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The Visitor
A delivery worker who stumbles upon Fenix Corp's security room to find the security staff dead and the building on fire. The Visitor is now thrust with the responsibility of guiding four people to safety, with limited access to the security system.
- Everyone Calls Them Barkeep: They are only ever referred to as "Visitor".
- Featureless Protagonist: They aren't given any description.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Sometimes responds with this when criticized for the choices they make.
- Mission Control: They command the other characters in order to achieve the least casualties.
- Sadistic Choice: Repeatedly has to choose who to kill and who to save.
Christina
An employee of Fenix Corp. She's particularly critical of the company's activities.
- Affably Evil: Although she becomes an arsonist and a murderer, she's still a relatively friendly person to the visitor when admitting her guilt.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: In the True Ending, just before she goes back to the TEMPEST to try and find her mother again, she tells the Visitor to tell Steve that she's sorry, and that she loves him.
- Anti-Villain: She lit the fire and killed the security guards all because the company got her mother killed in an experiment.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Despite constantly bickering with Steve, it's very obvious that the two of them are close to each other, eventually coming to the point that both of them offer to die in the place of the other.
- Big Bad: She was the one behind the fire that sets the plot in motion.
- Didn't Think This Through: She didn't think to double-check that the building really was empty before she started the fire, which leads to Troy and Steve being caught in the crosshairs. She also didn't properly plan her escape route or account for the building's fire suppression system, leaving her in a situation where she can't escape the building in time without another character to help her, or in the Golden Ending when the player has all the knowledge they need to do it themselves.
- Driven to Villainy: She committed the arson in Fenix Corporations to stop them from killing someone else in their experiments like they did her mother.
- Even Bad Women Love Their Mamas: The whole reason why she did what she did: her mother died at the hands of Fenix Corporations.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She genuinely cares for Steve and is heartbroken if he dies. This is especially true because her carelessness led to it in the first place.
- Evil All Along: She's the true culprit behind the fire.
- Failed a Spot Check: Christina claims the building was supposed to be "nearly empty" except for Lionel, but she apparently didn't double-check this, leading to Steve and Troy getting caught in the fire as well.
- Foreshadowing:
- Her associated color is a reddish-orange. Say, what color is fire again?
- How she reacts to who you choose to save is very telling on a second playthrough. She seems strangely upset if you let Troy die, considering he keeps repeating that he lit the fire: Christina knows she did it. She has no idea why Troy is lying, but she knows he's innocent and feels terrible for it. She's perfectly content to let Lionel die because he was the original target of her plan, and she's furious if Steve dies because she not only genuinely cares for him, didn't realize he was in the building when she set the fire.
- She seems to know more information than she should. She asks why the guards were shot when you've only said they were dead, and seems awfully convicted to the idea that the fire was lit to stop Fenix Corporation from operating.
- Heroic Sacrifice: If you choose to save Steve over her.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Right before the choice between her and Steve's endings, she mentions that the guards were shot. You never said they were shot. Nobody catches this.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's rather hostile to Lionel and is still belligerent to the visitor, but she genuinely likes Steve and wants to keep him alive, and unlike the others, she expresses remorse if Troy dies. Because she knows he's not the arsonist: She is.
- Karma Houdini: In the true ending, she runs off through the TEMPEST machine to escape punishment for lighting the fire and find her mother.
- Love Confessor: She admits to the visitor that she loves Steve in the Golden Ending, but resolves to go back in the TEMPEST machine to try and find her mother, lamenting that she cannot have both Steve and her mother at the same time, but hopes to see him again someday.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Upon realizing that in her desire for revenge against Lionel and Fenix Corp, she accidentally killed Steve.
- Also shows up if you choose to kill Troy first; she's shown to be unusually upset when Steve jokes about it. She knows Troy was lying about setting the fire because she did it herself, but at this point in time she doesn't know why Troy told that lie; from her perspective, someone she's never met before has not only taken the blame for her crimes, but just died horribly because of them.
