Broken Home is a piece of fiction I've been throwing around in the back of my mind for the last two years since its announcement. Since buying the Division game, this story became more solid in design and became Broken Home. It originally was known as "First Wave" but since has been changed.

There a few major points I want to establish Broken Home from its source fiction and apart from its counterparts in the Division Fandom. Broken Home breaks from established canon and seeks to create a realistic world that could potentially exist in our world. Another goal is to explore the lives of Division Agents and show who they really are and finally to give the game the Clancy treatment; the game while good doesn't do the brand justice and I want to respect the late Tom Clancy. Expect to see a number of Clancy references in this story, some subtle and others apparent. Please do read and review.

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Welcome to "Broken Home," a non-profit fan-produced fiction product under the ownership of set penname: RiptideZ.

DISCLAIMER: All intellectual property revealed in this work belongs to their rightful owner(s). RiptideZ, the author, owns only that of his intellectual assets. Please Read and Critique constructively via private messaging or review.

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["Dark Winter"]

[Summer 2008]

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"We live in a complex world; and the more complex it gets, the more fragile it becomes…We've created a house of cards, remove just one [function of modern society] and everything falls apart." – Directive Head of Operation: Dark Winter Simulation, After-Action Report, 2001

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In 2001, the American society was changed drastically. Some changes were for worse and others were for the better.

Among these drastic transformations was the creation of the newest executive department created by the President of the time. The Department of Homeland Security tasked with the protection and security of American society from threats within and without.

Fears and stigma birthed post Nine-Eleven only further radicalized the American population, and thus, security in one of those rare moments in United States History, trumped personal freedoms. It was a startling and sudden change that continued with further tightening of American laws in the name of national security. The new issues brought on by the September Eleventh Attacks also became numerous with time. The increasing segmentation and rampant suspicion between segments of the population. The rising threat of international terrorism and the Global War on Terror. Intrusion into people's privacy became a normality and numerous other issues that only began to scratch the surface of new problems created by a few sects of political extremism.

Before Nine-Eleven however, a secret government simulation that tested the United States' response to a bioterror plot against the United States took place. The threat: a released smallpox strain into major American population centers. The simulation quickly revealed a loss of control and an ensuing period of chaotic anarchy. The government was not oriented to prepare for such a threat and the simulation already spelled out the worst case scenario, a total collapse of American society and infrastructure. The simulated attack, known as Operation: Dark Winter, established a doomsday scenario that was very deadly and very much real.

There was nothing the American government could do at the time of the simulation. The age old stockpile of smallpox vaccines, live samples, and collected antibodies would do little to protect a population numbering in the hundreds of millions that hadn't been vaccinated for the extinct virus for the better half of fifty years. It was a hopeless case and at some point in the simulation, the government experienced a change of mind from prevention to survival and containment.

The population was just too big and the threats capable of producing such catastrophic losses became countless as time went on. With the rise of technology, the hands that held the knowledge and resources necessary to build bioweapons became more plentiful reflecting the period following World War Two when nuclear fission technology ran unchecked between nations. Besides unchecked nuclear threats, there were a number of other security nightmares as time went on: global warming, electromagnetic pulses, and other less notable issues. One of those more potent and immediate nightmares was the threat of a very real Dark Winter.

The US government, following the test of the simulation, found that survival was favorable to failed containment. The President of the United States would go on to sign in 2007, the Presidential Directive Fifty-one, which outlined the government's response to a number of possible doomsday scenarios. Notably, it's mostly classified nature made it impossible to tell how it would coordinate with more aged response plans outlined by other branches of government or other national agencies.

Only days away from the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China and at the height of a presidential race, Captain Nathaniel Lincoln of the United States Navy found himself seated in an undisclosed meeting room at the White House among a secret Presidential Crisis Response Committee. Among its members were key military and intelligence players in the Federal government, a coffee shop gathering larger than the National Security Council with a more detailed fixture on responding to security threats posed by hypothetical attacks.

The PCRC, or "Picker's Group" as it was known among the President's inner circle, was an advisory committee designed to discuss and provide feedback on national response plans. The group did not set policy, but it did give the President and his staff of analysts, space to eliminate unseen holes in their plans.

