Eternity Crux Read Online Free PDF

broke him. Galen broke Sayer. He’s the only one who knew where the file was.
    “I am sorry, my dear.” Ballard’s heavy arm fell over my shoulders, steering me mindlessly away from the violated hiding spot. The blatant relief in his voice belittled his words. “The fate of the boy is pitiable, but you’ve done all you could. There’s nothing more to do.”
    “No.” That couldn’t be right. I refused to accept that the Legion could make me that helpless. “I’m going back.”
    “What?”
    There was one place—one time —I knew for sure where the file would be. Right here, three months ago. “If I can jump back to the day he hid it, the day we ran, I can get the file right from the source.”
    “You can’t. Auralia, you’re not strong enough to—”
    The shock of the empty locker quickly shriveled and turned to ash, burnt away by my fury. “I really wish you’d stop telling me what I can and can’t do. I’m not a child anymore, Ballard. I know you’re disappointed with how I turned out. I know you wanted me to be a good citizen, follow the rules, keep my mouth shut and my head down, but—”
    “You’re darn right I did! After what happened to your parents—” Shock at his own disclosure widened Ballard’s eyes.
    “My parents? What does any of this have to do with them?”
    “Nothing. It has nothing to do with them.”
    One thing Ballard wasn’t, was a good liar. “Ballard . . .”
    He also couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. Or so I thought. But this one was a doozy. And he’d been keeping it from me my entire life.
    Dragging me into his old office, he locked the door and slumped back against it. “You know your father and I were more than colleagues, we were like family. He was a brother to me, but he was also a fool. He saw some documents he wasn’t supposed to and he just couldn’t let it go. I warned him. I told him they’d only bring trouble, but he wouldn’t listen, and look where that got him. And your mother. You’re just like him—stubborn, pigheaded—but don’t let that make you repeat his mistakes.”
    “Are you . . .?” I was already in the middle of one dilemma up to my eyeballs, I really couldn’t handle an identity crisis on top. “Are you telling me my parents were insurgents? And that it got them killed?”
    Ballard’s gaze turned inward, his chin wobbling as his head bobbed on his thick neck. “He brought you to my house the night they came for them. Told me to keep you safe. I didn’t know what was happening, but by the next morning, both he and your mother were dead.”
    “The Legion killed my parents. And you let me go to work for them?”
    “I tried to stop you, but you wouldn’t listen to me.” He had fought my career choice, but I thought that was because he’d wanted me to following his footsteps and go into medicine. Personally, I couldn’t even imagine what my bedside manner would be like. People would have died of the plague before they came to see me twice.
    “You knew all along that they were corrupt. That they were killing innocent people. My parents! And you let me believe they died in a car accident. How could you?”
    “I was keeping you safe like I promised your father. Everything I did was to. Keep. You. Safe! You have no idea how hard it was for me to call them.”
    “Call who?” I shoved aside all of the other chaotic, frenzied thoughts ricocheting through my brain like a pinball machine. Nothing mattered more than that answer.
    And he gave it. He looked me right in the eye, not ashamed at all, and laid it right out there. “The Legion. I hate them as much as you do for what they did to your parents. But when you came back sick . . . dying at my doorstep . . . What else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let this continue to go on.”
    “So you called the Legion? The very people we were running from? The ones who wanted us dead?” Some people’s reasoning skills fascinated me. Some terrified me.
    “Not you, my girl.