- For other uses, see Janssen.
- "The company hired me to continue my research on energy production from n-dimensional interactions. It was purely theoretical -- right up until it wasn't."
- — Ava Jansen, to Soap and Ravenov.
Ava Jansen is a character featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Zombies. She is a physicist who specializes in Aetherium-based studies. Formerly working for Victor Zakhaev, she now works alongside Operation Deadbolt to stop Terminus Outcomes' plans and put a stop to the outbreak in Zaravan, Urzikstan.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
- "I carried you, I gave birth to you, but your biological mother - was Sam - Samantha Maxis."
- — Elizabeth Grey in a recording addressed to Ava, 1996.
Ava was conceived as the biological daughter of Samantha Maxis and Sergei Ravenov, using their DNA samples collected by Requiem, with Elizabeth Grey acting as the surrogate mother, who carried and gave birth to her in 1993. Ava was cared for by Grey and presumably other Requiem leads for three years; by then Grey and the others were slowly dying due to long-term Aetherium exposure. It was decided that Ava would be handed off to a couple of "ex-National Intelligence" agents, the Jansens, while Ravenov would be keeping watch over her from afar.[2]
Ava would go on living her life, unaware of her real parents' identities until 2006, when she had a blood test during Biology class and found out that her DNA did not match that of the Jansen's. She went home, trying to find her birth certificate, only to stumble upon CD-ROMs marked with Grey's name, as well as a photo of Grey which triggered a faint memory in Ava's mind. After learning from her adoptive parents that Grey left her in their care and never came back, Ava was distraught with anger and resentment, and tried to avoid learning more about Grey by focusing on studying physics. She soon became fascinated with Grey's work on Aetherium, and became less resentful of her. Instead, she was driven to exceed her mother in her own field.
A Thought Experiment[]
- "Theories are based on the best data available, and as we peel back the layers, as our experiments and observations get more sophisticated, the thinking either survives, or gets replaced by a model that accounts for the new data. This is how it ever[sic] was. I mean, in 1632, a man was sentenced to house arrest because he dared to suggest that the Earth went around the Sun, and not vice-versa."
- — Jansen, during an interview with C. Cassidy[3].
Jansen primarily worked as a theoretical physicist. At some point, she began speaking about Aetherium publicly as a "thought experiment", as well as speaking about the possibility of alternate dimensions. She was heavily criticized by the scientific community after publishing her talk "Aetherium - A Thought Experiment" online, which theorized that Aetherium could be provoked into radioactive decay as to release enough gigaelectrovolts to "pop the soap bubble, to pierce the veil between adjacent dimensions" and provide the world with a clean sustainable energy source. Some dismissed her as a "quack" and a charlatan.[4]
Sometime after her talk was published online, she was interviewed by C. Cassidy regarding her PhD paper "Alternate Dimensions: Worlds within worlds", where she was asked to respond to her critics. She was quick to accuse the interviewer of being one of her said critics by forgetting to refer to her as "Dr.". She would then elaborate on her beliefs, stating that historically those in power have pushed back against scientific theories contrary to popular belief, using the Catholic Church's pushback against Galileo Galilei's championing of Copernican heliocentrism as an example.
News of her work eventually caught the ear of the American government, with the FBI raiding her laboratory, confiscating her research and placing her under arrest. She was held in detention for 12 days before being released. When asked by the media for an interview regarding the arrest, Jansen and her faculty staff failed to respond.
Working with Zakhaev[]
With her scientific career in shambles, Jansen was eventually recruited by Ultranationalist and wanted terrorist Victor Zakhaev to continue her work on Aetherium energy research. Ignorant of his true nature, Jansen assumed he was the CEO of the company she was working for, noting to herself he didn't fit the profile of a CEO. She surmised that Zakhaev's motives went beyond simple energy research.
She would be proven correct after Zakhaev and Terminus Outcomes raided a cache of weapons-grade Aetherium, and used a vial to create a Dark Aether outbreak in Zaravan, Urzikstan. It was then she began working against Zakhaev, using a tablet within the Urzikstan Exclusion Zone to contact Operation Deadbolt.
