Scarlett Adams

Scarlett Adams is a young Chinese girl living in London and she is the fifth of the Five in The Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz.

Ten thousand years ago
Scarlett, in her past life, was known as Scar, and she technically first appears in the third book of the series, Nightrise. She is said to be a very powerful warrior, and she leads a whole army of men three times her age. She is respected, despite being only fourteen. She is also very fierce and aggressive, and rude to Jamie when they meet. She finds Jamie for the first time when he goes back to the past ten thousand years ago. She is sent by Matt to take whatever she finds at the fortress where Sapling, Jamie's first form, was killed by the Old Ones. When Scarlett finds Jamie, she is shocked yet relieved, and her best friend Finn proves Jamie is Sapling by giving him Sapling's old sword, Frost. Jamie is then protected by Scarlett in the battle by waiting at the top of a forested hill until its time to venture in. Scarlett here shows her power by causing a rainstorm, which blinds the Old Ones so they can't see her arrival until its too late.

Jamie and Scarlett meet with the other Gatekeepers and stab Chaos in the heart, taking him by surprise when he finds all of them are still alive after all. Jamie and Scarlett then celebrate with the army and he returns to modern times.

Life in the present
Scarlett is the only one of the Five, besides Matt, with a relatively normal life. She was actually born in Meizhou, in China, and she was sent over to England for adoption. This was actually the Triads who sent her over to be fostered, because they knew that when the allies of the Old Ones came to hunt down the Five, China would be the first place they would look.

Scarlett's real name was said to be Lin Mo, named after an ancient Chinese storm goddess. The chairman of the Triads, Han Shung-Tung, had a statue of Lin Mo in his mansion in Hong Kong and knew the two were identical. He knew Scarlett was the incarnation of Lin Mo and thus sent her off for adoption.

An English couple by the name of Paul and Vanessa Adams came and adopted Scarlett, being very rich themselves. Paul later said he rushed into adoption and should have thought more carefully but he was glad he did it.

Scarlett ended up in Dulwich in London and she had a good life. She had a housekeeper named Mrs Murdoch and they had a mutual friendship. Neither of them liked each other but they respected each other. But Scarlett was happier at school and she had a friend (some thought he was a boyfriend but he wasn't) named Aidan, who came from America, and his father was a banker who could be relocated back to the USA any day. Scarlett regularly beat Aidan at tennis.

Necropolis
Scarlett first appears in Necropolis as the protagonist of the book. She is walking home from school one day when Aidan calls her over the road, and she goes over without looking left or right, and is almost killed by a speeding van (who, to be fair, had a driver who was late for his meeting and he did try and stop for Scarlett) and then to everyone's surprise Scarlett was saved by an Asian man who ran off when a policeman came up. Scarlett wasn't hurt but she was shocked and often wondered who the Asian man could have been. Mrs Murdoch said he must have been an illegal immigrant which is why he fled after police came.

This happened three years ago. Now it was 2009 and Scarlett was having a good life in London. She was unnerved when she was taken to a place named St Meredith's church in London for an art trip because she had a bad feeling about the church, as if it was possessed. Her friend Amanda even said there had been a murder in the church a few months ago. A man named William Morton had been stabbed. Amanda was a fan of Agatha Christie so Amanda doubted her until the teacher confirmed it.

In the church, Scarlett was even more creeped out by the candles and hunched worshipers, until she saw a door open, and a boy walk in. He looked like a boy named Matt who she had been dreaming of since she was old enough to dream. Scarlett was surprised when Amanda didn't see the boy and when he disappeared through a door carved with a pentagram she followed, but to her surprise there was a monk sitting at the end of a long hallway emblazoned with candles. The monk laughed and, to Scarlett's shock, dragged her into a cell to wait. When they got her back out, when they took her through the corridors of the monastery, she saw snowy mountains and a rural village and knew she definitely was not in England any more.

