Cooper is a NERO researcher and a friend of O'Brian. His team goes into a cave in the Highway 97 region to sample a mutant Freaker and stops answering the radio. O'Brian sends Deacon in to find them.
Deacon finds the team dead except Cooper, who has two broken legs and a torn suit. Cooper names the creature the Reacher and dies while trying to talk to his wife. Deacon kills the Reacher and brings the samples to O'Brian.
Image: Bend Studio / PlayStationDeacon St. John
Deacon St. John is the player character: a former soldier and Mongrels MC enforcer who now works as a drifter and bounty hunter in post-outbreak Oregon. You play as him from the opening hunt for Leon. He still grieves his wife Sarah, whom he believes died early in the outbreak.
James O'Brian
James O'Brian is the NERO volunteer who loaded Sarah onto an evacuation helicopter when the outbreak began. Deacon finds him again two years later as a NERO lieutenant in the Finding NERO storyline. He becomes Deacon's only inside source on NERO and on what happened to Sarah.
Joany Gray
Joany Gray was Boozer's wife, his high school sweetheart and a friend of the Mongrels. She died in a crash years before the outbreak. Boozer still carries the loss, and she comes up often in his talks with Deacon.
Martine Sinclair
Lieutenant Martine Sinclair is a NERO agent you only hear in recordings. Her voice turns up in several Inspector Field Notes and a mobile medical unit recording. Early in the outbreak she oversaw corpse disposal sites in the Highway 97 region.