"Now there's a fossil," Ishikawa commented, staring at the radio on the table. Videos of the local news feeds played on the screen, focusing mostly on Channel 33's broadcast as it rattled on about a runaway van that was apprehended by Public Security. "Never thought I'd see one of these actually working again."
"This thing caused so much trouble, putting so many lives in danger," Togusa frowned at the hunk of technology. "Mikami had been so calculating before now. This doesn't seem like his MO."
"It feels like a botched attempt at attacking Section 2," Motoko admitted. "It's like they knew we were there and went along with the plan regardless."
"There's no way he could've realized I was standing there to keep watch," Paz leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "It's like he knew we'd changed our team makeup just to stay ahead of him. How the hell did he know?"
"I hate to admit it, but there may actually be a leak here," Togusa frowned. "We know it's not one of us. We know it's not Mori, and I'm pretty certain it's not Daimon either given her reactions at the recent attacks. Aozora has been on guard duty for the Prime Minister this entire time."
"That doesn't leave us with many options," Saito sighed.
"None, really," Ishikawa shook his head. "The only ones left are the lab techs and they don't know our assignments."
"System virus?" Saito worried.
"Borma would've noticed that immediately," Ishikawa pointed out.
"Dammit, what the hell is going on?" Batou nearly kicked the table in frustration.
Motoko turned, watching the replay of the footage of the destruction after the crash. The incident played over and over again in her mind. "There's something that Saito observed when during the chase that has me thinking. You noticed that some people at the coffee shop began behaving strangely after the van drove by."
"Yeah," Saito recalled. "It almost looked like they'd become zombies for a moment but then returned to normal when you chased that van. I didn't see where they went after that, but there've been no reports of deaths in the area aside from the van driver."
"And only those with biological circuits would be affected," Togusa recalled the earlier conversation. "More people with biothetics….. Just how many people are affected? Or maybe infected."
"It's like they've spiked the damn coffee," Batou fussed. Good thing he didn't drink any.
Togusa frowned at his own cup sitting on the table, quickly setting it back on the table.
The screen flickered, switching off the newscasts as the blue-haired ghost appeared on the screen, flanked by a pair of digital Tachikoma. "I apologize for the interruption."
"So you must be the ghost," Batou peered at the screen.
"Ami Midorikawa," she introduced herself with a bow. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"How is the hand?" Motoko asked.
"I repaired it with some code," Ami replied, holding the newly repaired hand close to her heart. She still couldn't believe the Mikami she'd come to treasure would wield such a destructive power. It seemed like her wound was an accident, but she was now certain that Mikami wasn't who he seemed to be.
"I'm glad to hear that." Motoko didn't press on the recent battle. Instead she lead with what she believed Ami had arrived to discuss. "Did you find something of interest?"
"I did." Ami was more than happy to return to the research at hand. "With the Tachikoma's help, I managed to reassemble one of the files sent back from the darkNet. It's a partial file, but it was far too important to wait."
With a flick of her wrist, she brought the partial file up on the screen. The bottom half was pixelated, disappearing into cyberspace until she found the remaining bytes somewhere within the heap she was sorting.
"The hell is all that technobabble?" Batou squinted at it, observing that the paper was covered in technical diagrams and schematics.
"A schematic proposal," Ami replied. "Or part of one. It lays out the exact circuitry of a biological prosthetic, right down to the chemical composition of the circuitry." With a swipe of her hand, she spread out the partially deciphered documents.
"That'll make it easier to detect, especially if there's a widespread epidemic of biothetics unknowningly implanted," Ishikawa noted, looking over the diagrams.
"There is something of interest marked in this document, thus the sense of urgency," Ami continued as she pulled a document from the collection. "It mentions a fallacy in the technology. Certain magnetic waves, like in old AM radio signals, could cause a disruption in how the biothetic functioned."
"What kind of disruption?" Togusa wondered. "The erratic behavior we've witnessed or something that could cause someone's brain to stop working?"
"The details are sparse at the moment," Ami replied with a bit of a frown, "but the documents mention that exposing their test subjects to these waves caused them to become dazed, falling into a state they called the 'Collective Conscious.'"
"A collective conscious," Motoko turned the words over in her head. "That sounds like a hive mind mentality to me, a sort of collective order and will to control a group of people. That matches up with the behaviors we've seen with the radio signals broadcast from those boxes and that delivery van. It could very well be the meaning of the Collective we've seen mentioned over and over again."
"There's one more thing that is particularly peculiar," Ami added. "The proposal is from Hayabusa Pharmaseuticals, a different company than the one who filed the patent from biothetics."
"That's an old medicine company," Ishikawa recalled. "They went out of business when they couldn't evolve with technology."
"That's the one," Ami nodded. "The one that filed the patents and was raided was Ogami Biologics. I recall those files clearly. If I still dreamt, I would have nightmares about them."
