Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(75)

He must have cheated when he did that illusion thing with the bands. His skin wasn’t nearly as smooth and his nose was a little crooked. His eyes were probably a little too close for her taste and his eyebrows were out of control. Now that she thought about it, he kind of smelled too. Wait … she probably didn’t smell like a bed of roses, either. Nothing in this world did. But even with all his flaws, Elise still felt this flutter in her chest when she was close to him. James wasn’t the perfect man, but right now, she could tell he was hers.

She reached out and caressed his face, running her fingers along a faint scar on his right cheek. “What happened here?” Then she noticed the dozens of scars crisscrossing his arms and face, some so faint she noticed them only after close study, but some so deep, they formed ridges along his skin.

“You poor thing,” she murmured.

James rolled onto his back again and closed his eyes. “No need to waste pity on me.”

Elise kept her arm across his chest and pulled herself in closer to him. The two, too weary and exhausted to do much else, fell into a deep sleep, with neither moving an inch until sunup, when they had to do chores all over again. This one night, though, the first since she had miraculously survived the disaster on the Nutris Platform and then came to this terrible present, she didn’t cry herself to sleep.





TWENTY-EIGHT

EARTH PLAGUE

James woke feeling discombobulated. Where was he? The surroundings felt unfamiliar and he was freezing. He scrambled to his feet and powered on his exo, comforted by the fact that his bands were still wrapped around his wrists. In most of his dreams, occurring nightly now, he was often left unarmed and helpless.

The faint, comforting yellow glow of the kinetic field expanded from his body and filled every inch of the tent, every signal and piece of information filtering back into his AI band. His body was shivering, so he willed his atmos on. Why did he turn it off? He never did. Then he remembered where he was and why he wasn’t enveloped in his usual environmental cocoon. He was now a fugitive and couldn’t afford to waste his levels on comfort anymore. His old life, as hard as it was, was now just a distant luxury compared to what lay ahead. He’d have to get used to freezing like this.

“Fuck,” he growled at the thought.

Even though it was so cold that his toes had gone numb, James felt strangely rested. He assumed that sleeping without an atmos would have affected his sleep. Instead, he had woken feeling better than he had in months. Then he realized why: he hadn’t dreamt last night. James couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

He closed his eyes and relished his fleeting peace. There was something else. No, someone else. Elise was here as well. Close by, holding him. He remembered her touch on his chest and how during the night, her arms had wrapped around his shivering body. And he had finally slept that rare dreamless sleep, and it was wonderful.

Elise!

Where was she? He clawed out of the tent opening, nearly taking the entire thing down. He was about to call her name aloud when he realized it was not yet daybreak and the camp was still. He swallowed his yell as he scanned the grounds.

The tribesman on guard, perched on one of the tall broken columns, eyed him with suspicion, slowly angling his rifle James’s way. The Elfreth still didn’t trust him. Of course they didn’t; James wouldn’t either, not after what the corporations had done to them following the Welfare Exoduses a century earlier.

Keeping his hands out in plain view, and feeling silly for doing it—he had learned it put them at ease when he did that—James walked to the base of the column and looked up.

“Have you seen Elder Elise?” he asked.

The guard nodded and pointed toward the river, where James and the crew had spent the past few days digging. James thanked him and made his way there.

“Elise, are you here?” he thought.

There was a long pause before she finally responded. “Hello? Um. Damn thing. Hello? Is this thing working?”

“I can hear you.”

“You scared the crap out of me, James,” she said. “Give me a warning before you barge into my head like this.”

“What exactly do you want me to do before I talk to you to let you know I’m going to talk to you?”

“I don’t know. Knock or something.”

“Knock. Knock,” he said.

There was another startled stammer, and then Elise laughed, her voice ringing inside his head. She must have been laughing aloud because he could hear her voice downriver, the echo bouncing off the tall black structures rising up from the ground

James picked up his pace. If she were any louder, she’d wake the whole tribe in a few seconds. He found her kneeling at the water’s edge, arms elbow deep in the slow-flowing sludge that folded over itself as it ran downstream. He didn’t try to mask his steps and she craned her head as he approached.

“Who’s there?” She smirked.

“It’s James.”

Elise rolled her eyes as she stood. “You’re hopeless. Do you know that?”

He actually had no idea what she was talking about but he had more pressing matters to deal with right now. He looked at the ominous buildings that shot up into the skies around her, their windows like blackened eyes, all seemingly staring right at them.

“You can’t just wander off like this,” he said, pointing at the high-rise on the other side of the river. “It’s not safe out here. There are more feral inhabitants in the buildings across the city than there are people. In fact, according to the hunters, a nasty nest of wolf variants took up residence right there across the street. If one of them decided you were dinner, I wouldn’t be able to save you in time.”