Ghost in the Shell

by James Swallow

  Their skins were a study in contrast. Where the Major’s flesh was pale, and almost reflective, Lia’s ochre tones were wonderfully freckled and authentic.

  The Major moved closer, reaching up to stroke Lia’s cheek, then ran her thumb over Lia’s lip. She saw the young woman react in surprise to her touch. “What does that feel like?”

  “It feels…” Lia hesitated, “…different.”

  The Major ran a finger under Lia’s eye, then stroked her cheek again. It evoked a memory, though no names or faces came with it. But there had been breath, and smell, and skin, and warmth.

  Lia exhaled very softly, nervous. “What are you?” she asked. Was that fear in her eyes?

  The Major did not reply.

  6

  GHOST HACK

  Even though she lived in a far more elegant part of town that could only be afforded by politicians, top executives and corporate scientists, Dr. Sonia Dahlin’s apartment was not extensively furnished. Like most Hanka personnel, she didn’t spend much time in her personal dwelling. Tonight, though, she had taken her current project home with her and was up late, working. She could have remained in the lab, and protocol dictated that she should, but by the end of the regular workday, she had desperately needed a nap, a shower and a change of clothes in that order. There were places to sleep and even wash up at the Hanka Tower, of course, but she didn’t have a clean shirt with her and the thought of having to go on working with her own sweat clinging to her was more than Dahlin could take today.

  Moreover, Dahlin felt uneasy on this project. She had been directed to find every last bit of information that could be excavated from the geisha bot’s systems, but with all of the scientists who’d been killed in their laboratories or semi-public settings, it seemed safer to work from home at night, getting in before dark and not venturing out again until dawn.

  So here she was in her living room, rested, clean, with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, overflowing ashtray at hand. The hacked geisha bot was spread out on a table before her, with a hologram reading SECURE—PROJECT 2571 hovering in the air. In smaller words, the hologram also read, ENCRYPTED FOLDER STRUCTURE—DR. OSMOND.

  Dahlin scanned a hologram of the geisha’s head in order to access the encrypted file folder that the bot had hacked from Osmond. She reached out and manipulated the hologram to decrypt it.

  The decryption brought forth a new hologram: HANKA—PERSONNEL FILES.

  Dahlin frowned. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble—not to mention expense, bribery, and murder—for a directory that could have been obtained in far easier, less bloody ways. What information was in here that was so important?

  There were armed doormen downstairs in case of intruders and Dahlin always set the lock code on her door as soon as she stepped inside. There was no reason for her to fear that someone might break in, and consequently no reason for her to be on alert. So, as the scientist poured through the data streams, she did not notice her front door opening silently.

  But then a shadow moved where no shadow should be, and Dahlin turned to see Kuze standing right behind her. She could only see a glimpse of his face, pale beneath the hood.

  Kuze reached out and plucked the lit cigarette from Dahlin’s trembling lips. She was terrified, but not paralyzed by it. Her hands were still on her console, and she palmed the thumb drive from it, causing the holograms to disappear.

  Kuze didn’t seem to care about that. “Look at me,” he commanded.

  Dahlin peered at his face under the hood. Her own features registered revulsion and pity.

  “Tell me what they took from me,” Kuze continued.

  She knew he was referring to the scientists of Hanka. She even knew what he was talking about. But Kuze was here for vengeance, and probably nothing she could say would dissuade him. Still, Dahlin tried, the words coming out in a frightened gasp. “I’m sorry. They never told us.”

  Kuze’s reply came in a gesture rather than speech. With one hand, he broke the detachable eye-plate off of Dahlin’s face, blinding her and revealing the quikports underneath.

  As Dahlin screamed with pain and terror, Kuze tossed her eye-plate aside and rammed his hand into the ports in her eye sockets.

  * * *

  The next day, Batou was at the wheel of his car, the Major riding shotgun beside him. “It feels weird driving with these eyes,” Batou said. He expected some sort of smartass rejoinder, but when he glanced at the Major, he saw she was busy applying medication to one of the quik-ports in her neck. “Why do you take that?” He’d never asked before, but the eye implants made him feel like he’d earned the right; he had much more in common with the Major now.

