Rachel Mills

Rachel Mills
Portrayed by	Taylor Cole
First appearance	Our Father
In-story stats
Known ability	Teleportation
Gender
Place of birth	Newport, RI
Home	Calabasas, CA
Residence	Rachel Mills's home
Occupation	U.S. Marine
Significant other	David Sullivan (deceased)
Parents	Leona, Absent unnamed father

Rachel Mills is a Private in the United States Marine Corps recruited by Pinehearst as part of their super soldier program. She is an evolved human with the ability to teleport.

Character History

Our Father

Rachel trains with the other recruits at Pinehearst Headquarters in Fort Lee.

Webisode:The Recruit, Part 1

Rachel is interrogated by Angela in an unknown Primatech facility in Tappen, NJ about the whereabouts of the formula and claims not to know about it. Twelve hours before, Rachel is talking with Ryan Hanover and David Sullivan when an explosion at Pinehearst causes the building to start collapsing. Rachel tries to help David move a beam that has fallen on top of him, but is unable to do so. She then walks over to search for something to pry the beam off David and winds up teleporting back to him when an air duct begins to fall on top of her. Rachel pleads with David to ignore what happened and that it was nothing.

Graphic Novel:Stuck in the Middle

Rachel takes a shower at Pinehearst, and remains unaware that Ryan Hanover has stumbled upon a miniature peep-hole, and is watching her, leering at her naked body while thinking about what kind of a person she is (privately, he considers her "a bitch"). Suddenly, Rachel hears a crashing sound, and leaves the shower wrapped in a towel. Rachel spots Ryan walking by, and asks him about the noise, saying that it sounded like someone fell or something. Ryan denies he heard anything.

Webisode:The Recruit, Part 2

Rachel helps David Sullivan to his feet as Ryan Hanover approaches, holding two doses of the synthetic formula. When she asks him where the third is, he tells her he injected himself in hopes of surviving a large wound he suffered during the explosion. When David starts to collapse, she steals a dose from Ryan, who draws a gun and orders her to give it back. She injects David and is shot in the shoulder by Ryan. They both look up as David's synthetic ability begins to manifest.

Webisode:The Recruit, Part 3

Rachel is still being interogated by Angela. Rachel continues to flash back, this time she recountes what happened when David was injected with the serum. In Rachel's recollection, David keels over and leans on both hands while growling. Meanwhile, Rachel sits against the wall bracing her shoulder wound and Ryan continues to point his gun at them. David's ability manifests and he attacks Ryan and then tries to attack Rachel. She teleports out of his path to the other side of the room. David turns and again charges at her super fast, but Rachel has grabbed a pair of scissors and uses them to stab David in the chest.
After Angela asks what she did with the remaining serum Rachel says she destroyed it, then she flashes back to finding a remaining syringe on the ground the cracking it in half Angela says she gave the wrong answer and leaves, Rachel then recalls that after destroying the syringe, she still had the vial of serum in her hands that had been inside the syringe.

Webisode:The Recruit, Part 4

Still in the interrogation room, Rachel sees Carlos and Angela coming towards her. Angela continues to question Rachel about the serum and her abilities, mentioning Rachel's mother, Leona. Rachel denies that she is special, but then has a flashback about how she got out of the Pinehearst lab - she used her ability. Even after the flashback, she denies her abilities, only for Angela to tell her that she doesn't believe her.

Webisode:The Recruit, Part 5

Carlos and Angela approach Rachel, who is still tied down to a chair next to a conference table in the Tappen facility. Angela tells Rachel that she underestimated her and is letting her go; and Carlos removes her IV, saying that the effects should wear off in a few hours. Angela then commends Rachel for being a fighter like her, but Rachel replies that she's nothing like her and just wants to leave. Angela says that there's a car waiting for her outside.

Later, Rachel parks next to a gas station restroom and heads inside. While staring at the mirror, Rachel recalls how at Pinehearst, she had taken the vial of serum out of the syringe she broke and hid it inside her shoulder wound. Back in the present, Rachel removes the serum from her wound and redresses the bandage using her shirt to tie it up.

Rachel then leaves the restroom and finds Angela and Carlos waiting for her on opposite sides of her car, blocking her escape. Rachel asks why Angela let her go if she knew Rachel had it all along, and Angela replies she wanted to give Rachel the opportunity to face herself and learn if she could be trusted. Rachel then says that she just wanted to find a cure, but Angela says that her ability is an integral part of her, like the loss of her mother. Rachel says that she hopes to see her again one day, and Angela says that will be up to God.

After giving Angela the serum, Rachel asks them what else they want and she says that they want to help her and Carlos places a covering over her head and drags her around the corner into the gas station's garage.

