John Taylor

"You don't understand. I'm taking us home."

- Taylor to Hendricks.

John Taylor is the tritagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops III. He is the commander of the Winslow Accord Black Cyber Ops who later was under the influence of Corvus in the aftermath of the Coalescence Disaster, and compromised WA information across the internet. After a lengthy manhunt in Egypt, Taylor relented on his actions and ripped out his DNI in retaliation at Corvus.

However, Hendricks shoots him twice in the head with his MR6 after Hendricks succumbs to Corvus. His consciousness survived in the DNI network and he assisted the Player in purging Corvus from their DNI in Switzerland, however Taylor's consciousness continued to live within the Player's body.

Military Career
Taylor began his military career by enrolling at West Point Military Academy in 2037, who becomes the fourth generation of his family to do so. He excels at all challenges and is soon promoted to Bridge Commander at the end of his First Cadet Year. He graduates magna cum laude in 2041 and is later recruited to the US Army 1st Special Forces Group. Taylor is assigned to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force - Arabian Peninsula and serves dutifully with distinction. He attains the rank of Captain and is granted the position of Detachment Commander to his Special Forces Operation Detachment-A team in 2048. He is seconded to the Winslow Accord Special Forces in 2049. Taylor is later transferred to the black ops team Phi in 2058, but the team is shut down seven years later. By 2064, Taylor had been accepted into Project Prometheus and into the Cyber Soldier program.

Rescuing Minister Said in Ethiopia
On October 27, 2065, Egyptian Minister Said was confirmed kidnapped by the Nile River Coalition in the Semien Mountains in Ethiopia. The Winslow Accord created a joint operation led Black Cyber Ops Division consisting of Taylor, Sarah Hall, Sebastian Diaz, and Peter Maretti, and supported by WA Special Forces led by Jacob Hendricks and the Player. After Hendricks and the Player caused havoc on the NRC airbase, they slipped by undetected and liberated Said and Lieutenant Khalil from the prison. Taylor regrouped with them in the hanger before leaving Diaz to escort them through the base. After being forced to retreat to the secondary extraction, Hendricks demands that Taylor disobey orders and rescue the remaining Egyptian hostages. Taylor complies and takes his team back to the prison while Hendricks drives the APC to the exfil point amidst heavy enemy resistance. Hendricks, Said, and Khalil are escorted by a VTOL drone, but the Player is left behind and is savagely mauled by a GI Unit. Taylor takes down the NRC robot and rescues the Player who is left with both arms dismembered, a broken leg, and severely battered.

Cybernetic Training
The Player then suddenly awakes and sees Taylor, who introduces them aboard a private commuter train heading to the Zurich headquarters of the Coalescence Corporation. He continues to explain the onboard cargo, namely the prototype of the Winslow Accord Neural Network Initiative, which holds a specialized AI capable of rewriting its own code to adapt to any computer system. Suddenly, the maglev train explodes and train cars are derailed before time freezes and Taylor explains that the train was attacked by a terrorist group on December 12, 2054 at 7:31am. He later explains that the Player is currently in a simulation within their minds and how their Direct Neural Interfaces (DNIs) allow them to communicate with each other and the world around them. Suddenly, the Player is transported to an abandoned steel mill the day before the attack on December 11, 2054 at 11:30am. Taylor freezes time and explains the overwhelming firepower of the terrorists against the Zurich Security Forces. When the Player interfaces and discovers the terrorist Xavier Hirtzel, Taylor reappears and explains the inefficiency of the ZSF in recovering the information. He then transports the Player five hours later when ZSF failed to capture Hirtzel. After the Player interrogates Hirtzel and discovers their infiltration plan in the subway tunnels, Taylor explains how the ZSF took weeks to uncover their infiltration weeks following the attack. The Player is then transported back onto the train five minutes before the attack. Taylor reflects on the irony of the terrorist attack and how it accelerated the development of the Neural Network Initiative to prevent attacks such as this. The Player then enters the train and takes down the security bots attacking them before reaching the bomb control. As it is impossible to safely disarm or remove the bomb, the Player detaches the car from the maglev train before it detonates and Taylor remarks how their DNI can show all the options, but only they can decide what they are willing to sacrifice. The Player finally awakens in the hospital and sees Kane walking away with her bandanna on the table as an unidentified man speaks with Taylor. He later explains how the Player and Hendricks are about to go into surgery to be initiated into the Cyber Soldier program.

Infected by Corvus
During a mission at the abandoned Coalescence Corporation facility in Singapore, Taylor's team discovers the bodies of several test subjects wired into a mainframe within the depths of the facility, who were killed following the explosion in the facility, releasing a leakage of Nova 6, which ultimately caused the Singapore Disaster which resulted in 300,000 deaths. After reaching the facility's server room, Taylor interfaces with the mainframe in the server room, but upon doing it, allowed Corvus to enter his DNI, starting to slowly corrupt his mind. Sarah Hall then runs a diagnostics on Taylor, but also gets the Corvus virus to enter her mind as well. Soon, all of Taylor's team was infected by Corvus.