All her life, Fujiko wanted to be a cop. There was this show she used to watch with her dad: Rotten Apples. It was about a policewoman named Tanaka who worked on a corrupt force in Old Tokyo, and had to pretend to be corrupt herself to survive the day to day. Taking bribes, looking the other way when a perp got roughed up out on the beat, shutting the cameras off during interrogations.
But at night, once she got off her shift, Tanaka would go out into the street in disguise, catching all sorts of bad guys. The best episodes were the ones were when she had to nab her fellow cops, because it was always painful for her to do it, but she had to because she was the good guy. Because doing the right thing was almost always the hardest thing you had to do, especially when you were already doing bad for the sake of the good.
Fujiko wanted to be Tanaka. Damn it if she didn't want it more than anything else, she'd been so single-minded when she was young. And that stupid-could she say boyish, or was that sexist?-determination had made her stupid. Careless. She'd barely been two weeks into the academy when she'd had a bad fall during an obstacle course run while fantasizing about what kind of Rotten Apples merch she could stick on her locker. The injury hadn't been anything too bad, just a crushed knee. Nothing a touch of cyberization couldn't fix, if you you could afford it. Which she couldn't. Even now, she was still too poor to afford any kind of treatment that could get her back in the academy.
But that stupid, obliterated knee didn't hurt anywhere near as bad as having to come back to her family's apartment right after the accident, bawling her eyes out from a wheelchair, the symbol of her newfound uselessness. Stupidly, childishly, that didn't even hurt as much as knowing that she wouldn't be anything like Tanaka, the kicker of corruption, the original badass.
And somehow after that, she'd wound up here. Typing 100 words per minute in a pink, stifling nightmare of a suit, sitting alongside almost a dozen gynoids dressed in the same uniform, enduring the constant clacking of fingers making keystrokes, occasionally dictating what they saw onscreen out to whoever was supervising that day's operation, if there was one. Excitement was a pipe dream. Maybe once a year, she's get to fly some Section Nine operatives out on a helicopter to some run-down part of the city so that they could catch the perp of the week. They'd made her take 80 hours of training for that, just to make sure that she was on-par with the other Operators.
At this point, Fujiko could practically do her job in her sleep. The keystrokes were robotic, the lines of code eased across her vision like bits of trash floating down a crowded canal. Excitement came in frantic bursts: the occasional desperate call to the local police force to form a perimeter around a building, checking live security footage to pick out the right car that had a kidnapped dignitary in it. But when you boiled it down, she was just a typist. A typist stuck with a metric shit-ton of logistics work, zero chances for advancement, a non-existent social life, and one major screwup away from being replaced by a gynoid.
"HQ," a husky voice snapped into her earpiece.
"Go ahead, Major," Fujiko said.
"I need to run a car. Plate number three three six, nineteen forty. Check and see if it's been through the port district in the past half an hour."
"Copy that," Fujiko said. She guessed that was all the info the Major had on the car in question, otherwise she would've declared it. Pretty much all requests came like that, without so much as a hello or a please. Still, work was work, and it needed doing. Boring as her job was, it was important. She could privately grouse as much as she wanted, but Fujiko would rather gnaw off a thumb than complain.
The keyboard was a choir of plastic clicking as her fingers flew across it with superhuman speed, entering the intricate commands that allowed Fujiko to access the several dozen security cameras set up by the docks. A slideshow of images rocketed by, pausing every so often when a car was in frame. Fujiko checked each one for the plate number that Major Kusanagi described. Twenty point oh-three seconds in-Fujiko prided herself on her precision estimates-and she was on picture of a baby-blue sedan with a turquoise trim and flares so tacky they warranted an eye-gouging. She zoomed in on the plate. "Found it, Major." Fujiko checked the video's timestamp and glanced at the picture. "Looks like it was heading towards the warehouses ten point two minutes ago."
"Was there anyone in the passenger-side seat?"
