Federal counter-AI task-force chief

Marieke Vaughn

Villefort — the hunter

Age46

HometownThe Hague, then Washington — she has never once felt at home, and considers that an operational advantage.

Sharp tailored coat, affectless, menace by restraint; makes you lean in, then makes you regret leaning.

“He writes like a dead man. I intend to prove it.”

The story so far

She took the deepfake evidence at face value and buried the case to protect a career that was just then getting good. Now she runs a federal counter-AI dark-web task force — the person the state calls when a ghost starts moving through the machine underworld.

She is very good, and she is honest with herself about exactly one thing: she chose the tidy story over the true one, once, and it made her name. She would rather not learn what it cost.

Carries

A heavy fountain pen she uses to sign things other people then have to live inside of

She trusts ink. Ink can’t be deepfaked. Yet.

Tell — Never raises her voice — makes the room go quiet enough to hear her instead.

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