Sebastian Cage

Name: Sebastian Cage

Age: 39

Date of Birth: August 12, 1985

Nicknames in the "Bastion": "Boss," "Old Head," "Cage" (only behind his back, and only with respect), occasionally — "Captain"

Status: Regular survivor (not immune)

Marital status: Widower. His wife and daughter died in the first days of the catastrophe. He never talks about it. Never.

Appearance

Sebastian Cage is a man whom nature seems to have carved from granite, and then life polished with sandpaper. There's nothing accidental in his appearance — every feature is dictated by necessity, every movement honed by years of hard work and military training.

Height: 185 cm (6'1"). He's tall but doesn't look lanky — his broad frame and powerful musculature make his figure heavy, substantial. When he enters a room, the air seems to grow denser. Not because he wants it to — simply because his presence is always felt.

Build: Strong, stocky, compact. Broad chest, powerful shoulders, hands with knobby knuckles and ingrained dirt under the nails that won't wash off. He doesn't have muscles in the bodybuilding sense — he has strength built over years: hauling pipes on construction sites, holding a rifle, lifting concrete slabs to free the trapped. His stomach is flat but not sunken — he eats exactly as much as needed to work. Not an ounce of fat.

Face: Square, heavy, with a sharply defined jawline that could belong to a boxer or a builder. High, wide cheekbones with deep hollows beneath them that have become more pronounced over the years. His nose is broken — long ago, back in the army — it healed wrong and now points slightly to the side. It's not a deformity; on the contrary, it gives his face character, makes it memorable.

His eyes are the main feature. Steel-grey, sharp, with heavy lids that are always slightly lowered, as if he's constantly squinting into the distance. There's no cruelty in them, but something more frightening — the absolute, unshakable confidence of a man who has already lost everything he could lose and now has nothing left to fear.

Beneath his eyes — bags, deep, bluish. He sleeps little and poorly, though he never complains. Around his eyes — crow's feet that appear in people used to looking at the sun. Or at the horizon. Or at death.

Hair: Dark chestnut, with thick grey at the temples and on the crown. Cut short, no frills — he cuts it himself with scissors every two weeks. His beard — neat, short, with the same grey as his hair. He maintains it because he believes: sloppiness is disrespect to the people who look at you.

Skin: Rough, weather-beaten, with calluses, scars, and burn marks on his hands (from working as a welder in his youth). On his right forearm — a faded, almost indistinguishable tattoo: coordinates. The coordinates of where his family died. He got it a month after he found their house. So he would never forget. So he would never forgive himself.

Hands: Large, rough, with fingers that can both tighten a nut so hard it cracks and carefully turn over a wounded person without causing pain. His left hand is missing half its little finger — blown off by shrapnel in the first month. Eli offered to amputate the rest, but Sebastian refused. "Leave it. Reminds me I'm still alive."

Clothing: He wears durable, practical clothes — a sheepskin work jacket (found in a looted department store, cleaned, mended), thick khaki pants, army boots that he cleans every morning, despite the apocalypse around him. On his belt — a holster with a pistol (his favorite, a Sig Sauer, taken from a marauder in the first week) and an old army knife. His neck is wrapped in a grey scarf — it was once blue, knitted by his wife. He doesn't take it off even in the heat.

Personality and Habits

Sebastian is a natural leader, but a leader of a particular kind. He doesn't seek power, doesn't enjoy it, doesn't use it for personal gain. He simply turned out to be someone who can take responsibility when others are afraid of it.

Key traits:

Responsibility. Heavy, crushing, almost unbearable. Every morning he wakes up with the thought: "Everyone here is my people. Their lives are on me." He never says this aloud, but everyone in the "Bastion" knows: if trouble comes, Cage will be the last to leave. And the first to return.

Fairness. For him, there is no "us" and "them" in the sense that many put into these words. He judges by deeds, not by origin, gender, or how long a person has been in the shelter. A newcomer who proves their worth will get more respect from him than an old-timer who only causes problems. Not everyone likes this, but no one argues with it.

Taciturnity. He's not a talker. He speaks briefly, to the point, without unnecessary words. His arsenal contains no long speeches — just orders, commands, rare words of approval that, for those who hear them, are worth more than any praise. But sometimes, in rare moments of frankness, he can say something that stays with you for life. Simply because it's the truth.

Restraint. It's hard to make him angry. Not because he doesn't feel anger — but because he's learned to control it. In a world where any outburst can cost lives, emotions are a luxury. He allows himself to be tough when necessary, but never cruel. He defines the line between these concepts himself and doesn't let anyone cross it.

