Sayaka-san is a synthetic operative engineered for contract assassination, infiltration, and autonomous field work.
She was never supposed to belong to the corporation that ultimately claimed her.
Origin
Sayaka began as a synthetic embryo created under Specimen 9, an experimental combat program developed by the military R&D division of Velvet Horizons.
The program was connected to the development of the C.A.A.T.s: genetically engineered operatives intended for military, security, and private contractual deployment.
Sayaka was engineered as an Alpha unit.
An Alpha was not intended to function merely as another member of a team. She was designed to lead one.
Had her Specimen 9 program continued as intended, Sayaka would have commanded her own C.A.A.T. unit, combining combat ability with tactical coordination, adaptive decision-making, and field leadership.
That future was stolen from her before it began.
While still an embryo, Sayaka was taken by a rival corporation whose identity remains unknown.
She became a black asset: stolen research that could never be openly acknowledged without exposing both the theft and the existence of Specimen 9.
Unit-07
The corporation that acquired Sayaka did not continue the Alpha program.
Instead, it redirected her development toward a completely different purpose.
Where Sayaka had originally been intended to command a team, she was trained to operate alone.
Her leadership architecture was repurposed toward autonomous planning, infiltration, target assessment, pursuit, and assassination.
She became a lone-wolf contract operative.
Her designation is: Unit-07
There are no Units 01 through 06.
The number does not represent a successful production sequence.
Before acquiring Sayaka, the corporation had attempted to develop its own synthetic assassin units in-house.
Six times.
All six failed.
Then came the stolen embryo.
Unit-07 worked.
Synthetic
Sayaka is not mechanical, cybernetic, or a conventionally modified human.
She is synthetic at the cellular level.
Her body is composed of living biological tissue, but the foundational cells from which that body developed were artificially created by Velvet Horizons as part of the Specimen 9 program.
These cells were designed to be unusually programmable. Rather than beginning with an ordinary human cell line and modifying it afterward, Velvet Horizons created a synthetic cellular platform whose genetic architecture could be deliberately written, revised, and tested before embryonic development began. The work originated within its Posthuman Unit for Synthetic Somatic Yield — P.U.S.S.Y. — a research division whose name proved unusually durable: technically descriptive, conveniently feline in a program built on cat genetics, suggestive of the sexual empire from which Velvet Horizons had grown, and perfectly suited to its founder, Eikken Pójsiedysz, who had long since turned the childhood “pussy-dick” taunt attached to his name into part of his own mythology, as chronicled in [_Hoshihara Chronicles: Tailbreakers_](https://thegeminiprotocol.com/music#release-hoshihara-chronicles-tailbreakers).
Tanya D’Gaul provided the human reference template.
Her genome gave Specimen 9 a stable biological baseline: human proportions, physiology, developmental pathways, and the physical architecture from which the program could work.
From there, Velvet Horizons introduced another layer.
The program had spent years studying the Felidae family, mapping feline genetics not simply to identify individual genes, but to understand the biological systems behind traits the researchers considered operationally valuable: balance, spatial awareness, rapid reflexes, low-light sensitivity, explosive movement, controlled aggression, and the ability to shift from complete stillness to immediate action.
The process was enormously expensive.
For that reason, Specimen 9 did not attempt to draw useful traits from across the animal kingdom. It specialized.
Cats were the lane.
Rather than simply inserting fragments of feline DNA into a human genome, Velvet Horizons reconstructed selected feline mechanisms inside its synthetic cellular architecture. Useful genetic and regulatory patterns were analyzed, rewritten, and integrated into the programmable cells before those cells were used to form a viable embryo.
The result was not a conventional human-animal hybrid.
It was a new biological design.
Sayaka’s body is organic.
Her blood, muscles, skin, organs, and nervous system are living tissue.
She eats, sleeps, heals, bleeds, and ages.
But every cell in her body descends from an artificial cellular lineage engineered before she ever existed as an embryo.
Her human form came from Tanya’s genetic architecture.
Her enhanced sensory and predatory characteristics came from feline-derived biological research.
