Born on Outpost 46, an obscure planet that was remarkably Earthlike, there she was: Alto. He had a different name then, but even if he wanted to, he can’t recall it. They lived with their fathers and three siblings in a house near a huge park, with beautiful trees and so many people, and they were happy. Until one day that lovely scenery burned. Alto never truly understood what happened; they overheard something once, their dads talking about a corporation losing control of… what, they had no idea, a monster? Other people? Either way, the park was reduced to ashes, and all the homes anywhere near it went up in flames too. Alto’s family was left with nothing. Sent to a temporary home with the rest of the people who’d lost everything, they expected to be relocated to a new place to live-and technically, this happened. Only not in the way anyone expected it to. What these civilians couldn’t have known was that many of them had been “bought”, paid for by a group hungry for test subjects who wouldn’t be missed; they were perfectly willing to kidnap to get what they wanted. Not everyone was taken, of course. That’d be too obvious. But a family here, or maybe there… legally, Alto, her parents, and her siblings were declared dead from the disaster that had devastated a huge portion of the city they lived in. They’d drawn one of the short straws. This was how they all ended up in the labs that would become their new, permanent home. At first, it wasn’t actually awful, at least not going by living standards. Unfortunately, their captors were clumsy when it came to handling the mental states of their test subjects. The confusion, stress, and wild emotions of being torn from their homes twice caused mass panic in the kidnapped civilians, and only by separating the kids from the adults did the lab staff regain control, using promises of reunification and implied threats to keep the parents in line. They’d been smart about that, at least-ensuring the majority of their captives were families to keep all of the members in line. For a while, the faculty kept things as normal as could be. Answers to questions of how and why never manifested, but the refugees were not further mistreated at that time. They fed, clothed, and housed the families, provided ‘childcare’, entertainment, hobbies, work… some people grew used to the accommodations, seeing it as an improvement over their old lives. Others chafed at the invisible chains, and still demanded to know why they were taken here, or where they were. No matter their viewpoint, every single captive ended up at the same place. They all became a part of the experiments.

The experiments started simple. While once the refugees had been allowed shows or music, they were now required to listen to one thing: the talks, interviews, anything involving the voice of the proclaimed philosopher-scholar Milak Temperance. Had Alto not been a young teen, nor forced to listen, she probably would’ve loved his words. Being of a variant gender himself, Milak’s analysis of gender in the universe and the effects of a projected binary from Earth onto alien cultures would’ve really spoken to him. As it was, they just hated hearing the same guy day after day. Still. They would’ve gone back to that willingly had they known what was awaiting everyone. At the beginning, certain people began to disappear: known ‘troublemakers’ first, then people with extensive medical conditions, followed by adults with no clear patterns, and finally: the kids. Alto vividly remembers what it was like to be marched down those empty, lifeless, sterile hallways for the first time; there were so many eyes on them, staff members watching greedily, desperately. He was only a teen, and had no idea what these medical procedures were for, or what the faculty hoped to accomplish. But ignorance didn’t stop the pain. Not just the pain of long needles, or being put on IVs while conscious, or of feeling being cut open, or of human hands moving around inside of him, changing and placing things. The worst were the visions: images of strange places carved in mineral Alto had never seen before, angels of purple light and sharp edges welcoming him, alien writing far beyond his understanding stabbing into his brain like millions of knives. She wanted to die every time it happened. Later, the leader of this place said she had to be awake despite how agonizing it was in order to reach “what was needed”. Thinking on what she’d seen, maybe Alto understood, and she hated it. Her body no longer felt like their own. He was drowning in a river of pulsating energy throwing him from universe to universe, fighting pointlessly against the poison circulating his veins in a spiral of purple that made him scream, vomit, or flat out attack the staff in fits of delusional rage. They promised him his family would be okay as long as she cooperated, but how could she, when her mind was being taken over? There were sharp, painful things inside her very bones, unyielding and cold, and from them Alto heard screams. Screams of people she knew, her own screams, and the screams of an entire civilization. Underneath them were whispers he couldn’t understand. They were being called somewhere, but for what? Why? The angels in their waking nightmares gave them no answers. He knew he was going mad, yet the doctors were still thrilled with each new day of “progress”. It came to a head when their tattoos showed up at last: a repeating pattern of diamond shapes, glowing with sickly colors. Siren tattoos.

