The package locker was in a neighborhood that neatly straddled the line between the place you didn’t want to be after dark, and the place you didn’t want to be at any time. I understood why he had chosen it, of course. Nobody with any sort of real power cared about these places, at least until they ran out of nearby real estate and decided to “uplift the community” through gentrification. As part of that neglect, no one had bothered to repair the wide angle street cameras typically attached to the corner of each building. Poor people are not without pride, and the idea of some government fat cat watching them struggle every day from the other end of a wire probably didn’t sit well.

The lack of blinking red activity LED’s on every corner might make them feel better, but the heft of the handgun in my jacket pocket, its knurled steel grip having warmed to my palm five blocks ago, was the only thing within a quarter mile telling me that I would make it home alive.

A few hundred feet from the package locker, I tripped over the outstretched foot of a vagrant. Not knowing which direction danger would approach from first, it was the one direction I hadn't been watching that nearly did me in.

I stumbled, able to catch myself before I lost my footing, and whirled on the slumped form behind me. My first thought, that the man propped up against the concrete barrier had intentionally tripped me, gave way to pity.

The layer of road dust and loose bits of plastic trash stuck to him told me that he hadn’t moved for a very long time. The smell of gently rotting flesh rolled off of him, and a quick estimate, taking into account the undisturbed layer of debris collected across his body, put him at about three or four days dead.

A faint light danced around the eye cups of the virtual reality headset he wore, which must have been activated by the motion of his body when I kicked his leg. In the near dark of the street, only illuminated by the indirect rays of the setting sun as it did its best to penetrate the urban sprawl, the light was noticeable at distance.

Several of the more enterprising vagrants shuffled over, and after a brief glance shot my way to make sure I wasn't a threat, began struggling with each other for the dead man's headset.

I turned away, feeling guilty for reasons I couldn't immediately articulate. The man had been a person, as had the other vagrants, but economic and societal nihilism had turned them into something less.

Needing to get away from the suffocating sadness of the scene I could hear unfolding behind me, I closed the remaining distance to the locker and scanned the code that Harry had provided.

The door opened with a click and a grind, the poorly maintained entryway grinding the sand caught in its hinges into even finer sand. Inside of the first entryway, a second door kept me from entering the building proper. Once the outside door ground to a close behind me, red LEDs blinked on in each of the upper corners of the inside door.

Cameras.

I allowed a second scan of the code, and after what felt like an excessive amount of time, the second door clicked open. I assumed the double entry doors were to keep the facility from being overrun if a group of people followed in a paying customer once they opened the door. A shiver went down my spine at the thought of being that customer, trapped in a room with a group of would-be criminals in this part of town, knowing what the police response times were for this area. For the second time in five minutes, I had cause to appreciate my meager place in the world.

Where outside the facade had been weathered and dirty in the way that most of the city was in this neighborhood, the inside was well kept and clean. Clean, yet not well appointed, as anything that could potentially be removed was covered with lexan or steel housings and bar code scanners. The place gave off a “we don't trust you, but also don't want to give you a reason to complain on our customer service surveys” vibe.

Service with a stiff upper lip.

I matched the code on the ticket with a locker, and after a quick check to make sure nobody was watching, I let the black mirrored scanner on the door get a good look at the code Harry had given me.

The door clicked open with much less fanfare than I’d been expecting. Growing up in a hard world, softness became more surprising than loud, brash noises. I'd expected the snapping, undeadened release of the post office box in my apartment building (create alternative to burbclave here), but the smooth, precise action of the locker was more satisfying than my last three orgasms.

The door pivoted open with well oiled care before retracting back into a narrow compartment, giving me unimpeded access to the opening. Inside, I found a couple of psy-con data crystals, a thick winter jacket, and an opaque white plastic bag covering the aforementioned pillow. The plastic had a matte finish, a subtle extravagance that alone would get me stabbed and robbed within minutes of leaving the building. I had no idea how Harry expected me to get this stuff home without bleeding all over it.

The pillow inside was sculpted out of layers of some sort of foam that, to my untrained eye, looked….expensive. How Harry had managed to swing all of this without his wife noticing the missing funds was beyond me.

Sliding the pillow back into the locker, I turned my attention to the jacket. It was dusty, faded, and much of the polyfill insulation in the lower back had fallen out at some point in the past through a fairly large tear along one of the seams.

Why would Harry would leave me this shitty jacket? Fairly certain I was missing something, I began to check the various pockets, and in one of the inside security pockets found a small slip of translucent paper. Opening it up, I recognized Harry's hurried scrawl.

Use the jacket to hide the pillow. Be careful. PS-this paper is edible.

Omit needless words, eh Harry? I had no idea where Harry had undergone his secret agent training, but I did as instructed and used the pillow to replace the missing polyfill in the jacket. Putting it on, I marvelled at how the jacket made the pillow almost invisible.

I tucked the psy-con crystals into the security pockets that the note came from, and ate the note. It was edible, in the way that dry oats were edible, but choking it down was not an enjoyable experience.

Once the inside of my mouth had reconstituted itself, I scanned the code again and enjoyed my daily moment of zen as the door extended from its compartment and closed with a quiet efficiency no human being would ever approach.

Two more scans of the ticket got me outside the building, my brief respite in a space where vacuums and window cleaning were still a thing making the real world look even worse by comparison.

Had the world always been this much of a shithole? Ancient videos from before the turn of the century made everything look so perfect. Kids walked down the street by themselves trick or treating, people could swim outside in lakes and oceans, and the only people who seems to walk around armed were soldiers and police officers.

Nowadays, the only difference between the police and the military was the color of the uniform, chemical runoff made swimming in unfiltered water a quick way to shorten your life expectancy, and any kid that wandered out in public unsupervised was often never heard from again.

