Deus Ex Diaries Part Sixty-Four (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.

Having arrived at the Utulek Complex, I had discovered that my contact was arrested, and had to bribe my way in to see him…

As the officer had told me, Tibor was in the first cell and reluctant to help me. Even though Interpol had offered to get his family out, he didn’t believe that it could be done safely. I tried to reassure him, but he wasn’t having it. However, he pointed me towards Louis Gallois, a smuggler who could probably get me to ARC if I did him a favour. Tibor’s ARC keycard had been confiscated by the police, and the officer probably still had it on them. He finished by asking me to help his brother Dusan out if I saw him, and since I planned on nosing around the place anyway, I agreed.

After informing Chikane about the slight change of plans, I checked out the nearby storage rooms. One of them had a weapons locker which I hacked open and nicked what I could, then used the handy ventilation shaft also in there to access one of the back rooms. As luck would have it, Dusan was being interrogated in the room just below, and there were no safety rails. I took a moment to check on my upgrades, and gave myself the Social Enhancer — AKA the CASIE implant that I’d used to constantly spray pheromones at people in the previous game.

I shot the man doing the interrogation with my stun gun, then took out his nearby buddies. The only one that posed an issue was the guy in a mech suit, but an EMP grenade allowed me to take him down. Dusan thanked me for the save and I told him it was because I didn’t want to see someone being savagely beaten no matter the reason. Then Dusan explained that while he wasn’t part of ARC like his brother, he did repair things for them like security cameras and heaters. However, after this he wanted nothing to do with them.

To help me out, Dusan repeated a passphrase that I could use to access the elevator up to The Throat, where ARC were based. It was an Alexander Solzhenitsyn quote: “When you rob a man of everything, he is no longer in your power, he is free again.” I looked this up and there seem to be several phrasings, but nevermind.

Dusan left, happy to be sleeping in his own bed tonight. I had no idea how he was getting past the rest of the police without someone discovering what I’d done. Or for that matter, why he thought the cops wouldn’t just pick him up again with questions about how he freed himself since they knew where he lived…

I left the holding area via the back entrance, sneaking underneath a fence to avoid detection and I found myself in a passageway which led to the marketplace, along the way were some storage rooms. Happening to notice a gap at the top, I jumped up to investigate and found some credits and a hypostim. At the far end, however, I also found a way into the last room, where I grabbed some ammo, alcohol, and something labelled “Supply Crate”. I left via the door, then hacked my way inside the first room on the row. There was a handy vent that I could punch through to access the middle room, but I only found ammo inside.

Making my way into the market, I decided to upgrade with Smart Vision and the Magpie augmentation. If nothing else, it would help me identify things to steal. I also grabbed the Rough Transmitter Tuning to help conserve power.

As I looked around the marketplace, I overheard a police officer on the phone. Apparently, he was the one who had Tibor’s access card for the ARC area. As I checked the area out, I spotted water on the floor near to an electrical breaker, so I flipped it on and continued browsing, heading upstairs. After going through the communal bedrooms, there was a ‘bang’ and flash of light, meaning my trap had successfully snagged someone. However, I continued investigating the upper level, hacking a door to enter someone’s house. Or, rather, a communal coffin, as there were four corpses inside.

Checking out the scene and hacking the laptop I found, I pieced together that someone was unhappy to learn that he was a father, so executed his wife, his brother, one other person, and then himself. The situation in Golem City was so desperate that he didn’t want to “bring another child into the world”…

Leaving that depressing scene behind, I went back downstairs and grabbed Tibor’s card from the police officer. As I still hadn’t checked out the area past the elevator, I walked straight past it to have a look. Downstairs, I found a merchant named Entity who was initially hostile towards me, but my good looks and sunny disposition soon changed her mind. I sold her all of the alcohol that I’d picked up, as well as a few odds-and-ends. I also sold some ammo for weapons I wasn’t carrying, but I kept my Neuropozyne. I didn’t envision that I’d need it like I did earlier to get information from the doctor, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I was flush with credits after all. Entity had some hacking software and two Multi-Tools, so I bought those.

Heading upstairs I found a locked door which I hacked my way into, finding what appeared to be a campaign office for Talos Rucker, or an ARC recruitment office. I found a triangle code and some hacking software inside, but that was about it. There was a computer belonging to an employee of the Santeau Group — the company which created the Útulek Complex. The first email made it clear that he wanted to get out of the city, and that Santeau was already looking at pulling their personnel out. The second email actually confirmed it, saying that he was being reassigned to Rabi’ah, the 3D-printed city under construction in Oman in the Middle East. The third email talked about Nathaniel Brown, the CEO of Santeau Group, wanting to meet Talos Rucker.

On the upper level, I found another merchant, this one named Louis Gallois. Tibor Sokol had mentioned him earlier, as having a way to get into ARC. Wanting to keep my options open, and the XP flowing, I spoke to him and offered to do a favour for him. He wanted me to get some Neuropozyne that the police had confiscated. Luckily, I had already obtained one of the Supply Crates earlier. I bought a bunch of ammo from him, then headed for the missing second item.

It turned out to be in the third room, hidden behind a box so I hadn’t spotted it earlier. I returned to Gallois, and he unlocked the security door behind him, which led to a ladder up to where I needed to go. With that done, I went back to the elevator to speak to the guard, a man by the name of Lubos.

Lubos was impressed that I had freed Dusan by myself, but his gratitude only went so far. I still had to tell him the passphrase, so I repeated the Solzhenitsyn quote and he unlocked the elevator for me. I asked him about Rucker, and the man clearly made an impression by saving his life by digging a police bullet out of his leg, then three months later recognising him like a dear friend. It seemed clear that his people liked him, they weren’t all just following for protection against the police.

I went up in the elevator and entered The Throat, stumbling across two men dragging a police drone over to a third — Viktor Marchenko, the self-proclaimed hound at the gates. We talked, and he was clearly trying to find out what my angle was. I listened to his advice (which was to leave), I sympathised that someone had to stand up to the police (he challenged whether I was going to), and I agreed that Talos Rucker sounded like a decent leader. None of this seemed to convince Marchenko that I was on the level. He picked up the police drone and walked off towards the market, warning me again to leave.

As I was in a warehouse, I looted the place before wandering further in. I was stopped by a laser grid, so I hacked a nearby door and found a pocket secretary with the bridge code (3354), as well as some ammo in the adjoining room. Leaving the rooms, I noticed that a large crate was blocking a hole, so I moved it and bypassed the lasers. Through the door at the end of the hallway, I found the bridge and activated it with the code. It looked like a long way down, and from what I could tell there was going to be a climb ahead of me…