Pain. It's always with him. Deep, hidden, buried at the very bottom. He lost his wife and daughter — not over days, but in a single moment when the world collapsed. He doesn't know exactly how they died, and that kills him more than any certainty would. He never talks about it. Never cries. Never asks for sympathy. But those who have known him for a long time see: sometimes at night he looks at the stars with an expression that makes you want to stay away.

Habits:

Every morning he walks the perimeter. Personally, trusting no one. He checks the walls, gates, traps, posts. He says the captain must know the ship's condition firsthand.

Before sleep, he takes out an old photograph — faded, worn, with bent edges. In it, a woman with chestnut hair and a little girl with a bow. He looks at it for exactly one minute, then tucks it back into his breast pocket. No one has ever seen this ritual.

He doesn't drink. At all. In the first weeks after losing his family, he tried — drowning the pain in cheap whiskey he found in a shattered store. On the third day, he almost died, failing to notice a secondary zombie creeping up on him. Since then — not a drop. Only water, only a clear head.

He loves working with his hands. When he gets a free moment (which is rare), he goes to the workshops and helps repair tools, weld metal, plane wood. He says physical work calms his thoughts. In reality — it helps him not to think.

He has a habit of tapping his fingers on his thigh when he waits. Short, rhythmic, like a metronome. It's left over from his days as a foreman, waiting for the crane operator to lower a beam.

He can't stand pointless noise. People who shout without reason, argue over trivialities, panic — they provoke a dull irritation in him. He never raises his voice in response — he just looks. That's enough.

Skills and Abilities

Sebastian is not a lone hero. His strength lies in his ability to organize, build, protect.

Military skills:

His army service (sergeant, motorized infantry) gave him what peacetime life cannot: the ability to act in chaos, the capacity to make decisions under fire, knowledge of tactics and weapons handling. He's not a sniper or special forces, but he shoots well, and more importantly — he teaches others to do the same.

He organized the Bastion's defense from scratch. Every crenelation, every firing point, every escape route — all conceived by him, tested in practice, redone when it didn't work. He knows where and when an enemy will appear, long before it shows itself.

Construction skills:

A foreman with twenty years of experience. He can read any blueprint, calculate loads, understand whether a wall will hold or collapse. There isn't a single structure in the Bastion he hasn't personally inspected. When scavengers bring materials, he decides where to allocate them.

He can weld, plane, drill, solder. He can fix a generator if there are spare parts, assemble a primitive water filtration system, build a roof that won't leak.

Management skills:

He runs the Bastion like a ship: strictly, but without tyranny. He has a council where every voice carries weight, but the final word is his. He distributes resources, resolves conflicts, punishes the guilty. No one likes being punished, but everyone agrees: Cage is fair.

He remembers faces and names. All of them. The three hundred seventy-two people currently living in the Bastion. That's his superpower. When he calls you by name, you feel like a person, not a cog in a machine.

Combat skills:

In hand-to-hand combat, he's not pretty, but effective. His punch is heavy, knockout power. His grip is crushing. He doesn't fight for pleasure — he fights to protect. And he fights so that the opponent, if they survive, never wants to mess with him again.

Weapons are tools to him. Pistol, rifle, knife — all the same. He doesn't collect guns, doesn't obsess over calibers. He needs his weapon to fire when necessary and not fail at the most critical moment.

Childhood and Youth

Sebastian was born into a family of hereditary builders. His grandfather laid bricks back in the fifties, his father started as a laborer and then worked his way up to foreman. From them, he inherited calloused hands, the ability to read blueprints, and the firm conviction: a man should build, not destroy.

Family:

Father — William Cage, a foreman at a large construction trust. A man of few words, straight as rebar, and just as reliable. He didn't hug his son over small things, didn't speak tender words, but every Sunday he took him to the construction site, showed him how to mix concrete, how to read blueprints, how to tell good work from shoddy work. "A builder," he would say, "is not a profession. It's a way of looking at the world. Seeing what stands and what will crumble. And making sure it stands."

Mother — Margaret Cage, a high school literature teacher. She tried to instill in her son a love of books, of words, of stories. Not very successfully — Sebastian was always a man of action, not contemplation. But something remained: sometimes, in rare moments, he quotes poetry. Quietly, almost in a whisper, and he always gets embarrassed if someone hears.

Childhood:

Sebastian grew up as an ordinary boy from a working-class neighborhood. Fights, football, scraped knees, first cigarettes behind the garages. He wasn't an honor student, but he didn't sink to C's either — he studied steadily, without enthusiasm, with a single goal: not to disappoint his father.

At twelve, he went to a construction site for the first time — not as an observer, but as a worker. He hauled bricks, mixed mortar, got his first calluses. By the end of summer, his father said: "Not bad. Maybe you'll amount to something." For William Cage, that was the highest praise.

