Background

> ■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■ was born in ■■■■■■■■, ■■■■■■■ in 1955 to ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■ and ■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■. A lower-class blue-collar family of unexceptional standing. Growing up poor yet with an unusual aptitude for numbers, he was expected to serve much as his father did during the Korean War. He was a loner and unremarkable during high school. His father, insistent on the value of service, pushed Eugene into the Military, particularly the Marines, when he was 16; however, he failed the standard physical tests at the time. This formed a rift between him and his family, where he worked as an off-the-books accountant and inventory manager in their local town grocers for a time. By the time he was 21, he was able to finally pass the standardised physical tests, albeit with a minor medical dispensation for his eyes, which were far below standard. During Boot, he was able to finally come to terms with his family, and after another unfortunate argument, cut them off entirely for pushing this path onto him. Graduating from boot camp, he found his place not with a rifle in his hands but with a clipboard and a pen behind the office of a logistics tent, making the best of the skills he had intuitively acquired. > For 10 years in various deployments, ■■■■■■■■■ has held his place as a supplies and logistics specialist in the military, being instrumental in his duties during the Cold War. He learned the tricks of the trade in logistics, leveraging his position to help his fellow brothers at first in the unit he was with, to the warehouses and supply depots he was stationed in. He was known to be a shrewd and often at odds with certain protocols, and by being resourceful in leaner times. He valued his position, going so far as to say that his life was in the military. Yet, during his time in the Middle East, he had noticed a discrepancy between his company’s accounts and those of an officer. Following the paper trail and his own amateur investigation, he cross-referenced enough evidence to deliver a compelling case towards his battalion commander. His reward was a commendation and a strong recommendation for any position he would like. He instead asked for a recommendation outside of the military once his contract ran its course, towards the Internal Revenue Service in 1987 > ■■■■■■■■■ was prepared for the training and the prerequisite experience in his role at first as an accountant, then as a Revenue agent. He worked on creating detailed budget reviews for both corporate, small business and even internal government branches. He tracked and waded through swamps of paper trails and cut his teeth in high-security, clandestine and confidential cases. He reimbursed victims of financial crimes, reviewed suspects of fraud, and developed a track record of catching low-level tax-evading criminals. All while documenting every case in shadowy basements and windowless rooms meticulously. For his diligence, by 1990, he was promoted to Special Agent of the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS, now burdened with the responsibility of catching more high-level criminal organisations and financial crimes. > However, his promotion was short-lived. A particularly difficult case against an infamous country-wide cartel ring soon found itself publicly intertwined in a media circus. Instead of a potential glorious arrest could be made, evidence went missing or was misplaced, and potential witnesses and suspects disappeared. Due to the nature of the case, ■■■■■■■■■ was forced somehow to become a public face as he attempted to wrangle it into control; however, the case was dismissed upon procedural grounds. Needing a scapegoat for the debacle, he was quietly reassigned to California to a subsidiary accountancy branch for the government. Due to the public-facing nature of the case and the genuine threat to his life, he entered the witness protection program and moved with his head hung low. > Renamed ‘Eugene Barrow’, disgraced and discharged dishonourably from the IRS in 1996, he grew bitter and far less trusting of the bureaucracy that he had given his life to. For years, he had worked indignantly and dejectedly until he was approached by the Esoteric Collection & Holding Operations department for his work ethic, attention to detail, his experience, his discretion and the fact that they managed to get him for cheap. A thankless, monotonous and mind-numbing occupation that had taken years from him and in which he has sacrificed his body, mind and perhaps even his soul. He finds his life to be in the same place where he works. A windowless, busy room with mountains of paperwork and the drones of resentful colleagues who would rather not be bothered by him. > As part of ECHO, he is partly responsible for the transport and disposal of critical intel, especially concerning budgetary concerns, to Washington. He travels with the rest of his co-workers towards a hopefully better office. One with a window.