While waiting for the meal, Vera listened to news from Night City while receiving updates from Arasaka's bioengineering department.
Her Solaris Staircase Project laboratory was being rapidly assembled and completed, along with the Sun Stairflowers brought back from Johannesburg, the Progenitor Virus samples, and that infected test subject.
The relevant defense forces were the same. To prevent another terrorist attack like the one in Johannesburg, a dedicated security and defense unit for the project laboratory had been established with a fixed staffing structure.
Oh, and the online war of public opinion was lively as ever.
The Johannesburg incident had exploded in popularity worldwide. Vera had announced a citywide lockdown and massive manhunt, then dusted herself off and returned to Tokyo, but the local branch obviously could not let it go. They investigated like mad. Whether they found anything or not, Militech was the prime suspect!
Thus, Arasaka's propaganda machine began to exert itself.
Claims such as Militech harboring sinister intentions, funding terrorist organizations, killing Arasaka employees and bombing Arasaka factories, being an evil corporation plotting to launch the Fifth Corporate War, and threatening world peace began to clamor across the net.
Militech naturally responded with the classic triple denial: it wasn't us, we didn't do it, stop talking nonsense.
They claimed Arasaka's evidence was fabricated, its assumptions invalid, and that the personnel involved were neither active Militech employees nor directly affiliated staff, but retired external contractors. And even if what Arasaka said was true, did that mean Arasaka itself had done nothing wrong?
Why had those third-party contract workers and outside hires targeted Arasaka after their terms ended? Wasn't it because Arasaka had done things too outrageous for heaven and earth to tolerate? Otherwise, why would people who had already retired still come after them?
Then Soshikah, which had been