Echo

## Appearances

### Appears In

Gridrunner 1: Gridrunner, Gridrunner 2: Abort, Gridrunner 3: Corrupted, Gridrunner 4: Offline

### Debut

Gridrunner 1: Gridrunner

**Echo** (born Artemis Andersen) is the chief hacker of the Gridrunners.

## Biography

### Personality

Echo's exterior can be viewed as cold by strangers and brief acquaintances, but warm and caring to those close to her. She has no flair for extravagance and prefers to keep her mind focused on important matters. She is studious and always craving more knowledge, about herself and the world around her. She treats everyone as an equal, putting no one above or below her. She was never a natural leader, yet has developed stronger organizing skills when circumstances put her in a position where she had to.

Echo begins the series much more optimistically than she ends it, and her most significant change is her developing pessimism as all of her efforts yield little significant advancement in their cause. Fighting so hard only to maintain a status-quo drives much of her optimistic spirit away.

### Appearance

Echo stands 5'7" tall with a strong athletic build, sharp jawline, and an intense look cast from light brown eyes. She keeps her head completely shaven after all her hair was burned off in the attack on Korbitron.

#### Augments

Echo has a LAE mod installed after an industrial accident. Following her attack on Korbitron, Echo's entire torso had to be reconstructed and her kidney, spleen, and both of her lungs replaced with artificial organs. The front of her chest is a plate that must be removed for servicing her artificial organs. She later required a RAK mod after her leg was severely injured in a motor vehicle crash.

## History

#### Workplace Injury and Meeting Vision

While working in a Korbitron fulfillment center as a mechanic, Artemis's left arm got caught in a machine and needed to be amputated. Unable to work as medical bills piled up, she knew there was no way to get out of the hole she had found herself in. The only place to go was down, into the underground world of black market tech and hacked mods. Taking out the largest loan she could, Artemis brought the money to black market mod-maker Vision, who built her a new arm. After seeing her hack into the mod herself, Vision took her under his wing and taught her everything he knew about hacking CyberGen mods.

#### Attack on Korbitron

Frustrated that she was kicked out of the workforce for her injury and left on her own, Artemis abandoned her given name and adopted the alias Echo, vowing revenge on those who wronged her and left her on her own without any way to survive.

While infiltrating the fulfillment center where she used to work with the intention of destroying all the machinery inside, Echo was caught and trapped by Korbitron head of security, Gadon Kincaid, who shot Echo six times in the chest and dumped her body in the garbage, assuming she was dead and unlikely to be found.

Echo was found by Vision, who was against the idea of destroying their facility. She was on death's door when she was brought to Vision's place and underwent immediate emergency surgery, replacing her heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and spleen with artificial organs.

Echo's life was saved, but forever altered.

#### Near-Death Experience

While recovering from her numerous surgeries, Echo talks with Shift about what she describes as a near-death experience after being shot. She doesn't know what it was or what it means, if it meant anything at all. In that time, there is little religious worship or spirituality. Shift explains that it was her body reacting to the installing of the numerous mods keeping her alive - the fusion of biology and technology. This "awakening" in Echo brought about a new understanding of her purpose, both as an individual and as a member of a larger symbiotic group - the human race.