Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(124)
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 f*cking 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.
FORTY-SEVEN
THE END
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.