"Checking." Fujiko CTRL-plussed the image a couple times until she was zoomed in enough. Then she fed the image into an AI sharpening program to get a decent picture. With a normal computer, that would have taken hours, but with Section 9 sitting on a pocket of God only knew how much RAM, the process took seconds. "Confirmed. Subject is female, mid-thirties, wearing a blue designer jacket. There appears to be a belly-band holster underneath."
"Mm, classic. What kind of gun?"
Fujiko squinted. "Think it's a Beretta."
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "You think?" the Major said, her tone gone razor-sharp.
Fujiko swallowed. She cleared her throat and took a calming breath to keep her own voice under control to hide a burst of anxiety. "I'll run an ID program, Major."
With a few clacks and clicks, stats were on her screen. "Confirmed, ma'am. Beretta nine milimeter Compact. Ribbed carbon grip, filed-off serial number, safety currently on-"
The line clicked off with an electronic hiss. "Well, goodbye to you too," Fujiko said with a relieved half-laugh, wiping the newly formed sweat on her brow. If there was one person nobody in Section Nine wanted to tick off, it was Motoko Kusanagi. The woman had a direct line to Aramaki, and Fujiko had no intention to go job-hunting any time soon.
The day stretched by, and Fujiko didn't get any more lines from the Major or the rest of the team. 'The Legwork,' she privately called them. Sometimes, the hours seemed to bleed into forever, and she saw code drifting in front of her eyes, running. Dancing. Fleeing.
Fujiko sometimes felt like she was fading in and out of consciousness. It reminded her of those times in middle-school math classes, where she'd be snapped out of the middle of a nap when her head would start to fall away from the hand propping it up.
Eight o'clock hit. Fujiko and the rest of her team stood up from their desks as one and shut down their computers in practiced synch. The dragon that was Section Nine's computer network breathed a tired sigh and resigned itself to the cold dregs of night, waiting to be thawed again.
The Operators headed for their charging units with a marching-band precision. As Fujiko walked out the front door, she wondered what she should make for dinner. Then again, she wasn't all that hungry, so she decided that she was going to spend some time playing with her cat Scottie, a stray she'd found last year in the alleyway behind her apartment. She'd named him after the character from Star Trek. She'd never actually watched it, she just liked the name. It had this flavor of foreign cuteness to it.
Fujiko smiled in eager anticipation of getting to pick him up and feeling him purr in her hands. She leaned out into the street and waved a hand towards a pair of oncoming twin eyes that glowed pure white. "Taxi!"
# # #
"I was thinking I'd cook tonight, that all right with you hon?" Togusa asked as he carefully negotiated the nighttime New Tokyo commute in his beaten-up cruiser. Distant yellow and blue pinpoints dotted the city skyscrapers, then they vanished as he swooped into a citrus-lit tunnel that went on for a whole mile, which was why he'd saved up for a whole month to buy an upgraded antennae to keep from dropping out on homeward-bound calls.
"What'd you have in mind?" There was a high-pitched, delighted squeak in the background. Their daughter, probably watching something tactically distracting on the TV. "And should I break out the hazmat suit?"
"Hey, I'm not that big of a kitchen klutz," Togusa said. "Batou actually recommended this recipe he pulled from online: lemon-garlic chicken thighs with pasta. You serve it with a lemon wedge on the side and squeeze it over the chicken. Guy wouldn't stop talking my ear off about it."
"That actually sounds pretty good," said his wife. He could hear the smile in her voice. "I'm looking forward to scraping it off the cast-iron."
Togusa smiled back, then he felt a buzzing in the back of his skull. At this time of night, that only ever meant work. "Sorry hon, I'm getting a call. I'll see you in a bit. Love you."
"Love you too. Bye."
"Bye." Togusa switched off his car's satellite phone and accepted the mind-comm call. "Go ahead. Just so you know, I'm driving."
"Noted. I'm afraid that those delicious chicken thighs of yours are going to have to wait," said the Major. "Sorry."
