The Courier (San Angeles) (16 page)

Fear grabbed control and I jumped closer to the security guard, trying to push past him to get to the safety of the building. I could still hear the motorcycle behind me. The guard wasn’t moving. I pushed harder, trying to duck under his arm. Just as he moved, a door behind the security desk swung open and Quincy ran out, pulling a gun from his shoulder holster. I stumbled backward onto the sidewalk.

A gloved hand grabbed my shoulder, yanking me closer to the bike. A man’s voice bellowed in my ear. “Get on, now.”

My stomach launched into my throat, stifling the scream that threatened to erupt. How had he gotten here? How had he known? A gunshot boomed out of the lobby and the security guard crumpled.

Instinct took over, and I chose the lesser of two evils. I jumped on the back of the bike and grabbed the rider, the envelope jammed between us. I clamped down with my thighs as the bike surged forward, feeling Quincy’s gun pointing at me, burning a hole in the middle of my back.

Whoever was riding the bike knew what he was doing. The bike flew off the curb and I felt it settle back onto its suspension, gaining traction again and accelerating. The driver made a beeline for the back alley across the street. Just before entering it, he locked the rear tire, sliding the bike’s back end out and bringing us in line with the sidewalk. The engine roared and the back tire’s sticky rubber grabbed
the dry concrete, launching the bike forward, keeping the parked cars between us and Quincy. At the next block, he turned right on to the street.

After that, the driver did the same thing most of the couriers did and kept the tires on the cleanest part of the road. He weaved between the slower moving traffic and potholes, leaning the machine so far over that the foot pegs scraped on the ground, throwing a shower of sparks behind us.

Ahead lay one of the transfer elevators, an express to Level 4. As if on cue, the doors opened when we got close and we rode straight in and stopped. The driver locked the front wheel and twisted the accelerator as he leaned the bike to the left. The tail end swung out until we were facing the elevator doors instead of the back wall. The stench of burning rubber filled the enclosed space. The acrid air made me gag. Tears flooded my eyes, blurring my vision. The driver reached forward and pressed the close door button.

A tan sedan surged onto the street ahead of us just as the doors slid shut. The elevator rocked as it started up to Level 4. I realized I was still holding on to the guy in front of me and jerked my arms back. I grabbed the package as it slid down to the seat.

The driver raised his visor, keeping his face pointed away from the camera embedded just above the doors, and leaned to look back at me over his shoulder, revealing a young face with brown eyes.

“I didn’t think we’d make it. You took long enough to get on the bike,” he said.

I pushed myself off and pressed my back into the walls of the far corner, sliding the envelope into my pocket. My shoulders were shaking, and I hoped he couldn’t see it.

“Relax. My name’s Miller. We figured something was up when IBC let you go with the package.” He patted the seat behind him and smiled. His smile went straight to his eyes. “You’d better get back on.
When the door opens, I figure we got two minutes before they show up. Maybe less.” He slammed his visor shut and faced forward again.

A wave of exhaustion blanketed me, pulsing outward until it reached even the tips of my fingers. Too much had happened in the last two days. Every piece, every particle of me cried out for sleep. I’d been wearing the same tattered and filthy clothes for days, and now they stank like I’d rolled through a burned-down house. I may as well have.

I was tired of running. Tired of people chasing me, commanding me, trying to kill me. Tired of the whole fucking mess.

The elevator doors started to slide open, and my body seemed to move of its own accord, as if knowing I had no control over it. I sat on the back of the bike and grabbed on again. The lesser of two evils.

This ride was less frantic. We made a couple of quick turns before riding into an interlevel parking garage. I watched the unpainted concrete walls zip past, blurring into a uniform gray. It felt like they were pushing in on me, squeezing the air from my lungs. I had to concentrate to pull air into my body. I think we went down a couple of floors before he—Miller—shut off the bike. The silence seeped into my numb skin.

Miller took off his helmet, pointing a thumb at the ramp we’d just taken. “The security cameras here have been disabled. No need to worry about them seeing our faces. They’ll be switched back on in fifteen minutes or so. We need to change vehicles. Come on.”

