Deus Ex Diaries Part Twenty-Five (Invisible War)

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 with Deus Ex: Invisible War.

After gaining access to flight deck 24 on behalf of three different people, I decided to hit the Tarsus Academy next, to perhaps solve the case of some missing kids, and locate Leila Nassif…

Using the code that I had nabbed from Maskini Nassif’s apartment, I was granted entry to Tarsus Academy. The receptionist was curt with me, assuming that I was there to complain about missing children without having read their memo first. After assuring her that I wasn’t, I was granted entry and had a look around.

Yes, I read the memo... as far as you know

After finding a few students and a teacher in a classroom, and being questioned whether I was a parent, but not asked who my child was, I moved on. The science room was being guarded, because greasels had escaped and they were waiting for an exterminator. Not wanting to wait, the guard offered me 100 credits to kill the greasels - and if anything inside the room went missing, maybe the greasels ate it?

So, in I jumped (there was an upended table blocking the way), and shot the greasels. They tried to return fire by spitting at me, but from their position a table blocked me from harm. Once they were dead, I raided the classroom before returning to the guard and claiming my credits. I had noticed an open grate in the back of the class, but decided to continue checking out the rest of the place before heading inside.

The hallway led me past the headmaster’s office, and into the reception area, behind the receptionist. There was a terminal behind her, so I gave it a quick hack and added a name to the enrollment list, as I was asked to do in the mosque. That done, I went back to the headmaster’s office and went inside. It was large enough for two guards to patrol, so far too big.

Yes, you can give me your interior decorator's number

I spoke to the headmaster, who hinted that he wasn’t going to be the headmaster for much longer. After cracking open his safe and stealing his money, with a guard wandering around right behind me, I went back to the science room and into the ventilation shaft. At the bottom were two girls, both of whom were assumed missing by the rest of the school. Eeva Nassif was one of them, and who I was there to speak to.

Apparently, the headmaster was acting suspiciously, and the girls had found a secret room which had notes from the headmaster saying things about “purification”. They told me that I could go in the shaft, which was patrolled by a spiderbot, or the route that “only the girls in gymnastics” could use. Since I could jump pretty well, I opted to avoid a confrontation in a vent shaft.

Fine, I'll do it myself...

At the end, after some hot steam and a bit of jumping, I found a camera and a turret. I was certain that I had disabled the camera from the headmaster’s terminal, but apparently not, so I used my mods to take over the turret and destroy the camera. Once my domination timed out, the turret was disabled and I was free to check things out.

Amongst the many cans of soda (which I took), I found the headmaster’s journal. In it, he mentioned wanting to terminate Eeva Nassif and others, as well as a hologram message. Donna Morgan, of the WTO, came through on comms after the message, saying that the Templars had seemingly penetrated ApostleCorps, which was how they took over the school. She tasked me with investigating “the secret ApostleCorp suite” that the Templars had discovered.

Nearby, I found a ladder leading down. I also heard someone down there shouting about, that they heard someone. So, I decided to ignore them and head back upstairs, using the handy spiral staircase and secret door into the headmaster’s office. I confronted him about his plans, and he said there was nothing that I could do. Alex D. made a suggestion of a threat, and the guy ran away - alerting his guards. I used my Boltcaster to knock them all out, then carried the headmaster back to the elevator, fighting off the Tarsus guards. I had found a note saying that the guards were all Templars, so I hoped that the rest of the Arcology wouldn’t turn on me.

Didn't think I'd killed him, but this proves me wrong

I was disappointed to find that the headmaster wasn’t with me when the elevator stopped, but I went straight to the guard station to report what was going on. Thankfully, the rest of the guards believed me and didn’t turn on me, so I headed back to the mosque. I had to tell the mother that her daughter had been bumped onto the admissions list, after all.

It was a quick trip down the elevator to see them, and they gave me five credits. Then, I nipped over to speak to the Omar Trader and Leo Jankowski, who again thanked me for the warning and the schematics.

