Rita felt ready to cry. Instead, she ran her fingers over the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment on her back.
Then she said to Trainee Duccio, who still looked like a kid, “Let’s go. With some more people.”
The district hall was completely deserted.
The stone structure, possibly the grandest in the whole of Quinta, was as silent as a graveyard. A day and a half had passed since the evacuation, or one day since they’d closed the gate. It was immediately obvious that no one had come in to work for the duration.
“It’s weird though, isn’t it? You’d think they’d be really busy,” Duccio remarked.
A couple more trainees stood next to him. In the end Amanda had refused to join them.
“Oh?” Rita inquired.
“Absolutely. We’re not going to be leaving Quinta for a while, right? There’s counting how many people are still here, taking stock of how much food we’ve got, buying up more from people with too much. No end to what they could be doing.”
“Y-Yes, of course.”
Rita was still failing to appreciate the big picture. Not for the first time, she reflected on how poorly suited she was for command. Sighing, she led the three trainees up the marble staircase.
It was the first time she’d set foot in the building. There was a desk for general requests on the first floor, but Rita’s mother, Doris, had always handled tasks that involved dealing with civil servants. Everywhere above the second floor appeared to be office space for staff to complete their clerical duties. Rita doubted she would ever have come up here had circumstances been normal.
Even though the building was empty, there were no signs of it having been ransacked. Discounting the attack of the Titans, there was nothing that attested to any kind of accident or incident having taken place. Purely and simply, no one was there.
They continued down a tall-ceilinged hallway, pushed open a solid set of doors, and walked into what looked to be the district mayor’s office.
It was, as expected, unmanned.
The space was fitted with a large desk and chair, along with some bookshelves, but there was no sign of the occupant. Rita recognized the faint smell of parchment.
“Think they’re all at home?” Duccio wondered. “Like, maybe someone in the family got hurt.”
One of the other trainees slapped the back of his head. “Yeah, right. These are the guys who gave the go-ahead for the evacuation. There’s no question they were the first to hightail it out of here.”
“Really?!”
“Look, we don’t know that yet…” Rita tried to argue the point, but her voice tapered out. The trainee’s speculation was probably accurate. It was something she hadn’t even thought to consider. Noting again that she was missing the big picture, Rita felt a fresh wave of discouragement.
“But!” Duccio piped up. “If that’s true, who’s in charge? Of the town, and of the military? The bigwigs are all gone, right?”
“How should I know?” The other trainee folded his arms over his chest.
The third of them said, “I’m sure they’re here somewhere. Just not in here.”
“I hope so.”
“Wait, I see,” Duccio clapped his hands as though he’d just remembered something. “It’ll probably be Rita, right? I mean the commander, and the person in charge of the district.”
“Huh?” Rita blurted, this catching her by surprise. “D-Don’t be silly. You shouldn’t just say whatever comes into your head.”
“But what about earlier? Ah, sorry, I kind of overheard. But that’s what Amanda was saying. That Rita should be acting commander.”
“For reals?”
“Ah, since all our superiors are gone…”
The trainees all looked towards Rita, their eyes full of expectation. The prospect of someone close to them becoming highly influential was, it seemed, an exciting one. All Rita wanted, meanwhile, was to be liberated from the role.
“Nothing’s been decided yet. And that was just something Amanda said, with nothing to back it up.”
“Maybe, but I hope it’s true. You’re tough as nails! I was up there, manning the cannons. I saw you out there.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“It was amazing. If you hadn’t relayed that order, we wouldn’t have gotten the gate shut in time. I bet you a few of those Titans would’ve gotten through.”
“For sure.”
The trainees nodded among themselves.
Rita felt a cold sweat creeping under her clothes. “That was just…luck. You just happened to see the best bits.”
“She’s modest, too!”
“Really, I can’t do it. Besides, you can’t decide who’s acting commander based off of rank alone. There’s things like experience to consider, and demeanor. It has to be someone with the right amount of gravitas.”
“Come on, you’ve got all of that! Doesn’t she, guys.”
“Yup.”
“We’d back you.”
The three of them swapped looks, then turned to her again.
“W-We can discuss this later. First we need to check the other rooms.” Thus forcing the topic to a close, Rita swiveled to face the door. She prayed to herself, Please let there be a royal government official or a surviving Garrison officer─even just one.
Her steps couldn’t have felt heavier, but Rita started walking towards the door, somehow taking the lead. As she was about to exit into the hallway, another soldier came charging in.
“Aie, watch it!”
“Sorry!”
He was a youth, also from the Training Corps. He seemed even younger than Duccio─probably a fresh recruit, likely with next to no training. He apologized for almost crashing into her, then stood to attention, saluting with a hand over the crest adorning his chest.
“Reporting in. P-People have started looting businesses in town. H-How should we proceed?”
“Looting?!”
Incredible. It was true that the Military Police Brigade was gone, and that the Garrison had suffered devastating losses; still, could civil order break down so completely in the space of just one day?
Duccio and the others looked shaken too.
“Businesses…the ones evacuees left behind!”
“They’ll have left stuff there.”
“I’ll come at once,” Rita told the recruit. “Take me there now!”
Whatever her title, it was her duty to protect the district.
She feared for her parents.
Neither her father Henning nor her mother Doris had been part of the evacuation. They had stayed in Quinta and were keeping the apothecary open. There was no guarantee that they wouldn’t be raided.
For the time being, the looting was taking place in an area that was removed from the family business. Otherwise Rita might have deployed the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment and left the trainees standing.
The disturbance had already spread over several blocks. A violent mob was sacking the many businesses lining the street. Most of the targets were, as suspected, shops whose proprietors had evacuated, but even those whose owners had stayed were being looted. On top of that, a steady influx of onlookers meant the mob was rapidly growing in size.
“That’s enough! This is the Garrison Regiment. Stand back!”
Rita pushed her way past the rubberneckers. A group of men were emerging from a butchers up ahead, arms laden with rings of sausages and clumps of raw and cured meat.
“Wait!”
Rita stood blocking their way. One of the men tried to shove her aside. She tripped his leg to send him tumbling then twisted his arm in a lock. She then unsheathed one of her blades and extended it smoothly towards one of the other men.
“Put it back! Everything you’ve got. It’s not yours to take!”
“Huh? Everyone else’s doing it. It’s not like they’re coming back.”
The man was asserting that the owners had made it past Wall Rose and were not about to return.
“That may be the case, but it doesn’t mean you─hey!” She caught another man with armfuls of meat sneaking out of the entrance. “Don’t just stand there, go after him!”
“Y-Yes!”
“Sorry!”
The trainees scampered after the looter.
Rita was clenching her teeth. There’s too many…
The looting was wholesale─at the cheese mongers next door, the greengrocers on the other side, the hardware and clothing merchants farther up. The crowd was doing nothing to stop it. If anything they looked hopeful of getting leftovers once the rough types were gone. Mixed in with the crowd, Rita caught glimpses of uniforms she recognized. Most likely they were trainees who had reached the scene before her. The looting was taking place in open view, but the recruits appeared at a loss.