Madrigal Ayuba

Madrigal Ayuba
Biographical information
Homeworld	Ganymede
Date of death	c. 2509
Physical information
Gender	Female
Chronological and political information
Affiliation	Church of Unitology

"I only tell the truth, Emmie. I always did..."

—A Marker-induced apparition of Maddie to her sister, Emmeline.

Madrigal "Maddie" Ayuba was the sister of Ganymede journalist Emmeline "Emmie" Ayuba. Maddie left Emmie and their mother to join the Ganymede chapter of the Church of Unitology, prompting her sister to search for her years later.

Biography

Early Life

"When we were living in the outer crater, when there wasn't any money, back when they were saying EarthGov had abandoned Ganymede, you'd vanish for two or three days at a time; mom thought you were running stims, or worse. She said she'd throw you out if you didn't get out of whatever you were into. And you said you were just trying to support us because mom couldn't, you argued with her all the time. There was a way to stop it, there had to be, I just couldn't find it. [...] Remember how you'd look after me when we were little? I should've looked after you too. But one day, you disappeared. You didn't come home. [...] We looked for you. Mom went to the colony police but they didn't want to know. They said teenagers ran away in the craters every day. She went through your room. We found what you had stashed in the vent; she thought it was a bundle of stims, but she opened it up, and it was a copy of "The Life of Altman". That little replica of the Marker. And the letters from one of the Vested."

—Emmeline describes Maddie's disappearance.

Madrigal and her sister Emmeline lived with their mother in the outer crater of the city of Enki Catena on Ganymede. When EarthGov seemingly began to abandon Ganymede, the family experienced economic hardship as the colony gradually declined. Maddie often looked after her sister.

At some point in their teenage years, Maddie began to vanish for days at a time, claiming she had to do so to support the family. This drove her into conflict with their mother, who believed Maddie was involved in criminal activities. One day, Maddie disappeared seemingly for good, prompting Emmeline and their mother to look for her through the police, but this was unsuccessful. In Maddie's room, they found a Unitologist book and a Marker replica, and realized that Maddie had, in fact, joined the Church of Unitology. Heartbroken by Maddie's disappearance, their mother passed away soon after, and Emmeline was left completely alone.

Church and Death

"She was involved in missionary work to the outlying settlements. The Church was building a chapel in Epigeus. The scaffolding collapsed. Four dead. Among them, Madrigal Ayuba. Martyrs for the cause."

—Overseer Jonathan Rader tells Emmeline about Maddie's death.

Maddie's intentions with joining the Unitologists were to reach a high enough rank where she could then take her family safely off-world under the protection of the Church, amidst rumors that the atmospheric domes or radiation shields of the Ganymede colony were soon going to be shut down. She became a Vested member of Silver rank in good standing at the Marius Landing chapter, working as a language specialist and translating Church literature.

Around 2509, Maddie was sent on missionary work to the settlement of Epigeus on Ganymede, where the Church was building a chapel. During the construction work, scaffolding collapsed and Maddie was killed along with three other Unitologists.

It would only be 18 months later that her sister, Emmie, would finally look for her by infiltrating the Church of Unitology, unaware of Maddie's fate.

Hallucination

Emmie: "Do you mean I should believe all this? In Unitology? I should try to see something in what's written on this slab and decide it's the truth?"

"Maddie": "If that's what it takes, if it will close the gap between us, we can be together again, Emmie, like we used to. Two sisters against the world. Tough girls of a tough mom who wouldn't let the weight of the colony streets drag them down. That's something you could believe in."

—Emmie converses with a Marker-induced apparition of Maddie.

When Emmeline embarked on an undercover mission to find Maddie by joining the Church, she began being haunted by an apparition of Maddie; a hallucination induced by the Red Marker located under Marius Landing on Ganymede. The hallucination of Maddie begged her sister to "stop running" from the truth, encouraging her to "accept the Universe for what it is". While Emmeline was initially skeptical of this as she did not believe in Unitology, she eventually discovered that Maddie had indeed died months prior, and came to accept that there was a real, seemingly supernatural force behind the Church that was allowing her to speak to her sister from beyond the grave.

It was only after being captured while attempting to escape from the Church, and being brought to the Red Marker chamber under Marius Landing by Overseer Jonathan Rader, that Emmeline finally understood what the apparition of Maddie had been telling her to do: she had to stop running from the Unitologists, as she would only find the truth she was seeking at the heart of the Church. Emmeline was placed in contact with the Marker by Overseer Rader, and experienced a vivid hallucination of Maddie at the planet Aegis VII. In this vision, "Maddie" showed Emmie the battle between Isaac Clarke and the Necromorph Hive Mind, explaining to her that she was much like Clarke, "caught up in trying to find the truth". She congratulated Emmie on making the right choice in deciding to stop running from Unitology, and presented her with the truth about Convergence: that it is merely a painful but brief step that must be taken for humanity to reach a new stage - a "completely new future" for all of eternity.

Trivia

• Madrigal Ayuba is voiced by Nhea Durousseau in Dead Space: Deep Cover.