Mission 8:
Return to Hengsha
As Malik's VTOL enters Hengsha airspace, she tells Adam that they've been rerouted from their original landing zone by the government. Adam doesn't like the change, but Malik tells him there's nothing she can do.
A man with a rocket launcher suddenly appears on top of a building and fires a missile at the VTOL. The missile blast causes an EMP pulse that disables the helicopter's systems. She orders him to jump out, and he does so just before she crashes. Down below, he sees Belltower troops entering the area and warns Malik to fly away. She tells him that her systems are damaged and will require time to get back online. He offers to cover her, and she tells him to make a run for it.
Instead, he chooses to take out every enemy in the vicinity, including a heavy sentry bot]]. Malik manages to get the systems back online and thanks Jensen before leaving. He heads to a nearby elevator and exits into the city.
Adam suffers from another bout of glitching, and Pritchard contacts him to inform that the World Health Organization is advising all augmented people to get a new biochip, and that he should consider upgrading. Adam pledges to keep it in mind, but decides not to get it.
He continues to explore Hengsha and eventually tracks Sevchenko's GPL to a Harvester base. He finds Tong there, who is wearing Sevchenko's augmented arm. Tong chastises him before revealing that Belltower gave the Harvesters Sevchenko's corpse a few weeks back and he recently had the arm installed. He then tells Adam that he wants to help, but Belltower has captured his son and is using him for leverage to keep the Harvesters in line. Tong begs Adam to free him then come back for more information.
Adam breaks into an old noodle factory and discovers Tong's son. The boy quickly figures out his father sent Adam and refuses to leave because he doesn't think he'll be able to get past the troops. Adam hands him a device given to him beforehand by the Harvester who told him where to find Tong's son; it's a handheld version of a cloaking implant, and the young man promptly puts it to use.
Jensen heads back to the Harvester base, and Tong thanks him for his help. He gives Adam a tip that Belltower often brings in freighters from an unknown location to the docks at Hengsha, and says that one is heading out later that night. He suggests that Adam stow away aboard the ship, with the help of a package Tong has hidden in the dockyard which will help Jensen bypass the heavy security.
Adam heads to the Belltower-controlled docks and finds the package, which is revealed to be a bomb. Per Tong's instructions, Jensen plants the bomb on the administrator's desk; unfortunately, the timer is pre-set for ten seconds, and Jensen barely manages to escape going up with the administration building. Immediately afterward, Tong's son gets on a boat called "The Tracer", and motors away unnoticed in the general chaos.
Pritchard calls to ask what's happening. Adam sneaks into a cargo container with a stasis pod inside, then tells him that he'll be going off the grid for a while as a commander nearby orders all the containers loaded onto the boat. Adam tells Pritchard that he has no idea where he's going...
Tropes:
- Affectionate Nickname: Malik begins calling Adam "Spy Boy" before they land at Hengsha. If you manage to save her, Adam returns the favor by calling her "Flygirl" as she departs.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: If the player chooses to break into the Harvester base and assault Tong's soldiers in the process.Tong: You disappoint me, Jensen. I thought we were friends. But then my hacker goes missing, you break into my place of business, half my men end up dead, and you don't even have the manners to knock when you enter a room.
- As the Good Book Says...: Zelazny quotes passages from the Bible, as part of his reformation after leaving Belltower.
- Big Damn Heroes: The player can choose to do this by rescuing Malik after the helicopter is shot down.
- Butt-Monkey: Kahn can become this, depending on whether the player beat him up during all his previous appearances. He can either be left unconscious again or simply killed off.
- Call-Forward:
- Adam tells Tong's son during their first meeting, "The more power you think you have, the more easily it slips through your fingers." Tong promises to remember that phrase, and (chronologically later) references it during his first conversation with JC Denton in Hong Kong.
- Tong's son escapes on a boat called "The Tracer", in a blink-and-you-miss-it shot.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Narhari Kahn (if he wasn't killed previously) is the one who kills Malik if the player doesn't intervene.
- Defiant to the End: Malik tells Kahn (or the heavy Belltower commando, if he was killed) to "go to hell" before being executed, if the player doesn't save her.
- Dirty Coward: The game goes out of its way to make the player feel terrible about choosing to abandon Malik.
- Enemy Mine: Jensen and Tong continue to collaborate against Belltower, each for reasons of his own.
- Evil Laugh: Kahn, if he wasn't killed beforehand and murders Malik.
