I'm a soldier, znatchit ya... I'm a soldier, and that means...
...i otvetchik i sud'ya ...that I am both defendant and judge.
Ya stoyu na dvuh kontsah ognya I stand at both ends of the fire.
Ogibaya virazhi, Leaning into the curves,
obgonyaya smert' i zhizn', overtaking life and death,
ya begu srazit'sya s ten'yu lzhi I'm running to fight the shadow of lies.
Skol'ko b nitej ne plyol obman, No matter how tangled the web of deception is woven,
pokazhet lik sveta istina... truth will always illuminate the outline of the light...
Save your tears for the day...
...when the pain is far behind.
On your feet, come with me.
We are soldiers, stand or die.
Save your fears, take your place.
Save them for the Judgment Day.
Fast and free, follow me.
Time to make the sacrifice.
We rise or fall...
A homicide staged to look like an accident?
From what the investigators tell me, there's a strong possibility...
...that he was hit hard enough to be certain to critically damage his braincase.
But the truck driver says he doesn't remember anything because he was asleep at the wheel?
We're checking the driver's cyberbrain just to be safe, but I doubt we'll turn up anything.
I guess our investigation into the blackmail against the Energy Ministry has hit a dead end.
Assuming that this man was working alone.
The victim's prosthetic body was a Toyoda Chemicals model 2902.
The braincase is a Dermo 2706 Mark 2.
Neither one is cutting-edge, but they're new, domestically-made units.
The exterior is also a market model with no options added,
but the face is the one thing that's haute couture.
Judging from the cellular deterioration, though,
I'd say that it's a holdover from when he was first prostheticized.
That sort of piecemeal swap pattern is unusual for a criminal.
Right. And his blackmail M.O. Was apparently rather crude, too.
It's entirely possible that the information of an Energy Ministry scandal was just a bluff.
But in spite of that, he was assassinated with the death made to look like an accident...
...right before we were going to take him into custody.
What's this carved symbol here?
I think it's the logo for the Shinjuku ward of the old capital.
The one that was sunk in the war?
Right. For some reason, his braincase has a coating of glass and lead.
It must have been engraved when he had that done.
These are the items that the man had on him.
The contact information for a reporter is written on here.
It should provide clues as you're trying to determine the man's identity.
This is a wedding ring, isn't it?
He left a message at my office saying that he wanted to meet with me, all right.
Offices of Fumiya Dobashi
- Reporter
I see.
The tip smelled fairly bogus to me,
but he had apparently called from a public terminal in Tokyo.
From Tokyo? So, what was the tip he wanted to give you?
Some scandal involving the Energy Ministry.
You'd never get any work done if you checked out every little tip.
Well, we don't usually meet our sources in person,
but he said that he'd send me something that would prove his story.
Just two? Smoking or nonsmoking?
Right this way, please.
It's completely black...
Right. I thought it would be some kind of photographic evidence,
but it's been completely exposed.
He must've thought that digital data wouldn't prove anything.
Not many people know how to handle film these days.
Would you mind if I kept this for now?
Sure, if you want. There really isn't anything on it, though.
Chief.
It looks like the man was in Tokyo up until a few days before he was killed,
and he sent a frame of exposed film to the reporter from there.
All right, you head to Tokyo on your own.
While you're en route, I'll find out what terminal he used.
On my own, sir?
Everyone else is still providing security for the Prime Minister.
I'll assign a Tachikoma to you.
Is the radiation gonna be a problem?
How many years do you think it's been since the war?!
No residual radiation has ever been detected since the dispersal of the "Japanese Miracle."
Roger that.
New Tokyo... New Tokyo.
Announcing the arrival of the Etorufu #3, bound for Berutarube.
If you're worried about residual radiation, I'd recommend getting a prosthetic body.
No, it's not that. It's just a gut reaction.
Do you feel sick?
In that case, I can let you ride in my pod if you want!
That'd make me feel even worse. Just pipe down and follow me.
T-That makes me so mad!
This is where he made the call from, huh?
Have you seen this man?
Sorry, never seen him.
I think he got a new prosthetic body somewhere around here.
I wouldn't know 'bout that.
Everybody around here makes do with the lowest performance parts around.
Let me take a look.
There's been lots of missing people lately. Maybe I know who he is.
This is the man.
Let me see...
Oh, I had a feeling that you meant this guy.
Do you know him?
I don't know who he is or anything, but four or five days ago,
a man wearing a black suit in this damn blast furnace asked me about him.
Guy had a face that would give you a heart attack, too.
And just a while ago, a young lady was asking about him down at the flophouse district.
What kind of stunt did this ladies' man pull?
Nothing major.
Thanks, buddy.
Excuse me.
Do you know someone named Kanji Kotan?
Sure, we know him.
You do?
Sure. Come on.
I knew it... That last one was a once in a lifetime find.
Huh? Togusa?
The string...
I think it broke.
If you don't wanna get hurt, beat it!
Are you all right?
About the man who contacted the reporter,
I managed to verify that a man by the name of Kanji Kotan was in the Kanto Refugee District.
Oh, you did?
Just to be sure, I showed the ring and the dead man's photo to the woman I took into custody,
and she said that they were definitely both Kotan's.
Who is she?
Ruriko Asagi. She says she worked for a refugee support NGO two years ago,
and that's when she met Kotan.
She says that they stayed in touch even after she left and eventually even got engaged,
but she lost contact with him three months ago.
Apparently, she came to Tokyo from Akita to look for him...
...after she suddenly got an e-mail from him a week ago saying goodbye.
Understood. Keep questioning the woman.
Roger.
