Eternity Crux

by Canosa, Jamie

  “Then come back and get it. Sayer, you know I wouldn’t ask for this if it wasn’t a matter of life or death.”

  “My life or death?” His head cocked to the side and I missed the way my Sayer’s hair would have fallen in his eyes. “You risked coming back here, now, for me?”

  “Sayer . . . Please. Give me the file.”

  Such a light thing, it felt too unsubstantial to possibly contain the downfall of our entire way of life, but there it was. And I held it in the palm of my hand.

  “Be careful with that,” Sayer warned. “I have to go. I have to get her . . . you . . . out of here.”

  “Go. Thank you.” I tucked the file inside my jacket for safe keeping. “And Sayer . . .”

  “Hmm?”

  “Kiss me already, would ya?”

  “Kiss . . . you?” He looked a little flabbergasted, and if I hadn’t been such a rush I might have laughed at him.

  “Not me, me. Your me.”

  “My you?”

  “Yeah. Your me. She is yours. She just doesn’t know it yet. Do you both a favor and make her realize it before it’s too late.” My heart clenched at the thought that that might be true, that it might be too late for us.

  How could I have been so blind to what was right in front of me for so many years? The first thing I was going to do when I saw my Sayer again was plant a big wet one right on his lips. Then I was going to tell him exactly how I felt about him. And I was going to do both of those things because it wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be. I would see Sayer again.

  ><><><><

  I had the file. And I’d made it round trip without falling to pieces. The question was, what the heck was I supposed to do with it? This had always been more of Sayer’s side of things. I got my sticky fingers on classified orders and canoodled bogus death certificates from Ballard, but it was Sayer who dealt with the human side of the mission. He knew all of the contacts, interacted with them, knew the plan beyond the gathering phase I was party to. I wondered now if that was for my own safety, but at the time I’d been so wrapped up in my part, I hadn’t given it much thought.

  All I knew was that he said he started with the victims in the file and went from there, so I went back to square one. In the relative safety of my fungal-ridden hideaway, I flipped through page after page of phony causes of death until I found a ‘next of kin’ I felt comfortable approaching. Jaz Marril. Her brother, Sazar, had died . . . falling off a bridge? Seriously? Where did they come up with this stuff? Anyway, she was female and about my age, which put me at an advantage—thanks to my training—if she was decidedly less like her brother than I hoped. And she didn’t live far, which was good since the solar reader on the transport unit I’d hijacked from the hospital parking lot was jacked.

  The frosted glass walls to her single story complex let through just enough light to leave no doubt she was home. Whether or not she was alone remained to be seen. There was only a single unit in the drive and it looked like one body moving around inside, but I wasn’t about to take that chance.

  Pressing the buzzer, I stood back and waited until a lean woman with long, platinum hair answered the door. “Yes?”

  “Hi. I . . . um . . . I’m looking for the man of the house?” What a dumb thing to say. Clearly I’d been spending way too much time in crappy hotel rooms, watching crappy television from the crappy past.

  “Well, you’re stuck with me. This is my house.”

  “There’s no one else home?”

  Jaz did not look pleased, and I couldn’t really blame her. If I were her, I’d want to smack me, too. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  Darkness shifted over me as the door swung closed in my face, but I managed to wedge my foot against the jamb before she could shut me out entirely. “No. Wait. I was hoping you’d say that.”

  Her face appeared in the slot where my toes were quickly growing numb, looking more terrified than angry anymore. She turned and fled deeper into the house and I followed her inside, cursing my stupidity.

  “Wait! Jaz, wait! I’m not with the Legion. I’m not going to hurt you.” At least I had one question answered. Only an insurgent would run from a Legion officer. I stalked through the elegantly decorated home, searching for her, but the girl was impressively skilled at hide-and-seek. Time to pull out the big guns. “Sayer sent me. Sayer Cane. He told me about you.” A risky lie since he’d never actually mentioned any of his contacts by name. “He’s in trouble, Jaz. He needs our help.”

  A narrow closet door at the end of the hallway I was standing in eased open slowly. “Sayer sent you? Really?”

  I nodded and she stepped out of the tiny closet. “He’s my partner. I’ve been helping him gather evidence against the Legion.”

  “Au-Auralia?”

  “He told you about me?” I knew that wasn’t true, which left me the suspicious one. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.

  “Your face is all over the news. I didn’t recognize you at first with that hood.”

  Of course it was. I tugged back my hood and let her get a good look at me, which seemed to ease the deer-in-headlights thing she had going on.

  “You said Sayer’s in trouble? What kind of trouble?” Jaz ushered me into a plush sitting room and offered a seat on an overstuffed beige sofa.

  “The Legion kind.”

  She gasped and I knew I wouldn’t have to expound. “I-Is he . . .?”

  Words weren’t really necessary between two people sharing the same exact fears. “He’s not dead.” He couldn’t be. “But he needs our help.”

  “Sayer’s always been kind to me.” That didn’t come as a surprise. Sayer was always kind to everyone. “When my brother . . . He was the only family I had left. I was . . . I was a bit of a mess. Sayer helped me when I had no one else. I’ll do whatever it takes to save him. What do you need?”

