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out at all angles. The square was lit up by a series of solar-lights, giving the place an eerie yellow colouring. To add to the theme, a number of bodies hung from those jagged fragments.
    After waiting a further five minutes in cover, no one took any more shots at them, so they got up and stalked to the building with the fire inside.
    The sun had fully set by the time they reached the outside of the train station. The voices came louder the closer they got, and Gabe could tell an argument was going on inside. Someone was accusing someone else of theft.
    He considered bypassing it and going further into the city, to find the apartment building where Jericho hid, but this was also a good opportunity to gather intel—if the locals were friendly enough, and given they were shot at, that was entirely debatable.
    “What’s the plan?” Petal asked.
    “Just wait a sec, listen to what’s going on, and see if it’s safe to approach.”
    “It’d have been a lot easier if that crazy bitch had just given us a map or the guy’s location.”
    “Well, life ain’t fair, is it? Now, shh for a bit.”
    Gabe crouched at the base of the building and peered through a gap in the sheet metal. Inside, a group of dishevelled people in tatty clothes warmed their bodies around a number of drum fires.
    In the middle sat a man and a woman in slightly better clothes. They sat on a pair of old seats that looked like they were ripped out of a train carriage.
    A young girl knelt in front of the pair, clutching a bag. Behind her, and with their hands on her shoulders, were two men with wiry bodies and black clothes. On each of their forearms was some of kind of stitched sigil—a gang sign—the same as he saw on the plantation warning signs.
    The woman sitting on the train seat held a pistol across her lap. She casually tapped her hand on its grip as the young girl in front of her tried to speak through beseeching sobs.
    “I didn’t do it. I was just...” she began.
    “Thieving! the man sitting next to the woman said. He was wearing an old-fashioned pair of jeans and a western-style buttoned shirt. It matched the trouser-suit of his partner. The pair of them looked like they came right out of the twenties.
    “Honest, Tatsu, I ditn’t touch nuffin’.”
    “Then why do you have our property on your person?” the woman said, leaning forward and gripping the pistol.
    “I found it, ditn’t I? I was gonna bring it back to ya, but Jer—”
    She stopped mid-sentence at the same time as a gunshot exploded from outside of the station. It reverberated through the sheet metal walls, making Gabe jump backwards—right into the outstretched arms of two girls, both wielding pistols. Behind them an older woman held a shotgun aloft. Smoke rose from one of the barrels.
    All three wore traditional ninjutsu wraps of dark cloth. The two girls with the pistols looked like teenagers. They all wore their hair up in a single ponytail.
    “Who the hell—” Petal began.
    “Shut your ugly mouth, bitch,” the young girl in front of Petal said, sneering.
    Petal tensed and moved her arms forward. Gabe knew she was readying her concealed forearm spikes. That’d be suicide.
    “Sorry,” Gabe said, holding up his palms, trying to be the least threatening  possible. “Did we do something we shouldn’t have? We’re new to the place, so don’t know the customs.”
    The eldest woman holstered her shotgun behind her back, placed her hands on the two younger girl’s shoulders, and pulled them back slightly as if holding back wild dogs. She looked Gabe up and down. He could barely make out her features in the darkness. The cracks in the walls allowed some light from the flames to flicker through, casting shifting shadows on her face. One second she looked sharp, cruel, and in another she seemed beautiful, ephemeral. She wore an interested smirk on her face as she took in Gabe and Petal.
    “No. You’re not, are you?” she said, her voice low and languid, smooth