- Necessarily Evil: How she sees her role as the Big Bad; she's doing it to stop Fenix Corporations from doing even worse things. Deconstructed in that her all-consuming desire to do this made her rush the job, leading to multiple innocent people getting caught in the crossfire when they shouldn't have been.
- Never Hurt an Innocent: She's distraught over Steve and Troy dying because they did nothing wrong.
- Tragic Villain: She's only doing bad things to get back at the company that killed her mother.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Snarks at and insults Steve, but never wants him harmed, and if the Sadistic Choice is between Steve and herself, she insists Steve be saved with zero hesitation.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She wants to stop Fenix Corporations from killing anyone else like they did her mother. She goes about it by killing the security guards and lighting a fire.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Does not take it well if you sacrifice Steve to save her.
- You Killed My Mother: Her goal is to destroy the Fenix Corp and kill Lionel because her mother was killed in one of their time travel experiments.
Steve
Another employee of Fenix Corp, working late at the time of the fire. He really likes to snark at Christina.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Despite constantly bickering with Christina, it's very obvious that the two of them are close to each other, eventually coming to the point that the both of them offer to die in the place of the other.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's quite snarky towards everyone else.
- The Everyman: Of the four main characters, he is the only ordinary character without any dark backstory or ruthless actions.
- Heroic BSoD: Steve does not take Christina's death well, lashing out at the player, desperately asking for Christina to reply, deluding himself into believing she's alive and making a crackpot theory as to why she survived from the fact that some cockatiels were taught to say "Christina lives".
- Heroic Sacrifice: Invoked by gameplay. If Steve and Christina are the only two characters remaining, the way Christina is saved is for Steve to move into the burning room and activate the sprinklers, which will protect her, but doom himself.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Steve is sarcastic, hot-tempered, short-fused, impatient, rude, and crude, going as far as joking about Troy's death. Steve, however, begs the Visitor to spare Christina when it comes to the choice of killing either him or Christina. Further, he's always the target of the Sadistic Choice, so his decisions come largely out of a desire to save his own life.
- Only in It for the Money: Downplayed. Steve has really no idea what Fenix does and he's pretty certain that it's shady stuff. But Fenix pays really well.
- Sanity Slippage: He starts undergoing it after Christina dies, desperately trying to convince himself that she's somehow alive.
- Speak Ill of the Dead: Makes jokes about Troy after his death, much to Christina's discomfort.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Snarks at and insults Christina, but if they're the last two survivors, he begs you to save her.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Does not take it well if you sacrifice Christina to save him.
Troy
An odd man who claims to have lit the fire and killed the security guards. He's also unusually knowledgeable of the building and of everyone's backstory.
- Cassandra Truth: Not during any of the playthroughs, but in the last five times he's been stuck repeating the fire and the deaths of everyone around him, he tried to warn everyone that he's been there before and what will happen. Nobody remembers the events because he has been unlucky enough to end up in timelines where no one else has gone through TEMPEST, and as a result nobody believes him.
- Death Seeker: At first, he just claims he's done what he intended to and is ready to die. Fair enough, but every time you choose to spare him, he gets more insistent that you kill him and spare someone else instead. Pretty odd for a man that apparently just committed arson and two murders.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: He has to watch his coworkers die six times over, but he finally reaches a timeline where Everybody Lives in the true ending.
- False Confession: Turns out he didn't light the fire after all. He just told you that so he could finally die.
- Good All Along: Turns out he's not an arsonist and a murderer.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: A short but violent one. He was just a regular employee caught in the fire. The visitor spared his life and he ended up stumbling into the TEMPEST time machine, which sent him back to the beginning of the fire. This happened FIVE times, and each time he was spared and he had to witness every other person die while he himself lived, only to have to endure seeing everyone die again. He could not warn anyone because nobody believed him. By the time the game starts, his will to live has been absolutely broken, so he claims to be the one who lit the fires in the hopes that the visitor finally lets him die.
