Time Salvager (43 page)

James, at a steady pace, walked out of the park and joined in and stood still while it carried him toward the center of the city. He noticed the neural bugs perched on their poles every fifty or so meters, scanning away with their blinking blue lights, zapping at each person, reading minds and checking mental thought processes. One passed over him and he felt the static buzz as it brushed his brain.

This time period was by far the most difficult for any chronman to operate in. No one less than a Tier-1 was allowed, and even then, most Tier-1s were required to undergo rigorous mental testing and an audit before every jump until they could work this era. It was a salvage-rich zone, but one ChronoCom always had trouble fulfilling jobs in. With a dearth of Tier-1s, the agency would eventually have to tap into this period with less-qualified chronmen. Then they’d start seeing the body count climb.

So far, so good. By now, James was an old pro in the Big Brother time period. This was his sixth jump here, making him one of the more experienced Tier-1 in ChronoCom. There were only four to five other chronmen still alive who had had more. Still, though, he had to be careful: one missed thought could give him away. And unlike with most other jumps, there were very few places he could escape to if detected. If a security alarm ever tripped, the entire city would go on neural lockdown. There would be no place he could hide that the bugs couldn’t detect him. He kept his breathing regular and his thoughts a steady stream of nonsensical connections.

Morning stream steady. Steady is stability. Stability is work. Work is contribution. Contribution is whole. Whole is perfection. Perfection is …

James stayed on the moving walkway for ten minutes, his neighbors in front and behind changing often as they joined and exited this ever-long conga line. Though he was completely aware of his surroundings, he kept his head facing straight, just as all his neighbors did. In this city, standing out was considered undesirable and tended to attract the wrong sort of attention.

Finally, he reached his destination near the center of the city, where the Adonian Dome Defense was based. Being a floating city had its advantages; Adonia had the ability to move all over the oceans. This was an unfortunate necessity for the Adonians, since none of the nations of the world tolerated this city’s presence in their maritime waters for fear of Adonia spreading its influence. And, without the resources for a strong military, Adonia resorted to developing exceptionally advanced stealth technology in order to survive. At the time of this jump, there were forty-six of these Adonian cities on Earth and 319 generational ships in space.

In terms of the ripples in the time line, James knew he was on shaky ground. Adonia was currently parked in the middle of the Arabian Sea, cloaked and secretly siphoning oil reserves from the nearby Saudi Emirates. In six days, an underground earthquake near Sri Lanka would birth a tsunami, causing a small change to the water levels filtering in through the city. That in turn would cause their stealth hood to temporarily overheat, forcing the Adonians to reset the shield. All in all, the disruption would be six minutes long.

The neighboring four emirates and three countries in the area would launch forty-two rocket strikes in those six minutes, crippling Adonia. Over the course of three more hours, the bombardments would continue to hammer the floating city until every living soul was dead. Today, James was going to steal that advanced stealth technology and hasten the city’s death by a few days.

James left the walkway and joined a small line of people heading into the Dome Defense building. That was one of his annoyances with the Big Brother cities; there were lines all over the place. But with so many people packed into such a small space, it was the most efficient way to keep the city running. It took him another fifteen minutes, one blood test, and two neural bugs to traverse the final fifty meters before he made it into the building.

James continued moving deeper underground through the building’s thinning lines, each one getting shorter and shorter, like capillaries diverging from main blood vessels. Eventually, he would arrive close enough to the stealth hood’s location. He knew, however, that the fighting would start before he even got close.

His fake security clearance wasn’t strong enough to make it all the way to the highest clearance. In four levels, his free ride would run out and he’d have to get through by other means. Right now, he just wanted to get close enough and do the least amount of damage, kill as few people as possible, and cause the smallest time ripple before he made off with the stealth hood.

I don’t remember you being so careful around me.
The young Nazi had appeared.
You seemed content to crush my skull.

Oh hush,
Grace shushed the boy.
He’s busy at the moment.

Of course you’d tell me to hush,
the Nazi soldier snapped at her.
He came back and rescued you. You get to be alive again.

Maybe if you had a useful ability …

James blinked. These two were bickering right in front of him. In the past, James could always tell they were just figments of his imagination. Now, a part of him wasn’t so sure anymore, as if his mind couldn’t separate what he was seeing from what he believed. This wasn’t even the real Grace, just an apparition. She was back in the present. Why was she still haunting him? How in the abyss was this possible? The two continued to fight, their voices getting louder. He tried to ignore them, but couldn’t as they continued to distract him.

“James?” Grace’s voice popped into his head. “Are you all right? You’re showing some strange signatures.”

He stopped dead in his tracks and closed his eyes, trying to will all the voices in his head to be quiet. Unfortunately, he was in one of the deep capillaries’ hallways where the moving walkways were no longer being used. Stopping in the middle of the hallway immediately caused a small traffic jam. A small woman squawked in surprise as she bumped up to him, then a man made a similar sound when he bumped up to her.

“Are you all right, citizen?” she asked.

James paid her no attention as he fixated on Grace and the Nazi soldier, who continued to argue in front of him. Then there was also the Grace talking in his head. How many Graces were there? And where was Sasha? He always looked forward to seeing his sister. Maybe if he believed hard enough, she would actually become real.

“Citizen?” The woman frowned, peering at his face from the right. He vaguely recalled a man staring at him from his left.

“We have an erred man,” the man said, looking up at one of the neural bugs. “Correct and remove.”

Two light sources blinked blue over James’s head, bathing him, Grace, and the Nazi soldier in an eerie glow. The two became translucent as they continued arguing, completely ignoring their surroundings. He felt the now-familiar buzz of something brushing against his scalp as the lights shone on him from either side. Then the light on the top right neural bug turned red, soon followed by the one on the left. The man on James’s left gasped and hesitated, taking a fearful step backward. The woman on his right seized his arm.

