After the fall of Pollepel Island and the death of Eileen Ruskin, Avi Epstein was a rudderless ship full to capacity with problems. From December to January he stashed himself away in a single-unit Ferrymen safehouse and nearly drank himself to death while listening to international news on a small wind-up radio. He cut himself off from everyone and everything, went to ground with the intention of dying drunk and alone.
In mid January, having failed multiple times to drink himself into an early grave, word came to Epstein that his daughter Emily's leukemia had gone into remission after completion of her second round of chemotherapy. Drawn out of his self-destructive haze by this news, Avi made his way back to the states and to Washington D.C. Unfortunately, it was a fucking trap.
Emily Epstein had gone into remission, in 2011, and she had not informed her estranged father of this fact. But Colonel William Heller used Epstein's sentimentality to lure him back into the United States and into a death-trap. Epstein was nearly killed in the ensuing confrontation with Heller's men but managed — like a cockroach and against his wishes — to survive the altercation and demonstrate that in spite of being far past his prime and an alcoholic mess, he was and may still be one of the best federal agents of his time. Just, duller than before. And more prone to blundering into a trap.
Epstein was unable to make it back to Canada with Heller's men looking for him and riots turning into a full-on Civil War. Through his Ferrymen connections, Epstein wound up serendipitously dumped into the lap of Hana Gitelman and the pair combined their specific brands of self-destructive qualities together and redirected them outwardly to people they had grievances with.
From 2011 to 2012, Epstein and Hana work as a pair in the civil war, earning a reputation as a highly-effective partnership able to track down and eliminate most targets. The duo earns the nickname "Wolfhounds" among their peers, though the title doesn't resonate with them yet.
In May of 2012, as the fighting is reaching its peak, Epstein and Gitelman nearly catch up with colonel Leon Heller but fall short of catching the notorious figure. During the operation, Avi severely re-injures the knee that was damaged during the Commonwealth Ark raid and can no longer reliably perform field exercises. Though he intends to stay in the fight from a logistics standpoint, Epstein is forced to take a month to recuperate when the Resistance needs him most.
While recovering, in July of 2012, Epstein returns to Canada to gather supplies and act as a courier from Ferrymen assets to the Resistance effort. He also picks up Colette Demsky at her insistence and brings her back to the United States to join with Hana. In late July, before being able to reconnect with Hana, Avi and Colette are caught in a massive Mitchell-administration counter-offensive in Connecticut and are separated.
Avi spends the rest of July fighting with an unfamiliar group of Resistance fighters based out of Maryland and acts as a tactician and strategist for their guerilla operations. At the end of July, Epstein reconnects with Hana, Colette, and the recently-rescued Scott Harkness. This unlikely team now bears a semblance of what it would become in the future.
From August to September 2012 Avi operates as an instructor and trainer for what would become Wolfhound, educating its younger members on tactical and covert operations. Epstein also manages logistical operations, and is forced to sit on the sidelines when Hana and other accomplices move to take down President Mitchell in an assassination attempt. The mission is a catastrophic failure, and Avi falls into a deep depression that he does his level best to conceal from those around him.
In November Avi pulls himself out of his fugue and throws himself into planning Wolfhound's responsibilities on a joint Resistance attack on the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Unlike the Mitchell assassination, this deployment is a stunning success and results in Wolfhound stealing an experimental X-51 ROOK fighter and destroying the rest of the produced models. With Wolfhound at a significant tactical and material advantage, Avi manages to claw himself out of the pit depression if for a time.
Through the entirety of 2013, Epstein takes well to his role as logistics within Wolfhound, no longer feeling the pangs of guilt about being unfit for field duty. He still maintains as a functional alcoholic, but he's balanced his life to some semblance of an equilibrium. In 2014, all of Epstein's training with Wolfhound is put to the test when all available squads participate in the battle of Raven Rock in January of 2014. Wolfhound is a key player in the defeat of the Mitchell administration and gains considerable fame and reputation in the eyes of wartime veterans. The X-51 ROOK likewise plays a critical role in the defeat of Mitchell's remaining air and land assets.
With Mitchell's surrender, the war officially ends. Unwilling to sit idle and deal with his problems, Epstein continues to coordinate search-and-destroy operations against remaining opposition forces as well as wetworks on targets like Humanis First.
In 2015 someone thought it was a good idea if Avi Epstein mediated a dispute when the military wanted to take an orphan into their care. It is largely regarded as a significantly bad choice, and he has told no one of his fosterage of this child. Not Hana, not — that's all of his friends. Isn't it? 8(
From late 2015 through 2017 Epstein continues to lead Wolfhound's logistical center, right up until that really bad choice in 2015 comes calling. Avi murders a SESA agent to protect his ward and is thrown into confinement in the Liberty Island Detention Center, a facility normally reserved for terrorists. Epstein is interrogated by DHS agent Jason Pierce on multiple occasions, and Epstein fears that something sour is going on within DHS but is powerless to do anything about it. On November 8, when one of Pierce's direct reports is grilling Epstein about the Ark raid, he is violently rescued by Colette Demsky, leading to a disastrous series of events that gets Colette ejected from her leadership position in Wolfhound and in the doghouse with Hana.
Though Epstein remains Wolfhound's tactical and logistics commander, he is skating on thin ice with Hana and goes into 2018 with the nervous tension of someone keeping an awful secret.
Because he is.