"Mr. Mendoza, this is the prosthesis plant assigned to you by the Family Council. It's called Neotex: Biomechanical Limb Factory."
The lawyer's voice echoed in the empty courtroom as he pointed to a half-ruined building on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, covered in graffiti, surrounded by dust and the discreet surveillance of security drones. To one side, an armored truck waited with its engine running.
"You have three months to generate a profit. If you don't, you will be eliminated from the succession process."
The lawyer didn't even wait for a reply. He got into the vehicle, closed the door, and drove off into the polluted fog of dawn.
Elías Mendoza remained silent, staring at the rusty facade of the plant. His head throbbed, dizzy, as if he had just woken up from surgery.
And indeed, he had.
He vaguely remembered being in an operating room in Mexico City, about to receive a heart transplant, and the next second... he was there, wearing new clothes, property documents in hand, and a different identity etched in his mind.
A wave of memories hit him like an electric shock. His heart—the new one or the old one, he didn't know—beat wildly as his brain processed the information.
Now he was the youngest son of Alonso Mendoza, patriarch of one of the most powerful corporate families in the country: owners of Grupo Mendoza, a conglomerate that controlled everything from energy to artificial intelligence.
Elías, however, was an illegitimate son, born from a secret relationship with a social activist who had disappeared years before. The family despised him. The corporate board only offered him this opportunity at the whim of his dying father, as part of an absurd "succession battle."
While his older brothers received multimillion-dollar deals—residential towers in Cancun, pharmaceutical companies with government contracts, entertainment studios with political influencers—he had been left with a bankrupt plant that produced low-cost prosthetics.
A trap.
A public humiliation.
A burial disguised as an opportunity.
But just as the desert heat made him stagger, a robotic voice echoed in his mind:
[Linking complete!]
[Welcome to the Mechanical Ascension System.]
[Do you wish to activate the welcome module?]
Elias took a step back, looking around, as if someone were speaking to him from an invisible drone.
"What the fuck…?"
[The system has detected that the host meets the conditions: severe physical trauma, hostile environment, unconscious desire for transformation.]
[Activating starter pack…]
An invisible interface unfolded before his eyes. It wasn't hallucinations: it was technology integrated into his new consciousness.
"The flesh is weak. The machine endures."
That phrase… he had read it before. In hidden forums, in banned books on transhumanism, in academic essays leaked from private universities.
The system wasn't Mexican. It didn't even seem of this world.
And yet, it offered him a way out. A path.
Cutting-edge biomechanical technology. Smart prosthetics. Self-healing artificial organs. Real-time neural interfaces. Integrated solar energy.
All of this could be manufactured from that plant.
All of this could be sold. All of this could change the country.
But first, he needed something more basic: trust. Users. Satisfaction.
Every satisfied customer would become a research point. Each point would open up new technologies.
"What if I can really win?" he thought.
Not just for the throne of the Mendoza Group. Not for the recognition of the bastards who had despised him all his life.
But for something greater: an irreversible transformation of the human being. A Mexico where flesh no longer signified weakness. Where the body no longer limited the soul.
He took a deep breath. He clenched his fists.
"Let's start with one arm."
He opened the door to the plant. Dust blinded him for a moment. But far away, among the industrial shadows, a blue light flickered.
The revolution had begun.