"I still can't believe all the people were rescued," Daimon sighed in relief. "We already have enough dead bodies on our hands."

"Agreed," Saito agreed. "How's Mori's wife?"

"Distraught," Daimon replied, "but Tsubaki has a tendency to be overly melodramatic. Mori's shown signs of recovery. I'm glad this wasn't worse." She glanced across the room, spotting Aozora fiddling with some sort of game again. The man seemed completely unfazed by the news of the rescue at the salt factory. "I hear Proto is out of commission too."

"Proto's stronger than he looks," Saito reassured her. "He's just down with the flu." He resisted saying how Proto had gotten the flu. The new recruits weren't aware that Proto was a bioroid and not a cyborg. With the problems with biological components abound at the moment and the suspicions of a mole, that information was best kept silent.

Daimon looked up as Togusa entered the room. "Are the rescued going to be okay?"

Togusa blinked, not expecting a compassionate question from someone who acted so tough all the time. Perhaps the situation was getting to her as much as it was getting to him. "Healthy," he replied. "We're still trying to recover the missing files to see if we can safely remove these biothetics."

"Any luck at all with the files?" Saito questioned.

"Nothing that'll help us with the rescued people," Togusa answered vaguely, turning just enough to keep an eye on the two new recruits. Aozora was busy fiddling with that game, but Daimon quickly approached and towered over him.

"I want back in, Togusa," she demanded. "This Mikami is going too far. I want to meet his face with my fist. I am not going to be benched for this." Her intense orange eyes focused on him. "He's put too many lives in danger, including Mori's."

He stared up at her, focusing on her expression and her demeanor. She could be the greatest actor standing before him, but something about those eyes spoke seriously. She'd twice now seen the assailants drop dead. But these assailants weren't some terrorist group. They were unwilling guinea pigs. Those eyes worried about the safety of her friends. Those eyes wanted this to end.

"You are cyberized so you won't be affected by the biothetics. I'll see where I can place you," he conceded. Turning to Saito, he added. "Ishikawa needs your link to the satellites to try to track something."

"I'll see what I can do to help out," the sniper nodded, heading out of the room.

Togusa peered back up at Daimon. The taller woman had folded her arms but kept that same serious expression as before. "How long have you been back at headquarters?"

Daimon continued to stare, despite the surprise that Togusa had opened up a private link with her. "Since this morning. Tsubaki wanted me to stay overnight. She's needy. Am I late?"

Aozora looked up from his game. "Another staring contest," he commented to no one in particular, puttering out of the room and into the hallway. He'd been benched due to his lack of cyberization, so whatever they were doing likely didn't concern him.

Togusa glanced at Aozora before returning to stare up at Daimon. This morning wasn't exactly the largest of timeframes to notice anything strange recently. "No, you're not late at all." He paused a moment, turning to watch Aozora leave.

Daimon suddenly grasped him by the shoulder. "There's something going on, isn't there? I'm not an idiot. I've noticed Mikami's been a step ahead of us. Someone's feeding him information, aren't they?"

Togusa didn't respond at first. He honestly wasn't sure how to respond, but he'd worked with Daimon enough to know she was sharper than she appeared. Sure, she liked to hit things and often served as muscle, but she was no pushover intellectually. He once made the mistake of accepting a friendly game of shogi. She wiped the floor with him.

"We're not sure yet," he finally replied.

"And if I'd venture a guess, you suspected us as a potential leak," Daimon reasoned. "I'd suspect us too. We haven't been here long. The only one of us who's been acting strangely is Aozora. He's distracted."

Togusa couldn't deny that Aozora was acting strangely, but as to exactly why, he still wasn't certain. He could complete the job as well as his fellow agents, but lately he really did seem distracted.

"He mentioned something about losing a close friend, but he hasn't really gone into details," Daimon added.

"That could cause a distraction," Togusa agreed. He'd already pulled Aozora off the case for his risk with getting infected. If he was dealing with personal issues, it was best he wasn't working on such a high profile case anyway. "For now, let's carry on. I'm bringing you back to this assignment. We need to close this case."

…

"There it is," Saito stated. "Are you getting this location?"

"Sure am," Ishikawa leaned forward in the chair, looking at the coordinates now appearing on the screen. His fingers glided across the keyboard, bringing a satellite image into view. "I'll be damned, there it is."

"That is the car that kept circling the factory last night," Motoko recalled the images the Tachikoma had retrieved. "Abandoned at the pier and partially submerged in water. That rental agency is never getting that car back."

"The car was registered to a foreign woman from the American Empire, Serena Moon," Ishikawa reported. "But according to travel records, Serena missed her flight. She's still overseas."

