»Daisy Sutter was born a no-name, unwanted daughter to a poor family in a small province in China. The mother, a native, was one of those unfortunate women who was wined and dined and ultimately left by a wealthy American businessman. By the time the woman knew she was pregnant, the businessman, business in China concluded, was gone. With shame brought to her family, the young woman was hidden from sight until the baby girl was born and taken from her mother in the dead of night, left at an orphanage with so many other unwanted children.
»The baby girl wouldn't stay in the orphanage for long, finding a home, instead, with an American couple who desperately wanted a child but could not have one of their own. David and Elise Sutter brought their daughter home when the nameless child was nearly a year old. They named her Daisy, after Elise's favorite flower, and gave her the middle name Sī kǎi, which meant Skye in her birth language.
»Daisy grew up loved. She was the kind of little girl that brought sunshine into the lives of those she touched. She was a precocious child, always curious, sometimes too curious, but neither parent ever stopped their daughter from living up to her own potential. She liked puzzles from an early age, word puzzles, number puzzles, picture puzzles. Putting things together, after taking them apart of course, was her greatest pleasure.
»David and Elise thought, or perhaps hoped, that their luck with their daughter would always last, but as they say, all good things must come to an end. In her early teens, Daisy began to act out. It happened in small doses, so slight and insignificant that she probably would have gone on flying under the radar if she hadn't slipped up and gotten caught. She developed what might be clinically termed kleptomania. She started collecting small things that belonged to other people that they wouldn't necessarily notice were missing until it was too late, and then they were always chalked up to being lost by "natural causes." She got caught taking the latest cd she wanted from the store which lead to the larger discovery of a cache of items all with similar origin stories.
»Daisy's kleptomania was only the start of the issues that would engulf the Sutter family in ways they never dreamed of. While Daisy had always known she was different from her parents, it had never bothered her until she was a teen. When friends began pointing out the differences between Daisy and her parents, Daisy began asking questions that her parents didn't have the answers to. It made Daisy sullen, to not know everything, and it led her to what would become her life's passion.
»Her ability and affinity for puzzles would follow her for her entire life. She moved from physical puzzles to the puzzle that was the internet and coding. Growing up on the cust of the Internet, and growing to adulthood when the Internet was at its zenith gave her purpose. She began coding and hacking in her teens, using her hacking skills to steal less tangible things, but to also build worlds and puzzles. She would go to college for web design and programming and would begin to make a career out of her skills for larger corporations, finding holes in their security systems and exploiting them in order to get them to notice her and her skills.
»Daisy is small and slight. She is isn't short, but she isn't tall like her adoptive parents (or her birth father, if she knew who he was). She has always been petite, something that she likes and dislikes in equal measure. Finding pants to fit her has always been an issue as her size makes her a slightly in between size and as such her wardrobe typically consists of dresses and skirts or pants that are way too long for her when she is lounging at home.
»She began teaching herself Chinese when she was 13. Her parents had been introducing her to her heritage at a young age, specifically when her school friends began making fun of her differences in appearance compared to them and her parents, but she didn't actually begin to delve into her own history until she was a teen. She began trying to read, write and speak the language but when she ended up accidentally insulting someone who COULD read, write and speak the language, the offended party took her under her wing and began to give her lessons.
»While Daisy has a good relationship with her parents, she moved out of their house as soon as she could. She lived on campus for school but didn't go home during summer breaks, rather she got an apartment near school and stayed on her own. She had always been an independent child but the more she tried to find out about her real family, the further she drifted away from her parents. Daisy often treats her mother and father like friends or acquaintances she was once closer to than she is now than actual parents.
»Spends all her money on electronics. She has an apartment full of electronic doodads that she really has no use for, but she wants them just the same. She can still take apart and put back together any puzzle put in front of her.