John Taylor

Commander John Taylor is the secondary antagonist, later tritagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and main protagonist in the Call of Duty: Black Ops III prequel comic. As the Executive Officer of the Winslow Accord black ops team Phi, Taylor quickly became one of the WA's most experienced operators. After his former teammates leaked classified CIA intelligence and attempted to defect to the Common Defense Pact, he and Jacob Hendricks successfully eliminated the defectors. Sustaining serious injuries on the mission, Taylor received augmentations and continued serving the WA as a Cyber Soldier. Throughout his career, he also kept a personal journal which detailed his actions and operations.
==Biography==
Taylor was born on February 1st, 2019 in Portland, Oregon.
===Military Career===
Taylor began his military career by enrolling at West Point Military Academy in 2037, becoming the fourth generation of his family to do so. He excels at all challenges and is soon promoted to Bridge Commander at the end of his First Cadet Year. He graduates magna cum laude in 2041 and is later recruited to the US Army . Taylor is assigned to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force - Arabian Peninsula and serves dutifully with distinction. He is promoted to Captain and is granted the position of Detachment Commander to his Special Forces Operation Detachment-A team in 2048. He is seconded to the Winslow Accord Special Forces (WASF) in 2049. Taylor is later transferred to the black ops team Phi in 2058, composed of himself, Dylan Stone, Hussein Patel, Eamon Xu, and Commanding Officer Jacob Hendricks.
In 2059, Taylor, along with Patel, Xu, Stone and Hendricks, was tasked with taking down a Saudi-Polish triple agent named Timur Abulayev. While going to acquire KN-44 assault rifles from a merchant, the squad (minus Hendricks) encountered various local gang members, led by a mysterious red-haired woman, nicknamed "The Wet Witch of Lubyanka". After taking down the thugs, they met up with Hendricks, who later briefed them on the mission. Taylor took on the role of intel gathering, by meeting up with a local woman, Dorrit, who told him about Abulayev's base as well as the Wet Witch, real name Mokrie Baba. Afterwards, the team attacked Abulayev's hideout, and took him out. However, Mokrie Baba showed up and killed Patel. She was seemingly killed by Hendricks (who took a sniping position), however, she survived thanks to her bulletproof armor.
Some time later, the team headed to Helsinki, Finland, in search of Mokrie Baba's asset, a man named Maxim Chernakov. However, their first day in Helsinki took a turn for the worse, as Chernakov's men chased them down, resulting in the death of their latest team member, Haruko Mandelbaum. Hendricks managed to capture one of Chernakov's men and forced him to lead them to Chernakov's hideout. However, upon arrival, his hideout was booby-trapped, and Taylor was injured in the raid. They learned from Chernakov's former mistress, Katrina, that he had escaped with Mokrie Baba to Sápmi. Hendricks then had Taylor contact Xu to bring in a sniper and a demolition expert to assist with the mission. The next day, they met with Alice Conrad and Joseph Fierro, and headed out to find Chernakov. Upon arriving at Chernakov's place, their VTOL was shot down, and the crew immediately split up, with Conrad taking on Chernakov herself, while Taylor and the rest of the squad opened fire on Mokrie Baba. While Mokrie Baba escaped, Chernakov was killed, with Conrad barely alive. However, before he died, he referred to Mokrie by the name Krasney Baba, the Red Witch.
Team Phi's hunt for Mokrie Baba leads them to Mogadishu, Somalia, where they find her arranging a meeting with the crime lord Ahmad Ghury Al-Ghazi. In the meantime, the team has also added Javier Ramirez. Mokrie Baba initially offers Al-Ghazi the head of his rival, Hassan Shabaab, but unbeknownst to Al-Ghazi and Team Phi, she secretly rigged the head with explosives, tricking Al-Ghazi into imprisoning her for her presumed assassination attempt. Taylor, meanwhile, works with Hendricks in Budapest to capture and interrogate the local Moscow Center operator, Konrad. They discover that Mokrie and Krasney are two separate people, and that Krasney sent Mokrie to Mogadishu to steal a data drive from Al-Ghazi. As Taylor and Hendricks contemplate what to do with Konrad, Stone leads the rest of the team and storms Al-Ghazi's compound and eventually kills the crime lord himself. However, Mokrie Baba manages to escape captivity and retrieves the data drive from Al-Ghazi's safe, and evades the Winslow Accord soldiers.