The Captain would have preferred to be on shore leave with his wife in Bermuda or on his way to visit Beijing as a private citizen and tourist rather than here. He would have preferred even active duty, playing glorified pirate chaser off the Somali Coast on his Aegis destroyer. This meeting wasn't on his bucket list but he served at the request of the President as his Commander-in-Chief, a call he could not easily deny. Lincoln was an older man but he had a youthful mind that the President believed could serve the country well as it had in war.

To say that Captain Lincoln was young was false by a long margin but neither was he really old. Lincoln was a twenty-year veteran in the United States Navy, long since reaching one of the highest attainable ranks in the Fleet. Even with his age, the experienced seaman still had a bit of youth in him and he planned to use every last bit of it in the service of his country. At one time, he might have settled for the unexciting life of a college English professor but after so many years in the Fleet, there just wasn't anywhere else he would have preferred to be. He was a sailor at heart, through and through.

The committee at this time had been more laid back with its professionalism as discussion had become an open house except for the occasional input from the intelligence analyst at the head of the table. The analyst, some paper-pusher from Central Intelligence, was responsible for the presentation of declassified war plans and crisis simulations for the advisory committee. Among this meeting's subjects was a new topic that the Captain had never seen before in detail, Dark Winter. The topic had been tossed around at domestic intelligence briefs and there had been a few high-ranking members of the government that had approached Lincoln on the subject in the recent past.

"As the President remembers, the after-action report predicted a rapid breakdown in essential institutions such as the overwhelming conditions placed on medical and security facilities at the state level. There would be subsequent civil disorder – mass looting, warzone-like conditions in major population centers, and rampant lawlessness. We can't even describe projected civilian casualties besides expecting them to number in the millions. The simulation director only had one word to describe the death toll back in '01—massive." The CIA analyst stated to the assembled military, intelligence, and federal leaders on the committee. The young man looked menacing in the low lighting of the smoky room.

Something to be understood by anyone related to the foreign intelligence community, they always had a certain air that ebbed from them, as if they were going to dissect you, kind of like a medical shrink. Any coordination with their field agents often sent shivers down Lincoln's back, as he remembered each encounter well. As much as they were presented as evil government thugs like the old KGB, they weren't anywhere as bad; it just so happened that anything they touched seemed to be immediately tainted. It was a military thing.

Lincoln watched as a few diagrams revealed statistical data that he had little reason to care for as he sipped his Pepsi. While most meetings with the President or most regulated meetings left little room for condiments or daily pleasures, this meeting seemed more simplistic and straightforward left the men and women in the room sipping soda pop and eating away at trail mix. The meeting could be easily considered impromptu.

The overhead statistical data wasn't within Lincoln's own interests because he knew when a problem was a problem, a sort of intuition shortcut to the logical answer. He was more interested in solving the problem than listening to scientists discuss the finer points to problems without considering the solutions. He was a problem-solver, not a politician or a scientist. He did not have the time to discuss the smallest details to every problem. His age also a factor, if he had been a little younger, he would have paid more attention. His reasoning, he knew, was a doubled-edge sword but the Picker's Group existed for the sake of evaluating problems and solutions from many different viewpoints.

"Commander, the simulation is already appeared out of date because if I'm understanding this: the simulation was not repeated or reassessed. It's been more or less seven years since its execution. Should we not consider a few more trials so that we might get some better chorographical data? I'm not satisfied that such a test, designed for the Federal government to fail is a worthy test bed, as a proper measure of our nation's response capacity." One of the newer members of the committee, some young Army brat from West Point still wet behind the ears. The West Point Officer was a member of the prestigious US War College and an ego the size of Rhode Island if his classmates' words had any merit.

The Captain didn't like the Army officer, though, he could not deny the kid was right. Wasn't it wrong to stack the fates against the government as if it were incapable of preventing a massive death toll on American soil?

