Infinity, progressing from Arasaka

"Plan a fast route for me that goes directly to the rooftop helipad."

Having said that, less than a minute after getting up, Vera, who had already changed into her most suitable clothes for strenuous exercise, rushed out of the suite.

Unfortunately, most of her expensively customized war-grade personal weaponry is stored in Night City.

After all, she went to Tokyo for the past few months to study, not to do fieldwork. There was no need for her to do anything. It's impossible that she foresaw everything that would happen later. Being fully armed would definitely not be appropriate.

She was responding to the attack 'passively,' not actively engaging the enemy.

Vera had a premonition and was mentally prepared for this sudden attack.

Whoever attacked them couldn't possibly be Saburo Arasaka, and if it really was Yoriyuki Arasaka who planned it all, then he was playing a much bigger game than Vera had anticipated... She had to think more highly of Yoriyuki.

Ta-da!

The corridor was in chaos.

Whether it was hotel security or secret agents from other departments of Arasaka who had followed them, Vera didn't have time to tell. She entered the empty direct elevator, and soon Vera led them to the top-floor helipad.

An armored levitation vehicle belonging to the hotel's security personnel had been waiting for some time.

Vera boarded the car, speaking sparingly, "Let's go, to the industrial park."

hum...bum...

The vector thrusters roared, and the hovercraft took off, accelerating and heading at full speed towards the Arasaka Industrial Park.

Inside the cabin, as soon as she settled in, Vera grabbed the high-end individual protective armor and weapons provided by the hotel security. This combat gear included a thickened aramid combat suit, a bulletproof vest with double-layered plates in a women's style that conformed to human physiology, shoulder armor, knee pads, combat boots, and a high-tech helmet.

Hmm, it's a bit tight.

The standard-sized ones certainly won't fit as well as Vera's custom-made ones, but I'll make do with these for tonight.

Vera glanced at the weapon a few times, then turned her head away.

Sigh, hotel security, don't make things difficult for them. Their role is different; they emphasize defense, with defensive sentry turrets and mechs. These individual weapons are too lightweight and ineffective. Let's wait for our security colleagues at the Johannesburg branch to send us more suitable equipment.

"Only this one works."

Vera picked out a large, rugged, and affordable 'Kill' shotgun. Just then, a friendly communication call came in. "Commander Russell, we have arrived." On the cockpit screen, three airborne armored vehicles flew confidently over the Arasaka Building in Johannesburg.

"Very good, prepare for the handover."

The hotel's armored airships are clearly more geared towards self-defense, with a more flamboyant and luxurious appearance, and are also smaller than the robust armored airships of the security department, which are equipped with external cannons, rocket launchers, and decoy munition bays.

The two vehicles hovered in parallel, the hatches opened, and just as Vera was about to jump into the combat-type armored airborne vehicle, beep beep beep! The onboard AI issued an alarm, "Damn it! Sir, we've been locked on—!" A soldier from Arasaka cried out in terror.

Her combat skills and practical experience are far inferior to those of her subordinates in Night City.

Vera thought to herself, and then she moved.

"caught you!"

A deafening boom!

With exaggerated leg strength and body coordination, Vera flipped forward from the edge of the unfolded hatch of the airship, bending her knees. In the instant her body flipped 180 degrees to face the ground, she straightened her legs, strengthened her tendons and ankles, and charged up with her legs!

With a piercing roar that seemed to push through the air, even the armored hovercar tilted instantly, its pale golden hair swaying as its dark silhouette shot out like an arrow.

Just then, whoosh!

From a dark, chaotic corner of the city, a guided rocket, its flames flashing, streaked through the air like a serpent biting a flying car, its trajectory intersecting with the falling figure.

"It's that bitch from Night City!"

In an instant, the military infiltration team, hidden in the corners of the city, waiting for an opportunity to ambush the enemy and create chaos, discovered Vera falling.

"Quickly, detonate it!"

Beside the man-portable air defense missile operator, his partner, holding a rangefinder, spoke in a deep voice, but there was no response to "Hey, you..." He turned around and was shocked to see a red data stream flashing rapidly in the operator's prosthetic eye, and sparks flying from the interface behind his ear to the crystal chip. The electronic countermeasures unit had clearly been breached.

At that moment, Vera, in mid-air, reached out and touched the missile body, gently flicking and pushing it. The guidance program failed, the terminal correction failed, and the missile crashed into the surrounding buildings with a deafening roar! A burst of intense fire erupted.

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. He had just made a move to raise his gun when Vera's terrifying figure, wielding a large-caliber shotgun like a javelin, was already close at hand.

"Sometimes, highly intelligent systems are easier to crack than mechanical countdown timers."

Vera's cold voice pierced their psychological defenses like a bullet.

The same applies in physics.

Clang—Boom!

The sound of metal striking stone rang out, and the ground of the entire dark alley crumbled. The old concrete walls of the buildings cracked in response, dust flew everywhere, and even the metal trash cans in the corners were shaken into the air. Blood mist mixed with smoke and dust debris rose high into the air, obscuring the vision of the people lurking nearby.

"Ken?! You guys..."

The flying pebbles crashed down, and the spies on guard nearby widened their eyes in surprise. In the dust, a slender figure, stained with gold, slowly straightened up.

With a cold expression, Vera pulled her foot out of the slightly sticky ground.

slap.

She looked down at the figure beneath her: a man with a bent, broken missile launcher, a jumble of mangled cybernetic implants, and a lower body missing and connected to a pool of blood, while the upper body was a bloody mess, with artificial muscles and subcutaneous armor torn off, exposing a broken sternum and pulsating organs.

Buzz. Vera's eyes continued to flash with an orange-red light.

Intrusion, rapid cracking, target location.

boom!

