After my daringly spectacular and homicidal escape from the former NSF base, I return to the hotel to report to Paul. There are still some guards in the lobby, so I sneak past them and stick a couple of LAMs on the wall next to Paul’s door to discourage anyone from interrupting us.
Paul’s in even worse shape than before, although he’s happy I was able to send out the warning. As we’re talking, there’s a commotion outside, and someone yells at us to open the door and surrender. Whatever else they were about to say is cut off by the sounds of the LAMs detonating. Paul tells me to go out the window and escape through the subway station; he’s no condition to accompany me, but he can still hold off our attackers for a while. I activate my Speed enhancement and head down the fire escape to the ground floor.
By now I’m pretty familiar with the area, so instead of taking the main streets to the subway station, I can take a shortcut by slipping through a hole in a wooden fence just outside the hotel. The street outside the subway station is patrolled by a couple of UNATCO troopers and a pair of combat robots. Since I don’t have time to be sneaky, I take out the troopers with my silence sniper rifle, then destroy the two robots with rockets from my GEP gun, ducking back behind the fence whenever I need to reload. I expect the explosions to attract the wrong kind of attention (never mind the question of what would constitute the right kind of attention, under these circumstances), and haul ass to the subway station and hop in the first train I see.
It takes me to Battery Park. You remember Battery Park, where there was just a massive shootout earlier this night? Battery Park, which was last seen to be occupied by UNATCO? Yeah. I’m not sure why in the world I’d willingly go there, aside from the fact that the designers made the game that way.
As proof that this was a really bad idea, Anna meets me on the subway platform. She’s disappointed that I turned against UNATCO; I tell her I’d die before I go back. She thinks this is a great plan, and is willing to do her part to make it happen.
This leads to an absolutely horrible firefight. My weapons loadout is really good for taking down enemies before they can find me. It’s not so great for dealing with a pissed-off Russian-Israeli cyborg who’s aiming an assault rifle directly at my face. I keep boosting my speed throughout the fight, taking cover behind the pillars in the train station while returning fire with my peashooter of a pistol whenever I can. Anna’s too close for me to use the GEP gun or sniper rifle effectively, and my crossbow reloads too slowly to be much use. And, as it turns out, Anna can take a whole lot of damage. Finally, after the longest continuest firefight I’ve been through in this game, I bring her down with a shot to the head. In one of the more unpleasant surprises that Deus Ex has thrown at me, she then explodes. Between Anna’s attacks and her subsequent explosion, I’m almost dead, I’m down to two magazines for my pistol, and the explosion has destroyed Anna’s weapon and ammunition, which might have been useful.
I consider the situation for a moment and decide that while the firefight may have been exciting, and was quite the interesting experience, there was probably a more efficient way to handle this encounter. I reload my last save and try again.
This time, as soon as I get off the subway car and see Anna walking across the platform, I don’t wait to hear what she has to say. I load a white phosphorous rocket into my GEP gun and launch it directly toward her. She doesn’t even get a shot off at me before she dies. Note to self: safe the small-caliber weapons for oblivious enemies; alert enemies require the liberal application of high explosives.
Once Anna has safely exploded, I run up the stairs and exit the subway station. Outside, I meet Gunther and a veritable army of UNATCO troops, backed up by several of the big military combat bots. Gunther demands that I surrender, and I do; the odds against me are just too overwhelming.
The game does give you the option to fight if you want, but it’s sort of a false choice. Several of the enemies in this group are impossible to kill, so it’s only a matter of time before they bring you down and take you into custody. This is apparently one of the few cases where the game “cheats” by putting you in an unwinnable situation. At least that means I’m not tempted to replay this fight over and over, trying to win it just to see what happens. In this case, Deus Ex has successfully short-circuited my tendency toward obsessive perfectionism. Well played, Deus Ex.