Claire Russell

Claire is a bartender at Afterlife in.

Biography
Claire became an engineer and worked for Militech for while before eventually quitting and opening her own autoshop in Arroyo, Santo Domingo, Night City. Here she worked on various vehicles and eventually came up with her own called Beast. At the same time Claire worked as a bartender for the infamous club of Watson, the Afterlife. With the staff she was often very friendly and memorized their drinks. She was also responsible for naming much of the drinks on the menu after legends of Night City. These drinks, were usually the the personal choices of the people who ordered them.

At some point, Claire married Dean Russell. Because of Dean's support, Claire was able to complete her transition from male to female without any implants. Claire and Dean loved street racing and were involved in many races. Dean was Claire's driver in the Beast; she described him as being 'one with the car' despite having no implants to help him drive. During one race with her husband, they got in a serious accident that led to Dean's death. It was during the street racing final championship event in the year 2076, and involved an old rival a corpo named Peter Sampson. Claire blamed Dean's murder on Peter, and never raced again.

In 2077, Claire met two new mercs who had been working for Dexter DeShawn, the two were Jackie Welles and V. Jackie gave Claire his personal choice and recipe for a drink, and told her to remember it for when he became a legend. After Jackie's death, Claire officially put his drink on the menu.

Street racing
Claire after some time contacted V about asking them to join her in a street race competition as her driver. V agreed to join her and raced through each race winning and getting to the next round. As they continued their success, Claire opened up with V and explained her situation and what racing meant to her. She told V of her late husband and the man responsible. Claire tells V the real reason she wanted to race again was to get revenge on Peter Sampson. During the championship, she explains to V to only go after peter and destroy his car so they could confront him. If V helped her get revenge, she is doesn't feel anything and only wishes to drink. Afterwards she gave them the Beast. If V finished the race, Claire became angry at them for not allowing her to get her revenge.

Database Entry

 * Every regular at the Afterlife knows Claire, the bartender who knows their favorite drink by heart, what they drank last time, and even what their friends ordered. Likewise, most know a few facts about Claire too. She's a transwoman who hasn't installed a single piece of cyberware in her body. She quit her job as a Militech engineer. And she's responsible for immortalizing Night City legends by naming drinks after them on the bar menu. Posthumously, of course.
 * What not all Afterlife clients know, however, is that Claire owns her own autoshop where she can be found spending hours under the hoods of broken-down cars and Beast, the rig she takes out on less-than-legal street races.