I ran a poll last month to determine the evil new character coming in Safe Haven. Everyone voted, and it was a tie for the two characters below. I have rewritten them and strengthened them. Please vote for one of the two characters below.

Walter Pruitt

Physical description: He's 44yo, five foot ten, pudgy, salt and pepper stubble, a scar through his left eyebrow that splits it into two uneven halves. He dresses plainly so no one notices him. His stubble never grows into a full beard.

Demeanor: He walks slowly and observes more than he speaks. He asks good follow-up questions and rarely volunteers an opinion unless asked directly. When he does offer one, he gives vague responses like, "I could be wrong, but..." He has a habit of repeating the last few words someone says back to them, and it makes people feel like he's really listening.

True nature: He's a former hostage negotiator who catalogs everyone's weaknesses. He holds onto confessions, debts, and regrets, and waits until the information is useful to him. He never forces a crisis. He waits for one to happen naturally, then makes sure he's the only person positioned to resolve it.

Main motivation: He doesn't want power for what it gets him. He wants to watch people break. The group is a slow experiment to him. When people die because of choices he engineered, in their death, he feels a sense of pride. It is the same feeling of a hypothesis proven correct.

Why is he like this: His job was built around a single skill: staying calm enough to talk someone out of the worst decision of their life. For years that worked. Then it didn't. During a domestic barricade call, Walter kept talking to the gunman two hours past when protocol called for a tactical breach. The man killed his wife and himself, and Walter has never admitted to anyone that some part of him was more interested in the experiment than the outcome. The department cleared him. He was never officially blamed. But something in him stopped believing that his calm, careful process was actually about saving anyone. He started to suspect it was about control.

Renata Vasquez, 29

Physical description: She's 29yo, five feet two with dark hair. She has a chipped front tooth she covers by not smiling with her mouth open. Her nails are bitten down to nothing. She wears form-fitting clothes only because she's been grabbed by zombies and wants to prevent it from happening again. She always looks a little more put together than everyone around her.

Demeanor: She comes off as honest and kind. She remembers small details about people and checks in with everyone. Her affection feels real. That's what makes it dangerous.

True nature: She's a former pharmaceutical sales rep who treats relationships as inventory. She tracks who owes her gratitude or loyalty. She genuinely believes she deserves the loyalty she's built, which makes her more dangerous than someone who's cynical about what she's doing.

Main motivation: She needs to be loved more than she needs anything else. Every kindness she performs is a hook. When someone's loyalty to her outweighs their loyalty to the group, she considers it a personal victory. If she recognizes that someone is more liked than her in a group, she gets rid of them, and she'll frame it to herself as protecting the group from someone who wasn't reliable.

Why is she like this? Her father left when she was eleven, and she decided it was because her mother had stopped doing the small things that made her memorable. She has never let herself become forgettable since, and once got a coworker fired over a promotion by quietly steering a client complaint against her.