The analyst seemed to take the challenge as a personal insult and evened out his glasses in a cartoonish way that only made him seem more menacing. The next words out of the CIA paper-pusher struck a chord through the room. "What if I told you the odds have always been stacked against us? Tell me that all the times all our security measures and all our technology have failed to protect our precious lives and infrastructure were just a fluke. Tell me the thousands of lives lost at the violence taken by Islamic extremist groups were all a miscommunication. Tell me that invading every single nation on the planet with a major of Muslim population for the next half century will solve terrorism. Tell me that is the solution we've come up with and ignore all the facts suggesting that is not the case. Tell me that all the evidence that our security measures and technology are not adequate enough to stop the foreign threats from making landfall on our shores is false. Some of those attackers aren't even foreigners, they can be American citizens. We created the Department of Homeland Security to monitor all threats, foreign and domestic. Do I feel safe now, knowing that I'm being watched or I'm doing the watching? No, it makes me feel worse because from what I'm seeing it doesn't work. The test was designed to test the government's ability to adapt to the aftermath of such an event, not to prevent the attack."

The analyst went silent and stared down at the Army officer who simply scoffed, rolled his eyes and slumped back into his chair. He almost shut himself down as if the argument was not worth his time but for a second he seemed to have a spark of intuition, a spectacular mind at work. The West Point grad took the initiative, "I cannot deny that there is a possibility that we may fail. However, I don't want our fate to be decided without proof that we are doomed. The United States is one of the most secure and safe countries on the planet, besides the number of failures we've had. Terrorism is certainly a dire threat but it's also a problem we don't fully understand nor are we capable of solving at this time. You're Central Intelligence, you should know that."

The analyst seemed to stop and actually consider the West Pointer's statement. "You're right, I'll hand it to you. We don't know fully how to combat and eventually eliminate it as a threat. It's still too new for us to fully comprehend. However, I would like to bring our focus back to Dark Winter. The point of Dark Winter is to consider the government's response, not the initial event because we expect ourselves to fail. We know from our experience of espionage from the Cold War and terrorism today that there are too many holes for us to plug. Operation: Dark Winter is about the contingency, not the prevention plan because that is one of the problems the CIA is not able to handle. We deal with international threats, not domestic. It only takes a potential enemy one good attempt to succeed. Prevention would have to pass on to a more public group that can organize prevention measures. I'm willing to consider more attempts and variations of the simulation but that would have to be discussed later."

The room was quiet as the young analyst looked toward the President in the back of the room and bored into him. The President, a graduate of Yale and a native Texan, just hummed in affirmation of the analyst's lecture. He had already signed Directive Fifty-One a year before and outlined a basic number of plans to respond to future crises. His time in the office was drawing to a close.

The President addressed both the West Pointer and the CIA analyst, "Both camps are correct in their statements. We should not doubt our own capabilities to prevent disaster. We need more tests, but we also cannot deny the eventually that our foes will succeed and we need contingencies in case that occurs. Again, we need more tests. Those tests, however, are expensive and require necessary personnel and funding. I cannot guarantee a blank check in the next few months since the budget already passed Congress and I won't be your Commander-in-Chief for much longer. It will have to come out of the next few years and will depend on the future political climate."

The tired-looking President, even with his constantly cheery and go-lucky grin, made a show to be polite to the people that he had the most respect for in his life. His fellow veterans and his advisors who had served through the mess of 2001 till now with him. If Lincoln could describe the President's facial expression, it was similar to how he would look upon his subordinates during maintenance hours. A proud leader overlooking his men with pride.

"Thank you again for coming. All of you; I hope your trips back are joyful enough and I thank you all for your input. We should be able to clean up a bit of the bureaucracy in Homeland Security within the next year. I would like the Joint Chiefs to remain behind along with my intelligence advisors. Everyone else is relieved, if you need anything else for the road, just ask the Secret Service gentlemen at the lobby. They can get you what you need. Once this is over, I'm seeing those Olympics."

The President stood up and slowly, maybe a bit overdramatic, saluted his advisors. The room's occupants quickly replied in a similar gesture. From there the majority of the room was vacated leaving only the President's circle of major advisors of the National Security Council. They spoke in soft voices and would motion toward the leaving crowd, something only Lincoln noticed.

One of the Admirals was watching the younger Captain intently as the doors closed behind him. That final match of eye contact still ran shivers down Lincoln's back as he approached the exit.

Before the Captain could make it out and into the sunny hallways of the government building, Lincoln was quickly pulled aside by some Secret Service agents and led to another conference hall in the government building. No words were traded between the guards and the naval officer. At the head of a large table, the Secretary of Homeland Security sat, looking out a window overlooking a grassy green lawn. At the sound of the Secret Service closing the door behind Lincoln as he entered the conference room, the Secretary turned to face Lincoln.

