Under normal circumstances Zhang Jie would have been dead well over 900 years ago but being an Alpha an inheriting his fathers "gift" of aging very slowly meant he had survived the passage of time. The loss of his mother at an early age and driven insane by a continuous existence has led Zhang Jie to believe his near immortality is a gift from fate and he has been charged with ensuring the human race's survival by making sure only the strongest survive. For centuries he was incarecerated but after escaping in the modern world he has become known by CLEA as Lock Box. This is down to his habit of playing "games" of survival by abducting people and placing them in elaborate dungeons with lethal puzzles. If a person escapes then they are obviously worthy of their role in society and if they die then Zhang Jie has done his job. He also likes "arranging" games of jeopardy whereby he places two people in situations where one will survive at the expense of another, so proving who is the stronger. Due to their prominence in society public heroes are his frequent targets and since those that manage to escape usually want pay back he has taken to wearing a powered armored suit which provides a means of protection and escape (via jet thrusters).

Much of what is known about Zhang Jie was voluntarily surrendered by his father Yu Jianjun. (aka The Oracle). Initially Jianjun was not believed which allowed Zhang Jie to get organised and thus become a far bigger problem.

Jianjun explained that Zhang Jie's life started nearly a millennia before CLEA had ever existed. He explained that the meteor impact which had “created” the present day Alphas had not been the first incident of its kind but rather the second for a smaller celestial body had landed in a remote region of China a thousand years earlier.

Just like in the present day, in time people began exhibiting strange abilities but unlike in the current time period there was not the same movement of people so Alpha humans never really spread beyond the village and valley they inhabited.

The Alpha ability Jianjun received was extremely slow aging and a form of unique insight where by nobody could hide the truth from him and he had the means to “see” an Alpha’s potential before they even made the transition to an Alpha Superior.

As with the current day, an Alpha parent could pass on the Alpha effect to their children and this happened with Jianjun and his wife when their children Liu Fang and Zhang Jie were born.

Zhang Jie their son seemed to gain something akin to his father’s ability in that he aged very slowly because he could rapidly repair any injury. Liu Fang also gained a similar form of immortality in that she could literally steal the aging process of another person which enabled her to heal aging her victims rapidly. Upon touching them she could also see inside the soul much like Jianjun.

Both children though did not know their capabilities until a local warlord attacked their village. At the time Zhang Jie was twenty nine and Liu Fang was twenty seven. The warlord had heard of a remote village filled with “magical” people. Fearing such people could undermine his power he sent soldiers in to eliminate those who he believed might challenge his status. The appearance of soldiers and their culling of the village triggered Zhang Ji and Liu Fang’s Alpha abilities. The family tried to escape with their parents but Jianjun’s wife, their mother was killed. Liu Fang also received a mortal blow from a sword but instinctively she grabbed hold of the soldier, at which point he rapidly changed from a young man to an old one and Liu Fang’s injury healed. At the same time she could feel the soldiers fear and panic and see into his thoughts.

Zhang Ji had a similar experience only his was much more straight forwards. Taking his ability to heal as a sign that he was destined for something special he fought back. Unable to get killed by bladed weapons certainly instilled fear into the warlord’s party. This along with the fact the other village Alpha’s were beating back the raiders led them into a retreat.

Having lost his soldiers the warlord sent an envoy to parlay with the villagers. He would leave them alone and protect them providing they would not usurp his position. Since the villagers had never had an interest in fighting in the first place an agreement was reached. However the deal was not acceptable to Zhang Jie. Full of grief for the loss of his mother, he wanted revenge. Jianjun tried to talk him out of the idea stating the path he was on would lead to no good end but it was no use.

Zhang Jie would not listen and so headed out of the village. Several days later he found his target but before he killed the warlord he wanted to know why his mother had been murdered along with a good proportion of the village.

The warlord was quite honest in explaining how he was forced to deal with threats to avoid being taken advantage of by rivals. He explained that only the strongest survived and this was the natural rule of survival for everything. Zhang Jie agreed and challenged him to a duel based on those words. Rather than lose face the warlord agreed to the terms without knowing that the challenger could not in fact be killed.

After the warlord was dead Zhang Jie was now the new leader and had an army at his disposal. For many years he controlled the region without any trouble. He acted justly and for a while rules wisely. However the passage of time made him grow bored. He grew tired of an endless precession of people wanting his help and that’s when the words of the warlord returned to his mind. He began to figure in constantly “helping” people he was defying nature by helping the weak flourish. Whenever anyone wanted his help, he would set them a challenge first. If they succeeded then he would help them. This progressed to the idea of pitting rivals against each other when two people wanted the same thing from him.

Eventually he concluded that the gift given him was to be used to cull the worthless from society. Since he could not die he considered that must be his purpose for existing.

After Zhang Jie had gone all that remained of the family was Jianjun and Liu Fang. They remained in the village and after hearing of how Zhang Jie was now the new warlord, Jianjun was desperate that his other child would not take a dark path. Years past and the population in the village declined. Having seen the devastation his gifts were bringing to the world the entire village decided that their gifts should be lost in the annals of time and so they chose not to have any more children. Consequently within a couple of generations the village and its people were nothing more than a memory apart from two surviving residents Jianjun and Liu Fang.