Togusa frowned, feeling more than a twinge uncomfortable from the implication. "You were listening?"
"Only for the last minute or so. I was trying to find a good break where I could buzz you."
"A whole minute? Doesn't sound all that urgent then," Togusa said. "What's up?"
"We've lost an Operator," the Major said.
"Lost, like, got fried by a power overload, or literally lost?" He knew it was going to be literally lost before she said it, otherwise he wouldn't be hearing about it in the first place. Operators broke. That wasn't anything special.
"The second one," the Major said.
"How do we lose a gynoid in a bright pink suit?" Togusa wondered aloud.
"Apparently, she just walked out the front door, got herself a taxi and left," the Major said.
"Huh," Togusa said. "Well, that's definitely new."
"Yeah. No outstanding orders or anything. She's heading up north on the freeway."
Togusa sagged. So much for cooking a nice dinner for the family. "And let me guess. I'm closest?"
"Afraid so. I talked to the Chief, he's good with approving overtime pay for you to go get her. I'll patch her route in to your cyberbrain."
Togusa pulled a wire out from the back of his neck and hooked into one of the two ports bolted into his faux-mahogany center console. His car's GPS screen lit up, highlighting the Operator's taxi amongst as a bright blue dot among lines of rust-colored commuters. It was about three or so miles ahead of him, moving at a casual speed. "Why would an Operator go rogue all of a sudden?" Togusa asked.
"Ishikawa's looking into it," the Major said. "I've been thinking about it though, and every conclusion I've run into's been on a scale of inconvenient to shit-covered fans. Best case scenario, it's some kind of overuse-caused glitch that we haven't seen before, but I've got a bad feeling that we're going to find some kind of system breach. I can't think of any other reason for why one of our gynoids would suddenly decide to play hooky."
The idea of Section Nine being infiltrated was a scary thought on its own, but if there was an outside force that was both aware of the Public Security branch and wished them harm, Togusa could think of a dozen other ways to do so that were a lot more effective than creating rogue Operators. "Well, maybe she's been getting ideas from the Tachikomas," Togusa half-jokingly suggested in an attempt at optimism.
"Well, wouldn't that be nice and simple," the Major sighed. "But we can't fit another satellite plan into the budget. Anyways, just be cautious when you approach her. All of our Operators are equipped with basic combat programs in case of a sudden hostile takeover at the office."
"Really?"
"Just enough to give us time to whisk the Chief away. So try not to get a knee in the crotch."
"You think she'll try and avoid coming back to Section Nine?" Togusa asked.
"Who knows? For lack of a better phrase, we're sailing in uncharted waters here. If this Operator was reprogrammed by someone, I'd say that there's a decent possibility that whoever did it doesn't want her coming home to roost."
"Well, all right. Just let me know if Ishikawa finds anything. Where'll you be?"
"I'm heading back now to help the techs run diagnostics on the other Operators. Hopefully, we'll get some clues as to how and why. If you need me, let me know."
"Roger that. Out." Togusa switched the Major off, made a quick call to his wife to let her know he was going to be home late-weathering the disappointed sigh and trying not to sound sorry when she pledged to get pizza instead-and trailed the Operator's taxi.
It pulled off about two exits ahead. He did likewise and tailed the car for another few miles. The car pulled into a residential district-judging by the crowded blocks on the GPS-idled for a moment, and continued on. And he was still five minutes away. "Crap."
He pursued it through spider-webs of narrow residential streets, flanked on all sides by brutalist concrete towers that leaned in a little too close for comfort. The car was gradually shrinking away from him, and he couldn't catch up without risking a crash or running a light, so he kept a his speed at a maximum of five miles above occasionally changing limit. Besides, it didn't look like it was trying to really get away to anywhere.
Togusa wound up in a neighborhood where mazes of apartments that had been bleached by acid rain grew over one another like fungi, stacking and stretching in all directions. Glow-lamps draped themselves over streets, casting pale orange glows, and what few people were about at this time of night stuck to the shadows. By all appearances, it wasn't the best quarter, putting it politely.
