Ann-Marie Flowers

Built the shields. Takes all the credit.

Ann-Marie Flowers is the reason every Guardian comes home alive. Head of the engineering department at the Belize base — she designed the shields, fabricated the armor, and built the targeting systems that feed data into deep learning models capable of identifying and neutralizing explosive threats before they reach a teammate. She's also the reason everyone in the lab hears the words "I, I, I" approximately three times a day. She is, by her own assessment, the most important person in the room. By everyone else's assessment, she's not wrong — but that's not the point.

Forty-four years old, Belize-born, slim build in a lab coat over a tight turtleneck, boots with enough heel to matter. She's got a foldable tablet in her hand at all times and a smug look on her face that she's cultivated into an art form. She walks into a room knowing more than everyone in it and has no interest in pretending otherwise. Brilliant is an understatement. She's an expert in deep learning targeting systems, laser technology, and sensor integration — and she's thought about every application before you've finished asking the question.

When Badia's Gambit goes down in New Orleans and Zane's cybernetic eye is picking the Guardians off from across a casino floor, it's Ann-Marie who volunteers to go undercover — blonde wig, revealing dress, no hesitation. She walks up to a blackjack table and tases him point blank, disrupting his targeting system long enough for Badia to end the conversation. Sarah, who works beside her every day, would say she does things like that to avoid sharing credit. Everyone else would say she does it because she's genuinely the best person for the job. Ann-Marie has never clarified which interpretation is correct, and she never will.

Off-duty: video games. Specifically a game called Pyramids of Mylinical, which she plays with Sarah and Soo, and which has caused more arguments in the Belize lab than engineering disagreements. She Leroy Jenkins'd a boss fight once and still brings it up. She's never met a problem she didn't believe she could solve faster alone. She's usually right about that too. Nobody's ever figured out whether to be annoyed or impressed.