I turned back towards the supervised part of town, and was around halfway to safety when I heard a voice ring out behind me.

“Oy!”

I kept walking. The voice had been a little over a block back, the only reason I even knew they were talking to me was that I was the only person left upright.

“Hold up, friend!”

I wasn't buying. I didn't make friends, and if I did, I wouldn't make them in this part of town. The soles of my shoes pounded the pavement as I worked to preserve the distance between me and what sounded like two or three people of questionable character.

“Get 'em!”

The words all sounded as though they came from the same mouth, which had given up the pretense of trying to be my pal.

I could hear the rush of footsteps closing ground, and knew I wasn't going to make it before they were on me. I turned down the next alley I saw, blindly hoping for it to not be a dead end.

Three buildings down, a brick wall bisected the pavement, but about halfway down the alley I saw a fire escape and a low wall I could probably clear if I beat my pursuers to it. I least for the blackened iron of the fire escape ladder, hanging low in a way that told me I had done something right in a past life, and felt the scaly surface rust come away with my fingertips as they were unable to hold on. I stumbled as my feet hit the ground, requiring a few halting, uncertain steps to catch myself.

I risked a glance back at the entrance to the alley, hoping that I’d drawn a pack of lazies, only to see them spot me as they rounded the corner.

My eyes shot from the lowest rung of the ladder, to the leader of the pack chasing me, and back.

It was going to be close.

I sprinted for the ladder. I wasn't sure why I thought this attempt would be successful when the first hadn't, but I suppose desperation convinces us we can be all heroes.

I leapt, timing my jump perfectly, and this time one of my hands wrapped around the pitted iron. My momentum carried my feet forward, striking one of the freshly arrived things in the face as I swung. The resulting crunch would have been incredibly satisfying, were I out of harm's way, but that was still to be decided.

The thug, who I could now see was bald and wearing a worn military jacket, fell back and knocked his two compatriots over in the process as he clutched at his nose.

I noticed no name badge on the jacket, making me think that the jacket must have been purchased from a military surplus store.

Strange, the things you notice when you should be running for your life.

I expected the ladder to release, to descend to ground level in the way I'd seen them work in the past, but this ladder had probably never been used, rust locking it into its current position. I swung myself, reaching up and taking hold of the next rung up from the bottom with my other hand, and began to climb.

The iron scraped my forearms, but the only option left to me was to continue up. A hand raked across my ankle, and I almost lost my grip in surprise. I kicked, shaking off the hand, and reached for another rung. I managed another rung before a price of discarded lumber struck my shin, causing my eyes to water and forcing out a grunt of agony. I didn't think the leg was broken, but putting weight on it was going to be sketchy.

Another blow caught me across the calves, and my off hand slipped free. I mastered the pain and swung back up, using the momentum to grab another rung. And another. And another.

The bludgeoning of my lower body had stopped, giving me the impression I had climbed past their ability to reach me, but I kept climbing. Another rung. Another. Running on adrenaline and endorphins, I poured every ounce of focus and strength into getting to the top of the ladder, and when I reached the second to last rung, I finally let myself take the first full breath I could remember since I'd started running.

And that was when the ladder let go.

The rusted mechanism screeched to life, betraying me at the last possible moment, and gravity took over. The lower end of the ladder slammed to the pavement, jarring me from the end hinged to the second floor landing. My hands were yanked free, and I landed atop the three things, driving them to the pavement.

Not bothering to scramble to my feet, my hand done for the hand gun that I had transferred into one of the large jacket pockets. No sooner had I yanked the zipper free than a pair of calloused hands wrapped around my neck.

The pressure in my head swelled, my vision going blurry. I couldn't breathe, and the throbbing in my head suggested whatever amount of blood was reaching my brain, it wasn't going to keep me conscious for long. Before either of the other two thugs could recover, I jerked the handgun free of my pocket and fired two rounds into forearm. How I managed to not blow my own face off, I'll never know. There was no aim, no consideration over the path the bullet might take once it punched through my assailant’s arm, I just pressed the muzzle into the meat muscle near his elbow and turned the encased radius and ulna into powder.

The pressure released immediately from my neck, consciousness preserved with only moments to spare. The arm turned to broken, bloody jelly, flopping away as the attacker rolled to his right.

The other two were already turning to run, but one of them had the presence of mind to help their injured friend to his feet before fleeing. I caught their retreat out the corner of one eye as my vision returned, coughing as I rolled into my side.

I managed to retrieve the arm holding the gun from where I had rolled into it, and lifted it. Two pulls of the trigger later, and the thing with the ruined arm had at least one additional round in his shoulder, a souvenir to remind him to not chase people into dark alleys.

Safe for the moment, I clutched the handgun to my chest, watching it rise and fall with my breath. After another minute, my breathing had returned to normal and I decided to test my legs. They both held, though I would probably have some nasty bruises for the next week or two.

The rest of the journey, hobbled as it was, was uneventful. The pillow and psy-con crystals had escaped unscathed. I was not nearly as lucky. My left ankle had a pretty nasty gash across it, which I cleaned out and dressed with first aid adhesive. I'd never had to use the stuff for anything larger than a paper cut before, and marvelled at how easily it stopped the bleeding. Wrapping it with a clean compress bandage and cloth tape for good measure, I grabbed a cold drink from the fridge and sat down.

Fitting the first psy-con crystal to the contact point at the base of my skull, my vision flooded with files. I took another drink from the bottle in my hand. If I was going to push through the pain of nearly having my legs broken for this story, I wasn't going to do it alone.

I closed my eyes, directing my glance to the unoccupied space at the bottom of my field of view. After a few moments the menu faded out, leaving me alone in the blissful dark.