"Do you ever put that damn game down?"
"I'm just passing the time, Mr. Batou," Aozora replied, not even bothering to look and seemingly more focused on the cellphone game in his hands.
Batou and Aozora stood outside the entrance to the assembly hall, the former more focused on the guard detail at hand. They were fortunate to have a female coworker with them, one which could stay closer to Kayabuki and not invade her privacy. Daimon was female, if not a particularly intimidating one, naturally standing tall and muscular. She could stick with the Prime Minister and not make it awkward.
The team of three had arrived dressed down in civilian clothes as to not draw any attention from potential Collective invasions. If they wanted to catch this repairman in action, they couldn't look like police or military.
"Yeah, whatever," Batou scoffed, pulling a bar of food from his jacket pocket.
"Our orders are to 'act normal'," Aozora reiterated.
"Act like normal people, not be oblivious to our surroundings," Batou fussed.
"As if I didn't notice the rather beautiful woman in red pass us just now," Aozora observed, not even looking up from the game he was playing.
"Huh?" Batou spotted her, a woman in a red dress that stuck out against the drab suits and attire of the people walking the halls. "The hell?"
"I am uncyberized, not unobservant, Mr. Batou." Aozora continued to tap and swipe at his game.
"Yeah but did you notice that woman in red has a bag just like the repairmen from before?" Batou fussed. "Stay here, and put the damn game down!" He began tailing the woman at a brisk pace but not enough to gain her attention. "Daimon," he called out over the cybercoms, "stick to the Prime Minister like glue. We got an Ogami bag sighting."
"Understood," she replied over the com.
Batou mentally cursed at Aozora as he tailed the woman. The kid was new, but he wasn't inexperienced. He'd come from Section 2 as a field agent, happy to get into a Section where the chief wasn't breathing down his neck constantly. He had proven himself rather useful in various cases, his combat experience not as refined but still substantial. But lately, he seemed out of it, addicted to that cellphone game when the situation was at a lull.
Batou had come slightly more accepting of new recruits and fresh faces. Mori was eccentric, but she was incredibly smart. Daimon's field expertise was always welcome. But Aozora seemed to be the slacker of the three, doing excellent work when he wasn't actually paying attention to something else, particularly that annoying game.
As he tailed the woman through the crowd, he noticed something off. The woman had been cyberized and possessed the ports on the back of her neck. A decoy? He stepped forward, placing a hand on the woman's shoulder. She nearly yelped in surprise.
"Where'd you get that bag?"
She stared at him, surprised, then stared down at the bag, also surprised. "Wait, this isn't my handbag! Oh dear, that poor girl must've walked out with my handbag. I bet she's missing her tools now. She looked like she was going to repair something! I must find lost and found."
Batou frowned. "A woman in a repair jumpsuit? Blue?"
"Yes, how did you know?" she stared down at the bag then back up at Batou. "Have you seen her?"
"What did she look like?" Batou replied with another question.
"Matching cap, her hair tucked up in it, a strangely blank expression," she described.
"I'm with public security, I need that bag," Batou held his hand out. The woman immediately handed it off to him, scampering towards building security to help find her own missing handbag. He rummaged through the bag. Various tools for repairs and maintenance, no identification or wallet, and notably no box which had appeared in the previous two locations. There was a note however.
Stopping the Collective isn't possible. Better luck next time, jerk. :p
Batou frowned sharply before crumpling up the note and throwing it back into the bag angrily. Smug ass Collective and their mocking emoji. He slung the bag over his shoulder, heading back towards the meeting room door. "The damn bag's a decoy," he fussed over the cybercoms. "The Collective's already here somewhere, toting some lady's purse. Daimon, keep a sharp eye."
"No sharp eye needed, Batou," Daimon replied over the coms sharply. "They're already here. Many of the reporters went glassy-eyed. I can handle this group. Camera stands can only do so much damage."
She stood strong on the stage, the Prime Minister behind her. The glassy-eyed reporters wielded camera stands and chairs, likely unable to bring guns into the assembly hall. Something about this attack bugged her. There was a decoy. How did the Collective even learn Section 9 was tracking repairmen with bags so quickly when they themselves just learned the information?
