Deus Ex Diaries Part Fifty-Nine (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.

Hot on the heels of a new designer drug that was only fatal to the augmented, I was heading to an apartment near Pilgrim Station…

The email that I’d found said that it was a cleaning company, so upon leaving the nightclub I went straight over. The metro station had a brilliant advertisement for the pharmaceutical company Versalife, as the outside was a face, and there was an art display of massive pills crossing the street into it.

Making my way up to the apartment with the swan, I was cautious to hack the door, deciding instead to find an alternate way inside. Their neighbour’s door was unlocked, but there was no way to access the swan. Going upstairs, I hopped onto the window ledge of the apartment across from the swan, then went inside, then out through a different window after looting the place. I continued around to the apartment opposite which turned out to be a reporter’s home. Since I was above the swan, I had a good look around and in the laundry room I found a punchable wall.

Going through the wall, I found my way down to the swan apartment’s punchable wall and finally gained entry. It was empty, but while looting and just generally touching stuff I unlocked a hidden door by moving a spray bottle. Before entering I checked out the rest of the place and found a pocket secretary with an email suggesting that they were aware of how deadly mixing Neuropozyne with this Neon drug was.

Inside the secret room was a safe, but to hack it open I needed to upgrade my hacking ability. So, I upgraded to Hacking Capture Lv.4, and added on the highest level of Hacking Stealth. Inside the safe was a credit chip, a Multi-Tool, and a pocket secretary with an interesting email. It talked about the Dvali lab which was making Neon, and how the Swan Laundry Company was smuggling it out of there. It had a door code and explained that it was beneath the Zelen apartment complex, and had quite a secure setup.

Exiting the building via a nearby ventilation shaft, I headed for the apartment in Překážka via the metro. It was taking me away from checking in at the TF29 office, but I figured they could wait.

My waypoint told me to go down a manhole into the sewer, so I climbed down the ladder and had a look around. There was an electrified area around a circuit breaker, so I used two wooden boxes to turn it off. It depowered the door terminal on the upper area, but I couldn’t work out a way of powering that and not being electrocuted, so I left it off and went down to the lower area and used the door code 0311. A turret guarded the area through a gate, but I avoided its gaze and hacked it, turning it friendly before heading up some stairs and using the same door code on a metal shutter.

There was a makeshift lab on the lower level with some people in lab coats as well as a handful of guards. I used some pipes to climb across from the gantry I was on to the opposite one, and stunned a thug before he could call out. Hacking the security terminal I disabled the cameras and alarm panels, then activated friendly fire on the turret guarding some chemical tanks. To my surprise it opened fire on the tanks, completing my objective for me. However, there was still probably loot to be had, so I carefully started picking off the guards.

This quickly went awry, and when my stun gun proved ineffective I had to swap to my shotgun to kill my way to safety. Once all of the guards were disposed of, I hacked the door terminal to access the chemical vats. They had already been destroyed, but that and the panel inside gave me a bit of experience which is always good.

I quickly looted the facility before leaving the way I had come, heading back through the tunnels. I got distracted when I noticed a passage filled with gas, so I used a side tunnel to bypass it. I spotted an access panel next to a gate so I hacked it, finding a nice throughway to a drone which was firing at something or someone on the upper level. Deciding to stay safe, I carried on down the tunnel I had veered away from and saw someone stood next to an obviously restricted area. An access card was required so I decided to talk to the guy standing next to it as opposed to just knocking him out and taking his card.

The guy was Viznik, and he’d obviously been through some stuff. Through the gate was a “hive mind” that he’d been disconnected from. I tried to reassure him and he seemed to come to some realisation that I could help put a stop to “the rat”, so I accepted his request. Viznik handed over his keycard and told me to free the others, but carefully, I had to find out how they were being held by the one in charge: Richard.

Entering through the door I found an underground commune — we were still in the sewer after all — with several gardens and a bunch of people muttering about Richard. On a large screen came the man himself with a cloud effect going on an obvious green screen behind him. As he began talking, my vision became clouded — something weird was definitely going on here.

Richard welcomed me and as Jensen tried to converse it was clear that his thoughts weren’t coming clearly. Viznik’s speech had been all over the place, so clearly whatever was doing it was located in the commune. Richard continued trying to convince me that this commune was the best place to be, free of injustices and violence. I tried to challenge Richard, but something literally stopped me mid-sentence, so I indulged him. He made me promise to not jeopardise the safety of the people living here and gave me the run of the place.

I had a look around, finding posters saying “Good people don’t go upstairs” along with some other suspicious bullet points. I also found some discarded posters about Richard & Liborio’s Explorations of the Mind: A Hypnotic Experience. It was becoming apparent exactly what was going on.

I spotted a ladder and was told to get away the moment I climbed to the top. A security turret above me guarded the area, so I avoided it and headed for the back. Unfortunately, a security level five door blocked my way, but fortunately I still had unused Praxis points so assigned myself Hacking Capture Level 5. I hacked the door and went through to bypass a second turret and enter Richard’s room through a back entrance.

Richard became hostile immediately upon spotting me, opening fire at me so I shot him dead. I used his security camera to disable the turrets, then pulled the power breaker, disabling his entire setup. However he had been doing it, the people of the commune were now free of it. As I headed through the commune to the exit, people lamented the loss of the belonging that they had been feeling.

Outside, Viznik thanked me for his help, but while Richard’s way wasn’t the right way, at least it wasn’t the current society where everyone was alone…

With that, I decided to head back to the metro and go home to have a chat with David Sarif. Sure I was late to work, but I had to find out why I was full of experimental augs…