Infinite, Progress Begins with Arasaka

Her biological mother, Ms. Mia Russell, was a mid-level manager in Arasaka North America Administration, overseeing meetings, banquets, and other diplomatic etiquette occasions.

After Arasaka was defeated in the Fourth Corporate War in 2023 and lost control over Night City, it had been steadily building its strength, seeking to return to Night City and restore its preeminent position in North America.

Taking advantage of the conflict between New America and the Free States during the Unification War in the late sixties, Arasaka supported Night City and the North American Free State, regaining the city's favor. It ultimately returned to Night City in 2070, and Vera's biological parents were Arasaka heroes of that war.

They died in the line of duty because of it.

The present Arasaka America Division Night City Headquarters was reorganized from the department where they had once worked.

Especially in the Security Department and the administration, quite a few veteran employees had once been Vera's parents' subordinates, political allies, colleagues, or superiors.

Though everyone knew Arasaka and the major corporations were cold-blooded, corporations always wanted to play both sides.

After all, Vera's parents had not been fired, nor had they come from notorious, dirty-work departments that offended people, such as the Counter-Intelligence Department or Intelligence Department. After returning to Night City, Arasaka also needed to set examples for new employees and keep drawing a pie for them.

So Vera's cheap parents were held up as model meritorious employees.

Vera inherited every asset left behind by her deceased parents.

It was not as though no one had coveted them, but Vera was no ordinary child. She was not the original model—at least not in soul.

With no one left to shield her from the storm, she clearly understood her situation: like a child carrying gold through a marketplace.

Forced into that position, and still unable to grasp the "Heaven's Gift" that belonged to her, Vera could only turn to her greatest backer at the time—and her only way out—Arasaka.

She expressed her desire to enroll in the newly established Arasaka Tower Academy. With the help of Cheap Dad's friend—at least an uncle who had once been invited to Cheap Dad's home as a guest and had given her birthday presents—she went through official company channels and placed her stocks, funds, and other assets under the company's management.

Until she could stand on her own, Vera only needed to collect the interest.

Naturally, that uncle also took his cut in euros.

After that, Vera chose to follow in her father's footsteps and enter the Arasaka Group's Security Department.

That choice caused no stir. For Arasaka, fathers dying and children inheriting their roles, with the same profession passed down through generations, was an everyday occurrence.

What mattered was bloodline.

After enrolling, Vera quickly displayed remarkable talent:

Exceptional learning ability, inheriting her parents' aptitude for quickly grasping security and administrative work; an interest and talent in biotechnology; assessment scores with virtually no weaknesses. She was placed on the Elite Student List and became an Arasaka Reserve Senior Executive Candidate, subject to further evaluation...

Arasaka's Night City division immediately realized that Vera was no useless child. She was highly likely to inherit all of her father's political legacy and rise to prominence!

If Vera had been useless, or merely a pretty vase unable to recover from the blow—

Company people would not have minded devouring her whole and taking everything her family had left behind. The warmth displayed before Vera by those smiling, fawning Corporate Dogs would have turned into the harsh reality of bare bones and the icy chill of cybernetic metal.

Clearly, Vera was not. She demonstrated her value.

Her background was clean, her connections were solid, and she was one of their own. She was reliable, highly worth cultivating, cost-effective, and the only daughter of an old superior, old friend, or capable subordinate. They had to look after her somehow.

At times like this, they put on another face: the world was not about fighting and killing, but about relationships and social graces.

Fine. There was nothing more to say. Accept her.

"She has her father's bearing."

That was the comment Vera received most often at the academy.

So, when Vera returned from Arasaka Tokyo Headquarters after completing her advanced studies and graduating at the top of the Arasaka Academy Class of 2073, an internship? What internship!

She reported for work in the morning and was officially hired before noon!

With a wave of their hands, the heads of the Security Department gave her a junior but substantive post in the General Security Bureau. One of Cheap Dad's former subordinates was assigned to look after her in particular, teaching her experience and precautions.

One promotion a year, rising straight through the ranks.

Before reaching Cheap Dad's position, so long as Vera did not make any major mistakes, she had no need to worry about her promotions being blocked.

If there was a ceiling, it was higher than Jenkins in the Counter-Intelligence Department, but lower than Abernathy, Director of Special Operations.

This was considered an unwritten rule within the company, called Intergenerational Attenuation.

