V stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking Night City below.
From up here, the crowds looked like swarming insects—insignificant, fragile, yet buzzing with life.
A sight like this…
Unbelievable.
Worth a drink.
She took a slow sip of tequila. The neon-drenched scenery instantly grew even more beautiful.
This—this was why people clawed their way upward, step by desperate step.
To see what those below could not.
Her holo-phone vibrated.
Jenkins' face materialized across her retina.
"V, the plane's taken off."
"Bon voyage, old man."
"Don't call me old man!"
"Okay, old man. Got it, old man."
"…"
After a long, pained pause, Jenkins spoke seriously:
"V… be careful. Don't die."
The call ended.
Honestly, V felt a little touched.
Last time around, Jenkins had never shown this level of concern.
Then the moment passed.
She knew he was bullshitting her—just as he knew she was bullshitting him.
She wanted to use Arasaka resources to fix her neural damage, so she volunteered to carry the weight. Jenkins, seeing someone dumb enough to stand on the front line, was more than happy to hide in the back.
No real feelings on either side.
Just business.
A mutual transaction.
Love at first sight only exists for romance—never for friendship.
Romance can be triggered with a few milligrams of hormones.
Friendship takes years of friction.
Unfortunately, neither she nor Jenkins had that kind of time.
So—back to work.
She didn't fight this hard for power just to admire the city.
V drained the last drop of tequila and sat at her terminal.
A pile of complex, headache-inducing tasks flooded her screen—any one of them enough to make a normal employee cry.
But what was the future for others… was the past for V.
Which op would succeed, which would fail, which assets needed extraction or deeper infiltration, which targets could be pushed, threatened, or abandoned… V, drawing from past life memory, issued orders with machine-like precision. Operations she remembered succeeding, she allowed to continue; failures she rewrote with alternate tactics.
She had thought she'd forgotten all this.
But once the first command went out, dormant memories surged awake—clearer than ever.
Brains are funny like that.
V tapped the final sequence of commands.
In one morning, she resolved every mess Jenkins had left behind. Then she issued Counterintel's highest internal directive:
"All sleeper assets: withdraw and observe. Full silence."
Abernathy was circling like a shark.
Special Operations was waiting for one mistake to bite Counterintel apart.
Simple solution:
If you don't work, you can't mess up.
Easy.
Not a permanent strategy—
But for now, it worked.
V's plan: hold the line, counterattack later.
Truth be told, Abernathy was terrifyingly competent.
If V were still at full combat strength, she could've simply killed the old bitch—clean and efficient.
But with her chrome locked and her nervous system shattered, she could barely protect herself.
Office politics, then.
The battlefield of the weak.
Abernathy's biggest advantage?
Her disgustingly complicated web of connections:
A husband in Zetatech.
A lover in Kang Tao.
A friendly relationship with Night Corp.
And most importantly—
She was personally backed by Michiko Arasaka.
V listed the connections one by one.
Her gaze finally stopped on a name:
Michiko Arasaka.
V hated the Arasaka family with every fiber of her being, but facts were facts.
In Night City, the Arasakas were the undisputed number one power.
As long as Michiko supported Abernathy, even if V blew up Militech HQ, she still couldn't topple Abernathy.
A noble favored by the emperor.
V scoffed.
This was Night City—2076—yet still the same old feudal bullshit.
Cyberpunk?
Cyber-my-ass.
Even if androids replaced every factory worker by 3076, they still wouldn't replace service-sector workers.
Because some satisfaction comes only from enslaving your own species.
"Tch."
V clicked her tongue.
Why the hell was she having all these philosophical thoughts lately?
Johnny's influence?
She shook her head and refocused on the real problem.
Abernathy's power came from Michiko.
Reverse the logic—
Remove Michiko, remove Abernathy.
Could she kill Michiko?
Impossible.
So the only option—join Michiko and replace Abernathy.
Michiko valued Abernathy's network.
To replace Abernathy, V needed an even stronger one.
Abernathy had three pillars—Zetatech, Kang Tao, Night Corp.
Which meant V needed at least three corporate allies.
Face expressionless, she began listing viable Night City factions:
Militech
Biotechnica
NCPD
Trauma Team International
Kiroshi Optics
Kendachi
Tsutomura Arms
Winter Moon Electronics
and various automakers like Quadra, Thornton, Villefort, motorcycle brands like Yaiba, etc.
Automakers and moto manufacturers were wealthy but mostly commercial—good for garnish, not a main dish.
Trauma Team and Kiroshi were declared neutral—pulling them in would be difficult.
NCPD?
A pseudo-corporate entity under Night Corp—Abernathy-aligned.
Discard.
Tsutomura Arms specialized in blades and custom weapons—products lethal and beautiful. V actually wanted to meet them sometime. But their close relationship with Kang Tao made them hard to sway.
Winter Moon Electronics was an Arasaka subsidiary—no point.
Kendachi too—deep in Arasaka's pocket. Competed viciously with Kang Tao's weapon subsidiaries. Pawns in proxy wars.
Which left only two viable giants—
Militech
and
Biotechnica.
For repairing her nervous system, Biotechnica was already on her list. She was well-prepared; chances of success around 80%.
But realistically… her odds with Militech were higher.
About 90%.
Because Militech happened to have a certain fur-coat-wearing Venus.
And V was… very familiar with her.
So which one?
Militech or Biotechnica?
V weighed the pros and cons.
Finally, she chose Biotechnica.
"Because I have no idea how to face that Venus yet… I was too wild when I was younger."
