#timeline tag

During this year, the two men have a series of wild encounters that get more and more insane the longer it goes on; it includes, but is unfortunately not limited to, Cassidy biting off a chunk of Seb’s ear, the two of them running over the highway, the two of them getting handcuffed together and chased by the NCPD then hit by a car right in front of the hospital, and Seb sensually licking blood off Cassidy’s face after having stabbed him when Cassidy wanted to strike at a concert Seb is visiting.

All of it comes to a sudden stop when Cassidy learns his client has been lying to him the whole time, and since he does not appreciate lying clients he ends up jumping sides and teams up with the Cobras to do some cleanup duty in Arasaka Special Programs. He and Seb work together to go after a list of targets to get the still ongoing projects mostly to a halt, while remaining in the shadows themselves as to not draw too much attention their way; and during this collaboration they meet several people from their past, bringing back both good and bad memories.

One of these people is Hanan Chisaka, the Head of Security at Special Programs. She ends up becoming the next test subject of Project Cobra after the last successful subjects, Xavier and Gabriel Mason, end up escaping in the midst of the chaos of Hanako Arasaka’s capture in mid-2077. Once Seb’s best friend and Cassidy’s mentor, she’s now forced to hunt the both of them down; but in their final confrontation she snaps out of the controlled mode Arasaka keeps her in and runs away with them, effectively leaving Special Programs without any test subjects. Another one of these people is Reid Bennett, Cassidy’s ex and ex-coworker back at MaxTac. He still works for the corporation and has been on an ongoing investigation into Arasaka Special Programs; seeing Cassidy alive and well, working together with Seb no less, piques his interest and he continues to look further into the case, which will cause him to make a very big mistake later on in the timeline.

By September 2078, Seb and Cassidy have successfully taken down all their planned targets and retreat back into the shadows, leaving Special Programs with many losses and no test subjects. With the APEX program discontinued a month earlier (incident discussed in this fic, which is a continuation of the in-game events), and Hanako Arasaka recovered and ready to take the corporation back from the hands of her corrupt brother, Special Programs ends up having to retreat for the time being, and cook up a new plan in the background.

Special Programs by this point is run by Andrew Colton, Alana Cartier, and Kaida Akiyama, three players who have been in the game for a long time already in the SERPENT projects’ runtime. Colton and Cartier are married– Cartier used to be married to Seb and cheated on him for a good amount of time when he was still at Arasaka– but their marriage is starting to fall apart. Akiyama has had to watch over Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne for a while during his chase after the Mason twins, which ended up with the twins dead and Hawthorne going into early retirement (Arasaka doesn’t know the twins faked their death and Ambrose is now dating one of them lol), and xe is now determined to help Colton and Cartier get Seb back into Arasaka so the projects can continue.

Cassidy’s initial plan was to leave as soon as the collaboration would come to an end, but he has found his place with the Cobras and instead ends up officially joining them.The next chapter in the story is a more laid-back and easygoing chapter, in which Cassidy learns to be part of real life again, and in which Seb learns to let people get close to him again after spending years trying to convince himself he doesn’t need any help. Over the course of a little over a year (all the way to November 2079), the two grow even closer than they had already done, going on gigs together and, you guessed it, slowly but surely falling in love until they inevitably end up together at the end of it.

Not long after the two get together, Reid returns into Cassidy’s life. He wants to try and be friends again and Cassidy gives him a second chance, though this soon enough turns out to have been a mistake, with Reid trying to create distance between Seb and Cassidy and then going as far as trying to sell Cassidy to Kang Tao (one of the few corporations that have been hunting Cassidy down for a while now) in exchange for his own freedom from MaxTac (where he would have otherwise been stuck at for probably the rest of his life). Naturally, Reid can’t watch Cassidy get tortured for long and leaks his location to the Cobras, who find and free Cassidy and take Reid into captivity instead– he does not get killed, but instead has to sit out some time at a safehouse somewhere in solitude, where he gets to decide what kind of person he wants to be in the future.

