Deus Ex: Human Revolution storyline

This article details the storyline of Deus Ex: Human Revolution by chapter.

Chapter 1
Human Revolution begins in the office of Bob Page as he participates in a meeting with fellow members of the Illuminati, including Hugh Darrow, Zhao Yun Ru, William Taggart, and Elizabeth DuClare. Much of what they discuss foreshadows events that will occur later in the story. In a private conversation with an unknown person, Page talks about the research done by Megan Reed but claims that she is "out of our reach". However, the mystery person questions "is she?"

As part of her research for the biotechnology company Sarif Industries, Megan Reed discovered a way for humans to receive mechanical augmentations without suffering from the rejection syndrome known as Darrow Deficiency Syndrome. Her findings could revolutionize the augmentations industry as it would remove the need for the anti-rejection drug, Neuropozyne which, in turn, would allow augmentation technology to reach a much larger number of people as only one in every 25 people are augmented at the time. Reed and her team are scheduled to present their research to the National Science Board in Washington D.C. and so Reed spends the night before these hearings checking on her team. Meanwhile, Sarif Industries' Chief of Security, Adam Jensen, is finalizing security details for the team when he is requested to visit his boss, David Sarif, for one last briefing on his security plans.

On his way to the office, Jensen strikes up a terse conversation with his colleague Francis Pritchard, who is in charge of their cyber-security division. Pritchard informs him that Megan's team have implanted GPL devices so that they can be located if Jensen's security plans "don't measure up." During the briefing with his boss, an environmental malfunction occurs in a sub-section of the laboratories and Jensen is instructed to investigate the cause.

Once in the labs, it becomes clear that it is not a malfunction that has caused the disturbance, but rather a break- in by a paramilitary group known as the Tyrants. The Tyrants kill any scientists they come across and when Jensen finally locates Megan, he is intercepted by one of the Tyrants' members, Jaron Namir, who shoots Jensen in the head. The Tyrants then set the Sarif labs on fire. Due to the fact that the remains of the scientists have been burned so badly, it is not possible to verify their identity and thus it is presumed that they have all died in the attack.

However, the bullet didn't immediately kill Jensen and, to save his life, he is augmented extensively. These augmentations are funded by his boss, who did not need to consult Jensen about the the augmentations due to an agreement in his employment contract.

Chapter 2
Following a short recovery period of only six months, Adam Jensen is requested to return to work by his boss. He is informed that yet another attack on Sarif Industries has taken place, this time a break-in of the Sarif Manufacturing Plant at Milwaukee Junction. Before leaving, Jensen must first have his Retinal Prosthesis repaired by Francis Pritchard.

Jensen and Sarif are transported via VTOL to the manufacturing plant by Faridah Malik, one of the company's VTOL pilots. During the journey, Sarif debriefs Jensen on what to expect. The manufacturing plant has been stormed by a group of anti-augmentation extremists known as Purity First. Sarif informs Jensen that a secret military augmentation has just been scheduled for production at the manufacturing plant, known as the Typhoon Explosive System. He says that it is crucial to secure the plans for it before the extremists do. A secondary objective is for Jensen to rescue a number of Sarif employees who are being held hostage at the plant, but the priority is the Typhoon.

Chapter 3
Once Jensen has arrived at the plant, he is contacted by Pritchard via Infolink on the possible routes into the building. A SWAT team are already on standby in the facility, waiting impatiently for the go-ahead from Sarif to enter the main building. However, Sarif won't allow them in until Jensen can secure the Typhoon prototype first, earning Jensen a lot of backlash from SWAT members.

The building is heavily guarded by Purity First members, who are also searching for anything incriminating on Sarif Industries' activities. In the labs, a number of Sarif employees are being held hostage in a room with an explosive device. Jensen can choose to rescue these hostages or not, but either way he proceeds to locate the Typhoon. However, he is surprised to find an augmented Purity First member called Yune trying to steal the Typhoon blueprints. Upon being found, the hacker shoots himself in the head while pleading for help, as if doing this against his will.

In order to get an explanation for this augmented hacker, Jensen confronts Zeke Sanders, the Purity First leader responsible for the attack. Sanders denies any knowledge about the augmented hacker, leading Jensen to believe that Purity First is being manipulated by a third party.

Chapter 4
With the Typhoon in his possession, Adam returns to the Sarif Industries Headquarters in Detroit. He brings the Typhoon to Pritchard for him to examine. However, the Chief of Cyber-Security says he is too busy to inspect the prototype right away as he is running a diagnostic sweep on Sarif's network and router security to find out how Purity First managed to breach it.

Following a visit to Sarif's office, Adam learns that the corpse of Yune, the augmented hacker, is being held at the Detroit Police Station. However, police are denying that he was augmented and are refusing Sarif permission to view the body. Sarif suspects that this is an intentional cover-up, and that securing Yune's neural hub will give them information on the people who attacked the company. He sends Jensen to the police station morgue to steal the augmentation.