Togusa pulled over by a meter that looked like it'd been around for the last three World Wars, got out, fed a debit card into its slot, shut the car door and locked it with a twist of his key. He and Batou had a thing going to see which of the two of them would break first and get a fob. "All right," he said, adjusting his holster beneath his khaki jacket, looking up and down the street. "Now where did you go?"
As he scanned for the Operative, he spied a kid peering at him from around the corner. "Hey," Togusa said. "You see a woman walk by? Bright pink suit, brown hair?"
The boy came out of the shadows. His gait, sharp eyes, and hand-me-down clothes all screamed street urchin, so Togusa saw what the kid was about to say coming from kilometers off: "How badly ya wanna know, khaki?"
Togusa sighed and withdrew about ten thousand yen in bills. He handed it to the boy, who licked his finger and counted off the amount before pocketing it with a satisfied nod. He smirked. "Yeesh mister, ya coulda just said 'Pretty bad.'" He pointed to an apartment complex across the street. Its windows were either barred, shut up with plywood, or dark and smashed. "She went in there about a bit ago. Ya ask me, if she can afford to dress like that, she's gotta be nuts."
"Why's that?" Togusa asked.
"Because there's no way she's poor enough to wind up there," the urchin said. With that, he turned on his heel and walked off, hands in his pockets, whipping his head from side to side, probably checking to make sure he wasn't about to get jumped by his fellow street rats.
Togusa patched himself into wireless comms. "Major. I've tracked her to an apartment complex downtown. Place is a real hole."
"Just an apartment complex? Well, can't say I was expecting that. Not sure if that's good or bad," said the Major.
"What were you expecting?" Togusa asked.
"Worst case scenario? The airport. If one of our Operators were to get out of the country...well, we could fry her CPU and all its memory remotely if it came to that, but the airport made the most sense to me. Wondered if it might be someone's try at some kind of shameless, reckless foreign espionage. Damn. And Occam's Razor falls down the drain."
"You come up with anything on your end?" Togusa asked.
"Not yet. All the other Operators seem fine. Ishikawa's close to a lead, I hope. We should have something by the time you get back. Watch yourself in there, Togusa. Out."
The connection cut off. Togusa sheathed his hands in his pants pockets, looked right down the street. Looked left. Crossed it, taking care not to step into some of the deeper puddles. The front door to the apartment complex was a cracked pane of translucent acrylic lined with a steel frame. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the Operator on the other side of it, gesticulating with all the energy of a driver warning oncoming cars of crossing ducklings at someone sitting behind what looked like a theatre's will call.
The moment he pulled the door open, the Operator turned to him and her eyes widened. "Mister Togusa! What're you doing here?"
He tripped over the words that weren't even out of his mouth yet, overcoming his shock at being addressed by name. That wasn't out of the ordinary with Operators, but this was the first time it had happened with him face-to-face that he could remember. "I was about to ask you," he said.
"I live here," the Operator said, before shooting an angry glare at the old man sitting on the other side of the gap in the wall amongst rows of filing cabinets. He looked like he'd been through a series of addictions to various vices in his life, and each and every one of them had slunken away, beaten and ashamed. He had maybe three teeth, enough loose skin to give him sufficient drag in a good wind, two gray hairs on a liver-spotted pate, dressed like he'd been to the gym recently, but smelled like he lived there. "But you wouldn't think that talking to this guy!"
"Lady, for the last time," said the wheezing old-timer as he absent-mindedly flicked a bit of dirt out from under his nails using an impressively massive knife, "I've never seen ya before, and there ain't no room registered under yer name." He pointed back and forth between them with the point of the blade: "Young man, this lady a friend of yers?"
"Um, she's more of a..." He trailed off, unsure of how to finish that sentence without feeling ridiculous. "Coworker?"
"Yeah, well, just take her and git," said the old man, whom Togusa guessed was the property manager slash super. "I've got better things I could be doing."