The team tracks down Mokrie Baba to Japan, where she meets up with Yakuza boss Oni Bozu to negotiate the purchase of illegal combat drone control chips. Stone leads Conrad and Fierro to infiltrate Bozu's chip factory by an underwater route through the factory's pylon, while Xu, Taylor, Hendricks and Ramirez assault the factory by helicopter. Bozu, however, activates the factory's defense system, shooting down one of the helicopters, seemingly killing the latter three. Unbeknownst to Bozu and Mokrie, the helicopter was filled with dummy dolls, while Taylor, Hendricks and Ramirez attack the Yakuza's hideout itself. As Bozu takes refuge in his secret armory with Mokrie Baba, Ramirez works on leaving several C4 charges behind. Later, Bozu steps out with a high-tech armor suit, but is killed along with all of his men, while Taylor and the rest of the team escape. As they check on the explosion for survivors, they find a half-burnt Mokrie Baba who somehow survived the explosion. Before Xu could react, Mokrie shot him in the head and escaped in the smoke.
The team later travels to Alexanderplatz, Berlin, in order to assassinate Ivan Rudel, who has been suspected of manufacturing combat drones based on Oni Bozu's control chips. However, the mission goes sideways when Conrad's shot misses due to a refractive effect in Rudel's armored glass windows, forcing the CEO to escape in an armored van. Taylor, Fierro, Stone and Ramirez attempt to capture Rudel, but are confronted by a R.A.P.S. drone. After barely escaping, Taylor and Ramirez join with Hendricks to chase down on Rudel, who unleashes a series of Talon drones as well as a GI Unit to slow them down, while Stone and Fierro encounter a prototype quad tank. The GI Unit hops on Hendricks' car and grabs him and Taylor by the throat, but is destroyed by Ramirez, who uses a shaped charge to blow it up. Unfortunately, Ramirez himself could not escape the blast, and receives facial burns. Rudel's driver, who turns out to be a bandaged Mokrie Baba, steps out of the van and attempts to kill the trio, but is stopped by Conrad, who arrives in a motorcycle and puts a shot in Rudel's head, effectively finishing the mission. However, Mokrie Baba escapes once more via the sewers. The team then contemplates going to Moscow to deal with her once and for all.
Team Phi infiltrates the Lubyanka in Moscow, where it is revealed that the Red Witch, a.k.a. Krasney Baba, has been running the operation within the Russian Security Services' headquarters, the Lubyanka Building, as the administrative officer and was aided by an artificial intelligence. Fierro and Stone manage to take down one of Krasney's squads in the sewers, while Taylor and Ramirez visit the Perinatal'nyy Medical Center to find and eliminate Mokrie Baba, who is receiving treatment for her burnt face after the incident in Japan. Mokrie Baba evades their attacks and chases them despite half of her face still being untreated and un-bandaged. Conrad, meanwhile, manages to slip through security by going in unarmed, and retrieves her equipment from an airdrop missile later, after taking out a group of chemical agents in the building. Taylor and Ramirez are picked up by Hendricks in an armored van. Another of Krasney's squad is sent down to the sewers, where they find that Fierro and Stone have set up several C4 charges under a sewer manhole cover, set to go off at the slightest vibration. The C4 is detonated as Mokrie Baba passes by the manhole, killing her immediately. Conrad manages to pass through lines of security, and kills Krasney as well, effectively ending the threat. Moscow is then immediately put on lockdown, as the security services goes on a hunt for the Winslow Accords fugitives. The agents are found disguised as prisoners on a transport train, however they manage to gain the upper hand and defeat their pursuers. Elena, the new head of the Moscow Control Center, decides to wipe the AI and does not pursue Team Phi.
===Manhunt for Dylan Stone===
In 2064, Taylor and Hendricks were deployed into the quarantine zone in Singapore to investigate a CIA black station that had mysteriously ceased operations. Battling the local 54 Immortals forces and meeting up with their new CIA handler Rachel Kane, the two soon discovered that the staff at the black station had been brutally murdered and the station's data drives - containing highly classified CIA intelligence - had been stolen. Terminal logs indicated that the last recorded personnel to report to the station were Stone, Ramirez, Conrad and Fierro, implicating the four in the attack.
