At the age of 18 Marjorie Dellinger quit college and started working behind the camera at her hometown television station, KLXT, in Monterey, Calif. A quick learner with a face you could trust, Dellinger soon secured a post in front of the camera.

Known for her uncanny ability to ferret out a story and get just about anyone to trust her, Dellinger won two Ace awards, one for successfully revealing a multi-million banking scandal and a second for tracking a local gang's involvement in three murders.

After her second Ace award, Dellinger's contract was picked up by CNN. Hired as a field reporter, Dellinger moved to San Francisco. Dellinger was a clean-up reporter, handling any breaking news story.

At the age of 22, Dellinger had earned the notice of West Coast Bureau Chief Robert Faulk. Faulk liked Dellinger's style and he certainly had no questions about her reporting abilities. What he had was a story for her. Faulk had sources among PRIMUS and UNTIL. Those sources had told Faulk that the two agencies were concerned about a new threat from VIPER.

Faulk recognized the story of a lifetime ‹ A new, capable and deadly VIPER. Faulk wanted the story behind VIPER's rise and he wanted to know the man who engineered it. Faulk, a veteran correspondent from the Nixon era, knew the story would take an inside job.

In Dellinger, he saw the perfect reporter for the story. Smart and capable, she was able to get the story and young enough that her face wasn't too famous to forget. For Faulk wasn't foolish, he knew the odds were stacked against Dellinger. The only chance she had to get inside VIPER was to destroy her past.

It was a hard decision. Dellinger would have to give up her friends, relatives and most of all, her father. To this day, Dellinger sometimes questions her decision, knowing it hurt her father so. She wonders if he would ever forgive her for what she has done to him.

To get inside VIPER, Dellinger had to make her old life disappear. Faulk called in an old favor from a man he knew in the FBI called Monahan.

On Feb. 24, 1990, Marjorie Dellinger died in a single-car rollover off the coastal highway. The police report said excessive speed on the rain-slick road was the cause of the accident. The funeral was held on Feb. 28 at Memorial Gardens Cemetery. Marjorie's father Joseph was heart-broken. Widowed 10 years earlier when Marjorie's mother Eleanor died, Marjorie was his only child.

After the funeral, Joseph sold his electronics firm and retired to his vacation home in the Sonoma Valley.

Marjorie Dellinger never asked Monahan whose body was in the casket. She decided it was better not to know.

Dellinger had said her goodbye to her father the night before, only he hadn't realized it. She had brought her father her birth flower, gladiolas. When she was young, he had always joked that she was born to live on the edge of a sword because she was always getting in trouble. In Latin, gladiola means sword.

Dellinger didn't go to the funeral. If she had, she would have seen her casket decorated with hundreds of gladiolas ‹ a father's tribute to an only daughter.

Her death was the beginning of a new life. Monahan took Dellinger to a doctor in Brazil. Marjorie Dellinger, all-American girl with short blond hair and blue eyes, disappeared under a surgical gown.

Dio Vara, a European beauty with auburn hair and green eyes, emerged from the hospital a month later. The hair was an easy dye job and Dio let it grow out till it was past her shoulder blades. The eye-color was a bit more difficult. Monahan's "doctor" introduced her to a newly developed chemical the stained the color of the eyes. Green was her only choice, the stain could only do a variation on her own eye color.

The rest was reconstructive surgery. Not radical, that would be easily noticed. Her eyes were given a more almond shape and her cheekbones were better defined.

The changes were not all skin deep. For the next year, Monahan worked with her. Already an expert with camera equipment and somewhat experienced with electronics from hanging around her father's shop, Marjorie Dellinger, now Dio Vara, was turned into an expert spy.

Monahan taught Vara to break any security system, through its loopholes, mistakes and back doors. She could get out of any prison or get in. Banks, hotels, jewelry stores, military bases, research institution's Vara could get into them all. For practice she took down one of Britain's foremost banks.

To round out her abilities, Monahan taught Vara self-defense, several weapons and a few assassin techniques he had picked up over the years. All the while Dio was learning, Monahan was secretly creating a name and a past for her.

Dio Vara became a federal agent. A computer and security expert, she was dissatisfied with her life . Fellow agents said she was on the edge, taking chances when it wasn't necessary just for the thrill.

When Monahan declared her ready, Dio Vara was summarily dismissed from the FBI. A rogue agent, Vara started working for those who could pay for it.

Along the way, Vara started keeping a set of records on those she worked for. Partially for herself, partially to repay her debt to Monahan. She owed him. The information she provided helped him track various criminals and it helped Vara feel less guilty. As she moved around the world, Vara has created various safety caches. A safety deposit box, bus locker or contact where she leaves some money, clothes, a weapon, various forms of fake identification and copies of information she has garnered.

Vara has also kept in contact with her "uncle" Paul. Once every six months, sometimes more if it was necessary, Vara would call her "uncle" to let him know how she was doing. In a code set up before she disappeared, Vara would describe seeming innocuous visits with family members or friends to let Faulk know she was okay.

When she was recruited to join VIPER, Vara cut off contact with Monahan, fearing he would demand information or do something that would reveal her. She had also come to fear him.

Monahan was the only one besides Faulk who knew who she really was. Lately, he seemed to obsess on her fake identity. He would only call her by the name Dio Vara. At times he could not remember her other name. Sometimes Monahan appeared to only remember her fake background. He would discuss past experiences with Vara when she was still an FBI agent. They were memories that never happened but Monahan seemed to think they were real.

Monahan had started cajoling Vara to return to the Bureau, saying it would be best and hinting he could not "protect" her from other agents for long.

Vara's last contact with Monahan was in Ireland, just one month before she joined up with VIPER. She never talked to him after joining VIPER.

