| Storyline: | Brother Dearest |
| A merc proposes a mission to loot a corporate storage area. | |
| Type of Storyline: | Mercenary |
| Repeatable: | Unique |
| Era of Storyline: | Any |
| Minimum PL: | 3 |
This Storyline has the following additional prerequisites:
- a merc with Ex-Matsumoto backstory (default name Emille)
The following jobs may be part of this Storyline:
- Cube Run (steal as much as you can, collect research secrets)
- Ghosted Paper Trail (LEGWORK, investigate academy records)
- Midnight Fisher (solo spike on air traffic CPU)
- Cold Foot Shakedown (raid a medical site for records)
- Midair Bedlam (solo spike on air traffic CPU, yes, again)
- The Cradle (investigate stasis tubes)
- Resolution of search for Emille's brother
Trivia:In the earliest days of Early Access, the first mission in the Brother Dearest storyline (Cube Run) was the initial mission offered before speaking to Octane. In Update #11 (11/2/2023, only 2 weeks after EA launch), the new mission Forward Op replaced Cube Run as the first mission and Cube Run moved later in the timeline. Eventually, Cube Run was changed to require team Power Level 3.0.
Walkthrough part 1[edit | edit source]
This story line can start after team PL 3.0 if Emille is on your starting team. Without any timeline event, a dialog box pops with a message from Emille: "I've been working on a job we could pull off ourselves". There is nothing suspicious about this :-).
The mission is "Cube Run", which is presented as a standard raid against Warner-Braun. After you start, you learn that she has lied to you; while there is raid loot available, it is a two stage mission. The second stage contains three clues about the disappearance of her brother Marcus, related to the secret "Project Khronos". As you progress through the level, you can obtain between 0-3 of the clues.
After some time, a follow-up will appear, where you get some dialog introducing ULI Rising Prep Academy where Marcus attended school. Emille requests you to complete a legwork, Ghosted Paper Trail, to track him down. The legwork reveals a chief medical officer, Dr. Alan Goodman, who was behind the academy, and probably has information. Potato, who feels protective of Emille, offers a mission, Midnight Fisher, to hack into an air traffic coordinator CPU and trace his movements. The hack finds a secure medical site location where more records can be found. The follow-up mission must be run on a tight timeline, within 2 days.
The mission to this location, Cold Foot Shakedown, is shown as a raid. Once the mission starts, it is revealed that the map has three medical scanners which appear deactivated; but by having a merc stand in their yellow activation zone for two turns, we will be able to collect more information. So, rather than any loot, you must send your mercs to stand in these zones. They may be activated in any order, but all three must be activated before the exits become active.
For additional fun, a VIP hunter team of three Field Sergeants is sent on turn 3. Recall that these enemies have a stealth field. When their model is glowing brightly, they cannot be directly targeted; only AOE damage can affect them, including shock mines.
During the mission you learn of another student, Eliza Zaar. A number of students were forced into this program and illegal, painful bioserum experiments were done on them. They were kept in these tubes on stasis and a drug, Compound K, was used to keep them under control. They were kept in a place called "The Cradle".
After some time, Potato offers another mission, Midair Bedlam, to spike the air traffic coordinator CPU (yes, again). This will let us locate a transport carrying Eliza, where she broke free and caused a crash. As before, the follow-up mission must be run within 2 days.
The final mission in the storyline is "The Cradle", which is shown as a raid. The description of this mission deserves separate spoiler space.
Walkthrough part 2[edit | edit source]
The Cradle mission is two stages. The actual lab is located in a sub-basement of a company called LifeSave in Ward 7. The first stage is to cross a map. The dialog at the start of the second stage gives the goal: investigate three stasis tubes scattered around the map. It is not clear if the order is random, but one tube shows records of Eliza's death, and the second tube contains Marcus!
There are several paths through the dialog, allowing roleplay for the CK and for Emille. It is pretty clear that Marcus has been transformed into some super-soldier and is quite insane. The CK can hold out hope for rescue or suggest a mercy killing; Emille can offer to kill him or to rescue him. It is possible that there are alternate endings but so far (August 2026) we have not found any.
After the dialog Marcus breaks out of the tube and is hostile to everybody. He has a huge number of hitpoints and a number of special abilities, apparently related to Agent Ex (glitch and smokescreen). So far (August 2026) we are not aware of anybody who killed him. When you flee and exit the level, there is post-mission dialog where everybody is sad about the outcome, and fears that he will rampage through New Boston to kill Dr Goodman, and possibly come after Emille and her family.
That is the end of the storyline currently although we suppose Marcus will probably show up sometime.
(Player speculation: maybe he will hook up with Taylor Strizek and have ultra-super-babies.)