Mission 2:
Morning Comes Too Soon
In a nondescript boardroom, members of the Illuminati, including Bob Page, Morgan Everett, Lucius Debeers, Stanton Dowd and Elizabeth DuClare meet to discuss current matters.
Everett informs the group that their plan to seize the weapons during the meet was a disaster, and all of the assets are dead. Another member of the group, Volkard Rand, express optimism and says that they can use the attack to their advantage because Interpol will be confused for weeks, and asks everyone else to have patience. Debeers reminds everyone that things are getting worse by the day, and they need to act quickly to take care of the offending elements. Rand offers to go to New York and personally ensure that the "Human Restoration Act" is passed by the United Nations. Debeers authorizes it, and tells Dowd to go with him before the latter two men and Duclare hang up, revealing that they were holograms.
After this, Everett tells Debeers that Rand's plan won't succeed because the government is too weak and ineffectual, and casts doubt on Nathaniel Brown's unmentioned plan. Debeers reassures him that they have an alternate strategy, and authorizes Page to put his own plan into motion. While Everett expresses skepticism that Page's plan is secure because of the machinations of Janus and the Juggernaut Collective, Debeers tells them that he will take care of Janus. He orders Page to activate his sleeper cell before all of the participants deactivate their holograms...
One week later, Adam wakes up with a start onboard a train pulling into Ruzicka Station in the city of Prague, Czech Republic. He radios Miller and tells him he's just getting off the train and will be at the office soon.
As Adam walks through the station, he notes several augments being harassed by heavily-armed police officers, along with floating cameras that are scanning people. Adam stops to help a woman who dropped some papers, but it is revealed that this is actually an undercover contact, Alejandra "Alex" Vega. She expresses happiness that he's alright after what happened in Dubai, but expresses surprise that Task Force 29 was sent to Dubai in the first place. When Adam says that Miller told him they were the only team available at short notice, Alex says that it was a lie.
The pair walk through the station and show their identification at two checkpoints. Alex proceeds to tell him that the Juggernaut Collective has been keeping their eye on all of Interpol's Task Force teams, and suggests that it may be an Illuminati front, but doesn't understand why they would send their own unit into an ambush. Adam muses that the Illuminati may be steering the team towards seeing what they want to see.
After telling her that he won't be surprised if there's another extremist attack, and seems unwilling to fight against it, claiming that it didn't work too well the last time he tried to stop one. Alex expresses indignation and says that they can't just give up and let hatred and prejudice take over. He tells her that his only goal is to find The Man Behind the Man and see justice brought to them.
As they walk through the mezzanine, Alex begins to wonder aloud about who gave TF29 the order to mobilze, and wonders if someone is using a system called the "Neural Subnet" to plan their operations. She hands him a wiretap device and says that Janus has built it to fit into a motherboard at the Task Force headquarters. Before she can continue further, their conversation is cut short when an explosion rips through the terminal, knocking both of them to the ground. They get up a few moments later and realize that someone bombed the terminal.
Adam tells her to get clear, while he goes to help a young boy who is screaming for help. When he goes to the boy's location, he discovers that his mother is inside a pile of debris. Despite his efforts, he's unable to dig her out before she dies while holding his hand. He stands back up and looks around in shock, while the boy continues to plead for her to wake up...
A day later, Adam is recuperating in his Prague apartment. He wakes up and discovers that several of his augs are malfunctioning and don't work anymore. He gets up and checks a stash beside his bed, which includes an email from David Pritchard sending him links to news stories about anti-aug sentiment, and a pocket secretary from Quinn that originally put him in contact with Alex. He opens the blinds, then hears a voicemail from David Sarif, who wants to catch up with him and see how he's doing after the bombing.
After taking a shower and watching a Picus broadcast, he calls Sarif, who expresses relief that he's alright. As they catch up, Sarif reveals that he was thankful to be rescued at Panchaea, and laments that the Sarif Industries building was broken into by looters and razed to the ground, before Tai Yong Medical took over the rest of the company. When he inquires about Megan Reed, Sarif tells him that she moved to San Francisco to work at Versalife at an offshore facility called Roccasecca Beach, then tells him to move on with his life. Sarif also mentions that he's planning to meet with representatives from the Santeau Group — and Nathaniel Brown. Adam expresses doubts that Brown's plan to build ghettos for augs will work, but Sarif says that things will get better before ending the call.
Adam radios Miller to let him know that he's going to go into the city to get his faulty augs checked out before reporting to the office, and leaves the apartment...
