Zero
“If they’re still breathing, I’m not finished.”
Profile
Real Name: Ethan Jakobs
Callsign: Zero
Known As: Hell Host Zero / Medic
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Status: Active
Faction: Hell Hosts
Branch: Medical Corps
Operational Attachments: Doom Corps / Fleet Guard
Role: Combat Medic
Relationship Status: Single
Known Ability: Accelerated Healing
Primary Weapon: 94CAR
Sidearm: P2 Particle Service Pistol
Additional Equipment: Retractable Utility Blade / Advanced Medical Equipment
Ethan Jakobs, better known as Zero, is a Hell Host combat medic known for operating directly alongside frontline personnel.
Unlike medical personnel who primarily operate from field hospitals, ships, or secured treatment facilities, Zero routinely deploys into active combat zones alongside the soldiers he is responsible for treating.
His unusual biological ability allows him to accelerate the healing of injured personnel through direct physical contact.
The ability has made Zero an exceptionally effective battlefield medic, but it does not make him capable of curing every injury.
Ethan understands this intellectually.
Accepting it emotionally has proven considerably more difficult.
His personal philosophy revolves around a nearly impossible objective:
Zero preventable deaths.
He knows he will never achieve it.
He continues trying anyway.
Early Life
Ethan Jakobs developed an interest in medicine and emergency care from a relatively young age.
Unlike many Hell Host personnel whose careers were shaped by catastrophic events, vengeance, warfare, or anomalous encounters, Ethan’s original ambition was remarkably straightforward.
He wanted to become a medic.
Eventually, he did.
Ethan pursued medical training before entering active Hell Host service and quickly gravitated toward battlefield medicine rather than conventional clinical work.
He was less interested in treating personnel once they had already reached safety.
He wanted to be the person who kept them alive long enough to get there.
This eventually led him into the Medical Corps and repeated attachment to frontline formations.
Combat Medic
Zero specializes in emergency battlefield medicine.
He regularly operates alongside Doom Corps personnel and has also served aboard or alongside Fleet Guard forces.
His responsibilities include:
- Immediate trauma treatment
- Hemorrhage control
- Battlefield stabilization
- Casualty extraction
- Emergency resuscitation
- Combat triage
- Treatment under fire
- Medical evacuation coordination
- Monitoring wounded personnel
- Supporting prolonged frontline operations
Zero is fully trained as both a soldier and medic.
His medical status does not mean he is incapable of defending himself or his patients.
If necessary, Ethan will fight his way toward a casualty and fight his way back out.
Accelerated Healing
Zero possesses an anomalous ability allowing him to dramatically accelerate biological healing through direct physical contact.
The effect appears to stimulate and enhance the body’s natural regenerative processes.
Depending upon the severity of the injury, Zero can potentially:
- Close wounds
- Stop or significantly reduce bleeding
- Accelerate tissue repair
- Stabilize damaged blood vessels
- Reduce traumatic shock
- Assist fracture recovery
- Stabilize moderate internal injuries
- Increase a casualty’s chance of surviving transport
Minor injuries may respond extremely quickly.
Severe injuries require substantially more time and effort.
In many cases, Zero does not completely heal a casualty.
He simply keeps them alive long enough for conventional medicine to finish the job.
This distinction is extremely important.
Limitations of Healing
Zero is not capable of reversing every form of damage.
His ability cannot reliably:
- Regrow completely lost limbs
- Reconstruct extensively destroyed organs
- Reverse catastrophic brain destruction
- Resurrect the dead
- Cure every disease
- Remove Element 95 corruption
- Reverse Ascension
- Repair every anomalous injury
- Restore tissue that has been completely destroyed
The patient’s existing condition also influences the effectiveness of his ability.
A body still possessing viable tissue and functioning biological systems can be accelerated.
A body that has already suffered irreversible destruction provides considerably less for Zero to work with.
His ability is healing.
It is not resurrection.
Biological Cost
Using accelerated healing places significant strain upon Zero.
The energy required to force rapid biological recovery appears to partially draw upon his own metabolic reserves.
Repeated or extreme use can cause:
- Exhaustion
- Tremors
- Severe hunger
- Dehydration
- Reduced concentration
- Muscle weakness
- Dizziness
- Loss of consciousness
The more serious the casualty, the greater the cost.
Attempting to treat multiple critically wounded personnel in rapid succession can leave Zero physically incapable of continuing.
Medical personnel therefore monitor Ethan during prolonged casualty events.
Zero has repeatedly objected to being ordered away from patients because of his own condition.