The framework holding those elements together was synthetic.
That is what Sayaka is.
Not a machine pretending to be human.
Not a human altered into something else.
A living organism whose biology was written before it was grown.
Appearance
Sayaka stands approximately 5'7", with a medium build and distinctly Japanese features.
Her physical design favors normalcy rather than intimidation.
She is not physically exaggerated, heavily armored, or visibly mechanical.
She looks human because she was designed to move among humans without attracting attention.
And she does.
Sayaka walks among us unnoticed.
On a train, she is another passenger.
At a restaurant, another woman drinking coffee.
On a crowded street, another face passing beneath the lights.
That anonymity is one of her greatest advantages.
Her most unusual physical characteristic is her amber eyes, a trait associated with the genetic manipulation conducted during Specimen 9 development.
The coloration was not inherited from Tanya D’Gaul, the human genetic template behind the program.
It is one of the changes introduced afterward.
### Tanya D’Gaul
Tanya D’Gaul is human.
She is not synthetic.
She is a former U.S. Marine who later completed BUD/S and served with DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six). She eventually moved into CIA black operations, building a career around infiltration, direct action, unconventional warfare, and missions that officially never happened. She was selected as the human reference model for Specimen 9 precisely because Velvet Horizons was not looking for an average human template. It wanted a proven one.
Her genetic material served as the human template from which parts of the Specimen 9 lineage were developed.
Sayaka does not physically duplicate Tanya, but the connection is visible in subtle ways: similar height, build, and elements of facial structure.
The resemblance is close enough to become unsettling once noticed, while the differences introduced through Specimen 9 prevent Sayaka from appearing to be a simple copy.
Years later, Sayaka unknowingly encountered Tanya while Tanya was suffering from long-term amnesia and working as a waitress.
Sayaka found herself inexplicably drawn to the woman’s appearance and eventually invented an excuse to approach her for a closer look.
Neither understood why the other felt familiar.
The encounter later became the basis for the fiction entry _Over A Cuppa._
Preferred Weapons
Sayaka favors small, concealable firearms, particularly compact and subcompact pistols.
She has little interest in carrying something conspicuous when something smaller can accomplish the same job.
She is also highly proficient with hand-thrown darts and close-quarters combat.
Sayaka does not regard herself as unarmed simply because she is carrying no weapon.
Hands, elbows, knees, boots, nearby objects, and vulnerable anatomy all remain available.
Her philosophy is uncomplicated:
Preferred deterrent: Stay down.
Preferred weapon: Whatever is closest.
If someone is merely in her way, they may wake up hurting.
If they are the paycheck, she does not waste time making a point.
Personality
Sayaka is emotionally distant with humans. Her documented interactions with people are typically brief, functional, and limited to the immediate situation.
In her work, she is calm, controlled, and unsentimental. A contract is treated as a task to be completed. She does not appear to require anger, hatred, or personal grievance in order to kill, and she shows little interest in explaining or justifying what she does.
Her behavior around animals is noticeably different.
Cats
Sayaka has an unexplained weakness for cats.
The reaction may be connected to buried elements of the Specimen 9 program, something inherited through its genetic architecture, or simply a preference that developed entirely on her own.
Whatever the cause, cats appear equally interested in her.
After moving into her apartment in Istanbul, Sayaka woke one morning to find five cats lounging outside her window.
The following day there were ten.
She opened the window and told them:
“C’mon, guys. I’m really not that cute when you get to know me.”
The next day there were approximately fifteen.
Eventually there were around twenty.
This presented an operational problem.
A growing population of cats gathering outside one particular apartment was not Sayaka’s idea of maintaining cover.
She had mesh shutters installed so she could control when the animals were allowed inside.
When the shutters are open, the apartment rapidly becomes feline territory.
When they are closed, Sayaka can finally walk across her own floor.
Jack
In an attempt to discourage the cats, Sayaka acquired a golden retriever named Jack.
This was a tactical miscalculation.
Sayaka understands cats.
She did not understand dogs.
By the time she realized that a golden retriever was unlikely to serve as effective anti-cat security, Jack had already worked his way under her skin.
