Sleeper Agent

Some crew members are Syndicate sleeper agents or sleepers, secret agents so secret that even the agents themselves don't know they're agents, until the Syndicate broadcasts out a sleeper agent signal to awaken them. Unlike other Syndicate operatives, sleepers do not get an uplink. Without an uplink, they cannot order Syndicate Items directly (although they can find them in dead drops — more on that later.) No code, no PDA, no nothing; they must do their dirty deeds without them. They can of course still try to use Syndicate gear from traitors, certain merchants, and/or some Adventure Zone locations.

Sleepers may not get an uplink, but they've still got some useful tools of their own. Most notably, the Listening Post is accessible to sleeper agents, who can use a hand scanner by the door to open the airlock. You can stock up on whatever goodies C.A.R.L. is selling, or just use it as a safe haven to rest and prepare your schemes.

Dead Drops

If you're lucky, you might remember the location and access code of a dead drop some time after awakening — stashes of useful supplies hidden inside of station objects. An arrow near your character will point you towards your dead drop, like the one that appears when you're using a pinpointer; once you've found the right object, you can interact with it and enter the code (which should be conveniently stored in your Notes) to open the drop and retrieve your stuff! Nobody else can access the dead drop or verify that it's there, so barring certain exceptional circumstances, it'll remain there until you're ready to retrieve it.

Dead drops contain a handful of random illicit goods (typically including Syndicate items) such as agent cards, flash/cell assemblies, omnitools, and handguns. On the Classic server, you'll find lots of weapons, like syringe guns and bear traps; on the RP servers, the pool of potential items is larger and based less around overt murder and more around sabotage and sneakiness: radio jammers, light breakers, cloaking devices, and the like.

Remembering a dead drop is tied to an entirely separate random event, so it's up to chance whether or not they'll show up in a given round. Like a surplus crate, the selection of items might be very useful, or it might be basically useless for your plans. Making do with weird items can be fun in its own right, though!