I slid off the seat and dropped to the ground by the rear tire. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to suck the stale air in, but it never seemed to be enough.

“Now is not the time to give up. It’ll take them a while to find the bike, and I want to be long gone before they do.”

My eyes couldn’t seem to focus. The walls still squeezed and pushed down on me.

“Come on,” he said as he reached down and grabbed me under my arms. “Things are just about to get interesting. You don’t wanna lose it now.”

Miller half dragged and half carried me to a car. I barely noticed it, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that the sedan was a dark blue four-door. He opened the back door and laid me on the seat, my legs still hanging out the door.

“You just lie there and rest a while. I’ll have you somewhere safe in no time. I just gotta make sure you’re not being tracked.”

He moved to the back of the car and I heard the trunk pop open. When he came back, he held a small scanner in his hand and began to move it over me. He whistled.

“Man, they weren’t kidding when they said you were green. You’ve still got an active ID tag. With this damn thing turned on, they’ll know where we are the second we leave the parking garage. Hell, they probably tracked us down here.”

He ran to the trunk of the sedan and came back.

“Now, I’m gonna roll you over and stick this over your tag. I gotta block the tag from being read. You okay with that?”

Before my brain could even form a response he moved into the car and rolled me over, pushing my face into the back of the seat. My brain pushed through a thick fog, slow and sluggish. I wanted to stop him, but the signals didn’t seem to be getting to my arms and legs.

“You could help a little bit, you know,” he said.

Cool air hit my back as he lifted my jacket and shirt, sliding his hand in, to just under my shoulder blades, and pressed something cold and supple between them.

The fog lifted as the cold penetrated my skin, sweeping away the darkness. I squirmed and rolled over, kicking out with all the strength I had left. My foot missed Miller’s head by a couple of centimeters.

Miller grinned, lighting up his whole face again. “Now that’s more like it. Come on, we gotta get out of here. The car is out of the question. With your active ID tag, they’ll already have the exits blocked. We need to move fast.”

“What did you do?” I reached back and my fingers slid over a thin film stuck just below my shoulder blades.

“I told ya. I put a temporary block on your ID tag. The whole city’s filled with scanners. The corporations, the government, anybody with access knows where you’ve been since the day you were born. Come on, we gotta move!”

I pulled the envelope out of my pocket. “I have this package. IBC told me to deliver it—”

“I know.”

He grabbed it out of my hands and pulled me from the car. Without letting go, he started walking to the far corner of the garage.

“There’s a service entrance on the next level down. We can jump between the levels here and get into the service area,” he said.

I followed him, although I wasn’t sure how much choice I had. When I slowed down, his grip tightened and he pulled me along. I focused my attention on the manila envelope in his hand, the reason I was in this mess. It didn’t seem like much really. Just some paper glued together. What could be in it that could ruin my life so completely?

We reached a low wall. The drop on the other side was about two meters to the next parking level.

“I’ll go first. You follow me, and I’ll catch you if you slip, okay?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the envelope.

Miller grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled my face close to his. “Look, I don’t feel like dying here today, and I can’t leave you behind. You saw the guy at Innotek? He’s a killer; it’s his job. And he’s after you, so pay attention and follow me. I’m going first. When I’m down, you follow.”

The sound of tires screeching on the level above echoed around us, pulling me back from the edge.

“That could be them. We gotta move. You need to trust me.”

“I don’t know you,” I said.

“No, you don’t. But it’s either me or them, and you know them.” He pointed over my shoulder with his chin.

I made my decision. I had seen Quincy’s handiwork.

“I’ll follow.”

“Good.” Miller climbed over the wall and lowered himself to the other side. His feet touched the ground before his hands had let go.

Leaning over the wall, I saw him standing below, waiting. Tires squealed again. I moved over the wall, my arms and shoulders holding on to the top. Suddenly, I was back in the elevator shaft again, slipping slowly down. My grip froze. The sound of a motor joined the squealing tires.

