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. This, 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. To make matters worse, a number of Sarif employees are being held hostage further inside the plant with an explosive device. Jensen eventually makes his way to where the Typhoon is stored only to find a surprise: an augmented Purity First member named Yune, who is 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 and 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 therefore sends Jensen to the police station's morgue to steal the augmentation.

Chapter 5
Jensen makes his way into the Detroit Police Department's morgue and talks to the coroner, who was performing the autopsy on Yune. The coroner, mistaking Jensen as the person sent by Homeland Security, informs him 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 was remotely hacking 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 after this, 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 corporation's network. Before investigating Highland Park, Jensen is sent to disable it.

Chapter 6
Faridah Malik brings Jensen 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 Industries 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 Industries HQ.

Jensen intercepts the Tyrants right before they leave the facility, but he is caught off guard by Barrett and has to fight him, allow the other two Tyrant members to escape. Jensen emerges from the fight victorious and tries to further question Barrett, who implies that Sarif Industries has "worse enemies than FEMA" despite the fact that it was their facility the Tyrants worked from. He then reveals a penthouse address in Hengsha, China before trying, unsuccessfully, to kill Jensen, resulting in only Barrett dying.

Chapter 7
Jensen heads back to Sarif Industries HQ with the Hengsha address when Pritchard informs him how the terrorists accessed the network: there was an unknown backdoor access into Sarif's security system set up almost a year before. Pritchard claims that it was Sarif that set up this backdoor 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 and his boss reveals that, before Jensen 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 scientists were experimenting with gene modification. He will then give Jensen a passport coded with his biometrics to travel to China and check out the address Barrett gave him.

Chapter 8
Malik flies Jensen to Hengsha, China where he investigates Hengsha Court Gardens. When he arrives, Jensen discovers that the apartment complex is under lockdown by Belltower Associates and they've ransacked the penthouse, which belonged to an Arie van Bruggen, the hacker that worked through Yune during the second attack on Sarif. However, van Bruggen was warned beforehand and has gone into hiding from the people who hired, and now want to kill, him. Jensen is able to look around the penthouse and learns that he might find out more on van Bruggen's whereabouts in a local nightclub called The Hive.

Once at The Hive, Jensen learns through the club owner, Tong Si Hung, that van Bruggen is hiding out in the Alice Garden Pods. There, Jensen finds van Bruggen, who 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 and is a loose end in Zhao's plans. 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 proceeds to escape from the complex.

Chapter 9
Jensen, using the card provided by van Bruggen, takes TYM's shuttle car to the lower portion of TYM's building. 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 Industries 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 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. Unable to go after Zhao, Jensen escapes 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 take him to Picus Communications, their Montreal headquarters. When he arrives though, the building is unusually empty for a 24 hour media agency that should have employees around the clock. Also, all the fire doors have been shut, which leads Pritchard to deduce that they knew Jensen was coming and had the building evacuated as a result. Despite its emptiness, Eliza is still in her office and has a brief conversation with Jensen. She tells him that she has been watching him ever since she was ordered to disrupt satellites over Detroit six months before, resulting in everyone thinking the Sarif scientists were dead as no signal was popping up from their GPL implants. Jensen, wanting more answers from her, tries to bring her with him. However, when he goes to grab her hand he realizes that the Eliza he is speaking to is just a hologram and she vanishes.

Jensen finds out that he has walked right into a trap and black-ops mercenaries had entered the building during the conversation. At the same time, Pritchard informs him that he noticed a spike in activity from Eliza's hologram had originated from an undocumented sub-basement of the building. With this information, Jensen makes his way through the Picus Web and Picus TV offices to a funicular that leads to the sub-basement. Here, 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 occurred and 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. However, 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 able to show a small clip where Jaron Namir is tasking Isaias Sandoval in disabling the Sarif scientists' GPL implants. Eliza also hints that David Sarif knows more about the motivation behind the kidnappings than he lets on. Malik then picks up Jensen to head back to Detroit.

Chapter 11
Back in Detroit, riots have broken out over people protesting human enhancement technology. The streets are unsafe and are patrolled heavily by police, with the core of the rioting surrounding Sarif Industries HQ. As a result, it is not safe for Jensen to return there, and instead he meets his boss in his own apartment. When confronted, Sarif admits that he suspected he knew who had kidnapped Megan and her team, but was not sure if the elusive "Illuminati" were actually involved. On learning that William Taggart, an anti-augmentation activist, is currently in Detroit giving a conference, Jensen will point out that his aide, Sandoval, is involved somehow in the kidnappings. Sarif then tasks Jensen to visit the Detroit Convention Center to try to uncover Sandoval's location, warning him to tread carefully around Taggart as it is uncertain if he was involved in the kidnappings as well.

Chapter 12
In the Detroit Convention Center, Jensen learns that Sandoval tends to stay at a local apartment building when in town. Making his way there, Jensen tracks Sandoval to a make-shift office in the Detroit sewers. After seeing Taggart on TV placing the blame for the abductions and riots on Sandoval, the doctor gives up hope and decides the best course of action is to commit suicide, knowing that he will be put in jail for his involvement with the Sarif scientists' kidnappings. Jensen learns from Sandoval that he failed to fully remove the scientists' GPL devices, so he instead changed the frequency they were transmitting to something so low nobody would think to scan for them. Pritchard uses this new information to start searching for the GPL signals.

Jensen returns to Sarif Industries 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 augmentation. Darrow talks about how far the technology has developed since he created it, and that Sarif was hoping he'd encourage the United Nations to not regulate it. He also mentions his geo-engineering project Panchaea, built to curb global warming. Sarif interrupts to inform Jensen that the GPL signal of Vasili Sevchenko has been traced to Hengsha. However, as Sarif had to call in a favor from the Department of Defense to find it, he warns Jensen that the Illuminati will know he's coming.