V rubbed her forehead, helpless.
Even the memory made her heart race.
"Nope. Not thinking about that right now. Use that energy to study!"
She slapped her cheeks, opened a drawer, and pulled out a learning shard.
Inserting it into the neural socket behind her ear, V plunged into a sea of data.
What was she studying?
Hacking, of course.
Combat chrome pushed nervous systems to the limit.
Hacking cyberware, though?
The lightest load of the bunch.
The Mechatronics Core, RAM Upgrades, External Drives—all of them were essentially autonomous smart modules. The operator only needed to pierce enemy ICE, then issue commands.
ICE-breaking relied mostly on brain processing power—not raw reflexes or muscular output.
Even paralyzed individuals could become elite netrunners.
Low requirements, not no requirements.
But for V, this was the best path.
Past-life V, with a Militech Berserk Mk.5 installed, hated indirect combat.
But she hated being helpless even more.
Being prey—being butchered—was agony.
She'd rather suffer the pain of learning.
And in her current state, stealthy or indirect combat was her only option.
By evening, V completed the entire shard.
Her Intelligence stat rose from 3 to 4—one solid step toward becoming a top-tier netrunner.
"Kidding myself. With this baby-level stuff, I'm nowhere near a real netrunner."
She pinched her brow. "Sure enough, hacking isn't like smashing skulls with bats. One person learning alone is too slow. I need a real teacher."
She thought of T-Bug—the Black netrunner girl who once offered to train her. V had refused.
Now she regretted it deeply.
Worse—she didn't even have T-Bug's contact info anymore.
"Forget it. I'll find another teacher. Night City can't possibly have only one netrunner."
With that, V stood up and headed toward the exit.
Workday over.
It was 8:30 PM.
The sun long gone.
Night City gleamed brighter than daytime—neon colliding, multicolored, like overlapping human desires: dazzling, overwhelming.
Arasaka Tower was no exception—brilliant lights, but only cold white. Many corpo workers still toiling away.
Not overtime—
Their contracts required 16-hour days.
If they didn't do it, someone else would.
V, however, was one of the few who could decide when she left.
See? In Night City, there were plenty of reasons to climb.
"Mm… I'm still working. Don't wait for me. Eat first. I'll come right after. I even brought your favorite flowers."
V paused.
A young man—barely a man, really—was standing at a corridor terminal, multitasking badly as he typed and talked on the phone, sweat beading across his forehead.
V recognized him.
Carter.
An intern from the Arasaka Academy.
No background.
A street-rat kid who fought his way up.
Yes—an ordinary kid attending Arasaka Academy.
Not because of scholarships.
But because Carter's mother worked four jobs, and his sister worked two.
V remembered his first day vividly:
"Deputy Director V! I'll work hard! One day I'll reach the very top of Arasaka Tower!"
Reality?
Two years in Counterintel, still no office.
Working in the hallway.
But what could he do?
His mom worked four jobs.
His sister two.
"Sorry, Mom… It's your birthday and I'm still late…"
Carter's voice trembled as he typed.
"No, no—company treats me great. Everyone's really nice to me. Remember Deputy Director V? My boss? The ice-queen beauty? She said I work hard—and I'm getting a promotion and raise this year!"
He turned, mid-sentence—
And nearly dropped dead when he saw V standing behind him.
He began coughing violently.
"I-I need to go, Mom. Busy—bye!"
Carter swallowed hard as V walked toward him.
He didn't know whether he would hang up…
or his life would.
"'Ice-queen beauty'?" V asked.
Carter trembled so hard V thought he might dislocate something. He bowed deeply.
"I'm sorry, Deputy Director! I—I was wrong!"
V said nothing.
Carter clenched his fists, ready to beg for mercy—hell, ready to offer his body if that's what it took.
But instead, he received an authorization ping.
"Huh…? This is…"
He looked up, eyes wide.
"Your mom's birthday today? Go home. It won't count as leaving early. I'm lending you my AV."
"W-what?" Carter froze. "B-But that AV is your executive vehicle. I'm not qualified—"
V raised an eyebrow. "Never mind. I'm withdrawing it."
"No!" Carter yelped so loudly passersby stared.
"You're… you're really lending me the AV?"
V nodded. "Mm."
"C-can I let my family look inside? Just for a moment? Maybe take a photo?"
V frowned.
Carter panicked—
Then V spoke coldly:
"If you get cake frosting on the seats, I'll kill you."
In that instant, Carter saw death itself.
"I swear! Not a single crumb, Deputy Director!"
But V had already stepped into the elevator.
"Thank you, Deputy Director V! Thank you so, so much!"
Ding.
The doors closed.
And Carter could've sworn…
right before they shut—
V's lips curled upward.
"Hallucination?" he muttered.
He looked at his hands, clenched them tight.
"If it's a hallucination—please don't let me wake up!"
With the wild energy of youth, he ripped off his tie and sprinted toward the rooftop AV pads, dialing his mother again.
"Mom! I'm off work! I'm on my way! Wait for me—we're celebrating together!"
Below Arasaka Tower, V sat on a bench, watching the AV she lent Carter lift into the sky.
She whistled.
"You kidding? In my fragile, glass-cannon state? No way I'm riding an AV. Sturdy, reliable Delamain is more my style."
Right on cue, a Delamain taxi stopped before her.
She opened the door and sat.
"Choose Delamain—leave worry behind. Good evening, Miss V."
"Good evening, Old De.
San Domingo—Dam Overlook."