Robin Kiley

"'That’s uh- Signal Intelligence, for reference.'""- Robin, explaining her nickname."

Overview
Robin Lois Kiley, (call-sign SIGINT in the CIA) Was a civilian CIA employee during the 1989 Mittageisen Incursion in the German Democratic Republic. In MITTλGΞISΞN°, she is a support character who helps both Kira Maresch and Merrick Harrington, with Huey Carswell being a reluctant coworker of hers. While never referenced directly in the main events pertaining to Anne Levesque's story, it's understood that Kiley is Levesque's mother.

Early Life
What's known of Kiley's early life is related to the player by dossier documents and her own words. In documentation, her hometown is listed as being in Missouri, with expanded information mentioning her having spent most of her formative years in the Sheffield neighborhood of Kansas City. For most of her time growing up, she was often tasked with taking care of her younger brother, who was severely mentally disabled. Carswell makes occasional mention that this experience has made her exceptionally friendly and patient with people he personally wouldn't be able to stand, including Harrington.

At some point before the events of MITTλGΞISΞN°, she attained a college education in accounting and cryptography, becoming employed by the CIA and getting trained in the use of radio and signal communications for decoding short-wave messages sent across the Berlin Wall by the STASI. Several months before Kira's awakening in the early months of 1989, Kiley and Carswell were taken to East Berlin using forged passports and set up a signal intercepting and decryption station in a vacant textile warehouse.

Mittageisen
In December of 1988, Harrington contacted his two colleagues on the eastern end of the Berlin Wall to request that they assist with a psychological conditioning experiment he had been granted the funding for. Kira Maresch was funneled towards their listening-post during the Mittageisen Incursion, where Carswell and Kiley greeted her for the first time. They resupplied her with ammunition and medical supplies before informing Maresch that they would radio ahead and let the freighter personnel on the northern tip of Germany know that they would need to be ready to depart when Maresch arrived, as she had survived the initial confrontation with the Volkspolizei and Marines.

Kiley is encountered several other times after her initial interaction with the player. When Maresch bumps into her again, it's on the command-deck of the USCGC Claudius, when Huey is absent in the engine-room trying to repair a stalled motor to get the ship running. She explains to Maresch that she feels a considerable amount of guilt for the ethically questionable nature of Harrington's experimentation on live subjects, even if she wasn't directly involved in the surgical alteration that led to Maresch's state. She also tells Maresch that she was the one who argued to try and preserve her life at the conclusion of Maresch's mission, because the initial plan involved executing their test-subject.

After docking in Hong Kong, the remaining personnel of the Claudius were bagged by a Marines fire-team, including Kiley. She contacted Maresch over a short-wave radio and informed her that, while they escaped, they had returned to Texas and were unable to give any further support to Maresch, with the exception of directions to a cargo-plane that would deliver Maresch to the United States for medical treatment, as otherwise she was certain to die as a result of complications from her alterations.

Kiley is encountered for the last time at the Armor and Swift Company Packing House, in Fort Worth, Texas. She appears alongside Carswell and Harrington after Maresch saves them from a squad of Marines who have come to silence the three and burn any documents related to the Mittageisen Project. Kiley explains that she convinced Harrington that the player-character was worth preserving, at least for a time, and that they've prepared medical equipment to try and prevent the expiration-date that was soon to take Maresch.

After Mittageisen
It's assumed that Kiley returned to her 'normal' life after the Mittageisen Project was concluded, though she was forced to leave the CIA as a result of the collective misconduct that brought the Mittageisen Project about in the first place. While exonerated for ostensibly being an accessory to the murder of dozens of US Marines (the soldiers that Maresch fought were technically ignoring direct orders) She sought to distance herself from the federal government in any way she could. Unbeknownst to anyone but the pair, her and Harrington had started an affair some months after being saved by Maresch. They agreed to leave both their lives behind in the past to try and live as a normal American couple, renting a cabin outside of Duluth, Minnesota.

In the late 1990's, after nearly a decade of peaceful cohabitation with her husband, the two of them begun noticing federal agents casing their home. Fearing the worst, Harrington called Matt Hernandez, an old friend from his days with the CIA, and requested a favor in that Hernandez help them get out of the country. Several days later, when Hernandez arrived, he found that several teams of armed agents were on the approach. When Hernandez revealed this information to Harrington, Harrington told his friend that he believed Kiley was pregnant. After several minutes of argumentative back-and-fourth, it was agreed that Hernandez would hold off the federal agents from Harrington's home while he took his wife and unborn child north through the Canadian border. The last thing Kiley and Harrington saw of Hernandez was him holding off waves of U.S. Marshal personnel with an M16, which led both of them to believe that he had died in the ensuing firefight.

Kiley, with her husband, followed Hernandez's parting advice of staying well away from the United States, living for several years in rural Canada with their baby girl, who they named Anne. While their child would eventually begin attending school state-side with Kiley's relatives in Louisiana, having taken the name Levesque to avoid suspicion, she would always return back home for the summers. Kiley remained dependent on Harrington's income as a commercial truck-driver under a fake name.

It's not known exactly what Kiley's status during Trinity is. Levesque mentions writing home to her mom on more than one occasion, so it's likely that she remained out of trouble and didn't return to the United States.

Personality
Kiley is shown, on multiple occasions, to be incredibly caring and understanding to Maresch's plight, much to the chagrin of both Carswell and Harrington, who seem to be of the opinion that she's not at all deserving of sympathy on account of her fascist background. This is likely due to her seeing Maresch as something of a surrogate daughter-figure because of her similarities to Kiley's disabled little brother, who she misses dearly during her time abroad. She is shown to be remarkably proficient at the things her job requires her to do, seemingly having no trouble passing as a German native or decoding and intercepting very verbose encoded transmissions. Otherwise, she seems to be a fairly normal young woman with a very maternal and loving streak.

While she seems generally cold and distrusting of Carswell and his overall level of intelligence, she understands his nervousness and generally skittish nature to not inherently be a bad thing, and treats him with more dignity by the time they've fulfilled their purpose in the Mittageisen Project, though she still remains fairly professional and curt with him regardless.

Her outward behavior towards Harrington as a colleague tends to be similar, though it's clear they both are a little awkward and unsure of how to act around one another. She often chides his reckless behavior, though it's clear that this is because she cares quite deeply for him.

Appearance
In MITTλGΞISΞN°, Kiley is shown to be a fairly regular-looking young woman, with blonde hair and an unusual left eye that appears brown instead of blue and remains permanently dilated. Her cheeks and nose are slightly reddened, standing out against her otherwise pale and possibly slightly pink skin-tone.

She wears a very heavily dirtied Kansas City hoodie with blue jeans and army boots, fingerless gloves on her hands. It's likely that she changes clothes into something more typical of an Eastern Bloc civilian if she ever needs to pose as one.

Physically, she appears on the slightly shorter and more squat end of what's typical of an American woman, her physical form compact and skinny.

Development
Kiley's model went through several iterations, especially in relation to her clothes. Originally, she was meant to wear an ESPRIT jacket, which was then changed to a Jordache jacket, and then finally the Kansas City hoodie that's shown in promotional materials. Her head-bust was generated with an Autodesk Character Generator web-application. Her animations and gestures were reused from Alyx in Half-Life 2.

Trivia

 * Kiley's left-eye being permanently dilated and heterochomatic is a reference to David Bowie.
 * She is referenced in-engine as SIGINT. (sigint.mdl, choreography files, scripting, etc.)
 * The name SIGINT is from Metal Gear Solid 3, which features a character of the same name in a similar role.