Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(51)
Exhausted from the depressing outing, not to mention the tender feeling of the skin on her face from just the few minutes of exposure to the sun still hidden behind clouds, Elise decided to head back toward the hotel and see if James had returned. Maybe she could hide near the entrance and catch him before he went inside, or if he was there, he’d surely wait for her, right? What else could she do? She backtracked the way she had come, through the narrow bazaar back to the plaza, then found the blue tunnel that took her underground.
No sooner did she see the entrance of the Heights at the far end of the tunnel than two black-armored men wearing the cone-shaped helmets appeared on either side of her. One of them said something she couldn’t quite understand. Elise shook her head. The other one looked at his friend and grinned.
“Off-worlder, huh?” he said. “That chronman knows how to pick them.”
“ChronoCom monitors,” the first said. “Come with us.”
As if to show her how much choice she had to comply with their demand, he grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her with them. Elise was about to protest when she noticed the emblem on both their shoulders. It was the same emblem as the half-flaked-off one on the ship James flew. Maybe they were going to take her to him.
“Are you guys with Salman, I mean, James?” she asked.
“Quiet, whore,” the first one said.
Elise looked stunned. She heard those two words very clearly.
The grinning one leered at her and spoke to his friend as if she weren’t there. “Funniest-looking prostitute I’ve ever seen. Never heard of an off-worlder one. Look at her skin. Not spaceborn white but none of the surface blems. I wonder how much she costs.”
The first grunted. “Probably more than you can afford. Let’s hurry back. We’ve kept the auditor waiting long enough.”
“Hey, *s,” Elise snapped, swinging her elbows. She was protesting more at being completely ignored and treated like an object than actually being called a whore. Who did these guys think they were! This was no way to—
The first conehead backhanded her across the face. Elise felt her legs buckle and she fell to her knees. “Stop struggling, whore,” was all she heard as they grabbed her elbows and carried her limp body along the ground.
It took a minute for the cobwebs in her head to clear. The conehead had busted open her lip, and the smack stung even more on her sunburned cheeks. James’s friends or no, she knew she had to escape these two. She had to think of something.
The two carried her all the way back to the plaza on the surface level. Whoever these guys were, the people in these crowded tunnels gave them a wide berth. The two didn’t even acknowledge the masses as they continued chatting with each other, once knocking down someone too slow to get out of their way.
Elise devised a plan to escape; it wasn’t much of one, but it was better than pretending to be unconscious and carried like a sack of potatoes. She stayed limp until they reached the far end of the plaza. Just as they were nearing the end of the crowds, Elise leaned in toward the guard on the left—the grinning conehead—and pushed into him as hard as she could. She wasn’t a very big person, and the guy probably only stumbled a couple of steps, but it was just enough to knock him off balance and into the crowds.
Grinning conehead had to let go of her to steady himself. As he did so, Elise swung her right arm up and smacked the right conehead in the face. He took her punch with a slight swivel of his chin, and then he looked down at her. She tried to knee him in the groin. Same effect. Were these guys robots?! Just then, the grinning conehead she pushed grabbed her hair, spun her around, and smacked her on the side of the head. The blow knocked her to the ground.
“Easy there,” the right conehead said, “we still need to interrogate her.”
Grinning conehead spat. “Bitch did that on purpose!”
Elise, facedown on the ground, realized that they weren’t holding on to her anymore. She got onto her hands and knees and scampered into the forest of legs. She heard a squawk from one of the two but she continued to crawl forward in desperation, around feet, under carts, pushing between bodies. She turned left and then right and continued to change directions until she wasn’t sure which direction she was going anymore. All she could hear was the yells from the two coneheads behind her as they barreled through the crowds looking for her.
Suddenly, she was out in the open and on her own. She got to her feet and took off, running as fast as she could to the edge of the plaza and up a flight of metal stairs, pushing and shoving as best she could, but she was still mostly at the mercy of the flow of the crowds. She had turned back once to see if they were in pursuit and was horrified to see that they were only a few steps behind her.
Elise turned right into a crowded intersection and continued to run, weaving left and right as her eyes scanned for any place to hide. She looked up and saw one of those bright clean spaceship stores landing in a clearing and made a beeline for it. She reached the opening where the ship, still fifty meters off the ground, was slowly descending.
Elise tore through the beams of white lights lining the perimeter, ignoring the cries of alarm from the white-clad guards who were keeping the crowds at bay. She gritted her teeth and hurtled under the landing ship. If she could reach the other side, maybe she could throw off her pursuers, since they’d have to go around the building. The sprint under the building looked like a hundred or so meters. As she ran under the ship, she was almost immediately struck by the heat from its thrusters. She staggered a few steps but continued on, willing herself to get across. The building continued to lower, increasing the temperature around her by the second. If she didn’t get out from under here soon, she was going to burn to a crisp.