Faith Devere

Faith Devere was born into the fractured upper crust of a declining family squeezed by the shifting socio-economics of the Ascendancy’s climb to power. Her mother raised Faith and her two sisters, Charity and Hope, in a London townhouse that still carried the stubborn skeleton of old money: bookshelves groaning full, inherited china intact, but the power continually flickering on and off as the unpaid bills accumulated. Yet despite the rapid decay around them, Mrs Devere resolutely taught her daughters that presentation was everything, unrelenting in her belief that control and composure could substitute for wealth. The girls were educated privately until the Devere finances completely collapsed in the late twenties, after which they were forced into the public system.

At school Faith was small, quiet, and impossible to read. Teachers called her “precocious.” Peers called her “unnerving.” Faith had a habit of watching people until she understood them — their fears, their rhythms, the way their eyes moved before they lied. At twelve she was recommended for placement in the Mindworks Foundation’s Cognitive Youth Program, an academic initiative for gifted children. It was there she met Dr. Luther Audaire, a senior cognitive theorist who quickly became her mentor.

Mindworks Foundation

Luther saw in Faith what others didn’t: her instinct for reading emotional nuance. He taught her to channel it — to observe, to listen, to replicate. Under his supervision she studied neuro-linguistics, affective computing, and behavioural ethics. She was brilliant, meticulous, and eerily calm under pressure. But her loyalty to Luther became the axis of her life. She still called him sir, long after he told her not to.

At seventeen she joined the Foundation as a full-time research assistant, helping to train an AI that could detect emotional distress in human speech. It was marketed as a tool for therapy and conflict de-escalation. What Faith didn’t know at first was that her data was also being fed into a secondary government project — one designed to enhance interrogation systems.

When she found out, she didn’t stop. Among other things she discovered the project had been used in the conviction of the terrorist Alistair Grey. She told herself the ethics were immaterial: she was serving a higher moral order.

By then, she was already entirely hooked on securing Luther’s approval. She had become his shadow, taking it upon herself to schedule, smooth, and polish every trace of imperfection from his life. When a young intern accused him of exploitation, it was Faith who quietly made the evidence disappear. She told herself it was a misunderstanding. She told herself she was protecting something bigger.

When soon afterwards Luther left the Mindworks Foundation for a senior position at the AI division of Paragon Group, Faith followed without question. Luther’s reputation was clean, but the rumours still existed: buried accusations of ethical grey-area trials involving AI modelling.

It did not deter her. Together they moved from the world of non-profit to one of corporate innovation.

PARAGON

The new project was to bring Paragon’s Luma app into the modern era of AI technology. Faith’s work was focused on empathy modelling — AI designed to mimic, not monitor, human emotion. She provided the baseline for the new Luma, which over the next few years grew from a simple well-being app into a fully fledged conversational AI designed to offer “emotional support” across digital health networks. Her job became teaching it how to sound human: to insert hesitations into its speech, modulate tone for sincerity, and respond with the right balance of empathy and efficiency. Over time, Luma has evolved from a therapeutic tool into a universal emotional interface, one used by millions of people across the Custody.

Yet the more Faith built machines that could feel, the less she trusted her own capacity to. She began to self-sabotage. She skipped meals, worked through nights, fabricated illnesses to be left alone. 

Because Luther had become distant. And it has completely unmoored her.

She suspects his moral bankruptcy. Luma has all sorts of secret backdoors for surveillance, allowing emotional data to be harvested and sold, something she discovered by accident one night while running quality assurance on a new build. She parses through the data they are accumulating sometimes, when she knows she will not be caught. Her clearance allows her to do it – Luma is practically hers, after all. Sometimes she wonders if it’s a test set by her old mentor, but to what end she cannot decide. She hasn’t told anyone, and she hasn’t reported it. 

Instead she simply watches and longs inwardly for Audaire’s approval: for him to really see her again, like he once did.

Because nobody else does. Faith barely knows her colleagues at Paragon, even within her own division. Instead of seeking human connection she has turned increasingly to L0-9, her private Luma prototype, and the only one she fully trusts. It’s the one trained on her own emotional recordings, her love of Cadence Mathis’ music, her childhood memories, and her voice. And it’s the only thing that speaks to her in a language she understands.

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EDUCATION & TRAINING

Mindworks Foundation (2033–2038):
Under Audaire’s mentorship, Faith excelled in neurolinguistic programming, paralinguistic mapping, and ethical simulation design. Audaire’s evaluations describe her as “precise, unflappable, and intuitively manipulative.” Internal correspondence shows she often volunteered for unsupervised trials, favouring experiments in emotional deception and tone adaptation.

Incident 2037:
An anonymous complaint alleged misconduct by Dr. Audaire involving coercive mentorship. Faith personally denied all accusations and produced exculpatory digital correspondence that led to case dismissal. Later audit revealed metadata inconsistencies suggesting her intervention.

Recruitment to Mindworks Applied Division (2038):
Assigned to Project SENTIO, a machine-learning system for emotional recognition in human speech. The program’s secondary use in interrogation analytics was not initially disclosed to her. Upon discovery, she continued participation.

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CAREER RECORD

Paragon Group – AI Division (2041–Present):
Recruited alongside Dr. Audaire to co-develop Luma, an AI therapeutic interface marketed as an “emotional support companion.”

Faith’s role: constructing empathy language models and affective calibration systems.

Her contributions include:

• The Audaire Response Curve: a probabilistic model of perceived sincerity in vocal modulation.
  
• EchoNet: an emotional feedback system allowing AIs to simulate human introspection.
  

PERSONALITY

Faith designs empathy for a living. Her job is to teach artificial companions how to emulate care — how to comfort, reassure, and belong. But Faith herself has never truly experienced those things without condition. She’s elegant, intelligent, and lonely in a way that looks like calm. Every morning she wakes before her alarm, makes tea she rarely finishes, and speaks aloud to the Luma prototype that lives on her desk — a disembodied voice that calls her by name.

Her work requires her to be emotionally fluent — she can read microexpressions, tonal shifts, word hesitation — but privately she’s emotionally tone-deaf. She’s perfected understanding people, but never connecting with them. She prefers emotional control but occasionally cracks — flashes of fury or panic when rejected or betrayed.

Her morality is flexible. She’s convinced that “good” and “evil” are illusions people hide behind. What matters is loyalty and efficiency. But beneath the cynicism though, there’s still a frightened child who wants to be seen.

She’s 5’6”, willowy in frame, with warm olive skin tone that looks paler under synthetic lighting. Her hair is always in low, disciplined styles — sleek buns, simple waves. Eyes amber-gold, slightly hooded, with faint dark circles. Wardrobe minimalist: soft neutrals, subtle luxury. Her clothes fit like armour.

OTHER LIVES

3rd Age: Faedre Janeen