  “Answers. I have all the proof we’ve gathered, so far. It’s damning, but I have no idea what to do with it.”

  Jaz leaned back in the arm chair and took a deep breath. “The insurgents have a plan for that information. An organized execution of distribution. If we just throw it out there, it’ll cause chaos. Riots, attacks on anyone associated with the Legion, a complete breakdown of the legal system. It’ll be anarchy.”

  “But . . .” Because there was always a ‘but’.

  “The insurgent’s plan . . . it could take months to organize. A year.”

  “Sayer doesn’t have months! Galen’s had him for days already. We need to act. Now!”

  Jaz ran both hands over her weary face and stared off into space. An endless minute stretched between us before she finally drew herself up and nodded. “There’s a woman, Dev Pierson. She’s the insurgent’s implant in the media industry. She’s up high and itching for action. The Legion murdered her husband. She couldn’t care less about plans, she just wants them to pay. Take that file to her, and I guarantee she’ll make sure the whole world sees it.”

  “Where can I find her?” Excitement at finally having a solid course of action ahead of me that led straight back to Sayer had me nearly bouncing in my seat.

  “The Zirom building, downtown, though it’s a bit late for that. Spend the night. Go see her in the morning.”

  “You don’t know where she lives?” It was more than just impatience—though it was that, too. Strolling into the hub of the news world with my face splattered across every other one of their reports did not sound all that appealing.

  “I don’t. I’m sorry. I’ll go with you tomorrow, get her alone somewhere you can speak with her privately.”

  I didn’t like the idea of involving her any more than I already had. If she were caught out in public with me, it wouldn’t end well. But what other choice did I really have? “Thank you, Jaz.”

  She shook her head on a deep sigh. “I owe Sayer more than this. Let’s get some rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

  ><><><><

  The Zirom building glittered in the morning sun like some kind of d
iamond, blinding me as I pulled into the lot and coasted to a stop.

  “You stay here. I’ll call when she’s ready to listen.” The com Jaz handed me was out-of-date, but it would get the job done and was likely untraceable by the Legion.

  “Alright. Just hurry.” I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep, lying awake in Jaz’s guest room, worrying about Sayer, about Dev Pierson, about what would happen when this news broke, if this news broke. We were so close, and yet, so far from ending this.

  “I will.” Jaz slipped out of the passenger seat and I watched her sashay her way into the building like she had every right in the world to be there.

  Confidence—not to mention her bombshell looks—must really have gone a long way toward opening doors, because less than twenty minutes later the com lit up.

  “Jaz?”

  “There’s an employee exit around the back of the building. It’s propped open so you can get inside. Take the back stairwell to the third floor. Second door on the left.” She hung up and my scattered brain struggled to keep all of that in order.

  The door was easy enough to find, and it led straight to the set of stairs I assumed I was meant to take to the third floor. Second door on the . . . Right? Left? I stood there, eyes darting back and forth between my two options. 50-50 chance of walking into some serious trouble.

  Mind made up, I turned right for no other reason than my gut said so, and the door behind me opened.

  “Auralia. Where are you going?”

  So much for my gut. Cringing at how close I’d come to messing everything up, I spun around and followed Jaz inside a large dressing room. Clothes—everything from evening gowns to pantsuits—hung along the walls, makeup and hair supplies coated the vanity, and I caught the reflection of a woman with curly black hair seated primly on the edge of a chaise.

  “Auralia?” Her voice was familiar. I’d heard her on TV, or the radio, or something.

  “That’s me. I’m assuming you’re Dev?”

  “You’d be correct. I hear you have something for me.” Dev stood and crossed the area rug, hands reaching for the file.

  I’d made copies of everything before I ever left the hospital and stashed them right where Sayer had, but it was still beyond difficult to hand it over. I was putting all of my faith in a woman I’d known for all of ten seconds. And trust wasn’t something I was feeling in bulk supply as of late.

  “This is . . . perfect.” She scanned page after page, quickly moving through the documents. “There’s no way they’ll be able to deny all of this.”

  “How soon can you have it on air?”

  “It’ll take a little rescheduling. And I’ll have to go over all of this in a meeting with the executives of each individual station.” Dev glanced up and caught sight of my need for speed. “By this afternoon, at the latest. Give me a few hours.”

  Good enough. “I want this included with it.” Handing over the only picture I had of Sayer was even harder than giving up the file. “His name is Sayer Cane. He used to be a security officer for the Legion until he found out what they were doing. He’s the one responsible for all of this. For exposing the Legion. You make sure everyone knows it.”

  If he was still alive—I was loath to admit, even to myself, that there had to be an if attached to that statement—they couldn’t execute him after this without turning him into a martyr.

  “I will. I promise.” Dev took the picture and tucked it inside the file.

  “Ready to go?” I’d almost forgotten Jaz was still in the room, she’d been so quiet, pacing in the corner like an anxious cat.

  “Yeah.” There was nothing else to be done here. And there was somewhere else I needed to be.

