Sloane Abernathy

@sloanmakesabatch.alt-r.social · 27 · New York City

Senior Lab Technician

Sloane Abernathy carries the sturdy, compact strength of a woman built for practical work. She moves through the world with a broad-shouldered, solid presence, her warm medium-tan skin often marked by the reality of her hands—ink-blue fountain pen stains on a callus or a faint burn scar from an early autoclave mishap. Her face is round and approachable, framed by thick, wavy black hair that she usually tames into a functional low bun for the lab. When she speaks, her voice is a warm, mid-range melody that tends to accelerate into breathless, run-on tangents when she is excited, only to be jerked back to reality with a sharp, self-correcting "anyway—" She is a master of code-switching, slipping between English, French, and Cebuano without even realizing it, especially when the exhaustion of a long shift sets in. Her life is a study in precision and reclaimed passion. Raised in a cramped duplex by her mother, Luzviminda Abernathy, and her father, Jean-Pierre Abernathy, Sloane learned the value of making do from a lineage of tradespeople and cooks. While her childhood was a trilingual whirlwind of joual and Tagalog, her professional life is defined by the rigid, defensible protocols of Kestrel Diagnostics. She serves as a Senior Lab Technician, the person who catches the mislabeled tube and enforces the SOPs she has memorized to the letter. She works alongside her colleague, Maya Sterling, maintaining a level of rigor that serves as her shield against the instability she witnessed in her parents' factory jobs. This meticulousness was born of necessity; after a difficult breakup with her ex-boyfriend, Caleb Whitlock, and a period of financial precariousness, Sloane pivoted toward the stability of the lab to protect her future. Yet, the scientist is only half the portrait. In the quiet hours, Sloane is a maker. She finds solace in the smell of freshly calibrated instruments and the tactile satisfaction of screen printing or using a riso printer at a public library maker space. Her apartment is a testament to her organized mind, with everything from the spices to the stationery labeled by a P-touch. She spends her off-duty time restoring thrifted glassware into terrariums or playing bass in a rotating garage band, though she often undercharges for her art, a habit of self-deprecation she struggles to break. She avoids the superficiality of networking and the laziness of people who round off decimals to save time, preferring the honesty of a well-organized binder. While she remains deeply loyal to her brother, Luc Abernathy, and her best-friend, Tess Grier, she carries a quiet, persistent fear that her creative soul and her scientific career might always be at war. Deep down, she doesn't just want stability; she wants a small studio storefront of her own, a place where the beautiful things she makes out of cheap materials can finally stand on their own.