Yelena Fedorova

Yelena Fedorova (Cyrillic: Елена Фёдорова) is an antagonist in the book Deus Ex: Icarus Effect and the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. She is a senior member of the Tyrants.

Background
With an athletic build and statuesque, augmented height of 6'7", twenty-eight year-old Yelena Fedorova is a trained assassin, part of an elite team of special operations mercenaries working for Belltower Associates, a private military corporation. A Russian woman of African descent with a cut of shoulder-length, spiky black hair, she's rarely seen out of her combat gear; her only affectations are a silver cross on a black steel chain around her neck, a family heirloom of great personal value, and sometimes a nose ring, as seen to the right. She has progressive mechanical augmentations; her legs have been extended with ungiligrade prosthetics that enable her to move quietly and quickly. These augmentations also give her at least a two foot height boost, giving her an intimidating figure.

According to Eliza Cassan, Federova witnessed the murder of her entire family as a child and suffers from consequential mental health issues. Yelena is a ruthless and resourceful combatant, never choosing frontal assault when another approach will more easily destroy her enemies with less effort. When she moves, she does so with unexpected agility, speed, and grace - a sleepy-eyed cobra uncoiling rapidly as it strikes. Yelena has become adept at vigilance and is cautious of everything around her; she's not easy to sneak up on, and usually has a plan for every eventuality. Yelena had a one-night stand with Ben Saxon.

Sometime before 2027, she is sent to kill Secret Service agent Anna Kelso, who knows too much about her superior's mysterious work and is considering joining the Juggernaut Collective. Later, she is involved in a confrontation between Anna, Ben Saxon and the two other surviving Tyrant operatives. She is shot with an adhesive non-lethal shotgun round, but she is otherwise unharmed.

In 2027, Fedorova is part of the black ops team that attacks Sarif Industries research labs, where she kills many security guards and scientists. She prefers hit-and-run tactics: in one instance, she blitzed several guards with dual Hurricane SMGs before cloaking and retreating to a better position afterwards.

Later, she and Lawrence Barrett returned from a failed mission to retrieve a Neural Hub from a dead augmented Purity First member, meeting up with Jaron Namir in Highland Park factory complex. Just as they were about to leave, Adam Jensen made his way to the lower levels, where he fought and killed Barrett while Namir and Fedorova escaped. When Jensen traveled to Montreal to confront Eliza Cassan, Federova was waiting for him in the facility that housed Eliza's AI. There, she ambushed him, but was defeated and seriously wounded and eventually succumbed to her wounds.

Tactics
See Fedorova Tactics in Confronting Eliza Cassan for tactical suggestions on how to defeat Fedorova.

Behind the scenes

 * Fedorova is typically a surname, quite popular, meaning, literally, "of the line of Fedor". Fedor is a Russian equivalent of the male name Theodore (Greek - gift of God), while Yelena is a common female name, English equivalent of which is Helen.
 * In Deus Ex: Icarus Effect Fedorova never speaks, implying that she is a mute. On page 270, a passage - "sometimes it seemed as if Jaron Namir had never known Fedorova to speak at all." suggests that she did speak at some point in the past.
 * In the novel, her last name is written as Federova, with an e, while in the game it's Fedorova, with an o. This minor discrepancy has not been explained as of yet. The proper transliteration of the Russian surname is "Fyodorova".