Main Characters
Maddy Carter
- Artificial Human: Maddy, Liam and Sal are all just support units, robotic humans constructed by Roald Waldstein in the distant future to serve as Time Riders to prevent time contamination. Their memories of regular lives are fake.
- Nerd Glasses: She wears a pair constantly and has trouble seeing without them. This, along with the t-shirts she often wears early on in the series, bearing tech company logos, make for optimal nerd attire.
Liam O'Connor
- Alternate Self: He looks to be one for Foster, until City of Shadows when the team finds out that they are all support units and Liam and Foster are separate Liam units.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Spends a lot of time with Bob, going on every mission with him, chatting to him about how to appear more human and being affectionately pleased when he succeeds. Lampshaded by Sal in The Mayan Prophecy, when she suggests they Get a Room!.
- Large Ham: Liam's No Indoor Voice and frequent exclamations throughout the series are well-documented, both in dire and happy situations, but are noted to be part of his charm.
Sal Vikram
- Break the Cutie: Particularly by The Mayan Prophecy. She's the youngest character and has to deal with the fact that she was modeled on a real girl, making her seem like a fake, on top of all the pressures of working for the agency and keeping history as it should be.
- Character Death: As of The Mayan Prophecy.
- Ripple Effect Indicator: She is responsible for walking around the city of New York during the days before and of 9/11 attacks, checking everything for changes caused by the Ripple Effect. Due to the group living in a time bubble, she and the others all have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory.
Bob
- Artificial Human: He is a support unit - a robot created in the future that is almost exactly like a human. He was grown from cloned tissue, deliberately given the appropriate genetic makeup for up to 700% human strength, superior speed and reflexes ... and a brain the size of a walnut. He also has an incredibly powerful supercomputer hooked up to it. Aside from being seven feet tall and laden with more muscles than is strictly fair, he goes from completely bald (after 'birth') to having fairly ordinary dark hair and grey eyes. He is flesh-and-bone rather than metal simply because it is better at learning and better at repairing itself on the field (flesh heals better than steel, at any rate). There are only two problems; he can't easily gauge emotional inflections like sarcasm, and he finds it confusing and problematic to make a decision.
He is frequently described as 'an ox of a man', and before being named Bob; Maddy wanted to name him after Arnold Schwarzenegger for a reason. - Heterosexual Life-Partners: Him and Liam grow incredibly close over the course of the series, joining each other on every mission. Bob mostly learns about human emotion and etiquette from Liam. They even decide to stay together at the end of the series!
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: While Liam is the leader of all field missions, it is invariably him or Becks who bail him out of trouble. He is stronger than regular men, faster, and isable to process an obscene amount of tactical data in a second. He swears undying loyalty to Liam, and to start with is near incapable of independent decisions - he doesn't just accept being the sidekick, he requires it.
Becks
- Artificial Human: She is a support unit - a robot created in the future that is almost exactly like a human. She was grown from cloned tissue, deliberately given the appropriate genetic makeup for up to 700% human strength, superior speed and reflexes ... and a brain the size of a walnut. She also has an incredibly powerful supercomputer hooked up to it. Aside from being seven feet tall and laden with more muscles than is strictly fair, she goes from completely bald (after 'birth') to having fairly ordinary dark hair and grey eyes. She is flesh-and-bone rather than metal simply because it is better at learning and better at repairing itself on the field (flesh heals better than steel, at any rate). There are only two problems; she can't easily gauge emotional inflections like sarcasm, and she finds it confusing and problematic to make a decision.
She is much more slender than Bob, but muscled like a gymnast. In fact, aside from her robotic coldness, quiet demeanour, and artificial speech pattern, you be forgiven for thinking that she was (an unnaturally beautiful, which she capitalizes on at more than one point) human woman. - Hypercompetent Sidekick: While Liam is the leader of all field missions, it is invariably her or Bob who bail him out of trouble. She is both stronger than regular men, faster, and is able to process an obscene amount of tactical data in a second. She especially qualifies, as she doesn't have the sheer size or strength of Bob, but is no less ruthless and often seen as cruel or monstrous in her ability to dance all over the enemy, exploiting tropes like the Honey Trap. She swears undying loyalty to Liam, and to start with is near incapable of independent decisions - she doesn't just accept being the sidekick, she requires it.
- Ice Queen: Being an Artificial Human means she has no emotion, to the point where Maddy gave her this nickname. She gets better making her a Defrosting Ice Queen eventually
Rashim Anwar
- Future Me Scares Me: In Gates of Rome, he is horrified to discover that he has become an aged madman due to Caligula's treatment of him.
- Red Herring Shirt: Him joining the team in Gates of Rome was completely unexpected. He seemed to just be another One-Shot Character until he was dragged off by the team back to the archway (and into subsequent books).
Recurring Characters
Foster
- Alternate Self: He looks to be one for Liam, until City of Shadows when the team finds out that they are all support units and Liam and Foster are separate Liam units.
- Demoted to Extra: While many characters have come and gone, Foster continued to make appearances, until his death in City of Shadows, in most books, albeit smaller ones than in the first book.
- Meaningful Name: Foster tries to 'foster' an understanding of the Time Riders' duty and shapes their ideas of the world. He a fatherly figure to them, too.
- The Mentor: He is a mentor to the team, constantly helping them, although he appears less and less until City of Shadows, when he dies, but not before giving Maddy a crucial clue to the Agency's true nature.
Roald Waldstein
- Ascended Extra: Was originally only referred to in conversations, then eventually became a major character.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: His wife, Eleanor, and son, Gabriel, both died in a tragic car crash. Literally wanting to see the world ruined is still nowhere near justified, but he implied to be acting on something else too.
Joseph Olivera
- Porky Pig Pronunciation: Joseph has so much trouble with the letter s he often has to s-s-sub-s-s... "replace" s words with different words in conversation.
- Speech Impediment: Joseph has a horrible stutter that flares up when he's nervous. Waldstein finds it amusing.
Frasier Griggs
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Waldstein. The two have been extremely close since childhood, eventually starting up Waldstein's company together.
Adam Lewis
- Starving Student: Even though he's already struggling, Adam borrows thousands from his parents to go abroad, deciding he doesn't care if he'll be broke for the rest of his student life.
