Toby Nance was the Special Projects Group's inventor and technology expert, and Mac Rendell's love interest.
Biography
Background
Toby was born to a Chinese mother and a preacher father, and learned to speak fluent Cantonese from her mother. Toby's father was apparently highly strict with her, and Toby herself usually tried to keep her romantic relationships secret from her parents. (Angry Birds, Babes in the Woods) In high school, Toby at one point dated a football team captain, but secretly had an affair with the same cheerleader as him. (Undone)
As an adult, Toby developed a romantic relationship with Natalie, and the two joined the Fatal Babes. (Babes in the Woods) At some point, Toby apparently left the Babes and subsequently joined Evan Cross' Anomaly-hunting Special Projects Group.
The New World
While the Special Projects Group were attempting to track and study a recurring Anomaly in Stanley Park, when Evan brought Mac Rendell into the SPG and showed Mac the Tank, Toby was introduced to Mac and then began discussing the Stanley Park Anomaly with Evan. Evan and Toby decided to set up a magnetometer network in Stanley Park to detect and reach the Anomaly quicker, and went to the Park to do this.
Mac and Toby covered the west side of Stanley Park to set the magnetometers up, with Toby setting the magnetometers up while Mac looked her over to her slight irritation. After the magnetometers were set up, when Mac asked about the Anomalies and how the magnetometers would detect them, Toby was confused at how Mac got on the Special Projects Group if he knew nothing about the job, and was shocked and further confused when she learned that Evan had simply given him the job and hired him out of the blue.
Later, when the Special Projects Group returned to the Tank from Stanley Park, Evan and Dylan Weir showed Toby pictures of a Utahraptor that had attacked them in the Park, and Toby was shocked and amazed that the Anomalies were spacetime portals and were releasing dinosaurs into the present. When the team then learned that Tony Drake was tracking a creature at a SkyTrain service tunnel, Evan, Mac and Dylan left to help Drake.
Shortly after, when Trevor Molison was abducted by a Pteranodon in Stanley Park, Evan had Mac tell Toby to meet them at the Park to help track Trevor down. When Evan, Dylan and Mac began searching the Park, Toby alerted Evan over the radio when they detected a distress call from Trevor over a weak radio signal. After the Pteranodon and a Utahraptor still in the present were killed, Toby helped Mac and Evan take the bodies back to Cross Photonics and store them in the freezer room, and discussed Evan's decision to keep the Anomaly phenomenon secret from the public and keep the dead creatures preserved until they could be returned to their time. After the Pteranodon and Utahraptor wer frozen, Toby left the freezer room with Mac to show Mac around the Tank more.
Sisiutl
Following the Stanley Park incursion, Toby built a new Anomaly detector at the Tank which covered the city area and would alert the Special Projects Group when it detected an Anomaly. A week after the Stanley Park incursion, as Toby finished the detector, when Evan arrived, Toby activated it and it immediately picked up dozens of Anomaly signals throughout British Columbia. Evan ruled the majority of Anomaly signals out as false positives from radio towers and hospital MRI scans, but the trio realised that one of the signals at a rural coastline had to be a real Anomaly, and Evan and Mac immediately left to investigate while Toby stayed at the Tank to monitor the Anomaly.
Toby eventually pinpointed the Anomaly's exact location at the coastline on the detector, and called Evan to tell him. Evan had already tracked the Anomaly down, and warned Toby that a Titanoboa had come through and instructed her to send out a fake warning to stop anyone going into the coastal waters where the Anomaly and the Titanoboa were located.
A short time later, Mac and Toby talked over the phone about the incursion as Mac contained the Anomaly, until interference in the phone signal from the Anomaly broke up the signal. Ange then came into the Tank, and Evan sent Toby's phone a photo of vomited up human remains he had found, which repulsed both Toby and Ange. Ange asked Toby if she thought it could be possible to block the Anomalies and stop them from opening, and a suspicious and hesitant Toby admitted that it could have been with enough funding and genius minds, but wanted Ange to talk to Evan about it first.
