Cyborgs

You know what else I saw this morning? Cyborgs. At least they had to be, with those eyes that sometimes glow and circuits tattooed all over. Creepy-cool. Didn't think I'd ever meet one. I mean, we buy contraband from them, like 3D printers, but they're supposed to live far from the big cities because what they do to themselves is illegal. Then again, who's going to notice if a few of them lurk around the periphery? They can probably hack drones just by looking at them.

— Peripheral

Developed at the end of the Oil Age to provide basic health support where qualified doctors were in short supply, medical nanobots were designed to boost immunity, speed up healing and control pain. They proved capable of much more. Hackers soon figured out how to use them to give themselves superhuman memory, reflexes and even wireless network interfaces, at the cost of obvious body alterations. Sidelined for a while, the original medical functions of a cyborg's nanobots proved essential again once space colonization began in earnest, and people could find themselves stuck far away from civilization for years at a time.
Ordinary people can turn into cyborgs through a weeks-long process that involves considerable discomfort. There is a small risk of rejection that leads to temporary or permanent disabilities. This risk increases with the patient's age; the optimal time to apply the treatment is around 16-17 years old, or after a full regen treatment.
A cyborg's typical powers haven't changed much over the ages, but each individual is unique in the end. Looks are more varied; most cyborgs end up with the skin tinted in unusual colors such as blue or gold, and they have visible patterns shaped like circuit boards, or else "seams" that glow when the body is overheated -- which happens after relatively little exertion, especially if they use cyborg abilities.
For security reasons, a cyborg's nanobots only accept new instructions in the form of chemicals injected into the bloodstream. If somehow they are deactivated or removed from the body, the cyborg is crippled until they can be stabilized via conventional medicine. Unless they're given new nanobots soon, they will then revert to being baseline.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Transhumans