Altered Carbon

Carnage introduces the fight as a night of revenge for the crowd, which is comprised of spectators once wronged by Ryker. There is a blade suspended in the air, which is to be used by Kadmin to kill Kovacs after he is sufficiently beaten. When the fight begins, Kovacs struggles, since his neurachem is not functioning after his recent unconsciousness. Kadmin is in a new sleeve that is made for fighting, and he knocks Kovacs down repeatedly.

As the neurachem wakes up inside Kovacs, he makes some progress, landing a few blows against Kadmin and defending himself. It is not enough, and Kadmin soon knocks Kovacs down again. The crowd cheers. Just when it seems like Kadmin will deliver the final blow, the glass above them shatters, and a bullet strikes Kadmin in the chest. Kovacs gazes up and sees Trepp firing from above at Kadmin and into the crowd. Bautista joins the fight, and Kovacs notices that Carnage is on fire.

When the threats are neutralized, Bautista and Trepp join Kovacs. Bautista warns that what they did was illegal but that no one kidnaps a Bay City police officer. Kovacs takes Bautista’s gun and uses it to destroy Kadmin’s stack, killing him permanently.

Outside, Kovacs tends to his wounds. Ortega joins him and tells him that Trepp fled. Despite killing Kadmin, Kovacs feels the urge for greater revenge. As rage builds inside him, he sets his sights on the Meths. He thinks of how they abuse everyone below them and do not care what trauma they inflict on those who resleeve from one body to another.

They meet with Bautista to concoct an explanation for what they did, and with Trepp gone, Kovacs suggests blaming it on her. He argues that Bautista and Ortega can say they received a back-channel warning of what was happening and responded, though they cannot share their contacts. He promises that Irene can scrub any footage of the fight and make it look like Trepp did it.

As Bautista and Ortega consider this, Kovacs stumbles upon another realization and begins formulating a plan to end this conflict. He asks for Ortega’s help to get aboard Head in the Clouds, where he believes he can prove that Kawahara killed Laurens, take Kawahara down, and clear Ryker’s name. Ortega pushes back, arguing that he cannot simply do whatever he wants and that he is in no condition to even try. Kovacs senses that if he succeeds, their time together is approaching an end, and he feels sadness.

Kovacs speaks with Irene, and she agrees to help him erase the footage, under the condition that Ortega and Bautista help her get her original body back. She warns him not to come looking for her again. She says she is leaving her home and husband, since she needs to be on her own in her new body.

At the Hendrix, Kovacs, now in a ninja tech suit with advanced neurachem, watches as he, in Ryker’s sleeve, calls Miriam and makes plans to meet her to apologize. Kovacs split himself at the Panama Rose with Irene’s help to aid in his plans to infiltrate Head in the Clouds. The Kovacs inhabiting Ryker’s sleeve will go to Miriam’s island as a distraction while the Kovacs in this new sleeve takes down Kawahara.

As the two Kovacses drink and plot their mission, the newly duplicated Kovacs finds it strange to see himself in another body. He tries to have an open conversation with the Kovacs in Ryker’s sleeve, but this Kovacs does not want to talk about anything but their plans. They finally discuss what will happen to them afterward if they succeed and survive. They could graft their two minds back into one, but both are uncomfortable with this idea and prefer that only one version lives on.

They ultimately decide to compare memories after their different experiences and decide whose memories are worth more. The next morning, the Kovacs in Ryker’s sleeve leaves with Miriam, while the duplicated Kovacs meets with Ortega.

Ortega informs Kovacs that Irene is willing to work another job but will only talk to him. They fly out of the city to the northeast, where they find Irene living in a tech savvy and isolated community. Though Kovacs keeps the exact details from Irene, she agrees to help them as long as she can have her body back. Ortega promises that she can have it back if everything works out, their success granting them retroactive forgiveness. Kovacs assures Irene that he will buy her sleeve back no matter what happens. He also realizes with some sadness that in this new body, he does not feel the same pull to Ortega that he did in Ryker’s body.

