Stringer

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Person who freelances for CIC. Stringers collect intel of various types (video, audio, text, whatever) then upload it to the CIC database. If a CIC user wants to access that intel, the user pays a fee. Some of that fee goes back to the stringer.

Hiro Protagonist operates as a more conventional sort of stringer, until he chooses to become a gargoyle, albiet with a very compact wearable system, just prior to his purchase of his motorcycle and trek north to Oregon to save YT, Juanita Marquez, and the nam-shub of Enki. Hiro's swords tend to cause people to assume that he is not just a stringer, but a high level operative involved in wet work.

Dr. Emanuel Lagos, a former Librarian at The Library of Congress, is an accomplished stringer/gargoyle with the Central Intelligence Corporation who originally conceives of the idea of neuro-linguistic hacking using the early Sumerian language and compiles a number of stacks of intel on this and several related topics. He is also referred to as a bug by the local private constabulary.