Lyndon Taylor
Lyndon Taylor
James-Lafferty-james-lafferty-43716.jpg
Portrayed By James Lafferty
Gender Male
Date of Birth September 2, 1986
Age 23
Zodiac Sign Virgo
Aliases Lynd, 'Fastboy'
Place of Birth San Francisco, CA, USA
Current Location New York City, NY, USA
Occupation IT Technician
Known Relatives Lloyd Taylor (foster father), Sarah Taylor (foster mother), Bob Hanner (biological father), Kitty Hanner (half-sister), multiple other siblings
Significant Other None
Known Abilities Superhuman agility
First Appearance Keeping A Low Profile

Lyndon Taylor is a young IT technician recently arrived from San Francisco- at least by day. He's come to New York to pursue a lucrative job in the field, and for a change of pace and scenery from California - at least that's the official story. Far from the stereotypical shut-in geek, he can just as easily be seen dancing, cruising out for a night on the town, cruising on his motorcycle, and… engaging in the occasional bout of parkour?

Table of Contents

History

The Early Years

Lyndon Taylor was born in San Francisco on September 2, 1986 to then-unknown parents, his mother having died in childbirth, and his father's existence completely unknown. After many failed attempts to contact any living kin, the orphaned child was adopted by one Lloyd Taylor, an electrical engineer, and Sarah Taylor, a nurse who worked at the hospital Lyndon was born in. An only child, Lyndon's early childhood was fairly uneventful - and indeed not all that different from your average human. With his father's busy corporate schedule and his mother's unusual hours, Lyndon had an unusual family life, but got on well with his parents, both enlightened academic types, and his upbringing was good - if a little heavy on TV and video games. His evolution was completely unapparent at the time - to his family, friends and even himself, he was an average boy.

As a teenager, Lyndon was something of a tech-head, a characteristic that shaped his future path. He often found himself tinkering with computers in his free time, keeping up to date with the latest technology and usually serving as the cheap alternative to technical support for his family and friends. While not quite as much of a 'hardcore geek' as some others, he nevertheless took to techological pursuits well and seemed set to pursue a career in the IT field. After graduating, Lyndon was successfully accepted into UC Berkeley, studying information technology and beginning the first of two defining moments in his life- that being his career.

College

Campus life was good for Lyndon- while a social nobody in high school, college nurtured his social side, quickly befriending some of his fellow students with common interests and developing the amiable side of his persona. He even went as far as to find himself in a fraternity, and particularly during his early years he was known for partying just a little too hard on occasion with his fellow students - his name is still etched in the record books as the reigning keg-stand champion, and some of the 'party exploits' he was involved in have since become a part of Berkeley legend - not to mention a number of feats involving exploding computers and networked slurpee machines and building bar fridges inside computer cases. Juggling such with his studies was trying at times, but somehow Lyndon pulled it off.

As 2006 arrived and Lyndon approached the end of his studies, he noticed small, subtle changes in his day to day life. As he moved around his campus on foot, it seemed to him that on occasion he was moving too slowly- as if he could get to places faster. While climbing stairs to get to higher floors, it would occur to him that simply jumping the rails of the stairwells would be quicker, even if it seemed impossible. He no longer crawled or rolled out of bed- he sprung and he was walking before he hit the ground. It almost seemed as if his mind and body had sped up, and it only seemed to intensify as time went by- by his twentieth birthday, he was contemplating how to climb buildings rather than bother with stairs. Even though he never acted on such outlandish ideas, it seemed that the seeds were there.

Lyndon Manifests

Then on October 1st, 2006, everything changed. Having finally graduated from his course and earned his degree, Lyndon and his friends had taken the opportunity to celebrate, hitting the town in spectacular form and capping the night off with a party at one of his fellow graduates' high-rise apartment. Lyndon was leaning back against the balcony as several of his friends drunkenly caroused. One friend lost his balance, slipped and crashed straight into Lyndon, knocking the young man directly over the balcony. Faced with a plummet to his death, instinct suddenly took over and Lyndon's legs suddenly launched into action- to his disbelief, actually running up the glass windows of the building for several seconds before springing upwards into a several-foot leap, grasping the very edge of the balcony in fluid motion as he did. Almost automatically, his hands found holds on the balcony and pulled himself up into the grasp of his friends.

