Rachel Hartley

Kathleen Seward (cousin)

Elena Seward (aunt)

Andrew Stark (boyfriend)

**Rachel Isabella Hartley** is the only child of former United States President Isabella Hartley and her late husband Richard. Raised in a political household from birth, Rachel learned responsibility young and has made it her life's mission to repair the mistakes her mother made through ordering the creation of the Perfect Soldier Division. After the retirement of Clarisse Mitchell, Rachel became the head of the Division herself. She initially wanted to push the organization to succeed in its mission of creating viable android soldiers, and when she realized this was impossible, she shifted her focus to reining in the damage the Division's creations caused, ordering task forces to apprehend or eliminate the remaining androids commissioned by the organization.

## History

### Early Life

Rachel was born on December 29, 2202, just under a year before her cousin Kat. Her mother, Isabella, was a senator for the state of New York at the time of her birth, which meant that Rachel was surrounded by politics all her life. She was still a child when her father died in a fire at his office, and his loss drove Isabella to dive deeper into her work to distract herself. She eventually ran for President of the United States and was elected, making Rachel the First Daughter while she was still in junior high. In her teenage years, Rachel spent a lot of time with Ravenna Mitchell, the niece of her mother's senior advisor, Clarisse.

Rachel saw how politics tortured her mother; Isabella's administration was riddled with controversy, and though Rachel wouldn't understand this until years later, much of that had to do with the Perfect Soldier Division, which her mother created. Rachel wanted nothing to do with the political world. Instead, she focused on her love of music, and she attended Julliard for college, where she majored in music performance. Her primary instrument was the violin. While she was in college, her mother told her about the Division for the first time, and while Rachel was intrigued by the idea of android soldiers helping the U.S. military, she wasn't sure it was worth the cost.

After Clarisse Mitchell retired from leading the Division in 2224, however, Rachel volunteered to step up and take over the organization. She viewed it as her obligation to her mother to see this project through, and she wanted to rectify the mistakes her predecessor had made. Under Rachel's leadership, the Division continued creating new android prototypes, and while some of them saw moderate success, none of them quite reached the level the Division had expected.

### July 2232

Rachel reached out to Eddie Dodson, who had created Mia for the Division, in 2232 to ask him to attempt to fix the programming issues that had led to Mia's initial failed trial (and the deaths of several people, including Henry and Samantha Lawrence). Eddie sent Mia to the Division's base at West Point to be tested again, and for the second time, the android killed Division personnel during her trial. Mia escaped from West Point, and after several failed attempts to contact Eddie, Rachel decided to take matters into her own hands. She tasked Blue Team, the Division's most decorated special operations team, with apprehending or killing Mia, and she stationed Andrew Stark, whom she was dating in secret, at Lawrence-Dodson Enterprises to keep an eye on the situation.

When the murder of Damian Lawrence was announced on July 26, Rachel was crushed. She feared Mia's involvement, and the guilt she already carried for the Division's mistakes multiplied; the androids created for her organization had moved on to killing civilians. She met with Andrew that morning, and while he tried to persuade her that they didn't need to hide their relationship any longer, Rachel was afraid that if word of it got out, it might endanger Andrew's safety. She told him to stay focused on his mission while she went to work on "damage control" in Washington, D.C. Rachel was constantly grilled by President Ethan McNaire about the Division's progress in tracking and stopping Mia, who was only the latest in a group of military androids to escape into the world. McNaire had never agreed with the Division's mission, and he'd often told Rachel that wars were meant to be fought by humans. He had an antagonistic relationship with Rachel's mother, though he had been the Secretary of Defense in Isabella's cabinet, and he planned to shut the Division down permanently as soon as Mia and the other rogue androids were apprehended.

Rachel returned to West Point, where she met with Abigail Knight, her second-in-command, to discuss a new development: the Division had managed to hack into the hardware of its original wave of androids and track them. Abigail told Rachel she suspected the androids knew they were being tracked and were allowing this to happen, as the Division had made several unsuccessful attempts to locate them before. The two women believed that Mia was likely working with Osiris and the others, and Rachel instructed Abigail not to tell anyone connected with McNaire's office about this. She worried about what the androids could be planning if they had found one another.

After Blue Team, the Division's most decorated special-operations unit (led by Rachel's cousin Kat), unsuccessfully fought Mia in the streets of Manhattan, they returned to West Point to discuss the failure of their plan with Rachel. She was frustrated at the team's loss of their assigned target, and when Kat informed her that Mia had seemed to know they were coming for her, Rachel was unsurprised. She told the team that when Andrew had planted a tracker on Mia at LDE, she'd known his name, and Rachel assumed that Mia had gotten into the Division's database somehow. Kat suggested having Andrew break cover and approach Eddie about Mia, but Rachel was opposed to the idea. She was determined to find Mia quickly and without involving anyone else. She said the fact that Eddie had told the media Lila had killed Damian had bought the Division more time; if Lila was guilty, that was one less problem they had caused, and if not, at least no one would suspect Mia's involvement. She told the team to go rest so they could all formulate a new plan.

Rachel later met with Andrew a few blocks from LDE's headquarters for a status update. He told her that there had been no sign of Mia since her fight with Blue Team. Andrew also informed Rachel that Eddie seemed suspicious of his continued presence at LDE when normal operations were suspended and most of the staff was on leave. Frustrated by the distance Rachel continued to show during their meeting, Andrew asked her how long they would continue pretending not to be in love in public. She told him it wasn't safe; they were already in too much danger without their enemies having the leverage of their relationship to use against them. After Mia followed Andrew to his office at LDE, threatened him that she and the others were coming for the Division as a whole, and broke his wrist, he returned to West Point briefly. Rachel was distraught that he'd been hurt and kissed him in front of a few members of Blue Team, effectively ending their secrecy. She told him he could abandon his mission and stay, but he insisted on returning to his post at LDE until the android threat was neutralized.

## Appearances

* *Lacrimosa* (narrator)
* *Veritas* (narrator)
* *Shadows of the Mind*(short story collection)
	+ "Division" (narrator)
	+ "Convergence" (mentioned)
	+ "Vessel" (narrator)

* *Shadows of the Mind*(podcast)\*
	+ "The Co-President"
	+ "Control" (narrator)
	+ "Until Proven Guilty" (narrator)
	+ "Surrender"
	+ "I'm You" (narrator)
	+ "Broken" (narrator)

\*In the *Shadows of the Mind*podcast, Rachel is played by Sarah Jilek.