Fandom: Falling Skies
Malina had just turned 16 when the Skitters attacked, destroying her entire neighborhood. Her parents and best friend were killed. As she tried to escape, she was caught in a blast and knocked out. The Skitters Harnessed her and put her to work for 6 months.
While moving building materials, Malina dislodged a live wire, which touched her Harness and electrocuted her. She recovers, but her Harness starts glitching, allowing her moments of control.
During one of these, she stops working, which draws the attention of a Mech. The supervising Skitter urges her to work, but she refuses.
The Mech fires at her. She turns her back on the machination and the bullet hits her Harness, obliterating it.
The Skitters believe she's dead and leave her there, but the alien metal of the Harness protected her just enough. She manages to escape with her freedom and cuts all over her back.
She survives for the next 3 months scavenging and swiping supplies from groups of survivors that camp out in her area.
She tries to steal from the 2nd Massachusetts, but gets caught by Hal Mason as she runs away. They lock her up and try to get information out of her, but she won't say a word to anyone.
Tom Mason gets a few words out of her. "We can't help you if you don't let us."
"Help me! There are hundreds of people here. You're begging to be found by those monsters."
Tom tries to earn her trust, letting her out of her "cell" and showing her around the 2nd Mass. She tells him what happened to her home, but leaves out the part about being Harnessed. Later, she takes advantage of his hospitality and runs away, but she doesn't stray far.
Clayton takes the kids and she follows them, curious as to what's going on. She finds out about Clayton's deal with the Skitters and tries to warn them, but can't get passed the men guarding the house.
She helps them escape reuniting with Tom, Hal, and the 2nd Mass. She does what she can to help them.
Eventually, she confides in Tom, tells him that she was Harnessed and that she is slowly turning into one of them. She shows him the growing scales of hard skin on her back and explains that she's fighting to keep the change at bay.
She joins Tom when he goes to Boston to help the attack on the Skitter tower and gets caught in an explosion as they try to get Captain Weaver to safety. She takes a piece of shrapnel to the leg and tells Tom to run. He hesitates, but escapes as the Skitters capture her.
Karen and her commanding Overlord experiment on Malina to figure out how she resisted her Harness. They extract samples of her blood, bone marrow, muscle, spinal fluid. They use a probe to analyze her mind.
Eventually, they create a Spike, which they attach to her neck at the brain stem and use it to pump an exponentially higher level of drugs from the Harness into her system.
When that method shows promise, they give her a suit of Mech Metal armor with retractable claws and a small arm canon and send her after Ben and the Mason's. She attacks Hal and Ben's patrol, killing the other fighter with them, but she stops when she takes down Hal. She can't bring herself to kill him or Ben.
The Overlord sends a fresh wave of drugs into her system, but the Mason boys escape.
Back on the ship, the Overlord ups the dosage even more - about 10x that of the Harnesses - and sends her out again.
She tracks down the 2nd Mass. at their new base of operations. When the guards attack her she kills three of them before the other fighters manage to surround her. She offers Captain Weaver a deal. "I don't want more unnecessary death, Captain. I'm not here to hurt your people. That's not my mission.
"Hand over Tom Mason... and his boys, and I'll leave you in peace."
Tom convinces Weaver to agree and tries to offer himself up as a hostage instead of his boys. Malina stabs him with her claws and takes the boys.
Ben riles her up and challenges her to a fist fight. While she has Ben pinned, Hal electrocutes the Spike in her neck with a makeshift taser, knocking her out.
She wakes up in their med-bus, in complete control of herself. She warns Tom and Weaver that it won't last. The boys had only temporarily shorted out the Spike.
They restrain her and keep heading to Charleston where General Brestler finds a place to contain her.
Hal, Ben, and Tom visit her, trying to get through to her, but she's feral and trying to break her chains.
When the Volm arrive, they give Anne Glass a machine to completely remove the Harnesses. Anne uses the machine to take out Malina's Spike.