“You have been marked with impure thoughts, citizen,” she said. “Move to the side and fall upon your knees.”

James slowly turned to her. The woman was actually trying to arrest him. She was so small it was comical. The woman tugged at his elbow.

“You are resisting arrest,” she grunted. “Comply or things will go badly.” She felt like a gnat pestering him. James tried to shake her free, but she latched on to him more tightly, jerking back and forth as if she thought more tugging would wiggle him loose from where he stood. James looked up, and saw that Grace and the Nazi solider had stopped fighting. They were standing there staring back at him.

Oh, just kill her already,
the Nazi said.
They’re all dead anyway
.

Grace rolled her eyes.
Of course they’re all dead. He’s from two hundred fifty-eight years in the future!

I meant they’re all going to die in a few days anyway!
the Nazi snapped.

“James, what is going on?” Grace spoke to his head.

“Citizen,” one of the two red lights spoke in a clear woman’s voice. “You are committing Adonia Law Violation 3A-C: impure thoughts.”

“Obey the law, citizen!” the little woman screeched.

At least the man to his left wasn’t saying anything. He just stood there, frozen in place, too unnerved by James’s presence even to move. Suddenly, the upper red light that was pointing at James turned on the man.

“Citizen,” it chirped. “For impure thoughts of community and failure to act, you are committing Adonia Law Violation 5-A, failure to uphold order.”

That woke the man up. He yelped in fear, turned and fled. A metallic gray cord burst out of both red lights, one aimed at James and the other at the fleeing man. James’s exo burst to life, knocking both the woman and the linked metal cable aside. The man, however, was not so lucky. The cord wrapped itself around one of the man’s legs and tripped him. He began to writhe around on the ground in pain.

“Snap out of it!” Grace screamed in his head.

More red lights shone on him and several more cords shot at him. Fortunately, his exo responded to them. James took off, running through both the apparitions of Grace and the Nazi. Where was he going again? What was he trying to do? For a minute, he felt confused and disorganized.

“Make a left at the next intersection, pass through the fourth door on the right,” Grace yelled in his head.

Red and blue lights were blinking all over the place as more lengths of steel cord were shot at him. James turned at the intersection and ran into six white-uniformed guards. James leaped into action, throwing himself forward until he was in the center of the group. Right when they focused on him, he expanded his exo and slammed them all into the wall.

“Are you with me, James?”

“I’m fine now,” he thought back.

“Well, hurry. The lockdown is spreading and you have a hundred men converging on you as we speak. I’m starting to detect a widening ripple. Smitt says ChronoCom has detected the signature of the initial jump. If they catch the ripple, they can pinpoint you anywhere you go in the past to your present.”

James cursed. Between his initial jump here and the large ripples he was making, the auditors should be able to track him no matter which direction he fled. These ripples would continue until the time line self-healed from the city’s destruction. His best course of action was to grab the hood and just get out as soon as possible. He charged to the set of double doors and blew them off their hinges. He found himself in a garage armory.

“Other end of the room. Second door on the left,” Grace instructed.

James continued to the end of the room and went down a long flight of stairs where two guards tried to pin him down with small-arms fire. He reached out to both with kinetic coils and threw them into the walls.

A few minutes later, after having dispatched four more squads of guards and a small horde of rucks who fanatically threw themselves into his path, James found the stealth hood. It was a humongous machine, two stories tall and half as wide, with dozens of cables attached to it. He wasn’t sure if his netherstore could maintain a field this large. There was only one way to find out. James began to cut all the cables from the machine.

Suddenly, the entire room became whisper-quiet as, deep down in the recesses of Adonia, everything came to a standstill. The low, imperceptible hum of the stealth hood became noticeable in the silence. A new sound, sirens seemingly a world away, began to scream.

“Adonia has been detected,” Grace thought to him. “The Emirates have launched two warheads. They are up in the air now! Pakistan is showing four rockets! The ripples you’re causing are huge. You need to leave now!”

James gritted his teeth and sliced through the base of the hood, tearing it off its supports. He willed his exo to lift the massive contraption, but it was too heavy.

“Impact in forty-six seconds!” Grace barked to him. “Forty-five, forty-four…”

“I don’t need a fucking countdown!” he growled, shooting himself into the air on top of the machine. There, he opened his netherstore wider than it was safe to do so, until it was large enough to cover the machine. Then, he jumped off and slowly lowered the netherstore over the stealth hood. It was slow going as the netherstore struggled to adjust and take in such a large item.

“Fifteen seconds, James.”

James ignored her and continued to float down slowly. If he dropped it too quickly, the netherstore might fail, either destroying the contents in its storage or containing the hood improperly, making it useless upon its retrieval.

The door below him burst open and another swarm of guards entered. They opened fire, striking him several times. James checked his levels: 31 percent and dropping by the second. Well, he had ten seconds to half a dozen warheads’ impact, or he would die by bullets once his levels failed. He gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to do anything about either scenario as long as he got this stealth hood. Elise and the tribe needed it.

The first cluster of warheads hit the city before the squad of soldiers’ bullets cut through his exo. Luckily for him, the city, suddenly tilting a sharp twenty degrees, threw the squad off more than it did him, sliding them toward the far wall. James reached the floor and tied the netherstore container closed. He checked his levels: 5 percent.

“Jump now!” he yelled.

The second set of warheads struck the city, this time cracking the city and shaking the ground so hard the squad of soldiers ricocheted off the walls and floor like rag dolls. An avalanche of fire rolled from the hallway and spilled into the room, eating everything inside in an instant, enveloping machinery and climbing up the dangling cables that whipped about the room. Within seconds, all life in the room, with one exception, had been snuffed out. And if James didn’t get out soon, it would be his life as well.