"No signs of movement yet," Saito reported over the cybercom.

Paz leaned against the wall of the building, flicking his cigarette as he stared upward. He knew that Saito was perched up there somewhere but he'd made himself quite hidden. Paz returned his attention to the Section 2 entryway, flicking his cigarette again. "Nothing here either."

Motoko perched herself atop a Tachikoma, one leg dangling as she watched the building from the opposite side patiently. "Mikami did threaten to handle Sekiguchi, but after I yanked the ghost from the database, it's possible he canceled the attack. I'd rather be safe than end up with more dead bodies."

"I'm still trying to figure out this Mikami," Togusa admitted, reviewing the data at headquarters as he flipped through all the information they'd gathered thus far. "His actions seem disjointed, almost like there are two playing the part."

"How do you figure?" Paz questioned.

"First, we have the Mikami who demonizes prosthetics," Togusa explained, "but then we have the Mikami who attempted to delete the Major in the database and potentially dove into the darkNet to find Mori. From what I gather, the darkNet is only accessible with cyberization."

"We do need to consider the possibility that these biothetics can act like regular prosthetics," Motoko pointed out. "Remember the finger that arrived at the Prime MInister's office? It looked real but it was built of circuits."

"Biological circuits," Togusa noted. "None of the bodies here show any signs of ports or a means to interface with computers. It does make me wonder if there's some other means that these biothetics use to reach technology."

"Nothing that won't give us nightmares." Paz flicked his cigarette. "The damn things are grown on people. Here I thought the Solid State Society was messed up."

"No doubt," Motoko agreed. "These biothetics are connected to known technology somehow. Consider the boxes that show up before an attack or that unusual static both Proto and the Tachikoma picked up from there."

"I can weigh in on that one," Ishikawa chimed in. "Now that Mori's finally stabilized, I've had a chance to run some analyses on the noise we've gathered. It's an old radio wave."

"Radio?" Motoko echoed. "No one uses that anymore."

"Exactly," Ishikawa agreed. "Radio waves went unused after the 3rd World War. If these boxes were sending radio waves through the air to control the attackers, we'd have nothing to pick them up. Everything is cyberized and digital."

"All Net and satellite," Saito added. "They wouldn't even interfere with our cybercoms. They'd be virtually invisible to us."

"Batou's theory wasn't that far off," Togusa noted.

Motoko stared off at the building for a moment. Old technology to carry out modern attacks. What an unusual strategy. "So what is in these signals, Ishikawa?"

"Static mostly," Ishikawa replied. "To us, anyway. I had Proto observe them in a stunted environment thinking it was something affecting biological circuitry."

"There's no way Proto is actually running on biothetics," Saito frowned at the idea.

Ishikawa leaned back in his seat in the computer room, flipping through the data gathered about the signals. "He's definitely not. He's comprised of biological circuitry but he is still cybernetic. But the thing is, he was able to hear something in the static when we first encountered it back at the Kotobuki building. The static began to affect him, so I had to yank the tests, but what he heard was something like words."

"Like words?" Saito echoed. "How can it be like words?"

"Well Proto described it to something more akin to programming syntax," Ishikawa replied. "Just from a few moments of listening to it, Proto's now shouldering something akin to a bad flu."

"Proto can get sick?" Paz nearly said aloud in surprise as he watched a few cars putter past the building. A sports car, a delivery van, a convertible driven by a man who thought shirts were optional in the colder weather.

"After reviewing some specs for bioroids, no, it's supposed to be impossible," Ishikawa added. "Borma has him under some observation but he seems to be just under the weather. It's almost as if this radio wave was trying to reprogram his biological circuitry and it failed."

"That would explain why none of us have been affected by this, even in the center of the broadcast," Togusa reasoned. "And during our raid on Kotobuki, Proto never entered the building. He heard the static but perhaps being connected to the internal Net shielded him from the effects that time."

Motoko peered down at her Tachikoma perch, the tank peering around curiously watching the nearby airspace. She thumbed through some data from the Net about old radio technology. "The Tachikoma were unaffected, as well. But it makes me wonder, radio signals were analog. They couldn't transmit code or data."

"I wondered about that too," Ishikawa admitted. "But from Proto's descriptions, it's actually spoken code. Someone is speaking it as if they are reading the code word from word. What Proto repeated out to me is the start of a routine."

"A back door into the biothetic system, perhaps," Paz reasoned.

