'''Jacob's Shadow''' is a :Category:Deus Ex books, magazines and newspapers|book appearing in ''Deus Ex''. It is a work of fiction created by Chris Todd, one of the writers for the game. It is attributed to the fictitious author Andrew Hammond (in homage to crime writer Andrew Vachss). The first chapter displayed is chapter twelve with a subsequent six other chapters (fifteen, twenty, twenty-three, twenty-seven, thirty-two, and thirty-four) that portray the cyberpunk themes of the game in the style of William Gibson. The book appears to be a violent, spiritual journey of a man named Jacob as he searches for a woman, who is never named, through a city described as 'Hell'. A chapter from a sequel to Jacob's Shadow, titled Jacob's War, can be found in Deus Ex: Invisible War.
==Transcript==
===Chapter 12===
"Lot a people say this city looks like Hell," Allie said. She took a long drag
from her cigarette. The glowing tip burned a hole in the darkness.
"Most people never been to Hell," Jacob said.
She looked at him and he could hear the smile in her voice. "And I suppose
you have?"
Jacob said nothing, then stood and walked to the bed. Allie let out a small
noise and shrank back against the pillows as if she'd claw her way into them
if she could. He leaned down close to her ear.
"You like to play games," he whispered. "And that's fine. But you don't
want to be playing games with me, because I'm the one honest man in this
city. You should know that, since we were married."
===Chapter 15===
Waiting was always the hardest part: in the stir, and in life. Guys who
couldn't handle it either ended up rocking back and forth in a dark corner,
or babbling incoherently. Always the same.
Jacob would have been the one rocking in the corner. He did solitary the first
time after a fight, someone thinking he was an easy mark. Forty-eight hours
and he started screaming and didn't stop until his larynx was raw and his
voice cracked. It was a month before he could talk again.
One of the lifers saw Jacob wasn't as fence-post dumb as the rest of the
population and took to schooling him in chess. Jacob never got much respect
from the old-timer, but he got his sanity. He'd play chess, checkers,
backgammon, any game there was.
He got into another fight when one pendejo who was looking to make a name for
himself flipped over Jacob's game board, said impolite things about people and
their little kiddie games. Jacob cracked one of his ribs and amused himself
for a week in solitary playing Kasparov and Bobby Fischer in his head.
===Chapter 20===
Samuel looked at him from across the table, but he might as well have been
peering at Jacob from the Devil's own palace in the deep blue sea.
After a moment Samuel rubbed his rheumy eyes. "You ever wonder about morals?"
he said. Jacob shook his head. "I do... all the damn time. I wonder what
it means to be good - if there's some tally that says 'you only hurt ten
people, so come on up, but eleven and you're going straight to hell.' Then
I think maybe it's a little voice that tells you, way back in your head.
And then I wonder what happens when that voice goes away..."
Jacob reached under the table and put the little .22 pistol against one of
Samuel's kneecaps.
"I don't think you're going to like my answer to that. Where is she?"
===Chapter 23===
There weren't many moves left. Jacob knew that. Most of the pawns had been
taken off the board and his own queen lost. The game had entered its final
phase, and now the question wasn't which piece to sacrifice - they were all
more or less expendable - but when.
He shined his flashlight throughout the rooms of the vacant house. It was a
perfectly serviceable tract home somewhere in the suburbs where the sun
occasionally shone. It looked like no one had lived there for ages, and that
was true enough. Jacob just took care of the bills - any paper trail ended at
Hobb's Cemetery up state.
In the attic he found the old water heater, cold now. He removed the top and
felt along the edge for a nearly invisible strand of fishing line. Jacob
hauled back on the line until he pulled a dripping plastic bag free of the
murky tank. He took the flashlight between his teeth and opened the bag.
Inside was a gun, a clean gun. Its serial numbers filed and the rifling
scratched beyond any possible match. The bullets all reloads with blank
copper casings. No fingerprints.
Time for the next move.
===Chapter 27===
It was late when he got back. Everything black and quiet. Jacob killed the
lights but didn't take the key out of the ignition. He reached into his pocket
and took out a little box with an LCD display, thumbed a button and the radio
transceiver captured the last few hours worth of motion sensor logs from the
building. He'd done some favors for friends in the Shop - or whatever it was
they were calling it this week - and they'd installed it to spec for him.
As he walked to the door he was still arranging all the pieces in his head.
Sure way to get his ass taken down, but he couldn't help it. Something was
missing. Didn't fit. Allie hunched over in the bathroom, that needle
dangling from between her toes. Katsuya shifting a half million yen before the
currency market closed. The radio station Samuel had turned him on to, the one
with the little girl repeating all those numbers in sequence. And somewhere in
the middle...
Jacob stopped, looked up at the night sky. He'd been assuming that there were
two sides to this game and both were playing to win. But what if... what if
there was someone else, and they wanted to see both sides lose?
===Chapter 32===
Jacob looked at her and watched all the regret drain from her eyes. She tossed
the empty revolver onto the body next to her, the gun in her other hand never
moving an inch from a point that Jacob guessed was just above the bridge of his
nose.
"You don't have to do this. It doesn't have to be like this."
"Oh, yes... yes, I'm afraid that it does."
He slowly shook his head. The window cracked and for a moment it sounded as if
a wasp had buzzed through the room - then a dull thud as her body dropped to
the floor. Blood poured from the cavity that had been her skull, a wide black
pool that spread like a shadow in the darkness.
Jacob knelt and rubbed his fingers in her blood. Monk never missed with a
sniper rifle. Not ever.
===Chapter 34===
Jacob sat down on the bench and unrolled his chess board onto the rough stone
table in front of him. As he was removing his playing pieces, a shadow fell
across the board. He looked up, squinting into the sun.
"Merriweather," he said.
"Jacob." She settled herself down onto the opposite bench, leaning heavily on
her cane. "It didn't turn out so well for you this time, did it?" Jacob said
nothing. She gestured to the board with one hand and he detected just a hint
of a tremor. "You're playing black today."
He put the queen down on her square and his fingers lingered. "No, it didn't
turn out well. I did some stupid things." He closed his eyes for a moment.
"I cared, and some people died because of it."
Merriweather made a tsking sound. "It's not the caring that's a matter,
Jacob, it's what comes after. What are you going to do now?"
Jacob paused for just a moment. "Now... I'm going to play another game."
==Trivia==
*A fanfiction of the first Chapter can be found on http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3465547/1/Jacobs_Shadow# fanfiction.net
*The titles might be a reference to the Ender's series of books where the first one is Ender's War and the second is Ender's Shadow
==External links==
*http://www.7crows.com/archives/2000/01/entry_39.html Jacob's Shadow by Andrew Hammond
Category:Deus Ex books, magazines and newspapers