Damien Cavanaugh

A programmer at WATI who, along with Rio Kuroki, was trying to expose Project Alchera. Damien was working on DreamNet when he discovered there was a glitch in the system, and was ordered to fix it by WATI officials. However, when he started tracing the origin of the system error, Damien discovered the dark secret behind Alchera - that the Dreamer Consoles would be used to read the minds of users and implant thoughts in return, effectively brainwashing whomever used one.

Damien and Rio contacted 'Jericho' - the codename of investigative journalist Reza Temiz - in an effort to get the story out. Rio travelled to Casablanca to meet him, while Damien stayed behind to continue work on the problem. Zoe Castillo infiltrated WATI in her search for Reza and met Damien, who was shocked and saddened to hear of Rio's death. He agreed to help Zoe, and came up with a plan to trace the interference affecting Eingana by implanting a Data Worm into the computer. Damien helped from his computer with security overrides while Zoe did the legwork.

When Zoe finally escaped the WATI headquarters, Damien offered to let her stay at his apartment while the information from the Data Worm downloaded and decrypted. Zoe recounted her entire journey to him including her stay in Arcadia, which explains how Helena Chang, who had bugged Zoe, knew most of what had happened to her. While there was a degree of romantic tension between him and Zoe, they set it aside to concentrate on the situation at hand. Damien was initially against Zoe's decision to use the Dreamer console again, but finally agreed to help her. He promised - a promise once exchanged between Zoe and Reza - that he would be there when she woke up, but he was forced to leave while Zoe was unconscious. However, he left a message telling her that he had traced the interference to Saint Petersburg, and asking her not to worry. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Like most WATI employees, Damien lives in WATI City, Hokkaido, and has a comfortable Japanese-style apartment - like the Castillos, he appears to live on take-out rather than clean his kitchen. He has an Irish accent, and so he is likely a native of that country. Damien is a moral person who is prepared to take risks to expose WATI. There is a suggestion that he and Rio were close friends, if not actually dating, but his attraction to Zoe is obvious. However, he is just one man - if he made any further attempts to stop WATI from releasing the Dreamer console without Zoe, they were unsuccessful.