Tropes:
- Advertised Extra: Though Ivan Berk (the shifty-looking Aug) played a big part in many of the promotional trailers, including one where he's seen kissing the hand of the Big Bad, he only makes a token background appearance before he suicide-bombs Prazicka Station. You don't even resolve the investigation unless you have the
Pre-Order Bonus "Desperate Measures" DLC. - Ancient Conspiracy: The Illuminati, obviously. Notably, its leaders are people who were seen and spoken about in the very first game, including Bob Page, Morgan Everett, Stanton Dowd, Elizabeth DuClare and Lucius Debeers.
- Answer Cut: The game cuts from Debeers ordering (the unseen) Elizabeth DuClare to "activate the asset"... to Adam suddenly waking up with a start on a train heading into Prague, with a fellow passenger having fallen asleep and resting her head on his shoulder. The Stinger more-or-less states that Adam is a Manchurian Agent who is unaware that the Illuminati have control of him — and that woman resting her head on his shoulder? That's Dr. Delara Auzenne, The Mole within TF29.
- Badass Longcoat: Lampshaded. It's stated in an email that Adam has ordered a new longcoat from a local manufacturer, along with custom specifications (likely so he can use his augs).
- Bag of Spilling: Due to the explosion at the station, Adam loses the functionality of all his high-level augs and is forced to seek help to restore them.
- Big Brother Is Watching:
- The police have numerous flying drones that scan people in the station and throughout Prague. If the player uses their nano-vision to look around Adam's apartment, these can be seen passing by Adam's window and looking in periodically.
- Alex also tells Adam that the Juggernaut Collective has access to camera feeds all over the station, and can see everything that's happening.
- Blatant Lies: At one point, the player can choose to sit and watch television in Adam's apartment. Doing so brings up Picus Television, with Eliza Cassan proudly proclaiming that they offer "fair, impartial and unbiased news".
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In-universe. If Adam sits and watches television in his apartment (or anywhere else in the game, for that matter), Eliza will sometimes "wink" when she's reporting "live" from Picus. This appears to be a nod to the fact that Adam is one of the few people who knows that she's an AI.
- Bus Crash: It's stated in an email Pritchard sends to Adam that Belltower Associates (the antagonists of Human Revolution) went bankrupt in-between games after the Juggernaut Collective leaked information to the public about one of the company's black site facilities. This appears to be a nod to the Aborted Arc that was set up at the end of Deus Ex: The Fall (which had Ben Saxon and Alex Vega heading off to investigate one of Belltower's secret facilities in Australia).
- Call-Forward: The Illuminati council scene is a large-scale one for the original game. Aside from all of the major players from said game being present (including Bob Page, Morgan Everett, Lucius Debeers, Stanton Dowd and Elizabeth DuClare), a large number of references are made to events that would eventually be told by Dowd to J.C. Denton after scuttling the superfreighter in New York. This includes Everett authorizing Page to put his own plan into motion, which would eventually cause the latter to build Majestic-12.
- Continuity Nod:
- At one point, Page mentions the "Human Restoration Act", a plan that was put into motion at the end of the Children's Crusade comic prequel.
- One of the members of the Illuminati, Rand, may be the head of the RAND Corporation, which was previously mentioned in Human Revolution, in an e-book found underneath the police station in Detroit.
- Jensen's stash in his apartment includes an amusing email from Frank Pritchard (from Human Revolution) that has a repository of news articles covering events that happened in the previous game (and Deus Ex: The Fall, resolving the Aborted Arc set up in the game's Sequel Hook). Additionally, this is the book that was given to Adam at the end of the Black Light tie-in novel.
- Adam's stash also includes an email from "Quinn", the mechanic from the Missing Link DLC, who still calls him "bratan" and mentions that Alex has a fake identity set up at a company called Lebedev Global.
- One of the commercials on the television Adam can watch in his apartment advertises Versalife, a key corporation from the original game.
- The Pre-Order Bonus "Covert Agent Pack" includes Jensen's original coat from Human Revolution, which can be worn and seen in various cutscenes.
- Continuity Porn: The opening folds in characters from three different games (members of the Illuminati from the original, Janus (from Human Revolution's Missing Link DLC, and Alejandra Vega from Deus Ex: The Fall), with plenty of continuity nods and Foreshadowing for future events in later games.
- Dull Surprise: The newscast Adam can watch in his apartment shows Picus newscaster Eliza Cassan reacting impassively, even while trying to convey emotion for tragic events. Of course, this is justified because she's a holographic AI designed by the company to be on-air 24 hours a day delivering reports.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Several characters are present in the opening sequence who will turn out to be much more important later in the game:
- The woman resting her head on Adam's shoulder after she fell asleep on the train ride into Prague? That's Dr. Delara Auzenne, who's later revealed to be The Mole for the Illuminati.
- Madame Photographe is seen standing near a shop window as Adam and Vega walk and talk in the plaza. She is later revealed in a Pocket Secretary to be affiliated with Elizabeth Duclare, an Illuminati Council member.