"Clearly!" groused the indignant Operator. She ran her hands through her hair and groaned, and a look of concern washed over her expression. Togusa couldn't help but stare, she was acting so human. Sure, being androids, the Operators were designed to look and sound human, and to behave that way when interacting with other people, but this one had a personality. At least, she was acting like she had one. And that was definitely different.
The Operator leaned her elbows onto the wooden perch beneath the gap separating her and the super. "Look, Genichiro-"
The super started. "How'd ya get my name?" He sucked air through what few teeth he had left and clutched at the back of his neck. "Ya hack me?"
"What? No!" the Operator exclaimed, sounding shocked at the suggestion. "I told you, I've lived here for five years. My name is Fujiko Nihei, I live up on the fifth floor, and I need to get in and feed Scottie."
"Who?" Genichiro croaked.
"My cat."
"Miss, this be a no-pets building. Now leave. Please. I ain't in the habit of threatening to call the police on no lady, but I've told ya three more times than I oughtah've by now that I ain't got nobody by yer name living here."
The Operator opened her mouth, and it definitely seemed to Togusa for a moment like she was about to say I work for the police, but instead she grit her teeth and stalked off into the hallway's dimly lit depths. The super heard her go and started mumbling curses under his breath as he tried to get out of the chair, still gripping his comically gargantuan knife.
"Woah, hang on there, old-timer," Togusa said, thrusting a staying hand out at him like a superhero on one of his kid's shows shooting a fireball. "Let me talk to her. You just sit back a bit, all right? I'll promise I'll have everything worked out."
The super slumped back in his chair, already out of breath. "Five minutes," he said, smacking the flat of his blade onto his wristwatch's face. "Want her out in five minutes."
"Sure," Togusa said. He jogged over to the Operator as she started climbing up a set of cold concrete stairs. The walls were dark-blue and pockmarked with water-rot and mold. The kid definitely hadn't been exaggerating. "What did you say your name was again?" he asked her.
"Fujiko," she said. He caught a glimpse of a wince. "I'm sorry for snapping like that, Mister Togusa. I'm just really worried about Scotty. He has some separation anxiety."
"I...can relate," Togusa said. He figured he might as well play along and see where this led. He didn't feel threatened by this Operator. If anything, he was curious, because if he hadn't already known what she was, he would've taken everything she was saying at face value. "What started all that?"
"I lost my key and he wouldn't give me another," said the Operator. "You heard him, right? He said I've never lived here. I don't know what's up with him, he just all suddenly up and turned around! Do you think it's because he's old?"
"Maybe," Togusa said, wondering what 'up and turned' around meant, because it sounded figurative. He almost asked her how long she'd lived here for, but he didn't want to crack the shell with a sledgehammer. A chisel was better. "You know, if it were me, I'd try to find a better place than this."
"Well, I don't have kids to think about. But yeah, I know, it's not great," the Operator said as they ascended to the fourth floor. "But it fits my budget and the commute's not too bad. Say, what'd you say you were here for again?"
"Uh, well..."
The Operator gasped and ducked down, taking cover on a stair just as they were about to ascend to the fifth floor. She pulled Togusa down by the shoulder, her other hand cupped over her mouth.
"What? What is it?" Togusa said, grimacing from being yanked down as hard as he was. He'd forgotten that androids, even gynoids, were exceptionally strong. He'd once watched a drunk Batou arm-wrestle an android at a French casino, and even though Batou had won, the 'bot had still given him a run for his money. Promptly before the house ran off with Batou's money. Togusa made a mental note to keep the Major's advice on-file, as it were.
The wide-eyed Operator pressed a finger to her lips. "There's a man in a dark suit trying to get in to my apartment!" she hissed, panic laced into her hushed voice.
