Time Salvager (49 page)
“Emergency channel,” she thought furiously. “Anyone in the emergency channel?” She switched to the subchannel she and James shared. “James! This is an emergency!”
She stayed hanging in the air while the figure approached. She tilted her head and looked at her assailant. He looked a lot like James when they first met: bald, pasty white, and in good shape. However, instead of the sadness she often saw in James’s eyes, this guy looked damn proud of himself.
“Hello, little mouse,” he said. “Now do you remember me?”
“No,” she spat, squirming like a fish on a hook. “I would have remembered someone as ugly as you.”
Shizzu chuckled. “That’s not what you said when we met. You complimented me on my vigor. I was flattered. You were quite fetching wearing that tight black outfit of yours.”
Then it dawned on her. He was the old security guard who disappeared back on Nutris two weeks before it exploded. He had begged to transfer to Sector Four, the smallest sector requiring the least distance to patrol. She had taken one look at him and decided to authorize the transfer.
“I was just being nice, you asshole,” she growled. “You looked like you were pushing eighty!”
He mocked her and bowed. “Some people, like your boyfriend, who by the way is a dear comrade of mine, prefer to play it straight. I enjoy a bit of theater with my work. Did I tell you that James and I go twenty years back? He was a brooding prick then as well. Now me, I’m a whole lot more fun, little mouse.”
“So you pretend to be an old hobbling man to get what you want? That’s sick.”
He grinned. “Whatever gets the job done, little mouse. Going into the past requires an understanding of that period. I like to think of myself as an actor studying for a role.”
“You’re the one that sabotaged the platform and killed all my friends,” she said. “What kind of role is a mass murderer?”
“Perhaps a little simplistic, but yes, guilty as charged.” Shizzu shrugged. “Your friends were already dead, as were you. I just bent the rules and helped you all along. By the way, I am shocked that you are still alive and sane. I would have thought you would have exploded by now, or at the very least become a raving lunatic. Obviously, we need to revisit some of the theories of time travel.”
“How can you sleep at night, you sociopath!”
“Such a mouth.” He lifted her face to his eye level. “Maybe I should teach you a lesson.”
With a casual swipe, he struck Elise on the side of the face, swiveling her head to the side and rocking her entire body. Elise was disoriented as her head rung. Her vision blurred and she struggled to stay conscious. Still hanging upside down didn’t help matters either. When her eyes finally focused again, she saw Shizzu gazing off to the side, his eyes carrying a distant look that James often had when he was using his comm band. She squawked and flailed at him with her hands, managing to scratch a long gash across his cheeks.
With a snarl, he smacked her again, making her head ring. He pulled her in close, cupping her chin with a hand. “One more outburst out of you and I’ll cut your arms off. You hear me, bitch?”
She could feel his hot breath as his calloused hands clamped around her mouth. She ignored his snarling and tried to clear her head. Her legs were still tied together by invisible bonds, and blood was rushing into her head. She wouldn’t be able to stay conscious long. Squirming to her left and right, she suddenly realized she was with him inside his shiny orange shield.
Elise did the only thing she could think of: she lifted her arm and shot him in the face. Either he was overconfident in his abilities or didn’t realize she had bands hidden under her long sleeves. Regardless, he wasn’t ready for the attack and took a blast in the face. Unfortunately, even at point-blank range, her aim sucked.
Elise thought she had pointed the beam at Shizzu’s nose, but either her aim hanging upside down was off or he had moved at the last possible second. The beam grazed him on the left side of his face, burning his cheek and left eye. Interestingly, his hair caught on fire as well.
Shizzu screamed and fell backward. He must have lost control of whatever it was holding her up. Elise wasn’t prepared when she suddenly felt herself falling. It was at least a two-meter drop upside down onto concrete. She barely had time to brace herself with her arms and was only partially successful in protecting her head.
Elise groaned as she bounced off the floor. Everything went fuzzy and she struggled to stay conscious. She forced herself to keep moving, even if she didn’t know which direction she was going. She crawled on all fours and tried to blink the hundreds of little stars away. She regained her senses just in time to see Shizzu run up and punt her midsection like a kick ball.
