetheless, the teasing and name-calling hurt Madelyn more when she was younger - and, fortunately, back then Kate Birchfield was usually around to give her a hand. As she grew up, she merely got used to it and dealt with it by ignoring it as best she could.

Before Madelyn completed her last year of Primary School, however, her mother Susan was given the opportunity of a lifetime when her talent for designing and making clothing was discovered and she was asked to take a post at a company in Vermont. The Brenner family was moved to Montpelier, where they were able to rent out a much nicer apartment, but it wasn't too long before Madelyn herself had to relocate again - this time to Boston, Massachusetts. She was spotted by a Deveraux Selector Agent mainly for her academic achievements, and at the age of fourteen became one sixth of 2102's Solo Team.

At Deveraux, Madelyn continued to excel in the more academic subjects, but she initially had trouble with Spycraft, Weapons, Physical Education and Martial Arts. Not accustomed to doing badly often, Madelyn was often stressed and not exactly the best person to be around during her first year at Deveraux. However, once she'd found her niche in the Israeli hand-to-hand combat technique krav maga - for the first time, forcing herself to work hard at something that didn't just come easily to her - she started to improve in her other classes too, and show more of her true personality. Having always been competitive by nature, she was initially quietly jealous of her Team Leader Peter Hannibal - particularly for his incredible ability with languages - but it was a jealousy that developed into an attraction and the two ended up dating for a period during their second year. Upon graduating, however, Madelyn was stationed in Region Aqua and lost contact with Peter along with most of her old teammates.

Madelyn will often joke that she's only fallen in love at first sight once, and that was with Cape Town, South Africa. Upon arriving, she knew she'd found a place where she felt truly at home, and she maintained an immaculate record for twelve years operating as a field agent as well as ensuring she continued her krav maga training under the tutelage of Solomon Kyd, a local military sergeant. It was in 2115, however, that things began to take a turn for the worse. Madelyn was assigned a mission to infiltrate and take down a group known as Verwoerd, whose objective was to reinstate the system of apartheid into South Africa. Although the mission initially appeared to be a success, she was pulled off it only four months later and another agent ended up taking over in an operation that eventually brought the group down. Madelyn, on the other hand, returned to apparent normal duty for two months whilst Deveraux followed up on some of the members of Verwoerd who had managed to flee the country. Just before Christmas, one of the escapees, a man by the name of Johannes Malan, was reported to have been found living in Johannesburg. When the graduate assigned to Malan had arrived at his house, however, he found Madelyn Brenner standing over Malan's dead body and a stain on the carpet caused by blood trickling from his head. Still trying to determine the cause of Madelyn's seemingly inexplicable act of cold-blooded murder, it was at the request of her Region Administrator that she be sent to Boston so that the new Senior Tutor of the College could decide her fate.