- The Harvester/Daria can be seen standing by a different shop window during Adam and Vega's conversation at the station before the bomb goes off.
- Easily Forgiven: Regardless of which choice the player made at the end of Human Revolution, Sarif doesn't hold any hard feelings over what happened at Panchaea and still regards Adam like a son.
- Fantastic Racism: Alongside in-game advertisements subtly throwing shade at augments by marketing their products to pure humans with sly putdowns towards the former, augments are treated as pariahs in public. They are routinely gawked at, insulted and threatened by citizens and the police. The fact that another bombing occurs doesn't help matters.
- Foreshadowing:
- An in-game newspaper mentions a ruling crime syndicate called the Dvali family, which have escaped prosecution for the third time that year.
- When Adam watches television in his apartment, a news broadcast appears talking about Nathaniel Brown, the head of the Santeau Group which is authorizing construction of Rabi'ah. As Brown is also an associate of the Illuminati (and was The Man Behind the Man in the Children's Crusade comic tie-in), this serves as foreshadowing of his motives.
- Heartbroken Badass: Adam still seems to harbor sadness for what happened with Megan, if his conversation with Sarif is anything to go by. After telling him that she's working with Versalife in San Francisco, Sarif tells him to push her out of his life completely and stop thinking of her.
- Holographic Terminal: The Illuminati use one to run their meetings, with the caveat that none of the members involved in the meeting are actually present in the boardroom.
- Hypocrite: When Sarif points out that Megan rejected the scientist who developed TITAN augs from getting a job with the company, he says that the reason she gave was that the scientist's morals were questionable. Adam (rightly) points out that Megan's own ethics were very questionable, considering that she previously took samples of his DNA without his consent and used it in her augmentation research.
- It's Personal: After seeing the woman in the train station die while holding his hand, Adam stands back up and angrily looks around while his shades snap closed. This proves to be the motivation he needs to investigate the case, an opinion that can be further bolstered by dialogue choices in later missions.
- Meaningful Background Event: When Adam is talking with Alex in front of the entrance to the Prazicka Station terminal, a man (Ivan Berk) can be seen walking quickly past and covering his face as he passes Adam. Just a couple minutes later, the bomb goes off in the station.
- Old Save Bonus: If the player has completed the Deus Ex GO mobile game and accomplished certain feats within it (clearing story mode/beating all levels with Mastermind status/completing up to two sets of weekly puzzles) and owning a Square-Enix Members online account, this can be transferred into Mankind Divided to unlock up to five extra Praxis Kits.
- Please Wake Up: The young boy in the train station after the bombing pleads for his mother to wake up again after she dies in the process of Adam trying to dig her out of rubble.
- Police Are Useless: It's mentioned in a newspaper that the Dvali crime syndicate walked free due to the Prague police bungling a murder investigation. It's also revealed that this is the third time that year such a thing has happened.
- Properly Paranoid: An email from TF29 team member Chang expresses paranoia about all of them (including Jensen) being in danger. Although his fears seem to be unfounded, the audience knows from the Children's Crusade comic prequel that there's a mole within the Task Force, who Adam hasn't found yet.
- Riches to Rags: Downplayed with Sarif. After the collapse of Sarif Industries, he has become a private citizen living in a modest apartment, trying to find investors to restart his empire. Even his claims of I Own This Town (when he offers to get more information on the TITAN augs for Adam) seem like he's convincing himself that he still has relevance in a new age.
- Shirtless Scene: Adam spends the entire scene in his apartment like this, and the camera isn't shy about showing off his new model and the capabilities of the new engine. There's an even an obligatory Shower Scene, complete with Censor Steam.
- Urban Segregation: Aside from augs being looked at with scorn from non-augments, they are kept in ghettos in Prague and are forced to deal with cops at security checkpoints whenever they try to move anywhere. Additionally, it's shown in broadcasts and newspapers that Nathaniel Brown (the CEO of the Santeau Group) is planning to build Rabi'ah solely for the purpose of housing augments.
- Virtual Paper Doll: If the Pre-Order Bonus DLC is installed, the player can choose between one of several outfits (both tactical and civilian) for Adam through the menu, thus averting Limited Wardrobe.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Although Adam can ask Sarif where Pritchard and Megan are, there is no choice to ask about what happened to Hugh Darrow or Bill Taggart (the only mention of the latter is via an in-game reference to the "Taggart Act", a piece of regulation for the aug industry). It's implied, but not outright stated, that both of them perished when Panchaea sank.
- With This Herring: Averted. Searching around Adam's apartment nets you a bunch of credits, a fair amount of ammunition for most major weapons, crafting parts (which can let you build a multitool or biocells) and items to sell at weapon shops. Additionally, if you have the Pre-Order Bonus "Covert Agent Pack", you also get access to several alternate outfits and additional weapons.