"And somehow, after Hayabusa shut its doors, the schematics ended up in the deepest reaches of the darkNet," Togusa reasoned, "and Ogami either purchased or stole them."
"Likely the latter," Paz commented. "This Ogami operates like a yakuza outfit. Legal biological technology on the outside, biothetics on the inside."
"Ogami had submitted a good number of patents," Ami recalled. "I once had a section filled with their work in my database. I had worked on their cases a number of times when I was still an investigator for Section 2, even met their CEO a few times."
"Mi?" Ishikawa recalled the names from the patents.
"No, it wasn't Mi," Ami shook her head. "His name was Fujikawa. At some point after I'd merged myself with the database, he'd retired and his protege had taken over. The patents ceased for some time before resuming with biothetic research. It was as if the company had done a complete 180."
"Who handled the Ogami case after you?" Motoko questioned.
"He signed his work as Mikami," Ami replied. "Public facing documentation doesn't mention this. Only internal documents ever did. But he always delivered new documents in person. That's how I'd come to know him."
"Did you know him before you fused with the database?" Motoko pressed on, recalling how the Mikami avatar interacted with her.
"I'm not sure honestly," Ami frowned. "No one at Section 2 had that surname, but I must've since he knew I played chess." She resisted mentioning what Mikami had said to her, that everything he was doing was for her.
"So we now know Mikami's link to Ogami, the biothetics, and Section 2," Togusa noted. "It's also possible that since these files were from the darkNet that he's adept at diving that deep like Mori is."
"Given the attack in the Section 2 database, he's more adept than we gave him credit for," Motoko pointed out. "He literally deleted data and Ami's hand simply by his touch."
"He must've done the same to the biothetic files when I wasn't looking," Ami frowned. She didn't like it when her data was damaged or garbled. It bothered her. It also bothered her that the avatar she thought was sweet was likely using her to reach hidden data. "I did notice some alterations of files earlier, but I had gone to correct them."
"It's very possible that he's been altering the files he was giving you," Ishikawa suggested. "When we'd reviewed the files before, even the public facing ones, it felt like something was doctored. It's very likely that Mi is actually Mikami altering the work."
Ami frowned sharply. "To think he was doing this all behind my back in my own library."
"Miss Ami! Miss Ami!" one of the Tachikoma interrupted wielding a page of data in its hand. "We compiled another page, and this one's kind of scary! It made us shutter in our shells. I hope it won't give you nightmares!"
Ami almost didn't want to take the page, but she knew it would help solve this biothetic nightmare. And it didn't help that the team was staring back at her expectantly. She took the page, skimming it over and nearly dropping it.
"More trouble?" Togusa asked, concerned.
"It's a page of a different proposal," Ami nearly shuddered. "It proposes that biological circuitry could be built using nanotechnology as a transport."
"Nanotechnology?" Ishikawa echoed. "Like the microscopic machines that can be ingested to heal wounded tissue from the inside?"
"Selfsame technology," Ami presented the information on the machine. "It's proposed that they can use these nanites to carry biological circuits to build the circuitry from the inside without surgery. The document goes on to say that the risk is great in terms of the body rejecting the procedure, but it remains primarily untested."
Motoko skimmed through the page. "Signed Mi."
"Explains why not a single one of the assailants have had surgery," Ishikawa frowned. "They may have not known they had biothetics in them either. Between the nanites and the radio waves, it's like Mikami is using Niihama as a testing ground until these biothetics are perfected."
"That's damn unsettling," Batou hissed.
"And it seems like he's specifically targeting people without cyberizations," Togusa observed. "It makes his research nearly invisible, and he can use them to lash out against those who shut down Ogami or get in his way."
"He did mention that he needed a proof of concept when we encountered him in the database." Motoko folded her arms, drumming her fingers in thought. "Ami, does it say anything about the effects of someone cyberized?"
"According to the second page, all attempts at combining cybernetic and biothetic parts failed," Ami replied. "The biothetic components actually died in the process."
Togusa frowned, knitting his fingers together. "We'll need to pull all uncyberized agents off the field. Really that's just Aozora and Azuma. My cyberization is slight, which should be enough, but I think it's best I pull off the field as well."
"By current technology, nanites aren't airborne," Ishikawa pointed out.
"I'd rather not take the risk," Togusa admitted. "Not until we know how this is spread."
"Perhaps Batou isn't that far off," Motoko suggested. "Perhaps it really is in the coffee."
...
Author's notes
Hopefully this chapter didn't get too technobabbly, but some of the technobabble here is real technology. AM radio waves are actually magnetic (which is just weird but cool) and nanotechnology has been tested to repair a body from the inside out. It's also been proposed as a means to transport organic tissues, which is the reference to biothetics being transported here.
Mikami is a clever little shrew. He's using old technology and forging documents to cover his tracks as he possibly uses the entire city of Niihama as a test grounds. Unsettling little shrew is more like it. Batou has the right of it. It is damn unsettling.
