Ben

"Nothing went wrong with me! I'm a soldier. I'm doing what I was made to do, what we were taught to do."

- Ben

X5-493, or "Ben", was one of the twelve X5s who successfully escaped from Manticore in 2009. He later went insane and became a serial killer, and was eventually killed by Max.

Childhood
Like all the other X5's, Ben was raised at Manticore's facility in Gillette, Wyoming, and trained to be a soldier by Colonel Donald Lydecker. He was very popular among his unit-mates, or "siblings", due to his charming personality and great imagination. Always looking for answers, he would make up fantastic stories to explain all the questions he and his brothers and sisters had, which helped them deal with the hard life they lived. He said that there was a Good Place, where only the best soldiers were allowed to go, and a Bad Place, where those who failed were sent. One night, when one of his brothers was having a seizure, a Manticore janitor noticed and went to comfort the boy, giving him a picture of the Virgin Mary. Afterwards, Ben would say that the "Blue Lady", as he called her, was watching over them.

At some point during their training, the X5's were forced to participate in an exercise involving the hunting down and killing of a prisoner, which they accomplished with ruthless effectiveness. Ben, in particular, was exhilarated by the hunt, and even Lydecker was alarmed by the savagery of their attack. Later, during the night, the X5's climbed up onto the roof of the barracks, where Ben showed them the teeth of the late prisoner, which he had pulled out as an offering to the Blue Lady.

One day, during a drill, his brother Jack collapsed from a seizure and was taken away by the guards. The others never saw him again, and Ben would later say that he had been taken to the Bad Place, where he would be slowly eaten up by the "Nomlies".

Eventually, the X5's lost patience and rebelled, escaping the facility and fleeing into the forest, where they split up and left Manticore far behind.

Adolescence
Nothing is known of Ben's life as a teenager in the years immediately after the escape. Presumably, he found a foster family to take care of him, while he kept a low profile to avoid the military forces still looking for him, though it is unlikely that he grew up in a stable environment. He claimed that nothing made sense outside of Manticore, so it can also be assumed that he had no one to give him answers to the questions he had. This probably contributed to his psychosis in the months before his death.

Psychosis and Death
At some point around 2018, Ben, for reasons his siblings would never understand, lost his mind and began killing people in various major cities across the United States. Eventually, he made his way to Seattle, where he claimed two more victims. His M.O. was always the same: he captured his intended targets, those he believed "worthy" of the Blue Lady's protection, armed them, and proceeded to release them into a forest, where he hunted them down and killed them by breaking their necks. He would then pull out their teeth, as he had done back at Manticore, and left the body to be found.

Ben's old unit-mate, Max, who was living in Seattle at the time, learned of his killings through Eyes Only, and tracked him down. Unwilling to turn him in to the police, for fear of exposure, she tried to convince him to stop, but to no avail. Ben escaped her and went after another victim. By this time, Lydecker had followed Ben to Seattle, and was also beginning to close in on him. Max followed Ben into the forest, and intervened just before he could kill his target. She then fought him, giving his victim time to escape, and eventually crippled him by breaking his leg. Manticore's soldiers were close now, close enough that both X5's would have been caught if Max tried to carry Ben to safety. Unable to escape, and unwilling to be taken back, he begged Max to kill him. Sadly, knowing that returning to Manticore would be worse than death, she told him to tell her about the Good Place, and while Ben was distracted, she snapped his neck.

Trivia

 * Although he probably did not know it, Ben had a twin brother, X5-494, who becomes Max's assigned breeding partner. She named him Alec.