So when I left off, Sarif had just called to let me know they'd found the hacker who was mind-controlling dudes and sent a shuttle to pick me up on Derelict Row. Sure thing, boss. Okay, from the clinic that's... where's my map... mmh, hmm... THAT WAY! I'M GOING TO BEAT YOU, CITY! YOU WON'T MAKE A FOOL OF THIS SQRLIAN INVADER! I can do that on my own!
I make my way back to the roof of the proper building. This takes like half an hour, because I get lost as hell. Even with a map marker, it's really hard for me to find things on purpose left to my own devices. This is why I take such a casual, roam-around attitude towards things. If I stumble upon something interesting, I will probably break or ruin it at my leisure. Still, I get there eventually!
Malik shows up in her VTOL. I bet SHE never gets lost. She vectors her thrust nozzles around and we head off to... another part of Detroit, yaaaay.
"Look for anything UNUSUAL around this factory." Oh, cool. I got this. Unusual things are magnetically drawn to me. You can count on me. The local gangsters sell me a bunch of shotgun shells and fill me in on "suspicious". Like, snipers on the roof and things like that. Excellent knowledge from the underground.
I look for an alternate entrance to the nearby building, but there isn't one, because CUTSCENE MODE TIME. Jensen spies on some really thickly accented (russian and southern) thugs who he (but not I) recognize as the ones who killed Megan. DUN DUN DUN. Apparently Manderly is not content with being the focus of Deus Ex's plot, he wants to come be the focus of this game's plot too. GEEZ, MAN. Don't get greedy. Anyway he is the one giving all the orders from up high, and there can be "no loose ends" and stuff. Jensen elects to go in.
I go creeping through the faciity, and am remarkably stealthy by which I mean I only punch a bunch of guys in the face and shotgun one other on the way to the elevator. Down, down, down, past a bunch of robots and mercs. "I think this is a FEMA internment camp." Jensen reports. "FEEEEEEEMAH?!" Sarif disbelieves. "IM-PAUHHHSABLE. HAAAAALF our contraaaacts are government ISSSUUUUE." Holy shit, Dave. You want sone prozac? He orders Jensen to keep hanging around in the secret government military camp and find out who's giving the orders. I eat a candy bar and reload the shotgun.
When the elevator stops, it's in front of two guys having an argument in front of a giant Tachikoma-style robot. I elect to maybe go AROUND those dudes instead of facerushing them. Happily, I can duck into an air vent in the floor and GTFO. Also, some of the mercenaries aren't FEMA? Or something, it is hard to tell. Work through to another elevator... yes, Prichard, I can see my target is below me, I have a HUD. THrough a hall lined with... radioactive boxes? To the ceiling? Great.
On the way in, it goes into cutscene mode so an enormous dude called Barrett can deck Adam while he's walking down the middle of a hallway. Wow, what the hell. Anyway, it's boss fight time! I unload the shotgun into his face and Typhoon him at near-point blank. Boss fight time is OVER. Man, I bet that would've been a real problem if I wasn't playing on "screw combat, tell me stories" mode. The enormous man with a gun arm called Barrett (this sounds familiar!) tells Adam to go to Shanghai. SOUNDS LIKE OUR NEXT CLUE! Malik, airlift me the hell outta here.
Once at Sarif's home base, Adam suddenly sprouts armor plating out of every orifice. Pritchard calls to try to get into the pecking order before David, so I sigh and go see what he has to say. There's a guy in his office named Taggert who is a big anti-augmentation dingus and who happens to look and kinda sound EXACTLY LIKE the guy they got to play Senator Kelly in the X-Men movie. I hit "punch in face" frantically, but it doesn't work. Damn.
Sarif, unsurprisingly, is sending Adam to China. Adam is worked up about this, but Sarif claims that it's super-important. Their work has to do with "redefining what it means to be human" and he really needs Adam to go check out all possible threats. So... yeah, sure! I am a good corporate monkey and truck back downstairs to see what Pritchard wanted. He's still hung up on that "we have a backdoor into our systems that I have never seen before and which apparently the company president put there" business. Hmmmm. I could investigate that... Orrr I could be a huge jerk to Pritchard and just stroll out the door to China.
In the end, my drive to get experience and story tidbits just barely wins out over my desire to be a huge ass. I tromp back up to talk to Sarif. This suddenly pops the conversation into first-person view and starts putting up HUD meters and personality/psychological profiles and all kinds of things. Adam and Sarif argue for a while over this leak, and finally as Adam threatens to quit ("I am your head of security. You have a HUGE SECURITY HOLE you deliberately did not tell me about. I will walk over this.") Sarif hurriedly nononononos him and reveals that he set up that link so a private investigator could check out anyone in the company. Particularly Adam, who is ex-SWAT and who he was nervous about hiring.
Sarif sends the files down to Adam's computers. I feel kinda bad about pulling that on him, but he needs to know that Adam "The" Incredible Robocop Hulk-Banner "JC" Jenson-Jensen can and will take all his very expensive cyberware and go work for someone else if Sarif doesn't fly straight.
Adam sprouts two more carrying capacity rows in his inventory, eats a candy bar, and heads downstairs to tell Pritchard all about it. Sadly, he's nowhere to be seen, so I steal everything out of his office and read the files about Jensen. Neither of his parents are his birth parents, and the excuse to throw him off the SWAT team was probably made up on the spot. Intriguing. WELP, OFF TO CHINA. Oh. Pritchard ambushes Jensen outside his office. Jensen tells him nothing, so he decides to backtrace the signal.
"Let me know if you find anything."
"You mean... WHEN I find something."
"Pretty sure I didn't."
Oh, ADAM, you wacky funster.
Off to Shanghai, which is an enormous two-layered city. "I'm supposed to find answers in THAT?!" Adam asks, and I'm right there with him. Malik advises I walk the rest of the way from the drop, find who lives at the address I was given, and get out. I know it's not gonna be that easy.
In part because I have no idea where I'm going.
NEXT TIME: Getting Incurably Lost in Shanghai.
This entry was originally posted at http://xyzzysqrl.dreamwidth.org/327141.h