Ghost in the Shell

by James Swallow

  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.”

  Privacy? The Major wondered if he meant more than the closed door, if Tony knew about the mindcomms. His next words confirmed it. “Listen. No signals going in or out.”

  The Major trembled and inhaled sharply.

  There didn’t seem any point in lingering in the men’s room now that he had his gun, so Batou emerged and headed for the bar. He spoke again over the comm. “Major, I’m in position. Do you copy?” There was no response. By now, Batou was starting to worry but he was also face to face with the bartender, a fit, bare-chested fellow covered in tattoos, with a right-eye implant and a pure dark mech
left arm. From his glowering expression, he clearly was not among the legion of bartenders famed for being good listeners.

  Batou decided not to even try questioning the guy; no good could come of it. “Beer,” he ordered. While the bartender retrieved a bottle, Batou used the mind-comm again, this time trying for dry humor. “If you don’t answer, you’re gonna hurt my feelings.” No answer.

  The bartender thumped the bottle down in front of Batou and opened it, giving the Section Nine soldier an inhospitable glare as he did so.

  Batou took a swig of the beer, which tasted like it had been recycled, and glared back at the bartender. With no response from the Major, he tried an alternative. “Ladriya, do you have Major on comms?”

  Ladriya came through clearly on the comms, but her reply was not comforting. “Got nothing. Signal’s still blocked.”

  In the VIP room, No Pupils struck the Major again with the electric prod. She couldn’t stop herself from flailing against the pole, chained there by the handcuff. Sparks tumbled about her and she fell to her knees, her breath trembling. She was thankful that at least Tony stepped away from her, taking his smell and sweat to an almost safe distance, taking a seat on the red leather sofa that ringed the walls.

  “I’m afraid I get bored rather easily, so…” Tony paused for effect. “If you don’t want to talk…” He paused again and began tapping his foot to the beat of the music pulsing through the walls from the main room. “Maybe you wanna dance!” He hissed rhythmically in time with the taps of his foot and began shaking his shoulders to the music in a manic shimmy.

  No Pupils giggled, swallowed, and jabbed Major with the electric prod again. He gave a cry of pure excitement as she jerked and gasped.

  Still at the bar, Batou was getting impatient and anxious. He didn’t like either of those emotions, so he was shoving them down in favor of growing anger as he spoke into the comms once more. “Major, come on. Answer me.”

  He couldn’t help noticing that yakuza enforcers at a number of tables were staring at him suspiciously. As a holographic stripper beckoned, her words indistinct, the two bouncers who’d let Batou in earlier approached him from behind, one of them jabbing a pistol into his ribs.

  Batou exhaled and inhaled, irritated. He turned to the bouncer who had cautioned him at the front door and used the man’s words against him. “I thought you said no trouble.”

  In the private room, No Pupils cried out with joy as he continued to jab Major with the prod. Tony made boom-box vocalizations, boogying to the beat pulsing in from the club’s sound system.

  The Major gave another agonized gasp, arousing her tormentors even further.

  “Dance,” Tony told her. He continued to sigh and click along with the music as he danced toward the Major.

  “Ah-ha!” No Pupils shrieked with laughter.

  The Major’s gasps became louder, her trembling more violent.

  “Ah-seeeee…” Tony was now trying to sing along with the music, sounding as though he was building to some sort of ecstatic climax.

  “Mmm… no,” the Major quivered.

  “Eeeeee…” Tony’s singing got even stranger.

  “Enough.” The Major’s voice shook.

  Tony was so giddily delighted to hear his captive beg that he stopped dancing to listen to her and started chortling.

  “The truth is…” the Major went on, marshaling her strength. She would only get one shot at this.

  “Mmm,” Tony encouraged her.

  She fought down the tremors and slid both arms up to grip the pole above her, and then all the vulnerability, all the fear and panic melted off her expression and left a wicked smile in their place. “… I wasn’t built to dance,” the Major concluded. She took a moment to savor the gangsters’ reactions, then leapt up and flipped in mid-air, descending to kick No Pupils in the head. Then she swung herself inverted on the pole, her feet pressing to the ceiling as No Pupils sent another charge into the space where she had been an instant before. Sparks flew, but he had no time to react as she spun and whirled around the pole, planting both feet in his chest and kicking him back into the sofa with a freight-train blow.

  Diamond Face uttered a mechanical-sounding growl through his enhanced jaw. Tony seemed too far gone to appreciate that the tables had turned. He laughed and clapped as the Major flipped back onto her feet, kicking Diamond Face. Even his gasp of pain sounded mechanical. The Major kicked him again, snarling.

  She turned to Tony, unleashing a flurry of punches that sent him reeling back toward the door. Tony emitted an “Ooh!” of pain, but even then, the Major was afraid he might be enjoying himself.

  No Pupils recovered sufficiently to lunge, knife in hand. The Major ducked out of range as Tony fell out the open door into the bar.