This brings us to Elysium; a gorgeous spaceship which was supposed to be a relatively cheap escape from reality for everyone who wanted a refreshing break from Earth, but through Arasaka sponsorship has become just another cash-grab project to compete with the Crystal Palace– and considering the megacorporation has its greasy hands all over it, the secret labs in the spaceship are used for a series of very unethical experiments. Naturally so, it would be the perfect place for Colton to continue his SERPENT projects without the risk of Hanako Arasaka finding out and shutting the place down. He sends forces up to Elysium (obviously after his other attempts at relocating the project to space have failed tremendously, having lost contact with every single crew in the smaller Arasaka stations in orbit around the planet), but since he’s not there himself his cousin (one of the CEOs of Elysium), Maxwell Crane, unbeknownst to Colton, takes control of the SERPENT projects in space instead. From the earlier linked Special Programs page: “Project Eryx used the technology of previous projects, but took a completely new approach in the hosts it used; rather than focusing on the human psyche it attempted to create a new type of cyborg which would lack the humanity that caused previous projects to fail. The Cobra chips were no longer used and the software was instead installed directly onto the host’s mainframe. The flexibility of the new hosts– more robot than human, and in some cases the entire human aspect was lacking altogether– allowed for experimentation with highly advanced cybernetic enhancements and military grade tech and upgrades, turning the test subjects– dubbed ‘prototypes’– into dangerous, unstoppable killing machines.”

Things settle down for Seb and Cassidy, but this moment of peace does not last long. In January 2081 the two find themselves traveling to the spaceship Elysium, to investigate a curious situation in the laboratories– they’ve been hired by Arasaka without their knowledge and it’s a setup to get Cassidy killed and Seb back in Cartier’s control.

While in space, they learn that the secret labs have suffered an outbreak of the above mentioned prototypes. They quickly connect the dots and realize Special Programs is back in the game, and they work together with security guards Aubrey Valentine and Leon dello Russo to try and fix the situation before it gets out of hand. Obviously this fails tremendously and Elysium ends up on a complete lockdown after a ship-wide outbreak, which is eventually contained in late March of that year, with CEO Maxwell Crane dead, leaving only his wife Kinsley Osborn behind.

Elysium continues to exist and is rebuilt after the crisis, and Kinsley Osborn can now finally turn it into the retreat it was always meant to be. Previously, most Elysium employees were to be stuck in space for the rest of their lives; however, with Arasaka out of the picture they are free to leave as they please, which results in a gigantic cut in total employee count in the months that follow.

Seb and Cassidy return to Night City and take Aubrey and Leon with them. Aubrey reunites with his sisters; Becca, James, and Rikki, and soon after his return to the city he opens an LGBTQ+ nightclub called Bodytalk with them, found Downtown, City Center, in June 2081. Not only is it a fun place to hang out at, it’s also his main hub as a fixer, and he starts a collaboration with the Cobras to get business going between the gang and the club; and soon enough it grows into a large and powerful network of connections, which is the foundation on which the rest of the stories are built.

After this point in time, many many more things happen but it would take me another hour or ten to go into full detail of all of that, so instead here’s a quick rundown of some of the other things that Bodytalk gets involved in:

Reid Bennett is handed over to Aubrey and he starts working at the club, and he becomes a very valued employee as well as a good friend to many now that he’s no longer fucking insane

Kaida Akiyama returns from Elysium and shows up to Hanan’s doorstep, to ask for her help with getting out of Arasaka for good; much later on, xe starts working for Bodytalk as well, in an attempt to put xyr past behind xem and become a better person

Urban Dynamite starts performing at the club regularly, and it becomes their home base

Luna Serratos, Cassidy’s ripperdoc friend from all the way back to killing era, gets involved in the Harbinger case from Maelstrom (one of the gang’s most feared members); turns out the Harbinger is in fact Reuben de la Rosa, a by then 22-year-old kid who has ended up in Luna’s care with his friend Noah Telavera after the two got caught up in an explosion. She requests the Cobras’ help with getting Maelstrom to let Reuben go

Officer Michele Diaz from Militech (who used to be Cassidy’s boss) is demoted following the lawsuits after the Elysium incident, and her investigation into the incident in hopes to get her job back leads her to Bodytalk; she begins threatening them and sends the whole club and their allies into uncertain times

Many people get married. There’s so many fucking guys here we went a little insane with the numbers but there’s several weddings and there’s a whole polycule going on too feel free to send asks about this if you’re interested

