Gunslinger Girl: Long Weekend Chapter 1 Friday Morning, a gunslinger girl fanfic

GUNSLINGER GIRL

"Long Weekend"

Robert Frazer

With reference to characters created by "Wraith11", "Kiskaloo", and "Professor Voodoo"

"Fish and visitors smell in three days"

Benjamin Franklin

"Painter's gone black."

"…Casualties?" Lorenzo sighed.

"Seven tangos confirmed killed, but objective target is still live. Handler dead. Cyborg-" the word tripped over the speaker's teeth and stumbled out, "-missing."

"I'll come to the compound immediately." Lorenzo acknowledged. "Rouse all handlers onsite. Recall all field personnel currently offsite. Contact the Section One night officer, have him wake Chief Draghi and tell—request that he do the same on his side."

"Sir." The earpiece clicked to a dead rattling burr.

Chief Lorenzo put the 'phone receiver back down on its rest. The heavy weight clunked noisily; the chunky plastic of the device looked inelegant, if not plain anachronistic - some Seventies throwback where the magnets would make your hair stand on end. Of course, it was for a practical purpose – the 'phone was bulky because it was stuffed with snooper-baffling electronics – but the whole stolid inarticulateness of the thick lunk of a contraption suddenly curdled a pit of loathing inside of Lorenzo's stomach.

There were two 'phones beside Lorenzo's bed, a personal line and the Agency connection. His personal line rang with a soft, low-frequency pulse, more a breath than a sound, which rolled over and gently stroked you with a light downy wave. It was almost a request to alertness, one phrased so politely it would be churlish to refuse. By contrast, the Agency 'phone never so much rang as went off – a shrill, shrieking grate of shearing and scraping metal which rattled the fillings in your teeth and juddered window panes from their frames. It was a juvenile tantrum, hammering and beating and screaming at your senses – but you still had to respond to it, because you couldn't let the idiotic tyke brain itself on the furniture as it thrashed about, could you? There seemed something indecent about how a crude, inconsiderate method could still produce the same result.

The mattress springs creaked as Lorenzo swung out of bed, as did the wardrobe door as he began to get dressed. The news that he had just received certainly would not have put anyone in a genial frame of mind, and now even the rustle of his clothes as he pulled them on irked him. Noise - there was never any escape from the noise. Wherever you went, whatever you did, there was always noise. The blaring of televisions from a hundred windows, smacking you into a wall of sound; the yowling of drills as yet another building was being clawed out and thrown up; the bronchitic hacking of car exhausts; the relentless drumming of rain; the reedy scratching of pencils and pens; the hum of lights, always whining along the very rim of the periphery.

Years back, before present difficulties made the prospect of northern holidays improbable, Lorenzo had been hiking up in the Dolomites. Even on a bare peak, though, there was always the cutting keen of the wind, or the clink and skitter of weathered stones crumbling away and tumbling down the slopes. You could pinch your nostrils, close your mouth, blindfold your eyes – but stop up your ears and you would only be assaulted by the gurgle and splutter of your own treacherous body. The world drowned in sound. It was constant, incessant, inescapable. Never a breath of relief – not even a mote of respite.

As he scooped up his car keys from the bedside, Lorenzo glanced at the clock.

3 A.M., on the dot.

You had to laugh.

"Need a coffee." Avise pleaded through the ceiling. He'd been stirred by a small surge of pride when he saw that he was the first to arrive at the lecture theatre – it would soon be a full year since he had left the army, but his promptness was a reassuring sign that the old skills hadn't yet withered. He'd had his leisure to repent, though, picking out sleep gumming up his eyes and rubbing the sandpaper stubble on his chin irritably as others dribbled in.

The lecture theatre was the deep, semi-circular chamber where the cyborgs normally took their school lessons; it reminded Avise of old pictures of medical schools where eager students craned their necks to watch a doctor hack up another reeking cadaver – one probably shoved in through the back by some shady resurrection-man (a cheery allusion, that). All of the seats had been filled, with a few latecomers slouching up against the far walls or leaning over backrests. However, because everyone had streamed in gradually, there was no organisation – handlers and support agents were spread across the theatre very much randomly, but even so conversation seemed free and not stilted. Seeing dialogue between the different branches of Section Two brought to mind lions laying down with lambs, but Avise wondered if the allusion was a little overcooked.

