Eternity Crux Read online

  And there was the final nail in my coffin.

  ><><><><

  “Aurgh.” My entire body felt like it had been stuffed in a blender and set to puree.

  “Aura?” Gentle hands rolled me onto my back and cradled my head as it lolled to the side.

  A face swam in my vision. “Sayer?”

  “Hey, there. It’s alright. Relax. You’re okay, now.”

  Okay? Not exactly the word I would have chosen to describe how I felt at the moment. More like the hangover from hell with a first-class case of the flu on top. “Where are we?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Sayer’s fingers trailed over my cheek, leaving a fiery path in their wake. “We don’t have much longer. You should rest while you can.”

  “Sayer . . .” I squinted the rest of the room into focus. Though it made me dizzy, I scanned for clues and my gaze settled on the high-tech equipment in the corner. Some really new-age stuff. As in new, new age. Better question . . . “When are we?”

  “Don’t worry about that now. How are you feeling?”

  “Sayer. When are we?”

  He frowned at me, obviously displeased with my dog-with-a-bone mentality, but that wasn’t going to change a thing and he knew it. “We’re back in our time. I brought you home.”

  “What? Why?” I sat and my head spun. The whole room spun. The whole freaking planet. Faster than normal. Carousel-on-crack fast.

  “Whoa. Slow down.” Through the whirl of color, I was able to pick out the red of Sayer’s shirt and reached for it. His arms closed around me, steadying me, as everything else settled back into place.

  “Why would you bring us here? Are you crazy? They’re hunting us.”

  “What choice did I have? You were sick.”

  “Yeah, but, Sayer—”

  “Don’t tear into him too badly. He did the right thing . . . For once.” A portly man with a scruffy gray mustache that made it look like all the hair from his shiny head had migrated to his upper lip stepped into the room wearing a wide smile I never thought I’d see again.

  “Doctor Ballard?”

  “Who else, my dear?”

  I reached for him, desperate to touch the man I’d considered a father for most of my life, but knowing full-well Sayer would probably tackle me if I tried to get up. Not to mention my legs weren’t exactly cooperating.

  “Welcome home, Auralia.” Ballard’s crushing embrace really did feel like home, but that didn’t change the facts.

  “We shouldn’t be here.” I pulled away, sticking with the stubborn streak ingrained in me since birth.

  “You’re wrong. You’re exactly where you need to be. Sayer made you a passenger on too many jumps, too fast. Without your own crux to stabilize you, your cells couldn’t handle it. They were coming apart. You were coming apart.”

  “This isn’t Sayer’s fault.” I jumped to his defense, knowing Ballard would take every shot he could at him. They’d never been what you’d call . . . close. And one look at Sayer exposed just how much guilt he already harbored.

  “That’s beside the point. At least the boy had enough sense to bring you back here. When else would they have had the knowledge to diagnose that? The technology to treat it?”

  I could respect the predicament. I knew the day they asked me to turn over my eternity crux that I’d regret going along with it, but I’d still been naïve enough at the time to think we could complete our mission before anyone noticed. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention, so I’d gone along with their orders like a good little soldier. The order alone should have been enough to tip me off that things weren’t going to be as cut and dry as we’d hoped. They were already on to us, moving in slowly for the kill.

  “Besides, it’s nice to see my girl again. But for now you must rest. Your body still needs time to recover.” With a quick kiss on the cheek, Ballard excused himself from the room, leaving Sayer and I alone.

  “You shouldn’t have stayed here.” I kicked my feet back up on the bed and reclined my aching body, slowly until my head hit the soft, fluffy pillow, abandoning any hope of going anywhere soon.

  “What part of ‘you were sick’ are you missing?” Sayer tipped his head and cocked a brow.

  “The part where that has any bearing on your ability to travel.”

  “The damage must be worse than we thought if you seriously think I’d leave you here alone.” He settled beside me, sitting against the headboard, and drew the covers up over my body and his legs. “Close your eyes, Aura. Stop fighting the rest you need. I’ll be right here when you wake up. I promise.”

