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Someone had been leaning on the Ministry of Energy for money, and the leading suspect turns up dead in Nihima City, staged to resemble a fatal accident. A more careful look at the corpse instead reveals a killing. With almost every operative tied down guarding the Prime Minister, Togusa is left to run the case solo, assigned a single Tachikoma for support. The material the victim meant to use as leverage proves to be a piece of film, but light has darkened it into a useless black square, so Togusa carries the scrap toward the Shinjuku Refugee District to trace where it came from.

By chance he meets the dead man's fiancee there, and the two decide to pursue the death as partners. They uncover that the victim, Kontan Kanji, had taken a peculiar contract from Kuromatsu Electrics, tempted by the promise of a fresh prosthetic body. His labor had involved scraping residue from the walls of an underground complex in the Uchikon 7 district, a place drowned during the last conflict. Ground Self Defense Force troops now block the main way in, but Togusa and the fiancee slip through a side passage instead.

Deep inside the flooded structure, Togusa realizes it is a mothballed nuclear power station, and the so-called photographic proof was never a photo at all but a radiation dosimetry badge. Someone unseen has ordered this pre-war relic dug out, yet no name attaches to the authorization. Russian Dazhdbog armored suits catch sight of the pair and give chase, forcing them to run and radio Section 9, which opens an official probe into the facility. Unknown to them, a man carrying a newspaper about the deceased has been trailing their movements. When Togusa tries to alert the fiancee by phone, no one answers, and a stranger's foot comes down over her ringing handset.

This is the sixth installment of Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG, carrying the episode subtitle EXCAVATION. It reached Japanese screens on March 6, 2004, and the English version followed on January 7, 2006. Toshiyuki Kawano directed, with the script credited jointly to Junichi Fujisaku and Kenji Kamiyama. The story sits between Those Who Have the Motive and The Rhapsodic Melody of a Bygone Nation, and it quietly introduces the stalking figure who ties the plot back to Kazundo Gouda.