Time Salvager (21 page)
Exhausted from the depressing outing, not to mention the tender feeling of the skin on her face from just the few minutes of exposure to the sun still hidden behind clouds, Elise decided to head back toward the hotel and see if James had returned. Maybe she could hide near the entrance and catch him before he went inside, or if he was there, he’d surely wait for her, right? What else could she do? She backtracked the way she had come, through the narrow bazaar back to the plaza, then found the blue tunnel that took her underground.
No sooner did she see the entrance of the Heights at the far end of the tunnel than two black-armored men wearing the cone-shaped helmets appeared on either side of her. One of them said something she couldn’t quite understand. Elise shook her head. The other one looked at his friend and grinned.
“Off-worlder, huh?” he said. “That chronman knows how to pick them.”
“ChronoCom monitors,” the first said. “Come with us.”
As if to show her how much choice she had to comply with their demand, he grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her with them. Elise was about to protest when she noticed the emblem on both their shoulders. It was the same emblem as the half-flaked-off one on the ship James flew. Maybe they were going to take her to him.
“Are you guys with Salman, I mean, James?” she asked.
“Quiet, whore,” the first one said.
Elise looked stunned. She heard those two words very clearly.
The grinning one leered at her and spoke to his friend as if she weren’t there. “Funniest-looking prostitute I’ve ever seen. Never heard of an off-worlder one. Look at her skin. Not spaceborn white but none of the surface blems. I wonder how much she costs.”
The first grunted. “Probably more than you can afford. Let’s hurry back. We’ve kept the auditor waiting long enough.”
“Hey, assholes,” Elise snapped, swinging her elbows. She was protesting more at being completely ignored and treated like an object than actually being called a whore. Who did these guys think they were! This was no way to—
The first conehead backhanded her across the face. Elise felt her legs buckle and she fell to her knees. “Stop struggling, whore,” was all she heard as they grabbed her elbows and carried her limp body along the ground.
It took a minute for the cobwebs in her head to clear. The conehead had busted open her lip, and the smack stung even more on her sunburned cheeks. James’s friends or no, she knew she had to escape these two. She had to think of something.
The two carried her all the way back to the plaza on the surface level. Whoever these guys were, the people in these crowded tunnels gave them a wide berth. The two didn’t even acknowledge the masses as they continued chatting with each other, once knocking down someone too slow to get out of their way.
Elise devised a plan to escape; it wasn’t much of one, but it was better than pretending to be unconscious and carried like a sack of potatoes. She stayed limp until they reached the far end of the plaza. Just as they were nearing the end of the crowds, Elise leaned in toward the guard on the left—the grinning conehead—and pushed into him as hard as she could. She wasn’t a very big person, and the guy probably only stumbled a couple of steps, but it was just enough to knock him off balance and into the crowds.
Grinning conehead had to let go of her to steady himself. As he did so, Elise swung her right arm up and smacked the right conehead in the face. He took her punch with a slight swivel of his chin, and then he looked down at her. She tried to knee him in the groin. Same effect. Were these guys robots?! Just then, the grinning conehead she pushed grabbed her hair, spun her around, and smacked her on the side of the head. The blow knocked her to the ground.
“Easy there,” the right conehead said, “we still need to interrogate her.”
Grinning conehead spat. “Bitch did that on purpose!”
Elise, facedown on the ground, realized that they weren’t holding on to her anymore. She got onto her hands and knees and scampered into the forest of legs. She heard a squawk from one of the two but she continued to crawl forward in desperation, around feet, under carts, pushing between bodies. She turned left and then right and continued to change directions until she wasn’t sure which direction she was going anymore. All she could hear was the yells from the two coneheads behind her as they barreled through the crowds looking for her.
Suddenly, she was out in the open and on her own. She got to her feet and took off, running as fast as she could to the edge of the plaza and up a flight of metal stairs, pushing and shoving as best she could, but she was still mostly at the mercy of the flow of the crowds. She had turned back once to see if they were in pursuit and was horrified to see that they were only a few steps behind her.
