Page 17 of Gunslinger Girl

“Skin?”

“Some of the costumes are… unconventional.”

“What about you?” Pity said to Olivia. “Are you with the Theatre, too?”

“Me?” The woman chewed and swallowed. “Nope. I’m just a bartender.”

Without another word, Olivia returned to the front cab, closing the door after her. The click of its lock was a grim reminder that, for all intents and purposes, Pity was in a cage. Where she was going—and what she was going to do when she got there—wasn’t entirely in her control. Which meant that she needed to bide her time. Falling to pieces wouldn’t bring Finn back or get her anywhere at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Max, “for getting worked up. Y’all have been nothing but kind to me… more or less.”

Max smiled. “Olivia is slow to warm to strangers. Give her some time.”

“Sure,” Pity said aloud, staring at the locked cabinets.

I don’t want her warmth, she thought. I want my guns.

They hit the desert a day later. Though she remained confined to the back of the vehicle, Pity didn’t need to see it. She was familiar with the parched, empty steppe shown in CONA broadcasts, the edge of the lifeless scar left by the Pacific Event more than fifty years before. To this day no one knew exactly what had happened—the nature of the weapon or who had unleashed it or even whether it had been an intentional act. Only that it had left huge portions of the world uninhabitable and erased civilizations that had endured for millennia.

The bleak history that led up to it was well documented, though: escalating global conflicts, overpopulation-driven biological terrorism that left so many infertile. The aftermath of the Pacific Event was little better, the desperate exodus eastward too much for an already strained nation to bear. In comparison, the conflict waged between the Confederation of North America and the United Patriot Front hardly seemed worth spilling a tear over. Bloody as it had been, it was an ugly sort of proof that life could, and would, go on.

Is it the same for you? she asked herself. How much can you lose and still go on?

Without windows in the vehicle, Pity measured time in meals. It was morning when Max made breakfast, night when he said it was time for dinner. She helped him cook, though there wasn’t much to it: open a pack, heat something up, add water to something else. Still, the work helped to quiet the grim ruminations that stumbled through her head like drunks: where she was going, what she was going to do, and what an artist, a bartender, and a soldier were doing in the middle of nowhere with a mobile command.

And Finn, left behind to rot.

In late afternoon on the third day, the door to the cab opened.

“We’re almost at Last Stop,” Santino called, still strapped into the driver’s seat.

Max, fussing over the status display on one of the larger storage containers, looked up. “Can I bring Pity up front?”

“Why not? Olivia, you drive. Pity, take her seat.”

Pity put down the rag she was wiping the counter with. “Last Stop?”

“The last station on the Trans-Rail, ten miles outside the border of Cessation.” Santino slipped into the back. “Cargo five-by-five, Max? I want it ready to move as soon as we get to Cas.”

“All set.” Max took Pity by the arm and practically pushed her through the door.

A curved control board took up half the front cab. The rest of the space was filled with the operators’ seats. Pity climbed into the empty one.

Max leaned in over her shoulder and pointed. “There’s the station.”

“And more,” Olivia said as they drew closer, her tone grim. “Might want to close your eyes, kid.”

It was too late. Pity had seen the station. With the Trans-Rail line running into the center, it was little more than a sprawling mass of dark buildings growing darker as the sun set. But there was no mistaking what lay just outside its razor-wire fencing. From a scaffold hung half a dozen bodies, their shadows gouging long, dark fissures across the baked earth. As the mobile command passed by, Pity could see a painted placard above them, bearing the CONA seal and one word: CRIMINALS.

She suppressed a shudder, thankful for the black hoods hiding the corpses’ faces. “What did they do?”

“Who knows.” Olivia accelerated, leaving the ugly sight behind. “Murdered a whole squad of CONA soldiers. Stole a heel of bread. It’s not the crime that’s the point. It’s the warning.”

Max sighed. “Even though they have little presence this far out, CONA authority officially ends at Last Stop.” A note of bitterness crept into his voice. “A fact they like to remind Cessation of. Step one foot over the line and… Well, I’m sorry. That’s not what I wanted you to see.”

Pity remembered the scrounger. “I’ve seen worse. It’s just that… I don’t know.”

Olivia looked at her askew. “You expected that sort of thing from the other side of the equation?”