Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(22)

Ilana wiped her face with her sleeves and shot venom at him with her eyes. “You should have let him be, Levin. Why didn’t you let him stay in the past? He wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”

“He broke the Time Laws,” Levin said. “Bringing him back was the right thing to do.”

“Protecting your flesh and blood was the right thing to do,” she lashed out, jabbing her finger at his face. “He didn’t need to join your damn agency. He had options. Now look what’s happened to my baby! I’ll never forgive you.”

New tears streamed down her face as Ilana fled the landing pad, cursing him every step of the way. Levin watched as his sister disappeared into Earth Central, knowing full well that she was a woman of conviction. He gave himself slim odds of seeing her alive again after today.

He sighed. Bringing in Cole had been the right thing to do. There was no doubt about it in his heart. Still, it didn’t make the burden weigh on him any less. He looked up at some of the engineering crews staring at the spectacle of his family grief. Anger burned through his veins and radiated to the surface of his skin—and not a small amount of shame. After all, he might have removed some of the stain on his honor, but Central was still abuzz with talk of this scandal, and every word from these gossipmongers was about him.

Quick, harsh words bubbled up to his lips, but instead, Levin returned the gaze of their judging eyes. He stared them down with a cold rage, daring them, daring any of them to maintain eye contact. He knew his shame was misplaced. It was not he who had broken the Time Laws, only his blood. He didn’t bring his own nephew in because he was overreacting; it was because it was the right thing to do. So for that, there was no way in the abyss he would let any of these lower tiers inflict shame upon him.

The engineering crew wilted before him and dispersed, each realizing he or she had something more pressing to attend to than mock the high auditor of Earth. Let them have this one moment where they could feel superior to him. It was likely the last one any of them would ever get.

It wasn’t until he was back in his office that he relaxed, and let a few moments of grief pass over him. Ilana wasn’t wrong. It was his fault. Cole had joined because of him, because of his uncle who had regaled him with stories of the past when he was a boy. Unlike most other chronmen, Cole did have other choices for careers. Levin, through his work as a chronman and later as an auditor, had lifted his family from the cesspool on Oberon to a better life. The boy could have been something else. Anything else.

Levin went behind his desk and poured himself a glass of bourbon, a rare Pappy Van Winkle retrieved from a salvage back in the late twentieth century. He had been saving it for a special occasion. Today was as good as any, though the occasion was not what he had imagined. He tossed back the glass and poured himself another.

Against the wishes of both his mother and uncle, Cole had joined the Academy of his own volition and had had the talent and skill to rise to the chronmen tier. It was after he began to run jobs that his sensitive soul began to suffer and unravel under the strain. The deterioration was quicker than with any other chronman in recent memory.

Levin blamed the Academy. Someone in psychological analysis should have picked up on his mental frailty early in his first year. Maybe they hadn’t dared fail the nephew of a high-ranking auditor. Maybe ChronoCom, with its depleted ranks, had loosened its strict requirements. In any case, there was failure on every level, and it had paved the way to today. But Levin felt especially guilty. He brought his glass to his lips and sipped the Pappy again.

He gave himself another minute of anger before he pushed it out of his mind. Duty called, and he had wasted enough of his time reminiscing over what had happened. The past was already dead: a chronman axiom that couldn’t have been truer.

The vid on his desk began to blink. Levin stared at it for a few moments before sitting down and pulling it up. He had cleared his calendar earlier today to deal with Cole’s trial. Whatever it was must be important.

Instead, he received instructions from the director for a last-minute psychological audit on a Tier-1 who was running a jump for one of the agency’s largest sponsors. Levin frowned. He disapproved of these sorts of jobs.

The agency was intentionally created outside of the corporate complex, unaffected by capitalistic motivations. After all, ChronoCom was far too important to humanity and to the solar system to be weighed down and tainted by profit and greed. However, with the corporations funding an increasing percentage of their operations, it was becoming more and more difficult to keep corruption out.

“Damned abyss,” he swore when the audited chronman’s profile came up.

It was James Griffin-Mars. As if his day could get any worse. Levin had banned James from all Earth salvages three years ago because the two couldn’t get along, ever since that unfortunate incident with Landon. As high auditor of Earth, Levin was forced to make hard decisions. He had had to make several with Cole, after all. The recent dearth of Tier-1s must have pulled James back. How unfortunate for them both.

Levin grimaced. Might as well get this over with. He still had a lost nephew and sister to mourn.

*

True to his word, Smitt was still standing outside his door two hours later when James received the summons from High Auditor Levin, or Backstabbing Asshole, as he liked to refer to the man. Wearing a scowl, he let his handler lead him through the audit wing to Levin’s office door.

“I’ll be waiting right here when you’re done,” his overbearing best friend said. “Behave yourself.”