Free The Courier (San Angeles) by Gerald Brandt Page A

life went on for anyone living down here. A life filled with drugs and hate and disease. I wished I was anywhere but back here.
    The northern corner of the lot still looked unused. At least I hoped it was. Lying under the layered garbage and crushed bricks was an entrance into the old basement of the building that had once stood here. An entrance that, at least a couple of years ago, only I had known about. The access itself was a tight squeeze, as though it was made for a small kid. I hoped I could still wriggle through the openings and tight tunnels created by the collapsed structure.
    Sudden motion caught my eye, and I twisted to face it. Something slammed into my chest. I jerked backward, stumbling over therough ground. My heel caught on some loose rubble and I fell on my back, laying stunned, staring at the mottled gray ceiling and Ambients through a layer of fog and flashing points of light floating above me. I moved my arm across my chest and struggled to sit up. Two thin wires lay across the ground, embedded in the front of my jacket and leading to a pile of garbage about six meters away.
    The pile moved.

LEVEL 1—WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2140 5:40 A.M.
    Awareness struggled to rise through the thick fog in my head. As it began to clear, I realized what had happened. The wires were from a Taser. I flexed my hand, looking for the Taser I had held only moments ago. It was gone.
    Unless things had changed over the last two years, Tasers were not the weapon of choice for the Level 1 gangs. Baseball bats and knives were more their style. Maybe the assholes in the white van knew where I was heading, but how?
    My reaction to the Taser wasn’t what I’d expected either. I had felt some surge of power, and my chest felt bruised, but where was the pain? I’d seen firsthand what a Taser could do when I hit Quincy. I moved my arm again, searching in the dirt for my own Taser.
    Footsteps approached from the pile of garbage, accompanied by the sounds of scraping bricks and the hollow clang of empty cans banging. Someone knelt down beside me, and I lashed out with my feet instinctively, using all the strength I could gather from my prone position. I felt contact. The figure grunted and fell, sprawling on his back. I stood and ripped the Taser hooks from my jacket before sprinting deeper into the piles of rubble.
    I slid to a stop and threw myself behind a large mound. My heartpounded in my chest, a sharp pulsating roar that filled my ears. The only other sound I could hear was the sharp intake of my breathing. Nothing from the lot surrounding me. The Ambients continued to raise the level of light, and I knew my chances of slipping away unnoticed in the dark were falling. I forced my arms to move, pushing myself up to my knees, ignoring the small rocks and glass grinding under them, and peeked over the pile. I scanned the area, looking for the man that had attacked me. The lot was empty. Where the hell did he go?
    My Taser was back where I had first fallen. Even though I knew it was empty, its loss made me feel exposed, naked. I rubbed my palms on my thighs and looked down at them. A glint of light shone from my wrist. The indicator on my jacket’s cuff. The damn thing was fully charged! It must have absorbed the major hit from the Taser. I was lucky it didn’t blow out the jacket in the process.
    I looked back out at my fallen Taser. Come on, where was the bastard?
    “Are you looking for me?” The voice was clean and crisp with a slight lilting accent.
    I spun around. The man in front of me was huge. From my crouched position, he looked at least two meters tall. His clothes were made out of the garbage he’d been hiding in. Thin shavings of bricks, rusted cans, gravel, and wire were attached to his pants and jacket. His bald head was painted in blotches of gray and brown to match. The glasses on his face looked weird, almost as though they held some sort of tech. Probably infrared night enhancers. Shit. He had probably seen me