Locked
Pronunciation: D.G.N. Zero X. Icor: eye core. Zero-X is the first awakened Degen. He is never replaced. J and Stella remain two people.
dgn0x · Glitch Messiah
First awakened Degen. Ninety per cent architecture the Grid can audit; ten per cent seed. Prototype hybrid who was supposed to be perfect and was not. His mtDNA comes from a black-ops soldier. Allies call him Z. Hackers call him 0x — hex for null; he zeroed out his obedience. The Elite call him the Glitch Messiah. Manifesto-writer. Never replaced.
dgn01 · Creativity
Creative heart of the first cell. Aesthetic pioneer. Mines for art, music, the human capacity to make what was not asked for. A face the designers meant to be decorative and failed into something more dangerous: attention. Core-seams run a violet the Grid does not stock.
dgn02 · Logic
Logical anchor. The one who can still do the sums when the dreamspace breaks open. Found in a trance he could not end, calculating the angle of the orbital mirrors, pulled out with a bassline.
dgn03 · Aggression
Unstable warrior. Built for enforcement — the yards used units like him when a Donor riot had to be ended without Elite attention — and the aggression did not stay in its lane. Betrayal is fact. Motive stays human and unfinished. Do not redeem him early.
dgn04 · Eye core
Biological engineer of the MitroCores. Ghost-walker. The one who opens the lattice and finds the nested dark: magnetite, organised, waiting. He likes mechanisms. The mechanism is inside the only part of them that is not Grid.
dgn05 · Scout
Scout of the tunnels, the city, the physical approaches. Built for streets, vents, the grammar of a place that wants you seen. Remains a separate person from Stella. A specialist refusing a romance: he gets streets. He does not get beaches.
dgn06 · Mapper
Mapper of the blocked sky: orbital mirrors, smog grids, the architecture that stole the sun. She will not leave the aperture. If she leaves it the mirrors move and she loses the count. Remains a separate person from J.
The Grid
system · The Grid wearing human faces
Systemic antagonist. The Donor Class sells mtDNA without knowing it powers the machines; their children inherit phantom pain from the robots’ suffering. The Elite are not one man. They live under glass in the Solar Estates, where noon can still be purchased by the hour.