Cyberpunk: Infinite Progress Begins with Arasaka

Johannesburg, Arasaka Industrial Park.

The shriek of high-powered automatic weapons fire continued to tear through the air. Explosions shook the buildings of the biological research district again and again.

Glass walls shattered with a high-pitched crack. Warped industrial equipment, collapsed support beams, twisted metal doors, and destroyed automated battle mechs littered the scene.

"She's on the move. The delaying units we deployed... update, we've lost two teams."

Rat-tat-tat! Bullets splattered against a concrete pillar. Sitting atop a decapitated Arasaka combat robot while reloading, two military operatives in undershirts and heavy combat jackets spoke tersely.

"Bitch. No wonder that chromed-out freak Adam Smasher once complimented her in battle. That monster—he compliments no one. So she must be one too. Just happens to have tits and no real junk."

Their tactical goggles flickered with data feeds.

Captured from fallen comrades' battle cams, the SBD (simulated braindance) footage was near first-person. Every time that woman flashed into frame, latency spiked—and then came the gore. Limbs, viscera. It was a slaughter.

"Hsss..." The veteran from Militech's Africa Bureau let out a slow breath.

He wasn't part of the North America division. And Vela Adelheid Russell's rise to prominence had happened only in recent years. He'd never been posted to the Americas or Pacific, so this operation—steal or destroy the Sonnentreppe Project—was his first direct encounter with her.

And now, with her just minutes away from arriving to 'slaughter your whole squad,' even a veteran like him felt the tension.

"F*ck. She's gotten stronger..." murmured another, this one from the North America field division.

His words made the African team glance at each other.

"What do you mean?"

"Her processing speed and reaction time. They've leveled up."

This was someone who had studied her combat patterns—had watched countless battle replays. He knew for a fact that during an assignment in South America half a year ago, her coordination and reflexes weren't this insane.

Vela Adelheid fought nothing like Adam Smasher.

If he was raw brutality—cybernetic overload and power incarnate—then she was the opposite. Refined. A seamless blend of biotech and cybertech, her movements embodied elegance and deadly precision.

Click!

Magazine locked in. "No more time. All units, full assault! If we can't seize the lab within 7 minutes, destroy it." His voice was low, his massive arms covered in nano-fiber mesh and subdermal plating.

"Hacker team, this is Strike One. Load the daemon viruses. I need those Arasaka sentry turrets offline... wait for my signal."

Crack. He rolled his thick neck, hoisting the Russian-made VST-37 Pozhar assault rifle, chambered it, then grabbed the fully loaded T40 Uragan rocket launcher.

The next moment—

"Advance!"

As his foot left cover, he fired.

Zzzzzzz!

Flames roared. Arasaka's sentry turrets, as if their servos had seized up, locked in place—disabled. A gap opened in the defense grid.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! A series of controlled detonations tore through Arasaka's fortified line. The sentry post and several heavy infantry were reduced to a spray of blood and gore, then crumpled into silence.

Though Arasaka's counterfire had weakened, their heavy machine guns and smart-detonation shotguns still wove a deadly curtain of fire. Within seconds, multiple Militech operatives fell. Even Strike One, their field commander, took a few rounds.

This wasn't some back-alley skirmish. These were armor-piercing heavy rounds. Combat gear shredded, subdermal plating caved in, titanium ribs fractured, and patches of electrified synthetic flesh were blasted off in chunks.

Smoke choked the air. Bullets rained. Torn limbs and shattered cybernetics littered the ground. Chaos reigned.

Meanwhile, in a private comms channel unknown to the front-line grunts, a heated argument flared between the hacker unit's commander and his higher-ups.

[Bird of South Africa' calling 'Nest'—requesting permission to withdraw. Situation rapidly deteriorating. Intelligence was faulty. Arasaka has stationed elite security forces in addition to Johannesburg's local garrison. Covert op is now a failed assault.]

[Denied. Continue the mission. Hold for five more minutes. Vela Adelheid is en route. Our foreign sources risked everything to reveal this. The extreme secrecy and high-security presence only confirm the value of the Sonnentreppe Project. We must retrieve or destroy it. With the scale of investment made, results are non-negotiable.]

[But... we're not equipped to face Vela Adelheid's individual combat capability...]

[No buts. Execute the order! You have five minutes before she arrives. In that time, get the Sonnentreppe Flower—or ensure its destruction!]

...

