Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane

Data

Name Kenshiro Cochrane

Codename Ghost Rider

Age 21 (upon death)

Residence Verse Dependent

Status Alive

Relatives Harrison Cochrane (father), Shinobu Cochrane (mother)

Faceclaim TBD

Backstory

Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane was a hacker who ran with the Hotwire Martyrs, a street gang based out of the Transverse City sprawl. In mid 2099, the Martyrs hacked into a fiberoptic trunkline and snagged a heavily-encrypted data archive of unknown origin. While they were attempting to decrypt the file, the Martyrs were attacked by a gang known as the Artificial Kidz, who proceeded to murder most of the Martyrs and set off in pursuit of Zero and the archive. With the poison from the fletchette round he took while fleeing the Kidz rapidly eating away at his nervous system, Zero makes a last-ditch effort to screw them over by transferring the encrypted file to his girlfriend and then jacking directly into cyberspace in an attempt to burn out his headware implants.

Shortly after his white-hot fade into oblivion, Zero awakes to find himself in a surrealistic cyberscape populated by a group of rogue machine intelligence's who call their realm The Ghostworks. These AIs believed that the current human society (your typical "Corporations Own Everything" cyberpunk dystopia) was heading for a total collapse. And, being completely dependent on the world's technological infrastructure for survival, they wished to send Zero back to the real world to serve as their agent of change. Appealing to his anarchist sensibilities, the Ghostworks couched the whole deal as a chance for him to get back at The System and all those authority figures who seemed bound and determined to make life miserable for "the little guy." Zero, of course, accepted - though whether this was really of his own free will or due to subtle modifications the AIs made to his personality construct is debatable.

The machines hijacked an automated factory and constructed a heavily modified variant of a Cybertek 101 warbot, laden with advanced nanotech weaponry, self-repair, and camouflage capabilities, and downloaded their copy of Zero's personality into its neuro-net. Before hitting the streets, Zero used the robot's holographic capabilities to wreath his skull-like head in artificial flame - an homage to his fallen comrades that also served to make him look very similar to the Ghost Rider of the previous century. Appropriately enough, his first course of action was to seek vengeance against those responsible for their deaths.