Mara Sato

Overview

A 35-year-old systems engineer for Rest Easy Interstate Services (REIS), REIS Transit Systems Division — eleven years on the job, most of it inside REIS Six doing route planning, maintenance, and field inspections. She went dark two days before Session 1 opens, taking a set of arcology keys with her, and the crew was hired to bring her back alive.

She is also Iona Glass’s daughter — a fact Iona deliberately withheld when hiring the crew, and which Mara herself only volunteered when Speckz Arioso guessed it as a joke in Session 2.

Mara is estranged, exhausted, and blunt about it. Her mother is “a fucking psychopath” who has spent her life lording over her and refusing to let her out from under it; the whole point of the keys was to get somewhere Iona couldn’t find her. She’s not a corpo herself — she failed to get into a good college, no corp would take her at any real level, and she landed in transit systems by default. Asked how she’d know she could trust the crew, and told her mother would be furious, her answer was consistent: “I can’t fucking go back.”

Despite that, she’s pragmatic rather than desperate — she negotiates, she asks her own questions, she catches the flaws in the crew’s plans faster than they do, and she offered to cut off her own finger when the crew floated faking her death. Her summing-up of the whole situation, after Muktar pointed out that her escape probably won’t work: “You’re probably right. But it is incumbent upon me to try.”

The crew kept its promise in Session 3. They took her from her mother’s lunch table in a firefight. Iona held on to her wrist so hard that both of Mara’s arms were left hanging useless. She stumbled out to the van under shotgun fire and dove in: “Thank you. Let’s go.” She was free, but injured, broke, and hiding at a Van Life rest stop outside the arcology. She thanked the crew (“I appreciate your sacrifice, though I have nothing to give”) and refused, for now, Muktar’s one request that she let her mother know she’s safe. Any message might tell Iona where she is.

Appearance

Mid-thirties, dark hair pulled back, REIS Transit Systems uniform under a rain-stained jacket, work boots, a sling bag pulled tight across her body. When the crew found her in the Tangle she hadn’t slept properly in days: grime worked into the creases of her hands, dried blood along one sleeve, and a raw wound at her neck where her tracking implant came out. She does not resemble Iona Glass at all — she notes drily that in Knight City you can make yourself look like whatever the fuck you want.

Known Facts

• Iona Glass is her mother. This is not commonly known inside REIS, and Iona intends to keep it that way.
• Lived and worked inside REIS Six, specifically Section 34; her last tracked position before going dark was Section 36.
• Eighteen months into a job she was sick of, with a boss she didn’t get along with. She wanted a severance package; REIS refused, so she left rather than wait out the end of October.
• Had her REIS-implanted tracker removed illegally, off the books, by Alfonso.
• She never stole the arcology keys. A VYRAL contact gave them to her as payment for retrieving a data stick from NSMC’s restricted Under Sector tunnels. She did the job, took the stick, and deliberately never looked at what was on it.
• She found her VYRAL contact by asking around herself — she was actively hunting for anyone who could get her out, and he turned up.
• REIS is actively cancelling the access codes; she’s been dodging checkpoints all day and expects them dead within about twenty-four hours.
• Her drop with the VYRAL contact is at a public train station — the same one on her old commute — roughly twelve hours out as of the end of Session 2. VYRAL’s payment is scrubbing her tracks, not credits.
• Her guess at what her mother actually does: running access to all of REIS Six. She admits she doesn’t know.
• Free as of Session 3, and hiding at an abandoned Van Life rest stop a few miles outside REIS Six. Both arms were badly hurt in the tug-of-war between Speckz and her mother.
• VYRAL is looking for her. Jade Krasny of VYRAL Research calls her “a missing courier of ours” and has hired Bullfrog to report her location within 24 hours. Mara doesn’t know.
• Promised Muktar she would listen if he ever comes to her for help freeing others: “I will consider it… But I will listen. I promise that.”
• Isn’t sure she’s “lucky to have” a mother, as Muktar put it.
• She never trusted the crew’s plan to hand her back and then break her out — “this is feeling really fly-by-night to me” — but agreed to it under protest, on the crew’s promise. She agreed to tell Iona a version of the truth (unhappy, leaving) and deny finding anything in the Under Sector.

Relationships

• Iona Glass — her mother. Estranged and hostile on Mara’s side; Iona’s public composure visibly collapsed on seeing her. Mara returned her hug very tentatively.
• VYRAL — an unidentified high-ranking official gave her the arcology keys in exchange for the NSMC data stick.
• Alfonso — removed her tracking implant, no questions asked.
• Muktar — pledged his Rontai to her freedom and delivered it. He initially admired her for taking fate into her own hands, then feared she was a pawn being pushed, then decided she’d used the VYRAL man rather than being used by him. He has asked to be able to call on her someday.
• Bullfrog — offered her synth bacon, decrypted her data stick, tried and failed to impress her with his hacker reputation, and held the van door open for her under fire. He also has a VYRAL contract to report where she is.
• Jade Krasny — VYRAL Research; treats her as a missing courier to be found.
• Neon Drift — proposed the turn-her-in-then-break-her-out plan; treated her with what he describes as newly awakened paternal instinct.

Open Questions

• What happens at the train-station drop that nobody is going to attend?
• Does Iona know about the data stick at all? Mara doesn’t know what her mother knows.
• Will Bullfrog give her up to VYRAL?
• How will she ever contact her mother safely, if she does at all?

Appearances

• Session 1 — The crew’s mission target; not yet located as of session’s end.
• Session 2 — Found in the Tangle, taken at gunpoint, revealed as Iona Glass’s daughter, and revealed to have been paid in arcology keys for stealing the NSMC data stick. Handed back to Iona at the end of the session, with the crew promising to break her out.
• Session 3 — Taken from lunch with her mother in a firefight at a ramen shop. Injured, she escapes in Van Buren and is hidden at a Van Life rest stop outside the arcology.