"Honeyed tea. Looks like you could do with a pick-me-up, Manky." Priscilla leaned over to proffer a Thermos-cap of steaming fluid to Avise, smiling as she did so. Avise smiled back – maybe it wasn't so impossible a link after all.

Avise thanked Priscilla and took a sip, rolling the warm slug of fluid along his tongue and appreciating the flavour. "I thought that one of the privileges of being a spook instead of a squaddie was that I wouldn't have to get up early anymore." He offered by way of conversation.

"I wouldn't put you up for an Armani advert right now, I have to say." Priscilla chortled. "You'd be the star of the show for FATIP razors, though!" She darted a nimble hand out and scraped it along Avise's rough cheek.

Avise was startled by the contact and visibly jumped in his seat, almost spilling his drink. A mischievous glint sparkled in Priscilla's eyes – the minx was pleased at provoking a reaction.

Avise tried to regain his composure with a rejoinder. "Alas, my dear, the hour's not too flattering to yourself, either." Which, in all fairness, was true – with a bleary lack of make-up and clothed in a faded grey jumper which read "UNIVERSITY OF URBINO '82-'83" (it had belonged to her father, she insisted), Priscilla was lagging a few steps behind her usual elegantly coiffured self.

Priscilla's bright, elevated gaze suddenly flattened and dulled. "Are you finished?" She muttered sourly, nodding at the cap still in Avise's hand.

Seeing the gates close down in front of Priscilla's lidded expression, Avise shrugged and passed the drink back over to her. Another time—

As Priscilla turned away, Avise suddenly saw an impression of Calandra tossing her head irritably laid over the agent. The shock was enough to make Avise gnaw his lip fiercely enough to draw blood. Another time? What was he saying to himself? It'd be a long time yet.

Avise was stopped from sliding into a reverie of past mistakes when a rapping knock from someone near the front announced the Section Chief's arrival.

Lorenzo marched in with a rapid, stalking pace, speaking as he moved. "Don't stand, don't salute. Alacrity is important this morning and there's no time for banter or usual business.

"As you may have guessed, Operation Painter has failed." Lorenzo paused for a moment to scan the audience, noting which handlers tightened their jaws in expectation of further compounding news, and the more sanguine types who just blinked in incredulous or uncomprehending surprise at the idea that failure was even possible. "We've suffered a fatality – Mario Theuma has been shot dead by Padanian militants."

A ripple of murmurs of consternation rolled up the semi-circle of the lecture theatre. Askance glances bumped into, skidded from and tumbled over each other as people looked to their companions for reassurance, but were not willing to meet their eyes through the equal fear of finding that support crumbling. Even the harder-minded handlers, such as Jean, concealed their frowns behind steepled fingers. No handler could ever take on his work without accumulating a certain amount of hubris – even the most level-headed ones used their cyborgs as a right hand of unlimited length, crushing strength, and impregnable armour – and so pointed reminders of their mortality cut especially deeply.

After these cracks ran through the assembled agents' composure, a voice spoke up from near the back.

"What about Dona?"

Lorenzo nodded in a silent, private gesture when he saw that is was Marco who spoke. As Marco had expressed his wish to return to Section Two work following Angelica's death, he had recently been assigned another cyborg and brought back into regular Agency activity. It was impossible not to notice the more forthright attitude that he had adopted – not willing to repeat his attitude of coldness towards Angelica in her declining months, it seemed that Lauro was trying to compensate for past indifference by showing extravagant interest in every minutiae of the cyborgs' life. Lorenzo personally wasn't sure which aspect of Marco he preferred – there was a certain overbalance from keenness to intrusiveness, and he was developing a habit of getting under people's feet – but as he was the first handler to ever be assigned a replacement cyborg, Dr. Bianchi positively delighted in every psych report that he received.

Lorenzo drew in his breath to deliver the worst of the news. "Mario's cyborg Donatello, who we call Dona, is... unaccounted for."

The bubbling bed of disconcerted whispers suddenly seethed into hisses and gasps of alarm.

The wave of noise buffeted Lorenzo, and he raised his arm and barked harshly for calm. When the squall had eventually subsided, he continued.

"Allow me to explain the situation fully. For those not informed of the particularities of Op. Painter, Mario and Dona were in Milan to complete an anti-Padania action. Following our extirpation of traitorous elements in the Army last year" – Lorenzo had chosen his words deliberately to gauge Jose's reaction to them, and was disappointed to see him still wince at the memory of his dead friend, who had been involved in the smuggling – "and Jethro and Monique's disruption of the North African trade back in the spring, Padania has been seeking to diversify its sources of weaponry.

