The muzzle creeps cold into the hollow behind his ear on Rua Luis Gama.

“There’s no bullets in that thing.”

He feels Fia’s breath warm against the side of his head.

“Are you sure? Did you count them?”

“You’re going to shoot me in this traffic?”

She reaches round and locks one hand on the throttle, beside his. “I’ll take that risk.”

Tetchy. So her. So Fia.

“So who the hell are you.”

“Pur that thing away and I’ll tell. God alone knows how many cameras have seen it.”

“Cameras?”

“You really aren’t from round here, are you?”

Cold muzzle is replaced by hot whisper: “Yes I am.”

’’I’m Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. That’s just a name. Who are you with? The Order?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did she know’ you? My … alter’”

“We were, she was my girlfriend.”

She says quickly, harshly, “I’m not her. You must know that.”

“But you are Fia Kishida.”

“Yes. No. I am Fia Kishida. It was you on the rodovia, wasn’t it? Where are we going?”

“Somewhere. Safe.” Not home. Some things, even more than guns, cannot be explained to Dona Hortense. Emerson can put a couple of mattresses down in the office; that will do until Edson thinks of what to do with a murdered girlfriend’s double come through from a parallel São Paulo and being hunted by pistoleiros and Q-blades. He feels Fia’s arms tight around his waist as he blurs through the wash of taillights. Behind him in the slipstream she says nothing. She knows where she is. It’s always São Paulo.

Her grip tightens as he turns off the highway onto the serpentine road that is the gut of Cidade de Luz. She takes in the moto-taxis, the buses, the grand pillared frontage of the Assembly of God Church like a jerry-built heaven, the swags of power cables and tripping runs of white water pipes clambering up through the houses and walled yards into the glowing, chaotic mass of the high city, the true, unrepentant favela.

The road takes another wind; then Edson hauls on the brakes. There’s someone in the road, right under his wheel. The bike skids; the Fia — Fia II, he thinks of her — slides across the oily concrete to hit the high curb. The fool in the road: it’s Treats who has dashed out from his usual roost at the Ipiranga station where he hassles drivers into letting him clean their windshields while they fill up.

“Edson Edson Edson, Petty Cash! He’s dead, man, they’ve killed him, came right in.”

Edson seizes Treats by the scruff of his too-too-big basketball vest and drags him round the back of the fuel station, out of the light, among the gas cylinders.

“Shut up with my name, you don’t know who’s listening or looking.”

“Petty Cash, they — ”

“Shut up. Stay there.”

He picks up the beautiful, delicate Yamaha and wheels it over to Fia II.

You have to stop calling her that, like she’s a movie. Fia. But it’s not right.

“You all right?” She goes to say something about her torn top, but Edson hasn’t time for that. “Keep your hood up, stay out of the cameras, and lock yourself in the women’s toilet. There are people here who could recognize you. I will come for you. There’s a matter I have to deal with right now.”

Edson orders Treats to go round to Dona Hortense and ask for his go-bag.

“She’ll know what that means. And show my mother some manners, uneducated boy.”

He goes through the alleys and ladeiros beneath the swags of power cable and bougainvillea. Moto-taxis hoot past, pressing him to the walls in the steep narrow lanes. The ambulance is still outside the house. Edson can hear police drones circling overhead. The small crowd has the patient, resting body language of people who have passed from witness to vigil. A man-sized hole has been cut sheer through the gate and part of the wall. It matches another through the door and doorframe. And it is like a storm of dark birds flying out of that hole, flying at Edson’s head, blinding him with their wings and claws and beaks, bird after bird after bird, too many too fast, he swipes, slaps at them, but there are always more and they keep coming, wing after wing after wing, and he knows that if he misses, once, he will go down and their claws will be in his back.

“What happened?” Edson asks Mrs. Moraes seated on the side of the road in her shorts and flip-flops, hair still up in foil and her hand frozen to her mouth. Her neighbors stood around her.

“They came on a motorbike. The one on the back, he did that. Jesus love my boy my boy my poor boy, what did he ever to do to anyone?”

Now he sees Old Gear his antique dealer by the ambulance. All Edson’s alibis are there in the crowd. They all have the same look: He died for you.

What if you get killed? Petty Cash had joked. But he did. That is what the ambulance crews are taking away in their black bag: a body wearing a pair of I-shades that say Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas. Edson is an unperson now.

There is no place for him in Cidade de Luz. At the Ipiranga station he sees the ambulance pass, lights rotating, sirens hushed. Treats has his go-bag.

“One more thing, Treats. Go back and tell Dona Hortense I’m with the Sisters.”

“The Sisters.”

“She’ll know. Good man.” The jeitinho is fully paid. Next time, it will be Edson owes Treats.

The Yamaha heads west through the contrails of light. Edson calls back to Fia on the pillion. “Have you any money?”

“Some cash from selling tech and jewelry and stuff, but I’ve spent most of it on food and a capsule to stay. Why?”

“I don’t have anything. I don’t exist. That ambulance that went past, that was me in the back.”

She asks no questions as Edson explains his world. Carbon-fiber angels watching the city by day and night, never ceasing, never hasting. Universal arfid tagging and monitoring where the clothes on your back and the shoes on your feet and the toys in your pocket betray you. Total surveillance from rodovia toll cameras to passersby’s T-shirts or I-shades snatching casual shots; only the rich and the dead have privacy. Information not owned but rented; date-stamped music and designer logos that must be constantly updated: intellectual property rights enforceable with death but murder pay-per-view prime-time entertainment and pay-per-case policing. Every click of the Chilli beans, every message and call and map, every live Goooool! update, every road toll and every cafezinho generates a cloud of marketing informaation, a vapor trail across Sampa’s information sphere. Alibis, multiple identiities, backup selves — it is not safe to be one thing for too long. Speed is life. She will be trying to work how she can exist — must exist — in this world of Order and Progress, with no scan no print no number, a dead girl come back to life. As he is a dead man, driving west through the night traffic.