Deus Ex: Icarus Effect
Several months prior to the attack on Sarif Industries, U.S. Secret Service agent Anna Kelso is working a protection detail for a meeting between a senator and the CEO of an augmentation manufacturer. Before the meeting begins, Anna's team is ambushed by a group of assailants who kill her mentor and friend Matt Ryan and the CEO. Anna is wounded in the crossfire, but is left alive along with the senator.
In Australia, former SAS soldier-turned Belltower operative Ben Saxon is leading a team of commandos against rival forces involved in a civil war in Australia. Before they can land their dropship, it is shot down by a military drone. Most of Saxon's team is killed in the crash, and his fellow soldier Sam Duarte is seemingly killed when the drone doubles back and fires at him. Saxon destroys the drone and falls off a cliff into a nearby river.
Saxon is found and brought to a local military hospital. Soon after, he is approached by the leader of the Tyrants, Jaron Namir. Namir asks him if he wants to help find the people responsible for his team's death without adhering to the legality of official government groups, and Saxon agrees to join the Tyrants.
Elsewhere, Kelso recovers from her injuries and begins investigating the circumstances behind the attack. Her boss, Ron Temple, shuts down her investigation, prompting Anna to go rogue when she theorizes that it wasn't caused by members of Hong Kong's triad, but a black-ops group looking to kill off their competition.
She eventually discovers the identity of the Tyrants, but her investigation is cut short when she is captured by New York police officers. She is sprung from jail by Temple but suspended from her job.
Saxon works with the Tyrants for several months, including Namir, Lawrence Barrett, Yelena Federova, Gunther Hermann and Scott Hardesty. Hardesty routinely puts down Saxon and Hermann for being inexperienced, but they continue to perform missions together. Eventually, Saxon becomes suspicious about the Tyrants during a mission to assassinate the man who was seemingly in charge of the mission that killed his SAS squad. Later, he gets knocked out and subjected to a loyalty test in a supposed fight to the death with Gunther. Namir reveals that they both passed, and Saxon later gets to know him and how he operates a double life by returning home to his wife and kids.
Anna receives a call from a mysterious hacker named D-Bar who wishes to meet with her. When she meets with him at a Humanity Front rally, he tells her that the Tyrants are part of a powerful Ancient Conspiracy with near-limitless authority.
D-Bar also explains the titular "Icarus Effect", a social phenomenon which equalizes the playing field by limiting people who exhibit great intelligence. The hacker tells her that the Tyrants act as a form of the Icarus Effect and are assassinating people who could bring radical social change. Anna agrees to help him investigate the matter further.
Saxon continues to work surreptitiously by searching for clues as to the Tyrants' real agenda while working for them, and discovering that another hacker named Janus is hijacking his television with messages.
At the same time, Anna infiltrates the Secret Service headquarters in Washington and downloads a large amount of information onto a flash drive, but is once again captured and imprisoned underneath the building. Temple says that he is being forced to cooperate with the conspiracy because they were threatening to kill his family, and that she will be transported to a holding facility for the remainder of her life. As she is being driven away in a prison van, she is rescued by D-Bar, who crashes a semi truck into the van. However, Anna still refuses to trust him because he abandoned her at the Secret Service building, and goes off on her own again.
The Tyrants decide to plan an attack on Sarif Industries to prevent them from further developing the Typhoon Explosive System and their groundbreaking work in augmentations. Some of the members express reservations about their security expert, Adam Jensen, but Namir tells them not to worry about it. Saxon, Hermann and Hardesty are given a different assignment, which the latter believes is an assassination contract on Anna's boss. Saxon is left on sniper overwatch by Hardesty, who complains that he's too weak to go on the mission.
Still lookng for answers, Anna heads to Temple's house. She discovers that the Tyrants invaded and shot dead a number of people while Temple was holding a party. She sneaks in and discovers that the Tyrants are still there, and finds that Temple is hiding in the basement. They wait until the team leaves and go to escape, but a grenade is suddenly thrown into the house and Temple is killed in the explosion. Anna narrowly escapes and makes a run for it, and Saxon sees her through his sniper scope but doesn't fire because he can't kill an innocent civilian.
Hardesty chides Saxon for letting Anna get away, but has the media spin the story so that she is blamed for the attack. Anna sees the reports on television and has to flee. She receives a package from D-Bar's hacker group, but is attacked by Federova afterwards. Anna manages to disable Federova's leg augmentations before fleeing. She eventually makes her way to D-Bar and the rest of the hackers.