"Their latest venture has been to the Balkans. Bosnia has recently begun a process of military cutbacks and disarmament in anticipation of beginning the process of E.U. accession, but certain quantities of arms have not been sold on or melted down but have found their way into criminal possession, and are now being trafficked here."

"Queer form of tribute." Avise grunted, without irony. Lorenzo arched his eyebrows at the handler's condescension.

"Perhaps they are just attuned to the Italian appetite for violence" sighed Bernardo, more to the whole room than to Avise himself. The despondent tone of Bernardo's voice – not a deft hit of acerbic wit, but a dreary concession of fault and failure – also alarmed Lorenzo. Bernardo has always been an animated, gregarious, effusive sort, but since Beatrice had been killed in the St. Mark's farrago and he had returned to being a general support agent that flood of spirit had ebbed away. It wasn't so much that he'd become sullen and withdrawn as fatigued, as though he'd expended a lot of energy in his relentless chatter with Beatrice, but no new infusion had come into refill and revitalise him again. Italian could be beautiful when spoken in full flow – indeed, it was one of the few sounds that Lorenzo didn't mind – and it was dispiriting to see it sound such thin, enervated notes.

Lorenzo took his mind off of Bernardo and prevented the audience from becoming maudlin from the agent's remarks by distracting them with Avise. "Mr. Mancini, such cultural supremacy is not part of the Agency mission, please save your opinions for a private forum." Avise blinked very quickly, as though he'd been slapped. Briefly Lorenzo wondered if he'd made the right decision – Avise was a former soldier and disciplined and deferential enough not to fly off at the handle at a cross word, but this episode could well be a memory to store and brood over. Lorenzo decided that he would deal with any potential truculence from the handler when and if it happened, and to concentrate on higher priorities at the current moment.

"To continue – Mario and Dona were to kill a Bosnian broker currently in Milan and prevent a deal from being closed. However, they were anticipated and intercepted before they could launch their attack."

"Is there an information leak?" Alessandro asked suddenly, his past as a spy making him immediately consider the vulnerabilities through which the operation might have been compromised.

"We've no reason to believe that there have been any security breaches recently" Actually there had been, but it wasn't as if Lorenzo would ever have told the handlers that – and besides, the concern wasn't related to Operation Painter specifically. "It's most likely that a man and a young girl walking together in a half-disused industrial estate at two in the morning made guards suspicious." There was no time for full debriefings and assessments now, but Lorenzo still cut a hard edge to his voice to make it clear that he considered Mario to have made a grave error, one which he would expect other fratelli to avoid.

"Ferro and Domenico, the fratello's operational support, reached the site and removed Mario's body before the police could arrive. They had little time to conduct a survey, but they deduced that Mario was killed first, shot by a rifle from range with the hope of confusing Dona so that an assault team could move on her. However, as we all know, a fratello's bonds are not so easily – or cleanly – cut. Dona responded to the assailants approach and..." Bit through throats, gouged out eyeballs, trampled internal organs into mulch and literally ripped them limb from limb? "...killed seven. However, after that, she seems to have wandered off."

"So, we need to find her." Jean's no-nonsense prosaic words cut to the heart of the matter.

"Indeed. That is why all of you have been called here, handlers and support staff alike – Section One is also deploying its entire available operational staff. We need as much manpower as we can muster to set up a dragnet operation to locate and retrieve Dona."

Lorenzo gave a few moments for the assembled Section Two to consider what was required of it. More hubbub rolled along the curve of the theatre seating as the full implication of their chief's understated words sank in. No-one could think of a single occasion where the entire strength of the cyborgs had been massed, let alone the support staff too – and yet here Lorenzo was informing them that not just Section Two but the entire Social Welfare Agency was being turned out. The sheer scale of importance invested in Dona was dizzying – this was far more than a manhunt.

The voice of Amadeo jumped up from above the conversation. "Why can't we make the search public? Missing person, child abduction, whatever. Get Dona's 'photo on the local news, we can turn a couple of dozen pairs of eyes into ten thousand, access police data, and pick her up in hours."

