Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(109)
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.”