Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society

Two years after Motoko Kusanagi walked away, Section 9 looks almost unrecognizable. Togusa sits in her chair now, running a team that has swollen to twenty operatives, and the caseload has gotten stranger by the week. Cases that make no sense on their own. A trail of them, laid out like someone wanted them followed. Somewhere underneath all of it sits a hacker called the Puppeteer, and nobody can say what he actually wants. Then Batou runs into Motoko. Just like that, in the middle of his own separate hunt. She does not explain where she has been or why she left. She tells him to stay away from the Solid State Society, the outfit quietly holding the whole state together, and then she is gone. He is left standing there with one ugly thought he cannot shake: what if the woman he has been chasing is the Puppeteer herself? Piece by piece the incidents start locking into place, and the shape they form is too neat. Too deliberate. Section 9 is walking into something that was built for them. Is Motoko pulling the strings, or is she trying to cut them?