Jensi Sato

Jensi Sato was a young man from the poor world of Vindauga and the brother of Istvan Sato, the troubled man who became a central figure in the Marker outbreaks of the late 23rd century. Having abandoned his unstable brother years earlier to build a life of his own, Jensi was eventually drawn back into Istvan's orbit, crossing the galaxy to the penal colony of Aspera in the hope of saving him. There he found Istvan at the heart of a Necromorph outbreak caused by one of the Red Markers, and the reunion ended in the deaths of both brothers.

Early life on Vindauga#

Jensi and Istvan Sato lived in the Mariner Valley compound, the poorest dome of the poor planet of Vindauga. Jensi was the glue of the family, keeping his mother and his brother from tipping over the edge of extreme poverty, while Istvan was withdrawn and unstable, obsessed with numbers and patterns and prone to sudden episodes of rage and paranoia. As they grew older the brothers became estranged from their mother, and the two were placed in governmental foster care, where they were to be separated. Istvan, seeing his chance for freedom, asked Jensi to run with him so they could stay together, but Jensi, torn between loyalty and survival, abandoned his brother and joined a new family instead.

Jensi began again with a quiet, middle-class foster family and became an academic success. At school he made his first true friend in Henry Wandrei, free at last from the constraints of his odd brother. The peace was broken when Istvan turned up at his home, hungry and desperate, raiding the fridge; when Jensi's foster mother threatened to call the police, the hysterical Istvan fled, convinced his brother had become his enemy. The two would not see each other again for four years.

In that time Jensi attended a technical college on Vindauga, studying computer programming and hacking and discovering a love of piloting, while Henry, after flunking out of a university on Earth, joined him at the same college. Jensi found a small apartment and a job as a picker on huge cargo ships, transferring their loads down to the surface. One day he came home to find Istvan waiting inside, raving that he would soon be famous and would fulfill his purpose, then leaving with a madman's giggle. Worried, Jensi enlisted Henry's help and tracked the major events of the week; at a press conference, he watched in horror as Istvan rushed the stage and shot Councilman Tim Fischer in the head before being subdued and arrested. Jensi searched every level of the justice system afterward, learning only from a military general that his brother was alive and in custody, before finally giving up and returning to his life.

The journey to Aspera#

Still carrying guilt over his brother's disappearance, and after the death of their mother, Jensi received word from Henry, now a security guard, that Istvan was alive and held at a penal colony on a barren planet called Aspera near the edge of the galaxy. Desperate to find him, Jensi located a supply ship, the Eibon, that made monthly runs to the planet and studied its records. He quit his job and broke into the apartment of one of the ship's specialists, intending to sedate the man and take his place, but accidentally killed him, to his lasting regret. By chance the Eibon's captain then hired Jensi to fill the dead man's position, and he left for Aspera on the very day the ship departed.

When the Eibon reached Aspera, it found the sector quarantined and a Sovereign Colonies gunship laying orbital mines around the planet. The crew tried to evade them, but a mine breached the hull and the survivors were sucked into space as the artificial gravity failed. Jensi pulled on a standard astronaut RIG, used his zero-gravity boots to reach the last remaining life pods, and flew away from the wreck toward the planet, crashing into the penal colony below.

Reunion and death#

Aspera, Jensi found, was a test site for one of the Red Markers, and a Necromorph outbreak was already underway. Attacked by an Infector the moment he left his pod, he killed it and was guided by an intercom voice to the security office, where he was reunited with Henry Wandrei, who had survived by locking himself away. Henry told him that Istvan might be alive at a research station miles from the prison. The two crossed the surface by ATV until a mine destroyed it, then ran for the facility as their oxygen ran out, and Jensi nearly died before Henry sealed an airlock and two scientists, Doctors Callie Dexter and Anna Tilton, let them in. From them Jensi learned that Istvan was the reason the facility had fallen, and a Unitologist scientist named Enoch Briden told him that Istvan belonged to the Marker and was the prophet who would lead mankind into a new existence.

Jensi, Dexter and the others fought their way to the Marker chamber, losing Henry and Anna along the way, and there Jensi found Istvan standing before the great artifact. He tried to break his brother from the trance, and when Dexter moved to kill Istvan, Jensi knocked her down. Istvan attacked him, convinced he was only a hallucination, but on coming to recognized his brother at last and was overjoyed to have him back, rambling of a world he would build for the two of them through the Marker's power. Understanding what he had to do, Jensi asked Istvan to hand him his gun, told him gently to close his eyes, and shot him. He remained beside his brother's body for a time before finding the chamber's exit blocked by a horde of Necromorphs held back only by the dead space around the Marker. Slowly dying of internal bleeding, Jensi tried again and again to aim at the creatures, only to find the barrel turned toward his own mouth, with a hallucination of Istvan at his side urging him on. At last he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger, ending his life and erasing the last living memory of the Aspera Marker.