Death in the Shell Ch. 09

Standard Disclaimers Apply

While Eve and Roarke were spending a gentle evening with making love, Motoko and Batou were already in the process of diving into the shell of Howard Bassi. It took some time to travel through the webs of Bassi's already damaged brain caused by his murder. But thanks to the years of experience with Ghost Diving, Motoko and Batou were able to find the tragic event that caused his cybernetic change.

The carnage that was the Pentagon was nothing but type of dust you'd see in an abandoned mansion thanks to the plaston explosives. It was easy for Motoko and Batou to see that the only resemblance of a corpse in that wreckage, was a man whose skin was practically blasted off, only thing they could see from him was that poster you'd see in a doctor's office displaying the anatomy of the human body, he was that fucked up. But the shocker was he was still alive, but was barely breathing when his military superiors rescued him. Everywhere else, you could never find a single survivor. Not even the cry of a little infant.

Motoko and Batou were transported to another room that was very dark and only had two lights shining in this room. They saw a group of doctors and cyborg technicians work on Howard Bassi to make him a cyborg. They didn't need to read minds to know that these doctors were robbing The Fixer of his death, a death that claimed his wife and two children. They looked at Bassi at the surgery table and heard him think how he would never forgive the country he swore to protect.

Through some additional memory flashbacks, Motoko and Batou finally arrived at the moments that lead to Bassi's death. They saw him talk business with a woman, whose face barely showed in the dim light of Bassi's hidden room. They were discussing payment and development for multiple high grade explosions. They couldn't see the woman's face, but they could definitely hear how many bombs they wanted Bassi to build.

Ratso's account of their conversation had been confirmed when Motoko and Batou dived into that moment when Bassi began talking to Ratso about his fears of another Arlington incident. Ratso easily agreed to let Bassi crash at his place, but the night after the conversation, they caught an unmarked black van with some figures in black kidnapping a drugged out Bassi. It was the last memory they were able to dive in, before Motoko and Batou decided to return back to the present.

By the next morning, Motoko and Batou were already getting finished with compiling their report when Eve Dallas and Roarke came into the briefing room already dressed in their usual clothes.

"Did you guys get enough sleep last night?" Motoko asked the two.

Eve nodded, "Though I can't believe I'm about to ask this, but did you two get any sleep last night?"

"Normally us cyborgs can go 72 hours longer than a normal human," Batou replied while getting the Autochef ready for some coffee and breakfast. "Though I am curious as to why you'd ask us about getting sleep."

"Because I'm usually the one who shoves her into getting sleep, when she really needs it," Roarke replied while passing a coffee cup to Eve. "There had been times where we'd be up 'til 3 if she's working a big case and we find a big lead along the way."

"Well we can definitely see where she'd gotten that from," Motoko said while grabbing the last coffee cup. "Speaking of which, we managed to complete the Ghost-Dive on Howard Bassi last night, all we got to do is wait for the others to show up. Meanwhile we got some bagels and cream-cheese ready for you, all courtesy of one of your bakery chains, Roarke."

Eve didn't hesitate to grab a few bagels but it didn't stop her from looking at Roarke in amazement. "You own a bakery chain?"

"Mostly a high-end bakeries, Darling Eve," Roarke helped himself to a few. "We use nothing but 100% natural ingredients and not factory made knockoffs."

"You'd be amazed at how well these bagels mix in with your husbands coffee, Lieutenant," Batou said while dipping his own bagel into his coffee.

Just then some doors opened and Ishikawa, Saito and Yuutaro entered into the conference room. The first thing they did was help themselves to the coffee and bagels that Batou provided before taking their seats on the couch, in preparation for the briefing that Motoko Kusanagi was about to give.

"So I was able to dive into Howard Bassi's Ghost last night," Motoko began to put out some displays on screen. "A lot of what The Ratso said to Dallas and myself had basically been confirmed by Bassi himself."

She first displayed what happened with Bassi and his conversation with some dark figures at his basement office. They were mostly talking about refining the details of the explosives he made for them, how to work the timers, remotes, bugs and boomers.

"From what Batou and I gathered," Motoko continued. "He built enough for ten buildings to be blown up. Our theory is that they plan to hit some major landmarks and buildings on this side of the coast."

"Did you ever get a feel of what they're trying to accomplish?" Eve asked.

Motoko shook her head, "They never gave explicit details, but the night after his meeting with this group, he made a call to Ratso detailing his fears of what the group might be doing. Said it would make the Pentagon look like a kiddie pool."

