Eighteen-year-old Emika lives in a tiny apartment with a roommate in New York City. With no family and significant debts, she works as a bounty hunter and exudes a street-savvy, toughened voice. The author reveals details to indirectly show Emika’s intellect and thoughtfulness, such as when she lists among her backpack contents a hard copy of a book, for use in waiting out suspects to catch: “Entertainment that won’t eat up my batteries is always worth bringing” (7). She dresses in torn and old clothing out of necessity and dyes her hair in a mix of colors. Her father, an artist, died when she was 11; Emika keeps a painting he made and an ornament from her childhood as her most cherished possessions.

Emika has a computer-like mind in the way she can see and assess problems: “I can take in a scene like a photographer might take in a landscape […] and take a mental snapshot to remember the whole thing” (7). Her father encouraged her to “learn to look at the whole of something, not just the parts” (33), and she uses this skill to show Hideo that she is capable of finding and stopping Zero.