His objections are frequently ignored.
Zero Preventable Deaths
The origin of Ethan’s callsign has accumulated several explanations over the years.
The interpretation most closely associated with him is:
Zero preventable deaths.
It is not an official Hell Host medical doctrine.
It is Ethan’s personal standard.
Zero understands that death cannot be eliminated from warfare.
He understands that some injuries are unsurvivable.
He understands that medical resources are finite.
He understands that triage sometimes requires abandoning one casualty to save several others.
He simply hates every part of that reality.
Zero does not expect immortality.
He expects himself to prevent every death that could reasonably have been prevented.
When he fails, he remembers.
Refusal to Give Up
Zero’s greatest strength and greatest weakness are closely related.
He has enormous difficulty abandoning a living casualty.
As long as a patient continues breathing, Ethan instinctively believes there must still be something he can do.
Usually, this determination is valuable.
Personnel who might otherwise have been declared unrecoverable have survived because Zero refused to stop treating them.
Sometimes, however, that same determination becomes dangerous.
Zero has remained inside compromised positions longer than extraction doctrine recommends.
He has exhausted himself treating casualties with extremely poor survival probabilities.
He has attempted to return for wounded personnel after being explicitly ordered to evacuate.
In the worst circumstances, his refusal to accept one death can threaten his ability to save several others.
This remains one of the central challenges of his medical career.
Triage
Zero dislikes triage.
He is also very good at it.
He can rapidly assess casualties and determine which personnel require immediate treatment, which can wait, and which injuries are unlikely to respond to available medical intervention.
The difficulty comes afterward.
Making the correct decision does not make Ethan comfortable with it.
If forced to leave someone behind, he remembers their face.
If forced to stop treatment, he questions whether another thirty seconds would have changed the outcome.
If someone dies while he is treating them, he reviews what happened repeatedly.
This tendency has occasionally required intervention from senior Medical Corps personnel.
Relationship with Naomi Calder
Zero holds considerable respect for Naomi Calder.
As one of the Hell Hosts’ foremost medical authorities, Naomi possesses significantly greater responsibility for large-scale medical operations and casualty management.
She also understands something Ethan frequently struggles with:
A medic cannot save everyone.
Naomi has repeatedly forced Zero to confront difficult triage decisions.
Their disagreements can become intense.
Zero tends to focus on the patient immediately in front of him.
Naomi must sometimes consider every patient waiting behind them.
If Ethan exhausts himself attempting to save one casualty with almost no chance of survival, he may become incapable of treating several others who could have lived.
Zero understands the logic.
He does not always accept it willingly.
Despite their disagreements, Ethan trusts Naomi’s medical judgement enormously.
She is also one of the few people capable of ordering him away from a patient and having a reasonable chance of being obeyed.
Reasonable.
Not guaranteed.
Relationship with Destiny
Zero has developed an unusually protective relationship toward Destiny.
The relationship is not romantic.
Its origins lie instead in one of Ethan’s deepest professional failures.
Zero was involved in the events surrounding an operation after which Destiny disappeared.
Despite his medical training and unusual healing ability, there was nothing Ethan could do to recover her.
Destiny remained missing for approximately nine months.
For a medic whose identity revolves around the belief that something can always be done while a patient remains alive, her disappearance affected him profoundly.
There was no body to treat.
No wound to close.
No patient to stabilize.
She was simply gone.
When Destiny eventually returned, Ethan’s relief developed into an unusually strong protective instinct.
He became considerably more attentive to her condition during later operations and was known to volunteer for assignments involving her.
Destiny occasionally found this excessive.
Ethan disagreed.
The Second Loss
Zero’s concern surrounding Destiny became significantly worse during the events leading to the shared Ascension Event involving Scyther and Destiny.
As Scyther’s Element 95 corruption progressed, he eventually transported Destiny unwillingly into the Farlands.
For Ethan, the situation repeated an experience he already despised.
Destiny had disappeared again.
Once again, conventional medicine could not reach her.
Once again, Zero could do nothing.
The eventual Ascension of Scyther and Destiny confronted Ethan with a reality his abilities were fundamentally incapable of solving.
Some conditions cannot be healed by accelerating biological regeneration.
Some transformations move beyond conventional biology entirely.
Zero could heal wounds.
He could not simply touch Destiny and undo Ascension.
Accepting that distinction has been exceptionally difficult for him.
Relationship with Scyther
Zero’s relationship with Scyther became considerably more complicated following Destiny’s Ascension Event.
