Treadstone Industries

Treadstone Industries is a Louisiana-based company, whose primary focus is research and development in various engineering fields. Treadstone also boasts subsidiaries connected with weapons development, pharmaceuticals, biomedical research, consumer electronics, shipping, entertainment services, retail, and various other industry sectors. While primarily providing consumer goods, the company holds a modest number of government contracts in the US and abroad.

The Los Angeles offices are located in Treadstone Tower is a highly modern building in the downtown area, and a major hub for business along the West Coast of the United States, and in Asia and the Pacific. Treadstone also owns El Toro, a former Marine Corps Air Station located in Orange County. El Toro's runways are used as a private field for company aircraft, while it's hangars and other buildings have been converted into warehouses, and off-site laboratories for Applied Sciences.

Off the books, the company has also invested in more proactive measures to prevent acts of mutant-powered terrorism, in the form of a paramilitary group nicknamed X-Force. A more covert and mutant-sympathetic alternative to the likes of Vanguard and Jericho, X-Force pairs military veterans with heroic mutants; it also has unofficial ties through some members with a branch of British intelligence.

Branches

• Applied Sciences - based just outside of LA, Applied Sciences focuses on research into mutant abilities: not into the genetics that cause them, but instead into the science that makes those abilities possible. It is hoped that a working understanding will lead to the development of new technologies that will benefit society; or that will provide non-lethal countermeasures and containment for more dangerous individuals with the mutant gene. Applied Sciences is based in Treadstone Tower, but makes extensive use of off-site facilities at El Toro.

• Business Process - an illusive division within the company; no one seems to know what it's role is, but are content to simply ignore that fact in the interests of not seeming ignorant. In truth it exists only for audit purposes, providing a cover for employees and spending dedicated exclusively to X-Force.

Current Members

• Dahlia Ericsson - Chairman and CEO
• Katrina Harriman - Personal Assistant to the CEO
• Hamilton Hughes - Business Process
• Hannalore Hughes - ICT Consultant

Applied Sciences

• Dr. Thomas Harriman - Lead Researcher
• Jim Lewinski - Student Researcher
• Emma - Lab Assistant

• Chelsea Wagner - Volunteer
• José Luis Flores - Volunteer

Other Associates

• Frank Toussaint - former Special Forces pilot with flight powers; the cousin of Dahlia Ericsson
• Ordinary Joe - a military vet with the power of body duplication, whose duplicants make up the entire security staff at the X-Force facility
• Nathan Godfrey - a consultant from the Security Service in Britain: one of Treadstone's international clients