Daniel McGee died on the side of a rural highway in the middle of the night.
When their rental car had broken down, Daniel had made his best effort to fix it on his own. But his best effort hadn't consisted of much. Daniel had always been much more of a computer guy than a mechanic. He was all too happy to let other people worry about how his car worked. But now there weren't any other people. And Daniel wanted more than anything to show his wife how calm and competent he could be under pressure.
For all that, Daniel felt a huge sense of relief when an aged pickup pulled up behind their car and deposited two men who looked like they belonged behind the wheel of an old pickup on a rural highway. "They must know more about this sort of thing than I do," he thought.
He wasn't wrong. In fact, they knew enough to be able to sabotage Daniel's rental car in mere moments while he and his wife were getting something to drink at the last truck stop. They'd known even more after seating themselves near the couple and listening in on their travel plans. A cozy bed and breakfast about a 100 miles further west. And they’d known more than enough to know what route Daniel's directions would involve.
After that, it had simply been a matter of giving Daniel a head start and then following the same route. They had found the couple stranded on the side of the highway just where they had expected. Then they had gotten out, made an offer of assistance, shot Daniel and his wife at close range, repaired the car, and driven off for the chop shop that operated in the backwoods not far away.
Daniel's wife had died. So had he. For a time. Then he had come back. Or been "spat out" as Daniel had come to think of it. His wife had been accepted and he had been rejected.
Daniel had never been a religious man. But he began to think that somehow he had doomed himself never to see his wife again. That she had gone to a "better place." A place that didn't accept his kind. But even then, he couldn't bring himself to believe in the idea of salvation. Not fully. Not in the way his wife always had.
Then came Orpheus. Daniel accepted their job offer because it offered him an avenue by which to understand what had happened to him. And perhaps to uncover what had happened to his wife. Once he had accepted the concept of ghosts, he couldn't help but wonder if she was out there somewhere. The victim of a violent, unjustified, unavenged death. Part of him, a big part of him, wanted to believe as he had before. That she was in a better place. And that, in the due course of time, he might also find that sort of peace. He contemplated killing himself. But what if it were all true? What if taking his own life would send him in a different direction entirely? So that he'd never see his wife again.
But if he were killed in the line of duty...
Daniel struggles constantly with his current lot. After being completely unable to protect his wife that night, Daniel took up classes in handgunning and self-defense. Skills that have proved themselves valuable in his work with Orpheus.
Then there are the other skills. Those he learned at Orpheus. Daniel struggles with those the most. He wonders whether what makes him capable of projecting, whatever hidden facet of his being generates that ability, isn't what caused him to be "cast out" when he died that night. He feels that perhaps, every time he uses those abilities, he widens the gap between him and his wife just a little bit more. That he makes himself just a little bit more unnatural.
He wonders the same thing about his teammates.
Daniel McGee is a skimmer-class projector. He is trained in the Flicker, Enshroud, Shadowland, and Puppetry emanations.