Trust and Blood

This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Heroes Evolutions

According to NBC.com's character reference for Rachel Mills, Rachel was born in Newport, Rhode Island, but grew up in Calabasas, California. She was raised solely by her mother, Leona, until Rachel was twelve and Leona committed suicide. Rachel's grandparents then took her in, but they struggled with little money and Rachel wasn't able to gain many friends. After graduating from high school, Rachel joined the Marines following her grandfather's footsteps. After spending four years abroad between Iraq and Afghanistan, Pinehearst recruited Rachel for their top-secret operation.

Rachel appears in The Recruit: Rachel

An intercepted mobile message posted on Hulu.com is a video message Rachel left for her friend, Amy, before she left for Pinehearst:

Hey, Amy! I'll be MIA for a couple weeks and I just wanted to give you the heads up before I'm off. I've been selected for this program. But after being stationed in Iraq for the past 16 months, it should be a breeze. Hence, the weather's nicer, pay's better, there's a lot of cute boys here. Anyway, I love you. Bye.

Operation Bad Blood

The above Hulu.com message was later included amongst other video mail messages in chapter 5 of Operation Bad Blood. They are part of a video feed being reviewed for security messages by a technician in Pinehearst that the Pinehearst contracted player spots. Rachel's message to her friend, Amy, is viewable by clicking the "video feeds" link on the page.

Rachel appears in Operation Bad Blood

A second and final message from Rachel to her friend Amy is viewable by again clicking the "video feeds" link on the iStory page:

Okay, this is it--my last message. Twelve hours to go and it's... it's really starting to sink in. It's a lot of pressure. But anyway, um, you're my best friend, Aimes, and don't forget that... unless you tell somebody about that thing. And if you tell somebody about that thing, then I will have to come hunt you down and take you out. Well, anyway, um, I love you and I'll call you when I get back.

The Private

In chapter 1 of The Private, Rachel visits the remnants of the destroyed Pinehearst Headquarters. Later, when in a job interview, her potential employer reviews her personnel file and mentions her many combat decorations she accumulated in her four years of service and excellent shooting accuracy even under the pressure of combat situations. To explain why she was discharged as a private, Rachel begins recalling her experiences from her last tour of duty in Iraq the previous summer. In Rachel's recollection, she is called Corporal Mills by her commanding officer, Barton. She begins to follow his orders to leave her Humvee and search a woman's car at a checkpoint in Ghanaf, Iraq, when she hears an erratic beeping noise that she follows and finds a coded message. When she grabs the message, Rachel hears loud bangs coming from the checkpoint and sees that the rest of her unit has been disabled by gas canisters.

Rachel turns and flees into an alley, where she runs into Ammar, her unit's Iraqi translator. Together, Rachel and Ammar continue running away and find a hiding spot in a side alley down a side street. Rachel then spots two of their hazard suit-wearing pursuers pass by. One starts to tug off his gas mask, but the other gives him an order and the first man pulls it back on. However, before he does so, she sees that the man isn't Middle Eastern. Rachel also notes to herself that the order sounded very much like English. Rachel begins to analyze the message and her situation. She realizes that the message is in Morse code and the translation means she was bugged by Ammar. However, Rachel's realization comes too late and Ammar forces her out onto the street at gunpoint. They are quickly surrounded by men in hazard suits and one of the men places a smelly hood over her head.

In chapter 2 of The Private, Rachel takes a break from her story when the interviewer leaves temporarily to fetch some coffee. When he returns with his cup and asks Rachel if she wants some, she declines and continues her story when prompted to. Rachel notes that next, her captors dump her in a muddy pit and she realizes her captors had taken some of her blood some time before then. She then waits by herself there for about 12 hours until a rope ladder is lowered to her and she climbs up. Rachel follows two men and a women to a mess hall where she is interrogated by an Arabic man who introduces himself as Harry. She tells Harry that her people will come for her, and learns from him that she is in Iran and that there is an Iranian army medical facility in the nearby village. When Harry then asks her about her mother, Rachel just stays silent and learns that she has been under surveillance from an unknown party for some time. She is then taken back to her pit and finds she now has company inside it.

The man sharing Rachel's pit, Jim, and Rachel introduce themselves to each other. Jim asks if they said why they brought her there, and Rachel must decide how to respond. She chooses to comment on Jim's appearance and gets Jim to open up about how he came to be there. Rachel's conversation with Jim is interrupted when Ammar arrives above their pit. When Ammar informs her that her captors plan to kill her, she asks for his help.

Rachel pauses telling the story when the interviewer makes a note, and she asks him what interested him. When the interviewer replies that Rachel seems to have a Type E personality based on her responses, Rachel asks if that is the best type and why she gets the feeling that how she tells the story is more important than the story itself. The interviewer doesn't answer Rachel, but instead notes that Ammar has a proposal for Rachel and asks Rachel to continue the story, which she does.

