Sasha Bordeaux (New Earth)

Sasha Bordeaux is hired as Bruce Wayne's bodyguard. She is assigned by Wayne Enterprise's second in command, Lucius Fox, against Wayne's wishes. Wayne at first tries to avoid her, but she keeps doing her job. She eventually becomes suspicious and did some searching, where she discovers that Bruce is secretly Batman.

Knowing he couldn't fire her because she knew his secret identity, Batman trains her to be his apprentice. After weeks of training, she is fit enough to go out with him on patrol in a suit, though he still treats her as a total stranger both as Batman and as Bruce Wayne. During this time, she falls in love with him, even as he insists on having her around while he dated other women.

Framed

One night, while Batman and Bordeaux are out on patrol, the assassin David Cain lured Wayne's girlfriend, Vesper Fairchild, to Wayne Manor. He kills her in a way that frames Wayne. Both Wayne and Bordeaux are charged with murder. Sasha refuses to exonerate herself by giving up Wayne's secret. They are arraigned and held without bail awaiting trial. After a while, Batman escapes to leave his alter ego behind, leaving Bordeaux inside Blackgate prison. Batman eventually confronts those who framed him, and Wayne and Sasha are cleared of all charges.

Checkmate

While in prison custody, Sasha is severely wounded by another prisoner. She would have died had the government agency Checkmate not given her medical treatment. They fake her death and offer to give her a new name and identity (complete with plastic surgery) if she would work for them. With no other options, she agrees.

Batman searches for Sasha, not believing she had died in prison. To facilitate this, he disrupts all of Checkmate's operations in Gotham City. They organize a meeting between the two, where Wayne confesses he loves her. Sasha tells him to let her go.

Bordeaux rises through the ranks of Checkmate to become right hand to Maxwell Lord, the group's leader.

Maxwell Lord hijacks the Brother I satellite that Batman had created to monitor all superhuman activity. Brother I itself had recently become sentient due to the actions of Alexander Luthor, Jr., as a part of his plans for the Infinite Crisis. He also created an army of cyborgs known as OMACs (who are originally human, transformed when needed by a virus) programmed to hunt and kill all superhumans and or specific targets. During his rule, Lord kills all who oppose him, assisted by Brother I who monitors for rebellion. Sasha feigns loyalty to stay alive, but breaks this when Lord kills his former ally Blue Beetle. Sasha is given the job of disposing of the body. She steals the goggles and sends them to Batman as part of a message detailing Lord's madness.

When Brother I reveals Sasha's betrayal, he sends out an OMAC squad. They find Sasha and Batman in an abandoned warehouse just after they share a kiss. The Omac's goal of killing Batman and taking Sasha only partly succeeds as Batman escapes. Lord discovers he cannot get anything out of Sasha, she is resistant to telepathy. Lord then causes a brainwashed Superman to attempt to kill Batman. To stop this, Wonder Woman snaps Lord's neck.

Cyborg

With the help of another imprisoned agent, Midnight (who had attempted to assassinate Lord earlier), Bordeaux escapes and heads out to kill Lord, unaware he was already dead. As they were on their way out, an OMAC attacks the two, and impales Bordeaux. This attack somehow activates her programming, turning her into an OMAC cyborg. She retains most of her human features, although her skin now resembles a metallic coating and one of her eyes is empty. She also discovers that she retained her free will; unlike the other OMACs, she was not under Brother I's control.

Brother I, with Lord's death, rechristens itself "Brother Eye" and activates all the remaining OMACs to kill Earth's superhumans. Bordeaux contacts the other various factions of Checkmate who had left when Lord took over, apologizing for Lord and asking them to rejoin.

She then creates a computer virus and hooked herself up to the Brother Eye satellite; the virus, along with a massive EMP blast that the various superheroes create, disables the majority of the OMACs. Brother Eye escapes with 200,000 OMACS.

She later reunites with Batman, who comforts her when she tells him she is now a machine.

Infinite Crisis

Eventually, with the aid of the new Blue Beetle, Batman locates Brother Eye. He then gathers a team of heroes, including Bordeaux, to attempt to destroy it. The attack sends Brother Eye crashing to Earth, but the satellite's central memory remains intact. With the various superheroes needed elsewhere, Batman tasks Bordeaux with destroying Brother Eye once and for all. Sasha resists the machine's brainwashing long enough to blow it up. She survives the blast with the sacrifice of the majority of her OMAC shell. Her left eye is covered and some of her right arm.

One Year Later

One year after Infinite Crisis, Bordeaux is the "Black Queen" of the Checkmate organization. In the first issue of the new Checkmate comic series, she leads a group of operatives into a Kobra stronghold. As the new series began, Bordeaux was depicted as a cold-blooded killer; it remains to be seen whether this is an after effect of her conversion to cyborg, or due to events of the previous year. Her "the ends justify the means" attitude towards the success of Checkmate missions has put her into conflict with Alan Scott. She is also in conflict with several of her Checkmate colleagues, particularly Fire and Mister Terrific, with whom she is romantically involved. As the series progressed, this aspect of her personality was rarely referred to again. In a 2007 story arc involving The Outsiders, Bordeaux suffers extreme torture at the hands of Chang Tzu who wished to lean learn more about her cybernetic implants. Although she survives this encounter (barely), subsequent issues have had her fighting to regain her confidence, especially when the healing process results in even more of her body becoming cybernetic.

Sasha intervenes in the trial of Wonder Woman (for murdering Maxwell Lord) by secretly delivering exonerating evidence to Wonder Woman's lawyer, Kate Spencer.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

O.M.A.C. Cybernetics: A rough ten-to-twenty percent enhancement over even an Olympic level athlete across the board--in strength, stamina, speed, dexterity...". Her skin has taken on a metallic coating.
- Enhanced Strength
- Enhanced Stamina
- Enhanced Speed
- Enhanced Dexterity
- Enhanced Resistance: During the procedure, she also demonstrated a rapidly increasing tolerance to the sedatives being used to keep her unconscious.
- Enhanced Healing: Body parts encased in the OMAC composite shell...nanobot scabs covering your weaker flesh. Sasha also has the ability to turn her nanorobotic components on and off at will, and they also help her to regenerate from damage she sustains, particularly to those non-biological parts of her body.
- Enhanced Vision: (Via Sasha's) ocular implant, the whole of the visual spectrum and more is revealed to her.
  - Infrared Vision: Sasha demonstrated the ability to see in the infrared spectrum.
  - Optimized Targeting Optics: make a terrifyingly accurate sniper.
Telepathic Resistance: Sasha is resist to telepathic abilities.

Abilities

Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)
Espionage Master
Expert Tactician and Strategist
Expert Marksman
Multilingualism: Can speak both English and Chinese.

Notes

Sasha renounced her American citizenship when she entered Checkmate. She still holds her Swiss citizenship.^[1]

Links

Footnotes

↑ Checkmate (Volume 2) #2

Checkmate Member

This character was a member of the top secret government organization Checkmate. This template will automatically categorize articles that include it into the "Checkmate members" and "Government Agents" categories.

Batman Family member

This character is or was an incarnation of or an ally of Batman, and a member of the Batman Family. This template will automatically categorize articles that include it into the "Batman Family members" category.

[0] Checkmate (Volume 2) #2

[1]

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