Togusa peeked out into the hallway, which was, like the rest of the building, dingy and dimly lit. There was indeed a dark-suited man fumbling at the doorknob outside of what the Operator claimed was her apartment. It looked like the man was fumbling a set of keys, and he was snarling angry mutterings under his breath. The fact that he kept shooting looks up and down the hallway gave Togusa the impression that whoever this way, he wasn't up to much good. But he might have a couple answers that could be coaxed out. Or kicked out, depending on how the next couple minutes went. Togusa hoped for the first one.
Finally, the dark-suited man managed to unlock the door. He kicked it open, turned the lights on and vanished inside.
"Oh god. Scottie!" gasped the Operator, her eyes wide with horror, fingers tented over her mouth.
"I'll go get him," Togusa said, unsure himself whether or not he was talking about the cat or the man. He decided to try a trick he'd seen Paz use once to sneak up on a bank robbery suspect: he took off his shoes, prying the first off with the flats of the other's heels, then prying the other off with his toes. Taking light, silent steps, Togusa crept over to the wall adjoining the apartment door, sidling along its length until he reached it. The door was still slightly cracked open and it was dark inside again. He listened for any kind of activity, and heard a soft weeping.
Togusa gently pushed the door open, keeping himself a comfortable distance from the doorway, and flicked on a light. The man in the black suit looked up from where he was sitting on a plastic-wrapped bean-chair and screeched like a banshee, falling over backwards and onto the floor.
In seconds, the Operator was at Togusa's side, but she came to a screeching halt when she saw the inside of the apartment, and her mouth fell open. "This..." she said. She looked at the number-plaque in the hall, once. Twice. She shook her head. "No, no. This is my apartment! It is! Mr. Togusa, I promise I'm not crazy!"
"Wha'vfa hellsa goin'...goin'...ah?" slurred the man as he forced himself back to his feet. His face was happy-hour red.
"Public Security, sir," Togusa introduced himself, walking inside. "Is this your apartment?"
"Public..." The man's red flesh went white, and he pointed a trembling finger at himself. "N-noddhereda find it! Nod! Just...just..." Back to red. "Canda man hadda good cry, huh? Huh?!" Flecks of spit erupted from swollen lips.
"Calm down, sir," Togusa said, pressing down on a large, invisible balloon with both hands, using the same voice he used to negotiate his daughter into a reasonable bedtime. "I'll ask again. Is this your apartment?"
"Noh," the man wheezed. He promptly collapsed onto his knees and vomited onto the floor, spewing red and green chunks everywhere.
Togusa gagged on the smell and pinched his nose with one hand. He stepped aside and indicated the Operator, who was slowly scanning the place like it was an alien landscape. "Do you recognize this woman? She says it's her apartment."
"Noh," groaned the man.
"Then whose apartment is it and why are you in here?" Togusa asked.
"Zit's muh...damn..." The man forced himself into a sitting position, not caring that the knees of what looked like a very expensive suit were now caked in steaming puke. "My mother's."
Togusa paused and absorbed this information. "Where did you just come from now sir? Judging by your clothes, I'd say you've either say a wedding, or..."
"Fun...few..."
"Funeral, got it," Togusa said. "Your mother's?"
The man's hand shot into a jacket pocket and Togusa's hand snapped onto his Mateba's grip. But instead of a weapon, the man thrust a folded-up piece of paper at him and promptly fell onto his back with one leg stuck in his own sick, muttering to himself. Togusa let out a relieved sigh and slowly knelt to pick up the paper. It was a pamphlet, printed on glossy colored paper. At the front was a portrait of a smiling elderly woman, her hair dyed bright red, set against a bright background of a sakura field.
Togusa read the bold black text beneath the portrait aloud: "Please join us at the wake for beloved mother and wife...Fujiko Nihei."
The room was quiet, save for drunken ramblings of the real Fujiko Nihei's son, lying spread-eagled in his own puke. The otsyua invite fell to his side as Togusa slowly turned to face the Operator, who was leaning up against the wall with a far-off look in her shining silicon-based eyes. Like someone had just told her that her childhood home burned down with her family inside it, leaving nothing but ash.