Before me, the cracked red backlit sign of a glass-fronted convenience store blazes against the concrete walls rising around it. Looking like an ancient human temple caught in the jungle of dipping wires, crackling headphone music, and the underlying rot of two-day-old garbage bags.

The space between where I stand is mucked with bacteria infested puddles, wadded receipt papers, and chewed cigarettes.

This scene tells me that I am alone.

Nobody is waiting there for me, against the light. I pretend not to see the three young men who are squatted next to the shopfront to discuss purchased spoils, preferring my stance of being alone in the world. 

I lift my right tattooed hand, bringing my wrist phone up, and press a small button on the band that pops up a projected screen with a pre-loaded map. I double-tap the pinpoint of my location to zoom in a little closer to see the names of the streets around me and the square indicating the corner store. 

No doubt that this is the spot.

It's a disappointing feeling when a client skips. I had even managed to put on a decent pair of clothes, a less ripped pair of jeans and a small white jacket pulled over a teal shirt that I had gone to sleep in, before leaving the house, but there is only one thing to do.

I swipe away the map to bring up the website for the cab service I used. I was halfway to requesting a pickup when a message from Ronnie pinged onto the screen:

      385 Woodsly Ave. 

     3rd Sector, 5th Level

     Westminister City

Strange. 

An address without a simple hello. It felt like a scam. I recognized that it was an updated address for my drug drop since it was nearby, but I stared at the words trying to think of the motivation. Anger? Coldness? If this plain information message is what Ronnie was feeling because of one admittance that I may have loved another boy, a boy now dead, then it sure was a pathetic way of proving a point.

The raised shouts of the men near the corner store have me glancing up from the screen with concern, but they are only trying to chase away a small collared dog that had been sent out by itself on a late night walk and had approached to steal their food. I really hated when people let their pets roam just because of the tracking collars. 

I put my attention back to the new address and paste it into my map program that now brings up a marker only three blocks east. As I move away from the convenience store to pursue this goal I recognize the green patch on the map as a public park.

I brush past women smoking a vaper pipe (not bothering to hide my distaste of scented strawberry as I wave the smoke away), slowly monovering my hover bike along the grounds by a young couple giggling and clutching to each other (ignoring slight jealousy), and finally dodge a man zipping down low on a hover bike (fuck, like share the space). And I finally come to a stop at a patch of three trees masquerading as a park (sorry parkette). 

I notice that a homeless person wrapped in a dirty blanket is slumped asleep against the single bench. There is not a single hope in hell that this is the right spot either. 

My phone pinged again. I see another message from Ronnie with another nearby address. 

"What the fuck."

I wasn't going to run blindly around in the dark. Vexed equally with myself, this job, and Ronnie I bring up the app for cab service and manouver blindly back through a laneway towards an open area for pickup.

I hear two sharp steps of a businessman's dress shoes before I'm spun around by a hand yanking my shoulder, and then slammed against the cold brick wall. I press my hands against the shoulders of a man who has pinned me on my tiptoes with an arm pressing into my windpipe. 

As I gasp and sputter for air, terrified at how fragile I am, I think of how useless I am to have tried to push him away and how smart he is to leave himself space to avoid any kick. My fingers wouldn't even reach the distance for my feeble strength to choke him out and I uselessly grip his arms.  

It's impossible not to stare into the man's sharp gray eyes as my mind grasps that I am to not yet be killed. The smell of cologne soaked into his clothes wafts into my nose. The rolled back suit sleeve that covers his arm is part of an expensive jacket. Oddly, my gaze wanders past his shoulder, beyond him to where the enclosed laneway began and I see the park bench empty of a person, only a blanket tossed over the slatted backrest. I tell myself that people like this don't exist.

A point pressing into my ribs makes me focus back on him. My eyes slide down the edge of the knife held in his free hand. A tightness and flutter of fear rise from my stomach, and sits there like indigestion. To think of anything else I take note of the blue veins showing vulnerability on the surface of his pale underarm, any sign that I could win, and follow the pattern up to a  curvy black tattoo shaped like a scorpion.

The shape of it, matching my own, makes some of my tension ease. I look to his gray eyes for an answer. He makes a laughing grunt in his throat as his lips twitch in amusement.

"They say it's lucky to meet your tattoo mate," the man jokes to me.

He's seen my matching mark from where my hands still grasp his shoulders. The same tattoo. Could it mean that they were similar? Could they be parted siblings, comrades, lab experiments, lost lovers? Was it some gang mark she didn't know about?

He adjusts his grip on the slender knife so the point leaves my skin, and with two free fingers reaches into my front pants pocket to pull out the vial of drugs. He holds this up near my face with his knife still gripped in the same hand.

"Where is the rest of it?" he asks.

Anger at his stupidity, at not knowing how these jobs were dealt struck me. If he was going to steal drugs, he should at least know how our trade worked.

"One delivery at a time," I tell him, with barely checked irritability.

Now I was treating him like one of my stupider clients. Did I have no self-preservation? What the fuck were we doing in the middle of a fucking laneway? Shit. Why the fuck did I come through here when I avoided tight dark spaces at any other time.

Factory yellow tinted windows stare back from across the laneway. Headlights of cars passing overhead glinted off the low rows of windows. 

And he fucking knew no one would see us.

"You're different," he finally says. "Why would he send me to someone useless?"

I regard him in the most unimpressed way.

"I don't know who your 'he' is," I tell him.

Useless indeed. I was starting to feel a great sense of self-loathing. I should never have come alone my first time meeting a new client. 

The mystery man slipped both the knife and the drugs into his jacket and, to my discomfort, slid his hand behind my back to my back pocket and pulled the white card from where I had stashed it. He held this up to me as his new piece of evidence.

"The person who gave you this? Do you know anything?" 

I frown. He looks disappointed. The mystery man sighs and his hold on me is suddenly gone, my feet hit solid ground and air rushes to fill my lungs. I raise my hand to my sore windpipe, now outright glaring.

"Come along. He must have changed the game," the man says more to himself.

"Why do I have to? You just robbed me?"

He looked at me like I was a dumb kid.

"I usually just kill you people. You can get an easy death later. I have more questions."

The only good thing. I knew he was rich.

"I better get dinner before I die. And you better be worth it," I told him.

I would at least get a fucking memorable death. Right?

And when the adrenaline wore off, maybe I wouldn't even cry.