Such a strategy would certainly have let everyone have a lie-in, but Lorenzo had to puncture Lorenzo's hopes of an early night with a point of reality. "After this foul-up Padania is now fully aware that a fratello is active in Milan – I don't think it's smart to hand them a big red arrow pointing out exactly who they need to look for!"

Amadeo was suitably chastened, but his intervention had been useful for highlighting an important feature of the ground that they were about to all go over. "I need not emphasise the severity of Dona's situation. Even the lowest polls put Milanese support for Padania or the Northern Association in high sixties – our cyborg is most certainly lost and adrift in hostile territory, and we cannot rely upon civilian accommodation and support. The gates of the city are closed to us.

"More importantly, however, Dona is as much a danger to the city as it is to her, if not more so. We are blessed to not have had many opportunities to acquire observational information about how cyborgs cope with the deaths of their handlers, but we are in that situation now and that lack of precise knowledge is dangerous in the extreme. Dona will be unpredictable – highly emotive, irrational, panicky, and," – Lorenzo winced inwardly as he remembered the photos of the dismembered Padanians that Ferro had e-mailed over – "liable to fits of rage. Dona was also on a frequent conditioning course, and these aberrations are likely to only become further aggravated and more pronounced as time passes and its effects fade. It is imperative that we reclaim Dona as soon as possible – even leaving aside the possibility of capture by Padanians, or mafia elements seeking a 'trading commodity', inadvertent contact with the public could be nothing short of catastrophic."

Lorenzo swept his gaze around the lecture theatre, making sure that everyone present met his eyes. "There is a time bomb ticking in Milan – a bomb with a fuse that's not measured in seconds but drips of fright, anguish, torment and grief. We don't know when it's going to go off, but for Dona's own sake as much as ours, we need to spare Milan from it.

"Dawn is in two hours. Everyone will have requisitioned concealed radios, prepared two sets of mufti, refuelled their cars and drawn arms by that time. All cyborgs are also to be put in the right frame of mind for street surveillance. Reassemble in the main parking quadrangle, where we will be having a combined briefing with Section One. Now, go!"

The world bled grey, until it had scabbed concrete over Dona's eyes.

Dona blinked. She felt... rough. A furry tongue and hurting teeth, like that strange sensation you always seem to get when you fall asleep during the day. Her joints felt stiff – flexing just provoked an ache rather than the pleasure of unfolding movement. She had slept, but she had not rested.

Dona blinked again. There was a brief flicker of black from her descending eyelids as she did so, which reassured her that the field of grey in her sight was not due to a vision impairment.

She sat up – although she had to push herself up with her arms instead of just swivelling from the waist, which was disconcerting. As she did so, she felt something smooth slip down and fall away from in front of her; she glanced back down, and saw an unzipped sleeping bag had been laid over her like a blanket.

She looked back up again. She was in some sort of underpass – a straight tar-black industrial canal was before her, while a flat concrete wall faced her on its far bank, more concrete hung over her head, and the bank that she sat on was, again, so much aggregate.

"You okay, kid?"

Dona glanced back to see the source of the noise. Against the wall behind her had been set up a number of boxes and irregular pieces of fibreboard to form a rudimentary shelter. There was also a man. He was dressed in waterproof trousers, a woollen hat and a khaki winter coat (Army Issue Pattern VC-10, Discontinued, Commercial Surplus, her brain thought) which was once thick but was now inescapably threadbare. A thick, unkempt beard with grey hairs suggested someone in his early middle-age. His clothes made it difficult to judge his build precisely, but the way he squatted comfortably showed at least that he was not entirely unfit. He did not appear to have a hostile bearing, nor was he carrying a weapon. Dona judged him to be only a minor and not immediate threat.

Assess the situation. "Is it morning?"

"Has been for a coupla hours."

"What day is it?"

"Um... sorry lass, don't have much use for a calendar. You ha'nt been sleeping-beauty for yonks, though, just the night."

Still Friday, then. "How did I get here?"

"Don't you remember?" The man looked concerned.

"No." She didn't.

The man stood up and stretched, grunting noisily as he did so. A sudden sense of being exposed put Dona on edge. "Well, you woke me up when you came stumbling in and knocked over some of my boxes. Damn near frightened the life out of me, thought it was some Padans come to do one of their 'social clean-ups', the twats – 'scusin my language. Anyway, you picked yourself up, and then without so much as a by-your-leave you walked over there, lay yourself down and was out like a light." There was no hostility in the man's voice – a visitor knocking down his fort just seemed to add interest to the occasion.