Torn flesh and blood, the spiderweb-like cracks in the ground were riddled with over a dozen more bullet holes, reeking of gunpowder. Vera looked away. "Eight left. A standard combat squad. Ha, you've gone from North America to South Africa looking for trouble. I'm truly flattered..."

Military technology, an old adversary. She rose to power in Night City, North America, and it could be said that half of her achievements came from exploiting military technology.

"Damn it! That bitch Arasaka..."

In the alley corner, a burly black man carrying an MA70HB light machine gun had barely fired his first shot when his prosthetic eye was invaded. It didn't need to go completely black; just a momentary lapse in vision, and thud! He spun around and crashed hard into the cracked wall, blood gushing from the back of his head.

Withdrawing her hand, Vera cocked her other gun and pulled the trigger, firing at his upper body with a bang! Another shred of flesh.

"Aaaaaah... Pfft—!"

Then, with a casual punch, she shattered the subcutaneous armor and internal organs of the man who had spewed out two mantis knives. Vera, like the Grim Reaper wielding his scythe, plunged into the midst of the reacting infiltration agents, leaving behind a silent scene of tearing flesh amidst curses and screams.

zizi...

Less than half a minute.

"Johannesburg branch, this is Vera Adelheid. The coordinates of some of the attackers have been cracked and uploaded. Ignore the explosion points and don't let them lead you by the nose. Hunt down their infiltration teams and kill as many of their personnel as possible. We must not let them retreat so easily... Counterterrorism and riot control team, follow me to the industrial park."

------

PS: One more chapter to come.

Chapter 056 Resident Evil, but Cyberpunk 2075

Arakasa Industrial Park, Johannesburg.

The continuous roar of high-energy automatic weapons and the rapid explosions shook the buildings in the biological research and testing area.

The glass curtain wall emitted a piercing shattering sound; deformed factory equipment, collapsed pillars and walls, twisted metal doors, and damaged automated combat mechs...

"She has already set off, and one of our delaying and interception teams has been destroyed... Update: two teams have been destroyed."

Rat-a-tat-tat! Bullets struck the wall and pillars, scattering gravel. Sitting on the Arasaka armed robot whose head had been blown off, two soldiers wearing t-shirts and heavy combat suits exchanged brief conversations as they changed magazines.

"Bitch, no wonder I heard that Adam Hammer, that cybernetic monster, praised her during the battle. That monster can praise people? Turns out he was praising a monster too! A monster with breasts and no real thing down there."

During the conversation, their eyes, clad in tactical goggles, flashed with data streams.

That was a clip their hackers had taken from the last battle footage of their dead comrades. In the first-person perspective of the dreamlike experience, their comrades were almost unilaterally crushed. Whenever the woman appeared in front of them, the image would freeze, followed by flying blood and scattered limbs.

“Hiss…” exclaimed a senior agent from the Military Technology Africa office.

He was not part of the military science faction stationed in North America, and Vera Adelheid Russell of Arasaka had only risen to prominence in recent years, which was not a long time. He had not yet been transferred to the Americas and the Pacific Rim for missions. This mission to seize or destroy the "Stairway to the Sun" was the first time he had faced Vera.

When faced with the pressure of knowing that the other party could come and kill your whole family in less than ten minutes, even someone as experienced in African affairs as him felt a chill run down his spine.

“Fuck, she’s gotten stronger again…” This was the murmur of a military field agent from North America.

His words left his colleagues in the African region looking at each other in bewilderment. What was that?

"Her computing power and reaction speed are even more exaggerated."

As an elite agent who understood the enemy's fighting style and had watched their combat videos many times, he knew very well that Vera's coordination and reflexes during her South American field mission more than half a year ago were nowhere near as strong as they were this time!

Vera Adelheid's fighting style is completely different from Adam Hammer's.

If the latter represents the brutal beauty of cybernetic prosthetics, then the former is implicit, embodying the perfect combination of human biotechnology and cybernetic prosthetics, a beautiful and elegant understated beauty.

It is equally deadly.

click!

He loaded the magazines. "No time left, everyone, charge! If we can't get it in the last 7 minutes, blow up the lab!" His voice was deep, his fist clenched, making no attempt to hide the nanofiber coating and subcutaneous armor implants on his thick arms.

"Hacker team, this is Assault 1. Focus on the Puppet Virus. I need you to disable those Arasaka dogs' sentry turrets... Hmm, wait for my signal."

With a clack, he stretched his thick neck, picked up the VST-37 scorching gun produced by Russian high-tech military industry, pulled the lever to chamber a round, then grabbed the high-tech military industry T40 Hurricane rocket launcher that had been loaded, and decisively moved forward in the next moment...

"attack!"

The moment he stepped out of the rear bunker, he pulled the trigger of the rocket launcher.

sizzle-

The Arasaka sentry turret, which was spitting out flames, malfunctioned as if a steering gear was not properly lubricated, leaving a gap in the firepower network.

Boom! A series of directional explosions tore apart the bunker defenses of Arasaka Garrison, and several heavily armed soldiers on the watchtower were instantly blown into a bloody mess before collapsing limply to the ground.

Although Arasaka's counter-fire was weakened, he still wove a dense fire net with heavy machine guns and smart detonating shotguns, knocking several military soldiers to the ground in an instant. Even No. 1, who was in charge of the assault, was hit by several bullets.

The firepower here is unlike the mosquito bites of street fights; it's all armor-piercing heavy warheads. Combat suits are torn apart, leather armor collapses, titanium ribs collapse, and large chunks of electrically charged artificial flesh are blown away.

Amidst the smoke and fire, bullets flew freely, flesh was torn apart, and prosthetic limbs, dripping with a sweet, metallic liquid, flew about, blurring everything into a hazy, indistinct image.