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

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 around 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.