Zach was placed in Arcis in 2164, the same year as Ash Thorane. There, he worked as a bounty hunter until he joined Ash to start the Uprising.

Standing before her was a man. He was dressed in dark, ragged clothes, and had a pistol strapped to his hip. Ash could see the hilt of a knife sticking out of his boots. He was about the same age as Ash—around twenty-eight or so. His hair was as black as the night sky, and startlingly light blue eyes stared at her, seeming to analyze every inch of the woman across from him. And most importantly, he was pointing a rifle at Ash.

– Fallen Nation

"This is what [the Authorities have] done to us. Twisted our reality into darkness, so that we don’t even know if the people we’re with are really there or not. If they can make us think things like that, think that people are dead when they’re not, if they can break us with just a lie... what else can they do to us? How do we know that what we’re seeing with our own eyes is even real? We can’t."

– Zach to Ash Thorane, in Fallen Nation: Downfall