Rachel
Rachel is the first-person narrator of the story. She is a scavenger. While that may sound like a terrible putdown by a critic lacking a sense of the gallant, it is actually the truth she herself describes. Rachel is more than willing to admit to ownership of a strange sort of “sixth sense” which all great scavengers have and she is also more than eager to commit to being a member of the scavenger society. She and they spent most of their time tracking through the city in search of experiments cast off by “the Company” and Borne is the most prized treasure of this hunt through thick fur of Mord.
Mord
To suggest this is a, indeed, a strange vision of a world unlike the one we inhabit would be like saying Jeff Bezos is comfortable. Mord is a giant bear-like creature. He was created by some ridiculously short-sighted associates of “the Company” as a sort of unbeatable watchdog. The key word there being unbeatable. Mord is now lord and master of all he surveys, the ruler of the city by force if not by name.
Borne
To suggest that it is difficult to describe Borne in a minimum of words is like saying Mord has a little bit in common with Jeff Bezos. (In the sense that one should be careful of what they help to create, not in the furry monster part.) Borne quite literally is introduced in the story’s opening paragraph as “just salvage” but by the end of the novel he has transformed into something much more. That first paragraph ends with the narrator foreshadowing this transformation by admitting she could never have imagined what Borne would come to mean to everybody. So, not to give anything away, but saying that Borne is just a piece of salvage is not unlike saying Jesus was just a carpenter. Important to keep in mind in that comparison, of course, is that Jesus was only half human while Borne isn’t even that.
Wick
Wick is Rachel’s lover with whom she shares a highly protected home out of sheer necessity. Into this home Rachel introduces this strange being she proceeds to being treating as a person. Wick’s backstory, however, is one which offered him much closer scrutiny into the way “the Company” carries out its creation of experiments…such as Mord, for instance. And so he is not so quick to jump on the Rachel’s bandwagon promoting Borne’s behavior as sheer childlike innocence. After all, Wick is also a drug dealer trafficking in a memory-altering beetle one engages by sticking into their ear.
The Magician
The Magician is a character that hovers over the entire narrative. She touches upon the entire story because she is basically the antagonist to every other character. The Magician is engaged in a fierce battle with Mord because she is engaged in a fierce competition with “the Company” to take over their control of the city. She is also a thorn in Wick’s side because she’s already taken control of the western reaches of the city, thus becoming an obstacle to his drug dealing operation.
