Deus Ex Diaries Part Sixty-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.

Finally done with some side stuff, I was on my way to meet Janus of the Juggernaut Collective, to see what they had to say…

Going to the abandoned information booth and climbing through the window, I was confronted with a difficult door hack. After failing it twice I just used my combat rifle to blast the door open, because I was frustrated. Inside were some painkillers and software, as well as a ventilation shaft. I used it to gain entry to the elevator shaft, then dropped down.

While moving boxes and looking for goodies, I found a strange device attached to the wall. On closer inspection the bottom of the elevator had a couple of them, too. Suspecting that Janus had them set up to blow the shaft in case of emergency, I used some crates to create a barrier. After a couple of minutes I followed the sound of Janus’ voice as he’d been asking me to get a move on the whole time, and entered the city tour guide office.

The figure on the screen was constantly changing its appearance, and the voice coming over the speakers was distorted, all to protect Janus’ identity. Even though they knew who Bob Page was and what he had said in his conversation with Joseph Manderley, the evidence was obtained illegally so we couldn’t proceed through official channels. As for the Orchid that was mentioned, VersaLife had a vault in the Palisade bank, so perhaps I could dig up something there.

We moved on to discuss Nathanial Brown, but the signal was cut off — there were sentry drones on their way to kill me! I closed the door to the office and blocked it with a crate, exposing a vent for me to climb inside, giving me access to the next room. While safely in the vent I switched my pistol ammo to EMP rounds, and upon exiting the vent I was almost immediately spotted. The long and short of it is that I wound up destroying the drones and exiting through the floor, as the elevator was covered in laser trip mines.

Going through the floor led me to the sewers. One more drone was around the corner, but I destroyed that too, moving into an inhabited section of the tunnels. I walked across some pipes to avoid wasting time climbing a ladder, and when I exited the populated area I spotted some more mines to my right. So, I went down the tunnel to my left with an electrified floor. Luckily, I had two reinforced wooden crates to stand on and used them to deactivate the breaker powering the floor.

Moving a crate I found a hole in the wall to crawl through, but as I did so I activated my vision augmentation which showed multiple hostiles and a camera. So, I decided to go the other way and found a large room filled with poisonous gas. Since I knew that I had the breathing augmentation already, I clambered over a pipe, jumped to a gantry, and climbed a ladder to the surface.

There was no time to catch my breath, however, as Nomad Stanek called me to say that his daughter was about to be killed, so I hightailed it to the metro. As I hit the platform, Alex Vega contacted me to say that VersaLife was closing their bank account tonight, we needed to move on the vault now. I had to choose: the vault, or Allison Stanek.

Leaving the metro I headed straight for the bank. Contacting Vega, she told me to retrieve a package from the bank manager’s car in the employee parking structure across the way. I figured that would be easy enough as I’d been through there earlier — but a day had passed and people had woken up or changed shifts, so the place was under guard again… Sneaking up on the guard patrolling the vehicles I shot him with my stun gun and he fell into a car, setting off the alarm. Quickly, I checked the blue car next to it, intending on going through all of them, and immediately located the package.

Running outside as icons on my mini-map came to investigate the alarm, I called Vega back. To activate the access card I now had, I had to obtain some biometric data from the CEO’s office inside the bank. As I entered the bank Smiley called to inform me that Nomad had escaped, and upon learning that Allison was in danger he urged me to go and save them.

I was annoyed to find all of the doors were locked again, limiting my options for going upstairs. Not that it would have mattered, given the fact that most of the offices were occupied… On a whim I moved two vending machines sitting next to an elevator, revealing a vent that I could enter! By going through the maintenance tunnels and jumping up on top of the elevator, I was able to reach the third floor.

Nomad called me again, asking where I was. He told me that Allison was gone to the “Ascension” which I took to mean dead, and hung up on me. Luckily, I was right outside the foyer of the CEO’s office as I exited the maintenance tunnel, stunning the lone guard inside before heading up and re-unlocking the CEO’s door with the 0211 code. Right on the desk was the Keycard Biometric Encryptor, so I used the Janus package to give me access to the VersaLife account.

Exiting through the vent in the ceiling, I once again dropped down to the lobby, landing right in front of a guard who only warned me that I couldn’t get past him without an appointment. Activating my cloak, I hurried past him and into the elevator just behind him, using the keycard to access the VIP vault level.

Vega explained that I had to plug a data rod into the terminal inside the vault, and Janus would be able to contact me once I had. Upon exiting the elevator I snuck down to a door labelled Security and followed the stairway around to where a guard was chilling in front of a security camera. Since I had 16 Praxis points, I used some to improve my cloaking energy use, my energy recharge, and be able to run silently. I even improved the energy drain on my Smart Vision.

Cloaking, I rushed past the lone guard and into the main security centre with its three guards, then on into a server room at the far end. Hacking the security terminal I deactivated the cameras, lasers, and robots before looking for an exit. Since I couldn’t immediately spot one, I used my cloak to help me stun the three guards in the main area. Spotting an office to one side I stepped in and rooted through the drawers finding not a lot before noticing a hole in the false ceiling! Annoyingly, it connected easily to the server room and would have been a much safer route…

Thankfully, the false ceiling allowed me to get into a cable duct, and after smashing a hatch I located a locked one. Since it required a high level hack, I decided to use one of my Multitools instead. The duct led right to the vaults, and I called down the VersaLife vault. Plugging in the device, Janus contacted me and started downloading data. I asked to listen to a random audio file, which turned out to be a call between Bob Page and Jensen’s ex-girlfriend Megan Reed.

To my surprise, Reed had been working on the Orchid. She mentioned a facility called GARM and Page said that they were keeping a sample of the neutralising agent inside a secure vault there. Apparently, it was a geological research centre until Belltower Associates purchased it some years ago, so Jensen decided that was his next destination. Janus finished downloading and signed off, leaving me to look around the vault. Hacking open a safe I found a sample of the Orchid neutralising agent as well as a bunch of Neuropozyne.

Exiting the vault, I jumped up on top of it and hit a button, the vault rising. Using buttons, ladders, and good old fashioned enhanced jumping, I reached the top which was the large ventilation system. Shutting off a fan that stood in my way, I found myself back in the employee parking structure!

As soon as I left I called Miller, who was on his way back to Chikane’s landing pad. I tried to tell him what I had found but he shut me down, wanting it in person. So, I had to go and see the boss…