Deadbolt Defection[]
- "Please. I have to fix this. I may be the only person who can!"
- — Jansen to Selma Greene.
After her tablet was found by Deadbolt operatives and decrypted by Lucas "Luke" Dobbs, Deadbolt would deploy boots on the ground to her co-ordinates. By the time Deadbolt operatives reached her, she was already in the process of deleting her work from Terminus' servers. Accomplishing this, she and Deadbolt then fought Terminus mercenaries to a nearby helipad where they were exfiltrated by Amy Fang.
Back at the base, Jansen was interrogated by SSO Selma Greene, Johnny "Soap" MacTavish and Ravenov about her work with Zakhaev. She told them that she had no idea that he was a terrorist when she started her work for him, and that she wanted to help Deadbolt stop his plans. Informing her interrogators that Zakhaev kept his weapons-grade Aetherium on his person at all times, she pleaded to Deadbolt to let her fix the problem she unintentionally helped start.
Working with Deadbolt[]
With Deadbolt's assistance, Jansen was able to craft a prototype Aetherium Neutralizer. After a firefight against Terminus Outcomes and disabling a pair of SAM Turrets, Deadbolt escorted an ACV containing the Neutralizer across the Exclusion Zone to a particularly Aetherium rich area, where they gave it a test-fire. Ultimately, it was successful in destabilizing the raw, unprocessed Aetherium crystals. Unfortunately, Jansen later revealed in a post-mission briefing with Greene, Soap and Ravenov that her research concludes that the Neutralizer would only be effective against unprocesssed Aetherium, as opposed to the weapons-grade Aetherium present in Zakhaev's vial. A frustrated Greene would accuse her of failure. Jansen shot back, saying that wasn't true and she could amplify the Neutralizer's output to affect the vial using research conducted by Oskar Strauss. After some debating, Greene relented and ordered Deadbolt to secure Strauss' data. As the Aether Storm in Zaravan expanded, Jansen began to clutch her head in pain as she swallowed some pills. A concerned Ravenov tried to comfort her and ask what was wrong, to which Jansen simply replied that it was "just a migraine" that would soon pass.
Deadbolt would soon after raid "Legacy" Baranov's fortress to obtain Strauss' data. With the Neutralizer complete and ready for use against Zakhaev, Deadbolt deployed to Zakhaev's Aetherium refining plant and prepared to activate the Neutralizer, but were attacked by Terminus forces and later by Orcus, an Aether Worm. After a lengthy battle, Jansen rushed to the Neutralizer past the Worm and activated the Neutralizer, killing it and destabilizing Zakhaev's vial. Without warning, a Dark Aether Vortex appeared, sucking up everything in its wake. The vortex lifted Jansen into the air, as an entity appeared before Jansen demanding her to "let us in". She screamed in horror, fainting as the vortex closed and she floated back to the ground. Ravenov quickly rushed to help her as she opened her eyes, as they briefly glew a dark purple. The experience seemingly left Jansen with no memory of what had just occurred, only remembering vaguely the Entity that had called to her.
Hallucination[]
While recovering at Deadbolt headquarters, Jansen began to look into Project Janus, a classified research from the 90s that involved various individuals, including Ravenov, the leads of Requiem, and Maxis. While doing this, Jansen suffered another bout of migraine while hearing the voice of the Entity. She suddenly found the lights in the facility had gone out.
Stepping out of her room to investigate, Jansen found several corpses laying about, and noises of gunfire. She then found herself surrounded by various zombies, with the zombified Requiem leads all pointing at her as the entity whispered to her. Jansen fought back against the zombie horde with a machete, but as Ravenov called out to her, she turned back and found that she had slashed his throat. Greene quickly ordered her men to arrest Jansen.
This turned out to be another hallucination as Jansen remained in her room, briefly possessed by the Entity as she whispered how they "will not be alone". Jansen snapped out of the hallucination as Ravenov called her, informing her that the strike team had returned from a brief encounter with the entity in the Dark Aether dimension.
