Cora
|
Cora |
|
|---|---|
|
Washout |
|
| Gender | Female |
| Year of intake | 2007 |
| Sponsor | Aunt Ashley |
| Handler | Haley |
| Gender at intake | Cis male |
| Date of birth | unknown |
| Name at intake | [show]Philip |
| First appearance | Chapter 44 |
| Chapters with POV scenes | |
| edit this box | |
Cora is a Dorley Hall washout employed by Peckinville as an operative under Elle Lambert's secret program; her handler is Haley. [SD 44]
She was washed out of the 2007 intake after first disclosure, in January 2008.[SD 45]
Cora has blonde hair with a small build. [SD 45] She is trained in close quarters combat, knives, and firearms. [SD 44] She likens her fighting style to that of an "ambush predator". [SD 46]
Previously of an undirected, viciously violent and chaotic disposition, following her Peckinville training and having experienced what might be described as actualization, Haley describes Cora as now having "a callous disinterest in traditional morality". Cora has a strong sense of curiosity; the flip side being that she still struggles with poor impulse control and boredom and wants desperately to be "normal". [SD 46]
Pre-transition
Philip is of aristocratic origin and is "of something approaching noble lineage". He recalls his mother as a deeply unpleasant, ugly woman and his father as usually "barely conscious". Philip was abused a "smattering" of times by a male associate of his mother's; when he reported the incident to her, she rebuked him, telling him to "take it like a man". Philip suspects that his mother was similarly abused as a child. [SD 45]
As a child, Philip was "difficult, undisciplined and fatally bored" and a "violent little bastard" requiring private tutoring. [SD 46] He fought with and apparently put various other children in the hospital. [SD 45]
As young adult, Philip was a prolific fighter and would pick random fights, apparently just for the sport of it. His family's high station offered him "a million second chances" as well as limitless legal protection; this total lack of consequences only added to his fierce fighting style, giving him the confidence to "strike with impunity". He regarded his own fighting style as having "the quickness of a kingfisher, the violence of a wasp, and the assurance of a prince", relying heavily on the element of surprise and a tenacity likened to that of a dog with it's teeth sank into someone's leg, refusing to let go. The year before his intake, he fought two larger Scottish boys, putting one of them in the hospital. The other described him as a "vicious wee cunt", which Philip found apt. [SD 45]
Deeply frustrated and disaffected, Philip was aware he was "broken" in some way and, at least in some part, desired to be "fixed". [SD 45]
At Dorley Hall
Philip was sponsored by Aunt Ashley as part of the 2007 intake.
Unfazed by the programme despite having surmised its true purpose, and disappointed in its inability to "fix" him, he entertained himself by provoking and manipulating the rest of his intake. He remained unrepentantly violent and enjoyed starting fistfights with the other basementees, especially Tabitha, whom he perceived as a peer and worthy adversary. [SD 45] His unrelentingly tyrannical behavior in the basement earned him the nickname "Prince Philip"; Maria would later describe him as a "gold-star washout". [SD 44]
However, he was not washed out until at least a week after disclosure, when he solicited Ashley for sex and (presumably) sexually assaulted Tabitha. [SD 45] Tabitha recalls that none of his fellow intake cared when he was finally washed out. [SD 44]
The Peckinville programme
Intake and training
As a washout, Philip spent two months in a cell at a Peckinville facility [SD 45] before being transferred to a medical facility where he was force-feminized, including voice feminization surgery, [SD 44] facial feminization surgery, and an orchiectomy. After two months convalescing, she was introduced to Haley, who assigned assigned her the name "Cora", explained the details of her new role (emphasizing that Cora is an expendable asset), and presented her with her first target. In Haley, Cora finds for the first time someone who is not intimidated by her and can take her in a fight as well as a guardian who recognizes her as needing "accommodating" and "listening to", rather than being controlled. [SD 45]
Fuller-Jennings
Following her training, her first target is delayed, and Cora is given a different, "training wheels" assignment in July of 2012: A man with the last name Fuller-Jennings who was responsible for the deaths of "a dozen or so" Dorley girls. Haley shows Cora a videotape taken from Grandmother's old Dorley in which he has presumably just left a girl for dead in one of the rooms at Dorley Hall and then proceeds to another room to await another girl. Cora is shaken by the second girl's strength and determination, and with some prompting by Haley, recognizes Fuller-Jennings' violence as part of a larger system of structural violence that celebrates men for the "same acts inflicted in miniature". Cora goes to bed that night haunted by her own history of self-interested violence. [SD 45]
After two months of infiltration work, she finally succeeds in pushing Fuller-Jennings over an eleventh storey balcony. Cora, having recognized "echoes" of herself in his "useless violence", experiences a euphoric lightness in Fuller-Jennings' death; at this moment she realizes that Haley has finally "fixed" her. "Ending him" has removed "something inside her that didn't fit". From this point on, her loyalty to Elle's programme is assured. [SD 45]
Alexander Twill-Barrington
Cora's first target was originally Alexander Twill-Barrington, an aristocrat she is already familiar with; Twill-Barrington was the associate of her mother who abused Cora as a child. The two were possibly having an affair together. [SD 45]
The assignment is delayed for a few years while awaiting crucial intel. When Cora is finally inserted into Twill-Barrington's clutches, her role has changed to that of an assassin; the plan is for her to "stick it out" for six weeks before killing him, in order to collect as much information as possible from the grounds and Twill-Barrington himself, including the locations of the remains of Dorley girls and other useful intelligence. Instead, Cora quickly exacts her revenge, killing him two days later by stabbing him in the throat with a broken shard of radiator pipe. [SD 45]
This deviation from the mission necessitates an extensive emergency cleanup of Cora's DNA, fingerprints, and security footage from the property; alongside the loss of any intel which died with Twill-Barrington, the debacle results in Cora and Haley being put on an indefinite probation. [SD 45]
No longer eligible for "honeypot" missions, Cora is given a complete sex change; from then on she and Haley are only assigned menial monitoring and bodyguard jobs in the United States. Years later, in January 2020, Cora and Haley are completing a mission in Florida to infiltrate a Silver River space within a megachurch complex. After Cora extracts information containing the planned movements of Henrietta Smyth-Farrow, she recognizes it as an opportunity to get back in Peckinville's good graces and back in action "making a difference". [SD 45]
The Smyth-Farrows
This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.
Other kills
Prior to the botched assassination of Alexander Twill-Barrington, Cora successfully eliminated a handful of other targets, each of them a client of Grandmother's old Dorley.
Haley mentions that Cora once poisoned two men on an airplane, [SD 45] it is likely the same mission that Cora recalls training as a stewardess for. [SD 44]
Cora has also killed her own mother, presumably under Peckinville's command. Cora recalls she choked to death on a crumpet during afternoon tea. [SD 45]
Pre-transition associates
| Dorley girls (and a few non-girls) | |
|---|---|
| 2007 intake | |