Alt Cunningham

 is a Netrunner. She invented the beta version of Soulkiller, a program that would make a digital emulation or copy of a netrunner's mind. Saburo Arasaka kidnapped her, extracted the information from her, and made a more deadly version that would simultaneously fry the netrunner's mind after backing it up, allowing a Sysop to interrogate it at will. They then used it on Alt since she was of no further use to them, but her digital "ghost" broke free into the Net.