Deus Ex Diaries Part Forty Two (Human Revolution)

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. I continue Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Having just found Eliza Cassan, and uncovered the fact that she manipulated the news and was herself not a real person, I was on my way back to Detroit…

As we flew in, Malik told me that Sarif wanted to meet at my apartment rather than the company building. There were anti-aug riots that we obviously wanted to avoid.

Disembarking the aircraft, I headed inside the building and took the elevator down. Walking past my apartment, I went to the second elevator to head down to the street — I had stuff I’d been dying to sell. Curiously, just before I got in the elevator, my implants shorted out for a moment…

Once I exited the apartment building, I was greeted by police cars blocking the road, and some other cars on fire, so I made my way to the abandoned gas station where the friendly local black market arms dealer was. It was funny seeing him still manning his store despite the heavy police presence on the street in front, and the two officers stood on the roof. Selling my unneeded ammunition, a bottle of spirits, and that weapon mod I’d been lugging around made me 3,050 credits, which was probably worth the effort.

Returning to the apartment, I was told by my security system that I had new messages. In a few minutes I would discover that this was a lie, as I could find no way of checking said messages. I did, however, have a guest: David Sarif. He kvetched about Picus telling everyone that Sarif Industries was making super soldiers, even though they totally weren’t. Just weapons, like the Typhoon. Jensen confronted Sarif about “anyone else” having the knowledge that Megan Reed’s research brought, only to be told that Sarif suspected that the Illuminati were behind the whole shebang.

Jensen was less than impressed that a fictional secret society was being blamed, but Sarif insisted that it was because Reed found a way to make augmentation safe, so that anyone could be augmented and not require Neuropozyne, like Jensen.

Since I knew that the only lead was to track down William Taggart’s aide Sandoval, Sarif mentioned the fact that Taggart was at the convention center a few streets away. He told me not to screw up, then left. I followed suit, heading down the elevator and out onto the street, going to the convention center. However, before I got there, I realised that I had a bunch of Praxis points to assign to my augmentations. I went for Mark & Track 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, and Cybernetic Leg Prosthesis. I envisioned having to track multiple enemies in the near future, and in the interests of further upgrading my sprinting speed, at least I could now jump higher.

Pritchard called me, telling me that Sandoval wasn’t at the convention centre. He then added that he had been looking into the system backdoor that I’d told him about earlier. He put me on the trail of Brent Radford, so I abandoned the convention centre and headed for the man’s apartment. I climbed up the fire escape and entered through the window, sneaking over to the open apartment door. There were signs of a struggle, and as I entered the bedroom I could see a man in a suit standing in the doorway to the bathroom. I knocked him out, then spoke to Radford, who had been shot and badly beaten.

Before he would speak to me, he told me to get the trauma kit that he had somewhere in the apartment, so I grabbed it from the wardrobe in the bedroom and gave him a morphine shot. Radford said that he should have seen this coming, after Sarif “got spooked”, and had clearly pissed off the wrong people. He didn’t have time to explain everything, but urged me to head to his storage unit where his attackers had gone. After another dose of morphine he gave me the code to a safe inside, then begged me to use the remaining morphine to kill him. Instead, I sprayed him with pheromones from my CASIE augmentation and appeased him to convince him to stay alive, even though he was a horrible bigot. He thanked me by telling me that my injuries weren’t as severe as I thought; I was augmented more than required to keep me alive. I already knew that from the emails I’d read in the LIMB clinic, so that wasn’t too shocking. He also told me to find a woman named Michelle because I “owed her”...

As I exited the building through the window, I called Pritchard and explained what had happened. Moving through a tunnel beneath an alleyway, I found the men that Radford had warned me were after his storage unit. Three of them were distracted, so I easily snuck past them and into the unit, quietly knocking out a fourth and accessing the safe with the code 4062. I grabbed everything from inside, credits, ammo, and a book, then snuck away. However, I still had to deal with the men, so I picked up a dumpster with the intention of chucking it at them. Annoyingly, I missed and had to duck behind cover. I threw a gas grenade at them, knocking out two before I shot the third. One of them was carrying a pocket secretary with “Mr Grey”’s travel itinerary, so although I didn’t know more than the fact that he was the boss, I at least knew that he was coming to Detroit from London.

With the coast clear, I grabbed some photos from the safe and hacked into the computer. Most of the emails were the same ones that Sarif had forwarded me earlier, the truth about me, but the final one was about Michelle Walthers. She had been friends with “the Jensens” and lived locally, so I headed over to her apartment building. Gaining ingress via the fire escape and a door on the roof, I went straight inside the unlocked apartment. As the email had mentioned, she appeared to be senile, but definitely knew Adam Jensen. Unfortunately, she knew him when he was a baby, and said that he was probably a tween by now.

After a bit of a chat, I got very little information from her. She had helped get Jensen out of a facility that his parents had set on fire, and wanted to give him 200 credits that she had been saving up for him, so I took it and left. Calling Pritchard, Jensen had him assign a security detail to the apartment because “she’s family”, and wouldn’t explain further.

With that done, I headed back to the convention centre, via the LIMB clinic to pick up two Praxis Kits. As I’d just leveled up as well, I had three points, so I assigned one point to Sprint Enhancement, one to Stealth 2 hacking, and the third to Energy Level Upgrade 1. I didn’t like running out of energy when throwing dumpsters around.

Finally going to the convention centre, I made my way through the hallways and upstairs to the main hall. I passed many people arguing about whether augmentations were good or bad, many with terrible arguments. I entered Room 2005 and interrupted Taggart, asking where Sandoval was, explaining why I wanted him, and even playing the recording of Sandoval talking about removing the locators from Megan Reed’s team. Taggart tried to brush this whole thing off as me trying to stop him succeeding in getting augmentations regulated, and that the recording wouldn’t hold up. I chose to confront him, agreeing that it wouldn’t hold up — but since I only wanted to get a search warrant, why was he standing in the way?

I was starting to convince him, but he said that I was clearly trying to find someone to blame for the trauma I experienced of being augmented against my will. I chose to redirect, arguing that the most important thing was asking Sandoval where the five kidnapped scientists were. He wasn’t impressed, saying that I was avoiding talking about my “real problem”. In response, I sprayed some pheromones and appeased him. I could give a reporter the recording to verify that it was real, or he could talk to me in private. He acquiesced and told me to meet him backstage.

Once in the green room, he told me that Sandoval had gone to his apartment in the city saying that he was feeling run down. He told me that if, and only if, Sandoval had done what I claimed, then it was only because of Zeke Sanders, his brother. Promising that I might try to not hurt Sandoval too much, I headed back downstairs and out.

Before I could get near the door, a police officer stopped me. His name was Nicky, and knew Jensen from his SWAT days. He had intel on a known criminal who was going to plant a bomb, and was going to do it tonight. I agreed to help, and he gave me some locations to check. This was going to be a long night…