In Rachel's continued recollection, Rachel listens to Ammar's proposal for them to use his motorcycle and make a one to two days drive on a road that the U.S. military is watching. She replies that it sounds like his plan is to get them blown up by a Predator drone, but Ammar says that she will signal to her people that they are escaped prisoners when they get close. Rachel then asks Ammar about bringing Jim. She learns that Ammar does not think he should come and that Jim thinks they should jump Ammar and take his motorcycle.

After Ammar comes back that night and helps them get out, Rachel knocks Ammar out with her fist and whispers to Jim that she thought that would feel more satisfying. Looking back, Rachel spots their pit in a fenced-off clearing behind them and sees other pits half-dug nearby. Jim and Rachel spot Ammar's motorcycle between two low storage buildings and hop on. Rachel holds to Jim as he drives them away from the camp. They drive for a couple minutes, then pull off and climb to the top of a nearby hill to check for pursuit. Reaching the top of the hill, Rachel says that she's thirsty and they've got quite a drive ahead of them, noting that it felt like their captors had taken her hundreds of miles. She then turns around to find four desert fighters have suddenly materialized behind them. Rachel tells them not to shoot in Arabic, raising her hands; but discovers that they are U.S. Special Forces that have been monitoring the facility Rachel and Jim escaped from. Two hours later, Rachel is briefed with Jim by the Special Forces lieutenant. She learns that the Special Forces squad has received orders to destroy the prison camp, and that they will claim that they are rescuing Rachel and Jim if there is any political fallout.

In chapter 3 of The Private, Rachel pauses her story to note that what she is going to say next is not what the official account says, and affirms to her interviewer that she is giving him the truth. Rachel then continues his story, saying she talks more with Sam, the Special Forces lieutenant, who warns Rachel and Jim that the Iranian forces will likely come quickly when the charges go off so to be prepared to run.

Rachel then watches with Jim from a rocky hill as the Special Forces squad sneaks down to the compound. Rachel spots someone leaving a hidden door around the corner from the front entrance, and asks Jim to warn the squad. However, it is too late and Rachel watches as the squad disappears in a white flash and chest-rattling boom. Rachel takes off running toward the facility, reaching Sam's body. Rachel refuses to leave without finishing the mission, and instructs Jim to return to their came and try to radio for help. Rachel spots the guy in the lab coat that had left the building earlier and runs after him. She finds that the door is just an outline in the building's metal siding, so she pulls it open and steps through it into a small, dark room.

Once inside, Rachel spots the man trying to use the inside door, and takes his pistol from him. Rachel then chooses knock him out and use his lab coat and mask to disguise herself. She heads through the inside door, and finds a giant metal cylinder with hazard and no-smoking warnings painted on it, and she see pipes running out of it into the walls in another dark room. She sees a glass door into what looks to her like a hospital ward and a staircase going down into an even deeper blackness.

Rachel chooses to explore the ward area, and finds a moaning girl laying in a tangle of wires and tubes on a table on the far side of the room. Rachel sees that the girl's "table" is a tray, half-full of a blue-ish chemical that is being pumped in through a tube like a garden hose, with her arms and legs swollen and bulging, as if full of liquid. She notes the girl has IVs in both arms; and although she seems unconscious, her eyes are half-open. Rachel decides to stop what's being done to the girl and chooses to pull out the IVs. When the girl awakens, Rachel tells her to lie still, that she will be fine. However, the girl ignores Rachel, breaking free from her restraints and tossing Rachel into a table and onto the ground. Rachel sits up and hears a screeching coming from the man that Rachel had found, who is now hiding behind a table of the ward. Rachel then hears a rumbling noise outside that sounds to her like trucks driving around the building.

In chapter 4 of The Private,

This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Evolved Human Abilities

Rachel discovers she possesses the ability to teleport herself across certain distances. It is unknown what her range is, but apparently she can activate her ability subconsciously (as it first manifested when she was in danger of being crushed; and her ability sent her to safety).

Notes

• The video message of Rachel on Hulu.com was posted on December 9, 2008, and entitled The Recruit: Rachel. It was later added to a video feed included in chapter 5 of Operation Bad Blood. Chapter 5 was released on December 10, 2008, but the video feed was not posted until December 17, 2008.
• Rachel currently holds the rank of Private in the U.S. Marines. In the iStory, The Private, Rachel was called Corporal Mills during her last tour in Iraq during the previous summer. Whether Rachel was a Lance Corporal or Corporal at that time is unknown. (Note: U.S. Marines ranks proceed from Private to Private First Class, Lance Corporal and then Corporal.)
• Although the episodes indicate the Pinehearst program Rachel was part of began and ended in 2007, Rachel's character reference at NBC.com refers to the year as 2008.
• It is not completely clear yet whether her ability is natural, or synthetic.

See Also

• For other uses of Rachel, see Rachel (disambig).