  I hated being told what to do. It only made me want to do the exact opposite. But I couldn’t fight Sayer’s command if I’d tried. Sleep crept over me like a thief in the night and I succumbed before I even processed a thought not to.

  ><><><><

  “Aura. Wake up.”

  I groaned and buried my face in a hard, yet not entirely uncomfortable pillow. A pillow that smelled of ice and wind. Blinking my eyes opened, I got an up close and personal view of red cotton stretched over hard muscle. Lifting my gaze, I located the head attached to said muscle, and blinked again.

  “Sayer?” I was draped over his torso like some kind of house cat. “How long was I out?”

  “A few hours, but we have to go now. We have to keep moving.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “Okay.”

  Sayer slid out of bed first, and then offered me a hand to do the same. I wasn’t exactly stable, but he steadied me until my feet no longer felt like they were stranding on a funhouse floor. “We should pack some food. Where’s Bal—”

  The slamming of the front door was the only warning we received before a Legion officer exploded into the room, looking far less surprised to see us than we were to see him. They’d been chasing us so long that I’d actually let myself believe they’d never really catch us as long as we kept running. So much for that theory.

  Sayer set me aside with a tenderness that did not foreshadow the rage with which he hurled himself at the man, after I was safely out of harm’s way.

  “Sayer!”

  He beat on the officer until his knuckles turned bloody and the man’s body hit the floor with a solid thump, but he wasn’t alone. Two more officers barged through the door and Sayer kept on fighting. He fought tooth and nail like our very lives depended on it. Because they did. And all I could do was stand back and watch, using the majority of my strength simply to remain upright.

  “Say!” Three more uniform clad monkey puppets with the Legion’s hands up their rear ends charged into the room and surrounded us. “Sayer, stop.”

  It took him a moment to realize what had happened. The fight was over. We’d lost.

  Sayer flattened me against his chest at the same time as his free hand closed around his crux, and I braced myself for the inevitable pain.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A cocky smirk tipped Galen’s lips. “Look at her. She’s barely holding together. One more jump could kill her. Are you willing to take that chance?”

  I knew Galen wasn’t lying. Everything inside of me felt so fragile. Another jump without my personal crux, tuned to my cells to counterbalance the effects, would likely shatter me. But as Sayer’s gaze fell to me, I silently begged him not to listen. No doubt being lost in a jump would be preferable to whatever Galen had planned for us.

  I knew the moment Sayer made his decision. His shoulders slumped as though the weight of eternity rested on them.

  “Go, Sayer. Please. You can still get out of here.”

  I used what little strength I had left to try and extricate myself from his embrace, but his arms only tightened around me. His nose brushed over my ear, followed by his lips. “Not a chance.”

  “Secure them until transport arrives.” Galen looked at us like we were the scum on the bottom of his boot. Funny, I felt the same way about him.

  Some brute tore Sayer’s crux from around his neck and herded us into a small side room B
allard kept stocked for emergency medical situations.

  “Where’s Doctor Ballard? What did you do to him?”

  Galen looked down on me as though I were dumber than a box of rocks. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about him. You have bigger problems.”

  That did it. If I’d had full control of my physical abilities, I would have punch him right in that ugly face of his. As it was, I needed Sayer’s help just to make it into the medical closet. The hard-core locking device that Ballard had installed to deter would-be thieves wasn’t doing us any favors. It snapped into place as I fumbled around for the light switch.

  The ‘closet’ was really more like a small room, large enough to perform procedures when necessary. The lack of windows made it ideal for avoiding prying eyes—the kind that required you to get your medical procedures in a closet, rather than a hospital—but again, it was no help for our current predicament.

  Despite the obvious, Sayer stalked the room, shoving aside machinery and shelving units like there might be some secret exit behind one of them. There wasn’t.