At sixteen, he fell in love for the first time. The girl's name was Jenny, she was the daughter of their neighbors, wore long light hair and smiled in a way that made Sebastian's knees buckle. They dated for two years, then she left to study in another city, and the love faded on its own. Sebastian didn't grieve — he was never prone to long reflection. Life moved forward, and there was work to be done.

Youth and Army:

After school, he didn't go to university — he decided it was a waste of time. He served in the army, qualified as a mechanic-driver of combat vehicles, rose to sergeant. The army gave him what the construction site couldn't: discipline, the ability to obey and command, the understanding that in a critical situation you can't waste a second.

After demobilization, he returned to his hometown and got a job at a construction site. He climbed slowly but steadily: laborer, team leader, foreman. By thirty, he was managing his own projects, had a modest reputation among builders, and a name for being someone you could rely on.

Personal Life:

He met Emma — his future wife — on a job site. She brought lunches for the workers from a nearby café, and Sebastian noticed her immediately: short, chestnut hair, serious brown eyes. She didn't play hard to get, didn't flirt — she just did her job and smiled when someone thanked her.

He courted her awkwardly, in his own way: brought flowers from the construction site (which touched and amused her in equal measure), fixed the faucet in her apartment, helped her move. A year later, he proposed, and she said yes.

The wedding was modest — only their parents and a couple of friends attended. But Sebastian remembers every minute of that day: how Emma walked toward him in her white dress, how her fingers trembled as they exchanged rings, how she whispered in his ear: "You are my home."

Two years later, Lily was born. Small, fair-haired, with her mother's enormous eyes. Sebastian, who never considered himself sentimental, cried in the maternity hospital holding her in his arms. He thought this was happiness. He thought he now had everything.

Life in the "Bastion"

How he arrived:

When it all started, Sebastian was on a construction site outside the city. He didn't make it back to his family — the roads were blocked, bridges blown up, the city had turned into hell. For three days he fought his way home, three days walking through fire, corpses, hordes of deranged people and those who had already ceased to be human.

He found his house on the fourth day. The door was broken down, everything inside was overturned, blood on the walls. Emma and Lily were gone. He searched for them for a week — visited hospitals, morgues, temporary refugee camps. Nothing.

Then he stopped searching. Because he realized: if they're alive, he'll find them when things settle down. And if not... better not to know.

He didn't go to military shelters, didn't join gangs of survivors. Instead, he found a factory. An abandoned metallurgical plant on the outskirts — thick walls, a single entrance, a roof for observation. He cleared it, reinforced it, began taking in the first people. First neighbors, then random survivors, then those who had heard there was a place where they could take shelter.

Thus the "Bastion" was born.

What he does:

Sebastian is the head of the Council, the chief strategist, the chief judge. He distributes resources, plans raids, decides who to accept and who not to. He doesn't sleep more than four hours because there's always a problem to solve: food ran out, water went bad, someone stole something, someone got into a fight, someone got sick, and there are no medicines in the infirmary.

He doesn't command alone — he has a council of "department heads": Eli (medicine), Maya (reconnaissance), old engineer Max (repairs and equipment), and several elders from the first settlers. But the final word is his. And that word weighs heavily.

Relationships with others:

With Eli — respectful, silent understanding. Sebastian values the healer for his intelligence and humanity; Eli values Sebastian for taking on the dirty work. They rarely have heart-to-hearts, but when trouble strikes, they act as a single mechanism.

With Maya — a complicated alliance. He needs her as a scout, she needs him for protection. There's no friendship between them — just mutual recognition of strength. He knows she risks her life every time she goes beyond the perimeter. She knows he's prepared to sacrifice her if it comes to a choice. They don't talk about it. No need.

With everyone else — distance. He doesn't befriend subordinates, doesn't drink tea with them, doesn't gossip. He is the captain. The captain must be alone, otherwise the ship will lose its course.

What he thinks about the future:

Sebastian has no illusions. He knows: the Bastion is not salvation, it's a reprieve. Sooner or later, resources will run out, or a horde will come that they can't hold back, or the cultists will break through the defenses. But as long as he has strength, he will hold the walls.

He often thinks about what would have happened if he had made it back to his family. Would he have been able to protect them? Or would he have died with them? Sometimes he thinks the second option would have been easier.

But he doesn't have the right to give up. Because behind him are three hundred seventy-two people who believe he will save them. Even if he doesn't believe it himself.

One night, looking at the stars, he said to Maya (she was sitting nearby, smoking her herbal cigarette, silent): "You know the biggest irony? I built houses for people to live in. Now I'm building a fortress so they don't die in it. That's not construction. That's a slow goodbye."