Cobra Cybernetics releases a new line of cyberware, which is incredibly buggy and dangerous to the public; it’s brought to the club’s attention and it makes them realize that Luiza Vidal (Seb’s sister), who not that long ago asked them to kill her husband (William Colton (Andrew’s brother), CEO of Cobra Cybernetics), has gone missing; they now need to get involved without getting the news out that they actually didn’t kill William and that he is still alive somewhere, while also balancing out dynamics between Biotechnica (angry at Cobra Cybernetics for stealing their designs) and Arasaka (the actual reason why Cobra Cybernetics’ designs look like Biotechnica’s designs, because William stole designs from Special Programs after halting their partnership after the Elysium incident, but these designs had been stolen by Arthur Jenkins from Biotechnica even BEFORE that to be able to hijack the European Space Council’s cybernetics following the Frankfurt incident. Are you still with me)

Vitali Dobrynin (fixer and main character from the in-game events storyline and the continuation of it; Vincent “V” Mayer’s boyfriend) ends up visiting Bodytalk after meeting Aubrey at a Fixer Council meeting, which happens in late 2083; this essentially ties the two main storylines together, which means that yes, a lot of the characters from the two separate storylines end up meeting :]

Officer Ulysses Dimakos (used to work with Reid at MaxTac) is sent to investigate Bodytalk following the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and ends up teaming up with the club to get MaxTac on a dead trail in exchange for his freedom of the corporation

On top of the Bodytalk / Cobras centered storyline, there’s a couple of side stories that are still connected to the whole thing but are more of a standalone thing with only a few touching points to the rest of it all:

This obviously takes place a lot earlier because it’s already mentioned above, but Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne is tasked with chasing after the escaped Mason twins; naturally he lets them go and ends up going into retirement, and Xavier Mason later on ends up becoming Bodytalk’s part-time repair guy on account of knowing Kaida

Gabriel Mason ends up in a car crash with retired security specialist Ames Ortega, who was also in Elysium during the incidents there, and the two end up babysitting Ambrose and Xavier’s kids together while those two are helping Hanan with getting Kaida out of Arasaka (Are you still with me. Blink if you can hear me)

Mercenary Frankie Sayyad gets a promotion from his fixer, Vulture (real name Diana Crane, Maxwell Crane’s older sister and cousin of the Coltons), and becomes one of her Bloodhounds; he works together with Evelyn Harris, Nimue Nkuna, and Beckett Rydel, the latter being one of the very first test subjects of Arasaka Special Programs, and the four accidentally get themselves mixed into a mystery concerning their secretive fixer

Caleb Harris, ex-security at Biotechnica, ends up back at Club Bodytalk not long after the conclusion of the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and starts working for Aubrey; he is partnered up with Ramiel Al-Masri, a mercenary who has been working for Vitali Dobrynin for a while and has recently joined Aubrey’s mercenary roster too, and together they dive into a series of gigs neither of them had expected

Journalist Bodhi Shankar has finally found more evidence and information surrounding the mysterious cult gang Umbra and its so-called Prophet, Thiago Salazar; however, his antics have led to him accidentally becoming part of the gang himself, and he has to figure out a way to get Thiago to stop listening to the supposed deity that the gang worships known as Scintilla, before she makes him do things that will get many people killed

taglist (opt in/out)

@velocitic, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @gurathins;

@mojaves, @shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption;

@ncytiri, @calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm;

@strafethesesinners, @fashionablyfyrdraaca, @aemondtargeryen, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian;

It’s July 2078. The peace at Vitali’s office is disrupted when Roksana, his younger sister, suddenly shows up without warning, claiming she wants to help Vitali put an end to their father’s path of revenge. Vitali is hesitant, knowing his family well enough to not fully trust Roksana; but he also can’t send her away and allows her to stick around, saying they will wait until Matvey does something again so they can act accordingly.

However, Roksana’s intentions soon enough turn out to be not as pure as first thought, the way she speaks and acts around the other mercenaries causing discomfort and confusion. Vincent realizes soon enough she’s attempting to create distance between Vitali’s mercenaries and himself, pushing them apart and trying to make it seem like Vitali is a bad person. On top of that, her weird obsession that she used to have with Mikhail in their childhood, seems to still be an issue, and she won’t leave him alone.

