Terry Akers

Terry Akers
Born	2037
Died	January 16, 2104; Aged 66; Delta, PATHOS-II
Status	Reanimated
Actor	Brian Protheroe;

“My reflection in the black blood of our Warden whispers. I need to save them from this hell. I need to let them sleep. Lock them in their lucid dreams I've seen.”

― Terry Akers

Terry Akers was the Chief Factor at Site Delta on PATHOS-II. In SOMA, by the time Simon Jarrett first encounters him in the lower levels of Theta, Akers is heavily mutated, uncommunicative, and hostile, forcing Simon to evade him.

Description

In SOMA, Akers is highly disfigured and eyeless. He is unusually humanoid for a WAU creation: he has arms, hand-like appendages, and a recognizable face with exposed eye sockets, though other features such as the nose and mouth have long since shrunken away.

Much of his body is encrusted in bulbous, cancerous growths (similar to a polycystic kidney); where his skin is visible at all, it is discolored and leathery. Growths resembling a third arm and third foot protrude from his abdomen, and a single large gash cleaves through the front of his head and torso, making Akers appear vertically bisected (possibly it is a bisection by Nadine Masters, prior to his revival). His limbs are visibly deformed, and the scans found in the medical room reveal a twisted, misshapen skeletal structure.

Despite his emaciated appearance, Akers is monstrously athletic and powerful, able to smash through heavy doors and to easily outrun and overpower Simon.

Behavior

Akers is blind but has excellent hearing, much like the Proxies found elsewhere in Theta. He moves to investigate disturbances throughout the labs; Simon Jarrett can stay crouched in order to avoid alerting him, or throw objects to create distractions. If Simon runs, it will cause Akers to appear near him and start a chase. While Akers cannot see the light from Simon's flashlight, he can hear the sound of it turning on or off. He will also detect Simon automatically, no matter the circumstances, if he gets too close.

Unlike most other enemies, Akers has a special hiding state that activates whenever he's out of Simon's sight. In this hiding state, Akers will quietly stalk Simon throughout the Theta labs, only occasionally making sounds to hint of his presence, such as distant footsteps and groans. Akers cannot attack in his hiding state, and will only exit his hiding state if any of the following conditions are met:

Simon makes a sound that Akers can hear. This includes actions such as running, jumping, using a WAU node, or breaking the glass near Brandon Wan's body. When repairing the elevator, moving each clamp will also be loud enough to alert Akers. Walking, crouching, and toggling the flashlight are quiet enough to not alert Akers while he's hiding. Throwing objects won't alert Akers until Simon has smashed the glass at least once, at which point Akers will grow wary and start hiding closer to Simon to try to catch him throwing objects around.
Too much time has passed. This depends on which stage Simon is at while recovering and repairing the connector chip. If he has just entered the area, then it takes 5 minutes for Akers to reappear. If Simon has taken the chip from Brandon Wan, then it takes 82 seconds. If he's put the new cipher on the chip, then Akers reappears in only 54 seconds.
Simon has entered the elevator. Akers will appear regardless of what else Simon is doing, and will immediately give chase in a last ditch attempt to stop him.

Akers gurgles and gags hoarsely as he trudges through the halls of Theta, and his footfalls are heavy and loud; these sounds can forewarn of the creature's presence. When wandering he moves slowly, arms close to his torso, but once he detects Simon he gives chase, shrieking and howling and flailing his arms. In this state Akers runs at least as fast as Simon can, and trying to outrun him is futile without a generous head start. If he catches Simon he knocks him unconscious and injures (or kills) him, then resumes wandering.

John Strohmeier's office is soundproofed, which makes it much more difficult for Akers to detect Simon when he's inside it. In the office is a computer linked up to the door systems, capable of locking off individual rooms. Akers opens closed doors by activating the adjacent panel, much like how Simon or a human would, which makes the door locks very effective for keeping him out of certain rooms, and can even be used to trap Akers by locking the doors around the room he's in. However, this won't contain him long, as he can escape once he enters his next hiding state.

After Theta's power is shut down, Akers becomes significantly more aggressive and will search for Simon much more often. Despite the lights going out, the door locks still function, so trapping Akers is still possible.

Biography

Not much is known about Akers' past other than he is an older man, whose accent indicates that he would be from what is today known as the Southern United States. He is one of the oldest people at Delta, if not the entirety of PATHOS-II, being 66. While Akers is never seen in his human form, both light and dark skin can be seen on his mutated form, which give an idea as to what his skin tone could've been.

He seemed to have a stable working relationship with the Delta crew, with them usually respecting him due to his age and position. He seems to have played a lot of chess while off of work, one of the games provided on the PATHOS-II computer network, with Javid Goya saying he's never going to play chess with Akers ever again due to how skilled he is at it. He continued playing chess when the Delta crew were relocated to Theta, likely what he did most of the time during his isolation at Delta, with one of the terminals revealing he had won 1,000 games against the computer opponent before leaving for Theta.