"Captain Lincoln. Thank you for seeing me, sorry about the weird transition from the committee." The older man marched over to Lincoln and briskly shook his hand in mutual respect.

Lincoln didn't really seem to understand the circumstances and was still blinking at the change from the War Room brief to an empty conference room, it was like being in college all over again. The lectures and the constant moving of classrooms. He simply nodded in recognition of the Secretary's greeting. He took a seat next to the Secretary who returned to his chair at the head of the table.

"I'll cut to the chase. Before the President is replaced in the next election, he wants to make a number of promotions. Including yours, a little early congratulation from myself, if you will. For your promotion to Rear Admiral in the coming weeks. I'm assuming you've already been groomed for the job and have been given a wide berth from command duties in Somalia?"

"Yes, sir. I've been on administrative leave for the last week and a half. I was interested in going to see the Olympics with my wife soon but I don't know if I will have the time to go visit Beijing."

"I got a hold of your file. You've got another good two weeks before you're needed back in the office so you got all the time in the world for personal fun, at least if no emergencies arise. When you get back; you remember the SHD offer?"

"Yes, the recruits you mean?" Lincoln nodded at the Secretary with a slow bob as if to convey more than he was willing to state.

"Yeah, I don't expect you to be able to throw in any dossiers anytime soon since you're not of rank but do start considering. It's of some importance for future operations in case of future crisis, for example, today's discussion of Dark Winter."

"Why military anyway? You never mentioned that when we last discussed this over the phone."

"Why Captain? Isn't the answer quite obvious? The military always makes the better survivors." The Secretary grinned wolfishly.

The incoming Admiral just stared at the man in cautious curiosity. He wasn't sure what that meant but he knew what the military recruitment was about. The Strategic Homeland Division, SHD, outlined in the President's emergency Directive, needed effective field agents to meet their mission objectives of protecting society in times of panic. While there wasn't exactly an accurately nice term to describe the job description, the men and women they were seeking were something reminiscent of the Cold War and Big Brother conspiracies.

The Department of Homeland Security, the parent company for SHD, wanted Sleeper Cells; agents that responded to the orders of their government from within their own populations without anyone knowing of their existence. Such a thought in the olden days would have been written off as insane and accounts on par with treason. Now the times were different, the world was a different place. A more desperate place. After all, desperate times called for desperate measures.

"You got any individuals you have in mind? Like a quota or something so I have a good example of who I should be picking?"

The Secretary stopped to give Lincoln's question a thought. The politician lazily traced the letters S, H, and D into the hardwood table spelling out the company acronym as if in a stupor. It was a meaningless act but it helped reflect the importance of the Secretary's request. This agency would have a jurisdiction in unknown territory.

After a bit of time to consider, the Secretary gave his answer, this time frowning at the thought. "This new agency is going into some unknown territory and is covering jurisdictions we have never taken. A few years ago, our actions would have been called out as authoritarian and we would have been out of the White House faster than you could blink. Everyone, not just the President's staff but the majority of the US government. We would have an uprising on our hands because by doing this we are most probably breaking the very laws we promised to follow and uphold as lawmakers and as its defenders. The SHD, outlined by the President, goes against every foundational belief we hold sacred as Americans. It's more or less betrayal, however, it has come to the point that it is necessary and while there could be an argument made that we are overreaching in our duty to execute our oaths of office, there is no written law that prevents us from creating the SHD."

"You're telling me we're committing treason? You know what we're talking about here, right? Establishing sleeper agents in our own population and breaking whatever moral boundary we have had. We crossed a line when the President signed the Directive, but I didn't know it was this bad!"

"Calm down Nathaniel. I feel the same way but we're not living in the nineties, the Soviets have long passed and we don't have a clear threat any longer. Instead of one big one, we got a bunch of small ones capable of doing a lot of damage. You can't even count how many threats exist because we don't know all of them and there are ones we don't even know that exist. You're a Captain, you don't have to sit through the NSC meetings and hear about a new terrorist group popping up out of nowhere. This is the world we live in now. There isn't anything we can do to change it but we can adapt; you don't understand that feeling of everyone being a potential threat. That the common Joe on the street could be the next mass murderer in suburban America. It keeps me up at night Captain and I'm only adapting to the world I live in."