  “Son of a—” Whirling around, he sought something else to lash out at, sending metal instruments clattering across the floor and a machine smashing to bits that popped and sparked its way into oblivion.

  I wasn’t in any shape to stop him, but I reached out anyway. Fingers twisting in the soft cotton of his shirt, I stepped into him. So close that I could feel the way his entire body shook with rage.

  “Say, you’ve got to hold it together.” My hand rose and fell along with his chest. “Please. I need you to hold it together right now. I can’t do this on my own.”

  “Aura.” His fingers folded around mine, pressing my hand hard enough against his chest that I could feel his pulse racing beneath my palm. “This is all my fault. I should have listened to you. When you told me to let it go, let someone else deal with it . . . You were right.”

  “I was a coward.” Curling my fingers through his, I met his turbulent gaze. “You were right. They need to be stopped.”

  “But we haven’t stopped anyone. All I’ve done is gotten you hunted, hurt, and now . . . Now, I’ve gotten you killed.” His fingers combed through my wild hair, palm settling against my cheek.

  The warmth of his skin on mine fueled the swirl of emotion whipping to full frenzy inside me. Without thinking, I turned my face to nuzzle his hand and pressed a kiss into his palm. If my brain had been firing on all cylinders, it might have felt like a strange thing to do, but it didn’t. It felt right to me. And it must have felt right to Sayer, too, because the next thing I knew his arms slid around me, hauling me into him as close as he could get me. It wasn’t close enough. If I could have, I would have burrowed beneath his skin and become part of him.

  “Auralia.” All he said was my name, but in that one utterance I heard it all. The fear, the desperation, the apology. The . . . love?

  “Collect the prisoners!” Galen’s voice rang through our private moment, shattering it like a sledgehammer to glass.

  Sayer pulled away, heading for the desk. Hiding wasn’t going to do us a whole heck of a lot of good, but that didn’t seem to be what he had in mind. Tearing off a sheet of paper from one of Ballard’s many journals, he started scribbling, while I craned my neck to see what could possibly be important enough that he’d feel the need to jot it down now.

  “I’m going to make it right, Aura. I’m going to make it all right.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about and when he swept me into his arms, I didn’t care. His lips covered mine, stealing my breath away as the door flew open and we were torn apart. Sayer was ripped from my grasp and I was left stumbling from the closet, dazed and confused.

  “Aura . . .” Sayer took a measuring look at me and, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, nodded to himself. “Run!”

  Before I could even process what was happening, Sayer had swiped the taser from one of the officer’s belts and the other was flopping around on the floor like a ragdoll.

  “Hey!” The first officer grabbed a hold of Sayer’s arm, wrenching the device from his hand, but it was too late for his friend. He was out cold on the carpet.

  “Run, Aura!” Sayer struggled with the officer, occupying him, buying me time.

  I didn’t want to. Leaving him behind was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but it did neither if us any good for me to stay. So I hoisted myself out the window, dropped to the ground below. How I managed it, I’ll never know. My arms and legs shook, my head swam, my knees nearly buckled, but something kicked in. Adrenaline? Survival instincts? Utter stubbornness, maybe, but something fueled my stride as I ran. And I ran. Not abandoning him—never abandoning him—but living to fight another day. To fight for Sayer.

  ><><><><

  The wooden floorboards were warped and entirely dislodged in places. Some kind of funky, florescent mold that could not be healthy climbed a good three feet up the walls. I gagged on the dank, musty stench permeating the air. Sandbags that obviously failed to do their job during the last flood season lined the walls. The dilapidated home was in bad enough condition that it had been abandoned for some time, making it the perfect place to catch my breath while I waited for my vision to go back to normal, my body to stop vibrating, and the feeling to return to my extremities.

  I’d barely found my way into what may have once been a bedroom, but now sat empty and derelict, when my knees sagged. The dirt-coated floor came up to meet me like a fast rising tide and I flinched on impact. I lay there like a sad sack of potatoes, completely incapable of moving another inch.