  She didn’t object to the question. “It keeps my brain from rejecting this body.”

  Batou nodded. He was still on anti-rejection drugs for his eye implants; something as extensive as what had been done to the Major likely required a lifelong medication regimen.

  He was about to say something, but then the car’s comm lit up with Togusa’s voice.

  “Major, Batou… you need to get here.”

  “What do you got?” Batou replied into the comm.

  Togusa sounded grim. “Another Hanka scientist has been found dead. It’s Dahlin.”

  Batou inhaled sharply and saw the look of alarm on the Major’s face. “Got it.” He jerked the steering wheel, putting the car in a one-eighty-degree spin.

  * * *

  When the Major and Batou arrived at Dahlin’s apartment building, Togusa, Ishikawa, Ladriya and Borma had just arrived and were waiting in the hall.

  “Major, this way,” Togusa directed. He led her and Batou past a murdered guard and into Dahlin’s apartment. The scientist’s body was on the floor.

  The Major pulled back the plastic tarp covering the corpse to see Dahlin’s ruined face. With the eye-plate removed and her head circuitry smashed beyond repair, Dahlin resembled a broken cyborg, even though she had been human.

  One of Dahlin’s hands was clenched tight. The Major’s first thought was that it was a result of rigor mortis but Dahlin’s other hand was open. The Major pried open Dahlin’s curled fingers, trying not to snap them, and found the thumb drive clutched in the dead woman’s hand.

  The killer had left Dahlin’s computer intact, so the Major inserted the thumb drive there. The hologram she had seen just before her death (SECURE—PROJECT 2571/ENCRYPTED FOLDER STRUCTURE—DR. OSMOND) appeared once more.

  “What is that?” Togusa voiced what they were all wondering.

  “She found what Kuze stole from Osmond,” the Major surmised. She scanned through the personnel files, and saw highlighted within the hologram: PERSONNEL #2605, PERSONNEL #1203, PERSONNEL #2605, PERSONNEL #1502.

  The Major recognized what the data revealed. “It’s a list of everyone who worked on a project called 2571.” She opened the PERSONNEL #1502 file. The holograms became a succession of portraits of Hanka scientists, with identifying captions beneath the images: Dr. Houser, Dr. Osmond, Dr. Sato, Dr. Markum, Dr. Dahlin. “That’s who he’s targeting.”

  “Is anyone else on the list?” Togusa asked.

  The Major scrolled past Dahlin’s portrait. The next image to come up was Dr. Genevieve Ouelet.

  She felt as though she’d been injected with ice water. “Find Ouelet,” the Major ordered. “Now!”

  Ladriya tried to contact Ouelet on her comm, with no luck. “She’s in transit. Her comms are down.”

  * * *

  A green electric truck, grubby with months of dirt, sat idling in an alleyway, its wide bulk almost filling the passage. The six-wheeler resembled a giant pill-bug. Right now, it was idling in place while its occupants ate lunch, because if there was one thing Bearded Man and Skinny Man agreed on, it was that there was no such thing as an emergency rush in the trash collection game.

  In the truck’s cramped and sweaty cab, Skinny Man was in the driver’s seat. He was wound tight with nervous, unspent energy, even while putting noodles in his mouth and talking arou
nd them, the implant in his right temple bobbing as he went on. “I’m looking at her and I’m thinking, ‘You want me to pay for violin, too?’ Don’t get me wrong. I love that kid to pieces. I do. ’Cause she’s amazing.” His words came out muffled as he chewed. “But when she practices that thing, it is painful, right?”

  Bearded Man just nodded and took a bite of his own noodles, trying to avoid dropping them on his orange overalls.

  Skinny Man hadn’t been expecting a reply anyway. “Why not piano?”

  Both men would have been astonished to know their conversation was being monitored. In the underground bunker, Kuze listened in and previewed the truck’s route via his cables, waiting for the right moment.

