Before Hanna was born in the Nineties, her mother was a troubled teenager who was considering getting an abortion at a nearby clinic. She was then talked out of it by a man named Eric Keller (a CIA operative), who recruited Hanna's mom and other similar mothers into a top-secret program started by Marissa Wieger (another operative). The program was to turn the unborn babies into super-soldiers by altering their DNA, which was highly illegal and unethical. Under pressure from the possibility of being caught, Marissa covered up the project and then killed all the mothers and their then-two-year-old children - except for Hanna and her mother. Eric left the CIA without warning and helped Hanna and her mom escape their fate, driving them down a deserted rural road towards the woods where they could hide. Unfortunately Marissa tracked down the family and killed Hanna's mother out of mental instability. Eric saved Hanna and raised her in an isolated tundra forest, away from human contact, pretending to be her father. Hanna's true father is unknown, but is probably, like Hanna's mother, of German ethnicity. Hanna also has a grandmother who is later murdered by Marissa.From the age of four years old onward, Hanna is raised by Eric to be the super-soldier she was created to be. She's an expert fighter, assassin, hunter and survivor, and lives for the day where she is able to be sent out into the world to take Marissa down. However, she knows nothing of the project or Eric's involvement in the CIA in the past. All she has of her mother is a faded strip of Kodak photos. Eventually Hanna decides that she is finally ready for her 'mission', but is captured by the CIA and kept underground at one of their complexes in Africa. After escaping, she finds herself trying to navigate a world that she just isn't prepared for, and after befriending a modern, middle-class British family, Hanna becomes very attached to the teenage daughter and realizes that she would rather just be allowed to have a normal life and not hurt Marissa. In the end though, things don't work out as she hopes and she ultimately ends up having to face Marissa in person.Hanna is of German descent and is a frail-looking, pale, freckled teenage girl with a passive, unemotional expression, long wavy light blonde hair, bright blue eyes and often whatever clothing fits the situation she happens to be in. She has very poor social skills, a lack of pity in most cases, a love of nature and of picture books, music and animals. Despite her lack of compassion and her ability to calmly kill people, she is not a bad person at heart and doesn't hate people. She even decides that she doesn't want to kill Marissa, telling her that she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. She is also shocked when she discovers her true origins and her status as an experiment gone wrong. Hanna particularly likes Mr. Grimm, an eccentric CIA agent-turned-magician who hides out in an abandoned Berlin amusement park. Show less «