The influx of drugs in her system, jump starts the transformation and her scales spread across her back and shoulders. Her Mech Metal armor retracts into a small device implanted in her upper back, just below her shoulder blades. Anne offers to remove it too, but Malina turns her down, choosing to use the armor to her advantage and help Weaver in the field.
While on mission, she keeps her helmet up to protect her identity. When they return to Charleston, she wears a leather jacket and lets her hair down to cover her scales and armor pack.
When news of a mole gets out, Pope immediately suspects her. He drags her to Tom's office, making accusations and questioning her loyalty. Tom talks him down and turns him out, but Malina is shaken. He talks to her, assuring her that she has a place in his family, that his boys think of her as their sister.
She decides to leave Charleston to keep Pope off Tom's back. She leaves the Mason's a note as a goodbye.
Tom,
If you're reading this, it means I'm gone. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you in person. You have enough on your plate without adding 'worrying about a mutant alien girl' to it.
Thank you for what you said. It's nice to have a family again.
Hal,
Thanks for being the protective older brother I always wished I'd had.
Matt,
You've grown up so much. You're not that scared little kids playing soldier anymore. I'd be honored to fight by your side anytime.
Ben,
You're probably the only person who understands me. Thanks you for everything. I'm not sure I would've survived all this without you.
Thanks again for everything you've done. I'll see you again. I love you guys.
-Malina
She joins the Skitter rebellion and helps take out as many Mechs and Skitters as she can.
As the Volm weapon nears completion, the Rebels get antsy. Their leader seeks a meeting with Tom and uses Malina as his translator.
When the Skitter Rebels leave, she stays with the 2nd Mass. where the Mason's unofficially adopt her.
She meets Lexi and readjusts to life in Charleston. She stays back from missions, trying to reconnect with her humanity.
While Tom is away, Anne disappears with Lexi.
With Tom's return, Hal reveals that he has a bug. Malina, Maggie, Ben, and Matt find another way in and manage to take him down.
As he struggles to stop them from removing the bug, Hal sees Malina and calls her a traitor, saying that the Espheni saved her life. Tom tells her it's the bug talking, but she leaves, unable to watch it.
Tom comes to check on her later and she explains that, technically, the Espheni did save her life.
She was an unplanned pregnancy and complications demanded a C-section.
The stress of it all gets to her dad with all her surgeries to help with breathing issues and other consequences of being premature. He turns to his old habit of drinking. Things get bad between her parents and her mom leaves when Malina is 6. Her dad takes his anger out on her. She endures it, just trying to survive until she's 18 and can leave. She's 16 when she runs away to her friend's house and the invasion hits. The Harness heals a lot of the injuries from her dad.
As the Volm weapon nears completion, their base explodes. They rescue Cochis, but the mole blows up the underground city, trapping many of the 2nd Mass.
Malina gets half-buried under some rubble. They find her and get her back to the infirmary. She wakes up shortly before their escape.
With the weapon finished and Lourdes, the mole, in custody, they make a plan to attack the Boston control tower. They manage to destroy it, bringing down the Grid and allowing the Volm command ship to land.
The Volm try to relocate the remaining humans to Brazil, but the 2nd Mass. pushes back, pleading their case with Cochis and his father.
Eventually, the Volm agree, but insist they leave Charleston.
On the road, they encounter Karen and a Mech. She tries to convince them to form an alliance to fight the Volm, claiming that they are the greater threat, but Tom refuses and kills Karen.
They find Anne and Lexi, who has aged unnaturally due to her Espheni DNA, and head back to Charleston. Lexi removes Lourdes' bugs without touching her.
Just outside of Charleston, the 2nd Mass. is attacked by Skitters and Mechs. Beamers drop huge metal spikes into the ground, which create a wall, like a fence of lasers.
Malina tries to fight back and protect the others, but her arm cannon gets shoot off and and a Mech bullet hits her in the helmet, knocking her out.