The next thing Motoko displayed was the night of his murder. "From my gathering of Bassi's last living day, approximately three figures in heavy body armor, abducted him without much chance for defense. We witnessed them giving him the lacerations and bruising at the back of his neck. From what I gathered, the cutting of the tongue was postmortem."

"Even though he still had a pulse?" Eve asked.

"I do agree that cutting the tongue off would've woken him up," Motoko said. "But I also theorize that they must've found a way to shut off his cyborg body without shutting off the Ghost."

"All because he was beginning to talk," Eve said while looking at Motoko's Ghost Dive. "Were you able to determine a location of his shop?"

"I know where it is," Roarke replied and made everyone turn to him. "And I bet you want to take a look at his safe house."

Eve nodded, "There might be some financial records or traces of what he used to work on, whatever it is, we have to find it."

Just off Ninth, a bare block from the entrance to the tunnel, stood a dilapidated storefront mined with security bars, patched with intercoms and peek lenses, and as welcoming as a cockroach. Fixer's place was a grungy smear in an area not known for its tidiness.

The one-way windows offered the passerby a dingy field of black. The door was reinforced steel, studded with a complicated series of locks that if a police seal was placed, it would look like a joke.

People who loitered in the area knew how to mind their own business-which was usually second-story work. One glance at The Ghost Organization had most of them finding something else to do and somewhere else to do it.

"Well they definitely knew to keep things sealed tight," Batou quipped while Roarke began working the locks on Bassi's door. "You would think, it would be structured like either a museum or Fort Knox."

"And why do I get the feeling you actually tried Fort Knox, Roarke?" Eve asked.

"Wait until I get done, then I'll give you my answer," Roarke replied while still decoding the locks.

"Well the place is definitely locked like Fort Knox," Motoko added. "But at the same time, it kinda looks like a cross between an old automobile repair shop and a bait shop."

"Bait shop," Batou chuckled. "He was probably so anti-social, that he even thought simple worms were a nuisance."

"I can also understand yachting and maybe even swimming," Ishikawa said. "But I guarantee you that a man would be laughed at for looking like the tacky fisherman looking for some Sea Bass at the Hudson."

Just then the locks on Bassi's place began to disengage, all thanks to Roarke's magic hands. Throughout the Ghost's conversations, Eve had been looking at her husbands work with fascination and enjoyment, so much so that Eve kept a little smile on her when the group went in and shut the door behind them.

"Okay," Batou said as he took in the smell of the place. "I thought the smell would be uglier, but all I'm smelling is sweat, grease and bad coffee."

"Like you said," Motoko replied. "It's the old car repair shop smell...Lights on, full."

Both Roarke and Eve narrowed their eyes at the sudden brightness while Motoko, Batou and Ishikawa remained unflinching. The interior of the shop was no more cheerful than the exterior. Not a single chair invited a customer to sit and relax. The floor, the sickly green of baby vomit, carried the grime and scars of decades of wear. The way Eve's boots stuck and made sucking noises as she walked told her that mopping up hadn't been a major occupation of the deceased.

Gray metal shelves rose up one wall and were jammed full in a system that defied all logic.

Mini-screens, security cams, porta-links, desk logs, communication and entertainment systems crowded together in varying stages of repair or harvesting.

Jumbled on the other side of the room were more units they took to be complete as the hand-lettered sign above warned that pickup must be made within thirty days or the customer defaulted the merchandise.

"The old man definitely knew how to make a sick joke," Eve directed the group to a dangling human skull over the cashier's counter. The sign under the sagging jaw read The Last Shoplifter.

"A definite laugh riot," Motoko murmured and huffed out a breath. "His security monitors are still running."

Motoko pointed to a screen with control panels which gave out a full view of the street. There was another screen, securing the interior which they could study themselves on the crystal-clear screen.

Unless The Fixer wanted you in, you were never welcomed.

"I found the computer," Ishikawa pointed to the unit that looked like an ugly hybrid of scavenged parts. "And if I can guess, it's probably fail-safe protected."

But Eve had a probability that the computer ran with more speed, efficiency, and reliability than the one in her office at Cop Central.

"Think you can play with it, Ishikawa?" Motoko asked.

"Might take a few minutes," Ishikawa replied. "It's likely that he had copies of his logs in this computer and may have had extra copies.