Saxon, Hardesty and Hermann meet with the rest of the Tyrants, who are shaken up by the attack on Sarif. Afterwards, Saxon overhears Hardesty telling Namir that he is a liability. Convinced that something is wrong, Saxon makes contact with Janus, who tells him how to access Namir's personal personal computer onboard the Tyrant's mobile base on an airliner.
Saxon eventually accesses Namir's terminal and discovers that the Tyrants kill their new recruits' close contacts to prevent distractions. Namir discovers Saxon's hacking and tells him that he's the one who shot down Saxon's SAS plane and killed his team. Realizing that he's in danger, Saxon shoots the terminal with a stun gun and sets off several fire alarms, then flees through the ship. On the way, he takes down Gunther Hermann by shooting him in the eye with the stun gun and breaking several of his ribs, blinds Hardesty with a fire extinguisher and causes one of Barrett's grenade belts to explode, seriously wounding the latter. Saxon opens the plane's cargo bay door and leaps from it while activating the Icarus Landing System before he impacts in the sea below.
Anna and D-Bar meet Juan Lebedev, one of the main financial backers of the New Sons of Freedom. He tells her that the Tyrants work for the Illuminati. Although she doesn't initially believe it, she is contacted by Janus, who reveals the conspiracy's goals of driving the people into rioting. Saxon also arrives at the hacker camp and says that Janus sent him to help the group. The ragtag group plans an operation to stop the Tyrants before they assassinate Bill Taggart, the leader of Humanity Front, in Geneva.
Saxon and the leader of an NSF platoon, Powell, go to attack the Tyrant airliner in the event that it's being used as a control center, and Anna, D-Bar and another hacker go to pursue a car bomb that is being driven towards Taggart's hotel. Anna discovers that the car bomb is being driven by Hermann, and eventually forces his vehicle into the Rhône river. Afterwards, she is taken hostage by D-Bar, who shoots the other hacker and reveals that the Illuminati swayed his loyalties.
At the same time, Saxon and the platoon assault the airliner, but discover that it was booby-trapped. Saxon escapes before it explodes, but the platoon is killed in the explosion. He discovers that Anna has been captured when he tries to radio her, and is told by Namir that they will kill her unless Saxon kills Taggart himself.
Saxon goes to the Palais de Nations and sees protesters lined up out front. Hardesty appears with a gun with one bullet in it and orders Saxon to kill Taggart, under threat of torturing Anna to death. Saxon goes inside and fights through several Belltower guards, but changes his mind and saves Taggart at the last second from Hardesty's sniper fire. Saxon runs to the building's library and attacks Hardesty. Both men fight until Saxon stabs Hardesty in the head with his arm blade.
Saxon flees the scene and is told by Janus that Anna is being held on a private yacht on the Rhône river called Icarus, and that if Saxon goes to assault it, he will alert the Geneva police to take it down as well.
Onboard the yacht, Anna is threatened with torture by Barrett, but she punches him in the eye using her sobriety coin and flees the cell. Running through the ship, she discovers that D-Bag was killed by the Tyrants for being a traitor before being attacked by Federova. Anna breaks a gas line and starts a fire on the boat before she's captured by the remaining Tyrants, who decide to get on a VTOL and fly to another base.
Saxon reveals himself as the pilot of the VTOL, having killed the pilot. Namir immediately challenges Saxon to a one-on-one fight and soundly beats him, but the latter produces a hidden pistol and shoots the Tyrant leader several times in the chest. Saxon takes Namir hostage, while Barrett threatens to kill Anna if Namir isn't released. Saxon complies before grabbing Anna and leaping from the yacht. The Tyrants flee from the raging fire on the VTOL.
Anna manages to use her rebreather augmentation to keep them alive long enough to escape the burning wreckage of the boat before the police arrive.
Afterwards, a young Morgan Everett and Lucius Debeers meet in Paris. They discuss the Geneva operation and reflect on how even though they weren't able to assassinate Taggart, the attempt has caused the United Nations to push for a conference on augmentation technology. Everett also brings up how his protege, Bob Page, recovered Hermann's body from the river and will give him augmentations, and that Page is more interested in helping Majestic-12 than the Illuminati...
Saxon and Anna retreat to his former partner Sam Duarte's residence in Costa Rica to recoup from their injuries. Some time later, Saxon goes out on an unknown mission, but before he leaves, Anna tells him that Janus has mentioned that there is a change coming soon, and that none of them can stop what will happen...
