Oenone Zero

Oenone Zero is a character in the Mortal Engines Quartet, introduced in Infernal Devices.

Doctor Zero was born on the Aleutian Islands about two years before Mortal Engines started, making her approximately nineteen or twenty when she is introduced, four years older than Wren Natsworthy, who wasn't born till over 2 years after Mortal Engines (Hester finds out she's pregnant at the end of Predator's Gold).

Background

Profession

Dr. Zero started playing with Stalker parts when she was young, and as described in Infernal Devices, she soon was called to repair the Stalkers of the Green Storm when the then experts were unsure of what to do. She enlisted into the Green Storm later, rising to a high rank in the Resurrection Corps, and when appointed the position of surgeon-mechanic to Stalker Fang, she rebuilds Shrike to kill the Stalker Fang.

Family

Throughout the two books, Dr. Zero is shown to have been very close to her family. Her father was a Green Storm soldier who was killed in the attack on Rogue's Roost in Predator's Gold. Her mother was an airship pilot who was killed sometime between Predator's Gold and Infernal Devices. Her brother Eno, who she is best friends with and loves dearly, dies in the time she was first an officer in the Resurrection Corps. She is forced to create a Stalker from him, and after she does so, she vows to end the war between the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft and the Green Storm by assassinating the Stalker Fang.

Religion

Oenone Zero is mistrustful of most of the religions in the world of the Mortal Engines, but she is attracted to a small Christian chapel in Tienjing, which allows her to be cynical about Christianity, saying "what on earth was the use of a god who went around getting nailed to things?" She is similarly cynical of other religions, though she returns to the chapel to pray and read a poem written on the wall, which has great appeal to her:

We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew tree
Are of equal duration.

The poem is actually from T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, with the quote coming from the fourth quartet, 'Little Gidding'.

By A Darkling Plain, Oenone says she has become a Christian, though she has little understanding of theology.

Role in the books

Oenone Zero is introduced at the very beginning of Infernal Devices. She is on the Black Island digging up the Stalker Shrike, who has been dead for 18 years, after Tom Natsworthy killed him. After a few months of working and restoring him, Oenone presents him to the Green Storm's leader, the Stalker Fang who accepts him and appoints him as her bodyguard.