  “I mean,” Skinny Man went on, “it’s the same price, you know? And doesn’t sound so bad.” He took another bite of his noodles. “At least if you can’t play that proper…” Suddenly, lights began to circulate within his implant. His speech slowed, “… it doesn’t sound…”

  His face went slack and blank-eyed, and he became unnaturally motionless. His eyelids gave a peculiar flutter. At his side, his partner’s face shared the same blank emptiness. They both released their noodle containers, which dropped onto the cab floor.

  Skinny Man’s put both his hands on the steering wheel, as if the appendages were two separately animated things moving of their own volition. He gunned the truck’s engine and it hurtled forward in a sudden rush, gaining speed as it lurched toward the mouth of the alleyway, motor roaring.

  * * *

  Ouelet was in the back seat of her limo, contemplating her next move as her chauffeur gracefully guided the sleek black car through the streets. Her assistant sat beside her, typing with hands that had been enhanced with ten fingers each. This gave the assistant a slightly insect-like appearance from the forearms outward, but the tech was ideal for a job that required letter-perfect real-time transcription. Over the limo’s sound system, opera diva Maria Callas was singing the “La mamma morta” aria from Umberto Giordano’s opera Andrea Chénier.

  Ouelet sighed. Cutter had been making his unhappiness with the Major’s investigation known inside and outside of Hanka. She hoped he wouldn’t really remove the Major from her supervision. That would be counter-productive.

  All Ouelet’s thoughts were swept away as the huge green truck suddenly smashed into the driver’s side of the limo in a violent, screeching impact of twisting steel and breaking glass. The T-bone collision sent the smaller vehicle slipping away and into a sideways somersault, rolling it onto its roof before it skidded to a halt across the roadway.

  The sound system, unlike the engine, was intact. Callas sang on. “Porto sventura a chi bene mi vuole!” I bring misfortune to all who love me.

  Ouelet cried out. Her first thought, even before she realized how much pain she was in, even before it sank in that her life was in immediate danger, was that her surgeon’s hands might have been damaged. For all that she touted enhancements for others, she prided herself on her organic skills. Outside the flipped limo, the garbage truck backed up and stopped. Neither of the men in the cab of the truck showed the slightest flicker of emotion as they reached for a threadbare bag in the footwell that contained two hooded trench coats, dully reflective covers like rain slickers, which each donned around his shoulders with rote motions. Beneath the coats were small-frame submachine guns, the kind of weapon gangbangers called a chop-n-drop. They took one each.

  Silently, the two men climbed out of the truck’s cab. They walked toward the upside-down limousine as the wreckage creaked and clicked, its tormented metal frame still settling.

  Hanka Robotics scientist Dr. Genevieve Ouelet, on her hands and knees, crawled out of a shattered window frame on the side of the limo opposite the truck, desperately pushing ahead in a terrified crouch. She searched wildly for any kind of cover that might protect her, but the nearest wall was too far away, with nothing but open asphalt between her and the meager safety it offered.

  The Hanka spokeswoman continued her holographic pitch. “…and your loved ones. Protecting your ever-evolving future. Hanka Robotics.”

  The limo’s chauffeur, hanging upside down from his seatbelt, struggled to escape from the vehicle, in too much in shock to comprehend that there was more danger on the street than inside the wreck. Dead-eyed, Skinny Man aimed his gun and fired a quick burst into the man’s belly, killing him.

  Ouelet had cleared the car but was unable to stand. A shadow fell over her and she looked up, dazed, at the machine-gun muzzle pointing at her face. Holding the weapon was a skinny man wearing a trench coat, with data lights cascading through the implant on the right side of his head. He screamed, glaring down at her through dead eyes, “2571! Tell me everything!”

  Then she heard the roaring snarl of an overcharged engine and both assassins pivoted toward the source of the sound. Ouelet saw a blocky, military-style jeepney hurtling toward them down the roadway, and a determined face behind the wheel.