- Foreshadowing: If the CASIE is used, Mengyao can be convinced to reveal that the data chip she was bargaining for concerns part of Panchaea called "the Hyron Project", which she says is 'similar to a computer'. Afterwards, Darrow says that Adam might even be able to visit Panchaea one day...
- Hellish Copter: Suggested, but ultimately averted. It takes an EMP rocket to bring down Malik's tiltjet, which is otherwise every bit as reliable as anyone could ask an aircraft to be. Even after the resulting dead-stick landing, Malik only needs a few minutes to get her ship back in the sky.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Malik pulls one by telling Adam to make a run for it while she draws enemy fire. Of course, this can be subverted if the player decides to take out all the enemies and save her instead.
- I Have Your Son: Belltower is holding Tong's son hostage, which leads him to enlist Adam's help under the guise of getting him to the cryopod onboard the freighter. Subverted in the bonus mission, when you find out that the son surrendered himself to Belltower's custody because he didn't agree with his father's involvement with augmentations and wanted to force his hand so he could be rescued and sent away from Hengsha.
- Interface Screw: Adam continues to suffer from glitches in his programming, prompting the LIMB Clinic in Hengsha to offer a new biochip that will fix the issue.
- Meaningful Echo: If Malik is saved.Malik: Get on with the damn mission, Spy Boy.Adam: Any time, Flygirl.
- Mugging the Monster: One of the civlians in Lower Hengsha attempts to blackmail Adam by insinuating that he will yell out for Belltower if Adam doesn't bribe him. Instead of doing so, Jensen has the option of pointing out that it'd be quite easy for him to permanently silence his would-be blackmailer, who on hearing this wisely backs down.
- Mythology Gag: Tracer Tong can be heard whistling the theme from the original game if the player sneaks up to his cell during the rescue mission at the noodle factory.
- Oh, Crap!: Adam, once he realizes that the bomb Tong gave him only has a 10-second timer.
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Pre-Order Bonus: The "Tong's Rescue" mission (initially a bonus for pre-ordering/buying the "Explosive Mission" pack, and later included proper in the Director's Cut). -
Player Punch: Malik's body being worked on in the Harvester base, if she was left behind and killed by Belltower. It's the second likeliest cause of a suddenly abandoned pacifist run. For the likeliest cause, see below. - Say My Name: Adam yells out Faridah's name if she's killed.
- Schmuck Bait: The new biochip. Considering that it's the exact thing the conspiracy members were talking about in the prologue cutscene...
- Shout-Out: Zelazny mentions that his project director quoted Apocalypse Now to him when confronted over the morality of the super soldier program.
- Spotting the Thread: Lazarus, the Alex Jones expy who can be heard on radios throughout the game, finds it incredible that biochips should just happen to fail simultaneously all over the world, and questions who's paying for the free replacements being given out at LIMB clinics.
- Super-Soldier: Zelazny, who was augmented with special devices by Belltower, and whom a doctor at the LIMB Clinic asks Adam to take down.
- Super Window Jump: Zig-zagged in Adam's escape from the administrator's office. The window is too tough to jump through directly, so Jensen hits it with a chair to weaken it, then times his jump so the bomb's blast wave pushes him through it.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Neither Darrow nor Tong seems to have any trouble getting the confidential frequency for Adam's infolink. Lampshaded in the case of the latter.Adam: Tong? How did you get this frequency?Tong: Ancient Chinese secret.
- That One Level: For pacifist players, rescuing Malik from Belltower. Better hope you've got plenty of candy bars and stun gun charges, because non-lethal takedowns and stun shots are the only chance you've got of being able to deal with all the attackers before they kill Malik; they're too widely dispersed for gas grenades to be much use, and the tranq rifle is far too slow to do any good. Oh, and if you don't have a couple of EMP grenades on hand to deal with the Boxguards that get dropped in halfway through, you're going to wish you did; if you dropped the heavies first like you should've done, you might be able to scoop up a heavy rifle and enough ammo to wreck the bots in time, but you'll have to be very lucky, as well as very good, in order to manage it.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Pacifist players ill-equipped to save Malik without killing anyone will often choose to break pacifist conduct rather than letting her die. Considering that the encounter comes late in the game, and killing the attackers necessitates an entire additional playthrough to obtain the achievement, it's an impressive demonstration of the trope.
- You Bastard!: Adam says this verbatim if Malik is killed.
