The Day the Bridge Falls

Prime Minister Kayabuki sits with her cabinet over the Fukuoka nuclear incident, only to find that the ministers have already resolved to send the army onto Dejima to recover the plutonium rumored to be stashed there. She yields to the decision, then privately relays it to Aramaki. He counters with an alternative: have Japan formally invite United Nations inspectors to collect the material instead.

Kayabuki adopts the idea and orders the Chief Cabinet Secretary to break the news to the press. The move blindsides him, and to shield his own agenda he quietly sets in motion a plan to unseat her. Because the inspectors need two days to reach the country, his hoped-for invasion is stalled, though the ground and maritime forces still ring the island.

Section 9, meanwhile, has moved the bomb's plutonium into one of its unmarked trucks and is hauling it toward Spring 8 when the team loses contact with Aramaki. Kusanagi takes charge and rewrites the mission: rather than deliver the cargo to the lab, the unit will carry it onto Dejima, seize Kuze, and turn both over to the UN. A lone Tachikoma peels off with a sample for Ishikawa to run to Spring 8, and the team commandeers a military helicopter under cover of the mobilization.

At the crossing into Dejima the refugees and the armed forces glare at each other from opposite ends of the bridge. A last-moment message from Kusanagi tips Kuze that the army is inbound, but Gouda's jamming severs the refugees from Kuze's cyberbrain hub before he can respond. A refugee marksman ignores the order to hold fire and drops a soldier, and the standoff erupts.

The chapter closes on one of Gouda's grim aphorisms, likening the human heart's slide toward its basest instincts to water flowing downhill. Twenty-third in 2nd GIG and subtitled MARTIAL LAW, it follows Abandoned City and sets up Aerial Bombing of Dejima.