After some of the data drives ended up in the hands of the 54 Immortals, Hendricks and Taylor posed as arms dealers to infiltrate the 54i headquarters and re-obtain the stolen drives. However, their cover was soon blown by a suspicious Goh Min and Goh Xiulan, the 54i leaders. After killing Goh Min with a squad of GIUs, Taylor and Hendricks pursued Goh Xiulan, who had transferred the contents of the drives onto a local computer system. Since the system required fingerprint authentication for access, Taylor was forced to cut off Goh Xiulan's right hand in order to download the stolen information, before hastily escaping the 54i territory.
The security footage obtained from the stolen drives positively identified Stone's team as the murderers of the black station staff. Kane sent Taylor and Hendricks to the site of Stone's last operation - a response to a priority alert signal originating from underneath the abandoned Coalescence Corporation facility at the heart of the quarantine zone. Following in Stone's footsteps, Taylor and Hendricks found 54i troops ransacking the area. After eliminating them and delving deep underneath the facility, the two found what Stone's team had discovered: the remains of SP/CORVUS, an illegal CIA-endorsed experiment using involuntary human test subjects that seemed to be directly responsible for the catastrophe that killed 300,000 Singaporeans and led to the creation of the quarantine zone itself. Upon further exploration, they located Ramirez in the facility's server room, in the process of leaking more classified intel. After briefly interrogating Ramirez, they learned that Stone was using the stolen intel to make an alliance with the 54i and guarantee safe passage out of Singapore. He announced Stone's intention to make their discovery of SP/CORVUS public - potentially discrediting the CIA and the Winslow Accord forever. Hendricks then reluctantly eliminated Ramirez, before the entire facility was flooded by the remaining 54i forces in the area in an attempt to kill Taylor and Hendricks, destroying the evidence for SP/CORVUS in the process.
The intel that Ramirez had leaked compromised the locations of CIA safehouses around the world, including their Singapore Safehouse|safehouse, where Kane was located. Although Taylor and Hendricks were ordered to leave her and pursue Stone, Taylor disobeyed this order and traveled outside the quarantine zone to save Kane from an army of 54i forces, led by a vengeful Goh Xiulan. Fighting through the war-torn streets of Singapore, and dragging along an antipathetic Hendricks, Taylor managed to rescue Kane before killing Goh Xiulan and evacuating Singapore for good.
Due to the compromising nature of the leaks, WA command was no longer able to assist Taylor, Hendricks, and Kane. Alone, they traveled to Egypt, where Stone had arrived earlier with the intention of kidnapping Yousef Salim, a psychotherapist involved in SP/CORVUS. Salim was under Egyptian Army custody at Ramses Station and Taylor planted a tracking device on him to ensure his safety. Soon afterward, Stone leaked information regarding the Egyptian Army's weak points to Nile River Coalition, who took advantage of the intel and launched a massive assault on Ramses Station. In the ensuing battle, Taylor and Hendricks fought alongside Lieutenant Zeyad Khalil to drive the NRC away whilst Stone took advantage of the confusion to extract Salim from the station.
Using the tracker, Kane tracked Salim's location to the ruined city of Kebechet, where Stone was interrogating Salim. Taylor and Hendricks attempted to find Stone, but by the time they arrived Salim was already dead and Stone and Fierro had escaped. They did, however, manage to capture Conrad, whom Taylor interrogated. Conrad revealed that Stone and Fierro had fallen back to the sub-Cairo aquifers under NRC protection and was now searching for the sole survivor and director of the SP/CORVUS project, Sebastian Krueger, to hold him publicly accountable for his crimes. Taylor then executed Conrad, much to Hendricks' dismay.
With the help of the Egyptian Army and Lt. Khalil, Taylor and Hendricks launched an assault on the aquifers and liberated them from NRC control. After nearly drowning on the aquifers, Taylor was rescued by Kane, who later confessed to harboring romantic feelings for him, which were reciprocated by Taylor. During the battle, Stone managed to escape, but Fierro was trapped inside the aquifers and cornered by Taylor and Hendricks. A brief fight saw Taylor kill Fierro, which triggered Hendricks to question the ethics of the mission, accusing Taylor of being used by the CIA to cover up their crimes. The two quarreled, before the entire structure began to collapse and they were forced to escape.