While Evan was searching through a storm drainage system for the Titanoboa, he called Toby and had her hack the sewer system's plans and send them to his phone so that he didn't get lost in the drains. Shortly after, Dylan called Toby and asked her to track Evan's phone, but Toby was unable to do that as Evan was underground, so she instead sent the sewer plans to Dylan's phone. Later, after Dylan rescued Evan from the Titanoboa in the drains, the two contacted Toby, who looked at the sewer plans and warned them that the creature would probably head for the nearby Merison Oil loading facility. They then had Toby raise the facility alarm and get it evacuated.
Evan subsequently had Toby tell Mac to use the latter's motorboat to draw the Titanoboa back to the Anomaly, and Toby phoned Mac to tell him, noticing as well on the detector that the Anomaly was weakening. The Anomaly initially closed a few minutes later when Mac lured the Titanoboa back to the bay, but Toby then alerted Mac when the detector picked up the Anomaly briefly reopening. Toby cheered and celebrated moments later when Mac successfully sent the Titanoboa back through the Anomaly just before it closed again.
Fear of Flying
One morning while Toby was unhealthily sleeping in at the Tank, the Anomaly detector awoke her to alert her to a new, gigantic Anomaly at Spring River Airport. Toby immediately called Evan about the new Anomaly and gave him the location, and Evan then had Toby call Mac and Dylan to meet him at the airport. When Toby called Mac, who was out biking, she learned that Samantha Sedaris, whom Toby knew from their bathroom at work, was with Mac, and unsuccessfully tried to warn Mac that Evan would be upset about Mac having to bring Sam to the Anomaly incursion.
After all the SPG apart from Toby, who remained at the Tank, had arrived at the Anomaly site, Toby called them to inform them of a video which confirmed that a local airport plane, Eastern Airlines Flight 443, had flown into the Anomaly and gone missing, and Evan and Dylan subsequently went through the Anomaly on a search-and-rescue mission for the plane's crew on the other side. While Evan and Dylan were on the other side of the Anomaly, Toby tried to monitor the Anomaly incursion from the Tank and kept Mac up-to-date when she feared the Anomaly could be closing, and Mac had her try and stop any more planes arriving at the airport and try to predict how long Evan and Dylan would have to return before the Anomaly closed.
Angry Birds
While Dylan was still settling into the Tank and was introducing Evan and Toby to new wildlife tasers for use against creatures, Toby was eager to get the chance to go into the field with the SPG and personally dealing with the Anomalies; claiming while trying to persuade Evan, that she needed to see them herself to get a better understanding of them, before admitting that she really just wanted to finally see a real-life Anomaly in person. When Toby's detector alerted the team to a new Anomaly at the New West Warehouse district, Evan agreed to let her come into the field on this one, instructing her to go with Mac once he showed up while Evan and Dylan would go on ahead.
Once Mac arrived and was filled in on the new Anomaly, he and Toby packed up their ammo and drove off for New Westminster, with Mac teasing Toby about her decision to come along the way. While they were on a country road, Toby had her terrifying first experience of what it's like to be out in the field against ferocious prehistoric predators, when their car had a close call with a Titanis walleri and when they afterwards discovered the horribly devoured remains of a creature victim off the road. Though scared and shaken by this since it was her first time, Toby refused to go back to the Tank, and insisted that she and Mac continue on to the Anomaly site to join up with Evan and Dylan and make sure that they were alright.
Toby and Mac drove to the abandoned train yard around the Anomaly site, to find Dylan and Evan's car was abandoned and they weren't answering their cellphones. Mac went ahead into one of the warehouses in search of Evan and Dylan or any creatures, ordering Toby to hang back in the meantime; but Toby, beating back her fears, disobeyed and went into the warehouse anyway, armed only with a tranquiliser gun. Toby's search led her onto a stored train carriage that had been made into a den, where she found Dylan in time to force Skeezer and Blake who were holding Dylan hostage to stand down from their increasingly-deadly argument.
