Who is Aaron Keener and What is his Evil Plan?

The following is a piece of lore notated by DenTay.

## Summary

Aaron Keener attended a military college in South Carolina called the Citadel. After graduation, he enlisted in the military where he then served a tour of duty at Camp Lemonnier in Dijbouti.

Upon being discharged, he took a job as a futures trader on Wall Street. While there, he was able to combine his military experience and decision making skills to achieve extensive success. These skills caught the attention of the Strategic Homeland Division leading to Keener being recruited and given the codename “vanguard.”

In his file, Keener was noted to be a "potentially prototypical candidate" meaning he was the ideal candidate to be recruited by the Division. What more than likely made him the best candidate was his natural intellect, acquired skills, and natural charisma.

Once the virus was released, Keener was activated as part of the first wave of Division agents. While acting as an agent in New York, he was given an objective to secure the Dark Zone in order to contain infected people within. However, the JTF and CERA soon lost control of the Dark Zone due to the growing chaos following the spread of the virus, causing them to abandon it as well as any first wave agents, including Keener. After this event, Keener became disillusioned with the Government, its plan to save the city, and his role within the Division.

He decided to go rogue after a conversation with a fellow First Wave agent and to leave the government’s flawed plan behind and focus on what he believed to be important now: power and survival.

After deciding to go rogue, Keener started to convince other agents among the First Wave to join him and his new focus. Any agents who did not choose to ally with him were killed. After forming his group Keener meets Lt. Col. Charles Bliss who is the commanding officer of the Last Man battalion and brokers a deal that benefits both of them.

One notable joint-operation was eliminating a JTF helicopter carrying Second Wave agents and the Division Commander in charge of them. Bliss provided a SAM to shoot down the chopper but it was First Wave agents who actually carried out the attack. The only survivors of this attack were Agent’s Faye Lau and the player character.

Along with working with the LMB, Keener also investigated the outbreak and soon discovered that Dr. Gordon Amherst was responsible. In a recorded conversation with a fellow first wave agent, he wanted to use a weaponized virus as leverage.

His research led him to Dr. Vitaly Tchernako in the Russian Consulate. Tchernako was also researching the virus and Keener seemed to take an interest in his work so he tasked a rogue agent to kidnap Tchnernako and his research. Ultimately, Keener betrays the LMB kidnapping Tchernako as the JTF assaults the UN compound where the LMB has built their base.

In a final last message to the player, Keener leaves an echo in the same lab Amherst created the virus. He believes that the old rules, laws, and governments are gone and that the only those who are smart enough and good enough survive, further iterating his belief that only power and survival matter. He goes on to say that he has a vision to win and that he plans to use Tchernako and the materials he stole from Amherst’s lab to fulfill that vision. From now on, he wants to write his own rules.