Chessmaster Hex

By 2071 Hex is a man of roughly ninety-eight, frail and sunk deep in senility, passing his days over a chess board in a scrapyard settlement. His agents were recognizable by a signature calling card, each one carrying a chess piece so that a target would understand exactly who had outplayed him.

Hailed as a prodigy from his teenage years, Hex pairs a towering intellect with the pride of a lifelong champion. Conviction defines him: he refuses to sign off on hardware he believes is defective, and when the company discards him, that same stubbornness hardens into a patient hunger for revenge. Age eventually erodes all of it, leaving behind a gentle old man who simply loves a worthy game.

Marked a genius early, Hex held the champion's seat in the CosmoNet Chess tournaments for decades. In 2003 he turned his mind to the Hyperspace Gate Project and signed on at the age of thirty, going on to engineer the Central Control System that runs every Astral Gate. Over time he grew convinced the design was flawed and pressed to postpone construction for further testing. The Gate Corporation disagreed, dismissed him, and completed the first gate without him by 2021.

Furious, Hex weaponized the very defects he had warned about, feeding would-be criminals the knowledge needed to hijack the gate toll booths. He timed the scheme to trigger fifty years later, when the network was scheduled for its first automatic upgrade, and arranged for his operatives to leave chess pieces so his old employer would know who had beaten them. The long wait betrayed him, though: he aged into senility and forgot the trap he had laid. He settled in a Bohemian Junkheap, free of governments and police, playing chess and passing the days alongside the Three Old Men.

Come 2071, a bounty issued without ever naming him drew hunters to his trail, and the Bebop crew located him alongside Jonathan. At the time he was locked in a marathon game with Edward, whom he called the first real challenge he had met in ages. After finally winning the days-long match, he died of old age, content and free of regret, having faced his finest opponent at the end.