Those political resources had ultimately been inherited by Vera. Reaching her father's position required real ability, which Vera was not worried about in the slightest. But if she wanted to go further and break through Cheap Dad's ceiling, she would need to work the system herself, earn more merit, and create more opportunities.

That was why Vera was especially grateful to her biological parents.

In this fucked-up world, in this garbage-heap city of Night City, they had left her such abundant "assets."

If she had truly been born an ordinary Night City civilian without the backing of an "old corporate dog," she really would have had no choice but to put down.

Leaving aside other paths, even if her abilities had been roughly the same and she had joined Arasaka, she would probably still be stuck in the assessment period.

If she attended Arasaka Academy, she would most likely have been assigned to the general academy for earning extra money. Many confidential courses and pieces of information would not have been easy to access. After graduation, she would either be tightening screws in an Arasaka automated factory or be tossed into some unknown department to become an insignificant nobody.

Trying to make something of herself would have been difficult, difficult, difficult.

"Phew..."

After rinsing her mouth, Vera stripped naked and soaked herself in a pristine, stylish bathtub.

Once she had quickly freshened up, she went to the walk-in closet and, out of habit, put on the women's underwear she had long since become intimately familiar with and no longer found particularly interesting.

After covering the fair skin between her lower abdomen and neck, Vera tapped the wardrobe with her fingers and selected one outfit from among the matching suits and uniforms of similar styles.

Even after twenty years, she still could not accept clothing that was too revealing.

Because of her work environment, most of her wardrobe consisted of uniforms.

The rest were either formal dresses or suits for everyday wear.

After changing into a black shirt patterned with dark red maple leaves, putting on suit trousers and a tie, fastening an aramid bulletproof vest, and hanging a custom pistol holster beneath her arm, Vera stretched her waist. She then pulled open the nearest drawer. Arasaka Kenshin, Yukimura, Militech Omaha, Kang Tao Chao Style, Tsunami Nue... it was packed full.

She also kept submachine guns, assault rifles, and shotguns at home, but they took up too much space and were stored in a dedicated gun room.

She chose her usual Militech M-76E Omaha. After checking it over, Vera slipped it into her underarm holster.

It was small enough.

It was a precision-made version loaded with tungsten alloy armor-piercing rounds, and its lethality was no weaker than a machine gun's.

Then again, if she really ran into a cyberpsycho charging straight at her, it would probably be better than nothing at most. But... she couldn't go without one. What if it came in handy?

Feeling no discomfort whatsoever about using Militech equipment despite being with Arasaka, Vera had no such taboos. Practicality came first. She grabbed a dark lightweight suit jacket with high padded shoulders, made from bulletproof material, and headed out.

Barefoot, she stepped across the soft carpet, passed through the hallway, and picked up her work briefcase from the living room. Through the displays inside the house, Vera saw the timer on a distant electronic screen:

2074/5/27, 7:29

The timing was just right.

Following a habit left over from her previous life, she put on cotton slippers and walked down the suspended staircase from the second floor. Passing through the hall and entrance foyer, she pulled a simple pair of dark office shoes from the shoe cabinet, changed into them, and stamped her feet.

The timer ticked over: 7:30.

Beep beep—

Knock knock.

The reminder chime and knocking sounded at the same time.

"Come in."

As she picked up a silver pin bearing the Arasaka Clover emblem from the long foyer table and fastened it to her left lapel, Vera, already aware of the visitor's identity, sent a command through her artificial eyes to open the apartment's smart blast-resistant armored double entrance door.

"Chief Vera."

Once the signal identification passed, the apartment door opened with the faint meshing sounds of bearings and metal.

Two burly, towering men whose entire bodies had undergone extensive cybernetic conversion stepped in, one Black and one white. As the Black giant took Vera's work briefcase, he said, "Chief Vera, the vehicle is ready."

"Mm."

Protected by the two hulking men, one Black and one white, Vera stepped outside. Beyond the small courtyard at the apartment entrance, a Thraxis 388 Jefferson stretch luxury sedan bearing the Arasaka logo was parked conspicuously by the roadside.

Sitting inside the armored neo-militarist business vehicle, Vera silently propped her chin on her hand and gazed out at the corporate community beyond the window.

It was an upper-middle-class neighborhood in a prime location, with pleasant scenery, guaranteed property security, and NCPD surveillance at all times. It was also the property her parents in this life had left her.