Elise turned right into a crowded intersection and continued to run, weaving left and right as her eyes scanned for any place to hide. She looked up and saw one of those bright clean spaceship stores landing in a clearing and made a beeline for it. She reached the opening where the ship, still fifty meters off the ground, was slowly descending.
Elise tore through the beams of white lights lining the perimeter, ignoring the cries of alarm from the white-clad guards who were keeping the crowds at bay. She gritted her teeth and hurtled under the landing ship. If she could reach the other side, maybe she could throw off her pursuers, since they’d have to go around the building. The sprint under the building looked like a hundred or so meters. As she ran under the ship, she was almost immediately struck by the heat from its thrusters. She staggered a few steps but continued on, willing herself to get across. The building continued to lower, increasing the temperature around her by the second. If she didn’t get out from under here soon, she was going to burn to a crisp.
She barely made it out from under the spaceship store when it landed on the ground with a thunderous boom. Exhausted, Elise fell to her knees, but she knew she had to push herself back to her feet. She had to find a place to hide. Unfortunately, her legs had had enough. They gave out. Elise fell again and this time, she couldn’t get up. She rolled onto her back, gasping for air. One of the coneheads, the grinning one, appeared next to her.
“Get up!” he snarled. He held up his foot as if he was going to stomp down on her face.
“Not the head, idiot,” the other conehead said.
A crowd had formed around them. The grinning conehead grunted, picked her up by the front of her shirt. Elise lashed out, clocking him on the side of the face. The grinning conehead snarled and punched her in the stomach. Elise gasped and almost fainted from the pain.
“That’s for pushing me,” he smirked. “And this is for trying to run away.”
She continued punching and clawing at him, trying desperately to squirm out of his grip. He held her shirt with one hand and struck her again with the other. She squeezed her eyes shut as the blows rained down on her face and body, her own struggle weakening. Then the blows suddenly stopped. She pried her eyes open and noticed that her attacker wasn’t even looking at her anymore; he was staring up into the sky. Elise followed his gaze and saw a familiar ship hovering above them.
“Chronman,” the other conehead said hastily. “We appreciate your assistance, but we have this under—”
The conehead was yanked into the air and tossed like a rag doll into the ogling crowd. Grinning conehead dropped her and screamed as he was pulled into the air as well. Then she watched in horror as his body slammed down into the ground with force. Then James dropped from the air next to her and offered her his hand. “I have you,” he said, pulling her close, “let’s get out of here.”
Levin Javier-Oberon was having an awful week. Today was memorable, at least. He stared at the Watcher’s Board in the hallway outside the office of Director Young Hobson-Luna, head of Planetary Control on Earth. The Watcher’s Board was nothing more than a giant framed screen filled with hundreds of small electronically inked names, updated once a day at zero hour. Completely low tech: cheap, easy, and symbolic. The board served only one purpose: to display the current roster count of ChronoCom operatives.
Levin glanced down at the numbers near the bottom: 112,311 support, 2,266 administrators, 42,398 engineers, 3,021 handlers. His eyes moved up the list: 42,953 monitors, 3,341 chronmen. Both numbers had dropped since yesterday. The monitors by twenty-six and the chronmen by two. Levin then looked up to the last list near the top: 224 auditors.
Only 224.
From the tens of thousands of initiates at the Academy every year to the foot soldier monitors to the chronmen tiers and finally to the auditor chains, there were only 224 human beings like him out of a population of twenty billion humans in this solar system.
Levin was an apex, part of a select elite cadre that zealously guarded the chronostream. Only some of the largest corporations could field better military units. Obtaining this status was so rare and prestigious that the name of every person who had ever held the auditor emblem was forever etched in ChronoCom lore. No other rank could boast that. Every significant auditor event was carefully documented in agency records. Because auditors mattered. Auditors were important.
