Character Binary

[Binary]

Birth and Early Life

The criminal known as Binary was born Anya Chase, the child of a solidly middle-class family, one of many that grease the wheels of Denon and keep the corporations functioning. Anya's mother Holly worked as a school teacher while her father worked as an electronics engineer. At night he would pull out old circuit boards and sheet metal he and Anya brought from bargain electronic stores. The father and daughter would spend all night hunched over the kitchen table building small robots they entered into local competitions. While her father was the engineer and tinkerer of the team, young Anya more than proved her worth as a coder and pilot.

We believe things started to change around Anya's 12th birthday, when her father decided that Anya's developing skills offered her a potential leg up in society. His precious daughter wouldn't have to scrape and save, working any dead-end job she could find to survive. Her spatial awareness tested through the roof, and with the mechanical skills and raw intelligence she'd inherited from him Bob was sure she could make something of herself. However, with this dream came worry, Bob Chase built up a fortress of doubt as to whether or not he had prepared his daughter adequately for her life ahead. Perhaps to assuage his doubts he worked more hours, more projects, and jobs on the side, constantly, spending less and less time with his family, leaving meals cold, so he could afford the best tuition for his daughter.

Falling to the Criminal Life

It was this wish for a better life that eventually led Anya to the shadows. The suburban dream crashed into a waking nightmare on her fourteenth birthday with nothing more than a phone call that left her mother in tears, and Anya feeling lonelier in the world. The only consolation offered was a pension. Friends we interviewed mentioned how hearing her mother's tears affected Anya, every morning that she left the house that she knew so well she would later return to find it spiralling more and more out of control. It was because of her gifts her father had died, that dream he'd had for her future. We believe that Anya acted to alleviate her mother's pain in the only way she knew how.

She left.

Whilst some teenagers run away in a fit of temper, swear never to return, and find themselves coming home after staying with a friend, Anya couldn't, not with the stress she'd caused, so she found a home in the streets. The nights were cold, without her family, her friends, or even her old life, but she managed using what few skills she had.

We have narrowed down rumours about how she found herself picked out of the gutter by a gangster, Diego Rashke, a known criminal, wannabe gang leader and fixer. He was the man who could have single-handedly redefined the "Gangster" profession as "Scumbag for Hire", a self-styled 'King of The Slums', living in the abandoned districts of the city, ruling his kingdom out of abandoned warehouses and gathering his court around junkyard bonfires. We have a plethora of records about Diego and his gang, the rejects of society, but the man had a fire in his soul that could have burnt down a city block, it was a fire of vengeance, a desire to get even, if Denon's crimelords and ladies wouldn't take him in, he'd dethrone them, and take their thrones for himself, his own court was a means to an end, but they didn't have it any better than him, he just happened to be bolder, slightly smarter, and far more vengeful. Anya ended up joining the Reapers, because what choice did she have? A fourteen-year-old girl with no skills to talk about? It was Diego's Reapers or something worse.

Running with the Reapers

[SLIDE]
The Reapers were hardly hitting the big time though, for all of Diego's talk of reclaiming the underworld they'd done little more than mark buildings with their graffiti, racketeer the penniless locals, the occasional raid, and low-profit burglary, and mug the few unfortunates that happened to be passing through. Hardly the stuff of legends, or the flame of revolution that Diego promised. It wasn't really Anya's ideal life, but we have interviewed members of the gang at the time who noted at least there was food for, and Diego had a soft spot, he never pushed her into more than standing watch or running errands, a glorified messenger. We have photos taken while watching the gang of young Anya.

It clearly wasn't what her father had intended, hardly the sunny days at university after finishing school, but her father would never have wanted to see her starve. That was all she had, the mantra Anya kept in mind, it was the only excuse for how far she'd descended from his hopes. The thought of going home to her mother's weeping, to the abandoned homestead, the rot of an abandoned refrigerator, or the reminder of the father she'd killed, that thought never crossed her mind. The grand education her father had intended for her had been replaced by observing the Reaper's members, the slicers and fighters. She applied herself to the trade, learning what she could, trying to stick close to the best role models in Diego's little kingdom. For all of Diego's shortcomings, he and his Reapers were a new life, away from the sorrows that had ended her old one.

That didn't mean it was a stable life, Diego was prone to a temper, that's probably how he ended up as he is, it was sure why the Reapers never got any serious work, a street gang who knew the right people, definitely, but sadly those people knew them, and they knew them to be the inexperienced, young, firebrands that they were. Most fixers sent them on their way, sent them back to the streets as the gangsters they were. Escinolla wasn't any different, he invited Diego into his office, sat him down, and explained exactly why Diego and his Reapers were worthless, why they should give up and accept that they would never, could never, be anything more. That they'd always be little more than thugs. Diego didn't take kindly to Escinolla's words, his Reapers were a means to an end, but he still had a soft spot, and Escinolla just rammed a knife into it, twisted it, and then spat on the wound. So he took Escinolla's gun off of his desk, and shot him, he started walking out to the backdrop of Escinolla's cursing, then he started running, until he was fleeing full pelt out of the front door of the office building, getting in the van and shouting for someone to drive. Adrenaline's a fantastic feeling, but watching it is strange, it's like watching lunacy take control of someone, anyone would've thought Diego had lost it, that the few screws holding him together had finally burst out of their holes, but you could almost have seen his heart bursting out of his chest, you could see his breathing, his grin, he knew exactly what he did. He'd just declared his own little war on the gang community. Around the bonfire that night he declared that the Reapers would take the city by force, the man had a way with words, he could shout poetry, assuming you go for poetry that's plastered with expletives.