"That's what I'm thinking," Ishikawa agreed. "And explains Proto's adverse reaction to it."

"And how has this Collective has gotten this many people to die for their cause?" Paz flicked his cigarette, watching the delivery van sputter by. "I've heard of cult-like following, but this seems extreme for a technology that never went public."

"We've been researching the people from the press conference," Ishikawa replied. "Not a single one has a record of undergoing surgery or receiving any recommendation for prosthetics, yet the lab techs found biological circuitry in their necks. It's possible it was implanted without their knowledge, much like the police Interceptors."

"What a mess that was," Togusa recalled.

Paz flicked his cigarette, watching the delivery van sputter by. "Heads up, that's the third time I've seen that delivery van drive by with a driver that looks like he's worked too many hours and is wired on coffee."

"A delivery van," Saito leaned forward from his perch. "What's it look like?"

"White with flowers on the side labeled Makoto's Flower Shop," Paz described it, watching the van turn the corner again. "Just turned down Hanamichi Street."

"I see it," Saito spotted it in his scope. "It just stopped at the stop sign. Looks like a pretty old-fashioned van. How does that thing still run?"

"I don't think they make them like that anymore." Paz flicked his cigarette. "Old Toyota, has to be at least 10 years old. Wonder if that thing has a radio in it."

Popping the hatch open, Motoko crawled into the Tachikoma, manually overriding the controls. "I'm going to see if I can spook it away. Daimon, anything in side?"

"Five people attempting to claw at the door," Daimon replied, staring thoroughly unimpressed at the assailants. "Nothing I can't handle."

With a grand leap, the Tachikoma skidded down the side of the building, landing on the street with a resounding thud that frightened a few people at the nearby coffee shop. The tank whirred down the street, heading to towards Hanamichi to intercept the van. As soon as the van had pulled up to the intersection, it immediately took off.

"Paz, get an Uchikoma and head down the parallel street," Motoko ordered. "Saito, track this van from the skies. We don't want this thing aimlessly broadcasting that signal."

"Might already be doing that," Saito frowned, tracking the van's movements with his Hawkeye. "There's some strange activity in the coffee shop you just passed."

Paz scowled, flicking his cigarette and stomping it out with his shoe as an Uchikoma rolled up. "Dammit, this is getting reckless. Any way to jam that signal, Ishikawa?"

"This is really old technology we're talking here," Ishikawa fussed. "But it's not beyond what I can do. I'll work on some countertechnology, but at the moment, you'll need to catch that van."

"Fine by me," Paz leapt into the Uchikoma's hatch, bolting down the street parallel to where the van was driving.

"I don't have a clear shot," Saito frowned. "I can't take out the van from here. It's just turned right on Sandori Street. It's heading downtown."

The Tachikoma tilted as it turned around the corner sharply. "Paz, take a shortcut down Nidori street," Motoko instructed, focusing on the van before her. "Tachikoma, try to take out the tires."

"Roger that, Major!" the Tachikoma replied cheerfully. A whirr and a clunk within the machinery and it had loaded some caltrop spikes, preparing to fire it when the van suddenly careened off the street and into the nearby building.

Opening the hatch, Motoko leapt from the tank, rolling before landing on her feet. "Tachikoma, check for any injured civilians!"

"Roger that, Major!" The tank quickly busied itself with picking up any debris, searching for people who may have been injured. It lifted a piece of wall, finding a few people huddled beneath it safely. "You're okay! Now hurry to safety!"

She yanked open the door, finding the driver now dead and leaning against the steering wheel. In the center of the console was an old-fashioned radio connected to the van's entertainment system. Reaching over the body, she yanked the cables.

Paz rolled up in the Uchikoma, opening the hatch to see Motoko emerge with the radio. "The hell is going on." Just when they thought they had found out more information, they were presented with this. Paz rubbed his forehead. He needed another cigarette.

...

Author's notes:

The two of the streets here are simply numbered streets. Sandori is 3rd street and Nidori is 2nd street.

Yeah there's a bit of technobabble in here. But in essence, radio waves are simply non-digital waves in the air. Since everything in this world is essentially digital, an analog signal would be very strange and difficult to deal with.

The war they reference was actually a cold war before the 4th World War had sank the eastern half of Japan. I'd imagine that they ditched the old analog technology probably around the 3rd just because of the timing for cyberization.