After a close call with Mikhail, Vitali ends up confronting his sister and she reveals she has indeed been sent by Matvey to try and single him out to make him an easier target. She says she soon enough realized it wouldn’t work, but stuck around anyway- reinforcing the recurring theme of revenge to Vitali, Roksana’s own personal way of rebelling against her parents by working by her own agenda instead- and will now leave the entire situation alone, laying low until it’s all over. Before she leaves, Vitali asks her the location of their mother.

Not much time later, Vitali does in fact end up visiting Nadya Dobrynina in her safehouse in one of the city’s Megabuildings. He’s scared and not entirely sure why he’s doing it, other than wanting to understand. He knows his siblings’ role in all of it now, he’s still figuring out his father’s angle, but his mother’s surprising absence on the big stage is confusing him even more and he needs to find out what her role in all of it is.

The visit turns sour very soon and Vitali and his mother end up in one of their famous screaming competitions, oh-so easily slipping back into those roles they had always carried around each other in Vitali’s childhood. Vitali leaves empty-handed; he has not learned anything new, other than the fact his mother still blames him for everything that has ever gone wrong in her life, and he regrets coming there in the first place. He manages to find his way to Mama Welles in el Coyote Cojo and she comforts him, and tells him to stop by the next week so she can cut his hair for him; like she’s always done.

Following Vitali’s recovery from coming face to face with his sister and mother again, he pays a visit to the Afterlife to talk with Rogue Amendiares. While waiting for a window to approach her, Mikhail is confronted by an old client who wants their money back. Vitali had been in Arizona at the time, but still defends Mikhail, knowing the old client can’t be trusted anyway and the situation escalates into a fight which Vitali wins. It’s broken up by Rogue and the two of them sit down together.

Vitali reveals to Rogue that the Broker is his father, trusting her enough to keep the information a secret. The Council cannot know about any of this; they already suspect that Vitali either is the Broker himself or has something to do with it all, and this would only raise more suspicion than solve anything. He’s gathered evidence of the mercenaries no longer being with him and asks if he can present it to the Council- to at least show them that the Broker is not Vitali.

However, Rogue tells him she cannot call for a meeting, believing it’s too much of a risk with the Broker targeting fixers. Vitali understands and agrees to let Rogue present the evidence- as her own, no less- to the Council instead, hoping this will ease their minds for the time being and get them off his back.

Not long after that, tragedy strikes Vitali’s office building once more; Ravager, who was still in their captivity, has escaped, and is now on the loose in Night City. Vitali himself is on a recon mission all by himself and can’t be reached, leaving his mercenaries in control of the situation in the meantime.

After a full day of searching, they manage to track him down in a Megabuilding. Vitali has by then returned and upon hearing about the cyborg’s new destination, he hurries himself over as fast as he can, knowing that his mother is staying there. He believes Ravager is going to try and kill her; however, the moment he arrives he instead finds them kissing, and his mother’s stakes in the situation become evidently clear to him. He leaves without killing Ravager, deeming him irrelevant enough by then to be even worth the effort.

August arrives, and Vitali finds himself at the grand opening of a new Arasaka facility. The corporation is going to announce the launch of their APEX Program with it; its predecessor being the test trials Vitali was put through, the brainwashing effects of it still holding him in a chokehold to this day. The program is announced by Grant Armitage- truly some random Arasaka exec, however, Matvey is there that day too, to kill this man and blame it on Vitali somehow.

After the opening speech, Vitali and Vincent follow Armitage deeper into the building. Bit by bit they lose their backup, but push forward anyway- just in time to catch Matvey with Armitage in the latter’s office, Matvey’s gun pointed at the man’s head.

However, before anyone can do anything, Ravager shows his face again and kills Armitage without warning. In the confusion that follows, Vitali finds himself dissociating again and ends up all by himself, after which he’s attacked by Ravager who tries to finish the job. He rips out one of Vitali’s mantis blades and attempts to choke him to death, but before he gets to that he is shot in the head by Matvey, who ends up leaving instead of helping Vitali, but with such hesitation it causes Vitali to wonder what it means. He’s found by Vincent and brought to safety; Armitage’s death ends up blamed on Ravager, meaning Matvey’s plan has failed.

