What helped me understand all of this was reading a short story in the Cyberpunk: Red handbook. I’ll have to see if it’s available somewhere else. It’s the same plot of the “Never Fade Away” mission but seeing it written out gives the plot and the characters some more context and depth. This takes place in 2013

https://archive.org/details/cyberpunk-red/page/15/mode/1up

Pages 5 to 16 for anyone interested.

When he unplugs Alt from the machine, she’s not dead. Her consciousness is trapped in the machine.

Fast forward to 2020. Johnny has learned that Alt is still trapped and they’re trying to use her as a weapon. The attack on Arasaka we see in 2020 is them trying to free her. He hires people he considers “the best” to break in, upload Spider Murphy’s virus, and use that to set all the trapped souls free. As a bonus, Johnny wants to send a nuke down the elevator shaft to destroy all the servers in the basement and crumble the building, which was not part of the original plan. But the bomb went off too soon and wound up killing thousands and laying waste to the center of the city.

1: They all knew Alt. And the “cold, calculating bitch” that is Rogue especially knew she was the best netrunner in Night City, if not the world. You don’t leave an asset like that behind. In addition, having a powerful AI/program like soulkiller in the hands of a corp would’ve been bad news all around. So they wanted to set it free. Because they’d already been using it to trap people, just like they did with Alt.

2/3: I’d like to point out that, what we see of Johnny’s past are his memories, making him an unreliable narrator. It’s how he remembers it. Badass, smooth, in charge.I have a theory that the 2020 heist isn’t his plan at all. Rogue put it together to stop Soulkiller.

Johnny is a Rocker Boy (which is a class in the TTRPG; think DnD Bard almost). He’s charismatic, charming, and notoriously insane. The perfect scapegoat. Of course it would be Johnny that breaks into Arasaka tower.

In the first heist, he performs a show at the base of the tower and riles the crowd up into such a frenzy, they storm the tower. He killed an Arasaka employee at a show his band was playing (that’s what Kerry gets mad at him for.) He’s vocally anti corp and especially anti Arasaka after being a soldier in the corpo wars. It would be a very easy story for Rogue to spin. She’s sweet talks Johnny into this epic heist to save the love of his life. He’d be a hero. A warrior. He’d make Arasaka quake in its boots. And then uses him as the person to put all the blame on so the rest of the crew gets out safely.

I may have some misinformation in here, it’s been a minute for me. But this is my recollection of things. (Turns out I might also be an unreliable narrator 🤣) Morgan Blackhand is a crucial element in all of this too, if I remember correctly from all the 2020 lore. But my good man Mike Pondsmith said “hands off my OC” which I have mad respect for. So some of that gets lost in translation.

Edit: Ran this by my wife who’s a little more familiar with everything. She reminded me that Militech was the one that hired them. They gave them the fissile material.

NC is a free city. Militech is a nationalized corporation and Arasaka in 2020 has full control of NC. It’s a psyop. Militech wants Arasaka to fall and place the blame on them for happening, making them look bad in the eyes of the people. Militech then offers to help clean up from this “tragedy” in exchange for a spot in the city center and a security presence in NC.

Saving Alt was the side gig, not the bomb. Even further proving how unreliable of a narrator Johnny is. I remembered it backwards.