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blocks before she felt safe enough to stop and check whether Lee was following. No. She dropped her bag for a second and put her hands on her knees to suck air. People flowed around her. What had just happened? She remembered the details but it didn’t make sense. She didn’t know what she had been thinking.
    She looked up. Lee was shambling toward her, a hand clutched over his groin, his face contorted. She jerked upright. On the other side of the street, a girl with long brown hair and a cheap suit stepped onto the road, backed away from a car, then ran at her through traffic. The way she was angling, she wouldn’t cut Emily off so much as corral her, force her eastward, and this set off all kinds of alarm bells, because when someone did that, they had friends. She craned her neck and spotted two clipboard-carrying boys in suits heading straight at her. “Help!” she said, but to no one in particular, and of course there was no help. She spied an alley and ran for it. The bag slipped and she panicked and let it drop, which was unthinkably terrible because without her bag she had nothing; she would have to rely on people. She passed an office building, a beautiful business couple emerging from its glass revolving doors like an advertisement, and she thought about running in there, to whatever clean, safe, corporate-warmed world they had come from. But that would never work; that would end in her being tossed out the same door by a security guard in charge of protecting that world from people like her. She kept running. The alley turned and dipped and became a driveway.
Not good, not good.
It terminated at a locked roller door painted KEEP CLEAR LOADING AREA . She started back the way she had come, but they were already here. One of the boys held her Pikachu bag. She shoved a hand into her jeans pocket. “I’ve got Mace.” She backed up until she hit the roller door. All those office windows: Surely someone would be looking down. Maybe if she screamed. Maybe if there were angels.
    “Take a moment,” said the girl. “Get your breath back.” Beside her, Lee bent and spat.
    “Stay away from me.”
    “Sorry about the chase. We just really, really didn’t want you to get away.”
    “I will fuck you up,” said Emily.
    “It’s okay.” The girl smiled quizzically. “It’s okay, Emily; you passed.”

MEMO
    To: All Staff
    From: Cameron Winters
    Hi guys!! Just a quick one to say we ARE getting leave loading on the 29th so that’s double time for all casuals! Nice one head office!
    I’m away for the long weekend so Melanie will be CRO. On her 18th birthday too (Saturday)!! Sorry Melanie it just slipped out!!!
    Also please please!! be careful who you give the bathroom key to. We had a junkie and a poor guy walked in on her, she freaked out and scared the customers, obviously not a good look!!!
    Peace,
    xCx

[THREE]
    The van’s tires slipped on the freeway merge and the interior filled with the light from an approaching eighteen-wheeler. “Fuck!” said the tall man. A horn bellowed. Wil felt a looseness, a surrender of the vehicle to natural forces, then the wheels bit and straightened them up between the lanes. The truck’s horn blew endlessly.
    He wondered how much damage he would do to himself if he kicked open the door and flung himself out at this speed. Probably a lot. His hands were bound.
    “Fuck,” said the man. He was silent a moment. “
Fuck.
”
    Wil said nothing.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Wil Parke.”
    “Not now! Before!”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “When you lived in Broken Hill, Australia. What was your name?”
    “I’ve never lived in—”
    “I can hear your accent!”
    “I grew up in Australia. In Melbourne. But I’ve never been to Broken Hill.”
    The man hauled the wheel. The van slid across three lanes and slewed to a stop in the emergency lane. He pulled on the hand brake, took the shotgun, and tried to drag Wil out of the van. Wil resisted and the man hit him