  Time was marked only by the bright moon creeping across the small window. I lingered in that place between sleep and wakefulness, barely conscious of its passing, until the banging and creaking of rotted wood demanded my focused attention.

  “Auralia? Auralia, are you in here?”

  My head perked up and I scanned the dim room. “Ballard?”

  He appeared in the doorway, his oversized build filling the frame and I choked on my relief.

  “Oh, dear.” He hustled over to my side, grabbing a sandbag on his way and positioning it beneath my head.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I saw you climb out the window. I was outside when the officers arrived. I didn’t know what to do, so I hid. Then I followed you. You moved faster than I imagined you could. It’s taken me this long to catch up with you. I’m not exactly in shape, but neither are you. You must rest. Your body isn’t capable of withstanding this kind of abuse.”

  He didn’t need to tell me. I’d been hearing it from every bone, muscle, and tendon from the minute I’d jumped out that window. How I ever convinced my legs to run is beyond me, but they did. They carried me all the way here. All the way to safety. All the way away from Sayer. And now they’d called it quits in no uncertain terms.

  “They took him.” A sob built on a volatile combination of grief, exhaustion, and desperation tore from my chest. “We have to he-help him. We h-have to he-he-help Sayer!”

  “Alright, calm down. You’re getting yourself worked up. We can talk more about this in the morning.”

  Worked up? Darn right I was getting worked up. Ballard may not have particularly liked Sayer, but he’d always respected that I did. “No. We’ll talk about it now.”

  “You want to help him? Because if you don’t get some rest and heal, you won’t be in any shape to help anyone.”

  He had a fair point. It didn’t make the idea of napping while Sayer was trapped in Galen’s vile clutches any easier to stomach, though. My mind raced with a million terrible things that could be happening to him right that moment. It was too much. I hadn’t cried since I was a child, but tears pricked my eyes and slide under closed eyelids to trickle paths down my cheeks.

  “Hush now, Auralia. Just rest. Things won’t seem so bad in the morning.”

  I didn’t know how he could be so foolish, but I let my mind drift, certain that things wouldn’t seem so bad while unconscious.r />
  ><><><><

  “Aura? Aura!” Sayer came barging into Ballard’s exam room at the hospital, where I happened to be delivering him lunch during his break.

  “Sayer? What are you doing here?”

  “We have to go. We have to get out of here. Now.” His steady gaze latched onto mine. “They know.”

  My heart sank like a hydrogen fusion coil in a puddle of T2O.

  “Who knows what? Where are you going?” Ballard bustled around his desk, abandoning the uneaten pastrami on rye.

  I’d hoped to keep him out of this mess, but it was about to blow up in all of our faces. “The Legion is corrupt. We’ve been gathering evidence against them for months in an attempt to expose it.”

  “But that’s over now.” Defeat colored Sayer’s words. “They’re on to us. We have to run.”

  “What about the file?” We couldn’t take it with us. They’d never stop hunting us.

  “I took care of it.” He didn’t elaborate, but I sincerely hoped it meant he’d tossed it in the incinerator. It was a painful loss, but better than letting the Legion get a look at the sheer amount of info locked away in both our heads. Somehow I doubted they’d stay attached to the rest of our bodies for much longer after that.

  “You did this!” Ballard’s face turned an unnatural shade of maroon that I was altogether unsure was healthy. “You dragged her into this. Auralia would never be so stupid as to—”

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. And Sayer’s right. If they know what we’ve been up to, we need to get out of here now or we’re as good as dead.”

  Ballard’s intense coloring faded with his rage, morphing into something much more somber. “My girl.”

  He hadn’t called me that since I was little. It twisted something inside of me and made what had to come next that much harder. “I’m sorry. I’ll miss you.”

  “And I, you. You—” Ballard turned a bitter stare on Sayer. “You protect my girl. You keep her safe. You got her into this mess, you get her out of it.”