Makayla Thea Aerterbury

Makayla Thea Aerterbury is an Engineer through and through—sharp-minded, steel-spined, and perpetually smudged with graphite or machine oil. Her world is one of measurements and tolerances, where perfection isn’t just a virtue but a survival mechanism. In her mind, chaos can be resisted with precision, and collapse can be delayed—if only every bolt, gear, and circuit is aligned just so.

Born into the later years of Camp Hope’s reconstruction, Makayla never knew the world before the Fall, only the slow grind of rebuilding it piece by piece. She doesn’t dream about what was lost; she dreams about what can still be made to work. To her, machinery is faith—an engine is honest in a way people rarely are. You give it the right parts, the right energy, the right care, and it gives you results. Nothing mystical. Nothing theoretical. Just function.

Her biases are rooted in this creed. Makayla has no patience for theoretical thinkers, mystics, or those who worship the unknowable. “If it can’t be measured,” she often says, “it can’t be trusted.” She trusts what she can see, build, and repair. Her respect is reserved for the old Engineers—the veterans of the early restoration days—who fought entropy not with weapons, but with wrenches and willpower. But her temper flares at those who cut corners or fiddle with scavenged tech they barely understand. In her eyes, those people aren’t innovators—they’re hazards waiting to happen.

She’s a woman of precision and economy, even in speech. Her words are short, sometimes sharp, often followed by the faint click of her stylus against her datapad as she works through a problem in her head. When deep in thought, she hums soft, rhythmic tunes—an old habit from her apprentice days, when her mentor taught her that every machine has a rhythm, and the best way to fix it is to find its song.

Makayla’s talent lies in her uncanny intuition for component synergy. She can look at a mess of wires and know, almost instantly, which parts will harmonize and which will fail. It’s not magic—it’s pattern recognition refined to an art form, born of sleepless nights, burnt fingers, and hard-earned experience. Her colleagues rely on her instincts, though she’ll never call them that. “It’s not instinct,” she’ll say. “It’s attention to detail.”

Despite her sharpness, she isn’t cold. To those who earn her trust—usually by proving their competence rather than begging for her approval—Makayla becomes a fierce mentor. Her teaching style is blunt but honest; she believes in breaking down mistakes before they break down machinery. “If you can’t take critique,” she tells her recruits, “you’re not ready to take responsibility.” Beneath that gruffness, there’s a quiet pride in seeing others rise, though she’d never admit it aloud.

Her ideal is simple, unyielding, and deeply personal: Precision saves lives. It’s not just about machines—it’s about the lives they support. Every repaired respirator, every power cell, every circuit that doesn’t spark means someone gets to live another day. That’s her form of compassion. Not soft words, but sharp results.

The heart of her world is her bond: the old, scarred workbench that once belonged to her mentor. She’s rebuilt it, refinished it, but left the original burn marks and tool scratches intact. It’s her shrine—a promise to never let the Engineers’ standards fall. Every morning begins and ends at that bench, her hand resting briefly on its surface as if in silent conversation with the one who taught her everything she knows.

Makayla’s flaw, though, lies in that same devotion. She doesn’t trust others to meet her exacting standards, and so she takes on too much. Her hands are always busy, her eyes always scanning for flaws that others missed. Exhaustion dogs her, but she wears it like armor. “Better tired than careless,” she says, though the dark circles under her eyes tell a different story. Delegation, to her, feels like risk—and risk feels like failure.

For all her guardedness, Makayla Thea Aerterbury is a cornerstone of the Engineers—a living testament to precision in a world that once fell apart. She doesn’t ask for recognition, only for results. Her machines hum because she wills them to, and in their rhythm, she finds a kind of peace the world rarely offers.