After enduring months, maybe over a year of torture and worsening madness, the time for the final experiment came. The head of the facility, one Dr. Barclay Sinmara, personally led Alto to the place of the end, talking inanely the entire time about his worthless pursuits and spewing empty platitudes about meaningful sacrifices. She was not a stupid kid. She knew that so many people died because of these experiments, either disappearing or being mentioned by careless staff members. Even kids she’d known were murdered. But his family… he had to believe in their safety. They’d done it after all, right? Become a Siren? It still didn’t feel real. A Siren made in a lab, a non-female one at that, it couldn’t be possible. As far as they knew, Sirens were basically goddesses. Natural born ones. But Alto prayed and prayed to the jagged angels of their nightmares anyway. She’d made it happen. Let their family be okay. And her wish came true-somewhat. Her fathers and siblings were still alive; all of them had been horribly mutated beyond recognition by the experiments, twisted into nonlife by what Alto would later know was slag, the byproduct of the Eridium that created her. Sinmara gave her a task: end her family’s suffering. They hadn’t been strong enough to survive what the experimentation did to them, unlike her; there was no way to return her family to how they’d once been. There remained only one path: use the powers of the Siren for the greater good. Alto’s mind had become a vortex of one, unending sound: screaming. She screamed, and it was the loudest sound he’d ever heard in his life. All of her feelings rushed forth with the force of a tsunami crashing down on the coast that was this entire fucking facility: their rage, shame, agony, grief, everything mixed together until there was nothing but a primal screech left within. And in that moment, Alto felt what it was to be a Siren. Her powers, newly born and uncontrollable, burst forth without limit. Every member of the faculty there died screaming… all except him. Dr. Barclay Sinmara. While his colleagues and underlings perished in unpredictable ways-limbs severing, skin melting, shattering into a million frozen pieces, riddled with phantom bullets-he survived. Not only that, he lived with a smile on his face. Alto realized, years later, that it hadn’t only been joy on his face. It’d been pride, too. No wonder the image burned into their nightmares forever.

Alto didn’t know what age they were when they escaped from Sinmara’s labs. They were alone, and probably 15 or 16, and they were an abomination at that. She’d ended up a walking amalgamation of unethical science and mind breaking magic; how does a kid stay sane after that? They don’t. So basically, that meant he was completely fucked. In the years that followed, Alto tried to lay low and stay hidden, though rumors of a new Siren were inevitable. Most people dismissed it as bullshit, thankfully. It was exceedingly rare for anyone to see, let alone meet a Siren-hell, she hadn’t before actually becoming a manmade one. As far as anyone knew, he was simply an extra-lethal and feral teenager who would do anything to make it to the next day. Alto can admit to doing some messed up things to live. He used his powers to threaten other teens into giving them food or anything else necessary, she stole from those who had to work to the bone to feed themself for just that day, they attacked anyone they saw as a threat with little provocation. In their fractured mind, everyone truly WAS out to torture or kill them. She never stopped seeing her fucked up visions, and to make it worse, Sinmara joined the things that haunted the fuzzy edges of her peripherals. Everything morphed into a trauma reminder. Alto fell face first into violence… first her powers earned her respect, then her knack for vicious close-up fighting, and finally, picking up the skills to wield a pistol with deadly efficiency put the final nail in the coffin. As he grew into an adult, and even before then really, he was not someone to mess with. The broken, aggressive, and hollow shell that was Alto scared the living hell out of people. There was a sick pleasure in that idea, after so long of being afraid. Still, the self-loathing never stopped building. So deeply did Alto hate themself-hate what they’d become-that they began to call themself the False Siren, or sometimes, the Pseudo Siren. A fake, an abomination, an affront to the universe. Most people took it as a sarcastic title, which was just fine with Alto. Let them believe what they wanted to believe.

What drew Alto to becoming a Vault Hunter was its connections to the Eridians, and by extension, the true Sirens. They’d gained knowledge of Pandora’s wild past-the Destroyer, the eridium, the Warrior, everything-and wanted to glimpse it for themself. She wanted to discover more of the things that still haunted her every day. There’s been unbelievable rumors of a Vault on Pandora that needs no key at all, in any shape or form… it’s just waiting there, biding its time for the arrival of Vault Hunters that can endure its trials. Alto is one of four taking on the mission, and he’s dying to find out. Even if it means traveling with strangers he doesn’t like, he’ll take on any challenge to get closer to the tantalizing truth. Maybe, just maybe, Sinmara will try to find it too… and Alto can finally cross the final name off of their list.