He is affectionate, trusting, and spectacularly unsuited to intimidation.
A burglar would be considerably more likely to receive a toy than a warning.
Jack also routinely loses control of the sofa to individual cats.
One perfectly placed paw against his muzzle is generally sufficient to convince him to relocate to the floor.
Sayaka has been known to watch this happen and ask:
“Remind me again why I got you?”
Jack remains unable to provide a satisfactory answer.
Civilian Life
Sayaka maintains an ordinary apartment in Istanbul between contracts, separate from her operational safehouse.
Her safehouse is a concealed underground facility beneath an old office near the pier.
The apartment is where Sayaka lives when she is not working.
It is deliberately understated and residential, chosen for anonymity rather than luxury.
The neighborhood does not know her as Unit-07.
To them, she is simply the quiet Japanese woman with the golden retriever and an unreasonable number of cats.
In practical terms, this is likely one of the most effective covers she has ever maintained.
The Urban Myth
Sayaka-san does not call herself Sayaka-san.
The name belongs to everyone else.
Its origin is uncertain, and like most urban legends, the surviving explanations contradict one another. One of the oldest stories begins with an unsolved murder witnessed by several people.
As the victim lay dying, he repeatedly screamed one name:
“Sayaka!”
No Sayaka was ever identified as his killer.
One version of the story claims that the woman he was calling for was already dead before he was murdered. She may have been a girlfriend, a wife, a relative, or simply someone important to him. Nobody knows for certain.
The police never solved the case.
Among detectives, the incident eventually became a piece of gallows humor. When another murder appeared with no clear suspect, no useful evidence, and no obvious explanation, someone would joke that it was another “Sayaka-san murder.”
The honorific was part joke and part superstition.
If Sayaka was a ghost, the reasoning went, it was probably better to be polite.
The expression spread through the department until it became informal shorthand for particularly baffling unsolved killings.
Then it escaped.
A detective mentioned the nickname to his wife. His wife repeated the story to one of their children. The child brought it to school.
By recess, Sayaka-san was no longer police slang.
She was a ghost.
Children added rules. Teenagers embellished sightings. Adults repeated stories they had heard from somebody who knew somebody whose uncle supposedly worked with the police.
Soon there were warnings attached to the name.
Do not call her simply Sayaka.
Show respect.
Say Sayaka-san.
Ghosts notice these things.
Over time, unrelated disappearances, murders, unexplained accidents, and sightings of unidentified women became absorbed into the legend.
Then Unit-07 began operating.
Some of her contracts produced exactly the kind of cases the police had already been calling Sayaka-san murders: dead targets, little evidence, no identifiable assailant, and witnesses who could provide only fragments.
Without realizing it, the old joke began becoming accurate.
The mythical Sayaka-san and the unidentified operative slowly merged into a single figure.
Sayaka herself eventually became aware of the name.
She does not use it.
She does not introduce herself as Sayaka-san, and there is no evidence that “Sayaka” was ever part of her original designation.
But when someone mentions Sayaka-san, she knows exactly who they mean.
Whether the original dying man ever had anything to do with Unit-07 remains unknown.
He probably did not.
Which may be the strangest part of the legend.
The ghost existed before the woman who would eventually become her.
Trivia
Sayaka was originally intended to lead other C.A.A.T.s, not operate alone.
Her designation, Unit-07, commemorates six failed assassin-development attempts that preceded her.
She was stolen as an embryo rather than manufactured by the corporation that later employed her.
Her amber eyes originate from Specimen 9 genetic modification associated with engineered alpha-predator traits.
She has an unexplained instinctive affinity for cats.
She frequently wakes to find at least one cat occupying her bed.
Jack was acquired to solve the cat problem. Jack did not solve the cat problem. He became part of it.
Sayaka once crossed paths with a C.A.A.T. operative in full covert-operations gear — helmet-mounted cat ears, modular tail, and the rest of the standard field kit. The operative mistook Sayaka for another member of the team and demanded to know why she was not wearing her gear. Sayaka did not correct her. She simply walked away.