Kristin Ortega

Ortega had already closed Laurens Bancroft's death as a suicide when Kovacs shows up to investigate it. The problem is the body he's wearing: that of Elias Ryker, a cop, her former partner and ex-boyfriend, locked up for a crime. Ortega starts tailing him and even puts a tracker on him. At work, she sees stacks as a tool: a victim who comes back can say who did it. At home, it's another story. Her mother, Alazne, is a devout Neo-Catholic; Ortega drifted from the faith after losing her father very young, but she stays close to her family. To her, Kovacs is a stranger wearing the face of the man she loved.

At the end of episode 5, an ambush in an elevator leaves Ortega fighting for her life; her partner, Abboud, dies trying to protect her. She wakes up in the hospital with a bionic arm and isn't happy about it at all. Soon after, she's testing her new strength on a wall.

After that, Ortega and Kovacs start working together. Flashbacks show Ryker working a case on his own before he's arrested for killing a CTAC agent, and Ortega wants to clear his name. Proving him innocent is also her chance to get Ryker back, in his own body. In episode 6, she and Kovacs are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death in an underground ring, until someone from Kovacs's past shows up to save them. Spending time with a man who wears Ryker's face gets to her, and the two end up together.

Ortega tracks down Reileen's cloning facility. In the S1 finale, she joins the fight against Reileen aboard Head in the Clouds and takes on Mihn Leung, Reileen's right hand. With the case closed and his pardon secured, Kovacs goes to see her one last time before leaving Earth.

In Richard K. Morgan's novel Altered Carbon, Ortega is also the cop who treats Bancroft's death as a suicide, and Ryker is her lover. On the show, she's played by Martha Higareda.