Meanwhile, Arasaka Counterintelligence is investigating the mysterious deaths of Arasaka personnel. Believing Militech to be involved, they arrange an assassination attempt on Faraday, who narrowly escapes. With Militech refusing to provide him protection due to his lack of results on recovering data on Arasaka's cyberskeleton project, Faraday makes contact with Arasaka instead. Which was their goal all along.
Arasaka is willing to forgive Faraday for Tanaka's death, in return for him tracking down the netrunner responsible for hiding Tanaka's data and killing their agents. Meanwhile, David continues to show more symptoms of cyberpsychosis, as well as suffering from trauma over killing an innocent secretary that reminded him of his mother.
Doc recommends that David's scale back on his implants, only to be attacked by David, thus souring their relationship. David once again tries to recruit Lucy, but she insists there's something she has to take care of first, and David considers breaking up with her.
Lucy then detects another Arasaka agent looking for Tanaka's data and heads over to kill him, only to fall into a trap set by Faraday and Kiwi.
Tropes in this episode:
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Arasaka offers to take the hit off of Faraday and offer him a position with their organization in exchange for both information on the cyber skeleton as well as the Netrunner killer. Faraday reacts more to the bribe than the threat.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Lucy is unwilling to say that she's been killing Arasaka agents looking for information on David.
- The Corruptible: Faraday doesn't take much in order to turn against the team. Kiwi is a much more surprising twist.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: David is starting to suffer the effects of cyberpsychosis and refuses to remove any of his hardware.
- Death Seeker: David continues using cyberhardware despite the fact he's suffering from cyberpsychosis and loses his Ripperdoc with only a limited amount of meds left. David doesn't care about it and even seems willing to break up with Lucy.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: David's obsession with cybernetics and the consequences of it, much like Maine before him, play very much into being a metaphor for drug abuse. David needs a bigger hits than the last, regardless of the damage to him, and gets increasingly violent to people who care about his well being. Even Lucy isn't safe from his wrath; he contemplates breaking things off with her in a passive-aggressive outburst, instead of admitting he's making his own situation worse.
- Downer Ending: David begins suffering Cyberpsychosis and nearly turns away Lucy, who is keeping secrets to protect David. Lucy's desperate bid to cut all ties to the cyberskeleton project ends with her captured by Faraday and Kiwi, who have plans with Arasaka to capture David.
- Dramatic Irony: A television advertisement for a one-way ticket to the moon plays in front of David, with a price that is apparently affordable. David dismisses the prospect of leaving Night City behind with Lucy and doesn't seem to even consider it. She mistakes this for his remembering her dream.
- Evil Former Friend: Kiwi turns out to have betrayed the group to Faraday.
- Face–Heel Turn: Kiwi turns on the Edgerunners in exchange for forgiveness from Arasaka and a fat payout, at least according to Faraday.
- Heel Realization: David kills an innocent woman, and realizes he's become exactly like the people who killed his mother.
- History Repeats: David has begun showing signs of Cyberpsychosis and some of the gang have taken notice. He is told to downgrade for the sake of his sanity but, like Maine, he stubbornly refuses. Rebecca warns him that he may end up like the Cyberpsycho that killed her brother Pilar.
- My God, What Have I Done?: David reacts to his murder of the lab assistant. It is the first innocent life he's taken, one that reminds him of his mother, and one that gives him PTSD.
- Not So Above It All: Faraday was first seen as a high and mighty businessman that Maine and David talked to. However, he is at as much risk of losing benefits from his own Militech employers as anyone else in the corporate ladder. Arasaka exploits this by having him turn against David and the others.
- Sanity Slippage: Big time with David: he slips into cyberpsychosis over the course of the episode, starting with accidentally murdering two employees during a break-in (one of which is a mother) from an episode, and escalating up he attacks his Ripperdoc in a break. He even turns hostile to Lucy's pressure to cut back for his own sake, not unlike Maine had towards Dorio, and openly considers breaking up with her when she cannot explain why she won't come back yet to help them.
- Tragic Mistake: Instead of telling David the truth behind her actions or clarifying why she didn't want to return to David's crew, Lucy runs off in tears to pursue an Arasaka netrunner trying to decipher info on David's affinity to cybernetics. This was the worst possible thing she could have done, as the "netrunner" is revealed to be a trap from Faraday, and her capture creates a situation that will ensure David meets a violent end.
- Turncoat: Faraday and Kiwi both betray the gang to Arasaka.
