Casimir Volkov

Backstory

Cass’s parents put him up for adoption right as soon as he was born, deciding they didn’t have the money to take care of him. He ended up in the foster care system. Right when he was three years old, after a few years of careful care due to some medical issues, a family decided to foster him, and were planning on eventually adopting him-- until he was diagnosed with severe ADHD at age 4. They didn’t want a problematic child, and so he was sent back right in with the system. For most of his childhood, his life was very unstable. Sometimes he lived in the foster home. Sometimes a family would foster him. Some of them could afford to medicate him properly for ADHD, at which time he was much more stable, had better grades, and functioned better. His temper was still an issue, though, and he still struggled with school, so he was never adopted. And, at age 18, before he’d even finished high school, he was removed from foster care, told “good luck”, and had to live on his own.

He got into a nearby community college, and got a job, and barely was able to stay in a shitty apartment. He studied as much as he could, but the difficulties paying rent, the lack of medication, and the conditions where he lived kept affecting him. He kept getting fired from jobs for getting angry at the customers, or being too distracted. He was barely keeping his head above water when he started trying drugs in order to self-medicate. Shockingly, it did work, and his grades started improving. Adderall off the streets was cheaper than from the pharmacy with no insurance. But he also got involved in some harder drugs.

As he went to grad school, he interned at a pharmacy, and realized he could steal some of the drugs and sell them for some extra cash, since he was still struggling. He could also take some for himself. As the years passed, he started trying to manufacture his own drugs, improving them, in a makeshift lab in the apartment. This arrangement, which made him a lot of cash, couldn’t last long, though. After he finished grad school, he accidentally caused a chemical explosion in his apartment, knocking out one of his eyes, and making him half-blind in the other. This prompted an investigation, and he was put in jail, sentenced for 15 years. 

He stayed there for a few years, befriending important prisoners, befriending the guards. His first escape attempt was a failure, resulting in a few days in solitary. His second was a success. He made up a new name and moved across the country. With another experiment, he made his hair permanently white, cut it in a new way, changed up his wardrobe. He took a while to get settled back in. He had to get a shitty job somewhere for a while. He had to use a white cane and very thick glasses in order to get around. He started back on stimulants, just so that he wouldn’t get bored enough to go insane at his job. It took a while, but he sort of got back on his feet, getting a mechanical eye to replace the missing one, so now only one is mostly blind. He found out about the Lab soon, and applied there, hoping they wouldn’t notice that his degrees applied to someone who had recently escaped from jail. 

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