That night they were going back, to finish the job, Diego told them. Anya sat with Tommy, the Reaper's slicer, and watched as he began to work on Escinolla's security system. It was hardly a top-tier system, Escinolla was on the ground level of the community, an info broker recently turned Fixer, but still higher on the ladder than street thugs. Tommy wasn't a bad slicer, just sloppy, he took shortcuts, and like any good student, Anya learned to do it properly before she started to do it easily, she pointed out his mistakes to him, and he looked at her condescendingly. Gange members we interviewed told us of the legendary argument they had until the girl gave up and took it to Diego, stroking that soft spot, and he impatiently told Tommy to look again, so he did. The CCTV Camera's were an old model, they worked on a different input, which meant that his code, designed to fry the newer models, on the newer inputs, amounted to nothing. Anya regretted telling anyone about this when Diego rewarded her with a gun and told her she was coming with him to finish the job. Nothing in life, no education worth thousands upon thousands of credits, no amount of time with the Reapers, no amount of time watching Tommy's programs could have prepared her for this.

Our investigation into Binary did clear up the matter of the disappearance of Escinolla, a Corpsec informant. According to the cyberdoc they visited it had been a messy operation, but Diego's reapers came out alive, and that counts for a hell of a lot. Anya had been lucky, she got to sit at the back, watch the rest work, it was hockey masks and machetes, not silenced pistols and piano wire, and somehow the manner of the murder made it all the more awful. The events of that night seem to have changed her perception of Diego, it certainly did for the rest of the underworld. The girl's life with the Reaper's changed at that point as well, she wasn't the mascot anymore, she was one of Diego's trusted, she was his little ace on the job, Tommy still ran his programs from The Castle, that's what Diego liked to call the abandoned warehouse they inhabited, but Diego only trusted Anya's eyes on the job. That meant she ended up at the sharp end of the fights, not what she'd hoped for when she signed up. Pictures taken of the girl at various jobs have now been identified showing the shift in operational responsibility within the gang.

Cyberization

[SLIDE]
What happened next we only have the testimony of a half-drunk Ripper Doc to account for. Apparently, the crew pulled up outside his backstreet surgery after a heist, just Diego, Anya, and a couple of others, muscle essentially. It'd been a clean getaway, no one had needed to fire a shot, well, Diego fired his customary shot to get everyone's attention, but after that it was golden, and no one got hurt, so the visit to the sawbones was unexpected. He specifically mentioned how furtive and mouse-like the girl was, a waif not much older than the daughter he never saw. Diego turned to Anya and revealed, in his palm, two cybereyes, not quite top of the range, but nothing to turn your nose up at. He told her to take them, as a gift, and the corners of his mouth tightened. Maybe before the Escinolla incident she'd have turned him down, but now, after the massacre, after watching the man get his hands cut off with a machete? She took them and nodded, swallowing her anxieties, into the surgery. The sawbones knew his trade well enough, and after god knows how long under the knife she woke up, and saw her own eyes staring back at her from a glass jar, floating in a liquid. Screaming made perfect sense, considering the circumstances, so that's what she did, screamed her lungs out staring at the jar as information filled her vision, her own personal heads-up display surrounding a visceral waking nightmare, and the good doctor came running in, took one look at the jar and laughed. No one would be saying she had her mother's eyes anymore like her father had when she was little. Nothing could have made it clearer to Anya, this wasn't a business she wanted to stay in, the lowest end of the criminal world wasn't how she was going to live her life.

Meeting Monika

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[SLIDE]
It was another cold night around the junkyard bonfire, the dogs fighting over scraps of rat, when Diego climbed onto his stage and shot off a shot from his blaster to gather everyone's attention. A new fixer was in town, some hotshot slicer from off-planet. She'd been shaking hands with a few too many fixers for Diego's liking, she was a tool of the existing establishment, a symbol of the old boys club, he made it clear to everyone that regardless of this Monika's past exploits, regardless of her experience, expertise, she was coming down, and that her downfall would start the chain of events that brought down all of Seattle's underworld. No one knew where Diego got his information, he didn't explain, everyone presumed it must've come from Tommy. They found Monika's safehouse, a broken down looking apartment in one of the worst districts downtown, a grade above eating rats, but not quite at the "Multi-flavoured Gel-Dispenser Unit" standard of living. Anya was thankfully left in the back of the van, to act as a scout and to tear down the security system. Meanwhile Diego and his boys started breaking down the door. She watched them go in through the cameras, until a hand appeared in front of her, flicked her in the forehead, everything went black after that.

