Riley Ferrow is an engineer who learned early that machines can hurt you if you trust them too much.
She grew up around factories and workshops, places where noise never really stopped and everything felt slightly unsafe if you weren’t paying attention. When she was eight, there was an accident on the factory floor. Something went wrong, fast and final. She lost her arm in the process. Her grandfather, Jeremy, pulled her out and kept her alive long enough for help to arrive, but he didn’t make it. It was the first time she saw him die, and the first time she understood that even clever people don’t always win.
The prosthetic came soon after. It wasn’t good. It was heavy, stiff, and unreliable. Over the years she replaced it, rebuilt it, and stripped it down again more times than she can remember. Every version taught her something new. The arm she has now isn’t special because it’s advanced, but because it fits her. Every plate, joint, and cable is something she’s adjusted herself. If it breaks, she knows exactly why.
She travels because it makes sense. Engineers are needed everywhere, especially on the frontier, on ships, in old facilities no one wants to claim responsibility for anymore. Adventure, to her, is just work in unfamiliar places. She grew up hearing her grandfather’s stories, not heroic ones, but practical ones about jobs that went wrong, systems that failed, and people who had to improvise. She doesn’t want to repeat those stories. She wants her own, earned the same way.
