Just Drive
- Eddies
- 59
Nico Vicente Sainz
| Alias | "Ghostshift" |
| Age | 24 |
| Ethnicity | Anglo-Spanish |
| Birthplace | Night City, Outskirts |
| Height | 1.82 m |
| Weight | 78.5 kg |
| Gender | Male |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Lean and sinewy build. Slightly above average height. Short dirty blonde hair, gray-blue eyes. High-cheekbone face with a perpetual 5 o'clock shadow. Minimalist chromeware—he doesn't flaunt it.
BACKGROUND
Family Ranking: Urban Streetkid
Parental Status:
- Father: Unknown. Presumed deceased.
- Mother: Deceased due to complications stemming from prototype cyberware rejection.
PERSONALITY AND MOTIVATIONS
- Personality Traits:Shy and Secretive
- Side A:
- A mix of 80s-style synthwave and analog recordings—"Faded Memory," "Wanderers," "Days of Thunder," "True Survivor"and many others.
- A collection of Mila's favorite songs as well as an original or two.
- A personal message: Mila's voice, laughing between songs. Then a final, more somber recording, several moments after the final track:
"Nico... if you're hearing this, I'm probably dead, offline, or in some black site brain jar. Don't try to find me. Just... drive. That's when you're real. That's when you're you. Drive until you feel me sitting beside you again."
- Side A:
- FRIENDS
- Mila Reyes (Former Lover, Presumed Dead/Lost)
- Met on one of his gigs, developed a fast relationship. Unknown whereabouts, presumed dead after a gig gone sideways.
- A Ripperdoc who treats him like a younger brother. They met after Nico stitched himself up using a drive belt in her clinic lobby.
- Asher Cortez
- Mila's former partner-in-crime and ex-lover. Now a cyberpsycho-leaning merc working for Biotechnica. Believes Nico abandoned Mila. Blames Nico for her death.
- Mila Reyes (Former Lover, Presumed Dead/Lost)
SKILLS & ROLE
Role: Solo (Wheelman Variant)
Special Skill: Combat Sense (used while driving, for threat detection, ambush evasion, and tactical route planning)
Skills:
- Driving (Expert level)
- Street Navigation
- Handgun Proficiency
- Tactical Evasion
- Lockpicking
- Urban Stealth
- Quick Reflexes
- Basic Tech (vehicle mods)
- Cool-Under-Pressure (bonus to resisting panic/disruption)
- Kiroshi Optics (Basic) [-2]
- Neuroport (Standard) [-0]
- Kereznikov Reflex Booster [-4]
- Tactile Boosters [-1]
EMPATHY & HUMANITY
Empathy [5]
- 5
- [50 base] - [-7 cybernetics] = 43
GEAR & STYLE
- Wears a matte white neo-leather bomber jacket with a reflective, golden scorpion on the back (Mila's design).
- Synth-denim jeans and reinforced boots.
- Distinctive low-profile armored synth-rubber driving gloves, always worn.
- Mirrored Sunglasses
- Retro Cassette Player
HISTORY
Nico was born on the edge of Night City—Pacifica—not in the glittering towers but in a crumbling mid-rise that smelled of synth oil and ozone. His father, a small-time fixer and street racer, vanished after a gig gone sideways when Nico was 12. His mother, a low-tier Medtech who took experimental cyberware gigs to scrape by, died shortly after due to complications stemming from cyberware rejection. Nico was raised by the street, sleeping in the backseats of stolen cars or under flickering neon motel signs. Driving became a necessity before it became a passion. He was a prodigy—ghosting past NCPD scans, running silent, always clean. Never caught. Never flashy. In his late teens, he started doing freelance work—running rides, getaway jobs, silent escort gigs. People came to rely on "Ghostline" when they wanted speed, stealth, and no questions asked. He never got greedy, never got sloppy. It kept him alive.
Until her.
Mila Reyes was a Netrunner with the Civic Ghosts, a fringe crew of anti-corporate mercs who specialized in data-liberation and guerrilla hacks against mid-tier corpos. During a job that saw Nico driving a load of stolen neuro-silver up the spine of the Badlands, Mila jumped into his vehicle mid-chase, bleeding from a shredded datajack and pursued by Kang Tao enforcers. She plugged directly into his ride's sync port—without permission—and rerouted the police drones tailing them. Nico didn't say a word. Just kept driving.
After the job, she said, "I like the quiet ones."
He didn't say anything.
She kissed him anyway.
Mila quickly became the missing piece to what had been a rather trivial cycle of gig, sleep, and survive. Though Mila continued her freelance work, she began to join Nico on some of his gigs, when he'd let her. She was capable but Nico was always worried about what could happen to her - he'd seen what happened to those who crossed the corpos. For him it was one thing, for her... somehow he couldn't explain - it was different. Even so, they worked together - and they made a pretty good team. That is, until fate had its way. During "Operation Glass Halo", the name they'd given the gig, Mila connected to the target data node to extract the requested assets. After that, Nico's memory goes fuzzy. A mixture of unease, horror, and rushed activity. Mila's vitals spiked, unnatural words exiting her lips as she was seemingly caught in the network. After that, a bright flash, and the next thing he remembers is being evacuated by Trauma Team. His identification came back to a false identity, a failsafe Mila had established - no doubt. Over the next few months, he searched and scoured both physically and virtually for any trace of Mila - but she was gone. Local media skimmed over the event, noting only that several "insurgents" had been caught attempting a break in to a corpo black site, and died.
Since then, Nico has been barely holding on, living in a pattern or routine that gets him from morning to evening, then evening to morning. Internally, he's finally beginning to process his loss, but has been taking increasingly high risk gigs in an effort to drown out the ever present "noise".