Page 80 of Gunslinger Girl

An example. Pity fought a feeling of being dragged down, the gun belt around her hips ten times the weight it was moments ago. Selene was asking her to kill in cold blood.

No, not asking.

“Selene.” Nearly forgotten, Halcyon leaned forward, his voice imploring. “Perhaps it’s not yet the right time to—”

“It’s exactly the right time.” Selene’s attention remained on Pity. “Can I count on you?”

Was there any other answer she could give? This is what you signed up for, she reminded herself. You were bound to have come up against a Finale eventually. It had simply happened sooner rather than later.

Too soon. Pity clenched her teeth, desperate to say no—the one thing she couldn’t say to Selene.

“Yes,” she exhaled. “I’ll do it.”

Selene smiled, satisfied. “Thank you. Together we’ll finish another chapter of this nasty business.”

But not the last one. Daneko still eluded capture. There were whisperings of where he might be—in one of the CONA cities, under the protection of a warlord in a South American jungle, even that he was dead—but nothing definitive. And Pity was positive Selene wasn’t the sort to give up the hunt over rumors. That reckoning was still to come.

She stood reflexively when Selene did, their audience with her apparently over. “Halcyon, stay, would you? I would like to discuss the Finale details.”

“Of course.” Halcyon touched her shoulder as he passed. “Pity… take the rest of the day off.”

“What about—?”

“Practice can wait until tomorrow morning.”

She headed for the elevator as cold understanding settled on her. I just agreed to kill a man. In the span of moments, she had gone from entertainer to executioner. Reeling from the imperative, she didn’t register Beau until he was beside her, remaining a step behind, as if escorting her.

“Don’t overthink it.” He spoke so that only she could hear. “It’s nothing you haven’t done before.”

“I know.”

“And nothing that needs to hang on you after, either.”

She glanced at him, finding less ice in his eyes than usual. Somehow that made her feel worse.

“I’ll do what I need to do,” Pity said as the doors closed her in.

Despite that bravado, the moment the elevator began to drop, her stomach went with it. She braced herself against the wall as the muscles in her legs trembled.

If the agreement had been in ink, it wouldn’t have been dry yet, and already she was searching for a way out of it. The options cascaded through her mind as she descended: she could beg to be released or, at the very least, for fate and the fickle whim of the audience to decide who in the Theatre would do the deed.

But she knew the time to plead had passed.

There was no law but Selene’s law. And when the Finale arrived, Pity would be her cat’s-paw. But, she reminded herself, the man she’d be killing was a murderer. Someone who had killed not for survival or for principle but for money. He was no better than the men who’d slain Finn or the admirer who’d maimed Duchess.

And Pity knew, given the chance, he would kill her, too.

Justice, she thought. Ugly as it is, this is justice.

The idea had once soothed her hesitation. But now, propped up before the blaze of the approaching spectacle, the meaning of the word suddenly seemed translucent. Hollow. A definition molded by circumstance.

But maybe that didn’t matter.

Justice and murder—in Cessation, they were two sides of the same coin.

CHAPTER 26

Despite a flawless performance, by the time her act was over, Pity’s thoughts were a tangled mess, broken only by the distant buzz of applause or the rainbow blurs of other performers rushing by. When someone brought her a cup of ice water, she took it without a word. It slid down her throat and into her stomach like a blade. The screens in the preparation area beneath the stage showed the theatre was packed to bursting. Every box, every seat, every bench—full. Tonight’s Finale would usher in the New Year, and no one wanted to miss it.