Once Irene agrees to help, Kovacs explains that he needs her to find the layout of Head in the Clouds and hack into their system. While Irene begins working, Kovacs elects to have a recording device implanted under his eye so he can catch anything Kawahara says. Irene works quicker than Kovacs anticipated and informs him that the ship has a body heat alarm system. This means that the ship can sense and locate anyone by their body temperature. If anyone unauthorized walks down the wrong hallway or even the outside of the ship, alarms will blare. Kovacs and Ortega find a workaround for this and shake down some Stiff dealers. The drug will slow Kovacs’s heart and lower his temperature while still allowing him to function.

In the Hendrix, Kovacs and his team prepare for their mission, uploading into a virtual reality where Irene works. Everyone settles in to download, but Kovacs remains outside in secret to speak with the Hendrix. When he finally joins them, Ortega is suspicious, though Kovacs plays it off as a glitch because of his new sleeve. Irene confirms that Kawahara transferred Sarah back to Harlan’s World and that there is a covert broadcast from Head in the Clouds to Europe every 18 hours. Kovacs believes this broadcast is key to their plans, thinking of Kawahara’s clones.

Kovacs and his team fly up to Head in the Clouds. On their way, Ortega administers doses of Stiff to Kovacs so he can move past the sensors undetected. When they are hailed by Head in the Clouds, Ortega tells the ship that they are a police vehicle in search of Kovacs, who they believe is on the run in a new sleeve. Kovacs knows that this will grab Kawahara’s attention because she will worry about what he may reveal. Kawahara hails them directly and instructs them to land.

Kovacs, dressed in a stealth suit and a grav harness, ejects from the ship. He uses the grav harness to fly up to a covert entrance and makes his way inside without tripping an alarm. He remembers the blueprints Irene found and Miller’s confessions and makes his way to Kawahara’s quarters. The Stiff dulls his anxiety and his senses. As he walks through a hallway, a door opens, and a canine creature limps out, its legs injured. The creature drags itself down the hall, and Kovacs retreats to the door it came from. He listens and feels rage swell within him. He opens the door to find a man cleaning himself up and kills him. Afterward, he finds the dog and euthanizes it.

When he reaches Kawahara’s quarters, he waits around the corner of the hallway for her to arrive. Soon, he hears Kawahara as she walks with Ortega down the hall. She tells Ortega that she knows nothing about Kovacs’s whereabouts but can promise discretion over the matter. Kawahara then enters her quarters while Ortega and her escorts return to Ortega’s ship. When they are gone, Kovacs takes out his gun, knocks on Kawahara’s door, and enters.

Kawahara is surprised when Kovacs enters the room, though she hides it well. Upon seeing his gun, she asks Kovacs who he is, not recognizing him in his new sleeve. He tells her and dismisses her threats against Sarah for what he is doing. Kovacs tells Kawahara that he is recording everything and that it will be broadcast everywhere when he lands back on the ground.

Kawahara tells Kovacs to kill her, saying that it does not matter because she can be downloaded into a clone. Though she may not remember this confrontation, she will know what happened. Kovacs tells her that this is her only body, as Irene embedded the Rawling virus into her last broadcast to Europe. With Kawahara captive, Kovacs demands to know about the Catholic girl who fell from Head in the Clouds and who is the subject of Ryker’s investigation. Kawahara admits that the girl was recruited to be snuffed, but she tried to escape and fell into the ocean.

Knowing that what happens on Head in the Clouds is very illegal, and with the passing of Resolution 653 looming closer, Kawahara needed to silence the incident. She framed Ryker to end the investigation and argues with Kovacs that human life is worth nothing, as humans are abundant. She says it is cheaper to kill a real girl than it is to simulate a human to kill. Kawahara even tried stalling the UN vote on Resolution 653, using her son Marco’s sleeve to play tennis at the Bancrofts’ and discreetly advocate for its failing.

Kawahara tried to recruit Laurens to her side, thinking that he would agree with her, being a Meth. However, Laurens surprised her by not wanting to be involved. To resolve this loose end, Kawahara invited Laurens to Head in the Clouds after his meeting in Osaka, and with chemical assistance, manipulated him into killing a Catholic girl. This pushed him to die by suicide later that night, erasing the memories.