Stone was escorted by the NRC to Lotus Towers - the NRC's last stronghold in Cairo. With Khalil's help, they incited a civilian uprising by publicly assassinating NRC General Abasi Hakim. Taylor and Hendricks worked their way to the top of the towers, where Stone was fleeing to once again attempt an escape. Confronting him on the rooftops, Taylor attempted to eliminate Stone but was critically wounded. Taylor was saved only by the last-minute intervention of Hendricks, who shot Stone dead, completing the mission for good.
===Project Prometheus===
Having saved the Winslow Accord and the CIA from public disgrace, Taylor became one of their most valuable assets. He was considered a prime candidate for Project Prometheus, which saw his crippling injuries healed through cybernetic augmentation and a Direct Neural Interface implant. Taylor was put in command of a newly formed "Cyber Ops" unit designed to complete high-risk missions, consisting of himself, Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall, and Peter Maretti.
Hendricks, on the other hand, requested to be moved to a lower-risk WASF hostage rescue unit due to the stress of his previous mission. This resulted in the official disbandment of Team Phi. Hendricks and Taylor would part until meeting again a year later. Taylor's continued pursuit of serving the Winslow Accord's special forces also closed the doors on his relationship with Kane, but Taylor was confident that he had made the right choice.
===Rescuing Minister Said in Ethiopia===
On October 27, 2065, the Winslow Accord launched an operation to rescue Egyptian Minister Said from an NRC base in Ethiopia. The operation was carried out by a WASF hostage rescue unit under the command of Hendricks supported by the Cyber Ops division under Taylor's lead. Hendricks and the Player extracted Said and Khalil, who was captured during the uprising at Lotus Towers, whilst Taylor's team prepared an extraction plan. However, heavy NRC reinforcements ensured that their plan could not be carried out, forcing the team to retreat to the secondary extraction point. Hendricks managed to convince Taylor to focus his efforts on rescuing the rest of the prisoners, whilst he and the Player escorted Said and Khalil to the extraction, which they managed to do successfully. However, without Taylor's support, almost all of Hendricks' team was wiped out by NRC resistance. Taylor arrived on the scene just in time to save the Player, who had been dismembered by a GI Unit.
===Cybernetic Training===
The Player then suddenly awakes and sees Taylor, who introduces them aboard a private commuter train heading to the Zürich headquarters of the Coalescence Corporation. He continues to explain the onboard cargo, namely the prototype of the Winslow Accord Neural Network Initiative, which holds a specialized AI capable of rewriting its own code to adapt to any computer system. Suddenly, the Maglev train explodes and train cars are derailed before time freezes and Taylor explains that the train was attacked by a terrorist group on December 12, 2054, at 7:31am. He later explains that the Player is currently in a simulation within their minds and how their Direct Neural Interfaces (DNIs) allow them to communicate with each other and the world around them. The Player is then transported to an abandoned steel mill the day before the attack on December 11, 2054, at 11:30am. Taylor freezes time and explains the overwhelming firepower the terrorists brought to bear against the Zürich Security Forces. When the Player interfaces and discovers the terrorist Xavier Hirtzel, Taylor reappears and explains the inefficiency of the ZSF in recovering the information. He then transports the Player five hours later when ZSF failed to capture Hirtzel. After the Player interrogates Hirtzel and discovers their infiltration plan in the subway tunnels, Taylor explains how the ZSF took weeks to uncover their infiltration weeks following the attack. The Player is then transported back onto the train five minutes before the attack. Taylor reflects on the irony of the terrorist attack and how it accelerated the development of the Neural Network Initiative to prevent attacks such as this. The Player then enters the train and takes down the security bots attacking them before reaching the bomb control. As it is impossible to safely disarm or remove the bomb, the Player detaches the car from the Maglev train before it detonates and Taylor remarks how their DNI can show all the options, but only they can decide what they are willing to sacrifice. The Player finally awakens in the hospital and sees Kane walking away with her bandanna on the table as an unidentified man speaks with Taylor. He later explains how the Player and Hendricks are about to go into surgery to be initiated into the Cyber Soldier program. However, given the presence of Kane (who had no connection to the Player) and her bandana the veracity of this memory is suspect.
