Tom Clancy's The Division: Recruited: An Operation: Crossroads Novel

By Thomas Parrott

A newly recruited agent is the Strategic Homeland Division’s best hope to prevent a nefarious plot from ripping the agency apart, in this brand new post-apocalyptic thriller from Tom Clancy’s The Division® 

Maira Kanhai has had enough: since the Green Poison epidemic hit DC, her Cybersecurity degree is worthless, she can’t rejoin the US Navy, and her early efforts to secure Maryland led to a costly mistake: the death of her brother. Every day new factions emerge, trying to burn her city to the ground – until the Division emerges, inspiring hope. When a grenade kills one of their agents, Maira suddenly has a chance to make a real difference as a raw new Division recruit … if she can pass the tests, and overcome the enemies plotting to permanently eliminate the Division once and for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aconyte
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839081170

Thomas Parrott

THOMAS PARROTT grew up reading science fiction and fantasy. This was compounded by the discovery of video games and tabletop roleplaying, leading to a life of dealing with the mundane while dreaming of dragons. He has written Isha’s Lament, The Test of Faith, and Loyal to the End, all for the Warhammer 40,000 setting, as well as short fiction for Arkham Horror and KeyForge anthologies.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I’m starting to think this was a bad idea, Maira Kanhai said.

She and her brother Kazi were sitting in her car. The afternoon sun gleamed off silver paint gone to rust in spots. The sedan had been brand new when she bought it, a splurge upon arriving at her first duty station. Back then, enlisting had felt like something different. It had been a bridge to her future. Big plans, high hopes.

Now, she didn’t know what else to do.

Definitely has a creepy vibe to it, Kazi said.

The parking lot was all but empty. Since it was midday, there should have been plenty of people coming and going for lunch. Instead, only two other vehicles filled the asphalt lot. One had been sitting for days to judge by the layers of undisturbed snow on it. The other was parked at a cant, skewed across three spaces. It was as if the person had swerved to a stop at high speed.

The multistory building ahead wasn’t any more comforting. The chill winter sun overhead made it hard to tell if the lights were on. From this angle, the windows showed nothing but opaque black glass. It made Maira feel like she was being watched. The skin on the back of her neck crawled. Unfortunately, creepy or not, this was the recruitment station for her area. At this point, what else was she going to do? Walk to the beach and flag down a passing ship?

This is stupid, she said, venting her frustration.

Are we going home? Kazi asked.

No, Maira said flatly. I’m going inside. We spent an eighth of a tank getting here.

I’ll come with you, her brother said instantly.

He reached for his seat belt, and she caught him by the wrist.

No, you’re going to stay here, Maira said.

I’m not a kid anymore, Mai. I’ve watched the news. He motioned with his phone. Things are getting crazy in the world.

That was true. Kazi was ten years younger than she, but that still made him sixteen. Not much younger than Maira had been when she first enlisted. She smiled at him, but that only seemed to annoy him more. So, she ruffled his dark hair just to overdo it. He pulled away, making a face, but he still couldn’t help but laugh.

I know you’re not a kid. In two years if you want to sign up like I did, I’ll drive you to the enlisted recruiter myself. This is my thing to do, though. There’s nothing to be scared of.

Kazi gave her a brow-furrowed frown, rich in skepticism. If there’s nothing dangerous, why can’t I come with you?

It’s because there’s nothing dangerous that there’s no reason for you to.

Kazi wasn’t buying it. She could see it in his face. Maira pursed her lips and sighed, knowing her argument was more linguistic acrobatics anyway.

Look, if something bad did happen, it would be better to have someone here with the car running, so we’re ready to go, right?

He mulled that over for a few moments. OK. Kazi visibly brightened. I guess I’ll need to sit in the driver’s seat, then? Just in case?

Maira gave him a flat look. Her brother just grinned.

Fine. She sighed again. But if you move the seat, I kill you. Got it?

