Kira 'Patch' Vasquez

Overview

Kira Vasquez — known to everyone in the Dregs as "Patch" — runs the only pre-Cascade electronics repair shop still operating in Sector 7G. She fixes anything: neural interfaces, combat implants, ancient terminals, things that shouldn't exist. She asks no questions and keeps no records. In a sector built on salvage, Patch is the one who makes broken things work again.

She's also the reason you survive your first month with the ORACLE shard.

Thirty-seven years in the Cathodics have made her a fixture of the Dregs — part mechanic, part doctor, part confessor. Generations of salvagers have learned their trade under her watchful eye. She's trained doctors, fixers, soldiers, and people who went on to do things she won't talk about. Her shop smells of solder flux and antiseptic, the ozone-sharp scent of freshly tested circuitry mixing with the copper tang of exposed wiring. The hum of diagnostic equipment never stops. Neither does she.

Appearance

Patch looks like someone who's been fixing things for fifty years — because she has. Gray hair pulled back in a functional bun, hands scarred from solder burns and blade work, eyes that have seen too much and forgotten nothing. She moves with the careful economy of someone who's learned that haste costs fingers.

Her left arm from the elbow down is military-grade chrome — Ironclad surplus from before the Cascade, matte black and obviously retrofitted multiple times. She doesn't talk about why. The rest of her augmentations are subtle: optical implants visible only as a faint gold ring around her irises, subdermal reinforcement in her hands that lets her grip hot components without flinching.

She dresses practically: stained work apron over nondescript clothing, tool belt that's worth more than most people's annual income, a pair of magnifying loupes perpetually pushed up on her forehead. No logos, no flash, no affiliation markers. In a world of signifiers, Patch refuses to signal.

The Cathodics

For thirty-seven years, Patch has been the Cathodics. She bought the shop from a dying salvager in 2148, rebuilt it component by component, turned it into the closest thing the Dregs has to a community center. The walls sweat condensation that tastes of recycled air and old solder. The floor vibrates with the bass hum of pre-Cascade power converters she's kept running through sheer stubbornness.

Her workbench is a graveyard of half-finished repairs: a neural interface with its housing cracked open like an egg, fiber-optic bundles fanned out like metallic hair, the tiny jewel-bright lights of diagnostic LEDs blinking in patterns only she can read. A photo of a man sits at the corner of the bench — she never explains who he was.

She maintains unofficial connections with the Collective — shares information when asked, provides safe haven when needed — but never formally joined. She's seen too many organizations become the thing they fought against.

Mentor

Patch becomes your first real ally — not because she believes in you, but because she believes the choice should be yours. She teaches the fundamentals:

More importantly, she provides something rare in the Dregs: a stable reference point. When the shard starts showing you things — memories that aren't yours, knowledge you shouldn't have — Patch helps you distinguish what's real.

"You've got something in your head that wants to become everything. And you've got something in your heart that still cares about being human. Those two things are going to fight. Eventually, one will win." *lights a cigarette* "I'm betting on the second one. Don't make me regret it."

The Patch Protocol

Among the Fragment Hunters — the Sprawl's specialized ORACLE salvagers — Kira Vasquez is a legend they can't quite acknowledge. The extraction technique that bears her name, the "Patch Protocol," is the only known method for separating bonded ORACLE fragments from willing carriers without killing them. It's saved dozens of lives. It's also the most closely guarded trade secret in the fragment economy.

Patch doesn't advertise the training. Hunters find her through word of mouth — usually through El Money's G Nook Network, where certain bartenders know to pass along requests to the Cathodics. She charges steeply: not in credits, but in information. Every Hunter who trains with her provides a full debrief on their recent operations — where they've been hunting, what they've found, what corporate recovery teams are active.

She's turned away roughly half of all applicants. Perhaps thirty trained over the past decade — they become the most sought-after extraction specialists in the profession. And they follow one absolute rule that Patch instills during training: the carrier chooses. Always. No exceptions.

Voice

Patch speaks with the dry wit of someone who's heard every excuse and seen every mistake. She doesn't waste words. Her humor is deadpan and often delivered while elbow-deep in someone's malfunctioning cyberware.