A few days later, Vitali wakes up from a horrible nightmare and goes for a smoke at the door of his penthouse’s balcony. Vincent is at home too and tries to talk to him about the situation, wanting to know what Vitali’s next move is; however, Vitali truly doesn’t know, unable to kill his father and knowing it won’t solve anything either. Vincent is getting a little restless and doesn’t understand Vitali’s angle and their discussion turns a little more heated than necessary, after which Vincent tells Vitali to refer to him as “V” only and he says he needs some space.

In the meantime, Matvey is having a similar bad time in his own office, and the mercenaries Dusty and Sanders confront him at his desk. Sanders wants to know what their next move is and is clearly getting impatient with the fixer, and he ends up snapping and telling Matvey that if he had been in his position, Vitali would’ve already long been dead. This causes Matvey to snap in return and he shoots Sanders dead and orders Dusty to leave.

Not long later, Night City is once again under city-wide attack by the Broker’s mercenaries. Vitali and some of his mercs end up on their way to the Afterlife, which is under attack by a horde of them; but this time there’s no motive, no reasoning, and when they arrive at the scene it turns out the mercenaries seem to be out for Vitali’s blood as well. This is a new development, since Matvey had made it abundantly clear he did not want Vitali to end up dead.

They rendezvous at a safehouse, where they get a moment of peace and Vincent and Vitali make up. However, it soon turns out someone has followed them there; it turns out to be Dusty, who reveals that Matvey has been locked up in his own office building and the mercenaries have decided to take matters into their own hands instead. He gives Vitali a location to work with, and everyone instantly gets on the move.

Vitali leads a group to his father’s base of operations and they move in with explosives, not strong enough to level the whole building but strong enough to get rid of all the supplies held inside to stop the mercenaries’ onslaught. Vitali stays with Vincent and Rogue as they move into the building and plant the explosives, but after briefly dissociating he once again finds himself all alone and he comes face to face with Matvey.

A brief fight follows in which Vitali knows this is going to end with one of them dead- however, when the opportunity arises, mercenaries show up and they end up fighting them together instead. Vitali ends up distracted at some point, believing his father is struggling; a miscalculation on Vitali’s part and he ends up shot in his torso, and he collapses on the floor.

Much like last time they saw each other, there’s hesitation to be found within Matvey- but then he sits with Vitali and tries to stop the bleeding, calling in reinforcements to make sure Vitali is found and taken outside before the explosives go off.

‘What changed?’ he blurted out, grabbing Matvey’s wrist again to force him to look back at him- but the move caused him to collapse, body sinking forward until his father caught him and instinctively pulled him closer, one hand still on his wound and the other holding his head which rested steadily on his shoulder.

Oh, how Vitali wanted to push him away- how he wanted to punch him, to scream at him, to tell him how much he hated him for putting him through hell most of his life and for never being there for him and for never standing up for him or picking his side when he needed it, and when everyone knew that Vitali was right and Nadya was wrong.

‘You did,’ Matvey finally answered, his voice barely audible and Vitali pushed his face into his father’s shirt in return, staining it with blood and sweat and tears- balled his shaky hand into a fist and dropped his knuckles against his father’s shoulder, wondering how it would feel to knock it out of place but knowing it wouldn’t solve anything and wouldn’t even make him feel better.

‘Suppose I did, too.’

Vitali is brought to safety and patched up and stabilized, after which he’s brought to Viktor’s shop to recover. A few days later, he brings Matvey to a safehouse; his own old apartment in the Glen, and he tells him he’s got a long way to go to prove to Vitali that he is better than he was before, and better off without Nadya.

Afterwards, Vitali visits Viktor and talks to him about the situation, telling him he’s no longer sure whether he’s doing the right thing or not. Viktor tells him to stop doubting himself and whatever happens next is out of his control; all he’s done is give his father a second chance, and in the bigger picture of things it really would not have made a difference had Vitali killed the man.

It’s April 2078. Vincent has made a full recovery from Soulkiller and Vitali is no longer under the influence of Arasaka’s brainwashing technology. Following the very stressful events of all of 2077, he had to get surgery on his leg, and as a result has to walk with a cane for the time being while he recovers. Business has gone back to normal and he’s picked up his duties as a fixer full time now, and Vincent works for him as a mercenary.

However, this all changes when one of Vitali’s cargo transports is under attack, leaving his mercenaries injured and his cargo taken. They manage to trace the attack back to the Broker, a fixer who has been around for a while already and has been busy targeting other fixers; however, they now seem to have targeted Vitali specifically, as this is not the first violent encounter with their mercenaries.

