Anika Washington is an agent with U.N.I.T.
That acronym stands for the United Nations Intelligence Trust, "a global black ops agency founded by Western nations and their allies in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks". Their primary directive, according to one of Washington's fellow recruits, is "to kill bad guys". With such an unofficial objective, it is not surprising that the organization is largely hush-hush and, though there are a good number of operatives and even more support personnel, it is mostly unknown.
Each new recruiting class is made up of applicants pulled from one of two sources; either a federal orphanage in one of the contributing countries, or from a federal prison where the inmate is serving a life sentence. Interestingly, the way both the recruits and the agents are treated, and if called for punished, the way the operatives came to be in U.N.I.T. seems to make no difference - being an orphan was treated the same as being a lifer.
Coming from one of the former, Washington, though now an adult, still has sharp memories of her life as a child, abandoned by her parents and living in the facility "where I never got picked. Where the hopeful-looking couples always passed me over for someone else".
Now being a new agent with U.N.I.T., assigned to group 605 just over a year before, she sees a chance to be somebody and to have a life; "a chance to see the world, to be in the world - even better, to protect it". Unfortunately she will also come to realize that U.N.I.T. not only owns hers, it knows that it owns her.