Background

Laura Ruby was born July 6th, 1960, in a family that was rising in money and power thanks to the patriarch of the household: Franklin Ruby, CEO of the Ruby Corporation. Laura was the small daughter of five siblings, and her childhood was very comfortable thanks to the skyrocketing evolution of the Corp her father led. While not in a rich house where benedictine eggs were common for breakfast, Laura was always on the latest trends in fashion and under the heavy pressure of a vigilant father and a very strict mother. Failure? Not for the Rubys. Excellence? Mandatory. Growing up, her father always repeated her and the rest of siblings a motto: want to enjoy my richness as adults? Earn it. For Laura, this meant studying until insomnia was a natural state on her, competition at home that didn’t give her a break from school and high school. Her siblings? Rivals. Her friends? Not lasting. Her ego? Above the clouds. Her panic and anxiety? Her companionship. When she was 18, Laura managed to survive in high school and at least had a relaxed last year there since all her siblings were in university. Now it was her time to think about her future. She chose to fight for the Ruby Corp and study economics, like her brothers. She was sent to California University, to Berkeley. She was sent the farthest away from her home in Chicago, to which she saw as veiled declaration her father didn’t want her close. At Berkeley, Laura followed her routines of hard work and studying all she could, reading everything that stopped at her desk, and studied German believing it was going to be useful in the future at the Corp. Tho that didn’t stop her from enjoying college life and going to parties, meetings, clubs, etc. Graduating in economics, Laura then studied a masters in banking, since she got the information the company was going to enter banking, aside from the health insurance wing. In 1986, when Laura was 26, she joined Ruby Corp in the banking division as the lowest employee, just above the interns. The corporate world she imagined was different. The ambience at Ruby was a nest of wasps. Competition, backstabs and stress were constant. Thus, Laura looked for way to keep her mind out of the hellhole as much as she could: therapy, yoga, even playing golf from time to time. A lover here, a lover there, but nothing stable or meaningful enough for her to fight for. Years later, in 1992, Ruby Corp opened a private security division, and Laura was there to open it as a junior operational manager. For the first time, a role that made her feel the true weight of the monster her father and grandfather had created. Signing small contracts, assigning teams, and dealing with the shit of everyone underneath her and making excuses for those above. From groups escorting trucks with the corp money for the banking division, to publics acts that needed guards, not ignoring private security of businesses and even individuals. Laura wished she could divide in two, one glued to the phone constantly ringing at her office, and the other half to do all paperwork. Tho, on this new assignment, she had to deal with military officers, mercs and people she considered disgusting. On March 7th, 1993, she helped organize an investors meeting for the security division in Miami. But… little did they know two days later the rifts would appear. Laura freaked out initially, but she saw it as a chance to prove the company´s worth, and they fought all they could to escort some of these potential customers away from Miami. It was a bloodbath, and she was about to lose it entirely. Never saw a dead person, never saw…. That horror. She was useless for the first time in her life. Nothing she had learnt so far was useful. She was just an office woman, not a survivor, not a fighter… she was nothing. The group left the city as soon as they could in the armoured vehicles and waited in the outskirts for some days expecting the situation to improve and receive any message from the HQ in Chicago. Due to the silence, they made a plan to take the matter into their own hands and assaulted a police outpost to secure ammunition and guns for defense. For Laura this was the first time she used a gun ever, even tho she ducked behind a car and shot blind. After securing supplies, the group drove west, crossing the states towards Wisconsin. Tho, luck ran out for them. When the group was trying to drive around Louisville, in Knox County, they would be ambushed, making their car crash. Laura fell unconscious and was left for dead after the following gunfire. The rest of the Ruby team abandoned her on the side of the road. Hours passed and Laura woke up alone, disoriented, and in Knox