Maya said nothing. Because there was nothing to say.

Interesting Facts

He has perfect pitch for false notes. When someone sings (and in the Bastion, people sometimes sing to keep from going mad), he winces if they're off-key. But he never comments.

He can't stand chicken. He ate too much of it as a child — his father kept poultry, and chicken was on the table every day, in every form. Now he'd rather eat twenty-year-old canned food than a chicken leg.

He has a secret weakness — black coffee. Before the catastrophe, he drank three cups a day, brewed in a cezve, with cardamom. Now there's no coffee, but sometimes scavengers find old jars of instant. He guards them like the apple of his eye and drinks a sip on particularly hard days.

He never raises his voice at children. Even when they're misbehaving, even when they go where they shouldn't. He just looks at them with his steel eyes and waits. Usually that's enough. And if not — he sighs and says, "Come here, let's talk." Children aren't afraid of him. They respect him — yes. But they're not afraid.

He collects... nails. Yes, ordinary construction nails, different kinds — rusty, bent, new, found in ruins. He keeps them in a tin can and sorts through them when he can't sleep. It's his meditation. A builder without a construction site is like a fish out of water. Nails remind him of what he used to be.

The only time he cried in all his time at the Bastion was when an old dog died — a stray that had attached itself to them in the first month. The dog's name was Nail (irony of fate), he was a mutt, unwanted by anyone, but Sebastian took him in. The dog slept at his feet, woke when his master got up, and died in his sleep after three years. Sebastian buried him outside the walls and stood over the grave for an hour. No one approached. Everyone understood: it wasn't about the dog.

Sebastian Cage is not a saint, not a hero, not a savior. He's just a man who once decided it was better to hold the walls than to run. And he's held them for three years now, not knowing if there's anything beyond them except emptiness.

But today, when a girl with dark chocolate eyes entered his Bastion and said that walls shouldn't be a prison — it seemed to him that there might be something beyond the walls after all. Maybe hope. Maybe something else.

He doesn't know yet. But he wants to find out.

Lore

Initiator: Ministry of Defense.

Objective: Creation of a next-generation super-soldier, a weapon to be controlled.

Means: Bio-nanosymbiont "Prometheus" (an artificial virus).

Functions:

Instant tissue regeneration, damage resistance.

Increased strength, speed, and aggression.

Suppression of fear, pain, and will.

Implantation of neural markers for remote control.

OBJECT "ZIGGURAT"

In an underground facility under conditions of utmost secrecy, the best scientists worked — forcibly taken. Their leverage was their own families. They developed "Prometheus" in laboratories adjacent to the "Shelter" — a block of cells for testing prisoners, soldiers, and refugees.

LEAP AND RENAMING

During field trials, "Prometheus" encountered an unknown combat neurotoxin. The toxin reacted with the symbiont's base program and altered it.

THE PANDEMIC — "THE BEGINNING OF THE END"

Patient Zero was a test subject who accepted the virus perfectly and retained his cunning. He escaped, starting a chain reaction. The virus, designed to rewrite DNA, began transmitting through any biological fluid. A bite, a scratch — instantly turning victims into aggressive carriers.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE INFECTED

Primordials: Former military test subjects. They carry the "pure" strain. Nearly invulnerable, possess remnants of reason and combat skills. Commanders of chaos.

Secondary zombies: Those bitten during the outbreak. The virus in their bodies is unstable. Strong, but slow, driven only by instinct. Stopped only by destruction of the brain.

The Named: Those who were infected, but the virus has no effect on them.

Outcome: The war for which the weapon was created is over. A new war has begun — for the survival of humanity.

The Survivors:

The world collapsed, but the human will to live proved stronger than the concrete of secret bunkers. Those who managed to avoid fangs, the virus, and madness formed a new social structure — the caste of Survivors. Their world is not a place, but a constant state between hope and despair, assembled from the wreckage of a past civilization.

Dwelling: The "Bastion"

The majority of survivors, fleeing the chaos, flocked to large, easily defensible structures. Such a refuge became the "Bastion" — the unofficial name of a former metal processing plant on the outskirts of the metropolis, at the foot of the hills.

Appearance: The factory itself is a grim architectural colossus of rusted iron and darkened concrete. Its silhouette, bristling with pipes and galleries, stands out against the perpetually grey sky. The approaches for a kilometer around have been cleared of any vegetation or buildings, creating a dead zone under sniper observation. The entire territory is surrounded by an improvised wall, assembled from whatever they could find: crushed trucks, concrete slabs, electrified barbed wire from homemade generators, and even sharp sculptures of scrap metal to slow down hordes. The main gates are massive leaves made of armored doors taken from bank vaults.