  The bigger, Bearded Man, who hadn’t said anything, brought up his gun one-handed and sent a braying lance of fire toward the oncoming vehicle. Massive holes punctured the cab and the hood of the jeepney, but the heavy vehicle kept on coming until its tires blew out. It coasted jerkily forward for a few yards on sheer momentum, then creaked to a stop.

  Batou’s car screeched around the end of the block in a punishing turn and barreled across the intersection toward the site of the ambush. Skinny Man continued to scream at Ouelet, spittle flying from his lips. “Are you prepared to die for 257—”

  The Major leapt from the car even as Batou brought it skidding to a halt. She came forward with both hands clasped around her weapon, intent on her target. She fired at Skinny Man, but the car’s motion and her landing threw her aim off, and she missed. Skinny Man turned and fired back. She took cover behind the open passenger door, steadying herself. As Batou got out of the car, Skinny Man changed his aim and shot at him.

  The Major didn’t think—she just reacted. Leaning out from behind the open car door, and leading with her pistol, she drew a bead on Skinny Man. Her gun barked and she landed a single shot in his shoulder. It seemed to have zero effect. He returned fire again, spraying a pattern of bullets into the door.

  Ladriya, Ishikawa and Togusa exited the jeepney from the back. “Go!” Togusa told Ladriya, tasking her with protecting Ouelet.

  They were closing into a ring around the target, surrounding him. The Major knew that this was the critical moment.

  Skinny Man abandoned Ouelet and the gunfight together. He bolted for the end of the street. His beefy partner took up the cause, exchanging fire with Ishikawa, but Skinny Man did not look back. Ouelet ducked behind the limo, putting more metal between herself and her assailant.

  As he reached the end of the block, Skinny Man’s free hand snapped up and activated the thermoptic function on his trench coat. Too late, the Major realized what he was wearing as his outline flickered, turned glassy—and then vanished, leaving a heat mirage distortion that receded from view altogether.

  The Major ran behind the limo, simultaneously trying to protect Ouelet and bring down the shimmering outline of Skinny Man as he ran further and further out of range. Ladriya ran over to relieve the Major. “Go,” Ladriya told her.

  She sprang up and ran in the direction Skinny Man had taken. But the Major had no backup. Everyone else on the team was engaged in the gunfight with Bearded Man. The man did not appear to be bothered by the fact that he was outgunned and surrounded, that he’d been abandoned by his partner, or that their mission had apparently failed. He just kept firing, with no expression on his features, until two shots from Batou finally reached its target. The big man sank to his knees, then collapsed completely, dead.

  Skinny Man, now blocks away, leapt down from his perch on a second-floor apartment building into a deserted alley. The surrounding buildings were grey with decay, decrepit and largely abandoned. Tattered laundry hung from a few balconies, but no faces peered out to investigate th
e frantic footfalls on the cement below. The man raced across the alley to a low wall at the end and scrambled up and over the barrier. Without pause, he ran down the next dismal, dirty street.

  The enclosed canyons of the downtown district abruptly opened out into a flat, empty basin that reminded the Major of an ancient amphitheater. Rows of derelict tiered structures climbed away on two sides. The basin was visible but submerged beneath a foot of seawater, blown in by the last storm and just left there, as City Services never ventured into this neighborhood.

  The arena-like space was much quieter than the mayhem back by the garbage truck and the wrecked limo, enough so that, even though her target was still invisible, the Major’s enhanced hearing could pick out the thudding of his boots. She tracked the sound, looking for any sign of the gunman, and found ripples radiating out across the basin’s shallow water, disturbed in his passing.

  Thinking quickly, she went for the high ground. The Major gripped the edge of a wall and, in a few swift motions, she was up atop one of the tiers. Moving fast and low to present a smaller silhouette, she dashed along the top of the structure, still scanning the basin for the shooter. Below her, she caught sight of the gunman’s footfalls in another patch of murky water. He was close.

  She nodded to herself. Two could play at this game. The Major ran to the sheer drop at the edge of the tier, throwing herself into the air. In mid-drop, she triggered her own thermoptic camo, turning her into a spectral shape as she landed hard on the ground and crouched low.