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guys had the cops on their side or not. Everything was so corrupted by the corporations, you just never knew. But I was still scared, and there was no way I was stopping just yet. Not until I had more distance between me and the bloody corpse.
    After twenty more minutes of riding and transferring from street to street, doubling back and getting to the same spot by a different route, I felt the noose around my neck start to loosen a little. No way someone could have followed me through all of that, not even another courier, and we knew our streets. I took a deep, shaky breath and pulled the bike into a crowded 24-hour Super Store parking lot, turning off the motor, watching and waiting for a few minutes longer before the noose disappeared.
    The parking lot had its own lamps, and even with the dimmed Ambients, it was bathed in a glory of light. I tossed around the ideaof hiding down a side street or back alley, safe in the shadows, but something told me to stay where the light and the people were. The place wasn’t so packed I wouldn’t be able to see anyone approaching, but it felt public enough that you would have to feel pretty sure about yourself to attack someone here.
    I sat and watched for about five minutes before taking the package out of the helmet and stashing it in my jacket. I put the lid on and dropped the visor, pulling up the artificially enhanced traffic flow. I moved off the standard courier band and started to monitor the police frequency. The police band was borderline illegal, but I didn’t know of a courier without it. All of it, the traffic, the people, the comm band, was the same standard shit. No news about a speeding motorcycle, no news about a murder in the district I had just tried to deliver to. Nothing to differentiate this night from any other.
    It made me feel uneasy again. I fired up the bike, watching the battery levels stabilize. I was just about out. It was time to get home. Normally the bike lasted the entire day, as long as I plugged in at some customer sites, and it was always fully charged by morning. Today had been extra long, and I’d used a fair amount of power getting away from the last delivery.
    I eased the bike back into traffic and began the slow ride home. I went on autopilot as I navigated the traffic with the help of the visor, and began to go over the events that just occurred.
    The security guard brought back memories I thought I had put away forever.

LEVEL 1 & 2—THREE YEARS AGO
    Life was hard after Mom and Dad died. They were coming back home after work later than usual, following the path of leastresistance to our little apartment on the edge of Chinatown. The police said they got mugged by a street gang looking for cash or drugs. Dad tried to be the hero, protecting Mom as best he could. They were both beaten for his efforts, until there was nothing left to hit. The cops came and took me from my home that night. A week before Christmas.
    I was thirteen.
    I ride past the old apartment a lot, but I never look at it, never stop. As the cops dragged me out, I grabbed for something, anything, that was theirs. Something to help me remember them. I got Mom’s favorite ornament from the Christmas tree by the front door. A real tree they grew in a pot, reusing it every year. The ornament I grabbed was one she got from her mom, passed down from mother to daughter for generations. It was a solid figurine, arms clasped to its chest, holding what looked like a sword, painted entirely gold. Mom called him Oscar, though no one could remember why. I just grabbed for what I could, and got that. I didn’t consider myself lucky.
    It took them a few days to find my aunt on my dad’s side, and a few more after that before Auntie and Uncle agreed to take me in. I spent most of the time crying, thrown into a halfway house, huddled in the bottom bunk of a bed that stank like unwashed bodies. When my Auntie picked me up and saw my puffy, bloodshot eyes, she told me the time to cry was