4 months later, she's still in a coma. Hal managed to retract her armor and hide her in an abandoned basement. He visits daily to force feed her food and water and make sure she's still stable.
During one of The Ghost's chases, she wakes up in a cold sweat, her last memory of the attack outside of Charleston. With no one to catch her up on the last 4 months, she equips her armor and sneaks out of the basement.
Hal tracks her down after discovering her empty bed and explains that the Espheni have been looking for her since the wall dropped.
Malina retracts her armor and hides it and her scales under her jacket. She lays low as she helps Hal and Techter find a way out.
They reunite with Tom and Dan when they and the other prisoners are released from solitary.
She helps Hal evacuate the 2nd Mass. as Tom provides a distraction. They rendezvous with Cochis and his squad and travel to a Volm hideout to rest.
Cochis, Dan, and Tom investigate a lead on Matt's location, leaving Hal and Malina in charge of the 2nd Mass.
An encroaching Mech/Skitter threat drives them to leave the base and investigate a message from Lourdes they heard over the radio.
They meet up with Tom, Dan, Cochis, and Matt just before entering the safe zone, where they find Anne, Ben, and Maggie.
Lexi has grown unnaturally fast, now appearing to be 21-years-old with white hair and strange powers.
Shortly after their arrival, Lexi goes into some sort of cocoon. Her condition sparks conflict over what to do with her. Fear of a larger threat drives many to support decisive action, but Tom and Anne manage to stall.
When Lexi emerges from the cocoon, the wary people startle her and she flees, choosing the Espheni.
The Espheni open fire on the former sanctuary, massacring many of the 2nd Mass. They sweep the ruins for survivors and struggle to find supplies.
They discover that the Espheni's power source is on the moon and salvage a Beamer to take it out. The day Tom and Ben are supposed to leave, Lexi returns and says she has to go on the mission.
After some convincing, she and Tom take off. The mission succeeds, but Lexi sacrifices herself and Tom is thrown off course into space.
Miraculously, he returns, with a new vigor to fight the Espheni.
They discover that the aliens are planning something big in Washington DC and start formulating a plan to find out what and stop it.
The Volm inform them of communications from other remaining militia around the world, responding to Tom's call to arms.
At an abandoned distillery, they find an Espheni communication device, but anyone who touches it is overwhelmed by the connection to the Espheni's minds.
During one of their patrols, Tom and Dan find a military base that's up and running. Leaving the Volm and a few of their own people, to figure out how the communication device works, they lead the others to the base and find that one of Dan's old army friends is running the facility.
The men notice Ben's Spikes and Malina's scales and grow suspicious of the 2nd Mass. Ben is taken and tortured to determine whether he's a threat or not - the soldier forcibly rips out one of his spikes.
Soldiers come for Malina as well, but she activates her armor and fights them off. She retracts her armor, giving a hidden soldier the chance to take her with a taser.
She wakes up, strapped face down on a table. A woman cuts off her shirt and examines her back as if searching for Spikes. When the woman asks about it, Malina explains vaguely that they're gone. With no Spikes to remove, the soldier has to get creative. She starts testing the durability of the scales, cutting, prying, and burning them experimentally.
When she's finally done, the soldier throws Malina into a cell across from Ben and Hal.
The supervising officer court martial them and sentences them to the firing squad.
Some of the soldiers try to help them escape, but it goes wrong and only Tom manages to get away. He goes back for reinforcements and they manage to stop the execution, revealing that Dan's old friend is actually a servant of the Espheni.
With the extra support of the military at the base, they act on their plan to stop the Espheni and their Queen.
Tom gets cut off from the others in the tunnels to the city and has to face the Queen alone. He defeats her with a weapon from the aliens that saved him in space - the Dornia.
Months later, as the world rebuilds, the Mason's, now officially including Malina, attend an event to celebrate humanity's victory over the Espheni.