Childhood
Victoria Autumn Duffy was born in Twickenham, England on December 24, 1987. The Christmas Eve baby was a welcome Christmas present, as she would be the youngest child of three, and the only girl. Her father a barrister and her mother a teacher, education and intellect was highly valued in her family. While her two brothers were expected to follow in her father's footsteps, Tori was given more freedom, and soon grew into a whimsical and precocious child with a flair for the dramatic. She often led her older brothers in adventurous games of pretend, as well as her neighbors, and later her classmates.
Once she was old enough, her parents sent her to a competitive prep school for girls. There, she flourished academically and athletically, playing striker for the school's football team, but was never one of the most popular girls due to the fact she scoffed at conformity and conventionalism. Tori was the kind to wear neon green stockings and Doc Martens as accessories to her school-issued pleated skirt and blazer. Her quick wit made her a favorite with some teachers and the bane of others. In short, she had a mostly typical childhood full of friends, school, a couple of boyfriends here and there, and a good family.
Extraordinary Girl
It wasn't until she got to university that things became less than ordinary for Tori. She moved to London to go to the University of London, first as an undeclared major. She wasn't sure what to major in, so dabbled here and there in this and that. It was her first year of college that she found that she was, in fact, extraordinary, though her discovery came in a rather mundane way.
The flat she was staying in had a keypad entrance to its lobby, and once a month it was reset. One day, forgetting it was the first of the month, Tori left for class without checking the new password for the day. Upon returning to the building late that night in a less than savory part of town, she found she couldn't get in. To make matters worse, her cell phone was left in her flat, so she couldn't call anyone for help. After a few moments of trying to guess the password, something strange happened. She could *see* the sequence, on the buttons and in her mind. 19375. She punched in the unfamiliar number, and it worked.
At first she put this out of her mind as luck, but soon she noticed similar things occurring. One day at her computer, she suddenly knew her roommate's email password as well as the contents of an email to a mutual friend, complaining about Tori's less-than-neat ways. Curious, she opened up the girl's email account — the password worked — and found the email in sent mail. It couldn't be coincidence. From that moment on, Tori took advantage of the newfound talent — but told not a soul.
Tori's new power made school a breeze — already a clever student, she found studying even easier when she began to test her power. Visiting a professor during office hours, she touched his keyboard briefly, and found the questions to the upcoming exam. Any work in the computer lab allowed her to access the last user's inputted data. She could borrow a pen from a friend who just took notes on the lecture she hadn't paid attention to, and voila — she had the information. It wasn't cheating in Tori's mind, since she still had to know the information in the long run. It just made things easier. She finally chose to major in Literature, to follow her mother's footsteps in being a teacher.
A Life of Crime
The path to hell is paved in good intentions, they say, and Tori's intentions were good with her power at first. She used it to as a learning aide, in her mind, but soon enough, using the power became second-nature. She didn't even have to think about it and the information would be in her mind. Inevitably, more and more immoral uses for her power presented themselves. One day in the cafeteria, she forgot her user ID for the keypad at checkout, and had no cash. Touching the keypad gave her the last student's number, and Tori found out there is, in fact, such thing as a free lunch. That led to more explorations, and soon she found herself making a bit of spare cash by selling exam questions and test keys to a very select group of classmates. While she was passing her classes with flying colors, part of her knew that when she graduated, she was not going to be a teacher like her mother.
One of Tori's "customers," a handsome man by the name of Prescott, began to worm his way closer to the woman. A little older than her, he had a lot more experience with making money in unethical ways, and he couldn't help but see what an asset she would be in his grand schemes. The two began stealing more, with Pres promising that any victim deserved it. They would make their way through a locker room — combination locks were child's play to Tori, whose power was becoming easier and easier to use. There, they would find the watches and jewelry and wallets and credit cards of people that Prescott swore had it coming to them. They'd pawn the jewelry and use the credit cards. Their personal savings accounts grew larger and larger. But by the time graduation rolled around in May of 2009, Prescott wanted them to graduate on to bigger and better schemes as well.
The next scheme took some time to set in place, though they did their usual petty theft of locker rooms, Tori owning three gym memberships to make it profitable enough. The two lived together in a small flat, and Tori got a job at a bank as a teller, much to her family's confusion. She had a BA in Literature — why was she settling for a job in a bank?
The answer was simple. Prescott got a job at the same bank as a security guard. It was a small merchant bank, but even a small bank holds a chunk of change. Their goal was to take a million pound and split it, and then they could "go legit," as Prescott promised Tori, who had qualms about stealing.
The day came and went without a hitch. Prescott's job as security was to guard the back room where the safe sat; Tori had no problem going through the various security measures. A keypad on the door to the room — no problem. A keypad on the outer door of the safe — no problem. Finally, a combination lock — no problem. The bank didn't even know the money was missing until a week later.
There was no way to dump the money into an account, of course, so they simply hid it. They had to keep working at the bank for some time, to avoid suspicion; they had planned the heist well, however — they were merely part timers and worked few hours compared to others who were more likely to blame. Prescott knew another security guard had a criminal past that wouldn't take a lot of work to uncover. But money causes tension, and Tori and Pres began to argue more and more about their future — he wanted to steal more; she was afraid of getting caught.
Betrayal
It was after one of these fights that she discovered her power was even stronger than she knew. After Pres ran from the flat in anger when she refused to take part in another of his schemes, this one more dangerous than the last, she picked up the phone to call her family. Upset, she held the phone but was unable to dial. In her emotional state, more than the simple information from the phone's last use come to her. A phone number… one she knew: a mutual friend, a fellow thief. A moment later, the phone still gripped tightly in her shaking hand, something unsolicited. A vision, a feeling. She felt angry and cold-hearted, and then she could see Prescott swearing into the phone: "Tuesday night. We're going to kill her. She's going to turn me in, I know it. No one will believe she got into those safes, and if Doug's alibi checks out, I'll be the next suspect on the list. We'll take the money. You can have her share."
Tori couldn't believe it — the man she loved, the man she'd turned into a criminal for, was going to murder her.
It was time to get out of dodge. She took some of the money — not her share, because she didn't want Prescott coming after her in revenge, but just enough to cover travel expenses for a few months. She packed up a backpack of the bare minimum — a few changes of clothes and her important documents. She'd bounce around Europe a bit, and see where the wind took her. While packing, she came across Prescott's gun. She decided to try to push her power and see if she could do what she did with the phone, this time on purpose. It worked, and what she saw frightened her. Suddenly she felt herself raging in anger, thinking murderous thoughts, and then a horrible event played out like a movie in her mind: Prescott mugging a tourist couple in an alley, beating the man with the pistol until blood ran from his temple, then taking their money, leaving the woman sobbing over the limp body of her husband. Tori shoved the gun into its hiding place and left the apartment, without looking back.
Time To Fly
After spending six months in the various countries of Europe, she decided to head to New York on a student visa, planning to get a master's degree in Literature at Columbia U, arriving there in late January, 2010, just in time for a new year and a new decade.