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

“You’re not here looking for any trouble, are you?” the bouncer asked.

Batou gave his standard response. “I’m just here for the girls… and the beer.”

Inside the nightclub, the Major continued across the main floor, checking out the clientele, and avoided walking through a holographic wrestling match, which was accompanied by grunts from the combatants and shouts from the viewing patrons.

Diamond Face blocked the Major’s way. “Can I help you?”

The Major tried to determine if the man had been part of what she’d seen in the Deep Dive. “I’m looking for someone.”

“You been here before?” Diamond Face asked. He looked her up and down appreciatively.

“My friend had some mech work done here,” the Major said. The statement seemed credible enough, given what she already knew of the place. “Industry stuff.”

“We don’t do mech work here,” Diamond Face insisted.

This was an outright lie, but the Major chose not to confront him. “My mistake.” She turned to walk away, but found another gangster blocking her path.

Diamond Face gave her his most inviting grin, which was fairly repulsive. “Why don’t you come have fun with us? We’ll have some privacy.”

This would allow access to hidden parts of the club, which was why the Major was here, so she did her best to look receptive.

Admitted to the club, Batou was walking its warren of hallways. He passed a table where another bouncer, heavily armed, was watching the same holowrestling match that was rumbling along in the main room.

Batou tuned out the wrestlers’ grunts so that he could focus on Major, coming in over the comms to tell him, “ I’m in .”

In the main room, a sexy woman propositioned a male patron. This seemed to be the primary female/male dynamic here, sellers and buyers, though there were a few couples that might be genuine dates.

The Major allowed Diamond Face to escort her to the private VIP space. It was small—someone would have to work hard to avoid bumping into other people in here—with blue leather upholstered walls, red leather couches and a stripper pole to one side. The Major had been in her share of dodgy establishments since joining the Section, but this was perhaps the worst she’d ever seen in terms of pure bad taste.

A man known to his associates as Tony stood just inside the doorway, his eyes bright with interest behind his big steel-framed glasses. The skin on his face was as shiny and synthetic as his blue suit, making him look as though the front half of his head was covered in the kind of plastic cling wrap used by the working class for leftovers. Perhaps he had had repairs done after being badly burned or suffering from a disfiguring disease; perhaps he just thought it made him appear cool and distinctive. The Major thought it made him look profoundly unhealthy.

They were joined by another member of the club’s management, beefy and bald-headed, with a mouth full of metal teeth. He was known at the club as No Pupils. His eye implants were perfectly round, with unnaturally blue irises and pupils that didn’t work correctly, neither dilating nor contracting in any kind of light. He also stared intently at the Major.

While the Major was still assessing the two men, Diamond Face moved with surprising speed to handcuff her wrist to the stripper pole. She let out a gasp and pulled at it experimentally, testing the strength of the metal as she made a show of trying to free herself. She didn’t have to pretend that much. The cuff was dense, case-hardened steel and she wasn’t going to get it off easily.

No Pupils closed the door that led back to the club. Then he leered at the Major and let out a malevolent chuckle.

Batou, unaware of the Major’s current straits, said into the comm, “ I’ll be here when you need me. ” He was not worried when the Major didn’t reply; she was doubtless busy seeking evidence of what she’d seen in her Deep Dive.

The men’s room was just around the corner, past a couple of out of order vu-phones and the stuttering hologram display of a cigarette machine. Inside, it reeked of stale beer and spilled piss, and Batou took a breath through his mouth. A shapely pre-operative transgender patron was relieving herself at one of the urinals. Like Diamond Face, she too sported a metal lower jaw, the house modification specialty.

Batou tried to avoid making eye contact. He couldn’t risk starting a conversation that might keep her in the room with him and he definitely didn’t want the lady to think he was making a pass at her.

In the private room, the club boss Tony, sweating excessively and reeking of what passed for top-shelf liquor in Sound Business, leaned in close to the Major. “You say your friend worked here?”

Either Tony had misunderstood Diamond Face, or Diamond Face had misunderstood the Major. Or else she’d been made as law enforcement and they were toying with her. But the Major stuck to her story. “I said my friend had work done here.”

“She’s human… your ‘friend’?” Tony sounded at once playful and threatening, implying the Major had really been talking about herself. His words also implied that he perceived far more about the Major’s nature than made her comfortable.

She stalled for time. “Now what’s that supposed to mean?” she said aloud, carefully shifting her weight, so that she was braced for whatever might come next. She reached out over the mind-comm. “ Batou. ” There was no response. She tried again. “ Can you hear me? ”

Tony leaned in still closer to inspect her, his sweat dripping and his smell even worse. “Mmm, who did this… stunning work on you?” he murmured, stroking the Major’s hair. “It’s divine.” No one should be able to tell simply from looking at her that the Major had any work done at all. That this man was able to detect anything of her true nature suggested there was military-grade scanning tech hidden either in the room or perhaps somewhere in that absurd shiny blue suit.

Tony’s fingers began to descend from her hair to her cleavage. The Major grabbed his hand to stop him, but No Pupils jabbed her with an electric prod. A crackling sizzle of current made her jerk against the pole as the voltage coursed through her. Overload discharges sparked from her joints and at the corner of her vision, warning icons blinked red as her cybersystems felt the effects of the voltage.

The Major struggled to hold herself up, and abruptly the shocks halted as the thug lifted the baton. Her body continued to shake as her artificial nerve pathways cycled through a reset.

No Pupils chuckled softly, enjoying her reaction.

In the men’s room, the other patron was taking so long that Batou thought he’d look like some kind of voyeur if he continued to just stand there, so he finally took his place at another urinal and used it. At last, the trans woman left. Satisfied that he was alone, Batou called out on the mind-comm. “ Ladriya? Guns .”

Ladriya’s response was prompt. The bathroom’s transom window opened inward from the street and a machine gun slipped through the opening into Batou’s hand. He tucked the weapon inside his voluminous coat.

“ Here, ” Ladriya said over the comm, letting Batou know she was still in position outside in the alley.

In the VIP room, Tony circled around the Major. She twitched, aiming to look like a cyber-augmented but fully human woman who had just been subjected to a debilitating electric shock, and reached out again on the comm. “ Batou… I’m losing signal .”

There was still no response from her teammate but, unfortunately, there was another voice in her ear as Tony put his mouth right next to it and whispered, “Don’t worry, sweetie. We have privacy.”