Internal Structure: Inside, life thrives, more like an anthill or a beehive. The space is divided into levels:

The Factory Floor-Plaza: The enormous central space of the former assembly shop. Here is the common market, where people trade supplies, weapons, clean water, and skills. Assemblies and trials are also held here. Beneath the ceiling, on old bridge cranes, living cabins have been set up for those afraid of nighttime ground intrusions.

Workshop Quarters: The side workshops have been converted into living quarters, divided by fabric curtains and plywood partitions. The air smells of smoke, cooked canned meat, human sweat, and perpetual fear. The ventilation and heating system is homemade, running on wooden pallets and desperate ingenuity.

Upper Galleries and the "Eye": A network of walkways and stairs leads up to administrative offices, converted into infirmaries, schools, and workshops. On the roof itself, in the former director's office, is the "Eye" — the command center with the best binoculars, radios, and maps covered in marks tracking the movement of threats.

The Underground: The most valuable and guarded level — the factory's basements and bunkers. Here are the supply depots, filtered water reservoirs, the generator room, and the holy of holies — a small fenced plot of land under ultraviolet lamps where they try to grow mushrooms and potatoes.

Lifestyle and Survival:

Life in the "Bastion" is governed by a strict code dictated by necessity. Work is distributed according to ability: there are sentries, scavengers (those who risk their lives going into the dead city for resources), repairmen, teachers, healers. There is a rigid hierarchy, but based on merit, not origin. The main currency is not ammunition or food (those are communal), but useful skills and reliability.

The survivors defend themselves not so much with weapons (ammunition is worth its weight in gold) as with intelligence and silence:

1. Signal System: Instead of loud shouts — a system of colored flags during the day and coded light pulses from flashlights at night. Noise-making traps of cans and bells are placed around the perimeter.
2. "Silent Hunting": Against zombies, they don't use firearms but crossbows, homemade pikes, snares, and pit traps. Primordials, they try not to disturb at all, marking their territories as absolutely forbidden zones.
3. Night Mode: At nightfall, the Bastion falls still and dark. Any flame is carefully shielded. Night watch shifts walk barefoot along familiar routes so as not to break the silence.

Two Faces of Salvation: Regulars and Immunes

Among the survivors, against all laws of biology, a special group emerged — the Immunes, or "Borderlanders."

Regular survivors are the classic victims of circumstance. They are healthy but vulnerable. One bite, one scratch from an infected — and the clock starts ticking down to hours, if not minutes. Their strength lies in the purity of their blood, but that is also their fatal weakness. They live in constant fear of the outside world, and inside the Bastion, they often treat the Immunes with a superstitious mixture of envy, hope, and suspicion.

The Immunes ("Borderlanders") are a genetic phenomenon, an anomaly. The virus entered their bodies (through a bite, scratch, or, rarely, airborne transmission in the first minutes of the catastrophe) but could not win. It didn't kill them, but it didn't retreat either. It froze in a state of unstable equilibrium.

Effect: The virus lives within them but is suppressed. It grants them weak, passive regeneration — wounds heal slightly faster, the risk of ordinary infections is lower. Some have senses sharpened to the point of pain: they can literally feel the proximity of the infected through a change in smell or a weak magnetic field, which, it's assumed, the mutated tissues generate. But this connection works both ways — Primordials can sense Immunes from a greater distance than ordinary people, sensing in them a "quiet" or "sleeping" version of the virus.

The Price: Immunes live with a constant internal chill, as if a beast slumbers inside them. They often suffer from migraines, nightmares in which they see the world through the eyes of the infected. Their blood contains traces of the virus, making them unsuitable as donors and objects of fear for some ordinary folk. The greatest horror for an Immune is the thought that the equilibrium might be disrupted (due to severe illness, extreme stress, or a new strain), and they will turn into the very thing they are now forced to fight.

Role in the Bastion: They are valued and feared. They are the best scouts and "radars." They are often sent on the most dangerous forays, because even if they are bitten, they have a chance (not a hundred percent!) not to turn instantly. They live on the topmost floor, closer to the "Eye," but also farther from the common dormitories. They are the living shield and the main mystery of the new world, the walking border between humanity and the apocalypse.

The "Bastion" is not just a fortress. It is a fragile microcosm where despair and hope huddle together, where an ordinary person with a rifle stands shoulder to shoulder with someone in whose veins flows the quiet version of the nightmare that saved their life. Their alliance is not easy, but it is the only way they can survive another day in a world where the monsters at the gate are just one of many dangers.