For half a year, Rita’s thoughts had been drifting back to one of two scenes.
The first was the instant of Duccio’s murder. His head being blown apart, his body rising into the air, his falling slowly backwards.
Try as she might, she was unable to forget it.
The second had come a few days after his death, immediately after she’d interrogated the ex-MP.
“There’s been a robbery! Close by. It…seems someone from your family was there when it happened, acting commander.”
The moment the soldier finished his report, Rita raced out of the dungeon. She shot through the daylight streets─at full speed, using the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. She must have reached the crime scene in under two minutes.
She saw her immediately. Her mother, Doris, was sprawled on the ground outside a bakery cafe.
“Mom!”
Rita ran to her as though possessed. Pushing the soldier helping Doris out of the way, she pulled her mother into her arms. Doris’ face was covered in blood from her nose, itself broken and twisted. Her cheeks were swollen and one of her eyes was bruised shut. Her right leg was bent at an absurd angle.
She’d been there when the break-in had taken place. She’d tried to talk the burglar down, he had lashed out in response, and she’d snapped her leg in the fall.
“Are you okay?!”
Doris opened her eyes a fraction. She struggled to open her mouth and string words together, but it was too much.
“Don’t try to talk!”
“Acting commander. The burglar is still…”
Astoundingly, the criminal who had broken into the bakery cafe and violently attacked Doris was still holed up inside. One of the patrons had somehow managed to get Doris out.
“Just wait here, Mom.”
Rita laid Doris back down and got to her feet. She entered the bakery cafe.
It was a small shop. There was a counter directly ahead, and behind it, shelves lined with stock. Four tables along the wall on the way in provided the only seating.
The burglar, a man, looked about thirty. His overgrown hair hung down awfully straight. He had retreated to the cafe’s far-right corner, his arm around the neck of a young woman about Rita’s own age. In his free hand he held a knife.
“Let her go,” Rita commanded.
The man, covered in a repulsive amount of sweat, nevertheless appeared to be shivering. “The hell I will.”
“Just let her go,” Rita repeated.
He twitched his head in a shaking motion.
“I’m hungry. These guys are raking it in. I ain’t doin’ nothing wrong!”
“Okay, just─”
“I want food, and a horse. I’m getting the hell out of this place. I can’t live like this!”
So selfish, thought Rita. Thanks to people like him, the decent ones like Doris get hurt. Kids like Duccio end up dead.
Her arm moved, her hand moved, unconsciously.
Rita’s fingers squeezed the trigger and fired an anchor from one of the cylinders on her waist. The point ran straight through the man’s chest. She heard him groan.
The girl he’d taken hostage began to scream.
Again, Rita’s fingers moved unbidden. The Vertical Maneuvering Equipment started to wind in the anchor. It sped back terribly fast.
Without thinking Rita dropped into a crouch, planting her feet on the floor.
The man’s body leapt and sliced through the air, sailing in towards Rita along with the anchor. The young woman was knocked to the ground.
His eyes were wide with disbelief. Half-mad with the pain in his chest, he swung his knife about frantically.
Rita unsheathed one of her blades. She simultaneously flicked the lever to free the anchor from the man’s chest, averting a full-on collision. Just as the man passed before her eyes, she lifted her blade as if gliding it through the air. His throat ripped open.
Inertia sent the man tumbling into the floor even as blood fountained from his neck.
Everything felt like it was part of a dream.
“Acting commander…”
Rita realized some of her troops were standing there behind her. A crowd had formed outside the cafe, and a great number of civilians were peering through the entrance.
Until that moment, perhaps there had been a tendency among her subordinates to take her lightly. They had, in part, doubted her competence.
All that was gone. Not a fraction of uncertainty remained.
Instead, their eyes carried a look of fear. The same hue was present in the eyes of the civilians watching on at a remove.
I see, this is what I need.
If there are to be no more victims like Duccio and Doris.
Something had clicked, deep within her heart, like a lock coming undone. She heard the same sound every time the scenes replayed themselves in her mind.