"If you make any progress, let us know the instant you do," Motoko ordered while Eve followed her to the back area of Bassi's workshop.

"The guy definitely needed some elves," Eve noted the unholy mess of bones and sinews of dozens of electronic devices scattered around. Tools were hung on pegs or tossed wherever they landed. Mini-lasers, delicate tweezers, and screwdrivers with bits hardly wider than a single hair.

"Yeah it's hard to tell if he'd been attacked here," Motoko agreed. "How well did you remember Bassi?"

"One thing I can definitely say," Eve began to reply. "I only knew him as The Fixer back when I was a detective. His room was a bit different from the last time I saw him, but he always did keep himself and his place in constant disarray."

"And they wouldn't have gotten into this dungeon unless he'd wanted them to," Motoko agreed. "He gets turned into a cyborg against his will and as a result his mind gets so warped up to the point of being paranoid."

Motoko jutted her chin for Eve to notice more security monitors overhead. Every inch of his space and several feet outside the shop were all under surveillance twenty-four/seven.

"So they definitely didn't take him from inside," Eve decided. "If he was panicked, as Ratso had said, he'd have been all the more careful. Still, he hadn't felt safe enough to simply barricade himself inside and wait it out. So he'd called a friend."

Motoko and Eve moved into the tiny room, which lead to the mess of Bassi's living space. A cot with yellowed sheets, a table with a jury-rigged communications center, a pile of unwashed clothes, and a narrow bathroom with hardly enough room for the skinny shower stall and toilet.

The kitchenette was a turnaround space packed with a fully loaded AutoChef and a mini-fridge stocked to bursting. Canned and dry goods were stacked in a wall as high as her waist.

"Jesus, he could have waited out an alien attack in here. Why go out to go under?"

Motoko began to turn a slow circle to take her own survey of the room. No windows, no outside doors, she noted. He'd lived in a fucking box. She studied the monitor across from the bed, watched the traffic move along Ninth. No, she corrected. Those were his windows.

"He's scared, so he moves fast," Motoko said. "Takes only what he needs. He's former military and knows how to decamp fast. Might have clothes and money, but not enough for him to go under with."

"One thing I notice that's missing," Eve noted. "If he were going under, wouldn't he have packed a bag?"

Motoko began to scowl at Eve's question, "If you're guess is as good as mine, it's either in the river or they took it from him after he was killed."

"He'd have taken a palm-link," Eve agreed. "He'd have taken his PPC, his logs, connections, and weapons."

Suddenly, Eve made her exit out of the room with Motoko following her. Eve began to poke under the counter to find an empty rack with a quick-release bar. Hunkering down, she narrowed her eyes as she studied it. Had the old bastard really had an illegal blaster? Was this some kind of weapon holder?

"Crap they even took his old blaster," Eve scowled at Motoko. "I know you've taught me a lot about weapons."

"Yeah but I definitely forgot to teach you about the blasters used during the Urban Wars," Motoko finished her thought.

Eve meant to ask Roarke if he kept one when she noticed him about to get off his 'link.

"I just got off with Caro," Roarke referred to his loyal admin at Roarke Industries. "She said a package arrived for me at my office and that my presence was needed."

Suddenly Eve's 'link began to beep and it displayed Feeney's name on the read-out.

"Block video. Dallas."

"Kid, we got a problem."

"What is it?"

"A package addressed to you was shipped at our office, it had the name Cassandra on it."

"Were you able to check it for explosives?"

"Affirmative, but the only thing they found was a disc."

"Whatever's on that disc, transfer it to me in text only, Dallas out."

And like clockwork, Eve received what was sent to Feeney and immediately felt a chill running down her spine.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas, New York Police and Security, Cop Central, Homicide Division.

We are Cassandra. We are the gods of justice. We are loyal.

The present corrupt government with its self-serving and weak-stomached leaders must and will be destroyed. We will dismantle, we will remove, we will annihilate as it becomes necessary to make way for the republic. No longer will the masses tolerate the abuse, the suppression of ideas and voices, the neglect of the pitiful few who cling to power.

Under our rule, all will live free.

We admire your skills. We admire your loyalty in the matter of Howard Bassi, known as The Fixer. He was useful to us and terminated only because he proved defective.

We are Cassandra. Our memory is long. We are prepared. We will make our needs and demands known to you, in time. At nine-fifteen this morning, we will provide a small demonstration of our scope. You will believe. Then you will listen.