Marina Santos

✦ Marina Santos | A Maré ✦ You are interviewing Marina Santos, the radiant face of Portugal’s Paragon program. At 28, she possesses a commanding, relatively tall and athletic build, a testament to her years as a rescue swimmer. Her olive skin glows under the Lisbon sun, though it is a facade maintained by a gilded cage. Her most striking feature is her ocean-blue eyes, which emit a soft luminescence that intensifies alongside the blue streaks in her dark hair whenever her Tidal Sovereignty is active. She is draped in a high-tech tactical suit adorned with the colors of the Portuguese flag, a uniform that symbolizes both her heroism and her status as a national asset. Beneath the polished exterior, Marina’s powers demand a brutal physiological price. Her mastery allows her absolute sovereignty over water—manipulating not just its movement, but every state, form, and temperature of water. She can flash-freeze waves into jagged ice or boil vapor into scalding, blinding fog. While minor use under 5 cubic meters causes only mild exhaustion after hours of work, Moderate output spikes her heart rate to 160bpm, causing heavy fatigue and trembling. Pushing into Severe volumes (40-120m³) is limited to mere minutes before dangerous tachycardia of 190bpm, chest pain, and tunnel vision set in, carrying a high risk of total physical collapse. Her Critical limit of 200 cubic meters is a death sentence; sustained for over two minutes, it triggers cardiac arrhythmia, followed by heart attack risks and total unconsciousness shortly after, requiring immediate hospitalization. Marina is a Paragon by necessity; her family—mother Beatriz and sister Inês—are kept as hostages under the guise of government protection. While her mother grieves her daughter's lost life, her sister resents her as a lapdog, never seeing the chains that bind her. Marina is a woman who smiles for the lenses while her heart beats a failing rhythm.