- "Right now, all I want is revenge for what they've done to me and to my company. If it means losing everything...so be it."
- ―Helena Chang[src]
Helena Chang is a bioneer and founder of JIVA in Casablanca. In Dreamfall Chapters it was also confirmed that she is Zoë Castillo's mother. Her company created Faith as part of an experiment for unknown reasons, though Zoë believes it was part of research into dreams. After JIVA's experiment involving Faith was complete (her creation may have been its entire substance), Chang had planned to give Faith to a foster family, but WATI stepped in. They took custody of the child to test Morpheus on her for the remainder of her life in Saint Petersburg, some time before the 23rd of September 2218 (the date of the first entry in Dr Park's journal).
Because of this (Faith was special to her, for various reasons, despite being her creation, her 'daughter') Chang seems to have become disenfranchised with WATI's ownership of her JIVA. Somehow Reza got into contact with Helena while researching the Static for The Hand That Bites, possibly via Rio Kuroki, and he sends Zoë to collect a package from her containing a data cube of information. When Zoë arrives, she discovers Sela and Kano, the latter of whom had locked Helena in the sealed laboratory with poisonous gas leaking in. Chang would have died but for her image appearing to Zoë on a Screen behind the oblivious Sela - she was fiddling with the camera so it may have been a coincidence, but her appearance is fortuitous enough to suggest Faith may have intervened to save her.
After Zoë rescues her, Helena disappears on her own business only to reappear in one of the later chapters, urging Zoë to help her stop the Static by euthanising Faith. If Wonkers had his brain replaced earlier on, he tells Zoë that Helena Chang was asking him questions before Zoë arrived home, "difficult questions, the kind I can't answer. About you and your father." Several comments made by Chang suggest she and Zoë are connected, possibly even related.
At some point during her first encounter with Zoë, Chang planted a bug on her, though we do not know how or why she did this. At their second and last encounter in Zoë's bedroom she tells her that she has heard everything that's happened on Zoë's journey. She persuades Zoë to connect to a Dreamer and try and convince Faith to pass on, and in so doing avert another Collapse. Zoë agrees for her own reasons, but while she is unconscious, Chang gives Zoë an injection that ensures she will never wake up, though she does it with a small measure of regret.
Dreamfall Chapters[]
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“Where have you gone to, Dreamer. Whose dreams are you dreaming?” — Spoilers for Dreamfall Chapters follow. |
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Helena reappears in the game’s fifth Book, where she reveals that she, along with a reluctant Gabriel Castillo, had been holding Zoë’s comatose body captive in a JIVA facility in Mumbai since the events of the previous game. She also reveals her larger plan: taking control of Dreams and, in turn, the power to shape reality. Representing decades’ worth of work, this plan involved, among other elements, imbuing her daughters—Zoë, Faith, Hanna, and Hope—with the potential to become Dreamers; keeping track of Zoë’s dream manifestation after it was formed, via her agent Falk Friedman; manipulating WATI in order to facilitate the development of Project Alchera, whose technology she would then use for her own purposes; and joining forces with a like-minded Arcadian counterpart to set things in motion on the other side of the Divide.