- Nice Guy: Keeps saying that he killed the guards and committed arson, but otherwise, he doesn't seem to have a malicious bone in his body. It's almost as if he's begging to be killed so the others can be spared... because he is. He didn't light the fire, he's just lying to try to get himself killed to end his own suffering and, hopefully, let someone live and walk out. In the final play through, he is overjoyed that everyone finally remembers going through the fires, and that finally, no-one has to die.
- Red Herring: Troy states up front that he's the murderer and arsonist, and gives no reason for anyone to doubt him. When you get either his ending or Christina's, you'll find out the truth: It wasn't him, he watched people die over and over again and he wants to die because it's too much for him to keep witnessing.
- Suicide by Cop: Seems a bit too eager to have the visitor kill him...
- Time Loop Fatigue: After seeing everyone else die to spare his life five times in a row, Troy is out of willpower and just wants it all to end.
- Token Good Teammate: Ends up being this to his two coworkers and boss, as he's neither involved in shady endeavors (Christina and Lionel) nor a jerk (Steve).
- Trauma Conga Line: His backstory. Five times he was spared, witnessing every other survivor die horribly, and five times he ends up having no other option other than going through a time machine that makes him re-live the whole thing all over again. Understandably, by the time the player meets him, he no longer has any will to live left.
Lionel
The CEO of Fenix Corp. He happened to be visiting at the time, but he doesn't come to the facility regularly. He is rather shady, but he is otherwise the most cool-headed and reasonable of the people trapped in the building.
- Affably Evil: Despite his role as a corrupt CEO described below, Lionel is actually very cordial and professional with the Visitor.
- Ambiguously Evil: He's a shady man at the very least, and while Christina's mother's death was accidental, Christina herself implied that it wasn't nor will it be the first time something like that happens, so it's safe to say he's not completely clean.
- Anti-Villain: He's behind the company that led Christina's mom to death, but overall he's not the worst person and is actually quite well mannered.
- Cassandra Truth: The Visitor doesn't believe him at first when told about the company's interest in time travel.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The CEO of a shady business in which none of the employees are sure of what they do. He is also not above trying to bribe the player character into sparing his life with money and information. Indeed, Fenix Corp turns out to be a front for a time travel research lab. However, although his methods are super sneaky and most probably illegal, Lionel is not actually malicious.
- Evil Old Folks: Lionel seems to be the only elder of the group, and although he is a shady CEO of an even shadier company, he's not very villainous and is more of an Anti-Villain.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He seems to be the only character wearing glasses and he is a shady man, albeit a respectful one.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Fenix Corporations as whole could count, as it was their operations that led Christina to lit the fire but on an individual level, Lionel is the CEO and thus the one leading this company, not to mention being Christina's target with the fire.
- I Gave My Word: If you lead him through all the rooms, he will do as promised earlier and spill out everything you want to know, no matter how crazy-sounding or incriminating. Somewhat surprising, given his Corrupt Corporate Executive characterization.Very well. A deal's a deal. What do you want to know?
- Mad Scientist: Oddly enough, he is by his own admission a time travel researcher first, and presumably a CEO second.
- Mr. Exposition: He is the one who explains what Fenix Corp really is and ties everyone's stories together in the true ending.
- Only Sane Man: He's generally the most composed and levelheaded of the people you're coordinating.
- Pet the Dog: In the Bad Ending preceded by Troy's death, Lionel will take a moment to apologize for being more concerned about damages to his company than casualties caused by the fire.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Lionel is pretty scummy and undergoes plenty of unethical and dangerous research, but his vision is for the world to be saved. At no point does he ever attempt to harm anyone: He'd rather the projects succeed.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Lionel is really only committing potentially illegal acts on the job in pursuit of time travel research. Even the death of Christina's mother was accidental.
