Cyborg cyber-agent Motoko Aramaki has dispatched a humanoid surrogate -- call her "Clarice" -- to investigate an apparent terrorist attack on a herd of genetically engineered pigs designed for human organ cloning. And no sooner does the surrogate hit the ground in a vehicle assembly plant halfway around the world than she's wrangling a herd of a different kind -- no-nonsense security cyborgs bent on sending her to the cyber-scrapheap. But when Clarice/Matoko jacks into the brain of the facility's supervisor and breaks through network firewalls into the level 6 "ghostline," Motoko discovers that the pig slaughter may have been only a strike against a deeper conspiracy -- and yet another hidden enemy!