Deus Ex Diaries Part Seventy-Eight (Jensen Stories)

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 started Deus Ex: Mankind Divided — System Rift.

Opening on Adam Jensen watching baseball, where Detroit is winning, when it’s interrupted by Francis Pritchard, his former colleague from Sarif Industries in Detroit, whom he had an antagonistic relationship with. Jensen wasn’t happy about being called out of the blue, but Pritchard reminded him that he helped get him out of Alaska and owed him a favour.

Pritchard explained that he had a job in Prague checking into a company. The local he had hired to help him had gone dark, and he was concerned about what might have happened. He asked Jensen to go to Zatopek, a local bar, where I might find the man named Slaw.

Agreeing, I jumped on the metro and headed for a district I hadn’t visited before. There was a reason for that, as they didn’t take kindly to augmented people there. Actually, it was one part of the district, known as Náměstí Mečů or Blade Plaza. It was where one of the Palisade Blades was, one of the many server farms operated by the Palisade Bank.

Opening a gate labelled “Naturals Only” I was stopped by armed guards. Even after I explained that I was there on Interpol business, they were having none of it and threatened me, so I left. My mini-map showed the store right beside me had a rear entrance that could take me into the guarded area, but it was locked and people were close so I didn’t want to hack it open. Exploring a bit further to the north I entered an apartment block which looked like it could also give me access.

There was a computer on the reception desk and the door was locked, so I upgraded my Hacking Capture to level three, and fully upgraded my Hacking Stealth. I hacked the door open and forgot about the computer, then took a look upstairs in case I could find a way to the bar via a rooftop. The apartment at the top was locked, so I hacked it open and had a look around, finding a balcony — but it was facing the wrong direction.

Whilst looting the bedroom, I spotted a painting that was hiding a terminal, so I hacked it and it unlocked a secret door in the wardrobe. The room inside was impressive, a real “hacker” setup if I ever saw one, with one of the monitors showing a schematic of a Palisade Blade. The laptop in the living room didn’t have anything of interest on it, so I headed downstairs to the back door.

Since there were people outside and a sniper was watching the area, I decided to give myself the Glass-Shield Cloaking augmentation, both of its power upgrades, and both biocell capacity and recharge upgrades. I figured that they would be needed later, too, given how much I relied on it in the main game. I cloaked and went directly to Zatopek, then downstairs.

The only person sat downstairs was Slaw, the very person I wanted to find. He had decided to quit, since the Palisade Pass-Port he had swiped was no longer of any use. He worked at Palisade Bank, and had been asked to help steal some data from the servers, but he was afraid he’d be killed by security like Simona Saridakis. Realising that I’d probably been drafted in his stead, he laughed and insulted me, so I walked away and cloaked my way out of the bar and the alley.

Calling Pritchard, I told him that I had the Pass-Port and would pop it in the mail for him. Instead, he begged me to go to a Konverz Kafé that was under construction nearby so that he could explain everything. Heading right over, I found the door locked, but a ventilation shaft around the back behind a bin gave me access. Going into the basement, I activated the building’s holographic array and Pritchard appeared to talk with me.

The job that Pritchard had been hired to do was to look into Santeau Group, to see if it was worth his client backing their Rabi’ah project. Sure, he wasn’t looking to steal anything, but I reminded him that it’s corporate espionage, something we had both been paid well to prevent not too long ago. Pritchard was surprised that I had worked out that his client was David Sarif, but went on to talk about the security in the Blade — Tarvos Security guards, automated defences, unauthorised persons being killed…

Fortunately, one hurdle at least — the Pass-Port — was solvable, unlike what Slaw had thought. Pritchard estimated that there were 50 people able to hack it, including him, but he wasn’t in Prague. However, he knew of a hacker called ShadowChild that could also do it, so he would reach out to them — his handle was NuclearSnake — to get them on board. I left the café and headed down the street, but overheard someone say something that I didn’t quite catch.

Turning to look at the Palisade Blade and spotted someone standing alone on the steps leading up to it. Approaching him, he introduced himself as Simona Saridakis’ husband Niko, who believed that her death inside the Blade was no accident. Worse, the bank used her death as an advertisement of how secure they were! He claimed that Simona had found “something strange” involving her boss Masaaki Oshiro, who had helped to design the lavawall digital protection. He thanked me for listening and I went to ShadowChild’s apartment.

As luck would have it, it was the same apartment that I had broken into earlier to find a way into the alley! So I headed straight into the secret room to find ShadowChild hooked up to some equipment in a chair. A turret came out of the ceiling and took aim at me before she disconnected and addressed me, apparently NuclearSnake hadn’t disclosed all of the details.

After explaining what I needed, ShadowChild was eager to help out, being one of only 10 hackers in the world who could do it, with her being two of them. A much less generous estimate than Pritchard, that was for sure. Getting to work, I was told to wait outside on the balcony where she joined me shortly. She asked where I got the Pass-Port so I told her, as she had helped me I felt no need to keep it secret. She went on to tell me that she knew a hacker who worked in the lobby of the Blade, by the name of Baba-Yaga 50, who could let me in. She also asked me to place a figurine on the desk of the head of engineering, as some kind of symbol to a person she used to know.

Before I left, ShadowChild warned that the server chambers were equipped with heat sensors, so my cloak wouldn’t be of much use. On my way to the Blade, I passed by Niko Saridakis who was arguing with a guard, so I went on inside and spoke to the person at reception. It was Baba-Yaga 50, and upon being told their name, they turned off the security lasers to let me through, so I went in the elevator and up to the first floor atrium. To discover which server belonged to Santeau Group, I had to get to the CEO’s executive suite at the top of the atrium to find a client registry.

Sneaking to the right, I slipped into a ventilation shaft behind a pillar and came out into a bathroom. With my cloak enabled, I got into the elevator and took it to the third floor. Pritchard called to whine that I was taking too long, but wound up telling me that the suite was designed to be separate, which explained why the elevator only went up to the third and not fifth floor. Following my gut, I went through a rest area and into an open locker room where I found a weapons cabinet and some supplies. A crate on a shelf hid a shaft which took me through into a maintenance area, which unfortunately led to two guards.

However, to the right were some stacked crates, so I upgraded my arms so that I could lift them. As I’d hoped, it cleared the way to a maintenance corridor, though it was blocked by a breakable grate — which I was on the wrong side of. I’d found several throughout my time with the game that could only be punched through from one side, and I happened to be on the unpunchable one… So I threw a grenade…