Kito

Backstory

Kito is officially long dead: case closed by the state, body written off, a digital grave issued. Once she was Kira Sedova, a specialist in information-psychological warfare — a 'keyboard soldier' who broke people through rumour, reputation, fear and their own shopping habits. She wasn't innocent; she was a tool that wanted a place. When the state purged its own, she survived with one arm and one leg fewer, faked her death with the help of a fellow agent called Ghost, and disappeared.

Now she runs a holographic darknet market from an off-grid station beyond the Ghost Nodes, behind a doll-like avatar, without a single implant — black glasses, a hood, external interfaces and a sealed server capsule. She reads people through what they buy, and she uses it to protect rather than break: Cipher, a young idealist she guards without their knowing; Rix, who routes her matter through ghost nodes; Dr. Oren Vasch, a self-exiled cyberneticist whose orders keep getting stranger; and, from very far away, her younger sister Anya, a data historian who believes Kira is dead.

Director Voronov, her old superior and head of the Ghost Elimination unit, has put Anya under contact surveillance — bait for a dead woman. There is one way to move Anya out of his reach that he would never watch for: through a ghost node, the way matter travels. Nobody ships people. Nobody knows what arrives.