“I sure wouldn’t mind though,” he said, “if you did make a sound.”
I held up my arm to press him back. My Cuff burst to life, sparkling with another mouthwash Ad. His face lit from below. His eyes rolled down to see, sharklike, making him look crazed. He knocked my Cuff away with his own, and then jammed his Cuff under my neck.
“Why don’t you cry for help?”
His Cuff vibrated against my throat as his words rolled out of sight under my chin—$15.94. I pushed at his shoulders, and when that failed to move him, I kneed him, hard, in the groin. He bent over with a groan, 99¢, but kept a grip on me and began pulling me into the alley.
My heart pounded like a rabbit’s. No one would hear us. No one would help me. I pushed out against him, but he pinned me to the wall with his arm across my neck. I kicked, and he choked me harder. A sound escaped—a slight gasp. He stopped a moment. His face lit with excitement. I felt his heartbeat under mine, less frenzied, but fast and relentless. My Cuff registered nothing.
I was not going to scream, or cry out, not for this monster. I clawed at him, desperate, swearing to myself I wouldn’t stay out this late again, if I could just get away.
Two men passed on the street, just a few feet from us. They pretended to be enraptured by Ads and walked quickly out of view, the mouthwash chasing happily after them.
“Silent Girl,” my attacker said, his face next to mine, his foul breath beginning to turn my stomach. “You won’t be able to tell anyone what happened, will you?”
Above us came a sound, a slight creak, and he looked up. I shoved him back, and his hold slipped enough for me to duck away. I turned fast to run, but suddenly he had hold of my leg, yanking on it, and I slammed to the ground face first. A jarring pain made my head swim. My chin felt like it had split open.
“I don’t actually want you to make a sound.” He laughed, climbing onto my back and pinning me facedown on the pavement. “That way, no one knows where you are, or what we’ve done.” He let the pressure up a little, but not enough for me to escape. “It will be a secret we can share.” He began fiddling with something on his clothes.
With panic, I realized there was no record of me. Only his words would be recorded. He could have been talking to himself, for all I could prove. Location is only logged when there is a transaction—when you speak, write or buy. Privacy Laws are few, but this was one of the big ones. I should have screamed so my location was known. I should have done something. I could have called out Police! and my Cuff would have autodialed the authorities and recorded this mess. Was my silence worth this?
“Sluk!” He grabbed my hair, yanked my head back and then toppled over, landing with a thud, like he had suddenly, forcefully, passed out. I didn’t understand what had happened. I dragged myself out from underneath him and slowly comprehended he had not fallen on his own.
A man stood over me, dressed entirely in black, like a ninja or a superhero from a movie. I rose slowly, a hand on my searing, bloodied chin. The man in black remained still, perhaps to keep from frightening me. Our eyes met, but that was all I could see of him. His face was masked, and I understood why: he was a Product Placer.
Banded? adhesive strips now have Anti-Scarsilate?! an Ad behind his head texted insistently. For nasty cuts and bruises, Anti-Scarsilate? brings the healing. My chin was sure to scar, just as Saretha’s elbow had. The Ad showed instant healing, but below it, a disclaimer read Healing not instant—simulated for the purposes of demonstration. Anti-Scarsilate? hadn’t helped Saretha lose the little crescent moon on her arm, even though she’d been sure it would. I doubted it would help me with this.
The Ad wasn’t for me, anyway. I didn’t rate. It was for my unconscious attacker on the ground.
The Product Placer stepped back. Keeping his eyes on me, he raised his Cuff arm up and swung it back, smashing into the Ad panel. The glow sputtered in a strange rainbow of color as shards of the screen fell away. He reached into the shattered panel and pulled out a thin, square chip, then crossed the alley to the other side. He seemed fairly pleased with himself. He repeated the process with the other Ad and handed the chip to me gently. I turned it over in my hands. It was branded and labeled Seagate? 8PB Q-flash; a simple flash drive you could plug into most computers. Below this was a small, dot-printed label, which read: 24hrlp-3dscn-rs.
I was a little wobbly. At first I thought it meant something about twenty-four-hour help, but then I realized what the drive contained. It was the Ad panel’s backup loop of the last twenty-four hours of scan data and video. My attack, and my rescue, were on that little chip. It had been recorded and stored for upload and parsing.
As soon as I understood, the Product Placer snatched the chip back and tucked it away. He hadn’t meant it for me. He was taking it for himself. He wanted to erase any trace he had been in the alley. Product Placers can’t be seen, and they certainly don’t leave evidence behind if they can help it.
My attacker began to stir. The Product Placer bent down and pulled a small metallic-blue device shaped like a teardrop from his pack. It was no bigger than his thumb. He slid it over the man’s Cuff. The Cuff clicked and released from the man’s arm. My attacker moaned. I didn’t know a device existed that would allow you to remove another person’s Cuff.
The man screamed, raising his hands to his eyes. Disconnected from the Cuff, he had been shocked for his groan, and then was shocked again for the scream of pain. This time he winced, but held his tongue.
The Product Placer smiled under his mask and covered his eyes with his hands, then revealed them, like he was playing peekaboo. It was awfully shrewd to take the man’s Cuff. My attacker wouldn’t be able to report anything to the police until a new Cuff was assigned. That could take weeks, even with his wealth.
The Placer closed the man’s Cuff over a loop on his backpack. The platinum ring glinted in the dark. A second later, the Placer scrambled up a rope so thin and black, it almost looked like he was pantomiming his way up the side of the building.
“You—” My attacker tried to speak, blindly casting around, but even that single word was cut short by a hard wince as he held his hands to his eyes.
Acting more from instinct than good sense, I found the thin rope and scrambled up, away from my attacker. I never should have seen the Placer, but now that I had, I needed to know more.
PLACERS: $15.99
The Placer could have killed me. If he’d cut the rope, or yanked his grappling hook free, or just given me a gentle push, I would have tumbled five stories down to the ground. My head was still swimming with pain; I had been foolish to climb at all.