I’m taking a break from preparing for my trip to New York in order to write about JC Denton’s trip out of New York. It’s all symbolic and metaphorical and stuff.

After escaping from the MJ12 base where I’d been incarcerated, I found myself in UNATCO HQ, in the medical bay. I encounter Jaime Reyes there. Jaime’s had it with the threats and the torture and the inexplicable violence UNATCO has been inflicting on everyone named Denton. I tell him he should get away as soon as he can, and try to meet up with me later in Hong Kong. It’s also possible to tell Jaime to stay at UNATCO; the course of action you recommend to him determines when you’ll see him next, and what useful goodies or information he’ll bring you.

Jaime also has a retirement gift for me: a brand-new Torso upgrade canister. This isn’t one of the Aqualung/Environmental Resistance canisters like we’ve seen before. This one gives me a choice between Regeneration and Energy Shield.

At its lowest level, Regeneration lets me recover 5 hit points per second; since each body part can take 100 points of damage, this means I can go from nearly-dead to completely healthy in less than a minute. Mind you, it’ll take less than a minute to completely deplete my power supply, but a single bioelectric cell will give me enough juice to heal about 60 points of damage, twice as much healing as I can get from a medical kit. At higher levels, Regenerate heals damage even faster, and the power drain per second remains the same; at its maximum level, it heals 40 points a second, which is fast enough that you can actually use it in combat.

Energy Shield uses much less power than Regeneration does, and at the lowest level reduces the damage I’ll take from fire and energy weaons by 20%. At the highest level, it reduces that damage by 80%.

So the question is, is it better to be able to heal any type of damage, any time, anywhere, or is it better to be able to reduce the damage from a few types of weapons? This is a difficult conundrum, if you’re a complete idiot; I select Regeneration without hesitation and go on my merry way.

I suppose that there are some character concepts that would benefit from Energy Shield. If you’re playing as some sort of rogue doctor with a high Medical skill, the improved healing you’d get from medical kits might make Regeneration redundant. Or if you want to be some sort of Mirror Man whom lasers bounce off of. The problem is, both augmentations are very similar in function: they act to increase the amount of punishment you can take. Regeneration acts a bit slower and drains considerably more power, but it’s much more versatile than Energy Shield. Plus, whenever you find a recharging station, you can switch on Regeneration for a quick fix.

Overall, I find that Regeneration makes the game much easier; once I had it, I no longer had to conserve my limited supply of medkits, and spent much less time replaying difficult firefights to try and get through them with minimal damage.

Anyway, enough of that digression. There’s a guard wandering around the medlab area, so I take him down with a tranq dart. I want to avoid going on a bloody shooting spree against my former comrades, so I rely heavily on non-lethal weaponry throughout this section.

Across the hall from the medlab is Alex Jacobson’s office. I’m all “Thanks for the help, Daedalus,” and he’s all “Huh? What are you talking about?” This is actually somewhat surprising. Usually there’s only room for one hacker in a game, and he or she will do everything computer-related. This raises the possibility that there are multiple characters hacking into my infolink and telling me what to do. Intrigue!

Alex gives me the key I need to get out of the building, and remarks that he’d been considering a change of careers anyway, promising to find me in Hong Kong.  After this chat, I stop by the armory, and Sam Carter gives me a speech about how most of the people working in this office are 24-carat gold, doing their best to make the world a better place, et cetera. He refuses to leave with me to join the rebels, saying that the only way the organizatino can be saved is if the good people stay. He finishes his speech by letting me into the armory so I can steal any weapons and ammunition I need. A quick inspection of his computer reveals an email from one “Minister of True Lies,” thanking him for helping undermine UNATCO’s security protocols so I could escape. The Minister of True Lies is, as it turns out, the leader of Silhouette, the French terrorist group which was assisting Paul and the NSF.

Once I’m done there, it’s up to the first floor for an exit interview with Joseph Manderley. His secretary is shocked to see me, but I ignore her and go into Manderley’s office, where I discover the man talking to a Walton Simons, who’s appearing on some sort of funky holographic projector. Simons expresses his belief that Manderley will be much happier in his new job with the Library of Congress. Some might view this as a demotion, but I prefer to think this means that MJ12 is finally getting serious about infiltrating Delta Green.

God, that last joke was geeky and obscure even by my usual standards.

Simons is pissed at Manderley’s lack of effectiveness as a commander, and is upset at the way Manderley handled the Dentons, who Simons describes as having been very expensive assets. I interrupt the conversation and Simons signs off; Manderley tells me I won’t be able to get away; security already knows I’ve escaped, and with my killswitch activated, I’ll be dead within 23 hours. After the conversation, Manderley just kind of stands there like he’s waiting to see what happens next. I’d feel kind of bad about taking down an old guy, so I turn to leave. Manderley then pulls out a pistol and shoots me in the back! Jerk! I forget about my reluctance to visit violence upon old people, and zap with with my electric prod until he drops, which in the world of business etiquette is widely recognized to be an acceptable subtitute for submitting two weeks’ notice.

There’s no one else of interest in the building except for some armed guards, and I already have everything I need to make my escape, so I run out of UNATCO HQ at full speed. Outside, I find that Jock is waiting for me with a nifty stealth helicopter. He says that Daedalus contacted him and somehow authorized him to fly one of the UN’s ubiquitous black helicopters from Hong Kong to New York to rescue me. I hop in the chopper and we take off for Hong Kong to find Tracer Tong and get my killswitch deactivated.

This segment of the game really ups the WTF factor. It introduces Daedalus as a significant player, further establishes MJ12 as a force to be reckoned with, and throws Tracer Tong and Silhouette into the mix, too. When you also factor in the NSF (which might be in dire straits with Lebedev’s death and the failure of their New York operation), and UNATCO (which appears to have been mostly, but not entirely, coopted by MJ12), we have six different people or organizations involved in the plot so far. Luckily, aside from MJ12 and UNATCO, they all appear to be on my side. We’ll see how long that lasts.