“Motoko,” the Major confided. Her breathing was very weak.
Batou hoped she still identified as the compatriot he knew, the one he would gladly fight beside and die for. He didn’t try to hide his emotion. “Major is still in there, right?”
“I am,” the Major assured him.
He sighed in relief. All around them, the lawless zone burned, flames shooting and spreading in the wreckage and rubble. One of the hycop’s rotors had half-buried itself in the concrete, sticking up like a giant shark fin, a warning to any who might venture near.
Batou helped her to her feet. They stood looking at one another. The Major put her hand on Batou’s chest. Life wasn’t just about what had happened in the past. It was the people who were here for her now, and Batou was foremost among them.
The corridor led Aramaki to an elevator, which opened onto the Hanka building’s rooftop garden. No one was expecting the old man who ran Section Nine to show up, and before Cutter’s guards could consider what Aramaki might be doing there, he shot and killed them all.
Cutter’s horror at the Major’s survival was so absolute that at first he did not even react to the sound of nearby gunfire. Then he saw Aramaki approaching and deactivated the hologram of the plaza. The Hanka CEO had no wish to gaze on the visual report of his defeat any longer.
“Mr. Cutter.” Aramaki’s tone was formal. “I’ve come from the prime minister. You are charged with murder and crimes against the state.”
Cutter turned and started walking away around the rectangular perimeter of the lily pond. Aramaki followed, so the two men were circling each other.
The CEO had guessed that, if it came down to it, Aramaki would be the one to arrest him. “I thought that it might be you.” At least, Aramaki would be the one to try to arrest him.
Aramaki knew what Cutter would do next, but felt obliged to warn him against it. “It is unwise to resist.”
Cutter abruptly reached for his gun. It was a much more modern, sleek weapon, but Aramaki was much faster with his .357 and shot Cutter before he could fire. The defeated man dropped to the ground.
Aramaki walked over to the Hanka executive and kicked the gun out of his reach. His wound painful but not fatal, Cutter struggled to his feet and held his arms up in surrender. He was frightened now, whimpering, “Please.” After everything he had done, all the lives he had taken, Cutter didn’t want to die.
“Major?” Aramaki spoke into his comm.
In the plaza, the Major had some of her weight on Batou, but was managing to walk under her own power. “I’m with Cutter,” Aramaki announced into the mind-comm. Now that the moment of truth was here, he could only be its instrument. “Is there anything you’d like to say to him?”
Her reply came back to him over the wireless digital network, and he sensed her out there in the aftermath of the battle, broken but unbowed. “Tell him this is justice,” the Major replied. “It’s what I was built for.” She had been made to kill terrorists, and Cutter had proved himself to be the worst of them all.
“So,” Aramaki asked her, “do I have your consent?”
Despite her injuries, the Major stood straight. Whatever Hideo Kuze had hoped for her, she could never return to being who she had been, and Mira Killian was an illusion, constructed from falsehoods. And yet she was real, and she had a place in this world. “My name is Major, and I give my consent.”
Aramaki shot Cutter through the heart. He fell back into the lily pond, unable to keep his head from being submerged. His last sensation was of falling into dark water, just like the false memory he’d had implanted into the woman who had once been Motoko Kusanagi.
EPILOGUE
RISE
The city graveyard was very large, and all of the tombstones were similar, flat and gray, set in concentric rings of likewise gray cement walkways. It took some time for the Major to find the grave she was seeking. Eventually, she located it, helped by the fresh lilies that had been placed there not long ago. The inscription read: MOTOKO KUSANAGI. She knelt over it, reflecting. There were things she wanted to say to the girl she had been, and to the warrior she was still in the process of becoming.
She had a sense she was being watched, and turned to see Motoko’s mother Hairi Kusanagi. It was she who had put the flowers on the grave, but now the elderly woman hung back at a respectful distance.
The Major stood, making her way past the stone memorials until she reached Hairi. The two women looked tenderly into one another’s eyes. “You don’t have to come here anymore,” the Major said. Motoko’s body was gone, but her mind and spirit, her ghost, were right here, in front of her mother.
Hairi nodded. “I know.” Trembling with joy, she embraced her daughter.
The Major gasped, realizing that Hairi had recognized her even at the apartment. No matter that Motoko was in a new form; Hairi had her child back and there was nothing that could matter more.
She smiled and hugged Hairi in return.
“Yes,” Hairi whispered.
The Major exhaled into her mother’s shoulder, fully contented for the first time since she had been placed in the shell.
Later, Hairi set about restoring her apartment. Bustling with excitement, she removed the plastic from Motoko’s bed and the furniture in the room, readying it for the Major’s next visit. She knew that the Major was too old to play with dolls, of course, but Hairi left them there on the shelf. The toys had made Motoko very happy, and Hairi hoped that seeing the dolls might bring the Major happy memories. Whatever she did, whatever she looked like, whatever name she had, the Major was Hairi’s child, and she was alive. That last fact was enough to make Hairi feel that she, too, had been reborn.
The Section Nine team disembarked from a helicopter on a downtown skyscraper roof. The Major stood on the roof of an adjoining tower and let the wind wash over her, gently pulling her this way and that. She turned her face into the breeze. It ruffled her dark hair, and chilled her flawless, unmarked skin.
In the reflection off the silver and gold mirror of the building across from her, she saw herself—a lithe figure under a dark overcoat, watchful and waiting. She was whole and restored, her body renewed, improved… and somehow, more human than it had ever been before.
Holographic billboards floated between the rooftops, but the Major paid the ads no mind. They were only clutter for those who were easily distracted. She settled low into a crouch, her cybernetic eyes never blinking, taking in everything as she waited for the command to move, contemplating the knowledge that had settled on her in the cemetery.
My mind is human. My body is manufactured. I’m the first of my kind, but I won’t be the last. We cling to memories as if they define us. But what we do defines us. My ghost survived to remind the next of us that humanity is our virtue. I know who I am… and what I’m here to do.
As Aramaki entered the building that housed his office, something different happened. Instead of going about their usual morning business, every single person on the floor stood to attention and saluted him. He acknowledged this with a curt nod, then spoke over the mind-comm, interrupting the Major’s reverie. “Major. Engage targets.”
The Major removed her black coat, readying the thermoptic bodysuit underneath. She propelled herself off the roof in a graceful backward dive, preparing to attack the threat below. They would not be anticipating an assault from above.