She met the leader, a man named Father Gregory Malenkov who told her his own sob story of how he hated the world and hated humanity and that the Old Ones, an ancient group of demons from the past, were the real gods. Father Malenkov admitted to killing the old abbot, Father Janec, and killing the twenty other brothers, because only thirteen of them were willing to start the worship of the Old Ones. Father Malenkov also said that "the Old Ones deserve to rule the world because the world is evil and so are they." He then was sexually attracted to Scarlett, and touched her cheek. He said she was beautiful and that he couldn't believe she didn't know her full power as a Gatekeeper who had defeated the Old Ones millenia ago. Upon learning he was planning to take her to a prison a long way away, Scarlett waited one night in her cell before attacking the monks and fleeing the next morning. She had a furious race with Father Malenkov to the interdimensional door, but she made it in time and ended up back in St Merediths in London, shaking and being questioned by a curious policeman.

Scarlett was for some reason treated as if she was a criminal by both the teachers at her school, St Geniveves, and by the police themselves. Only her stepfather, Paul, (who arrived back from a business meeting to rescue her) and her best friend Aidan seemed to believe her about what really happened. Aidan even volunteered to return to St Merediths and see if the door was really magic. All her teachers were furious and yet all the girls were excited when they were with Scarlett. In the end, it was said that Scarlett fell, hit her head, and this version of events was caused by amnesia. Scarlett was surprised when her headmistress summoned her and told her her stepfather wanted her to go to Hong Kong, of all places.

Her father's company, Nightrise, had won the election results for the next US President, but it turned out they were exposed as frauds, and the company was in jeopardy. Paul pretended he needed Scarlett with him for this reason, but it was really a devious plan to capture her. Scarlett had to fly solo out to China and she was met at the airport by a man named Karl and Audrey Cheng who were actually both two of the Old Ones in disguise. They led Scarlett to her father's apartment, and it wasn't long into her stay before she realized her father was nowhere there. She was also contacted by the Triads, telling her to turn to page seventy in a guide book (by cleverly illuminating the message on a tower block at night) and Scarlett was told to meet at a temple in the Jade Market. She did, and was met by a Chinese fortune teller, who also worked for the Triads, and who slipped her a message in guise of a fortune to meet on The Peak at three tomorrow afternoon. The message said "Trust us if you want to leave Hong Kong alive."

On the Peak, Audrey Cheng was mysteriously butchered to death by three Chinese people. They apologized to Scarlett, then showed Audrey's corpse which had become a reptilian creature. They said she was a demon, and took Scarlett to safety. Their boss, Lohan, son of Han Shung-Tung, explained the Old Ones and the danger, then the Old Ones tracked them down using a bug in Scarlett's necklace that the chairman of Nightrise had given her. They chased her up to the roof and narrowly caught her, but thanks to Lohan they escaped. Lohan was going to disguise Scarlett as a boy and get her out, but at the last moment before she boarded the cruise ship she recognized her stepfather, and he betrayed her to the Old Ones who imprisoned her and killed her foster parents who also worked with the Triads.

In prison, Scarlett was met with Matt Freeman, for the first time in her life. He confessed her stepfather had been killed by the Nightrise chairman. Then the Triads caused a blackout, and he got them out, with Jamie Tyler's help. Then they escaped through a Signal Ten typhoon which Scarlett's rage had inadvertently summoned, and Scarlett finally used her power to control the storm. Whole tower blocks got incinerated but she got her party through alive. In the temple, the Triads killed the Nightrise agents who wanted to kill the Gatekeepers, and Scarlett said goodbye to the Triads before Jamie asked where to go. One Nightrise agent was still alive, and he shot Scarlett in the head, intending to kill Jamie. As he got shot by Lohan, the storm fell on them and destroyed the temple. Matt yelled for them to go into the interdimensional door, but forgot to have a fixed destination in mind. As a result, the Five and the injured Scarlett got swept all across the world.

Oblivion
Little did Scarlett know that she had passed ten whole years with a bullet in her brain. She survived, just barely, when the doors finally opened and they fell out into Egypt. Scarlett was with Richard Cole, the journalist and Matt's best friend. He had the good fortune to meet the Nexus organization who protected them from the Old Ones. In the hospital, the Nexus healed Scarlett and she slowly recovered.