===D.N.I. Infection===
Complications would soon arise during one of the Player's surgeries, leading to their death. The agony of their death caused Corvus to be reborn in their DNI. Taylor, being connected to the Player's DNI, became infected as well and the infection soon spread to his team, causing Diaz, Hall and Maretti to die. Living on through Taylor's DNI, the Player experienced a simulation which was somewhat different from but still based on Taylor's experience hunting down Dylan Stone and his team.
Taylor, Diaz, Hall and Maretti are assigned the roles of Stone and his team. However, when the simulation reaches Lotus Towers, Taylor fights back against Corvus and tears his DNI out. However, Taylor is then killed by Hendricks in simulation, who has come under Corvus' control. Hendricks soon embarked on a mission to hold Sebastian Krueger accountable for his crimes.
===The Frozen Forest===
Reawakening, the Player takes control of Taylor's body and pursues Hendricks. After the Player-controlled Taylor kills Hendricks, they attempt to kill themselves to end Corvus. They are instead transported to the "Frozen Forest", a simulated world created by Corvus so that DNI users could live on after death.
Having resisted Corvus, Taylor became a glitch in the system, allowing him to reunite with the Player. The Player struggles and almost succumbs to Corvus, but Taylor helps them remain determined and regain control over his body by fighting through illusory forces created by Corvus from Taylor's memories. While Taylor holds Corvus off, the Player initiates a DNI purge. As the Player is slowly erased, Taylor comforts them as they bring him outside the facility. When a ZSF soldier asks for their name, the last vestiges of the Player answers with Taylor's name, handing him back control of his body.
==Personality==
Taylor has a reputation for being loyal. He took full responsibility for the botched rescue mission in Ethiopia despite Hendricks disobeying his orders and also refused to abandon Kane in Singapore when she was captured by the 54 Immortals. On Taylor and Hendricks' hunt for Dylan Stone, he had to consistently keep Hendricks on track to deal with his short temper and his objections to the mission. While he is a lot more laid-back than Hendricks, not being afraid to crack a joke on the rescue mission or while training the Player, he is ultimately caring and determined, stressing the importance of self-sacrifice to the Player and not budging after Hendricks tried to talk him out of rescuing Kane or when Kane tried to talk him out of becoming a Cyber Soldier.
==Quotes==
==Gallery==
John Taylor screenshot BO3.jpg|Taylor speaking with Hendricks
John Taylor BO3.png|Taylor, before executing Yousef Salim
John Taylor bio 1 Black Ops III.png|Data Vault entry with his history
John Taylor bio 2 Black Ops III.png
Taylor Lotus Towers BO3.png|Taylor in front of the Lotus Towers
Taylor with the dying player BO3.png|Taylor fighting with the doctors by trying to interface with the dying Player in Coalescence Hospital, Zürich, Switzerland
Taylor Lotus Towers 2 BO3.png
Taylor Demon Within BO3.png
Wounded BO3.png|Taylor with a knife in his hand
It must grow BO3.png|"It must grow. It wants... everybody."
John Taylor Knife BO3.png
Taylor rips out DNI BO3.png|Taylor ripping out his DNI
Taylor Sand Castle BO3.jpg|Taylor in the introduction of sand castle.
John Taylor New World BO3.jpg|Taylor informing the Player after self-destructing the maglev train.
Issue1 Cover Comic Lootcrate BO3.jpg|John Taylor and Dylan Stone on the cover of Black Ops III comic.
Taylor Frozen Forest Life BO3.jpg|Taylor returns in the frozen forest to team up with the Player fighting against Corvus.
Taylor reveal image BO3.png
==Trivia==
*Taylor is seen with a KRM-262 on his back but he is never seen using it. Taylor's KRM is also equipped with a customized body not seen anywhere else in-game, as well as a Suppressor.
*Taylor appeared in the reveal trailer of Black Ops III when he's about to execute Salim however his appearance was different than in the final version of the game. Taylor's original appearance in the reveal trailer appeared to show him bear a striking resemblance to Jacob Hendricks when he aims his weapon at Salim in a short second before the screen fades to black.
==References==
Category:Call of Duty: Black Ops III Winslow Accord Characters
Category:Antagonists