However, the interruption was only brief before Skeezer and Blake's threats and hostility resumed, and in the ensuing skirmish, Toby accidentally shot and tranquilised Skeezer. With a Terror Bird loose in the warehouse attacking and cornering Evan, Mac and Ken Leeds, Blake reluctantly allowed Dylan to go out to help them, but forced Toby to stay as a substitute bargaining chip in the meantime. As Blake and Toby waited for Dylan and/or the others to return, while Toby was trying to soothe Leggy (a juvenile Terror Bird that Skeezer had been keeping) in Cantonese, Blake tried to make a run from the warehouse and get away, only to be cut down and killed by the Terror Bird.
While Blake was killed, Toby and Dylan managed to meet back up with Evan, Mac and Leeds, then fled out into the train yard grounds from the Terror Bird's pursuit. Toby intended to go and find the Anomaly's exact location so that they'd know where to send the Terror Birds back to their home, convincing Evan to let her go by agreeing to bring Leeds along as a chaperone. While Toby was using her handheld detector to track the Anomaly among the warehouse district, she and Leeds discussed Project Magnet, with Toby not having a very impressed first impression of it; until when Toby pinpointed where the Anomaly was, and she and Leeds finally got to see an Anomaly up close and in person for themselves for the first time.
After Evan, Dylan and Mac had neutralised the Terror Bird with a cannabis overdose, and Ken Leeds had helped them to send all the neutralised Terror Birds back through the Anomaly, Toby returned to the Tank at the end of the day with the rest of the SPG to fill Ange in on the incursion.
Undone
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Babes in the Woods
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Truth
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Breakthrough
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The Inquisition
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The Sound of Thunder: Part 1
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The Sound of Thunder: Part 2
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Personality
Toby was highly intelligent and possessed incredible computer and technology skills. Because Toby spent most of her life feeling too smart to be where she was, she was very determined with making inventions and upgrades she was responsible for as perfect as possible, and impatient with even the smallest of flaws in them. Toby also displayed signs of workaholism with her work. Like Evan Cross, Toby strongly believed in returning as many of the creatures as possible through the Anomalies alive to avoid causing a ripple effect.
Toby outwardly possessed a sarcastic and sometimes impatient demeanor towards others, but once people got past this and came to know her better, they found her to be a fiercely loyal friend. Toby loved seeing a world beyond what most knew, with the Anomalies, even if and when this world was dangerous and frightening. Due to this, Toby was eager and determined to see more and more of the Anomalies and creatures in the field, and she would not let others' commands that she stay back and stay safe stop her disobeying.
Relationships
Evan Cross
Toby and Evan seemed to have a mentor-student bond, and Toby was determined to do her very best with her work for Evan and was strongly and deeply loyal to him. Evan himself displayed a lot of insight into who Toby was, how she felt and what her secrets were.
Dylan Weir
Toby and Dylan were on good terms and were close friends. They displayed an ability to understand each-other very well and think similarly, and Toby was fiercely protective and brave when Dylan's life was being threatened, and vice versa.
Mac Rendell
Toby was good friends with Mac, but was irritated by his childish antics towards her; Toby compared her relationship with Mac to one with "the little brother [she] never wanted."
Angelika Finch
While Ange was with Cross Photonics, Toby seemed to get along with her relatively well. After Ange chose Project Magnet over the Special Projects Group, Toby was horrified and upset at Ange's choice.
Henderson Hall
Although Toby and Hall didn't actually meet each other in person, Toby considered Colonel Hall a reckless and thoughtless fool and lunatic for attempting to manipulate the timeline with the Anomalies on such a massive scale.
Appearances
- The New World (first appearance)
- Sisiutl
- Fear of Flying
- Angry Birds
- Undone
- Clean Up on Aisle Three (mentioned)
- Babes in the Woods
- Truth
- Breakthrough
- The Great Escape (mentioned)
- The Inquisition
- The Sound of Thunder: Part 1
- The Sound of Thunder: Part 2 (latest appearance)
Main: Evan Cross • Dylan Weir • Mac Rendell • Toby Nance • Angelika Finch • Ken Leeds
Secondary: Henderson Hall • Samantha Sedaris • Harlow • Connor Temple