Richard then told her of the truth, that ten whole years had passed, and every single city, including London and Cairo (where they were now) was destroyed, also no electricity or Internet existed any more. The Old Ones had won. To this end, the leader of the Resistance, a man named Tarik, tempted Scarlett to kill his eternal enemy, Karim el-Akkad, by using her power to control the weather to destroy him in a tornado or a rain of fire, but the peaceful Scarlett refused.

All the soldiers were shocked and an angry Tarik turned Scarlett into a suicide bomber to kill the Field Marshall. However, a cunning Richard switched the bomb to Tarik's car. He found Tarik used child soldiers and believed him to be just as evil as Field Marshall Karim el-Akkad. Richard waited until they got to Karim himself, then Tarik's jeep blew up, killing Tarik and his men. Richard fought with Karim and Karim got shot by accident and he died. Then Richard and Scarlett fled Cairo, Scarlett using a sandstorm to block the enemy vehicles.

At the palace of a mad sheik, Rasheed al-Tamim, who wanted to marry Scarlett and whose captive pilot Scarlett and Richard needed to fly them to Antarctica, Scarlett won the lottery and impressed the sheik and Richard got the sheik's wife to release the pilot for them. After being chased out, Scarlett used her weather control powers to block the enemy vehicles and the pilot initially thought she was just falling asleep until Richard told him of her powers.

In the intervening times, Scarlett met the Five in the Dreamworld and knew Matt had a precognitive sense of the future because of his biography he read, but he refused to say how he knew. She told Richard she saw Matt and how he looked down. She finally met him for real in Antarctica again and she also met Lohan, both of them having survived Brazil. Then they engaged in a battle with the Old Ones. Scarlett helped by using a blizzard to enter Oblivion but the battle was an utter disaster - the bombs used to destroy Oblivion barely damaged the palace, and it was an illusion that it was destroyed. Almost all the soldiers were brutally killed, and Scarlett tried to sweep the enemy up in a tornado but this wasn't enough. Matt cracked open the ice pack and stopped the Old Ones from entering the camp.

Eventually, when Matt decided to meet the traitorous Scott Tyler and get arrested by the Old Ones who tortured him, Scarlett got so angry she entered Oblivion itself, and used a blizzard to protect her and Lohan. She entered the palace to find a dying Scott in the snow. Lohan killed Jonas Mortlake before he could kill Scott and then the interdimensional door finally opened, Scott having unlocked it with the price of death. Scott saw Jamie before he died and all seemed lost because only three of the Five existed and at that moment Matt died. Then the sky got on fire. But the past forms of Scott and Matt returned just as the Five got surrounded by the Old Ones and they were about to be slaughtered. When the King of the Old Ones, Chaos, appeared, Matt and Scott joined Scarlett, Jamie and Pedro, who all stabbed Chaos in the heart and ended his evil reign. The Old Ones got sucked into the new gate which opened, but before it could close, the World Army sent nuclear bombs in which blew up the Old Ones, finally killing them for good.

Afterwards
After a bitter sweet victory feat, Scarlett was torn between going with Matt and staying on Earth and returning to Dulwich. She knew it was destroyed but finally the thought of possibly seeing a dead Aidan made her decide to go with Matt to the Dreamworld, which got back all its life and colour and she lived there with the Five and their parents, the Librarian and his wife, to this day, finally at peace.

Personality
Scarlett was a strong natured girl who could see the best in everyone and she felt pity for Father Malenkov despite his many evils. She was a very likeable individual and despite having never met her in his life, Matt took an immediate liking to her at first sight. Also Scarlett was a very comical person, despite having a bullet taken out of her skull, she said "What a mess!" upon seeing herself. She was always slim, yet after war rations, she got thinner. All she really wanted was peace yet she got it when she went to the Dreamworld, and she would do anything to defend those she loved, such as Scott, she completely forgot about his treachery as she saw him bleeding to death on the snow. Despite her being shot in the head she had no serious brain damage afterwards, which is something to be grateful for.