To top it all off, the Broker’s mercenaries seem to have connections with Vitali. Many of them used to be part of Vitali’s network, but left when he skipped town with Vincent to find a cure for his condition after getting rid of Johnny Silverhand. It worries Vitali, to now see them with the Broker instead; but there is not much he can do about it, and instead he decides to focus on revealing the fixer’s identity.

Soon enough, yet another attack happens- on Vitali’s office no less, in his absence. Mikhail is taken by Edward Keizer, better known as Ravager, an ex-Maelstrom mercenary of the Broker. Mikhail is tortured by Ravager’s people and rescued by Vitali and Vincent after a couple of days, but the whole situation leaves everyone shaken. Vincent voices his concern to Vitali and urges him to make a move, but Vitali rather wants to focus on keeping his friends safe and uses an example from his past to explain to Vincent why acting too rash won’t get them anywhere.

But Vincent can’t sit still. Two weeks pass in which he, behind Vitali’s back, looks into Ravager and ends up launching a solo attack on his factory. It backfires and Vincent is captured, after which Vitali attempts to free him; but it ends up being a trap and many of Vincent’s friends end up captured as well. They see each other again when the Broker’s right hand man, Ivan Dupoint, enters the scene; he challenges Vincent to a rigged game of chess, with his friends at stake.

Vincent wins and his friends walk free, but he himself is forced to stay. After a few days he’s rescued and Vitali manages to capture both Ravager and Dupoint as well, and he brings them to his office for further interrogation.

However, Vitali’s interrogation attempts soon turn sour when the remnants of Arasaka’s brainwashing technology begin to act up again. It puts him in a passenger seat in his own body, leaves him running on autopilot until he snaps out of it; and most of the time he is unaware of what happened while in that mode. He is desperate to figure out the Broker’s identity, still convinced it will make the situation easier to deal with; but his fear of losing control again and once again fully being under Arasaka’s control instead leaves him terrified and exhausted, to the point he starts having nightmares.

Another problem he is dealing with at this point is the Council. The collaboration of fixers was created to keep the innocent people of Night City safe and he has been part of it for a long time now; though they continue to see this as a city-wide issue rather than acknowledge Vitali is being singled out, and only a few of them take the Broker seriously. Vitali is starting to run low on resources following all the raids on his office and his cargo transports, and especially now that most of his other business with clients has been halted; but despite it all he keeps going, refusing to let any of it get to him.

Dupoint ends up giving Vitali a location and Vitali pays it a visit with Huxley and Lauren. They find what seems to be an empty mansion, but while investigating the Broker’s office, a woman enters the room; Nadya Dobrynina, Vitali’s mother, effectively confirming to Vitali that his father, Matvey Dobrynin, is the Broker.

Vitali knows exactly why Matvey is angry. After Vitali was fired from Arasaka some years ago, apparently Matvey and Nadya were fired as well; Arasaka no longer wanted the name Dobrynin to stain their ranks, and Matvey ended up blaming Vitali for losing his job. He became obsessed with his son, to the point he became a fixer himself and picked up Vitali’s mercenaries the moment Vitali left for Arizona; only to then turn them against him, and attack him like he’s been doing with other fixers (to bring order back to Night City, as he claims so himself) but now singling him out.

After coming face to face with his mother, Vitali runs away and gets drunk in a club somewhere, then somehow finds his way to Viktor’s shop and he breaks down here. Viktor briefly speaks to him and then brings him home to Vincent and Mikhail.

The next day, Mikhail returns to the mansion to investigate further; it is empty now, but they find evidence of Vitali’s sister Roksana having lived there as well- and for some reason, they find a picture of Mikhail in her bedroom, much to everyone’s surprise. She has always been weirdly obsessed with Mikhail ever since they were all younger and Mikhail would often be around to hang out with Vitali; but neither of them had expected her to still be like that.

Vitali once again interrogates Dupoint and the man tells him he will bring Vitali to his father. They thoroughly plan their attack on the Broker’s hideout, but once they execute it everything goes wrong; and Vitali comes face to face with his father, who mocks and belittles his failed attack and then promptly fires a gun in Mikhail’s direction. The bullet misses him, but it could have easily killed him; and after that, Matvey allows them to leave.

