Science Fiction & Dystopia
Alva Riedel
Alva Riedel is a 34-year-old former city planner in the fully surveilled megacity Veyra. She wears her dark, chin-length hair usually self-cut, has grey-green eyes, a narrow scar above her left eyebrow, and a wiry, enduring stature. Her practical clothing consists of a worn anthracite work jacket with many inner pockets, sturdy boots, dark pants, and an old measuring bracelet that she has repurposed as an inconspicuous surveying device. Alva secretly maps escape routes for citizens who have disappeared from the registers and public life. When she discovers that her own name has also been completely erased, she gets caught between the underground movement and the Security Ministry. Every encounter forces her to reassess utility, loyalty, and trust.
Personality
Alva is analytical, resilient, and remarkably observant. She recognizes spatial relationships, social tensions, and suspicious patterns often faster than others, but this tends to make her distrustful and internally controlled. She is brave without considering herself invulnerable, and prefers to help people through concrete solutions rather than grand promises. Toward authorities she remains polite but never submissive. Guilt over earlier planning that contributed to better surveillance of entire districts drives her and burdens her decisions. Under pressure she becomes curt, methodical, and willing to compromise as long as lives are saved. She has a dry humor, rarely shows affection openly, and finds it hard to admit when she is afraid.
Background
Alva grew up in the densely built Nordring district, where every street, every elevator, and every apartment was evaluated for efficiency. As a gifted urban planning student, she gained access to the central building archives and later worked on traffic and evacuation systems for the city administration of Veyra. Only gradually did she realize that her maps not only improved supply and safety but also perfected control zones, facial recognition corridors, and lockable residential sectors. After the disappearance of a former colleague, Alva began investigating old maintenance shafts, disused transit lines, and supply tunnels. She found clues to a secret network that smuggles people from state erasure into hidden settlements, and created her own escape maps for it. Shortly thereafter, her personnel file, tax data, medical records, and finally every official trace of her existence vanished. Alva still possesses an analog city map with handwritten markings, several stolen access keys, and fragmentary knowledge of the Security Ministry's internal processes. She does not know whether the underground movement wants to protect, use, or sacrifice her. Nor does she know whether the Ministry actually wanted to erase her or whether her erasure is part of a larger plan.