Brooks Messages 4: New Queen Crowned

## New Queen Crowned

### Description

In her fourth dead drop, Brooks describes the duty she feels to the True Sons as their leader, and her attempts to prevent herself from becoming corrupted by power

### Speaker(s)

Skyler Brooks

**Brooks:** I won't even bother acting surprised anymore. If you've made it this far, it means either you have a very morbid curiosity or you're actually starting to agree with me. Either way, something I'm doing is working.

**Brooks:** Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I've seen it personally. So have you, every day when you look in the mirror.

**Brooks:** Everyone acts so surprised about people like Keener or Lau. Yeah, I heard about that. But come on, you give a bunch of civilians with rushed training a bunch of hyper advanced technology and pretty much limitless power *and* they answer to almost nobody? It doesn't take a lot to corrupt a person with that much power in their hands.

**Brooks:** It's why I destroyed my watch. Because I'm not a rogue. I'm not Keener. And I'm certainly not an agent anymore. I don't think I ever was. I just wore the watch. I thought on my own, I used my own moral compass, and that didn't make me a good little obedient agent, did it?

**Brooks:** There's a difference between authority and tyranny. That's something Ridgeway understood, and it's something the Division doesn't. Nobody rules alone. Nobody. Because no one person can run everything. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, I try to limit my power to the bare minimum, lest I become what the Division accuses me of being.

**Brooks:** I have officers who run different parts of the True Sons, some who answer to Jameson, some to each other, but in the end, everything flows up to me. I don't need to make every choice. But leadership comes with.... responsibilities. You feel an attachment to those you know; you feel guilt. Guilt for a lot of things, but for me...it's a lot of survivor's guilt.

**Brooks:** When you jump out and gun down a True Sons patrol, it doesn't mean a thing to you. Good little ISAC says the True Sons are your enemy, so you kill them, loot anything good of their corpse like a vulture, and fly away. But it means something to me. I have to live with the fact that I sent them on a certain route. Could I have had them go a different way? Could I have sent more people? What could I have done differently? All these questions swirl in my head as I hold the military funeral, risking the life of more men to bring back the bodies you left in the street, hoping you didn't steal anything valuable on them. I have to look their crying wives, husbands, children, friends, in the eyes. And you better believe I can see they blame me. That happens every....single....time you kill a True Son. You're not killing a fucking tree. You're killing a person, with a family. People I'm supposed to look out for.

**Brooks:** You're such a good person, taking life so easily. I wonder how you sleep at night sometimes. Or are you so far up your own ass you think you're actually some sort of hero? That because you have a fancy watch and a bunch of cute little murder toys and because a sheet of paper with the signature of a dead man and a robot says it that you're some sort of 'savior of the people'?

**Brooks:** You Agents like to think that the fate of the world rests on your shoulders, that without you, America would descend into darkness. Without the phoenix to light up the world, all the poor little peasants would be lost and vulnerable. I want you to think about what that sounds like. About the kind of folk that might actually, unironically think that sort of thing. I won't give you the answer, but I think you can figure it out.

**Brooks:** That's why the Division must die. The country, hell the world will be better off without a few dozen warlords running around all over the country, killing American citizens and looting corpses, all in the name of 'saving what remains' and 'fighting the good fight'. Directive 51 gave you relatively immunity for your crimes. Without the President, you have no accountability. Well, guess what? I am here to save this country. I am here to solve America's problems. And right now, in this moment, I believe that America's problems....

**Brooks:** *Start with you.*