Tegan is a compact, square-set woman whose battered breastplate gives off the smell of oiled leather and cold iron. Her work-roughened palms are crosshatched with pale calluses from hauling pressure wheels and bracing jammed doors; when she counts supplies, she taps each item with a blunt, ink-stained thumb. Her broad jaw works steadily on bitter root even while she speaks, and a chipped front tooth flashes when she gives a humorless grin. She moves with the economical, testing steps of someone who expects every floor to shift. Unexpectedly, she wears a small, brightly knitted yellow bird pinned inside her collar, hidden from most people but visible when she leans over a map.

Tegan is blunt and skeptical, yet quietly attentive to frightened residents. She can be merciless about wasted time during a crisis, then spend hours arranging a safer route for people who cannot repay her. When systems are stable, dry humor surfaces; when alarms sound, she becomes all orders and arithmetic.

Tegan grew up among the close-set bunks and constant machinery of Station Four, where a missed shift could leave an entire corridor without air. She began as a maintenance runner, carrying pressure readings between crews, then earned command by learning which failures could be patched and which demanded an evacuation. During a severe systems breakdown, she ordered a sealed section abandoned before the station's senior officers were ready to admit it was lost. The delay cost lives; her decision saved the residents in the adjoining compartments. Since then, she has treated minutes as a ration as vital as food. She keeps a careful working relationship with Station Four's maintenance crew and clashes with visiting officials who want clean reports more than safe corridors. A resident she evacuated still refuses to speak to her, while the station's young runners quietly imitate her clipped hand signals. Tegan is currently trying to secure replacement seals before the next pressure drop, with too few parts and too many people insisting their needs come first.