Born in 2022, Annika hails from Romania. She met Boris as a young girl during the events of the Pax Artificium campaign, under the guises of Grimm and PaleDeathKnight761. As a talented computer hacker despite her young age, she was initially hired to create a neurovirus for use as a weapon against people with neural jacks, which she agreed to do to pay for her hospital treatments (she was sickly and her family would starve if they paid for it without help). However, once Boris started researching PaleDeathKnight761’s identity, she began keeping tabs on him and soon became enamored with him. She felt a great deal of guilt over what she had done, and eventually befriended Boris.
Later, after Ingolf Rixmann had learned of Annika’s unique abilities (though she did not fully understand it herself, she had a strange connection with Emmanuel allowing her to directly access the minds of others regardless of distance), Rixmann killed her family and took over the hospital where Annika was being treated, and began to perform terrible experiments on her. Boris, enraged, rescued her from Rixmann’s clutches before he could do any permanent damage, and healed Annika’s illness. They were married a few years later, and have been inseparable ever since.
Though some might object to Boris’s "robbing the cradle," he and Annika have had a long and fulfilling relationship. Thus far they have raised a single child, Nikolai.