"Convenient," Batou scoffed.

"Likely he just picked a car without an owner," Motoko reasoned. "Any matches on the partial images the Tachikoma took yet?"

"Not yet," Ishikawa shook his head, disappointed. "The man was good at hiding his face within the shadows. Not even image manipulation helped reveal more of his face. The only thing we've noticed is that he appears to be wearing a beanie and possibly more to obscure his features. Could be the real Mikami checking up on his work."

"He's gonna be pissed we broke up his little operation," Batou pointed out.

"For once, we were the ones ahead of him," Paz commented from the corner. "He's gonna be real pissed about that."

"No doubt a jab to his ego," Motoko agreed. "A victory for us, though we are still no closer to finding out his identity. The factory's records were slim at best. I only found a note stating that the salt going to Kuma Coffee would be mixed with an additional ingredient as requested by the shop. No doubt a falsified request. Any luck on unscrambling the files?"

"Nothing that will help us at the moment," Ishikawa replied. "We have more schematics and a few written documents, but they're still partials. No record that the biothetics can be removed either."

"I want to help with that, I'd say."

Motoko turned, feeling someone staring directly at her butt. Mori had arisen from the dead, leaning against the doorway with wires and cables still connected to her. Several techs behind her attempted to coax her back to the lab but she quickly swatted them away.

"That bastard thought he could get the better of me," Mori smirked. "But I want to ruin his little plans for the apocalypse. I read those files. I can pull them from my memory. Just get these damn nodes off me."

"We'll need Borma to check and ensure the virus is completely gone," Motoko informed her. "But we'll be happy to have you back. Jupiter."

Mori nearly melted into the doorway. "I… I don't know what you're talking about."

"The Chief told us," Motoko grinned, amused by her reaction.

Mori glanced at the gathered agents with wide eyes. "You're…. not angry?"

Motoko shook her head. "Not at all. There's likely worse here right now. Besides, the Chief assured us you used your skills for something other than boredom now. And right now, we need your skills and those files."

Paz nearly laughed at the worse comment. Several here had their fair share of dark or peppered pasts. "Now we really will be ahead of Mikami and his sadistic little game," he commented. "And your survival will really hit his ego."

"The guy's a damn egomaniac," Batou pointed out. "He may do something desperate this time now that he's losing the upper edge, and then we'll be able to nab him."

"They always make a mistake," Motoko agreed.

"Hopefully soon. This Mikami is a menace." Daimon frowned, towering over Togusa standing next to her.

"That is the hope," Motoko agreed.

"I'm pulling Daimon back into this case as well. We'll need all the help we can get." He paused, expecting objections, but no one said anything. They had trusted his judgment in bringing the agent back in. "We'll bring these two up to speed quickly and find this Mikami quickly."

"And now we have the radio, we can investigate this signal more quickly," Ishikawa added.

"That thing has to be at least 40 years old," Mori squinted at the orange monstrosity on the counter as Borma plucked the nodes from her head. "How is that thing even- no wait, I bet it's powered by another finger." She frowned sharply at the thought.

"Likely, but I haven't bothered trying to open it," Ishikawa admitted. "I have it connected in a closed environment, running some speech algorithms on the signal to match the spoken words and see what exactly is being broadcast in this static."

"The radio signals mentioned in the documents," Mori frowned some more. "They really are controlling biothetics with them. That section stuck out to me when I skimmed over them. That and Mikami's avatar. I swear I've seen him before our encounter in the darkNet, almost like I've met him in person."

"That's an odd thing to say," Paz pointed out.

"That's just it," Mori frowned even more. "It's not the face that was familiar. It was that voice. I know I've heard it before. And what's worse, he knew exactly who I was. He didn't call me by Jupiter. He called me by my real name."

"We can certainly try to run a voice match once we pull the memories from your cyberbrain," Ishikawa offered. "Given that the virus didn't corrupt them."

"I still remember everything," Mori countered. "Borma's expert skills at counteracting viruses kept everything intact."

"Major, you've encountered him before as well," Togusa recalled. "Did his voice sound familiar?"

"Nothing I could place," Motoko replied. "I may have heard it before, but at the time, it wasn't my primary focus."

"She's clean of the virus," Borma informed the gathered group. "We can extract those memories."

"Excellent," Mori nested in the familiar seat in the tech room. Reaching for the wires, she nearly leapt from the seat as a blue-haired woman took over the screens with a rather paranoid look. "When did we get such a hot AI?"

"I am a ghost within the mainframe," Ami corrected her sharply. "But I'm here because of an emergency."

"An emergency?" Motoko echoed. "Did you find more data?"

"Worse," Ami replied. "Mikami. He paid me a visit. Here."