But first and foremost, she had to deal with these assailants with chairs. Could they be saved if Batou found another box and disconnected it or would they be lost like the first group?
"Tachikoma," Batou called out over the cybercoms. "I need you to hack into the assembly hall surveillance system and find a repairman and that box from the Kotobuki building!"
"Roger, Mr. Batou!" the Tachikoma replied, immediately setting to work.
This was just wild. Just how many people were affected by this Collective technology? Had truly this many people been outfitted with these illegal biothetics which potentially were controllable by the Collective as suggested? Batou could hardly believe it when the Chief had relayed the information to the protection detail early yesterday. People with undetectable prosthetics controlled by a box that looked like it was from a bad scifi movie from the late 90s.
He ran past the entry door to the assembly hall where Daimon was, nearly shouting profanity as Aozora wasn't standing at his post. "Aozora!" he shouted over the cybercoms. "Where the hell are you?! This isn't break time."
"It was better than whizzing on the floor," Aozora retorted. "But I also spotted the repairman on the way out of the restroom. I'm tailing him now. Possibly her. Those are rather feminine shoes."
Batou could never quite understand Aozora's fortune, his laziness somehow always leading him to the culprit. When he actually applied himself, Aozora was a good field agent, just that game had recently stolen his attention to the point Batou wanted to break his phone. "Tail her. Find out what she's up to."
"Mr. Batou!" the Tachikoma exclaimed over a private cybercom with Batou. "I found it! The box is located on floor B1."
"What's located over there?" Batou skidded around the corner, heading down the hallway towards the stairs, the decoy bag still slung over his shoulder.
"An electrical room," the Tachikoma replied. "That box is hooked into one of the panels in the wall. I think it's responsible for a lot of static noise."
Batou frowned sharply. Proto had reported the same noise at the Kotobuki building, but he'd also reported some extreme noise once the box was removed, something he described as the equivalent of a jet engine suddenly and unexpectedly firing off. These boxes also seemed to affect AI as well. He wasn't certain if it affected cyberbrains the same way, but he wasn't about to experiment and find out. "Record the noise for a moment then disconnect right away."
"Roger that, Mr. Batou!" the Tachikoma replied happily.
Batou peeked out the stairwell door, his firearm in one hand, door in the other. The hallway was empty, not a sound apart from the water pipes clattering in the ceiling. He crept along, finding the room indicated by the Tachikoma. Also empty. The repairman had already left, likely with Aozora now on her tail, and she had left no one behind to guard the box.
Batou inspected the wires. All this trouble over a stupid box connected to an access panel. It wasn't even a computer panel, just one connected with the lights. Batou paused. The means to control the Collective, the glassy-eyed people, wasn't through a computer broadcast but through the light system? Now that he thought about it, the box at Kotobuki was connected in the CEO's office, as well, not at a server room.
He made a note of the information, yanking the cords.
"What in the world?" Prime Minister Kayabuki stood behind Daimon, who was now covered in various bruises and scratches from the assault. Daimon had made a rather effective wall, taking the brunt of the damage while the Prime Minister remained safe. "Did they… did they just drop dead?"
"Just like before," Daimon stared almost in horror. She leapt off the stage, placing a finger on the neck of one of the reporters. "Dead." She flipped the reporter over. No ports. The poor woman looked perfectly human, not a sign of prosthetics on her.
She flipped over another and another and another. Every single one of them were perfectly biological. Cybernetic and android reporters were commonplace in a public meeting like this. They had the capability of interfacing with their recording equipment better than those without cyber brains, though that didn't mean there weren't completely fleshy reporters still working in the business. The sheer number of uncyberized reporters was what stood out the most.
"Every single reporter here shows no signs of cybernetics and is now also dead," Daimon reported over the cybercom. "This gives me a bad feeling. Was this some sort of suicide mission knowing we'd find the box? Or are they unwittingly forced into this?"
"The repairwoman is also dead," Aozora reported.
Batou scowled. So many lives lost by this box now in his hands. What was the Collective trying to do, really?
...
Author's musings
Honestly how could I resist a Matrix reference? I can't quite resist pissing off Batou either. That emoji really got under his skin.
But now after the encounter, Section 9 seems to have more questions than answers as well as a room full of dead reporters. Oops.