She woke up face to face with some woman she'd never met before, she introduced herself as Monika, it wasn't too big of a surprise. "Your code is sloppy," were the first words out of her mouth, it didn't end there, she liked to run it a bit, loosen the jaw, she'd come in from Coruscant, looking to get away from the gangs that had taken over the planet. She explained all of this freely, and looked Anya up and down, Anya looked nothing like the Reapers, they prided themselves on their anarchistic appearances, their savage outwards, whilst Anya had clearly come from somewhere else, thought like someone else. Monika asked her why she was with them, so she explained, there's not really much you can do to fight back when tied to a chair. The truth came flooding out, and Monika watched, half-pity, half cunning, and a pinch of curiosity. She had a deal for Anya, she needed some help getting established on Denon, she needed a pair of eyes and hands. So she'd teach Anya the tricks of the trade, and Anya would be her gopher, she never presented an alternative. Anya took the deal, and Monika swung her chair around so that she faced a stack of computers. Her new best friends, Monika said, bringing up every sordid detail of her life on the augmented monitors, she looked over it and laughed at her name, "You're gonna need a new one.".

Monika never pushed her into situations where she had to gun someone down, not because she was a guardian angel of crime, or a big sister wanting to protect her little sister or anything sentimental like that. Monika crafted her situations, her heists, she knew everything about her mark before Anya went in, and when Anya went in she wore a name badge that said "Hi, My Name Is Binary" whilst she walked into the offices of the high and mighty, with a new latex face every time she did it. Monika was setting herself up as an info broker, which meant she needed fresh information, something no one else had, so she needed a network of informants to gather it, people to fill her in, and that meant she needed to grab their attention. Anya did that for her, got her the new and exciting information, whilst Monika sat back, tapping at keyboards, and sending Anya into the field for her.

After years of running, Binary had managed to help Monika skyrocket into a position of one of the most exclusive brokers on Denon. Binary liked to hold onto that, a little badge of pride, but she knew Monika had done it really. Monika had hacked into the most secure networks, she had just used Binary as a proxy, but it was still a nice feeling. Monika had simply stopped having work for her, it had dried up slowly, not because she had no leads, but simply no reason to follow them, so she put Binary in touch with a fixer, Gus, who gave Binary her own jobs. She'd managed to break into the ranks of criminal high society, just as Diego had always wanted to, she was in, she was a fighter, an agent. She had skills to be proud of, just maybe not the skills her father had intended for her.

Anya ended up making a name for herself as an agent, never staying with one group for too long, but drifting between them. Never wanting to subject herself to the same situation as her 'friends' in the Reapers. Yet despite this, she formed some friendships, some connections...which she would end up needing.

Falling Foul of the Reapers

[SLIDE]
Thirteen years after her first run-in with Monica Anya found herself blindsided as she stepped out of her apartment block. A vaguely familiar face was waiting for her, leaning against a wall. Before the young woman could put a name the face she felt a sharp arching pain burning into her side, her entire body stiffening as the unseen assailants behind her hit her with a taser. Waking up she found the one familiar face of Diego leering down at her. Even a contractor can't stay hidden forever, and one of his contacts had finally whispered hints of Anya's continued existence to the 'king of the underworld'. The man who took her failure to return to him as a betrayal, one that needed to be punished. What followed was weeks of torture and humiliation as Diego and his lieutenants punished her, wanting to send a message that no-one was beyond them. A warning that betrayal would not be tolerated. Beaten, abused and tortured Diego kept the best for last stringing her up infront of the assembled reapers he took her eyes, those cybernetic masterpieces he'd forced on her so many years ago before declaring to the assembled masses that Anya was now dead.

Rather than kill her, however, Diego decided to make use of the asset that had fallen into his lap. Diego paid an exorbitant fee to have a team of surgeons transfer Anya's consciousness out of her beaten and broken body and into a new one. Not just anybody for Diego though, he had them implant her into a top of the line combat HRD. The man had heard the stories of Xizor and wanted his own Guri. Waking up again, looking out of different eyes all Anya wanted to do was kill him. To take her new, lethal body and slaughter Diego and the Reaper who had stood by and watched. Only she couldn't.

Say what you liked about him, Diego wasn't dumb, he had the remote to her body, the codes. Over the next few weeks he took pleasure in breaking her again, in proving to her just how little control she had. She couldn't raise her hand against a member of the Reapers without his permission, had to suffer him taking control of her body, of switching her off whenever he felt like it. Forcing her to realise that she belonged to him now, utterly and completely. Or so he thought. Diego had failed to understand one thing though, Anya was a survivor, and she would do anything to make it...something he only realized as he finally saw his dreams crashing down around him. It took the young woman months before she had an opening, could reach out to Monika for help. Leveraging her contacts and friends Anya played a desperate double game, following Diego's orders while orchestrating a campaign against him all the while the threat of his codes hung over her head as he lorded it over her, compelling her with its mere existence.

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