Arasaka Yorinobu's answer is ruthless, but it is precisely what Rocky expects.
Rocky does not argue. He splits from Yorinobu, takes Rebecca, and heads for the Mikoshi access.
They reach the elevator on the lower levels. The car rises from below, and the doors part on a squad of fully armed Arasaka troops. Unlike the black-clad patrols in the rooftop jungle, these soldiers wear white, the colors of the Kiji faction. They surge out to retake the atrium.
Ascension guns speak first. The elevator fills with muzzle flash and smoke. When the shooting stops, the car floor is slick. No one in white finishes the charge.
Rocky guides Rebecca in. This lift cannot reach the Mikoshi directly, so he taps the floor for Arasaka's hacker operations center.
The doors open on another checkpoint. Guards line the corridor. This is the tier closest to the Mikoshi interface, one of the few places Arasaka Saburo keeps under direct loyalist control. Even Yorinobu cannot reshuffle who holds these floors.
The posted soldiers spot the two intruders and start to raise rifles.
Color ripples through the air. Space cuts like glass. Lucy steps out of a blink.
"Leave this part to me. You two go to the shrine."
Her will seizes the room. Rifles freeze mid-arc. Bodies lift, joints pulled tight by invisible force. Pressure closes like a vise—armor crumples. Bones give. When the last body hits the floor, the corridor is quiet again.
This is Arasaka Tower's network control center. The building's host lives here. Once it is wired into the Ascension net, Lissandra can wrap the entire tower in one sweep and pull every byte that matters.
Rocky nods to Lucy. Rebecca adds, "Do your thing."
Lucy answers with a short nod and floats forward on a cushion of force, bullets sparking uselessly against her shield as she clears the rest of the floor.
Confident she has it handled, Rocky pushes deeper with Rebecca and punches the call for the other lift, the one that drops to the Mikoshi interface.
The car opens on another reaction team. Sparks burst out of the backs of helmets as their occipital implants overload. Bodies fold, smoke trailing from the fused ports.
A voice arrives in Rocky's ear, steady and cool.
{ I've seized network control for the entire building. Your route is clear. }
Across Arasaka Tower, hostile squads die before Ascension's robots can even reach them. Rocky steps over the fallen without breaking stride. When Alt connected to a host, she could collapse a fortress by herself. Lissandra's reach is no less.
He follows the route until the room opens on a device that glows the color of banked coals. This is Night City's interface to Mikoshi, Arasaka's most guarded data fortress. The central server sits in orbit on an Arasaka satellite, air-gapped from any public net. The only way in is through buried interfaces like this, hidden and defended so well that hackers and AIs have obsessed over them for years without ever touching the real thing.
The interface glows in front of him. Rocky does not hesitate. He slots in and connects.
…
Elsewhere, just before Rocky links in.
Tokyo, Arasaka Headquarters.
Deep underground, in a hidden Mikoshi room, Saburo's blue projection stands in front of the console.
"Yorinobu. Ungrateful wolf. I knew you would do this. You butcher the board, conspire with Ascension, and lock Hanako in her own rooms. Bold."
His voice is flat, but the anger under it is plain.
"Deploy at once to Night City. Capture Yorinobu. Do not harm him. I still need his body."
His diehards wait beneath the hologram, the loyal cadre that answers to no faction but Saburo himself. Their reports have kept him fully informed even while he lives inside the data fortress. He knows what Yorinobu has done, and he knows what the other ambitious players are trying to do under the cover of the chaos. It is time to act.
"Sir," they answer as one.
New alerts hit their feeds. Faces tighten. Before the lead operative can speak, Saburo's projection stutters and vanishes.
…
Back in Mikoshi.
As Rocky's connection stabilizes, Lissandra threads through the same interface. Mikoshi space unfolds: a colossal fortress in the Net. Rocky stands in a courtyard laid out in pure Japanese style, quiet as a temple and humming with invisible power.