Chapter 5
Jensen makes his way into the Detroit Police Department morgue and talks to the coroner who was performing the autopsy on Yune. The coroner mistakes Jensen for the person sent by Homeland Security to retrieve the neural hub, and informs Jensen that the hub has been modified with some sort of wet drive, but that it is possible it was damaged when Yune shot himself. He assures Jensen that he did not have a look at the contents of the neural hub, since Homeland Security issued an "ultraviolet" security classification on the case. Evidence found in the police station reveals that both the manufacturing plant incident and the Sarif Industries HQ attack had crucial pieces of evidence covered up by the government official, Joseph Manderley.

Jensen is instructed by Sarif to take the neural hub to Jensen's own apartment as the Sarif Industries network has not yet been secured so connecting an unknown piece of hardware to the network would be risky. Once Jensen brings it to his apartment in the Chiron Building, Pritchard examines it and discovers that the augmentation effectively turned Yune into a human proxy, meaning another person remotely hacked through Yune rather than Yune doing it himself. The person who actually performed the hacking hid their tracks well using multiple satellite signals, but Pritchard manages to trace the source to an abandoned factory complex in Highland Park.

Shortly afterwards, Pritchard also figures out what was compromising Sarif's network. A signal being transmitted from Derelict Row in Detroit is keeping a back door open to the corporations network. Before investigating Highland Park, Jensen is sent to disable it.

Chapter 6
Faridah Malik brings Adam to the abandoned warehouses in Highland Park, only to discover that they are not abandoned at all. The facility is occupied by black-ops mercenaries, just like the ones that attacked Sarif HQ six months previously. Jensen spots a number of mercenaries that he recognizes from the attack, namely the Tyrants Jaron Namir, Yelena Fedorova, and Lawrence Barrett. He follows them deeper into the facility and discovers that it is a secret internment camp run by FEMA.

Not only was this facility used as a base of operations for the hacker controlling Yune, but it was also used six months previously by the Tyrants when they attacked Sarif HQ.

Jensen intercepts the Tyrants right before they leave the facility, but he is caught off guard by Lawrence Barrett and has to fight him, allow the other two Tyrant members to escape in the meantime. Jensen emerges from the fight victorious and with an address in Hengsha, China for the hacker who worked through Yune. Before he dies, Barrett implies that Sarif Industries has "worse enemies than FEMA" despite the fact that it was their facility the Tyrants worked from.

Chapter 7
Jensen visits Sarif HQ before going to China. Here, Pritchard tells him about a backdoor access into Sarif's security system that was set up almost a year before and is how the terrorists accessed the network. Pritchard claims that it was Sarif that set up this backdoor access and was streaming a lot of information through it shortly before he hired Jensen. Jensen questions Sarif on why he set up this private access route to bypass the firewall. Sarif may choose to divulge the reason why, depending on how persuasive Jensen is. It turns out that before he was hired, Sarif hired a private investigator to look into Jensen's past. The investigator uncovered Jensen's history as a baby test subject at White Helix Labs (a subsidiary of VersaLife) where the scientests were experimenting with gene modification.

Chapter 8
Malik flies Jensen to Hengsha, China where he investigates Hengsha Court Gardens, the address given by Barrett. When he arrives, Jensen discovers that the apartment complex is under lockdown by Belltower Associates. He finds the ransacked apartment of Arie van Bruggen inside, who was the hacker that worked through Yune during the second attack on Sarif. However, van Bruggen was warned beforehand so he went into hiding from the people who hired him (and now want to kill him). Jensen is able to look around the penthouse to learn that he might learn of van Bruggen's whereabouts in a local nightclub called The Hive.

Once at The Hive, Jensen speaks with the club owner Tong Si Hung. Tong reveals that van Bruggen is hiding out in the Alice Garden Pods. When the hacker speaks with Jensen, he admits to his involvement with the attack on Sarif Industries and that he was employed by Zhao Yun Ru, the CEO of Tai Yong Medical, to do the job. She has since sent Belltower guards after him because he failed to extract the entire Typhoon plans from Sarif's servers. Van Bruggen claims that agreeing to that hacking job was the worst mistake he ever made, and agrees to help Jensen. As insurance in case anything went wrong, van Bruggen had stored security footage that could be used against Zhao on one of TYM's servers but, before he could move it, everything went south. He tasks Jensen with finding it, and encodes a TYM employee card with his biometrics so Jensen can gain access to the corporation's headquarters. Just after this conversation, the Alice Garden Pods are stormed by Belltower troops and Jensen must escape.

