Deus Ex Diaries Part Fifty-Eight (Mankind Divided)

This is my ongoing exploration of the Deus Ex Universe, in release order. Whether you’re a newcomer or an old-goer, I hope to make this something you can read along with and enjoy. This time I continue Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

With my augmentations reset, I was deciding whether to get a Neuroplasticity Calibrator to control my experimental augmentations, or go to the office…

Since I had two missions awaiting me in Čistá Čtvrť, I headed there via the metro. While heading down to the train platform, I passed a booth that had been set up to advertise the city of Rabi’ah to the augmented. Since it was still being constructed, the pair talking about it mentioned the fact that they would have to help build it before they could live in it.

I nipped inside a restricted door at the end of the platform and bought the Optimized Musculature augmentation so that I could move a couple of large crates out of my way. It was a pointless exercise as they were hiding absolutely nothing, but at least I had the upgrade.

Upon arriving in Čistá Čtvrť I went up to the street and entered an electronics shop, Tubehouse. The vendor asked me if I had “other interests” which I assumed meant drugs, but he actually meant that he could sell me biocells. Down the street behind the electronics store was my mission marker, which led me to two locked storage rooms and a manhole cover. Once down in the sewer I upgraded my Hacking Stealth twice, as well as Hacking Capture Lv.2, and grabbed Turret Domination just in case.

I hacked a gate leading into a restricted area, then avoided a camera as well as a man standing guard. Luckily, there was an opening to go underneath the floor, so I took that which led me to a locked door which I hacked my way into. The storage room I found myself in had a ventilation shaft that took me exactly where I needed to go.

There was a guard in the room, but I managed to knock him out quietly, then I stunned a second guard who had come in while I was looking around. I deactivated the cameras by hacking a security computer, then hacked open a safe which held some ammo and the Neuroplasticity Calibrator that I required. Calling Koller immediately, he said that he would pencil me in for later, after he’d finished with a house call. As I noticed a cracked wall, I bought the Punch Through Wall upgrade and did just that, though I could have just gone around the catwalk to access the same area.

Two guards were still on the lower floor, so I ignored them and crossed the upper level to a storage room which had a ventilation shaft inside. On the other side of that were some pipes which allowed me to walk across them and exit the restricted area. I climbed up the ladder to the alley behind Tubehouse, where I hacked open both storage rooms, finding some things to sell and some hacking programs. I also found a hidden stairwell leading up to Tubehouse.

My second side mission indicated that I needed to break into an apartment to investigate some drug called Neon. Rather than hack a door, I jumped onto the surrounding wall on the first floor and got into an apartment through a window. The bathroom had a ventilation shaft that had been electrified, so I ignored that and left the apartment, going upstairs where I repeated what I’d just done to get in through a window. The ventilation shaft in this apartment’s bathroom wasn’t electrified, but it did have a laser sensor blocking the exit. I went through it and immediately exited the bathroom, being greeted by the cautiously hostile guards of the vendor I’d stumbled across.

While his guards looked for the intruder who had set off the sensor, I sold the vendor all of my alcohol and a couple of odds-and-ends. He didn’t have anything that I wanted to buy, so I left the apartment and headed downstairs to where my objective was. I hacked open the door and entered, being informed by the smart home system that I wasn’t supposed to be there, and the police were on the way. Instead, I looked around the incredibly messy apartment — there were bin bags in the bath and loads of alcohol scattered around. While I was grabbing some of the booze to sell upstairs, the police arrived and I had to knock one of the officers out. Upstairs was a corpse holding a pocket secretary which had an email begging them to be careful.

I left the apartment when the second police officer’s back was turned and sold my newly pilfered alcohol, then left the building as I’d found another pocket secretary telling me where a Neon party was taking place. I hopped up onto a bin behind Ludvik’s Lounge cafe and jumped over the wall into a courtyard. It required a keycard to enter, so I would need to find a different way in. Luckily for me, I simply had to move a large crate to access a ventilation hatch.

Unfortunately, the inside was completely electrified and there was no obvious way to deactivate it. So, I ran for the ventilation shaft on the far side of the room and managed to make it through without dying! Now inside the club, I overheard two men discussing how augmented people who take this new drug were dying due to the combination of the Neon and the Neuropozyne that they needed to prevent rejection. Most of the other club patrons kept exclaiming that they “can’t stop dancing”, but nobody wanted to have a chat. I hacked a door open and found a dead augmented person who happened to have a pocket secretary on them. The email on it said in no uncertain terms that mixing Neuropozyne and Neon was 100% fatal.

The email also pointed me towards an apartment with a swan on the door which hid a front for moving drugs, which would have to be my next stop…