The Stiff dulls Kovacs too much, and he does not notice Trepp’s arrival. She shoots Kovacs with a stun ray, incapacitating him. Trepp is confused until Kawahara explains that the man before them is Kovacs. She says that they need to remove the recording device from his eye and download him so Kawahara can torture him. Kawahara goes to check on her clones and realizes that Kovacs was right: They are all compromised.

Trepp seems indecisive, not listening to Kawahara’s instructions to remove the device. Slowly, Kovacs regains some feeling and mobility. When Kawahara straddles him and gets pliers ready to remove the device, he takes his knife and slashes at her arm. Kawahara screams for Trepp to shoot him, but Trepp hesitates. She is about to pull her gun on Kawahara, but Kawahara takes Kovacs’s gun and shoots Trepp first. Kovacs and Kawahara fight, but she soon overpowers him and takes the recording device out, ruining his eyes. Kovacs uses one of the small grenades he has and detonates it against the glass floor, plunging them downward toward the ocean. As they fall, he grabs Kawahara and presses another grenade to her neck. When it explodes, it kills Kovacs and destroys Kawahara’s stack.

Kovacs, in Ryker’s body, visits Sheryl Bostock in Licktown. She works for PsychaSec and tends to the clones. Kovacs asks her why she but synamorphesterone in Laurens’s clone while he was in Osaka. She admits that Miriam made her do it.

At Suntouch House, Kovacs walks up the lawn to speak with Miriam while Laurens is in New York, the subject of a UN inquiry. Curtis tries to stop him, but Kovacs takes him down. Inside, Miriam asks if Kovacs remembers their time together on the island, and he admits that he does not. The version of Kovacs that went to Head in the Clouds is the one to survive. After hours of virtual deliberation, he and the other Kovacs decided who lived with a game of scissors, paper, stone. Kovacs still does not feel right about it.

Alone, Kovacs manages to coax the truth from Miriam. She forced Sheryl to dose Laurens’s clone, knowing that when he got back from Osaka, he would look for sex. The drug would make him aggressive and cause him to grow too violent, killing whichever girl he was with. Kawahara helped Miriam and was truly the one coordinating everything.

Kovacs believes that Laurens then came home to die by suicide because he wanted to avoid being blackmailed by Kawahara into tanking Resolution 653. If it passed, the girl could be resurrected to testify against him. Miriam disagrees, believing Laurens did it out of grief and guilt. When he asks why Miriam did this to Laurens, she explains that it was the only way to obtain revenge against Laurens for his infidelity. Kovacs questions why innocent women had to die for that.

Miriam worries about what Kovacs may do with all of this evidence, but Kovacs assures her that he and the Hendrix deleted it all. He gives her the only copy of evidence that links her to any of these events, saying that the UN will likely blame Kawahara, as it is the most expedient answer. He insists that Miriam and Laurens deserve each other but that the rest of the world does not. When she questions why he isn’t turning her in, he reveals that the version of Kovacs that spent time with her on the island asked him not to.

Kovacs meets Irene, who is now back in her original body in Ember. Once the UN cleared her, a security consulting firm offered her a high-paying job. This allowed her and her husband to buy a virtual condo for Elizabeth. They hope to resleeve her in the coming years. Kovacs gives Irene $80,000, suggesting she resleeve Elizabeth now. When she asks why he is helping her, Kovacs insists that he wants something good to come out of what they did.

It takes 11 days for Kovacs to be approved for transfer back to Harlan’s World. While he waits, he sits in the Hendrix and watches the news. The UN inquiry into Kawahara is veiled in secrecy, and no one realizes that it is connected to the passing of Resolution 653. Prescott facilitates the closure of Kovacs’s deal with Laurens. He receives everything he was promised but is warned to stay away from the Bancrofts going forward. He knows it is because Laurens knows about the island and is jealous.

On the day he is to be transferred, Kovacs returns to Bay City Central with Ortega. There is awkwardness between them, and Kovacs believes it is because Ryker, now cleared, will soon be resleeved into this body. Before he goes inside, he says goodbye to Ortega. He gives Ryker’s cigarettes back and asks that she promise to keep Ryker from smoking them again, as a gift to him. Ortega kisses him, and Kovacs feels his emotions well up. He walks inside to go home.