Jace Zayden

Jace Zayden- Jaden Tanner (former name) (a.k.a. Jazz)

Jace was born out of wedlock in New York to a single-parent household and worked at the Red Hook docks in Brooklyn as teenager; He lived in a district redlined for Class 5 (manual workers) which he was immediately assigned to and never managed to finish his formal schooling as his mother, who was a factory worker, was maimed while at work and was unable to keep supporting the family as the breadwinner, so he stepped up early at the age of fourteen. He is cousin to Shamar Wesley (affectionately named ‘Streetwise’) who is five years younger than him and was adopted by his mother when Shamar’s own parents passed away in a workers’ bus crash. Despite his education being cut short for sake of supporting his family, Shamar ended up helping Jace keep up by teaching him what had been learnt at school when he came home from his shift.
His mother, Nichelle, had a love for singing and from her is where his love for music (and his gift for it, as he claims) came from, and her death when he was 17 due to a chronic illness which they had no coverage for and he couldn’t earn nearly enough to mitigate, hit him hard.
To make things worse, Shamar was taken away from him because he wasn’t legally considered an adult yet, and even if he could argue in court for guardianship, he had a home life considered to be financially unstable.
With no choice but to surrender Shamar to the adoption system, Jace promised him that they would be together again once he was considered stable enough to provide a good home. In the meantime however, he found himself becoming more and more involved with unions as it became increasingly clear to him that people in his work class were being locked into a generational cycle of poverty that had to be broken.
With his innate charisma and alluring voice, he made connections and friends and became a visible youth figurehead of the union movement demanding for minimum wage and compensation for workplace injuries like the one which disabled his mother.
His activities didn’t go unnoticed however, and during a peaceful protest which was violently broken up by police, he was arrested on charges of inciting a riot and persuaded to give up his colleagues in return for a lower sentence and being given custody of Shamar.
However, a cop with a crippling guilty conscience, Barrin Caidel (Barricade) stopped him from commiserating over the deal and revealed that the intention from higher up had always been to punish him and his colleagues as an example, and that he was slated to be sentenced to Empurata like his older friends—-the only reason the procedure for him had been delayed was because of the red tape concerning his relative youth, and it had been cleared the same evening the offer had been made to him.
Urging for Jace to run, Barrin offered him enough money to take him across the Atlantic via a migrant smuggling operation at the docks to the UK where extradition would be a tedious process even if they could track him down, and Jace, torn between the horror of what was going to be done to him and the guilt of leaving behind Shamar, made a call to his cousin to explain the situation. Shamar wasted no time in echoing Barrin’s advice, asserting that this wasn’t goodbye and that they were going to see each other again.
Landing on UK shores a week later, Jace took on the pseudonym of ‘Jaden Tanner’ to hide his tracks and blend in with the working population. He found employment at the docks near Wapping and spent the next few years keeping an eye over his shoulder for every shadow and every face that seemed to linger on him longer than usual.
As his fear of being caught by US agents faded however, he began to properly integrate himself into the dock-working community and began pursuing music as a side career, joining a group of buskers on the streets after hours to earn a little extra income.
His gift caught the attention of the owner of Maccadam’s New Tavern in London’s Newham borough who offered to give him a bigger platform to perform for a night, which he enthusiastically agreed too.
On the night of his debut however, the career musicians on call staged a walkout after discovering that a manual worker would be joining their ranks as a vocalist, and for a moment it seemed as though his dream to make a real career out of music was in danger of being killed before it even began, until several patrons who were witness to the argument between Maccadam’s owner and the musicians offered their services to help him put on a show. It was here that he was first introduced to Omar Parvez (Optimus, who offered to take the piano), Omar’s close friend Morgan Trayton (Megatron, who offered to work the violin), Ramiro Vasquez (Ravage, who volunteered for the guitar) and Lara Soelberg (who made a beeline for the drums).
With the help of these four strangers, he managed to put on a show that earned him a weekend gig at Maccadam’s.
He continued to see Omar and Morgan sporadically on those weekends and became casually acquainted with them, until Morgan stopped coming entirely and the next time he saw Omar, it was when the man has been demoted from Constable to lost, confused and dejected dock worker for speaking up against systemic corruption.
Determined to repay Omar’s goodwill, he took the man under his wing and taught him how to work on and with the ships that docked in the area and during that time, became close enough friends with him that they ended up housemates in a shared apartment, and he ended up telling Omar his real name and the truth about his past.
When Omar was called on by Senator Sharifuddin Waseem (Shockwave) to investigate Senate corruption, he offered his services as well to connect to people on the ground and run infiltration exercises, having caught the glimpse of true revolution on the horizon and no longer willing to keep his head low and stay in hiding as the momentum grew stronger.
Once upon a time he’d been a teenager who fled a continent out of fear of how the government planned to break his body and spirit for lighting the the smallest of sparks on the bonfire of reform.
This time, the spark was a torch, and he wasn’t going to stand down until the old system was baptized in its flames.

by Oniwanbashu

Social

Hobbies & Pets

Owns a pet cat, Esmeralda, which he rescued on a mission and 'parents' with Preston Wan. 
Off-duty, he enjoys cooking, singing, late night Poker games and community volunteering.

Honorary & Occupational Titles

Chief of Intelligence

Age

32 (Start of war)

Pronouns

He/Him

Gender

Male

Eyes

Red

Hair

Dark afro, lightly shaved at the sides and worn in locs

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Dark

Height

6'0