Aaron Cross's History
Originally, Kitsom was from a group home for individuals with insufficient cognitive ability in Reno, Nevada. Upon induction into the United States Army, his recruiter, seeking to meet a quota, added 12 points to his I.Q. scale in order to meet the required I.Q. requirement for military service. Kitsom was declared dead in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Private First Class in the United States Army.
He was wounded by a road side bomb, leaving him with severe burns and other war related injuries. After Kitsom was declared dead he was then transferred to Outcome and given the identity Aaron Cross. In the process of becoming Aaron Cross, Kitsom was trained and guided as an intelligence asset that involved deep cover identities and other clandestine special operations under the direction of the Department of Defense. He is trained in the use of several foreign languages, small arms, hand-to-hand combat, and other intelligence gathering related trade craft. Kitsom was also genetically enhanced physically and mentally through two of his chromosomes, increasing his muscle efficiency, reflexes, strength, and the ability to suppress extreme pain. It also improved his mental capacity to operate as a field operative similar to that of
Jason Bourne. It not only made him more intelligent, however, he also has the ability to improvise and solve a problem or problems thinking in a linear tactical fashion.
The objective of Operation Outcome was to deploy highly trained assets who were genetically modified in order to do any number of intelligence operations mainly information gathering in highly hostile environments. Each operative in Operation Outcome are given two pills as medication to continue their abilities to operate as intelligence assets. Each Outcome operative is dependent on such medication as way to "control" each agent from becoming rogue in his or her operational status. One pill enhances mental capabilities dubbed as the blue pill and the other pill enhances the physical capacity of the agents which is declared as the green pill. In The Bourne Legacy, Cross mentions that if a member of Operation Outcome is deprived of such pills or "Chems" as witnessed in training, the agent will go back to their original state before joining Outcome. In the case of Aaron Cross, his mental capacity would be well below normal and he would be unable to live unassisted. In turn he fears the loss of his intellect.
At the beginning of the film, Cross is assigned to Alaska for a training exercise where he is forced to survive weather extremes and traverse rugged terrain to arrive at a remote cabin as punishment for missing training and going off the grid for four days. The cabin is operated by an exiled Outcome operative, Outcome Number Three or Outcome-3, who informs Cross that he has broken the mission record by two days. However, when retired Air Force colonel Eric Byer discovers a potentially scandalous video on the Internet showing a meeting between Treadstone and Outcome medical directors Albert Hirsch and Dan Hillcott, he orders everyone associated with the program to be killed in order to prevent the Senate investigators from learning about Outcome. He deploys a drone to eliminate Cross and Outcome-3 in Alaska. Outcome-3 is vaporized by a missile fired from the drone while Cross manages to evade the drone and force-feeds his radio-frequency identification to a wolf which is then blown up by another missile fired by the drone, tricking Byer into believing Cross is dead.
Cross later kills four "D-Trac" assassins disguised as federal agents who visited Dr. Marta Shearing at her country house attempting to fake her suicide. Shearing reveals to Cross that he has been genetically modified to retain the physical benefits permanently without needing the green chems anymore. The pair travel to Manila, where the blue chems are manufactured, trying to infect him with another virus that will make his intelligence permanent. Cross and Shearing bluff their way into the Morlanta Pacific pharmaceutical factory and Shearing injects Cross with the live virus stems. Byer alerts factory security, but they evade capture. Byer orders LARX-3, a chemically-brainwashed super-soldier, to track and kill them. As Cross is struck by flu-like symptoms induced by the virus, he hallucinates about his Outcome training. When police surround their shelter Shearing returns from buying medicine and sees the police closing in on Cross. She screams a warning to Cross who then evades the police and subsequently intervenes in her capture by the police and they steal a motorbike. After a lengthy chase through the streets and marketplaces of Manila, they lose the police and kill LARX-3. Shearing then persuades a Filipino boatman to help them escape by sea.
