Indigo Seven

A Crossroads Character by Chris Snazell

Indigo Seven lives in a small freehold of hippies on the Atlantic coast of Surinam. Wanted in 60% of Earth's countries, corporate zones and other territories, she only leaves when 
the pay is sufficiently high enough for her services as a Data Mercenary. Being highly skilled in the ways of the dataverse and being quite a skilled hacker she has been able to disguise her presence in any one place long enough for her to complete her mission. When not travelling she earns a living crafting mimetic weaponry for governments, corporations and the like and sells them on through some well-trusted cut-outs who have never met her.

Indigo is also technically property. Born on a coporate mining venture to the Groombridge Star System to indentured technicians who were theoretically sterilised before beginning the mission. Taken into custody, she was dubbed Indigo Seven, as she was the seventh person on the Indigo watch. The ship didn't have facilities for caring for or raising children so she was fitted with a Cranial Buffer, put into an I-Squared R facility and left to the tender mercies of the ship's medical AI. Indigo was raised by the AI in the
virtual realm encompassing the ship's data infrastucture. By the time she arrived at Earth, Indigo was more comfortable in cyberspace than she was outside of it. The AI had cared for her meticulously and she emerged from I-Squared R tank a lean, slightly gangly teenager.

Indigo was the youngest infant ever to be fitted with a cranial buffer and introduced to the malleable world of cyberspace, at least according to the corporation's records. Isolated in a research facility on the fringes of WorldGov territory, Indigo was subjected to numerous tests to ascertain how her upbringing had effected her. The most noticable feature was her initial inability to cope with enclosed spaces and some of the basics of just manouevring around in a physical world. Although her physical awkwardness gradually left her under a regimen of physical training and exercise, she still retains her claustrophobia. Perhaps this too would have been expunged from her psychological make-up but she was liberated from the facility by a group of terrorists who like to style themselves as Data Anarchists.

Living constantly on the run with the group was a radical change in lifestyle and she learned how to survive in the world outside. The Anarchists allowed her to develop her already prodigious computer and net skills and soon she too was leading raids, cracking the heavy crypto on an infodump and unobtrusively feeding seditious propaganda into corporate data-feeds. It wasn't long before she too was noticed, catalogued and identified as a criminal. Her most famous raid also cost her her friends. Researching her past had revealed that the corporation had extracted and isolated the AI that had raised her in order to study how it had adapted to the role. Locked in its own private blob of cyperspace the AI sat patiently waiting. Determined to free her 'mother' she carried out a series of interconnected raids and hacks to free the AI, alledgedly she spent a full week jacked into cyberspace as the terrorist group moved around. By the end of the runs she had managed to convince the research facilities computers to link the AI with the outside dataverse for long enough for her to extract a copy of it. The AI is now cached in several discreet but well-protected data havens and runs the net for her as an agent. Indigo wears quite a lot of rings, ear-rings and necklace which all have communication facilities built in so she can permanently be in contact with her 'mother'. The only reason Indigo survived the carnage that engulfed her fellow terrorists was a tip off from another netizen identifying himself as Waylander. He managed to get her a warning minutes before the rest of the group were wiped out.

Waylander is Indigo's only real friend outside the hippies of the freehold - who don't really understand what it is she does. Waylander is a skilled technician and as well as acting as an agent for her on occasion, has provided her with some bleeding-edge kit which has helped her maintain her freedom and her reputation for as long as she has. She hasn't heard from Waylander in the last week however and she is beginning to be concerned that something has happened to him.

The grown-up Indigo is still lean and on the gangly side, her blonde hair has been grown into dreadlocks - mostly to keep some of the hippy women happy. She does what she can to help out in the freehold but her skills are mostly hi-tech. She ended up in the commune after 'Mother' found its limited comms facilities and suggested it as being beneath suspicion. She never connects to the dataverse whilst in Surinam, if she wants to jack in she takes a fast cigarette boat over to Trinidad or one of the other Antilles.