Time Siege

James Griffin-Mars broke the time laws and left his job as a salvager for ChronoCom in order to rescue the people he loves and maybe even protect planet Earth. At the end of Time Salvager, James and Elise Kim, a scientist he reclaimed from the past, were living among the barbaric-seeming survivors on a poisoned Earth. The hope is that Elise can develop a cure for the plague that killed so many of the planet's inhabitants, but James has made too many jumps to the past to bring the remedy himself. They require another salvager, and they also need to hide from the Valta corporation, which will kill anyone who gets in the way of them retrieving Elise. The portrait of a far-future Earth devastated by disease is gripping, especially in the story's last third as the Chronmen and Valta get closer to the community that Elise leads in a former skyscraper in a desolate future Manhattan.