“You fucking bitch,” he growled.
The blow knocked the wind out of her, and her body slid like a rag doll across the floor. Elise bit her lip and held the moan trying to escape her. She lifted her arm and fired at his general vicinity, but her vision was blurred from the tears.
She fired again, but this time, Shizzu’s shield, an orange translucent glow, appeared and absorbed the beam. It didn’t seem to faze him at all and he continued to advance. She shot three more times, twice hitting and each time having no effect on him.
“I’m going to rip you into pieces,” he grunted. “Valta just wants you alive. No one said with arms and legs.”
He flicked his finger and an invisible force pinned Elise’s arm to the ground so she couldn’t shoot at him anymore. She struggled against these unseen bonds, but it was hopeless. She watched as he approached, his orange shield glimmering and reflecting in the night.
“Maybe I should burn your face off too,” he said. “I’ll enjoy—”
A yellow streak slammed into Shizzu from behind, carrying him into Farming Tower Two, where he crashed with a thunderous crack into the building and down through several floors. Elise’s bonds disappeared and she scrambled to her feet.
She saw James standing over a large hole with murderous rage on his face. He looked back at her and yelled, “Stay back.” Then he jumped down into the hole. Yellow and orange bursts of light filled the air, followed by several more loud crashes.
As always with James’s instructions, Elise ignored them and crawled to the hole and peered over the edge. She saw James and Shizzu locked in a strange fight. They stood in front of each other, neither moving an inch.
The aura of light around them danced, ebbing and flowing. She could see lines of yellow and orange streak back and forth, each time cut off and pushed back by other lines. Within seconds, she could see how the battle was progressing—James was losing. Every time his yellow lines pushed at Shizzu, the orange lines would cut him off and do the same. James would be able to repel them, but it seemed Shizzu’s were getting closer to James than James’s were to Shizzu.
The battle continued for another minute, their lights moving back and forth. Slowly, James lost ground, and at one point, one of the orange lines reached him and cut him on the thigh. He fell to one knee, and more and more of those orange lines grew closer to him.
“I wish I could help,” she muttered under her breath, feeling powerless. “I need to—”
James screamed, his voice guttural and filled with pain.
His cries snapped her back to reality. Of course she could help. She cursed her stupidity in being hypnotized by the battle. She scrambled around the large opening until she was behind Shizzu. Knowing how bad her aim usually was, she wanted to make sure she didn’t accidentally shoot James. Once she was sure she could make the shot, she aimed her wrist beam at Shizzu’s back, gritted her teeth, and unloaded with everything she had.
With his shields already up, her wrist beam seemed to have little effect, but with nothing else she could do, Elise kept her aim on Shizzu’s back and continued to blast away. She saw his orange shield flicker as it now tried to protect him on two fronts. Then she saw James’s yellow field gain ground on him. Elise walked closer, shooting continuously. Shizzu tried to move out of the way, but James seemed to lock him in place with his yellow field. Soon, the orange shield around his body began to crack and disintegrate.
“This is for Nutris, you homicidal bastard!” Elise screamed as the beams blasting from her wrist finally penetrated Shizzu’s shield.
James checked his levels one last time: 14 percent. He powered down his AI band along with his atmos, cryo, jump, rad, even his comm band … They were now all off. He looked over at Elise, who was preoccupied with bandaging his bloody hand with a rag torn from her shirt. He especially wouldn’t need the comm band anymore as long as she was close by.
“What a damn bloody mess.” She grimaced, wrapping it up so many times his arm looked like a stump. “I’m surprised your fingers are still attached.”
He held up his club hand and inspected her work. It was sloppy and would probably unravel in an hour, but it’d have to do. She was right, though; he was lucky not to have lost any fingers when Shizzu’s coils pierced his exo. The burn was severe and he had almost lost consciousness. Well, it was either his hand or his heart. If it hadn’t been for Elise beaming Shizzu full in the head, James wouldn’t have made it.
She helped him to his feet and together, they limped toward the edge of the building. A stiff breeze hit him full-on, nearly sweeping him off his feet. With his atmos now off, he was taking the full brunt of nature.