Roger that, petty officer, he replied in a fake guttural voice.

Dork, she said.

Maira opened the car door and got out to survey the building again. Nothing stirred. The temperature hovered just over freezing. The sun’s meager rays did little to alleviate the cold. Dark clouds loomed on the horizon, promising a fresh evening’s snow. Kazi slid into the seat behind her.

Maira leaned down to look at him. Keep the doors shut for anyone but me, yeah?

Something about her tone made the laughter flee from his eyes.

Kazi nodded. Yeah, of course.

Maira squeezed his shoulder quickly and set off towards the building. The front doors opened into silence. The lights were off, though sunlight spilled through the windows enough to get by. The air was still and heavy. It was uncomfortably cold. The heat must have been broken or turned off. Just standing in the lobby made the space feel more like a tomb than a workplace.

She checked the note in her pocket: Suite 450. The officer recruitment station. Deciding to go back into the Navy felt increasingly like a fool’s errand, but some part of her insisted on seeing it through to the end. Even though she’d waited, the images of chaos and plague on the news haunted her until she realized she had to do something. If the country was falling apart, she had to do what she could, right? She had taken an oath, and it didn’t have an expiration date.

She tried the elevator first, but the button didn’t even light up when she pressed it. Maira set off in search of the stairs. Even if there wasn’t a recruiter in the office, she reasoned, surely they would have left a note on who to contact. She made her way down quiet hallways past empty offices. Some were locked up as if the workers would come back after a long weekend. Others hung carelessly open.

Maira peeked into one of those, curiosity inescapable. The office was a riot of papers, as if someone had torn through the place dumping out every drawer they could find. Searching for something valuable, maybe? There was no way to know. Red smears and fingerprints marked some of the pages close enough to see in the gloom. Ink, she told herself firmly. A broken pen, no doubt.

The stairs, bereft of windows, were pitch black when she found them. Maira pulled her phone from her pocket and turned the flashlight on. She started to reach out to the rail but hesitated. There was a lot of talk about the virus spreading through contaminated surfaces. She wiped a sweaty palm off on her jacket and focused on climbing carefully instead.

Arrival on the fourth floor introduced her to a disturbing odor. Sickening, coppery, and just a hint of nauseating sweetness. She tried to place it as she turned the flashlight off again. Something from her time in the service? No. Older than that. She set off down the hallway towards Suite 450.

Maira found herself wishing she had a gun. It was an absurd thought on the face of it. What did she need one for? She couldn’t shoot a virus. Did she want to gun down some poor office drone in the wrong place at the wrong time? No, of course not.

Violence permeated the news, though. Ongoing riots and looting in Manhattan had spread their roots down to her neck of the woods near D.C. These were frightening times, and frightened people did frightening things. The world had already been a powder keg of simmering tensions. This virus was like putting more pressure on cracked glass.

Maira had arrived at the door to Suite 450. She reached out for the handle with a shaking hand. Intuition begged her to back away, screamed that this was wrong, that there was nothing good past that door. It pleaded with her to go back to the car and forget this whole idea.

She rebelled against that impulse. I am not a quitter, she thought fiercely. A flood of stubborn courage drowned out her fears. Maira used her elbow to push the handle down with a click, and the door slid open.

The stench, twice as pungent, hit her like a flung brick. Maira reeled backwards, coughing and gagging. She clamped a hand over her mouth, desperately trying to block out that noisome odor. It didn’t help much. The taste of it was on her tongue like an oil slick on the ocean.

The suppressed memory that had teased her before surged to the forefront. It was a moment from her childhood. Her mother had brought her to the hospital to visit her father. They had gone many times before, all throughout his battle with cancer. But this time was different. This was the last time. She’d known it the moment they entered the room. That smell was in the air. That same smell.

Death.

Even then, this was worse. This had played out in all its grisly finality. The room was half in shadow. There were three desks, but only one of them was occupied and situated in the darkest reaches of the room. The shape in the chair was slumped backwards, as if taking an afternoon nap.