Without anyone else around Jianjun felt his daughter would not have anything to tempt her, and she would grow old and die but live a normal life. He however underestimated Liu Fang’s compulsion to survive and she would sneak away for weeks at a time only to return with a youthful appearance.

Each time she regenerated her body in that manner not only did she regain her youth but significantly she also gained some of the memories and motivations of her victims. While an average person might gather feelings of anger, malice and aggression over time, in Liu Fang’s case hers was multiplied many times over.

Jianjun was aware of what she was doing since her appearance made it obvious and whilst he tried his best to get her to stop stealing the lives of others, any hopes of doing that were lost when on one of her “trips” away from home she learned that her brother had come up with an idea of ensuring mankind’s future.

Though he was ensuring the survival of the fittest through competition she believed she could do the same only better, by looking inside people and deciding if they were worthy enough to survive. She informed her father that she would do as he had asked and not steal the lives of others providing the individual was worthy in the first place. Those that were not worthy she would sacrifice.

When she told him this Jianjun realised that Liu Fang’s mind had been corrupted through exposure to too many negative influences via contact with their minds. He also realised that when she was reading the minds of others if those people were full of potential but had a low opinion of themselves she would make the assumption that they were not worthy when the trust was in fact probably the opposite. With his son running amok all over China kidnapping victims and putting them on trials against each other, he knew he had to stop his children, only he could not bring himself to find a means to kill them.

Instead he tricked the pair into going to a monastery where he had the monks imprison them hoping they could educate the pair and show them a way to live in peace and the potential for good they had. However both children were convinced what they were doing was for the good of people in general.

Days became, weeks, weeks became months and months became years. Centuries would pass with the pair incarcerated and refusing to change their ways. In Liu Fang’s case she would take every opportunity to steal the lives from the monks holding her prisoner which is how she survived for centuries without aging.

Jianjun meanwhile set about using his slow aging to train successions of warriors of the ages in preparation for the time his children would eventually escape their prison. Whilst he felt unable to kill them he knew what needed to be done if events took a drastic change.

The only time this came close was during the second meteorite strike but the ancient monastery survived. Jianjun continued training warriors right into the era when new Alphas began appearing. The Grey Man was of particular interest to him because he thought that particular Alpha had similarities to Liu Fang and that maybe he could use him to neutralise her.

Modern times became something of a problem for unlike in the past, groups of sword wielding warriors could operate without raising an eyebrow in modern society they would have to remain a secret. As training warriors became harder he had to change tactics and simply find allies rather than training his own army.

He therefore began freely training some Alpha heroes in the belief that when the time came they would use their skills to help him. Whatever his eventual goal was the plans were upset when an earthquake struck the monastery and his children escaped into the modern world.

Though it took some time for them to adjust to the technology and the way things worked once they were acclimatised they quickly returned to the old ways and like before since their methods were different they did not stay with each other but set out into the world alone.

With two of the most dangerous people, free to do as they wanted, Jianjun stepped up his campaign to find allies. This was when he hit upon the idea of contacting CLEA, since they had the proven skills to deal with troublesome Alphas. However they did not believe him when he initially told them the story so Jianjun was left to find other allies. This was despite the fact they were already aware of the actions of his children since they had attracted enough attention for them to be given codenames by the agency.

When word of the statement made by Jianjun eventually reached Chief Johnathon Hunter’s desk he immediately requested they locate Jianjun, now known as “Oracle” in order to learn more. By that time though he had slipped into the shadows after CLEA had not rallied to his cause. Ironically though Jianjun felt he needed CLEA’s help to deal with his children the agency needed his intel in order to understand how to deal with them and Hunter believed if Jianjun was as old as he had stated and the Alpha phenomenon had occurred before then the “old man” could have been a valuable source of information.

With such a missed opportunity training methods were changed in regards to handling “unusual” statements.

Of Jianjun’s children, Liu Fang is known to the agency as “Judgement” and has been spotted in a variety of locations around the world, each time leaving a path of dead bodies in her wake as she tests prominent individuals to see if they are worthy. She is considered danger for if backed into a corner she does not seem to hesitate in stealing the life of another in order to continue her quest. Psychologists analysing her actions think that she truly believes her actions are just but since her morals have been warped by the minds of others she is no longer able to differentiate between right and wrong and the part of her Alpha ability that absorbs the life force of others is so strong she has a desire to use it in much the same way as drug addicts feel the need to find their next fix.

Zhang Jie is known to the agency as Lockbox. Since first reported incidents involving this Alpha he has reportedly now managed to obtain an armoured suit capable of generating force fields. He continues to test the human race in cruel a viscous games which he believed weeds out the weak and has recently taken to testing what the public perceive as heroes. As such people are regarded as being prominent enough to be considered as role models for society Lockbox seems to be focused on testing that hypothesis. Psychologists presume Lockbox could not handle the loneliness that immortality brought to him and his tests are little more than a sadistic form of pleasure to provide a distraction from his mundane existence. Obviously and heroes that escape his games tend to want some measure of justice which is probably why he obtained the suit since such people may well have the means to end his life and for the first time in a millennia he is no longer totally invulnerable.