James had channeled all his excess levels to his exo. He was going to need it. He looked at the ground seventy stories down. The random ticking of primitive gunfire and the lights of wrist beams still played out below in small bunches. The Elfreth and their neighbors were still fighting, though they probably couldn’t last much longer.
“We need to get out of here,” he said in a low voice, looking up to the sky, still dotted with the silhouettes of several collies hidden behind clouds. “The ships patrolling the skies will prevent us from escaping by air, and once the monitors clean up on the ground, they’ll go looking for us.”
Elise shook her head. “I’m not abandoning the tribe. We brought this upon them. Besides, all my research is here.”
James sighed. There was no dissuading her. Still, he had to try to make her see reason. “We’ll go get your things at the lab. Then we’ll hide. That’s what the rest of the tribe should do as well. We can’t fight ChronoCom. We’ll rebuild elsewhere.”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around his waist.
James aimed for Farming Tower One and shot straight toward it, covering the diameter of the ring of buildings within a second. Time was of the essence now. He had enough levels to make low-altitude jumps in between the buildings. They could head northwest and possibly lose ChronoCom in the wilderness. He had already mapped an escape route the second night they stayed with the tribe. They could recover in the ruins of Toronto and possibly rescue the survivors of the tribe in a few days. That is, if the Elfreth even wanted their help.
Elise ran to the lab with James trailing close behind. She went to her workstations, confusion and concern on her face. She ran to the other side of the room and checked the shelves. She began to open cabinets and drawers. “I don’t understand,” she gasped. “The notes I keep. I can’t find them.”
James scanned the empty hallways, and then the rest of the lab. Something was wrong. She always kept a clean lab, and this place looked ransacked. “Where’s Grace?” he asked.
Elise froze. “She was hiding here during the battle. I thought…” She became even more frantic as she dashed to the adjacent room, calling for Grace. She was nowhere in sight.
James waited for her, slumped across a table to rest his exhausted body. He wouldn’t show weakness to Elise, but he could barely stand. Killing two auditors was unheard of, not to mention the dozens of monitors he had cut through. If he wasn’t the most wanted man in ChronoCom, he would be soon. His job wasn’t done yet, either. He had a feeling there would be more killing before the night was over. Maybe even another auditor. He hoped not. If he ran into another chronman, let alone an auditor, the only death left tonight would be his.
James trailed after Elise as she continued to search the floor, using the walls or furniture for support to drag himself along. He looked over at the edge of the building and saw the Nazi soldier, his face half-hidden in the shadows, looking out the window. The boy glanced his way and grinned.
Someone has to keep watch. Who better than a ghost?
To his left, Grace and Sasha were sitting in chairs at his feet, playing some sort of game with their hands. James reached for his sister. He touched her hair and felt the strands run between his fingers. He began to shake, his eyes moistening as he felt the warmth in her cheeks. Sasha shrugged him away.
Stop poking me, James,
she said.
I’m not a baby anymore.
Isn’t that the beautiful thing about being dead?
Grace smiled.
Especially for children. They stay young and innocent forever.
James’s throat closed at those words and he shook his head. “No! It’s not beautiful. There’s nothing worse. They don’t stay young, because it’s not real. Once someone dies, they’re gone forever.” Except it wasn’t true. James rubbed his temples trying to clear his mind. He didn’t know what was real anymore.
“You know,” a new voice cut across the dark room, “I would call you crazy if I hadn’t seen you drunk before.”
A figure appeared at the doorway with the translucent orange glow of an exo surrounding his body. James recognized the voice right away and moved toward the window. At his levels, there was no way he could fight Levin, not in this condition.
“Don’t even try, James,” Levin said. “You’ve escaped justice long enough. It’s time to do the right thing.”
James chuckled and shook his head. “You know, Levin, you are the one constant damn thing in this universe that will never change.”
“Do it for the people below,” Levin continued. “Give yourself up, give up that anomaly, and all those savages below guilty of harboring you will live. It’s as simple as that; no more people need to die tonight.”
