The Skull Merchant (Adriana Imai)

inventer, used drones to find her victims

The Skull Merchant is a tactical Killer, able to place Drones that detect and debilitate her targets. By her mid 20s, she was regularly flipping companies. While finalising on a real estate firm, two members of the board moved to block the sale, pointing to the trail of hollowed-out husks she left in her wake. Adriana was frustrated. It took her weeks to find out who the holdouts were, but once she did, she thought about how it would feel to hurt them. She learned everything about the directors. Stalked their every move. Manipulated them into attending a conference in Switzerland. And, while on retreat in the Alps, she made her move. Inspired by The Skull Merchant, and feeling something within demanding expression, she tracked them with a prototype drone, and brutally dismembered them with a cruel two-bladed weapon. The rush of emotion and adrenaline was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. And the company was hers! Thus began an unsettling cycle. Swoop in on a business, destroy anyone standing in her way, and gut the company for maximum profit. She targeted companies with larger-than-life CEOs and hoped one would present a challenge. None ever did. They just ‘disappeared’ unremarkably. An aggressive manager of a fireworks company, known for his “survival tours,” was her last target, right at home in Brazil. Survival tours… a perfect cover. Adriana lured him to a decommissioned airship hangar. The hunt started at dawn and went the distance, with her still tracking him well into the evening. Locating him, she used one of her drones to direct him to a dead end, when a pair of kites suddenly appeared on camera, and the feed died. Her face hardened. Her eyes widened in disbelief as she slammed her laptop shut and charged to where the drone had crashed. There she found her prey reaching out to someone in the growing dark for help. Without a second to lose, she plunged her blade through his stomach, exposing meat, bone, and a dying heart.