Marcus Yallow
Marcus Yallow, a.k.a "w1nton" a.k.a. "m1k3y," is a 17 year-old high school senior attending Cesar Chavez High School and the protagonist of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, abou 100 percent of Marcus's energy is focused on Live Action Role Playing (LARPing) and Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG). He has a fierce love and massive amount of knowledge of technology, and this comes in handy later in the novel. After being captured and viciously interrogated by the DHS after terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, Marcus Yallow starts on online resistance and untimately brings the DHS down, with a little help from his friends and girlfriend. Marcus is exceptionally smart and well read for a 17-year-old, and he has a serious problem with authority.
Darryl Glover
Darryl Glover is Marcus' best friend. After he is taken prisoner by and not released by the DHS, he gets very few actual pages in the novel, but he plays an important role because he is Marcus' main motivation for his movement to bring the DHS down. In the end of the novel, Darryl is rescued by Marcus; he was still in the captivity of the DHS and in bad shape, but he is alive.
Vanessa "Van" Pak
Vanessa Pak is the girl in the trio of guys. She acts as a kind of foil to Marcus, offering her opinions an all of his ideas and putting them in perspective. She is from Vietnam, so she knows about harsh governments and doesn't want Marcus to become a victim of something that he can't possibly beat. Van also helps give Marcus many of the great ideas that make his rebellion succesful. She disappears for the majority of the middle of the book, bailing because she doesn't want to see Marcus fail. Even though she is gone, Marcus still thinks about her frequently. After hastily confessing her love for Marcus, she comes through for him in the end. On a side note, Darryl has had a crush on her for a long time but nothing happens in this book.
Jose-Luis "Jolu" Torrez
Jolu is an intelligent 16-year-old who is the fourth member of the group of friends involving Marcus, Van, and Darryl. He is a programmer that is extremely advanced for his age, demonstrated by the fact that he has been working for Pigspleen, an internet service provider, since he was 12. He is an out-of-the-box thinker, which is the opposite of what he should be given the fact that he attends and has attended an extremely strict Catholic school for his whole life. Jolu is really good at coding, and he helps Marcus get his resistance started. After that though, he bails because he in afraid of getting in trouble.
Angela "Ange" Carvelli
Ange enters the novel a substantial ways in, at Marcus's key-trading party, and becomes his unexpected love interested. She and Marcus have always been friends with Jolu, but they don't meet until the aforementioned party at Sutro Baths, where she helps sell the key idea that Marcus came up with and is trying to promote. He finds her attractive in an unexpected, clunky sort of way. Ange is a spice junkie and carries a capsaicin mister with her wherever she goes. Like many other characters in the novel, she substantially contibutes to and helps Marcus's movement.
Carrie Johnstone
Also known as "Severe Haircut Lady," Johnstone is the woman who interrogated Marcus whe he is captured at the beginning of the book, and in Marcus's mind, she becomes the face of the DHS, despite tha fact that he doesn't know her name until the end of the book. She is essentially heartless, and doesn't care at all for the pain that she inflicts upon people. To prove how heartless she is, she performs waterboarding, or simulated execution, on Marcus at the end of the novel. Unfortunately, she never seems to be punsihed for the crimes that she committed.
Drew Yallow
Drew Yallow is Marcus's father, and he clashes with his digital freedom-loving son over the fact that he supports the measures that the DHS is taking in response to the terrorist attack. One night, he gets pulled over twice by the DHS for interrogations, and while that slightly derails his support of the DHS's methods, but he doesn't really turn against them until Marcus tells them about the secret interrogations. Overall, we get the feeling that he is a good father to Marcus and supports him for the most part.
Lillian Yallow
Lillian is Marcus's mom, and she comes from England. Her job is to help other British people integrate into the United States socially and culturally. One scene that perfectly illustrates who her character is is her standoff with the two detectives that Marcus nicknames Booger and Zit. She sides wirth Marcus on the topic of what the DHS is doing, believeing that it is unfair and ineffective. She and Drew almost got divorced a couple of years ago, but they fixed their marriage for Marcus. On a side note, she has a fierce addiction to black tea.
Charles Walker
Charles is the snitch at Cesar Chavez High School. Marcus depises him from before the book even begins. He is the antagonist to Marcus's protagonist in the novel. He is a very minor character, but he has some influence on the story because he almost catches Marcus ditching school at the beginning of the novel, and he almost aprehends him near the end after the VampMob.
Ms. Galvez
Ms. Galvez is Marcus's social studies teacher, and she acts as the guide/mentor figure in the novel. She is a really amazing social studies teacher, and she talks about topics like people making a difference and fighting for causes that they believe in. She forms a bit of a special bond with Marcus, who even helps her get around the internet sucurity system so she can talk to her brother, who is stationed overseas. Like Marcus, she dislikes the strict surveillance that the school implements, and she loses her job because of this. Fortuntely, it is revealed in the epilogue that she is going to get her job back.
Mr. Fred Benson
Fred Benson is mainly important in the novel because he fights with and viciously despises Marcus. He is a character that we are supposed to dislike, like Charles. One thing in particular that he does is fire Ms. Galve and hire Mrs. Andersen, who everybody dislikes.
Barbara Stratford
Barbara Stratford is a journalist for the Bay Guardian. She is important in the novel because she writes a piece on the interrogations conducted by the DHS on Treasure Island, and she gets most of the information for these from Marcus. Also, at the end of the novel, she leads the raid on Treasure Island and helps free Marcus and Darryl from the DHS for the last time.
Masha
Masha's real name is never revealed, because she is a spy on Xnet. She first runs into Marcus at the beginning of the book; she is the pink haired girl who snaps a picture of him when he is truant and threatens to report him. She is really tech savvy and is a double agent, working for the DHS and Xnet at the same time. She says that she is helping Marcus escape in the end of the novel after the VampMob, and she also shows Marcus a picture that she took at the beginning that can prove that Darryl was with Marcus before the explosion. Marcus can't tell if she is actually trying to help him and she threatens to delete the picture, so Marcus steals her phone and traps her in a truck and runs away from her.
Zeb
Zeb is another teenager who was taken prisoner by the DHS and questioned for months. About three months in, his appendix burst, and he met Darryl in the infirmary. After that, they became cellmates. Zeb is important ebcause he apparently is released, and he gives Marcus a note that tells him that Darryl is still alive and is still being questioned. This gives Marcus hope.