Before long, the vehicle started moving. The white bodyguard drove while the Black bodyguard sat in the front passenger seat. In a cautious, orderly manner, he offered his congratulations. "Chief Vera, I heard about what happened in Rio de Janeiro. Congratulations. You should be riding in a Holy Sword soon."

"Thank you." Vera smiled.

The Holy Sword was a luxury executive model of hovercar. He was flattering her, implying that she would soon receive another promotion.

She really was looking forward to it—her first hovercar in this life.

Well, the hover armored vehicles she rode while carrying out security services and policing operations didn't count.

After enjoying the thought for a moment, Vera shifted her attention to the virtual screen grid built into her artificial eyes. Opening the virtual documents, she began reviewing the matters she would need to handle once she arrived at Arasaka Tower, sorting them by priority.

"The Security Department's work has been handed over for now. If nothing unexpected happens, I should get a few peaceful days... Executive Michiko, hm? She's quite invested in Dangerous Girl's recovery and rehabilitation business."

"Looks like I'll need to keep fleecing Umbrella..."

The So-Called "Heaven's Gift"

"..."

The vehicle sped along smoothly. Vera reclined against the soft rear seat, quietly staring out the window with narrowed eyes, seemingly contemplating the contents of the work meeting.

In a dimension unnoticed by either Arasaka bodyguard, Vera's eyes flashed as brilliantly as stars for an instant.

That was not a radiance any artificial-eye implant possessed.

From Vera's perspective, time around her seemed to have come to a halt.

The movements of the objects around her became incredibly slow, and her field of vision sank, as though her soul had fallen into an endless deep sea in that instant. Yet there was no suffocation or discomfort whatsoever. It felt like returning to her true home, bringing only lightness and joy.

In the blink of an eye, Vera gazed into the depths of her soul—

A sunken cavity formed from ripples like black-and-white ink wash lay quietly embedded in the void. Dim specks of light and threadlike veins flowed within it, combining in an orderly yet traceless manner.

There was no concept of direction here, nor of length, width, or height.

It was like another side of the world, one that ordinary people could not perceive, seen only by madmen and the mentally ill.

No one had ever told Vera what this was, yet she instinctively knew that it was the reason she had been reincarnated and transported here after death.

At the far end of the unknown void, luminous veins like winding galaxies traced vastly different marks before Vera's eyes. Some intertwined, interwove, and coiled at certain points; others stretched endlessly toward their separate ends, only to abruptly stop at an unreachable shore.

They were hazy and indistinct, illusory, yet real.

Vera looked toward the vein closest to herself, and the only one that was solid.

Fleecing Umbrella.

How was she supposed to fleece them?

That was how she kept taking.

Her own heaven-sent gift.

"Umbrella... the byproducts of B.O.W. experiments, the ancillary results of T-Virus research—there really are quite a few useful things in pharmaceuticals, medicine, and life engineering."

The threads shifted constantly, but the intense summons within them allowed Vera to calmly focus all her thoughts on the one solidified "strand"—

Resident Evil.

For the time being, that was how Vera herself labeled it to distinguish it from the others.

"Resident Evil."

North America, Colorado, Raccoon City.

The engine shut off, and the black executive car bearing a red-and-white umbrella logo on its plate came to a steady stop at the building entrance.

After a bodyguard in black took the initiative to open the door for her, Vera stepped out. Looking up, she gazed at the Umbrella Raccoon City Building before her with an oddly unreadable expression.

"Hi, hi... Got it. Got it—the boss's Dangerous Girl business... Umbrella Group's technology in rehabilitation and recuperation alone will be enough to keep 'us' fed for quite a while. I'll get my hands on it."

It was Vera—the very same Vera. Other than the absence of any traces of cybernetic implants on her body or face, and the fact that her gray-blue little suit was more businesslike, lacking the gloomy oppression and technological feel of an Arasaka uniform, she was exactly the same.

'We' meant me.

After communicating with her other self in a way outsiders could never know, Vera turned her attention to the Umbrella colleagues approaching her, some dressed in formal suits, others wearing researcher ID badges over white lab coats.

A fittingly polite, false welcoming smile—the trademark expression worn by hosts, politicians, and businesspeople in Western society—bloomed across her pretty face as Vera courteously returned each greeting.