Literature / The Upgrade

The Coporate War begins.

The Upgrade series by Wesley Cross is a Cyberpunk Conspiracy Thriller series about Corporate Warfare in the near-future while human enhancement technologies are introduced into the public.

There's a corporate cabal that wants to rule the world. Some might say it has been doing it already for decades by whatever means necessary. But they are no longer content to hide in the shadows. They want to become true masters.Jason Hunt knows nothing about that world. But when his wife becomes ill, he finds himself pitted against the cabal that might hold the key to her survival. To save her, he needs to embrace technology he doesn't understand, take over a billion-dollar company without a billion dollars, outsmart professional assassins, and land a contract with the DOD. But even that might not be enough.

The series contains the following books:

• The Blueprint
• Vertigo
• The Loop
• Spare Parts
• Fate Morgana
• Deus Ex

POV characters

• Jimmy the Butcher: A Red Dragon gang enforcer and merc for Guardian Manufacturing. He is a psychopath and sexual predator.
• Helen Chen: A talented half-Irish half-Chinese female hacker who is instrumental to Jason Hunt's plans. She is in a relationship with Max.
• Mike Connelly: A former US Special Forces soldier (and member of The Unit) who is pure badass.
• Jill Cooper: A Professional Killer who has a young daughter that is her only weakness.
• Alexander Engel: The Big Bad and CEO of Guardian Manufacturing as well as no. 2 man in the Cabal.
• Andrew Hunt: Jason Hunt's father and a Posthumous Character.
• Audrey Hunt: Jason Hunt's mother and a Posthumous Character.
• Jason Hunt: The son of Andrew Hunt and an accountant who just wants to help his wife.
• Rachel Hunt: Jason Hunt's wife who is a cyberneticist taking a job at Asclepius.
• Chuck Kowalsky: An honest police officer upset about the gross corruption and negligence during the corporate war.
• Steven Poznyak: A research scientist with Asclepius that is slowly realizing his company has been compromised by evil.
• Maximilian "Max" Schlager: Jason's closest friend and fellow accountant.
• Oliver Sykes: A professional mercenary that has the worst luck imaginable.
• Latham Watkins: A chemistry obsessed scientist who works for the Cabal.

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This book contains the following tropes:

The Series

• Big Bad: Alexander Engel is the head of Guardian Manufacturing and the number two man in the Cabal but the primary antagonist of the heroes. He is also the man who killed Jason Hunt's parents.
• The Butcher: Johnny the Butcher is a machete-wielding psychopath who works for both the Red Dragon Triad and Guardian Manufacturing.
• Corporate Warfare: Corporations have started employing teams of black ops soldiers, mercenaries, and street criminals against one another in order to gain advantages over one another.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Alexander Engel is one of the Cabal and heavily involved with Chinese gangsters as well as a planned coup against the United States. He frequently uses wetworks teams against his business rivals as well as other unscrupulous means to increase his power. He's also just kind of a dick.
• Cyberpunk: Sinister corporate conspiracies are slowly starting to erode civil liberties and the power of the government but have already degenerated into outright Corporate Warfare. The protagonists decide to fight fire with fire by building their own Megacorp.
• The Dragon: Alexander Engel is actually Alpha Two and the second in command of the Cabal rather than its actual head. Despite this, he serves as the primary villain of the series.
• Dragon with an Agenda: The Red Dragon gang and Victor Ye is the official "head" of the cabal but Guardian Manufacturing has a lot more wealth as well as legitimate power. As such, Alexander Engel is always planning to take control of the group from him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A heroic version as Jason Hunt goes from a Florida accountant to one of the richest men in the world and a deadly enemy of the Cabal.
• Government Agency of Fiction:
  • The Unit is a US black ops government task force existing for the purposes of protecting the government from the corporate conspiracies.
  • The International Crimes Unit is a subdivision of Interpol with far more reaching powers.
• The Illuminati: The Cabal is directly compared to the Illuminati at one point. It is an alliance of corporate heads, organized crime leaders, and black ops mercenaries.
• The Man Behind the Man: Victor Ye is Alpha One and the head of The Conspiracy.
• Megacorp: Guardian Manufacturing is the world's largest arms dealer alongside General Armaments. Both of them employ wetworks teams against one another.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The series takes place recently enough that all of the characters remember both 9/11 and the Financial Crash of 2008.
• Police Are Useless: The police generally choose to stay out of the corporate in-fighting and more or less let them kill each other off.
• Post-Cyberpunk: A combination of Conspiracy Thriller and Cyberpunk, The Upgrade asks the question about how the world might end up under the control of corporations and what sort of people would be inclined to oppose them. Unlike regular cyberpunk, the answer is not a bunch of anti-establishment rebels but white collar idealists and trained soldiers.
• Posthumous Character: Andrew Hunt was the founder of the Unit and former Archenemy to the Cabal.
• Private Military Contractor: The corporations regularly use these as wetwork operations against one another.
• Triads and Tongs: The Red Dragon gang is Jimmy the Butcher's primary employers but he supplements his income by working for Guardian Manufacturing.
• Street Samurai: Criminals routinely find themselves working for corporations in a mercenary capacity in order to intimidate rivals or sabotage their enemies.
• You Killed My Father: Jason Hunt knows his parents were killed by Alexander Engel but can't prove it.

