Eternity Crux by Jamie Canosa Read Free Book Online Page A

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 un luckily—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 cursed 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