Feeling better?
Kotan's dead, isn't he?
Kotan gave this to me.
He said it was because he'd be able to leave Refugee Town soon.
But when he tried to get his I.D.,
Kotan's prosthetic body got flagged during his inspections.
It didn't meet the minimum performance requirements.
When he learned that, Kotan started to avoid me.
Maybe he thought that I had been hiding the standards requirement from him.
You weren't able to get in touch with him?
I called him again and again. I said I'd help him get a new prosthetic body.
But he turned down the offer.
When he was found in Niihama, Kotan had already swapped into a domestic body.
He never said anything about that to you?
No, he never told me.
I see...
The thing is, before he died, he was under suspicion of trying...
...to blackmail a government agency for money.
Your story made me think that maybe Kotan came up with the blackmail idea...
...to get a new prosthetic body, but he'd already changed bodies before then.
Why did he blackmail them after he'd gotten a prosthetic body?
Kotan may have been dealt a bad hand in life, but he'd never stoop to doing anything illegal.
Maybe so.
But there's a possibility that Kotan's death wasn't an accident.
That he was killed by someone.
Something happened to him during the three months that you two were out of contact.
What say we check out the flophouse district tomorrow?
It was about a month ago, I guess.
A rumor was going around that somebody was hiring lots of workers with full prosthetic bodies.
And they said that people willing to go all the way inside Uchikan Seven...
...would get a good prosthetic body for free.
For free?
Yeah.
Uchikan Seven? What's that?
That's one of the sunken areas.
But I never heard of anybody actually getting a prosthetic body,
so maybe that's just another rumor.
This man apparently did get a new body.
Hey! Does anybody here know that story where you could get a free prosthetic body?!
These two say that this guy really did get a full prosthetic body!
Hey!
I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for the Prof.
Professor?
Yeah...
He taught me all sorts of things at Uchikan Seven.
What happened there?
I'm not really sure, myself. I just worked and did what they told me to do.
Do you remember who hired you?
An outfit called Kuromatsu Electric or something like that.
They told us that they were excavating an installation that was buried during the war,
And we'd be diving a long way down, so we were told to report after we'd went full prosthetic.
You had to be at least 98% prosthetic, so I'd given up on the idea,
but I snuck in after I had a back-alley doctor dummy up my prosthetic percentage.
Was this logo on the prosthetic bodies?
Yeah. It was on all of 'em.
The Prof was really happy about getting to swap into a new prosthetic body.
But you can never be sure that you really got a new one,
'cause you can't see your own braincase.
So in the end, they got about 40 of us workers together, and we went deep underground.
There were probably other guys besides me who had spoofed their percentage.
So anyway, I teamed up with the Prof, and we started working.
"De-scaling," I think it was called.
We were wearing dust masks, but we still turned pitch black, even inside our noses.
The Prof said I'd be okay if I cut my sense receptors,
but I told him I couldn't do that 'cause I wasn't full prosthetic.
When I said that, he got this scary look on his face...
...and told me that if I didn't get out of there fast, I'd die.
But I wanted the money real bad, so I didn't listen to him.
So the Prof gave me this and said that if it turned black, I should get the hell out of there.
And then, four days into the job, all hell broke loose.
Sirens started blaring all of a sudden, and just as I was wondering what was going on,
some guys who looked like technicians were carried out on stretchers from the inner work site.
That's when it finally sank in that the job was really dangerous.
And that's when you ran away?
Yeah.
The next thing I knew, these guys in black came in.
The Prof and I made it outside okay,
but when I glanced back as we were running,
the guys we were with had been sealed in by some huge steel doors.
What happened to Kotan after that?
He said something about having to tell the world what he saw down in the tunnels,
and then disappeared somewhere.
Can you take us to this Uchikan Seven place?
Get serious! I wouldn't go back there even if you paid me!
Just partway is fine.
Please. I want to find out what Kotan saw there.
The JGSDA is down there...
That fence wasn't there when I ran away.
If you go in through here, you'll should be able to reach the same place.
Sorry, but this is as far as I'm going.
That's okay. Thanks.
This place is...
Armored suits!
Crap!
Jump! Hurry!
Come on!
Are you okay, Togusa?
Tachikoma?
Boo-yah!
Announcing the arrival of the Mirai 52, bound for New Fukuoka.
Kotan knew the risks, but he must've gone there so that he could be with you.
But by some fluke, he had the knowledge to figure out what kind of installation that was,
and he was killed for it.
I'll make a quick stop back home, and then go to pick up his body.
Sure. If you run into any trouble, call me right away.
I will.
Kotan came across an accident at a nuclear plant hidden in that underground installation...
... and used that information to threaten the Energy Ministry.
It may be that he really did try to expose the scandal to the public, though.
I see.
My guess is that they had an accident with the reactor while they were working,
and then they hastily started to bury everything,
but the military doesn't seem to be aware of the situation.
The real question is, under whose authority was that prewar installation excavated,
and for what purpose?
Those men in black suits...
It sounds like there's still more to this story. Once you get back, put together your report.
Yes, sir.
Finding out a galaxy...
...of planets and stars within me...
Listening to each of them...
...singing the same silent melody...
I've never seen such beauty...
In possibility...
No speck of doubt or fear...
Wake up!
I hear a voice,
hear a voice calling out to me...
I see inside,
see the light now ever holding me...
All the truth, all I need...
...to make of this reality, it's inside...
The beauty within the shell...
I hear a voice,
hear a voice calling out to me...
I see inside,
see the light now ever holding me...
All the truth, all I need...
...to make of this reality, it's inside...
Right here within the shell...