Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is good at her job: she can deter thieves and pacify thugs, if not with a blade, then by toppling an eight-foot pile of coffee canisters onto their heads. But when ravaged bodies show up on the waterfront, an arson covers up human sacrifices, and a powerful business coalition plots to kill the emperor, she feels a tad overwhelmed. Worse, Sicarius, the empire's most notorious assassin, is in town. He's tied in with the chaos somehow, but Amaranthe would be a fool to cross his path. Unfortunately, her superiors order her to hunt him down. Either they have an unprecedented belief in her skills... or someone wants her dead.

"His name was Jessie. He liked grunge music and hated his father and didn’t have a mother. When he was twelve he’d been shamelessly in love with Jessica Alba. He had a book full of clean jokes in his room that were so stupid they were almost funny. He was twenty-one years old, a junior in college, and he hated carrots. That he could remember. All of that seemed menial, now. What did it matter if he’d once watched Avengers three times in a row because he wished he was Iron Man? Jessie couldn’t feel his legs. Couldn’t move them. Hell, he couldn’t even turn his head..."

Writers have to get their characters from somewhere. Sometimes it's just not as simple as making them up.