Maira walked forward on unsteady legs. Flies buzzed around the room as she approached. The stench only grew worse as she got closer. She staggered to a halt at the halfway point. Convulsing stomach muscles doubled her over. She clamped a hand to her mouth to no avail. Vomit spurted between her fingers, spilling the remnants of her lunch across the carpeted floor.

She looked at her soaked hand with disgust and desperately wiped it on her pants. Maira wasn’t going to get any closer, she realized. With her other hand she raised the flashlight again and flicked it on. She swept the beam up and onto the shadowed shape at the desk.

It was an image she would never be able to free herself from. Maira knew that the moment she took it in. It was human despair spelled out in every detail. A corpse in a once-fine uniform, rotting. It had been ravaged before it had died, though. Old blood streaked around the eyes, the nose, and the mouth that screamed of a possible virus infection.

Maggots crawled across the body, feasting on dead flesh. The name tape on the uniform was obscured by the products of putrefaction. Whoever they had been, they had not waited for the Green Poison to take them. A Beretta M9 lay on the desk next to a swollen hand. A neat hole decorated one temple. A much messier crater marked the far side.

Maira lowered the light slowly. She would not be re-enlisting today. Perhaps at another recruiting station…

A scream erupted from outside, high and wavering with terror. Other voices followed, and gruff shouting.

Kazi, Maira whispered.

Fear and disgust evaporated in a second. She bolted forward, snatched up the pistol without thinking and ran for the door.

•••

Maira bolted upright. For a moment she couldn’t place where or when she was. The dream clung to her and refused to let go. Her heart pounded in her chest and her hands dug into the mattress so hard that it hurt. Reality reasserted itself only slowly.

Almost a year. It had been more than a year since that day at the recruitment office. Kazi, she said into the still air.

Maira scrubbed a hand over her face, her skin slick to the touch. She was soaked through with sweat, and the sheets clung to her. That wasn’t completely the fault of the nightmare. The air was hot and heavy. Everything was dark in the apartment, save where pale rays leaked around the edges of heavy curtains. The power had died again. That made it the twelfth time this week.

She kicked the sheets away and dragged herself out of bed. Shoving the curtains aside revealed streets lit by dawn’s glow. The light made her flinch and cover her eyes, but the pain passed quickly. It was 0700 at a guess. Recovered, she opened the window. It wasn’t exactly cool out there… low seventies at best. Still, it was better than the trapped and suffocating heat.

No power meant no coffee maker. Maira sighed and retrieved instant coffee out of one of the cabinets. Gallons of water sat scattered throughout the apartment. She picked one up and gave it a jaundiced eye. Satisfied she had chosen one that was indeed water, she filled a thermos and mixed in the crystals. They didn’t dissolve quite right in a tepid medium, but the alternative was no coffee at all. Forfend that thought.

She took a gritty sip, grimaced, and set about getting dressed. The first step meant smelling articles from each of the piles of clothing to find those that were the least dirty. Fashion wasn’t much of a concern these days. Sturdy clothing that was not stiff with dried sweat had become the new standard for couture.

Maira plucked her watch from the bedside table, next to the dead alarm clock. Most people had stopped wearing watches at all before the Dollar Flu had ravaged the city. They’d made a real comeback in the days since. There was an understated declaration made depending on the kind you wore. The most optimistic, the ones who believed the world would be back on its feet within a couple of years at most, wore electronic ones. A watch battery would last a few years, after all.

Maira’s was a windup piece, tough and dependable. With a little maintenance it would last the rest of her life. Currently it showed the time as 7:38. She sighed. The assembly was supposed to start in twenty-two minutes. She needed to get moving.