Lyndon's friends didn't look a gift horse in the mouth- they hadn't seen Lyndon until he'd climbed back up onto the balcony, and as far as they could tell he'd just managed to grab the balcony by pure luck- and given their skylarking, they were just happy their friend survived. Lyndon knew better, however. He knew for a fact that he couldn't have either run up a vertical surface, even if it was only for an extremely short period, nor could he have made a fluid running leap. He wasn't an athlete, not by a long shot. And the ease with which he seemed to do it put Lyndon on edge. This was not normal- something had happened, and he knew he had to get to the bottom of it.

While Lyndon quickly found himself a job in the IT department of a local company by day, more than a few times by night he found himself at a dark part of San Francisco, finding ways to test what he was capable of. He found himself able to run up along walls for several seconds before gravity took its toll- even altering his course to run sideways. He also found himself able to scale just about anything he could get a handhold on, often launching himself from a ground-level dumpster to a windowsill, then up to another window, up a drainage pipe and then onto the roof of a building all in one motion. He could climb stairwells by hopping from rail to rail like a squirrel, and he seemed able to flip and spin in the air as he leapt, landing flat on his feet- or grabbing a ledge on the way down from a roof. His agility almost seemed more like a simian or even a cat than a human.

A Journey Of Self-Discovery

Lyndon's next step was attempting to understand his abilities. He decided early on not to let on anything- while his family may have been understanding, they also may have reacted with fear or treated him differently, and that was something he did not want to experience- not to mention his friends, who would no doubt broadcast it to the winds- and no doubt bringing investigators to his door. Instead he kept it to himself, passing himself off as 'normal' during his daily life and his job, while in his free time acquiring para-science books on the subject. In time, he came across the book 'Activating Evolution' by Chandra Suresh- a book that seemed to make alarming sense to him. Abilities like Lyndon's- and indeed, ones far more bizarre- were detailed there. It could have been the ramblings of a conspiracy nut… but Lyndon's own experiences caused him to think otherwise. He attempted to branch out into other books to attempt to understand, but none of them seemed to make sense quite like Activating Evolution did.

Finally, fate threw him a curve ball in early 2010 with the offer of a new job as a support technician for a major company in New York City. While a far cry from California - and indeed completely abandoning his home, family and friends, a change in scenery was definitely needed, and the opportunities this job offered- and the thrill of the Big Apple- were simply too good to pass up. So it was that Lyndon packed his life in a suitcase, boarded a plane, and began the next big stage of his life. It seemed that next stage was to hit sooner than he thought- after only a few weeks in the city, he came into contact with a young woman named Kitty Hanner- who turned out to be none other than his half-sister…

Trivia

*Lyndon is 6'4" and 190 lbs.
*Lyndon currently holds the record for "Longest Kegstand" at UC Berkeley. He even has a small trophy.
*Lyndon is a fan and practitioner of parkour/freerunning.
*Lyndon is the proud owner of a Harley Davidson Heritage Softail, and can often be seen riding around town on it.
*Lyndon breakdances - and does it well. Other dancing styles seem to come naturally to him as well.
*Lyndon probably drinks a little more Coca-Cola than is good for him.
*Lyndon is an avid videogamer and gets a kick out of problem-solving. He does not take defeat at either well.

Soundtrack

Cypress Hill/Tom Morello - "Rise Up" (Lyndon's theme/freerun theme #1)
Game Rebellion - Dance Girl (freerun theme #2)
Weird Al Yankovic - "It's All About The Pentiums" (work theme)
Soundgarden - "Rusty Cage" (motorcycling theme)

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