Rocky linked Marvin to the terminal and queued the base training suite. The packages came from the system expansion set, cheap and plentiful, covering combat, tech, and daily-life tracks. "Training" worked like a software upgrade: finish the install, and the unit retained the skills. Basic combat, bare boxing, basic piloting—Rocky had stacked the list with care. As the program spun up, the usually lively Marvin went quiet, and Rocky turned to his next move. Marvin's first-generation unit was a trial. The robot army was the goal.
Power Stimulant plant. Night City's North Industrial Zone.
Construction noise rolled off several buildings around the factory. Yeshi Group's heavy crew worked without pause. A new perimeter wall climbed skyward, drawing a hard ring around the plant and the adjacent blocks. Rocky had started laying the groundwork the moment he decided to mass-produce robots. Ascension Technology bought out the neighboring facilities, and this whole tract would become Ascension's industrial park.
The lab could not shoulder that volume. Marvin units needed line capacity. So did their equipment and weapons. Lab throughput alone would never keep up. Factory mass production was not optional; it was the path forward. Ascension's footprint sat outside the city center, but the company had become a star in Night City, and expansion on this scale did not slip past corporate eyes.
Arasaka Tower, 33rd floor.
V read reports at his desk. Since passing Jenkins's test, he had been trained hard and raised fast. The advanced Soldier Serum deal had sealed it. As a point on that acquisition, V delivered value and pulled more voice inside Counterintelligence. Today, he was the de facto number two. Power meant pressure. He rubbed his temples, let the spike of fatigue fade, and returned to the stack.
"Ascension Technology factory expansion. Plan to establish the Ascension Technology Industrial Park."
No surprise that the file reached him quickly. Ascension mattered to Arasaka. As the source of advanced soldier serum, it had been the focus of Counterintelligence from day one. V counted Rocky as a friend, but that did not matter at this altitude. Even worse for Arasaka, Ascension's internal counter-espionage ran tight. Spies never touched the core. To date, covert ops had yielded nothing useful. Over time, Arasaka eased off. Why pry, when deliveries of advanced serum arrived on schedule and no fires started? Ascension's new motion, though, pulled V's attention back.
He pulled another file: a memo from Yamamoto Daisho, an Ascension insider.
Ascension was preparing a press conference. Marketing had already moved. The event would cover Soldier Serum sales and include an undisclosed product. Specifics were unknown, but the keywords read "machinery" and "automation." The report was thin; access was limited. The serum angle made sense. Ascension had finished Arasaka's advanced-serum order not long ago; a wider sale of a lower-grade serum would follow. The other product might tie directly to the industrial park build. V set the Ascension folder aside and opened the following report.
[ Plan to obtain live-combat data for Cybertron ]
[ First-generation Cybertron prototype is complete and has passed preliminary tests. Live-combat data is lacking. Plan: lure Militech troops and test Cybertron's performance. After testing, an Arasaka recovery team will be deployed to sanitize the site and retrieve the prototype. ]
[ Test subject: Captain Bafil (NC126978) ]
[ Handler: Kate ]
V frowned. Cybertron was a priority program; he knew its outline. What surprised him was the speed. Even after the Tanaka kidnapping, the project had reached the live-test phase. The Tanaka case had touched Cybertron directly. As a lead on the program, Tanaka held a deep pool of data, was kidnapped, and had his files mined. Arasaka recovered his body and most of the data, but the breach was real. Even under that shadow, Cybertron moved ahead. Credit likely flowed back to the advanced Soldier Serum.
Cybertron was Arasaka's newest combat prosthetic suit. The name fit: huge when worn, a silhouette like a gorilla. It mounted a powerful hover-suspension drive and the most advanced gravity-control unit on the market, with the potential to become a battlefield finisher. Arasaka believed that once Cybertron shipped, it could suppress Militech. The cost: control. As a military-grade frame, its performance sat far above ordinary human limits. In trial after trial, most subjects lost their personalities before complete installation and slid into full cyberpsychosis. The rare soldier who reached full install still broke within minutes. That was why the project kept stalling.