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

She took a moment, then entered what was left of the pagoda. Around her were what remained of the runaways’ squat. Plant life had sprung up from the ashes, spreading green tendrils through the blackened remnants of the wooden-slat walls. The fire had spared a mosaic, some keys that had been made into a display and some handprints in the plaster along one wall. The Major reached out her own hand to stroke the prints, all that was left of the young people who had banded together and made a home here.

An electronic voice with a buzzing echo spoke up behind her. “It is real,” Kuze said. He entered the pagoda and stood behind the Major. He sounded more than a little awed. “This place.”

“I remember what they did to us,” the Major told him. “Cutter and his men. This is where they took us from.” She walked over to a niche and gestured at the ground where their bedrolls had been. “We used to sleep right here. We were like a family. All of us runaways. We had nothing… except each other. They took that from us.” Her voice was soft and bitter.

She saw some graffiti carved into the niche, names of some of those who’d stayed here: Minori, Hideo, Motoko, Miya, Reika. And now she knew who Kuze was. “Your name was Hideo.”

Kuze looked up, and spoke the Major’s real name. “Motoko.”

She couldn’t speak. For the second time that day, tears welled in her eyes.

“That was your name,” Kuze said tenderly. He approached her, and said her name again. “Motoko.”

They gazed at each other, memories overlapping who they were now. The Major wondered who they would be if they had been allowed to live their lives together uninterrupted. Hideo had wanted to be an artist, Motoko had aspired to be a poet, both bringing beauty to the world. Instead, they had been transformed. Vengeance, death, destruction. This was the art they made now.

“Come with me… into my network,” Kuze urged. The Major looked at him, not sure what he meant. “We will evolve beyond them. And together we can avenge what they have done to us.” His electronic voice buzzed. “Come… with me.” He was proposing that they exist together in a purely cyber world, from where they could strike out at humanity.

Before the Major could answer, a mortar blast hit the pagoda, hurling both the Major and Kuze out into the plaza. She hit hard and stayed down, while he bounced, sustaining greater injuries on his second landing.

In the Zen garden, Cutter wielded a virtual remote control, directing the real arsenal he had in place in the lawless zone. He watched the spider tank’s slow and steady advance. So much raw power, and it responded from so far away to his every gesture. This, truly, was the pinnacle of human achievement.

“I’ll take control from here,” he told his soldiers over the comm. The intricate hologram of the spider tank glowed red, at odds with the peace of the garden.

“Weapons system manual command,” the female operative’s voice confirmed. “Spider tank now active.”

The Major lay on her front. Parts of her artificial skin had been obliterated in the blast, leaving her inner workings open to the night air. A tremor went through the road, echoing up through her boots, followed by another and another. Turning toward the source, she looked up and saw something that seemed to have crawled out of a nightmare, a gigantic tank that scrabbled and stomped forward on six huge metal segmented legs, red triangular lights glowing above its turret gun like enraged eyes, motors grinding as it swung its turret around, tracking her. Pistons hissed as it moved and the machine began to advance on the plaza.

The Major got to her feet and ran to Kuze. Like her, he had been damaged by the mortar. Both of his legs were shattered. All that remained under his left thigh was part of a metal pole, which, until this attack, had been encased in sensors, artificial muscles and cyber-flesh.

“It’s Cutter! He’s found us!” The Major grabbed Kuze as the tank started firing. Its ordnance was not machine bullets, but explosive missiles three feet in length.

The Major dragged Kuze as quickly as she could into the cover provided by the banyan tree’s thick roots, then ran to her motorcycle and grabbed a machine gun from where she’d stashed it.

She darted out from cover so she could get a better shot at the gargantuan metal spider that spit bombs instead of poison. Another whoosh signaled a second incoming rocket. The Major rolled to evade the blast in time, taking cover behind one of the pillars supporting the walkway overhead that engirdled the plaza.

Shrapnel ricocheted off the stonework and the concrete pillar. The Major felt a razor of torn steel clip her arm, but she ignored it.

The tank continued to fire. The hologram wasn’t showing Cutter the Major’s present position, but that was all right. Time was on his side. He would, if necessary, raze the entire plaza until no two bits of concrete larger than his thumb remained intact and nothing organic or inorganic survived.

Cutter turned the tank’s muzzle toward the banyan tree where Kuze was concealed. The Major leapt away from her own hiding place to draw his aim away. She fired at the monstrous arachnid weapon, then ducked back behind the column as the tank blasted at her again.

The next rocket looped down at her, tracking her thermal signature, and slammed into the column. Concrete splintered as the pillar broke apart halfway up its length. Suddenly robbed of any support, a section of the elevated pedestrian pathway collapsed, smashing into pieces amid a cloud of choking grey dust. The spider tank maintained its barrage, destroying one pillar after another. The pedestrian bridge collapsed section by section.

The Major jumped onto the bridge, keeping ahead of its fall, and used it as a launch to get herself to the plaza’s second-story balcony. She took cover behind a V-shaped post. The tank’s next blast missed her body, but it blew the gun out of her hand, wounding her arm. She had to find a different approach, circle around, and get closer to the tank. If she couldn’t find a way to defeat the machine, this fight would be over in moments.

She sidled over into the shadows cast by what remained of the bridge so that she was more fully concealed, then inspected the damage in her arm. There was no time to do anything about it—the tank was again marching toward the banyan tree, closing in on Kuze’s position. The Major lunged out, seized her gun from where it had fallen, and began to reload.

Below her, the tank finally found Kuze. The machine aimed its multiple guns directly at his head. Kuze, ever defiant, pointed his finger as if it were a gun back at the tank and pretended to shoot. Cutter smiled at the futile gesture.

The Major sprang out into the open and fired at the spider tank. The tank turned from Kuze to resume its assault on the Major. She ran along the balcony, keeping ahead of it as the tank spun, exchanging fire with her as both of them moved.

Cutter watched the thermographic outline of the Major as it flashed between the cover of the pillars. He couldn’t figure out what she hoped to achieve. There was no way out now, surely she understood that.

The spider tank extended the scope for its mortar cannon and locked onto the Major. Over the tank’s speaker, a female voice announced, “Target acquired.”

The spider tank fired a missile at the Major, hitting the balcony. A second hit caused the balcony to collapse.

“No!” Kuze shouted. The single word echoed into the night.

The female voice announced placidly, “Target eliminated.”

Cutter exhaled in satisfaction. No experiment had ever been so vexing in its results, or so hard to eradicate, but now he and Hanka were done with 2571. The only task remaining was to get rid of Kuze. Using his VR control, Cutter aimed the spider tank. When Hanka had disposed of that failed prototype, even though it was in pieces, they should have made sure it was truly extinguished; they should never have assumed the Kuze iteration of the project would fail on its own and become inert. Instead, it had literally, if imperfectly, rebuilt itself and very nearly brought down the entire corporation out of an implacable need for vengeance. It was a mistake Cutter would ensure was never made on future projects. Although Kuze could not hear him, the Hanka CEO conceded, “You came close, you freak.”