“Just drop, I’ll get you. Now!”

I closed my eyes and listened to his voice. I could hear the urgency in it. I remembered his smile, how it touched his eyes, and another wave of exhaustion cascaded through me. I didn’t know who he was, and I really didn’t care anymore. I let go and felt myself fall back, putting my trust in a stranger.

Miller caught me before my feet hit the ground.

“Okay, just over here.”

He stopped in front of an old service door, rust crawling through its gray paint. It looked as though it hadn’t been opened in years. Miller pulled a key from his pocket and slid it into the rusted lock. It turned without making a noise and the door swung open.

“Always be prepared,” he said, looking at me.

He pushed me ahead of him into the yawning black opening and closed the door behind us, locking it again.

“I don’t know if they’ll look in here. If they decide to, that door
won’t hold them back long,” he whispered. He turned on a flashlight and handed it to me. “At least there’s no cameras in here. Just follow the corridor to the tee section and turn right. I’ll be right behind you.”

I was lost. Miller had led me through so many doorways and up and down so many flights of stairs that I wasn’t sure we were even on the same level anymore. The areas we had passed through had changed several times, from the dingy and dark one we had entered to a clean one painted industrial gray, to one almost hospital white. Now, twenty minutes after we had entered the maze, we were standing in front of another door. It was all a hazy mess.

“These service corridors pretty much go on forever. It’s easy to get lost in here if you don’t know the way.”

Was that a threat or a warning? Either way, it didn’t matter. I stumbled in the darkened tunnel and fell against the wall, sliding into a sitting position. I closed my eyes as the flashlight slipped from my loose grasp.

“Easy there. We should be okay for now. When was the last time you ate . . . or slept?”

“I don’t know. This morning? Yesterday?” Everything over the last two days had become a blur in my mind. Had I eaten today? Somewhere in a remote part of my brain, it scared me that I couldn’t remember.

Miller slid to the floor beside me. “Another ten minutes or so, and we’ll be out of here.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you, the name’s Miller.”

“Who do you work for?” I opened my eyes and looked at him.

Miller examined my face, his brown eyes felt like they were boring a hole into my soul. He seemed to come to a decision.

“All right. I work for ACE. You heard of us?”

I nodded. “Yeah, you’re a bunch of taggers and vandals, destroying corporate property.” I knew as I said it that the description didn’t fit Miller.

“Yeah,” Miller chuckled. “That too. ACE is a lot bigger than that. We fund and lead the anticorporate movement, both on the corporate side and as environmental hackers. We’re actually bigger than some of the wannabe corporations. Not bigger than the Big Three, of course, but we’re pretty good. I’d say we got about half a million people on the payroll, which would put us somewhere at the low end of the middle range.”

“And your job is to rescue couriers in trouble?”

“Good.” He smiled and leaned his head against the wall beside mine. “You’re getting your wits about you again. C’mon, we’d better keep moving. You’ve got a meeting, and we’re late.”

I sighed and struggled to my feet, fighting the urge to just lie down and sleep. I figured as long as I kept moving, I had a chance. A chance at what, I didn’t know.

About ten minutes later we were in another gray hallway. The pipes on the ceiling were covered with insulation and labeled with cryptic sequences of letters and numbers. We stood in front of a door while Miller looked me over a couple of times. He shrugged and grinned, his eyes lighting up again, and opened the door. It swung open to bright white fluorescent lights.

“Where are we?”

“Level 4, the Hotel Chevrier. Right where we need to be,” he said.

After all the walking and stairs, we were still on the same level.
I followed Miller out and closed the door behind me. We were obviously in a laundry room. Washing machines stood silent along one wall, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. The other wall held huge tumble dryers, their doors hanging open.

“Our timing’s good. No one’s here,” Miller said.

He led me out through a blue tiled hallway and into an elevator. No music, thank god. The doors opened onto a spacious lobby. Warm Ambients flooded in through the large windows.