The bloody firefight had now raged for over ninety seconds.

"Shit, Arasaka's bastards just won't die! Dammit... reinforcements are five minutes away... another unit down. We're out of time! Blow the lab!"

BOOM!

A massive explosion ripped through the research facility, muffling gunfire with its overwhelming shockwave.

Waves of heat and force rolled outward, flame and smoke bursting from cracked walls. The air was choked with the stench of scorched metal and burned flesh.

Cough, cough...

Knocked down by the blastwave, an Arasaka squad leader groaned beneath collapsed rubble. Ironically, the fallen wall had formed a crude triangle of protection, sparing his life.

As he blinked open his eyes, he saw a hellscape of fire. The improvised defense line had been obliterated. His team—along with standard security personnel—were little more than charred fragments mixed in with the molten husk of an auto-turret.

"F*ck... how much restricted Militech ordnance did those bastards smuggle in... cough..."

The heat scorched his eyes and burned his augmented respiratory system. But what truly seized his focus was behind him—the lab door, blown clean open.

Inside, devastation.

Shattered ceiling tiles dangled sparking wires, live cables bursting into miniature arcs of lightning. A cracked specimen enclosure revealed scorched, electrocuted, or concussed lab mice scattered across the floor.

Most damning of all, his semi-functional analysis implant confirmed it: the DNA synthesis and analysis rig had been critically damaged. Viscous, pale fluid now leaked from its warped steel casing.

"The Sonnentreppe Flower sample... No—this belongs to Saburo-sama... we can't let those Militech savages take it..."

Suppressing his body's shock and spasms using his pain editor, he dragged himself from the rubble.

Even as shrapnel ripped his pants and flayed the skin of his legs, he crawled toward the lab.

"For Saburo-sama..."

He was a member of the Arasaka estate's security forces. As a child, Arasaka had taken him from the orphanage, raised him, outfitted him with free cyberware, granted him the power to frequent high-end dollhouses, and allowed him to walk among the elite. That was why—he must repay Saburo-sama!

"As long as Supervisor Russell survives, the experiment can be restarted..."

He crawled closer to the machine, slumping in the puddle of thick fluid dripping from it. In the mirror-like surface of the lab's polished walls and floors, he glimpsed his reflection.

He reached up and touched his half-destroyed, bloody face, smearing the sample fluid onto himself. His helmet and visor had been blown off partially, revealing reinforced teeth, synthetic flesh, and exposed cybernetic components that sparked and crackled.

Bang! Bang!

Screams from the remaining defenders and the dwindling gunfire outside told him what he already feared. To keep the experimental results from enemy hands, he had to destroy the sample. Reaching for the high-explosive grenade at his waist, he was about to pull the pin—

Thunk!

A railgun slug punched clean through his heart.

"F*ck, that Arasaka mutt almost pulled it off."

A Militech operative with a severed arm staggered into the lab, finishing the job with a few extra rounds, then kicked the now-slumped corpse off the console.

"Whew..."

Looking at the dark-red flower in the shattered containment chamber, he exhaled slowly.

"Take the flower—leave Arasaka with nothing. Grab the data. We've got less than two minutes." He moved toward the terminal as a technician followed, trailing a direct neural uplink.

"Sir, this will take time. The storage chip was partially destroyed. I might only be able to retrieve a fragment from the backup sectors..."

"F*ck it. Get what you can. With the flower, we'll figure out the rest later."

He crouched by the broken DNA synthesizer, eyeing the fluid dripping from its cracked housing. "Who's carrying a medical-grade containment unit?"

Two more Militech operatives arrived with cases, all focused on transferring the Sonnentreppe Flower and collecting the unknown fluid. But then, a sickening crack broke the silence—like bones grinding.

"Now's not the time to relax, you..."

He frowned and turned—

"AAAHHHHH!"

The technician was tackled by the supposedly dead Arasaka soldier—the one with a gaping hole in his chest and chunks missing from his torso. The man bit into the tech's neck with horrifying crunching and gnawing sounds.

"For... Saburo-sama..."

He raised his head—bleeding eyes, shredded face, jaws full of meat and gore-covered cyber-jaws.

A guttural, inhuman screech escaped him. His entire body twitched unnaturally as he launched toward the one-armed 'Strike One.'

BOOM!!

Blood sprayed everywhere. The corpse fell—headless.

"Holy shit... scared the hell out of me. What the f*ck is this thing?!"