Chapter 9
Jensen gains access to the lower portion of Tai Yong Medical using the card provided by van Bruggen. The server he is looking for is in the upper half of the building, so he makes his way up through the Pangu, a platform that separates the lower and upper halves of Hengsha. Upon locating the server, Jensen watches the security footage that the hacker talked about and learns revealing information: the attack on Sarif HQ six months before was actually an elaborate setup to kidnap Megan and her team. The recording also mentions that the scientists GPL devices have been disabled, and hints that an "Eliza" is involved.

He immediately sets out to locate TYM's CEO, Zhao Yun Ru, to demand answers about her involvement with the abductions. When questioned in her penthouse, Zhao claims that she was just a pawn in the situation and that there were other more powerful people that had forced her into doing it. She manipulates Jensen into letting his guard down and uses this moment to escape into her panic room. This sets off the alarms and the penthouse is soon overrun with Belltower troops. Jensen is able to escape to the helipad where he is airlifted out by Malik.

Chapter 10
Jensen interprets the mention of "Eliza" on the security footage as meaning Eliza Cassan, a world famous news anchor for Picus TV. To confront her, he asks Malik to bring him to their Montreal headquarters, Picus Communications. When he arrives, the building is unusually empty. Picus is a twenty four hour media agency so should have employees in the building around the clock. The fire doors have also all been shut. This is because those in charge of the company were alerted beforehand to Jensen's visit, and had the building evacuated before he arrived. Despite its emptiness, Eliza is still in her office and has a brief conversation with Jensen. She tells Adam that she has been watching him ever since being ordered to disrupt satellites over Detroit six months before. This was to disable the Sarif scientists GPL trackers, thus making them appear dead. Adam wants more answers from her and tries to bring her with him. However, when he grabs her hand he realizes that the Eliza he is speaking to is just a hologram.

Adam has walked right into a trap as a team of black-ops mercenaries enter the building right after this conversation. The spike in activity associated with Eliza's hologram originates in an undocumented sub-basement of the building. He makes his way through the Picus Web and Picus TV offices to a funicular that leads to the sub-basement. This part of the building is off limits to regular Picus workers. It is where the company's more clandestine activities take place, such as intentionally fabricating news stories and taking down political figures with smear campaigns. Eventually Jensen reaches the room were the spike in activity originated. Here he discovers Eliza Cassan's true form: a sophisticated artificial intelligence system. She explains that her role is to monitor data streams to see what people are talking about, and to ensure it is being discussed the "correct" way. If it is not, her programming allows her to spin the news so that it is. She is unable to tell Adam who created her, but suspects that Zhao is one of them. One of the Tyrants is preventing her from giving too much information about the Illuminati and their role in the Sarif kidnappings. Once Jensen has defeated the Tyrant Yelena Fedorova, Eliza is free to explain the involvement of Isaias Sandoval in disabling the scientists GPL implants. She shoes him being given orders by Jaron Namir to perform the operation. Eliza also hints that David Sarif knows more about the motivation behind the kidnappings than he lets on.

Chapter 11
Back in Detroit, riots have broken out by people protesting human enhancement technology. The streets are unsafe and are patrolled heavily by police. As a result, it is not safe for Jensen to return to Sarif HQ, and instead meets his boss in his own apartment. When confronted, Sarif admits that he suspected why Megan and her team were kidnapped, but was not sure if the elusive "Illuminati" were actually involved. Sarif states that the secret society The anti-augmentation activist William Taggart is currently in Detroit, and is presenting a conference about the dangers of the technology. Sarif asks Jensen to visit the Detroit Convention Center to try to uncover if Taggart had anything to do with the kidnappings.

Chapter 12
In the Detroit Convention Center, Jensen can choose to confront William Taggart, and demand to know the location of his aid Isaias Sandoval. Otherwise, evidence of his location can be found on Taggart's computer. Using this information, Jensen tracks Sandoval to a make-shift office in the Detroit sewers. After Taggart puts the blame for the abductions and riots on Sandoval, he gives up hope and decides the best course of action is to commit suicide. He knows that he will be put in jail for his involvement with the Sarif scientists kidnappings. Rather than be used any more, he states that he would rather be judged by God in death. Jensen can talk him out of suicide but during the conversation, he learns that Sandoval failed to fully disable the scientists GPL devices. Instead he changed the frequency they were transmitting at to something too low for people to check, so the signal from them went unnoticed. Pritchard uses this information to search for the GPL signals.

Jensen returns to Sarif HQ to tell his boss about what he has found out. However, he is instead greeted by the billionaire Hugh Darrow, the creator of mechanical augmentations. Darrow talks about how far the technology has developed since he created it, and David Sarif's request for him to encourage the UN not to regulate it. He also mentions his geo-engineering project Panchaea, built to curb global warming. Sarif interrupts to inform Jensen that one of the GPL signals has been found, that of Vasili Sevchenko. The signal has been traced to Hengsha, China. Sarif warns that the Illuminati will know that Jensen is arriving since a favor had to be called in from the Department of Defense.