The last item of her daily wear was the M9. She hesitated with her hand on the weapon in its holster. On the surface there was nothing odd about carrying it. Few people went about unarmed these days. This one, however, was the same one she’d taken in the memory-turned-nightmare, a parting gift from a dead man. She’d kept it ever since, even when opportunities had arisen to choose a different sidearm. She had tried to explain it a few times, and people had always found it morbid. They didn’t understand. It was a token of the day the end of the world became personal for her.

Maira sighed and clipped the holster to her belt. This was no time for introspection. She needed her head clear for the assembly. It was unlikely to be a pleasant discussion at best.

She set out into the hallway and shut the door of her apartment behind her without locking it. Most people in the complex didn’t bother anymore. The dangers of the post-Green Poison world didn’t care about deadbolts. There were no emergency services to buy time to arrive. If you couldn’t protect yourself, your only hope was your neighbors.

For Maira, said neighbors lived in the other units throughout the building. She could hear rustling on the other side of some of the doors; people getting ready for the day. Others were quiet, their occupants already gone or still sleeping. There were few empty apartments in the building, but it stood amidst desolation.

They called this community Athena, a village in the hollowed-out remnants of a city. This building had once been luxury condos inhabited by the well-to-do. The Green Poison played no favorites. It had left corpses and empty cities in its wake. When the dust had settled, a group of survivors had gathered here, determined to make the best of it.

The concentration was no accident. They huddled together for safety, as their ancestors had around the fire at night. There were no wolves to fear here, at least not literal ones. Not everyone had come through the pandemic with their minds intact. In the wake of the viral apocalypse, the most dangerous thing left in the world was other people.

The elevator wouldn’t be of any use with the power out. Maira took the stairs instead. The sound of footsteps announced someone coming up at the same time. She glanced over the railing and smiled to see Elena. The blonde shuffled up the steps with the gait of soul-felt weariness. The other woman gave a small wave as she saw Maira.

How was the night watch? Maira asked.

Blessedly uneventful, Elena said. Had to pinch myself about a dozen times to stay awake in the last hour. She couldn’t restrain a tremendous yawn, jaw popping audibly.

Be careful doing that on the roof. You’re gonna catch a bat one of these days. Maira clapped her on the shoulder as they began to pass. Are you planning to come to the assembly before you sleep?

Ah, hell, Elena muttered. That’s this morning, isn’t it? What’s this one about?

The supply situation, Maira said. It’s important.

Elena’s smile fell away. Right. Lead the way, boss.

•••

The Athena community held assemblies in a conference room on the ground floor. It was the largest space in the building, but that still didn’t leave much room for those gathered. Almost forty families occupied the building and at least one person from each jostled for space in the room. A couple of parents even had their kids with them. One father stood against the back wall with a baby swaddled in his arms. James and his daughter Christine. Her mother, Tara, hadn’t survived childbirth. That had been a dark day for the community.

Maira worked through the crowd towards the front. People eased out of the way as they saw her coming. Most of the glances were welcoming, but a few were angry. As the nominal head of community security, she’d been forced to make some calls that rubbed people the wrong way. Some people didn’t want to be told what to do, even while the world felt as if it was ending. That and…

There had been mistakes made. Painful ones that had cost everyone. Maira avoided eye contact with Kelly, a middle-aged woman in dirty work garb. She glared coldly at Maira the entire way across the room.

Jonah waited for her at the front and beyond the crowd. He was a distinguished-looking Black man in his early sixties, with close-cropped hair and beard both gone to salt and pepper. The community didn’t have a leader per se – officially everything was decided at assemblies like this. But when Jonah talked, people listened.

He held out a hand as she approached, and they shook firmly.

Petty officer, he said with stoic formality.

Not for years now, Jonah, Maira said.

They had the same exchange every time they met. Jonah thought it benefited the community for people to remember her military background. It made the residents feel safer, he said. Maira had her doubts, to say the least. The military hadn’t been able to keep anyone safe in the end. Regular citizens had to do for themselves nowadays, forming militias to see to their own security.