I returned to the arcology and went into the maintenance area, where I programmed the cure for the nanite swarm, not that the man down there was too happy about it. He grumbled, but left me alone as I went and headed for the ApostleCorp suite, and hopefully would finally find Leila Nassif…

"Well I don't know if I can trust YOU! How does that feel?"

As I entered, I was accosted by Klara Sparks, another fellow former-trainee from Seattle. As the WTO knew I had been doing things for The Order as well as them, they felt that I couldn’t be trusted to keep Leila alive - or conscious - long enough for them to get the information they wanted. It sounded like I would have to finally make that decision: follow The Order, or do what the WTO wanted.

Klara opened the door, and began firing at the men inside. I joined in, and soon the three were dead. I went - alone - into the next hallway and managed to attract attention before realising that there was a security console next to me. I hacked the security as Klara joined me and returned fire, before I shut down the turret and did something to the security lasers. Together, we finished them off, and I went between the flashing lasers before they resumed their full-time “on” position; cutting off Klara from me.

I went into the second door that I came across. Inside was one man, so I chucked in a spiderbot - but it didn’t attack. Crawling under the table, the man didn’t attack so I spoke to him, and it turned out to be the security chief. He knew who I was, having been informed when I arrived in Cairo, and bragged that he was fitted with better biomods than me. He suggested that I don’t go any further, but made no effort to go instead of me, so I checked out the room that I had passed a moment ago, before moving on.

Someone's overcompensating and it ain't me

Venturing forth, I came across an intersection with a laser grid on the left, and a ramp heading down in front of me. I used a multitool to hack the lasers, disabling them, and killed the two men at the end of the hallway. The hallway opened into an office rest area, I could tell by the multiple vending machines, and the fact that it overlooked some cubicles. There were two men patrolling, so I chucked down a couple of spiderbots, but that proved to be a waste of time, as I still had to shoot down at them from my vantage point. With the coast clear, I went back and down the ramp, through the cubicles to the door leading into the laboratory suite.

As I started down the hallway, The Order’s Lin-May Chen came through my comm, telling me that Leila was up ahead. I went around the corner and couldn’t see her, nor when I looked through a door at the four-legged robot patrolling the area. I hacked a security console and deactivated the cameras, but didn’t have enough upgrades to completely shut everything down. I spotted a second quadrupedal robot, so threw a spiderbot at it. The spiderbot immediately turned on me, so I quickly had to shoot it and the bigger robot before I could explore further.

My route took me behind and back up to the first robot that I had spotted, and once it was destroyed I grabbed a black market mod canister from a cabinet. After a bit of searching, I eventually found Leila, hidden behind protective glass and willing to chat to me.

Leila explained everything, and I hadn’t even been given the opportunity to murder her for The Order yet. She said that it was ironic that ApostleCorps’ biggest secret was aiding the Templars - Alex D. was a clone of JC Denton. More correctly the third Denton prototype, who had been taken out of Area 51 when she was five years old. Alex D. figured that JC had been at the facility, but Leila said probably not, though she had seen Templars taking a cryogenically frozen body away.

Who needs to communicate, anyway?

Going on, Leila explained that I should contact Tracer Tong in Trier, Germany, as he was the only one who could track down JC. It was then that Klara caught up, telling me that I had to interrogate Leila now, or Klara would kill me. I did as requested, and Leila told me that the ApostleCorp lab in Trier had a teleportation gate which would take me to JC Denton. Why she told me to find Tracer Tong moments ago, instead of exactly where to go, I had no idea.

With this new information, I headed back to the main area of the arcology. I was going to speak to the NG Resonance hologram again, but I was interrupted by the pilot that I had rescued from the WTO in Seattle, Ava Johnson. Leila had suggested that I pay someone to travel to Germany, but here was Ava saying that she’d do it for free - so I made my way to the medina, and up to the helipad. I was now looking for my genetic forebear - AKA daddy.