Deus Ex: Black Light (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided prequel)

by James Swallow

Illuminati. The word was ancient, heavy with contradictory meanings, double-speak and fantasy. It was a catch-all term; it conjured up images of cabals stocked with old men intent on running the world, of self-selected elites ruling the lesser masses by guile and force. Decades of sensationalist fiction and half-truths made it seem more legend than reality. Just a scare story, a lunatic conspiracy theory for the credulous.

the crumbling packs of Soy,

You can have this soy food

He’d never needed neuropozyne to keep his augmentations operable; he didn’t understand all the medical jargon behind it, but there was something different about his genetic structure.

Built different

“Do you really think that people gave a moment’s thought to the rights of the augmented after seventy percent of them went on a psychotic rampage? Things moved fast, Jensen. Anyone who didn’t accept the decommissioning of their cyberware had to sign up for registration, stringent controls, enforced licensing… compulsory confinement and hardware removal for the non-compliant ones. These days, if you’re an aug and you’re not eking out a life on expensive, insufficient nu-poz allocations, you’re either rich or you’re indentured to someone who is.” He spread his hands. “It’s a brave new slave economy.”

He listened intently as Pritchard laid out the whole sorry story. Jensen wasn’t surprised to learn that Sarif had got away aboard a private mini-sub, but as the hacker explained, it wasn’t without cost. “His submersible was damaged getting to the surface, and by the time the UN rescue ships got him on board, he was suffering from severe nitrogen narcosis. He was in a coma, you see? And so he slept through most of everything that came after.”

“Just how much of this segregation crap is there?” he demanded.

“This isn’t what I wanted…” Jensen said to himself.

I never asked for this?

He wasn’t about to try and explain how his uncommon genetics made neuropozyne redundant for him.

This is at least the third time this has come up

“I could stand to burn down some of it, yeah,” said Vega, an edge of venom in her reply. “The parts where all the rich bastards live behind their sky-high walls and fuck with the rest of us.”

“So,” began Quinn. “Those nasty little augs your ex-boss cooked up are all gone. I guess we call that a success, do we?” “A dozen people died,” Jensen retorted. “So no, we don’t.”