BrittaSA

The marriage between Luuk Stapelkamp and Britta Alderidge merged two of the world's wealthiest families and created an economic dynasty that has lasted for far, far too long. The Stapelkamp-Alderidges have ruled over their conglomerate from on high, in a human-hive like space station orbiting the Earth. Their lives have been unnaturally extended by gene therapy and cryogentic sleep. Their legacy has been guarded over tightly controlled artificial intelligences and by their own children. These were created, of course, via the use of cloning rather than the primative, unclean, and needlessly random methods of biological reproduction. But over the past three hundred and fifty years, the family nucleus has started to rot from within. Time's ravages have left Britta in her grave and Luuk old, infirmed, and though no one outside the clan's innermost circle knows it, suicidally depressed. The family is currently ruled by 3Britta and 4Luuk, originally in what some would call an incestuous affair. But things have broken down and the future of the family is in hot contention.

A compromise has been decided upon. Or, rather, it is a contest for rulership of the clan. For this, new clones of Britta and Luuk have been vat grown and trained by their respective camps. A month ago, they were sent out into the world. And now, they are both being hunted like animals; whichever one survives longer proves the supremecy of their patron.

4Britta Stapelkamp-Alderidge is a moral atrocity 18 years in the making. She has been tutored heavily in her matron's thinking and methodology. Human-hive mentalities. Emotional manipulation. Social order. She has been taught how to use and command people, logistics, and resources. How to fight, how to survive. The only thing she wasn't taught was that her life was to be a game piece on someone else's board. She is less a person and more a pile of methodologies and ideals that is being put to the ultimate test of survival of the fittest.

Now on the run from vat-grown family assassins, genetically modified neo-humans, cybernetically enhanced mercinaries, grotesque biomonsters breed in illegal pits, and whatever else the world is capable of throwing at her, 4Britta's life is a living hell of long stretches of paranoia interrupted by bursts of hypertension and terror. She has never considered contacting her opposite, 5Luuk, as it is outside of her ability to concieve that her brother-nephew would be capable of entertaining the idea of an alliance for mutual survival. It is, in fairness, as likely to be as far outside of his scope of active rationality as it is from hers.

As well equipped for the task of winning the challenge as 3Britta could design her to be, 4Britta is a determined and dangerous individual. She is a Neuromancer, her body implanted with and augmented by a solid-light hologram generator. It allows her to think constructs into life and project them into the world around her. Thus, she is never caught unarmed and the local terrain is rarely outside of her favor for the span of a few heartbeats. But she is just one woman and even so powerful a tool has it's limits.

Time is wearing 4Britta down. The resources of the most powerful conglomerate in the world are being arrayed against her. She can not win her fight, she can only hope to survive it longer then her brother-nephew. She can not hide, not for long, and fighting only draws more attention to her current location. And as she moves through the neon lit, rain washed slums of humanity's distopian future, she is learning that she is not like other humans. That the way they think is different, the way they live their lives is almost otherworldly to her. It has awoken a longing with in her she does not trust and an ache in her heart she doesn't understand. So despite her cheerful callousness and flippant emotional distancing, there is something in this world that she is growing to want. Hopefully, trying to obtain it won't be the thing that finally gets her killed.