Isaac "Ike" Ronson, call sign Sentinel, was a former agent for the Strategic Homeland Division, stationed in New York City. He is a protagonist in Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn.
Following the deaths of his family during the outbreak of Green Poison, Ronson secretly betrayed The Division and became a double agent for Black Tusk. He was tasked with intercepting April Kelleher and securing samples of broad-spectrum antivirals.
Biography[]
A native of New Jersey, Ronson was the father of three children from a previous marriage. During the outbreak of Green Poison in Manhattan, he was activated as part of The Division's Second Wave. His girlfriend and one of his children died from infection; his ex-wife and two surviving children were later murdered by the Cleaners.
Their loss shook Ronson’s faith in the Joint Task Force and Strategic Homeland Division. When an intermediary introduced him to an operative named Mantis, he was swayed by her promise of a new, stronger America and agreed to become a double agent for her employers (later revealed as Black Tusk). She then provided him electronic countermeasures to prevent ISAC from marking him as a Rogue Agent.
Tom Clancy’s The Division: Extremis Malis[]
After tracking Mantis to the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, Division agent Caleb Dunne witnessed her talking with Ronson, who offered to track down Dunne for disrupting her partnership with the Last Man Battalion. Dunne was puzzled that Ronson's Smart Watch was still glowing orange, despite having clearly gone rogue.
Tom Clancy’s The Division: Broken Dawn[]
Six weeks after their initial meeting, Mantis contacted Ronson with a mission to intercept April Kelleher, who had left Manhattan and was on her way to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Torn between following Kelleher and assisting in a JTF operation, Ronson decided to draw the hostiles away from the JTF before calling for backup and leaving, allowing another agent to finish the job. This resulted in fourteen civilian deaths; their bodies were discovered by another agent, Aurelio Diaz, who vowed to find Ronson.
Ronson left New York and pursued Kelleher with help from Mantis, delivering updates every forty-eight hours. During his journey, he also diverted from his mission in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania to help the local JTF recover stolen explosives. Outside of Milan, he caught up with Kelleher and rescued her from several escaped convicts, earning her trust. He lied to Kelleher about being deployed around Ohio and Pennsylvania and escorted her to the University of Michigan, where they met Diaz.
Kelleher told the agents about her husband's research on broad-spectrum antivirals--a potential cure for the Green Poison that had been produced in the school's lab facilities. Diaz feigned ignorance about Ronson's identity, but Ronson was not deceived; while Kelleher slept, he invited Diaz to kill him if he truly believed Ronson had gone rogue.
The next day, Ronson relayed the news to Mantis, who assembled a Black Tusk strike force nearby. The trio met with Dr. Kavita Chandrasekhar at the university labs; Ronson signaled to begin the assault, only to discover the antivirals had been sent to Washington, D.C. at the request of President Ellis.
Shortly after, Diaz knocked Ronson unconscious and bound him to a chair with extension cords. He revealed Ronson's betrayal to the group, took the double agent's Smart Watch, and escaped with Kelleher as Black Tusk forces raided the lab. Ronson's fate thereafter is unknown.
Personality[]
Although he was ultimately a traitor to Strategic Homeland Division, treachery did not come naturally to Ike Ronson. Instead, he constantly sought ways to internally rationalize his betrayal of the JTF and The Division as still working for the greater good, or dwell on how they had failed his family during the outbreak. Ronson also felt a lingering sense of responsibility towards the JTF and his fellow agents, which led to him resorting to half-measures that ultimately served no one - most notably, abandoning several civilians mid-evacuation in the confidence that another Division asset would arrive to save them, which instead led to their deaths and his eventual undoing at the hands of Agent Aurelio Diaz.
Ronson also held himself to high moral standards, and refused to take a shoot-first approach even if it was permitted under Directive 51. As he pursued April Kelleher on Mantis's orders, Ronson still took detours to aid those in need, such as helping the JTF retrieve stolen explosives at the Delaware Water Gap and even putting himself at risk to avoid needless casualties and save a baby in the process. He justified this as maintaining his cover by avoiding potential JTF complaints of unhelpful Division agents to his superiors. News of his good deeds even caused Agent Diaz to briefly second-guess his assessment of Ronson and whether he had misjudged him for a rogue agent.
However, Ronson truly did believe that Black Tusk's brand of authoritarianism was the best way to re-establish order in a floundering post-pandemic society, even if it came at the cost of countless innocent lives. Although he made several attempts to justify his actions to Kelleher and Diaz, he was unable to convince anyone but himself.
Equipment[]
- In Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn, Ronson carries an M4 and an unspecified sidearm.
- On the book's cover, he also carries a G28 with a Rugged Mini Reflex Sight.
Trivia[]
- In his initial appearance in Tom Clancy's The Division: Extremis Malis, Ronson wears his Smart Watch on his right arm. However, on the cover of Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn, he wears it on his left.