The Courier (San Angeles) by Gerald Brandt Read Free Book Online

at Paul. “Take care of your hand while I get a team together. We’re going after her. We’ve got her ID number, we’ll be able to track her. It’s only a matter of time.”

LEVEL 2—TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2140 9:00 P.M.
    The distant flickering neon glow of Chinatown, a pool of multicolored light in the Ambient-induced night, pulled me from my memories. The lights shone bright enough to reflect off the coarse Level 2 ceiling, bringing a sense of normality back to me, the feeling of being home and the world being right.
    Well, as right as it had ever been.
    I pulled my bike over just on the edge of the neon stream. I opened my visor and took a deep breath. The familiar sounds and smells of Chinatown washed over me in a warm wave, shutting the memories, both old and new, back in the locked box. Back to where I could at least pretend things were normal. My breathing slowed and I edged the bike back into traffic. Level 2 Chinatown. Home. I’d moved here as soon as I could scrape up enough cash, back to the neighborhood I’d lived in with my parents.
    The markets were beginning to shut down around me for the night. Owners hosed down the sidewalk in front of their businesses, using too much water, pushing the day’s debris into the sewer system, and from there to the treatment plants on Level 1. The neonnever quit, but the flow of people moving from point A to point B crept deeper into their known world, away from potential outsiders. Chinatown closed down from the outside in.
    I snapped the visor back down, shutting out Chinatown. Shit. With all the crap I had been through tonight, I forgot to contact Dispatch about the package. Hell, no one would be there, but the computers would log my attempt. That, combined with a bit of luck, and I might not get docked a couple days of pay. Taking packages home was breaking one of the cardinal rules. I connected to the Net and sent off a message to Dispatch telling her there was no one at the delivery site to accept the package, and I wasn’t riding all the way back to a locked building to try to drop the thing off either. I would leave the package on Dispatch’s desk in the morning, and another courier could deliver it.
    I didn’t mention the gutted man or the too-well-dressed security guard, the amount of blood, or how the man’s insides glistened and steamed on the floor. None of that needed to be said. If someone found out I was there, they might try to get me to testify or something, and that was getting way too involved. The thought of the tortured man having a family entered my head. Was his wife keeping his supper warm? Did he have kids waiting to be tucked into bed? It didn’t matter . . . I couldn’t let it. Corporate killings were nasty stuff. And they never seemed to end well for the witnesses. I was suddenly glad I didn’t see a cop while I was racing away.
    The bike’s motor cut out. Damn. The battery couldn’t last the ten more blocks till home? One more thing to mess up my night. I glanced around, feeling helpless without the ability to take off at any time. I noticed my hands still shook as I unzipped the charge cord from my jacket and plugged it into the bike. A few minutes later, the bike had just under one quarter charge and the jacket was empty. I pulled away from the curb as soon as the cord was packed away.
    My stomach grumbled as I idled the bike down the street, looking for an opening in the foot traffic so I could pull it up onto the sidewalk. I didn’t think I was hungry. The thought of food actually made me feel nauseous, but I hadn’t had anything since breakfast—I glanced at the time on my visor—over twelve hours ago. I knew I had to eat something before my body shut down. I didn’t have anything at home, so ordering out it was. It would bite into the budget, but what the hell.
    The chance of getting a shower tonight had gone completely out the window. Rule number one for the Lees was “no running water after nine o’clock.” It was