Status: Officially Deceased (Militech Records). Active.
Aliases: "The Exorcist," "Agent Null," "The Long-Fused Bomb"
Affiliation: Freelance Deniable Asset (Formerly: Militech Special Operations)
Meredith Stout's career in Militech Special Ops was built on a foundation of cold competence and ruthless pragmatism. Her involvement in the volatile "MLC Affair" of 2077—securing the prototype weapons shipment with the help of the legendary mercenary V—should have been a career-defining victory. It was, until V detonated a tactical nuke in Arasaka Tower months later.
The Corporate Wars 2.0 ignited, and Stout became a liability. Her direct, deniable connection to V made her a target for Arasaka vengeance and a scapegoat for Militech's own embarrassed intelligence division. She was marked for a "quiet retirement"—a corporate euphemism for a bullet and an unmarked grave.
Stout saw the hit coming. Using her deep knowledge of black-ops protocols and the labyrinthine, off-the-books infrastructure she herself had helped manage—most notably the forgotten Mobile Laser Comms (MLC) Platform from the Dogtown crisis—she orchestrated her own death.
With a substantial portion of her illicit earnings from a decade of black ops, she contracted the Lazarus Group. They didn't resurrect her; they replaced her. A genetically-matched corpse, tagged with her DNA and cyberware serials, was vaporized in a conveniently explosive "safehouse breach." The official record closed. Meredith Stout was dead.
What emerged from the Lazarus vat was a ghost with a purpose. Stripped of her Militech identity, Stout found a new, brutal niche in the 2097 underworld: corporate exorcism.
Specialization: She hunts Ghostwire Clique infestations and other forms of corporate psychic warfare. Her expertise isn't in netrunning, but in counter-possession—tracking the human vectors, identifying compromised assets, and performing "hard resets" on hijacked executives. She is one of the few freelancers NETWATCH will reluctantly contract, as her methods are as deniable as they are final.
Appearance: The severe Militech bob is gone. She now wears her hair long and blonde, often tied back in a practical but severe style. Her face is subtly altered, courtesy of Lazarus, just enough to evade facial recognition. She favors unassuming, armored streetwear that allows her to vanish into a crowd. The only hint of her past is the cold, analytical gaze that never quite warms.
Base of Operations: She operates from a rotating series of safehouses, but maintains a hidden, fortified module within the derelict MLC Platform—a bitter joke and a statement of defiance. It is her sanctum, her armory, and a reminder that the tools of corporate war can be turned against their makers.
Stout is not a hero. She is a weapon that broke its leash and now chooses its own targets. Her motivation is a cold, smoldering hatred for the corporate machines that created and then tried to discard her.
Against Arasaka: For trying to kill her for V's sins.
Against Militech: For trying to kill her for their own incompetence.
Against the Ghostwire Clique: For representing the ultimate perversion of the corporate espionage game she once mastered.
She has no permanent allies, only temporary contractors. She has worked with:
NETWATCH Exorcists when their goals align.
Michiko Arasaka's Kage no Kiri, seeing the Reformist's subtle war as a more interesting game than Hanako's brute-force approach.
The Mox, respecting their practical protection of the vulnerable.
Meredith Stout is a phantom in the corporate machine. She is a warning that the most dangerous asset is not the one who blindly follows orders, but the one who learns all the secrets, survives the betrayal, and then uses those same secrets to burn the house down. She is not trying to topple the corps; she is methodically making them fear their own shadows, one "exorcised" executive at a time. In the language of her former employers, she is a rogue, autonomous weapon—and she is now aimed squarely at them.