Well, today was a significant day for sure. A chronman had broken a Time Law, and not just any Time Law, but the first law, a cardinal sin that had never been broken in their history. Chronman James Abyss-plagued Griffin-Mars had brought someone back from the past, and he had done it on Levin’s watch. On Levin’s planet of stewardship. To make matters worse, after he committed that heinous crime, he broke out of Central right under Levin’s nose and disappeared into abyss-knew-fucking-where.
Levin gnashed his teeth and his hands curled into fists. It was an unbelievable act of incompetence on his part. If he was in the directorship, Levin would have himself executed for such a stupid mistake. Even if he were able to right this crime, Levin would forever be known as the auditor who catastrophically failed in his duties. James escaping was actually the least of his concerns. He was confident he could hunt down the fugitive and drag him back for justice. The sting of the most important Time Law being broken hurt much more. He would consider honorable suicide if he thought it would clear some of that taint from his name. Hell, he still might have to, once the director was through with him. It wouldn’t work this way, though. Levin couldn’t escape his failure so easily. Things these days were never that simple.
The double doors at the end of the hallway swung outward with a squeak—the lower hinge of the right door making that noise—revealing a pitch-black interior. A draft blew out of the opening. The director preferred to keep the temperature in his office frigid.
A gravelly sounding voice barked out from within the darkness, “Black fucking balls, Levin, you’ve fucked up on a galactic scale. In my damn fucking backyard, no less. Get your ass in here.”
Levin tore his gaze away from the board and entered the director’s office, intent on keeping his dignity intact. If he had to face possible orders to execute himself, he would do so with his head held high and his back straight.
“Have a seat, Levin.” Director Young gestured at the chair in front of his desk. “No, stand. Sitting is for those who aren’t fuckups.”
The blaringly loud and vulgar voice coming out of Young’s mouth was a surprise for almost everyone who suffered it the first time. In all the years Levin had worked at Earth Central, he had met the director dozens of times and had never received a kind word from him. Levin appreciated his honesty, though.
Young was a frail, scrawny-looking man, with only a tuft of white hair on the crown of his head and on his chin. His back was stooped and his entire body leaned to one side, like a bent tree. His right arm, cut off at the elbow, hung useless from his shoulder, shattered decades ago in service to the agency.
Before his injury, Young Hobson-Luna was the longest-tenured auditor and second in the chain. He had retired from auditorship after he was no longer able to stand watch, and had moved over to the administrative side. Now, only Jerome, the head of Europa, was higher linked.
“I prefer to stand regardless, Director,” Levin said. “How is your shoulder?”
Young looked down to his right and shrugged. “Still twisted and useless. That’s what will retire you as well, Levin, assuming I don’t tell you to strangle yourself first or the guys in Europa don’t order me to throw you out of an airlock without your fucking bands. Or both.”
“I will honor your wisdom, Director.”
“You are still ninth in the chain?” Young asked.
“Yes, Director,” Levin said. Right now he was, but for how long?
Young chuckled. “You think you’ll slip down the chain for this.”
“That would be the least of my punishments. I expect no less.”
“Always willing to take the beam to the chest even when you don’t need to. Admirable and fucking stupid. Well, we have more important matters to attend to, so tell your self-righteous honor to fuck off and let’s get down to business.”
Levin’s neutral face broke for a moment. “Pardon, Director? If you’re not here to punish me, why was I summoned?”
“Stop trying to get yourself hung, you imbecile. It doesn’t mean shit and solves nothing. Now you can sit down. I’m tired of looking up at you. Sit. It’s an order.”
Levin sat down, though he kept his body as erect as when he was standing.
Young rolled his eyes and his face became serious. He leaned forward. “Do you know what’s at stake, Auditor?”
“Director?”
Young leaned forward and rested his good elbow on the desk. “In the one hundred forty-eight years since ChronoCom’s official inception, no chronman has ever brought someone back from the past. Not once. Do you know why?”
Levin nodded. “The first Time Law expressly forbids—”
“Screw the laws for a second,” Young cut him off. “They’re just rules. The real reason that Time Law is the most egregious to violate is because…” His voice trailed off and he gestured to Levin.