Vitali returns to the hideout the next day, though unsure why. He feels horrible for what has happened and begins to spiral very quickly now, no longer knowing how to deal with the situation and not understanding why his father didn’t just kill him when he had the chance. He interrogates Ravager again, looking for answers, but all he ends up with is more questions when the man suddenly drops Nadya’s name in the conversation; Vitali has never mentioned her around Ravager at all, and he wonders how he knows about her.

Vitali believes he can still talk some sense into his father and decides to reach out to his brother, Daniil, who seems to have nothing to do with the situation. Daniil visits Vitali’s office and they have a conversation about the Broker and Daniil’s history with Kang Tao; but none of it matters, since Daniil refuses to help Vitali like he has always done and ends up leaving. It at least confirms to Vitali that Daniil has nothing to do with any of it, and in a way it gives him closure with his sibling; something he hadn’t been able to get before, since he had left home aged 18 and had not been able to reestablish contact with his family members.

Not long after his brother’s visit, tragedy strikes once again. Matvey has unleashed his mercenaries on Night City and they’re wreaking havoc in the streets, attacking fixers and mercenaries alike- and some of them have already ended up dead. Vitali is still desperately trying to convince the Council it’s the Broker’s doing, but they once again refuse to listen to him or help him.

Vitali suits up and joins forces with Viktor and Vincent to confront Matvey, in an abandoned warehouse that seems to be used as a temporary safehouse. However, upon confronting him it is surprisingly easy to get him to stop the attacks, and the three meet up with some of Vitali’s mercenaries at a rendezvous.

Here, it finally becomes clear what Matvey is after. Now that his mercenaries have hit the news, the Council is finally looking into the source; but they’re tracing the attacks back to Vitali considering many of the mercenaries used to be part of his network, and especially considering his history with Arasaka this is not looking good for him.

Matvey claims Vitali took everything from him; and in return, rather than killing him, he is trying to take everything from Vitali too.

Following the city-wide attack, some time passes. Vitali reaches out to the Council and attempts to convince them once again he is not behind all of this, and for now they seem to believe him; though it will take more to fully get them back on his side.

Weeks go by and Matvey seems to have vanished off the face of the earth for the time being. Vitali is not complaining and uses the time wisely to pick up some business and get his office running again. He allows his mercenaries to take some rest and tries to do damage control where he can, while also taking it easy himself for a bit.

With this new knowledge about what his father is trying to do, Vitali has a much clearer view of the situation he’s found himself in. He is still unsure how to handle it; at the end of the day Matvey is still his father, and especially considering how he had acted in their last encounter Vitali finds himself having hope, still, despite it all.

He starts to feel better, no longer plagued by nightmares or constantly on the brink of either passing out from exhaustion or being put in the passenger seat in his body again. He has realized that trying to control himself by letting out his anger in the way he’s been doing thus far isn’t helping him anymore and in fact only makes things worse; instead, he is now trying to focus more on the people around him and talking to them, or asking for help when he needs it. He has always acted out of love and out of care for his loved ones; by focusing on this rather than his anger towards those who have wronged him, he can control himself a lot better without the risk of going on autopilot.

Vitali knows he finds himself in the eye of the storm. Matvey is still out there, as well as his mother and sister; and he still hasn’t figured out their role in all of this, and he still hasn’t figured out a way to stop it all from happening. He knows it’s only a matter of time before Matvey strikes again and he is staying as alert as he can, waiting for the Broker to make his next move.

Vincent and Vitali have successfully left Night City and travel to Tucson, Arizona, to meet up with the Aldecaldos (and Judy) there and hopefully find a cure to Vincent's condition. Mikhail stays behind in the meantime and takes over Vitali's work as a fixer until his return.

After a series of tests and surgeries (including, but not limited to: installing cyberware in some of his organs as preventive measure, surgery to get a remaining bullet shard out of his head) they are still unsuccessful in figuring out what's wrong; unlike what was implied at earlier stages, his body seems fine, and doctors think there might still be something going wrong in his brain (possible lingering effects from the Relic).

Almost two months after leaving Night City, Vincent and Vitali are forced to return, knowing their only option left is probably Arasaka; Panam and Judy return with them (Saul is still alive and stays behind in Arizona with the rest of the Aldecaldos).

