You bite your thumb to get enough moisture on it to affect your phone's capacitive touch screen and pull up your contact list. Using a phone can draw hunters—that's why people use couriers like you, after all—but these are all people from your old life, carried like talismans from phone to phone.
You haven't seen most of them in years. Sometimes you see pictures of them on Instagram and they have gray at their temples or wrinkles around their eyes.
There are old buildings around here somewhere, off the highway. To the right or left? That's the question, and if you guess wrong, you burn. And your torturously slow data connection means you can't pull up anything useful fast enough. If you can just get one of your contacts to run a search on this area, you'll know which way to go.
You call—
Aliette—an old society maven and the mother of a college friend. She keeps odd hours and can pull up a map faster than I can.
A rich friend of mine named Rainer. A snob and a bit of a hustler, but he has a good job now, and he owes me a favor.
I remember a young woman named Chance who was infatuated with me when I was still alive. I still have her number, and I think I can persuade her to help me.
I remember a guy named Radu who ran a mixed martial arts club. We're still on good terms, and he was a smart guy—he must know something.
I still follow the career of a scientist named Vani. I met her just before I became a courier, back when I still kept up my studies, and she owes me a favor.
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