Jonah cracked a small smile, and she responded with a much broader one. Disagreements aside, she liked the man. He was kind and conscientious, rare traits to hold onto in a world getting harsher with every passing day.

Are you ready for this? he asked in a low voice.

Maira’s smile died. Probably not. No one likes bad news.

No situation ever got better by ignoring it, Jonah opined.

Maira glanced at her watch. 7:59. She took a deep breath. Yeah. Time to bite the bullet.

Jonah gave her a steadying squeeze of the shoulder and stepped away to join the crowd.

Maira turned to face those gathered head on. She raised her voice so that it cut through the general chatter. Good morning, everyone.

A scattering of replies came back. People cut off personal conversations and craned to look at her. Maira quickly became the focus of more than a hundred eyes. She wavered for a moment. Public speaking had never been her great strength. She settled her nerves by focusing on the necessity. There were a lot of worried faces in this room, and there was a good reason for that.

Maira decided not to dance around the subject. As some of you already know, and others may have heard, we have a supply situation on our hands.

Are we running out of food? a man cut in anxiously.

The crowd stirred uneasily.

Christ, let her talk, someone else replied.

Maira held up a hand and the chatter cut out again. We’re not in any immediate danger. We’ve stockpiled enough food for another month. Two, if we institute some careful rationing.

Why are we running out now? What about the scavengers? Tiffany, a brown-haired woman near the front, asked.

Well, that’s the problem, Maira said. We’ve all but picked clean the surrounding area.

There’s no way, someone called from the back of the room. There’s not many of us and all those stores–

Maira shook her head and cut him off. It’s been months since everything fell apart. Anything perishable has gone bad. The frozen items have thawed and rotted thanks to intermittent power failures. What we’re depending on at this point is the stuff that lasts. Cans, dried goods, that kind of thing, and there aren’t just huge stockpiles of those lying around.

What about the greenhouse?

Maira sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. Members of the community had worked very hard to convert most of the roof into a grow space for a garden. It had been a heartfelt project carried out with the best of intentions, and she hated to drown it in reality.

It helps some. It might buy us some extra time. Unfortunately, it’s just not enough, she said.

Maybe if we took over some of the surrounding buildings, converted their roofs too…

No. It came out blunt, harsher than she’d meant for it to. Maira frowned downward briefly rather than see hope fall from their faces. We would need acres upon acres of arable land to feed the community. Every attempt we’ve made to expand our agricultural efforts to surrounding areas has drawn more attacks down on us. There are one hundred and eight of us living in this building. It doesn’t work, and we’re running out of time.

This time, a painful silence filled the room. Expressions were grim. One man that Maira could see slowly worked his jaw, as if trying to literally chew this information down.

So, what’s your suggestion, petty officer? asked Jonah.

Maira shot him a look of combined annoyance and gratitude. There are things we can do to make things easier for the short term. The most urgent is that we have to widen the scavenging ring.

A low murmur of discussion filled the room. Some people looked concerned, but most weren’t getting the implications of her idea. Maira worried her lower lip, unable to decide if that was better or worse.

Could we see how that would look on a map? Jonah asked calmly.

There was way more irritation this time when she glanced at him, but she stifled it. He’s right, she thought. They had to understand. If they were to agree with it, honesty was key.

Of course, she said.

She pulled a rollout map down on the far wall. They’d pried it out of a government office several months back. It showed the surrounding area in useful detail. Maira tapped a finger against the map.

This is where we are. She traced a sizable circle around that point. Until now, the agreement has been that we’ve restricted our scavenging runs.

There were nods in the crowd. Most of them understood the general details of this even if they didn’t pay it much mind in their day-to-day lives. Only small crews actually went on the scavenging runs, after all. The most fit, the best trained. The ones most likely to come home.

What I’m suggesting is that we widen that ring. That will almost quadruple the area we’re collecting from, and if our estimates are correct, it will buy us a lot more time.

The crowd was murmuring again. Nobody seemed too upset with the