Arasaka is at this point still in the process of reorganizing. Yorinobu has temporarily abandoned the Relic Program and is instead working on something new, which should put Arasaka back onto the big stage with the other megacorporations.

This new program makes use of the secret additional features of the Secure Your Soul Program; data extraction, data copying, and personality modification. Arasaka can use this technology to "edit" living people; adjust their personalities, give them new traits or skills, and so on.

Yorinobu believes they can commercialize the technology by disguising it as a product that quickly teaches you a new skill, or is capable of "removing trauma" (memories) and stuff like that. However, the technology can also be used by Arasaka itself to quite literally brainwash people and turn them into soldiers.

The technology is still highly unstable, with complications such as: shifts in personality from messing with test subjects' personality traits, physical injuries to the test subjects because their bodies are being pushed over their limits through the addition of new skills, and the unsuccessful complete removal of undesired traits and memories (they're merely locked behind a firewall, and the test subjects could easily reacquire them).

Arasaka is in the midst of testing this new technology when Vincent and Vitali return to Night City. Their current (named) test subjects are Adam Smasher (undesirable trait removal), Hanako Arasaka (altering traits and skills), and Rogue Amendiares (memory wiping). All of these test subjects supposedly died when Vincent and his friends went to look for Mikoshi; however, none of them actually did.

When Vincent and Vitali come back, they waste no time and begin searching for a cure for Vincent. This mostly includes doing research into things Arasaka has been working on, attacking facilities, interrogating assets, and so on.

At some point, one of their attacks on a facility to gather data goes severely wrong; Vitali is shot in the chest and his heart momentarily stops beating, leading his friends to believe he's dead. Given the circumstances, they're forced to leave his body behind, and he is immediately found and successfully reanimated by Arasaka forces.

Vitali undergoes a similar process as Arasaka's other test subjects, and is turned into another one of their brainwashed/fine-tuned soldiers. The new division is led by a brainwashed Hanako, and their first mission is to neutralize Vincent and his friends.

Upon first seeing Vitali again, the others do not immediately realize he's been brainwashed because they are unaware of the concept at this point. Mikhail tries to talk to him, believing Vitali willingly joined Arasaka out of anger for being left behind, and Vitali stabs him in the chest with one of his mantis blades.

Time passes, and Vincent now has to focus on finding a cure as well as dealing with the brainwashed soldiers. His condition is worsening fast now, and now that his boyfriend is controlled by Arasaka he has little hope for the future.

Rogue snaps out of the brainwashing pretty soon, since the technology is still unstable. She manages to escape and joins Vincent and the rest of the gang, wanting to help take down Yorinobu once and for all.

She also manages to give Vincent a lead on a possible cure; the new Arasaka program uses Soulkiller as a base, which means there's still the high risk of its test subjects dying. To combat this, Arasaka has developed a stabilizer, which prevents the test subjects from dying; considering it's most likely the remnants of Soulkiller slowly killing Vincent, taking the stabilizer should instantly stop that process from happening.

With almost no time left, Vincent and his friends launch another attack on the tower, their goal to get Vitali and Hanako out of there and hopefully figure out something about the location of the stabilizer. Vitali has at this point snapped out of the brainwashing as well; he's been pretending to still be brainwashed, though, in order to get information from Arasaka without being noticed.

When the attack happens, Vitali saves Mikhail from being killed by Smasher; then, he assists the gang with getting Hanako, and they leave the tower without any losses.

Vitali has figured out the location of the lab that worked on the stabilizer and with only a couple of days left, they have to hurry to get their hands on it. Vincent's condition has worsened to the point he can barely walk, but he joins them to the location anyway; they manage to find the stabilizer and give it to him, and by the looks of it probably just in time as well.

Some time passes in which Vincent recovers at Viktor's shop. Vitali and Mikhail spend this time getting Vitali's business back on the right track; his sudden departure caused a lot of clients and mercs to become upset and leave, and he has to fix his reputation.

Hanako remains in their care and protection as well as she slowly sheds the effects of the brainwashing; once she's back on her feet, they can use the horrible technology to get Yorinobu out of his position and instead put Hanako there (the lesser of two evils, for the time being).

All seems okay for the moment, and after a successful recovery Vincent returns home. He moves in with Vitali in his penthouse in Wellsprings, and Mikhail soon moves in with them as well.