Aleksei Panchenko
"The mission either succeeds or it does not."
Grew up in Murmansk. Father and grandfather worked the docks. Went to sea at eighteen. Merchant marine, North Atlantic and Baltic routes, eleven years. He knew ships the way other people know their apartments: the weight, the movement, the sounds under stress.
His ability developed over years as a growing instinctive sense of his own weight. He could make himself harder to move, plant himself against wind and wave in ways crew members stopped questioning because reliable crew on a North Atlantic route is not something you interrogate.
Cargo vessel, twelve crew. Late November, severe weather. The ship was taking structural stress. His ability responded below the level of intention, trying to stabilize the ship the way an immune system responds to a pathogen. The gravity field collapsed and inverted across a radius he could not control. Hull compression was instantaneous. The ship went down in eleven minutes. He survived because his ability protects him even when it is not under his control. He was the only survivor. He told the inquiry it was structural failure. He has said nothing more.
Manipulates gravity locally on his own body. Can increase his density to immovable levels. Can reduce his weight to near weightlessness. Cannot fly. Effect is self only. Under extreme stress, the ability can operate below conscious intention with catastrophic results.
He will not allow physical contact with Drift. Drift is not entirely solid when phasing, exactly the kind of environmental variable Ballast's ability might autonomously respond to. He does not know what would happen. He knows what happened last time he didn't know.
The reasons people assign to outcomes are stories they tell themselves after the fact. He does not tell himself those stories anymore. Speaks only when he has something to say. When he does, it lands. When Cormorant contacted him after Port Sulphur, he showed up the next morning. Said nothing.
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