Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(76)
They were in an area far too enclosed and with far too many places to hide for his liking. The wilderness filled the night air not only all around them, but above them, in the abandoned buildings a hundred stories tall. Howls, barks, and the constant chirping of unknown creatures continuously emanated from the derelict skeletons of these once mighty structures as nature took back the land block by block.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve worked in a dangerous environment,” she said.
“There are also some very dangerous people hunting us as well.”
She shrugged him off as she set a plate of the sludge on a boulder. “I’m not going to hide in a cave for the rest of my life, James.” She turned her back to him and stuck her arms into the river, this time reaching deep down until the water reached up to her shoulders.
“This is not up for debate.” He knelt down next to her and peered over her shoulder. “There’s … what are you doing? Be careful or you’ll fall into the river.”
Elise rolled her eyes. “Cut it out, Dad. I have your atmos thing on anyway.” She pulled her right arm out of the mud and wiggled her fingers toward him. He just gave her a blank stare. She exhaled in exasperation. “You’re no fun.”
“Mud’s not much of a deterrent, though I think I have enough caked on me as it is.”
“Well, if you must know…” She pointed at the boulder nearby. For the first time, James noticed the fourteen plates lined up neatly in three rows. He walked over and picked one up.
“Don’t touch it,” she said, more sharply than he’d ever heard her speak to him.
James put his hands up and backed away.
Elise joined him and shooed at him. “They’re all in order.” She pointed at the top row. “Two hundred meters upriver before the sharp bend at three elevations.” Then she pointed at the middle row. “Immediately after the bend.” Then she pointed at the last row. “Four hundred meters down.’
“I don’t understand,” James said.
“The water is infected.”
“How can water be infected?” he asked.
“Like a festering wound. Back in my time, we called it Earth Plague. It was a newly discovered virus that sprung from a combination of environmental variables: carbon levels, pollution, radiation, ultraviolet rays … a perfect storm of bad crap upon bad crap happening. We first discovered small blooms of it in the Indian Ocean. And then reports of similar patches sprung up all over the world.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“That’s what the Nutris Platform was for. The global governments realized that this Earth Plague was a real threat to our planet, and they all pooled their resources and gathered the most well regarded scientists to destroy the plague.” She bowed her head. “Some of the best minds on the planet. I had a lot of friends there.”
“I don’t remember seeing this Earth Plague when I was in your time,” James said, puzzled.
“We intentionally built the Nutris Platform in the Arctic Circle. We needed a clean environment where the virus couldn’t prosper. Cold weather hinders its rapid mutation rate.”
“I wonder why it was labeled a military installation by ChronoCom.” Or by Valta. He wasn’t sure who was in charge of that operation anymore.
She shook her head. “I don’t know where you got that idea from. It was a cleanser. By the time the platform went online, we were only a few months away from starting trials. All we had to do was refine the particle filtering and sequencing.”
James shook his head as a lump sunk into his stomach. “You mean if the base hadn’t blown up when it did, Earth wouldn’t be this mess?”
“We could have cured her,” Elise said. “Maybe I still can.”
“By yourself?”
“I can try. It’s not like I have anything better to do right now,” she groused. “If I had the right equipment, who knows? Maybe I can pick up where we left off. It’s definitely something worth exploring, but this place is a mess.”
James stayed with Elise for the rest of the night until dawn, acting as her lab assistant and pack mule as she gathered more samples and carried them back to camp. By the time Sammuia found them to gather for the day’s work, they had collected over forty plates, each carefully labeled. Elise had to recruit the two children to help move the small trays into cover.
“How is this going to cure the planet?” James asked as they returned to join the tribe for the morning assignments.
“Not sure if I can,” she admitted. “Not without any equipment. This is just more out of curiosity right now than anything. It’s nice to have something to think about other than this awful mess I’m in.”
He leaned in to her. “We still need to talk about what to do next. We can’t stay here forever.”
She shrugged. “It’s not a bad life, James. These seem to be good people and the work is honest. What else are we going to do?”
“I didn’t bring you back here for…” He paused. Why did he bring her back? It wasn’t for her own good; that, he had to admit. He did it for himself, and now that she seemed to be adjusting to life here, he wanted to take her away again.
“Selfish bastard,” James muttered under his breath.