Half-Russian and half-Scottish, Michael was the oldest son of Umar and Anna Polenin. His father's stern, unbending dicipline clashed with Anna's flamboyent Scottish flair, and by the time Michael's younger brother, Mackenzie, was born, there was a great deal of strife in the marriage. Umar, unwilling to divorce or remain, took Michael and began to travel the world extensively. Before he was ten years old, Michael had covered a great deal of Europe and the Americas but was a relative stranger to his mother and siblings and somewhat frightened of his father, who was a harsh man.
Once when Michael was eleven and they were staying in Canada, he attempted to run away and ended up nearly drowning in a frozen lake. He was rescued by a Newfoundland dog, but his father was furious at what Michael had done, threatening to give him a good lashing but did not.
Tutored by his father for elementry school, he was enrolled in a German highschool when he was fifteen. He learned to speak German as fluently as he spoke English and Russian, but also learned to hate the school with every part of his being. When he finally graduated, none of his family were at the ceremony. He returned home alone as well, and found his parents immeshed in yet another feirce battle of words.
He left home for America, the country his father hated the most, and cut all his ties with his family. He put in papers to become an American citizen and began going to an American college. However, Michael was notoriously bad in school, as he had learned in Germany, and dropped out in his junior year. Running out of money, unemployed and sitting in a bad apartment in a bad part of town, Michael had ceased caring about everything in his life.
Then a new ambition struck him: he determined to become an agent of the CIA and protect the country he had known he loved since the first time he'd stepped off the plane. He found employment as a security officer and worked towards his dream when he realised he must have a college degree to become the agent he wanted to be. It took many years of work but he finally entered the CIA while keeping his security job.
He met and befriended a Jewish paralegal named Jakob Goldheim at the building where he was a security guard. Jakob introduced him to his family, who all but adopted him. Levi Goldheim, Jakob's older brother, desperatly wanted to be part of the CIA. Michael adopted him as a younger brother and helped him get into the CIA as well. Feeling like a third sone to the jolly Goldheims, Michael and Levi had only been partners for about a year when they learned of the O'Conor kidnapping and were sent with Don to help. Horrified by the cruelty there, Levi devoted his career to ending the Wonderland Gang while Michael, more grounded, went on to become an independent agent and work on his own.
He never expected to hear of Wonderland again but when a call from Levi came during his vacation time, he was sent to be a bodyguard to Crystianne, recently escaped from Wonderland herself. |