In October 1994, Vara was fulfilling a contract for the Sinn Fein. With the new negotiations between the English and the Irish, the Sinn Fein needed to increase its respectability. Using her abilities, Vara did some clean-up work for group. Vara electronically erased some of the the files on key Sinn Fein members. She also ensured the hard copies of those files "disappeared." With some fancy computer work, Vara also cleared up the Sinn Fein's financial records, removing some records of payments to the IRA.

It was while she was in Northern Ireland that Vara met a VIPER recruiter named Ronan O'Neill. Well, let's face it ‹ Ronan was a romance book cover come to life. At 6'2" he forced 5'7" Vara to have to look up, something she was not accustomed to doing. With black hair and bright blue eyes, the man was wickedly good looking and caught the eye of every woman, even Vara's, when he walked into a room.

Vara could barely form a sentence when Ronan sat down at her table in a small pub called O'Reilly's in Belfast. She was stunned again when moments later he jumped across the table and tackled her to the floor as the pub exploded around them. A bomb, meant to destroy the emerging peace in Northern Ireland, killed five people in the pub. Dio and Ronan escaped with a few minor cuts from flying glass.

It was standing in a darkened alley watching the fire engines, police and ambulances show up that Ronan asked her to join VIPER. He never gave a reason why, just asked her.

Shocked at missing death by inches and a little off-guard by the handsome man in front of her, Vara never questioned the why, when, where or how of the deal. She just joined up. Ronan put her on a plane to San Francisco and suddenly she was working for VIPER.

It was exactly what she wanted when she started on this escapade five years ago, but Vara found it almost anticlimactic compared to the two hours with Ronan.

When she has returned to California and joined VIPER, Vara had only been able to talk to Uncle Peter once. She just let him know that she was back in the Bay area and had found a "nest."

Being so close to her father dredged up memories for Vara. Each day she struggles with her conscience. While she was abroad in Europe and Africa, Vara could almost forget about her past life. Now in her old home area, Vara is constantly reminded about her choice.

Once, she even dialed her father's phone number. The answering machine picked up and Vara hung up without leaving a message.

In some sense, Vara might be considered a tormented soul. She gambled everything to uncover the story of a lifetime. Her "Uncle" Peter told her what she was doing saved lives. But, a part of Vara wishes she had never made the decision. She feels like she has lost her old life forever. Now she has new friends and her old friends wouldn't recognize her. Hell, her own father probably wouldn't recognize her.

Turns out, in the end he did. Marjorie Dellinger - aka Dio Vara - had been working for the San Francisco nest less than a year when she was assigned to a hit. It turns out that VIPER scientist had gone rogue. It used to be that the scientist was kept in check by threat against his daughter's life. But since the daughter had died, he had cut his ties with VIPER.

Yes, Marjorie was assigned to bring her own father in dead or alive. It turns out that the man she had protected had been working for VIPER for more than 15 years. Joseph Dellinger was responsible for some of VIPER's best equipment.

Caught in a trap of her own making, Marjorie desperately tried to warn her father. The first time she was successful. But she alerted VIPER's suspicions. The second time she was not so lucky. Her unit's commander made sure that Marjorie was carefully watched. Even an attempt to reach a friend of her father failed. The man she thought was an acquaintance of her father, was in reality the Supreme Serpent.

Then her worst fears came true. Marjorie was part of the team sent into Joseph Dellinger's home. There they found the doctor, apparently dead having taken poison. As agents checked the house, Marjorie worked at her father's computer. A computer is an understatement - Dellinger had created an artificial intelligence known as Eleanor. The computer recognized Marjorie immediately and told her that her father was only feigning death using a complex chemical.

Marjorie hoped that the VIPER team would just leave the body, but the team commander was not so trusting. He ordered the body flown back to San Francisco and asked for an autopsy. Marjorie raced against time to reach her father. Surprising the VIPER doctor, she cold-cocked him, grabbed her father's body and then battled her way out of the VIPER base, stealing Nest Leader Gwen Jones Owens' car in the process.

Reaching the CNN broadcast headquarters in San Francisco, Marjorie Dellinger was able to find temporary safety. Her father was revived, but found that his risky gamble had cost him the use of his legs. Marjorie turned over what she had learned about VIPER's organization to PRIMUS and the police. Then she went live on CNN and exposed the whole nest.

With one fail swoop, Dellinger had placed herself at the top of VIPER most wanted list. With a price on her head and perpetually on the run, Marjorie turned to her father for help. Joseph Dellinger - the genius behind the rebirth in VIPER's technological expertise gave his daughter a chemical formula he had been working on, hoping that it would help protect her should VIPER catch her again. The formula had an immediate effect on Marjorie Dellinger's physical abilities. Where before she was competent in her self-defense moves - now she was deadly. Hyped up responses and an incredible constitution added to her now superhuman abilities.

With San Francisco to hot for her and her father, Marjorie moved to Hudson City accepting a new position with CNN and a new goal. As the superheroine Jade, she was going to continue her crusade against VIPER and above all she was going to reveal just who was the Supreme Serpent.

But Hudson City was home to many more surprises for Jade. Her infatuation with her memory of Ronan O'Neill would now be tested under the harsh light of reality when she discovered that he didn't work for VIPER, but instead a soldier-for-hire group known as the Wild Geese. Even worse, Ronan is friends with Kevin Armstrong, the man who humiliated her on live TV by escaping from PRIMUS in the middle of her interview - an interview she has sworn to finish. And VIPER gets even with Marjorie, kidnapping and torturing her father and collecting an $80,000,001 ransom for the return of Joseph Dellinger. Then, if things couldn't get any worse, Majorie Dellinger discovers a very dark, very dirty secret about PRIMUS. A secret that will eventually lead her to betray her teammates and join those whom they consider criminals.