Akers also seems to have been an avid photographer, as evidenced by the pictures of various corals and other marine life plastered on the walls of his office at Delta.

Isolated at Delta

On August 14, 2103, fearing the growing threat of the WAU and the site's general state of deterioration, the rest of the site's crew relocated to Theta. After being told by Dorian Cronstedt that he couldn't keep his position as Chief Factor, Akers willingly stayed behind.

Sometime during the period of isolation that followed he began ingesting large amounts of structure gel, undergoing a brief period of reconstruction and plummeting into insanity. In one intense psychotic episode, Akers heard a voice telling him that he did not need his eyes to see; this voice, coupled with gel-induced light sensitivity, convinced him to remove his own eyes.

Relocating to Theta

On January 15, 2104, Akers called Theta claiming that he wanted to relocate as his crew did months prior. Theta dispatch technician Peter Strasky, pleasantly surprised at this request, informed Akers of a team of divers (Maggie Komorebi and Shawn Evans among others) who were in the area, and directed the team to the site to retrieve him. Akers ambushed them upon arrival, overpowering the entire party and cutting off their communications before they could warn Theta. He injected the fatally-wounded divers with structure gel and escaped using the Zeppelin they'd arrived in.

As the Zeppelin was preparing to leave Delta, Terry Akers recorded a transmission on one of the Zeppelin transmitters, in which he talks, presumably to the WAU, about the peaceful, derelict state of Delta and elaborates more on his plans to go to Theta to "tuck them in" and "watch them sleep".

Theta's crew later spotted the Zeppelin near their complex. Finding Akers disfigured and comatose within the vessel, they unwittingly brought him to the site's medical ward. The on-site doctor (Nadine Masters) took several scans and performed an examination, and started writing a report on her office terminal declaring that, due to the heavy mutation and gel infestation ravaging his body, he was unlikely to ever awaken. Akers rose from the examination table and bashed in her skull before she finished; Simon later finds her body slumped in her chair, kept artificially alive by structure gel.

The details of the ensuing battle between Akers and the remaining humans on Theta are unclear, but it appears to have been fairly one-sided. Several Proxies teamed up with Akers, created either by the WAU or by Akers himself (or both). Though a report by John Strohmeier claims the crew were able to kill one, the decision was made to evacuate the remaining staff to Omicron. Eventually, Brandon Wan deliberately trapped himself in the laboratory level with Akers by sabotaging the elevator, allowing the other survivors to escape to the basement.

In SOMA

After losing the DUNBAT vessel to the WAU at Theta, Simon decides to head to Omicron and search it for an alternate method of transportation to the Abyss. He first needs to use the elevator near the laboratories to escape the complex, but Akers is roaming through the area, and when Simon does reach the elevator he finds its connector chip missing. With Akers stalking him through the halls, he manages to find the chip on Brandon Wan's corpse in one of the nearby rooms and format it, returning to the elevator and repairing it. Akers rushes to investigate as the elevator activates, but Simon narrowly escapes as the doors close.

Akers later catches Simon off guard in Theta's maintenance level, capturing him and temporarily knocking him unconscious, wrapping his body in mind coral and wandering away. (Several animated people in Theta appear to have received similar treatment, all moaning and unconscious.) Simon later awakens and breaks free without much difficulty.

Akers makes one final appearance following Simon's escape through Theta maintenance. After activating the drainage system, Simon backtracks to find that Akers has followed him, but both are swept away by a flood of seawater. Akers is not seen after this.

Dialogue

Main article: Terry Akers/Dialogue

Behind the Scenes

While Akers is not seen again after Simon escapes Theta, Akers was likely killed when the tunnel was flushed, as revealed by cut content where Simon was going to see his corpse after waking up outside of Omicron.
In the game's files, Akers is listed as one of two "fleshers" or "coral puppets", the other being the generic model used for the Theta Proxies. Whether or not Akers is properly classified as a Proxy himself is still under debate.
The language files for SOMA reveal that Akers was originally meant to speak in his mutated form, with his voice being no different than what's heard on the comms at Delta. In addition to this, there are unused audio files of Akers' death, indicating that he died horrifically.
Akers' AI is capable of dynamically enabling the "badhearing" value, which controls from how far he is able to detect sounds from. This value is normally never enabled for enemies outside of Safe Mode. Akers' "badhearing" value is set to true whenever Simon is in Strohmeier's office. This makes any sounds made by Simon or thrown objects travel only a third of the distance as normal. As a side effect, this makes it nearly impossible to trigger Akers to come out of hiding while in Strohmeier's office. The "badhearing" value will be set back to false after exiting the room, making Simon's sounds travel the normal distance.