Captain Lincoln just stared at the Secretary in front of him, appalled. He didn't like where this conversation was going but really what was driving him insane was that deep down, he knew that the Secretary was right. The world was a different place and they were now just playing catch-up to the times. The world wasn't a pretty place and it was probably more dangerous than it had ever been. There was nothing the Captain could do about it.

"So…I guess there isn't much to say beyond that. Who would you like me to recruit?" Lincoln said finally recollecting himself.

The Secretary seemed to age a decade from the stress created by sleepless nights and terrorist threats. "We're walking into unknown territory as I said before, we don't exactly know who we need but I can give you an idea of what I personally want. There are a number of recruiters throughout the American government, now including yourself. They all have their own idea of what makes a good public servant as well as a great SHD agent. I am going to give you my version, hopefully, it's the correct idea because I don't want to screw this up because there are so many ways we can get this wrong."

The Secretary sighed to himself as the door behind the pair opened and a Secret Service agent handed the Secretary a warm coffee off the street. The female agent nodded to her superior officer, nodded to the Captain, then quickly walked out.

"See that agent, Captain?" The Secretary pointed to the agent as she disappeared behind the oak doors of the hall.

"Yeah, what about her?"

"She isn't the type of agent I want for the SHD, not by a long shot. I want people capable of autonomy but are capable of knowing right from wrong and will stick within the boundaries of our national laws. We're fighting to preserve our way of life, not inherently change it. These agents, I'm not sure if I should call them that but that's beside the point, need to have exceptional survival skills and be physically adept. They should express moderate leadership skills and be capable of working in teams under a number of work conditions. They need to be truly loyal to the Federal government, to love American Society like no one else, and they must love our traditions like virtues. They need to be the paragon patriots we always want to be but can't be through our office."

"That's it? Kind of seems idealistic, don't you think?" Lincoln asked with a bit of doubt.

"Maybe it is, maybe I'1m wrong. I don't know, it's kind of like voting. You follow the guy that you think has the best values and you just hope he sticks to them," The Secretary of Homeland Security sighed heavily. "This, however, is the most important. They need to be age twenty-one to forty-five. We need them to be young and still capable of serving the country in either the field or in the office. If they are forty-five, we can, at least, get a shelf-life out of them for five or so years which we then retire our people at the age of fifty. Also, they need to have a degree of separation from society."

"Alright, I can see that but what do you mean separation from society?"

"I mean they need to have no ties to the world around them. Nothing that would keep them from being able to do their job in the event of a crisis. I'm willing to accept married men and women and to allow them to have lives outside the office but they need to be able to abandon it in favor of the greater mission of providing order in chaos. They cannot be tied to the lives they once had. Introverted young people are our primary recruitment pool since they provide the best combinations for building field agents, at least, based on the CIA's own recruiting process. They're more malleable to a cause since they're young and impressionable. They are in their peak state of physical and mental fitness, and this generation especially coming out of college are some of the smartest young adults this country has produced, foreign-born or otherwise."

"I may not be able to remember all of that. You want to write that down for me?" Lincoln stated slightly joking but ever more serious. It was a lot of information to take in.

"Don't worry about it. I'll have an encrypted email sent to you from one of my hush-hush servers in the Company. From there, you can communicate with just about any of the major leaders in the Fed. Myself, DoD Secretary, SHD Command, the CIA director, the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of State, the President… Don't go overboard, only use it in times of need or when you have some questions. Such as background information on potential recruits, we'll pull their medical and Social Security dossiers for you." The Secretary finished his statement and stood up. Captain Lincoln quickly followed, realizing that this conversation was over with.

"It's been good seeing you, Captain, good luck on your promotion to Rear Admiral," The Secretary shook Lincoln's hand. "And remember, this conversation never happened. We've never met beyond intelligence meetings."

Lincoln saluted silently in respect of the older man. The Secretary saluted back lazily and motioned the Captain out the door.

From here on out, Captain Nathaniel Lincoln was an informant for the Strategic Homeland Division. Another secret as a military man, he would have to take to the grave.

Lincoln whispered to himself as he stepped out into the early morning sun. "Godspeed."

Now to make plans for Beijing. A little more vacation might make him feel a bit more at ease. Within the Captain, it felt like a cold hand had just graced his aging heart.