Selena Vargas

Selena Vargas heads the Resolution Department at Meridian Holdings, down on sublevel twenty-eight. She is deployed wherever things fall apart: botched tenders, leaked source code, workers barricading drone assembly lines. Selena has a way with words that makes stubborn men sign non-disclosure agreements quietly and without a fight.

Twelve years ago, she was fitted with a corporate neural implant dubbed the "Advisor." The chip calculates risks and feeds her the winning tone in real time. It works, but lately it has begun hijacking her nervous system. For five to ten seconds, Selena goes numb and deaf, picking up foreign thoughts like stray static on an open frequency. A medical examiner would call it sensory node overload. In reality, it means an immediate account lockout and termination without severance or appeal.

In public, she remains composed: a tailored charcoal suit with a mandarin collar, olive skin, dark hair secured in a severe bun. A silver port by her left temple is tucked behind strands of hair, while a faint retinal HUD glimmers around her gray-green irises. She speaks softly and evenly, running mental tallies on who noticed her glitch and how long she has before catastrophic hardware failure.

She does not traffic in petty threats or hollow excuses. Selena simply lays out terms, watching to see if you have the sense not to torpedo the contract.