The Blueprint

• Asshole Victim:
  • Oliver Sykes is a mercenary who finds his team killed, himself kidnapped, and betrayed by his employers. He deserves all of that and more.
  • Blackwater Research is an unethical research company that determines which companies are frauds via forensic accounting and then announces the fact to short-sell their stock.
• Blackmail: Max blackmails Andrew Davis, a Blackwater Research analyst, into publishing a false report about Asclepius in order to drive down their stock price enough to purchase it. Andrew had been conducting an affair with a colleague as well as hiding four million dollars of embezzled funds.
• Bittersweet Ending: The world is still on the precipice of falling into despotism but Jason Hunt has organized a Megacorp to fight the other megacorps, the coup against the United States has been thwarted, and Rachel Hunt is still alive but in cryogenic suspension. Lots of people are dead, though, and Alexander Engel is as powerful as ever.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Connelly attempts to do this to Sykes but finds himself unable to do it. For long, at least.
  • Victor Ye orders Latham tortured to death in order to send a message to Alexander Engel.
• Crazy-Prepared: Latham manages to escape being tortured to death by keeping a secret nerve agent pin in his finger in case of capture.
• Create Your Own Hero: All of this could have been averted if Alexander Engel would have let Rachel Hunt receive artificial lungs.
• Dirty Cop: Captain Brennan is bought by the megacorps and very obvious in his attempt to bury the case.
  • Bill Ryan also turns out to be a Sixth Ranger Traitor on Guardian's payroll.
• Evil Is Petty: Alexander Engel refuses Rachel Hunt a set of life saving artificial lungs because he wants revenge on her father-in-law, that he's already murdered.
• Evil Versus Evil: Guardian Manufacturing and General Armaments are both Megacorp evil doers that oppose our heroes as well as each other.
• Heel–Face Turn: Latham turns against the Cabal when they attempt to have him killed as an example to Engel.
• Human Popsicle: Jason Hunt puts his wife, Rachel, in cryogenic suspension in order to keep her alive. It almost derails Max's plans to fight Guardian Manufacturing because it costs so much.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Oliver Sykes manages to escape from being captured, only to be killed by his own team.
  • Travis Smith is killed by an enhanced soldier despite being the first POV in the novel.
  • Jesse Klein, an FBI agent ally of the team, is killed off by the Cabal.
• Meaningful Name:
• Rape as Drama: Jimmy the Butcher engages in sexual assault in order to break one of his victims.
• Justified Criminal: Max and Jason Hunt engage in blackmail, fraud, and stock manipulation in order to buy Asclepius from Alexander Engel. However, it is to prevent a massive criminal conspiracy from getting even stronger.
• Torture Always Works: Averted. Connelly can't get any useful information out of Sykes because he doesn't know anything useful and realizes continuing is pointless.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Oliver Sykes is freed by Michael Connelly and proceeds to immediately plot his revenge but is killed for his incompetence before he can take it.
• Villain Protagonist: Oliver Sykes and Jimmy the Butcher are both murderous mercenaries that get POV chapters.

Vertigo

• Ascended Extra: Helen Chen was a minor supporting cast member in The Blueprint and becomes the primary POV for the book.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Helen manages to do a great deal of damage to Guardian Manufacturing via stock manipulation but Alexander Engel retaliates in a way that destroys her old life as well as kill her friends. He then rebounds his company by getting into weapons manufacturing. The Unit is also shut down by presidential order.
• The Cracker: Helen Chen is a gray hat hacker who works for the Department of Defense as an independent contractor.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Victor Ye loves subjecting his enemies to being skinned alive. Helen Chen is forced to watch one of them subjected to it.
• Dating Catwoman: Helen Chen used to date Victor Ye's son, Victor Ye Junior.
• Doomed by Canon: Andrew Hunt will eventually be killed by Simon Engel.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Hiroko and Eugene are eliminated by the Red Dragon gang.
  • Subverted in that we don't know when, only that it will happen, that Andrew Hunt and Audrey will be killed with his wife.
• It's Personal: Helena Chen attemps to destroy Guaridan
• Justified Criminal:
  • As with The Blueprint, our heroes engage in massive stock fraud and securities manipulation to screw with Guardian Manufacturing. Its the only thing that even briefly derails their plans.
  • The members of the Unit rob a drug lord in Afghanistan of a hundred million dollars to fund their war against the Cabal.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Jill Cooper's specialty. She makes a couple's death look like a murder-suicide and also does the same to Helen Chen's sister.
• Pragmatic Villain: Simon Engel is every bit the ruthless greedy bastard his son is but understands that pushing too hard, too fast will cause unwanted exposure. He tries to reign his son in, only to get poisoned by him in return.
• Prequel: While the main series takes place in Next Sunday A.D., Vertigo takes place in 2007 and shows the set up for the events of The Bluerprint.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The 2008 Financial Crisis looms over the protagonist's investigation into corporate and financial crime.
• Shame If Something Happened: Jill Cooper finds herself on the other end of this when Alexander Engel reveals he knows about her daughter.
• Uncertain Doom: It is heavily implied that Jill Cooper will be the one who kills Andrew Hunt at the end of the novel.
• Visionary Villain: Alexander Engel attempts to pass himself off as this to both Lantham as well as Jill Cooper. The former is sold while the latter dismisses him as a megalomania with delusions of grandeur.