  ><><><><

  “Where to?” Jaz sat beside me as I cruised along the back streets, actively avoiding traffic cameras.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The Legion.” Jaz looked at me like I was crazy. Possibly because I was crazy. I was planning to walk right into the headquarters of the people who wanted nothing more than my head on a silver platter. It didn’t get much crazier than that. “They have Sayer. When all hell breaks loose, I don’t want some trigger happy goon,” AKA Galen, “to get carried away and take his frustrations out on him. I have to get him out of there.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?”

  “Like you said, it’ll be chaos. I’m hoping that’s enough to get me in and both of us back out.”

  Jaz looked thoroughly unconvinced by my foolproof plan. “And what if it’s not? What if you both end up captured?”

  “I’ve done what I can to help Sayer. At least I’ll be there to point out the flaw in their logic if they decide to kill him.”

  “What about you?”

  Including a picture of myself along with Sayer’s might not have been a bad idea, but too little, too late. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Auralia—”

  “Thank you, Jaz. For all your help. I can’t tell you how much Sayer and I appreciate it.” I stopped outside her complex and left the unit running. “I suggest you stay inside for the next few days with the doors locked. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the Legion falls, but things are probably going to get a little crazy for a while.”

  Jaz frowned, but reached for the door handle. “Stay safe.”

  “You, too.” Things were about to get real and it was going to be every man for himself. Except Sayer and me. No matter what, we were in this together. I just had to get to him, first.

  Which proved to be more difficult than I would have liked. I sat outside that flipping building for two hours before any signs of distress started to appear. It was subtle at first, officers walking with a little more determination, confusion and anger written in their scowls. But before long, things started to fall apart. There was fighting between officers, several abandoning their posts, leaving the limited supporters to try to hold down the fort, but the short supply of reinforcements left gaps in their security. Gaps I had every intention of exploiting.

  After another solid half-hour of pure torture, while I sat there analyzing their patrol patterns, I was ready to move. Hood up, head down, I took a roundabout route to a side entrance only employees were aware of, which made it far less secure. At one point they may have posted a guard there, hoping I’d show, but with the rest of society out for blood, they had bigger things to worry about than little ol’ me.

  I’d been inside the building only a handful of times during my lost years as their minion, but it was ingrained in me by none other than the Legion itself to be observant, so I knew exactly where each and every security camera was located. When and where to turn my back, duck my head, hug the walls. And I didn’t have to wander aimlessly. I knew just where I was headed.

  The containment facility was located at the back of the building, behind a locked door I was going to need a key card to access. I didn’t exactly have one of those lying around, so it was going to pose a problem. The officers stationed inside the Legion weren’t rookies. I couldn’t just take what I wanted from them. Fighting was a forgone conclusion and even with their abandonment issues, I was still discouragingly outnumbered.

  Luckily—or unluckily—the decision whether or not to risk another jump was out of my hands. No moral dilemmas for me. Scanners embedded throughout the building would have alerted all the wrong people the minute they picked up that my DNA wasn’t a match for the crux I was using. Leaving it behind didn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies, but added attention was the last thing I needed.

  The officer guarding the cells wasn’t Galen, which was a definite plus, but he was one of his. I recognized him. During our months on the run, I’d memorized the faces of each of Galen’s chosen associates and stored them in the mental ‘not to mess with’ file in my brain.

  “Hey!” It wasn’t the first time I’d failed to take my own advice. “Looking for me?”

  The officer practically jumped to his feet and I cur
sed myself for not looking more closely at how freaking big he was. It was like looking at a wall of pure muscle. I was so entirely screwed.

  But a fight—a genuine fight—doesn’t really come down to who’s bigger or stronger. Sure, those play a part, but the real winner is going to be whoever wants it more. And there was nothing I wanted more than to get inside those cells.

  “You’re under arrest for—” He reached for his cuffs and I took my opening.

  Middle exposed, I planted a roundhouse kick to his gut that left him bent over and sucking air. “Yeah, yeah, so I’ve heard.”

  He recovered quickly and sent a left hook my way. I may have been small, but that made me quick. I ducked it and danced out of his reach. Not quick enough, though. He closed the distance I’d put between us in two long legged strides and slammed me up against the wall. My head cracked against the solid limestone and dots danced in my vision.

  “You think that’s funny?” His thick fingers dug into my shoulder blades and I practically dangled against the wall.

  “No. But this is.” I yanked up my knee, catching him right in the family jewels, and hit the floor hard as he howled like a wounded bear.

  His taser was clipped to the back of his belt, completely exposed as he curled over himself trying to ease the pain. I snatched it without a second thought and lit him up like the Fourth of July. His large body flopped and spasmed on the floor at my feet before falling still.

  My stupid conscience chose that moment to make a rare appearance, forcing me to waste several precious seconds checking to make sure he was still alive and breathing, before swiping his key card and letting myself into the containment facility. I’d never actually been inside the cells before. They were . . . awful.

  The stench alone was disgusting, wreaking of fear, and blood, and sweat, and other bodily fluids. Holding my gag reflex in check, I crossed the filth ridden floor, scanning cage after empty cage. Alone in the last cell lay a heap of flesh and cloth.