Dona looked down at the open sleeping bag covering her legs. "You covered me?"

This made the man a little defensive, as though he'd inferred something more than the simple question itself. "I couldn't let you freeze, could I?"

Antagonising a source of information would not be conducive to reorienting herself. Dona decided to mollify the man and hopefully soothe whatever he had taken offence at. She made an effort at folding the sleeping bag – effectively impossible given the loose and smooth fabric, but her handler had said that it was important to at least be seen to be trying – then stood up and walked over to the man, handing him the bundle. "Thank you very much."

"No trouble, lass." The man seemed appeased. He then jerked his head towards his shelter. "You hungry? I've got plenty of tins. It'll be cold though, soz' – Selly's usually here with light for my fire by now but summat must be keeping him."

Dona was hungry, but she'd been schooled against eating anything that her handler had not approved of in case it had been spiked by poisons and drugs. Their enemies would look for any edge they could get against a cyborg.

"Never accept candy from a stranger." Her handler had said.

"No" Dona said.

The man looked unconvinced – the girl seemed as pinched as a winter sparrow, but he wouldn't press her. He could always ask, though. "Wanna talk about it?"

"About what?"

"Why you're down here."

"No."

"You sure? Boys, drugs, I seen it all, I ain't judging." The man would have liked to have thought that the girl – Jesus, she couldn't be more than twelve – was just some happy dreamer off on a big adventure, but these days... God forgive us all, it's not a world to live in.

"No."

"Lass," suddenly his eyes became imploring, desperate for contact. "I can listen".

"NO!" Dona yelled with sudden violence. The man blanched and instinctively jumped back as though a snake had leapt at him.

"Okay, okay kid, okay." The man raised his hands – except it was a warding gesture, not an expansive sweep of welcome. "It's your life."

"You're right, it is my life." Dona said, with a bold decisiveness that seemed to spring out of nowhere and surprised even her.

She paused for a moment while the man watched her warily, and then turned her head to look at the light beyond the underpass. She had exhausted this source of its use and so she needed to begin completing a rendezvous with her handler. Without saying farewell, she turned and walked out of the underpass and into the daylight.

The man wasn't finished. "What the hell...?"

The girl had been wearing good clothes. Not just neat clothes but good clothes, with almost aristocratic quality. That had just highlighted by contrast that the girl was absolutely filthy – but it had been night then, and dark under the bridge now. He'd assumed that it was just muck, or she been soaked from tripping up into the canal. But now, exposed—

Blood.

The little girl – the young thing that couldn't be more than twelve – was covered head to toe in blood.

It straggled her hair.

It streaked her face.

It stained her cardigan.

It shone on her shoes.

There were... there were bits. On her fingers.

Dona stopped. She sensed that a mistake had been made. Always be seen to be trying, she remembered. Appearances matter, her handler had told her. That's the very point of cyborgs.

The mistake needed to be corrected. She walked back under the underpass, towards the man who wavered, tugged in different directions by curiosity and fear. Dona calculated from her previous experience with the man that it would be most expeditious to take advantage of this. She fell onto her knees before him

"Help me..." she whimpered, her voice small.

Instinctively the man squatted down, his voice cooing in sympathy. "S'alright, lass," he began, "let it all out—"

Dona looked up. Her eyes were clear.

"I'm sorry".

The first punch crushed the tramp's throat; the second fractured his skull; the third split his neckbone. He never felt even so much as a twinge, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

Dona had somehow lost her radio, so she could not call up Ferro and Domenico in the support unit to arrange a body disposal. Nonetheless, she wasted little time in making use of the resources available, dragging the vagrant's body against the far wall and collapsing his shelter on top of him. It wouldn't stand up to detailed scrutiny, but a passer-by would just see a heap of fly-tipped waste.

The drifter had mentioned other visitors, one of them apparently frequent. That was a frustrating complication, and it increased risk of discovery. On balance, though, it would not be operationally relevant – from the circumstances she judged that Painter had been aborted, and thus she needed to arrange a rendezvous with her handler, and then she and her handler could be extracted and removed from the operational theatre, where none of this would matter anymore to she and Mario—

Mario—

Mario Mario Mario Mario Mario Mario

Dona fell onto her knees, scrabbled forward a few crawling paces until her head was over the blackness of the canal edge, and was then violently, explosively sick. The vomit settled on the water like scum.

(Continued)