  Most of the patrons were startled and alarmed, but Batou was relieved to see the Major through the doorway. He reeled back, head-butted one of the bouncers and smashed the beer bottle over the other one’s head. The man staggered back, trying to dash beer and broken glass out of his face.

  The other bouncer now swung his fist, still holding the pistol. Batou easily blocked the blow and grabbed the bouncer’s gun hand, shoving it aside. The revolver went off with a loud, flat bang, blowing through the torso of the man Batou had hit with the beer bottle, and sent him tumbling to the floor. Batou wrenched the shooter’s gun arm around with both hands, slamming it against the bar with an agonizing snap of breaking bone.

  Every patron in the Sound Business nightclub took notice. Nearly all of them were members of one kind of criminal fraternity or another. As one, the gangsters put down their drinks and turned toward Batou, while the civilian patrons screamed and ran for cover.

  The bartender grabbed a gun from under the counter. Batou, still gripping the armed bouncer’s hand, slammed it down on the bar, causing the other man’s gun to shoot the bartender.

  “Oww!” the bouncer cried.

  And all hell broke loose.

  Batou, seeing a pair of gangsters taking aim at him, turned the bouncer’s hand so that his pistol took out the two yakuza before they could fire. Behind him, the bartender uttered a few dying groans.

  The Major was still in the private room. She wanted to help Batou, but she was still handcuffed to the stripper’s pole and still fighting No Pupils. He came at her and she punched him in the face. He yelled.

  The sounds of the private room fight were entirely swallowed up by the commotion in the main bar as people shouted, yelled, shrieked and either tried to run or find shelter, or else figure out who they ought to kill.

  Batou, settling on two more gangsters, used the bouncer’s hand still clamped around the pistol to shoot them both.

  Diamond Face rejoined the fight in the back room, pulling a pistol. The Major grabbed his arm at the same time she redirected a knife strike by No Pupils, meant for her neck, into Diamond Face. The man groaned in agony, clutching himself where he’d been stabbed. No Pupils grabbed the Major by the throat, but she threw a hard elbow into his face, using his weight against him so that he lost his balance and went down.

  At the bar, Batou snatched the pistol completely free of the bouncer’s hand and shot him, then kicked him down into a conversation pit, knocking down two more gangsters who’d been preparing to open fire.

  “Get outside!” yelled one of the more sensible patrons. Many in the crowd stampeded for the exits. In the rising chaos, Batou spotted another pair of gangsters targeting him and shot them as well.

  The Major used another powerful kick to send the groaning No Pupils staggering back away from her. Then she hurled Diamond Face out through the door and onto the barroom floor.

  Batou looked down to see a sorry, unconscious mess of a guy with a cracked metal jaw. He didn’t know what the out-cold criminal had done to deserve the thrashing he most obviously had received, but he guessed it had something to do with underestimating the Major. That tended to happen. People looked at her and didn’t see the soldier she was, they only saw what they wan
ted to see, what they thought she was. Generally, it didn’t end well.

  He didn’t have much time to reflect on this, though, because those goons who hadn’t died or run off kept shooting at him. Batou dropped the bouncer’s pistol and pulled out the machine gun he’d hidden under his coat. The weapon was almost the size of his torso, which made it a little unwieldy, but it had terrific punch, and it couldn’t be beat for tackling a hostile crowd.

  In the private room, No Pupils pulled out a pistol. The Major was surprised it had taken him this long to try a firearm, but her speed was much better than his aim, and all his shots at her went wild. Then she kicked his gun arm up into the air. He screamed.

  In the barroom, a yakuza armed with two guns gave an attack yell. This was a poor tactic, as it alerted Batou to the yakuza’s intention and position and allowed him to shoot first. The gangster fell back with a dying groan, his guns tilting upward so that their shots punctured the ceiling.

  No Pupils tried to shoot the Major once more. She easily swung around the stripper’s pole, gained footing on the wall and ran around it at a ninety-degree angle to the floor as she evaded the bullets, then kicked No Pupils in the head. He dropped onto his face, insensate.

  With no one left to fight, the Major took a moment to catch her breath.

  Out in the club, only one gangster still seemed inclined to fight. He charged at Batou with a battle cry worthy of his warrior forebears. Batou frantically brought up his gun and fired. The gangster dropped mid-charge with a dying grunt that overlapped with the grunting holographic wrestlers and the sighs of the holographic strippers.

  Tony was bleeding out, his breath coming in raspy exhalations. The Major got the handcuff key out of his pocket and released herself from the pole. Taking out her pistol, she walked into the club. As she did, she could feel the comms come back on, no longer blocked by the tech shielding the back room.

  “Back on comms,” the Major told her team. “I’m heading to the back room.”

  Batou tried to keep his reply light, but he knew he probably sounded as relieved as he felt. “I missed ya. I’ll meet you there.”