Ethan understands that Scyther was suffering from severe Element 95 corruption and that his judgement had been progressively compromised.
Understanding the cause does not erase what happened.
Scyther took Destiny into the Farlands against her will.
Zero has never treated that fact lightly.
His feelings toward Scyther combine anger, medical concern, sympathy, and frustration.
Part of Ethan views Scyther as responsible.
Another part views him as another patient Hell Host failed to recognize was deteriorating until it was too late.
Zero has never found those two interpretations easy to reconcile.
Personality
Zero is naturally kind and helpful.
He is particularly good at reassuring wounded personnel and tends to remain calm while treating even catastrophic injuries.
Ethan understands that panic spreads quickly.
If the medic looks terrified, the patient usually becomes terrified too.
He therefore maintains a calm demeanor even when the situation is considerably worse than he admits.
Outside medical situations, Ethan can be friendly and approachable.
However, the original descriptions of him as simultaneously kind, helpful, and mean are not entirely inaccurate.
Zero possesses a sharp temper when dealing with:
- Reckless behavior
- Personnel refusing necessary treatment
- Preventable injuries
- Officers unnecessarily endangering soldiers
- People interfering with medical work
- Anyone threatening his patients
An injured soldier insisting they are fine when they very clearly are not is one of the fastest ways to irritate him.
Medical Authority
During active treatment, Zero takes his medical responsibilities seriously.
Rank does not make someone immune to injury.
If Ethan determines that a soldier is medically incapable of continuing an operation, he will say so.
This applies to officers as well.
He has little patience for personnel attempting to hide serious injuries for the sake of appearing tough.
“Congratulations. You’re very brave. Sit down before you bleed on my floor.”
Zero’s authority remains subordinate to senior Medical Corps personnel such as Naomi Calder, but in the field he is trusted to make rapid decisions regarding casualties and evacuation.
94CAR
Zero commonly carries a 94CAR during frontline deployments.
The rifle provides him with a reliable general-purpose weapon without interfering excessively with his medical equipment.
Ethan does not consider himself an assault specialist.
His weapon exists primarily to protect:
- Himself
- His patients
- Other medical personnel
- Casualty evacuation routes
Zero will engage hostile personnel when necessary.
He simply prefers situations where somebody else handles the shooting while he handles the consequences.
P2 Particle Service Pistol
Zero carries a P2 Particle Service Pistol as his standard sidearm.
The compact weapon is particularly useful when working in confined spaces or when carrying medical equipment makes a full rifle impractical.
It is also easier to operate while physically supporting an injured casualty.
Retractable Utility Blade
Zero carries a compact retractable blade integrated into his forearm equipment.
The device originated as the hidden blade recorded in older service documentation.
Modern configurations treat it primarily as a combined medical and survival tool.
It can be used to:
- Cut clothing away from injuries
- Remove restraints
- Cut damaged equipment
- Access wounds
- Sever cables
- Perform emergency medical procedures
It remains fully capable of functioning as a weapon.
Personnel attempting to attack a combat medic at extremely close range occasionally discover this distinction.
Battlefield Method
Zero’s battlefield priorities differ from ordinary infantry.
When a casualty is reported, Ethan rapidly evaluates:
- Can the casualty be reached?
- Can they be moved?
- What will kill them first?
- Can that problem be stopped?
- Where is the safest treatment location?
- How quickly can evacuation arrive?
He often begins treatment before reaching complete cover.
His healing ability allows him to stabilize injuries that would otherwise require equipment or time unavailable under combat conditions.
Once immediate threats are controlled, conventional medicine takes over.
Zero does not view his anomalous ability as a replacement for medical training.
If anything, he considers training more important because his ability makes mistakes happen faster.
Reputation
Among frontline personnel, Zero is generally well regarded.
The sight of him arriving often means a casualty who expected to die suddenly has a chance.
Many soldiers know him simply as:
Medic.
Ethan does not mind.
He has spent much of his life wanting exactly that job.
Among Medical Corps personnel, his reputation is more complicated.
Zero is talented.
Compassionate.
Experienced.
And occasionally an absolute nightmare to extract from a casualty zone.
Philosophy
Zero does not believe medicine is about defeating death.
Death always wins eventually.
Medicine is about making sure it does not win today when something could have been done.
That distinction drives nearly everything Ethan does.
Every wound closed.
Every casualty stabilized.
Every soldier returned to their family.
Every person who survives because someone reached them quickly enough.
One fewer preventable death.
One step closer to zero.
“You can die when there’s nothing left I can do. Until then, you’re my problem.”