James Swallow - Ghost in the Shell - The Official Movie Novelization

In the Deep Dive, the Major yelled in desperation as the swarm of predatory, ruined robots closed in around her.

In the forensics lab, the Major convulsed.

Dahlin frantically typed commands into her instruments. Her hands weren’t free, so she called to Batou, “Now!”

Batou grabbed the cable and, with a grunt of effort, yanked it out of the Major’s quik-port, releasing her from the Deep Dive.

The zeta-cable was supposed to be removed from the quik-ports slowly and carefully, so when it was suddenly torn away, the Major sat bolt upright. Batou put his hands firmly on her shoulders so that she wouldn’t fall. Her eyes were wide and unfocused in terror. She shuddered and gasped, trying to get her bearings.

Batou was trying to catch his own breath. What had happened to the Major in there? Was she still herself? Did she know where she was now? Was there anything he could do to help her? He expressed all of this with, “Are you okay?”

The Major managed to control her breathing enough to speak. “I know where he is.”

Downtown New Port City was the city’s vampire district, a place that lay near-dead and dormant during daylight hours, but came to neon-fueled life at night as the reckless or the dangerous congregated in its bars, nightclubs and drinking pits. These establishments nestled beneath the skyscrapers, rather the way cockroaches congregated under blocks of cement.

Just off the main drag, an alley led to a black-framed door retrofitted with atmosphere processors, where a garish illuminated sign gave the promise of illicit thrills within. The Sound Business club looked exactly as it had in the memories of the dead geisha synthetic. Batou, protected against the night air by a long brown coat that—not coincidentally—could conceal all manner of items, made his way over to where the Major and Ladriya were waiting for him. A collection of discs and an empty metal frame were propped up against the alley wall, looking like three-dimensional punctuations in the copious graffiti all around. Ladriya, in a padded jacket with a bright blue and green pattern, looked up, acknowledging Batou’s arrival.

The Major had changed into a red jumpsuit with diagonal zippers to sell the fiction that she was just some well-off dilettante from the corporate zone, slumming it down here for kicks.

“I know this place,” Batou said, keeping his voice soft. “They run black-market mech. You tooled up?”

Ladriya indicated her well-armed backpack. “Yep.”

The Major nodded, mentally reconstructing what she had gleaned of the club’s layout from her Deep Dive into the synthetic’s mind. “Target’s the basement,” she instructed the others. “I’ll lead. Switching to mind-comms.” Pure humans did not have the ability to process mental information as data. The Major had insisted that using spoken word over the mindcomms enabled her to communicate with her team more quickly. She pulled a medication vial out of her quik-port, then looked back at Batou. “Hope you’ve been practicing.” He was a great practical fighter, but he sometimes forgot not to speak aloud when the comms were in use.

“That’s unfair!” Batou called after the Major as she headed out of the alley. Then he remembered to turn on his comm. “It just takes me a moment to—” he realized he was still speaking out loud and finally switched to the mind-comm, “— get the hang of it .”

On the far side of the street from the nightclub, a threadbare noodle bar wreathed in steam was doing slow business, with only a couple of diners sitting on the benches with their faces in bowls of ramen. One of them was Togusa, who paused to tap his own implant and then continued to eat.

Above, a billboard advertised “sexy lipstick” in Cantonese, and all around, people on the street were chattering and laughing. The Major headed into Sound Business. The club’s front door led straight to a staircase that funneled guests to the nightclub’s main floor.

In the pool of light spilling from the sign above the door, the Major picked out the hulking forms of doormen as she descended the stairs. She pegged them as private security soldiers rather than regular bouncers. “ Two mercs at the doors ,” she said into the mind-comm, without breaking stride. “ Armed and enhanced .”

“ Copy that ,” Batou replied, now secure in the mind-comm’s use. “ We’ve got it covered .”

Ladriya split off from Batou and headed for the back of Sound Business, while he continued to the front door.

A peculiar sense of déjà vu washed over the Major as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Although she had never been in the place before, having briefly shared the memories of the reprogrammed geisha, it felt like she was returning to somewhere that held horrors and darkness for her. She frowned, dismissing the thought, and looked around.

A hard-edged bass beat thumped the thick air of the club where it issued out of tall speaker stacks across the room. Holographic strippers took up some airspace; several holo wrestling matches were also on view, drawing cheers and wagers. Knots of gruff men sat in booths on shiny vinyl couches clustered around private tables half-hidden by screens. They all bore the colors of the local gangster crews, the nubs of yakuza tattoos visible around their wrists or poking out from their starched shirt collars. Hostess synthetics in plastic outfits flitted back and forth between the groups, bringing them trays of beer or cycling through false bouts of laughter at their offcolor jokes. A male hologram offered some variety, asking a patron, “Or is this more your thing?”

Nearly all of the customers seemed to be armed. “ There’s a lotta heat in here for a nightclub ,” the Major reported into the comm.

“ It’s a yakuza club ,” Batou replied over the comm from his position outside the building. “ What did you expect? I quite like the place .”

The Major smiled, her tone dry as she replied into the comm, “ Why am I not surprised ?”

Dancers cavorted inside transparent cubes around the stage, and as she watched, the Major saw a Caucasian girl rise up into one of them, her hands drawing shapes in the air as she gyrated seductively toward a guy who had just settled in at the rail.

Things were moving too slowly. “ I’m gonna have to draw some attention ,” the Major informed her team over the comm, “ see if I can access the basement that way .”

Even among so many attractive women, both real and synth, it wasn’t difficult for the Major to get herself noticed. As she walked across the main floor, a lot of people looked her way, especially the men.

A young gangster, called Diamond Face because of the way light sparkled across his metal lower jaw, paid close attention to how the Major moved and the look of her skin. She was not the usual Sound Business customer. The combination of his mech jaw and flesh upper lip slurred his speech a little, but that was better than being knocked out every time he got punched during a bar fight. Not that he was worried about being hit by this out-of-her-depth babe while he worked out exactly what she’d had done to her. It looked special.

At the front door, Batou was stopped by the pair of bouncers and the old-fashioned accordion security gate behind them. Handsome types, pretty ladies and hatchet-faced gangsters were waved through without comment, but a guy like Batou was subject to a little more scrutiny. He sighed and allowed the bouncers to scan and frisk him, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t find anything dangerous on him. His gaze crossed that of a tall, spindly doorman with cyber-optic eyes and what looked like ritual scars on his face. The man’s enhancements were showy and definitely not legally sanctioned.