Confronting Ravenov[]
Following the appearance of the first rift, Jansen contacted the strike team and informed them of a second anomaly in Zaravan. Ravenov opted to join the team, as he was also on site at the time. Upon noticing Fletcher and a squad of Terminus soldiers entering the anomaly, Ravenov quickly followed them, and was later joined by the strike team in the Dark Aether.
Afterwards, Ravenov and the strike team managed to return safely. As Ravenov was tending to his wounds, Jansen confronted him on his affiliation with Requiem, demanding him to reveal the truth about the fate of its leads. As she tended to his wounds, Ravenov briefly mentioned that Requiem attempted, and failed, to rescue Maxis from the Dark Aether following her sacrifice in 1985. When Jansen pressed him on the purpose of Requiem's Aetherium research, Ravenov stopped her and promised to tell her more about the old days after resolving the current outbreak. Jansen stormed out of the room, declaring that she would find answers of her own. Ravenov remarked to himself that Jansen's parents were proud of her.
Entering the Dark Aether[]
Slowly, the Entity began to take over Jansen's mind further, causing her to become distracted during Deadbolt's briefing sessions. She was eventually lured by the Entity into entering a Dark Aether rift in Zaravan. Ravenov and the strike team pursued Jansen into the rift, and witnessed as the Entity possessed her completely, claiming that they have been "restored". Regardless, they were able to drive out the Entity and rescue Jansen. Later, Ravenov reprimanded Jansen for blindly pursuing Grey's research, but decided to finally tell her the truth, by showing her a recording of Grey from 1996. In the recording, Grey detailed the nature of Jansen's birth, and wished that some part of her would remember her after she is gone. Angered at the revelation, Jansen lashed out at Ravenov, claiming that he doesn't care about her as his own child, while showing disgust toward Requiem for creating her. She then stormed out once more, despite Ravenov calling out for her.
Confronting the Entity[]
Eventually, Jansen decided to return to the Dark Aether to destroy the Entity and stop the incursion completely. She enlisted Ravenov and the strike team's help, and entered a new rift appearing in Opal Palace, Zaravan. Here, the strike team assisted Jansen in performing rituals involving several items from Jansen's past, helping her to recover her memories while also sever her connection with the Entity. Despite its pleas, Jansen and the strike team combine their effort to destroy the Entity, then leave and return to Deadbolt headquarters.
Abduction[]
Three months after defeating the Entity, Jansen tried to take a vacation, but she couldn't stop focusing on Project Janus. She decided to learn more about them, by traveling to Liberty Falls, a small town in West Virginia where an outbreak happened in 1991. Having rented a hotel room, Jansen started to sort through a Janus dossier that she came into possession of. As she was chatting on phone with Ravenov, a shadowy figure appeared on a mirror in her room, then reached their hand out and passed through the mirror, while a chorus of disembodied voices starts chanting "Ava", calling for Jansen. Jansen, noticing the hand, reaches out to it, believing the voice to be Samantha, but the hand quickly pulls her through the mirror, leaving a distressed Ravenov on the other side of the phone call.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The medicine Jansen is seen taking for her migraine is Clozapine, an antipsychotic primarily used to treat people with schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder.
- In one of the audio logs in Operation Deadbolt, Jansen pronounces her last name using the "Y" phonetic sound, rather than the "J" sound.
- Jansen has a giraffe toy, which she names "Kameelperd" (Afrikaans for "giraffe").
References[]
- ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/CzetCwJJJOh/
- ↑ Operation Deadbolt Act I "Extraction" mission: "Don't look so surprised. My parents were ex-National intelligence. Taught me to protect myself." - Ava Jansen
- ↑ Operation Deadbolt, Act I Cutscene
- ↑ Operation Deadbolt, Act I Cutscene - "Jansen is a quack. A charlatan. None of her 'lecture' was based on peer reviewed studies. It was pure conjecture, polished until it shone with just a glimmer of truth, and then tossed into the forum of public debate."
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