Free LEGACY BETRAYED by Rachel Eastwood Page A

in return, Trimpot is given a place in his court. It’s really perfect, isn’t it?” She could see him thinking, so she pressed again. This was, ironically, the closest she’d come to subterfuge since joining the rebels. “I mean, look at me, afraid to show my face in public for fear of execution, and all I really did was ask a question at the centennial.”
    “But what can you do about it now?” Liam asked, seeming genuine.
    “What can we do, you mean,” Legacy corrected.
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you! Do you really want to see all this happening and do nothing? You work for the damn CIN-3 , don’t you?” Liam’s mouth flapped silently, finally speechless. “Well?” Legacy kept on, knowing she had him in her grasp now. “Do you want to see more evidence of corruption swept under the rug? Only this time, it’s not just a roll of film; these are the lives of one hundred innocent people. But you could stop it. You could get out the message! That it’s a trap!”
    The final shove caused Liam some backlash. “And lose my job?” he retorted. “And get arrested? Tried for treason? Executed myself? Exa . . . I don’t know–”
    “Then let me,” she replied flatly. “Because I do know.”
    “Let you what?”
    “Let me have your CIN-3 key.”
    “Exa,” Liam said again. “I don’t know.”
    “If I get caught, I’ll tell them that I stole it from you.”
    “But –what if you do get caught? That’s what I’m worried about,” Liam replied.
    “Remember how our personality scores were so alike, Liam?” she asked him. “Our results noted that we were both people of action. Neither one of us can just stand by and let something go wrong when we could stop it. Let someone get hurt when we could stop it.”
    Liam sighed and extracted a double-ended key. This key could be used to bypass high clearance checkpoints, and only belonged to staff members. “Here,” he said.
    Legacy kissed the key. “And you say I never listen,” she said.
    Liam grimaced. “You listen when you care,” he corrected. “So hear this: Dyna is usually in the studio. But she always leaves during the commercials to refresh her drink.”
     
                  Liam had gone long ago, and now, it was getting dark, and Legacy was all alone.
                  There was a leak forming in the drywall over this bed. It hadn’t started to drip yet, but it was just searching for the seam.
                  Legacy stared at the dark, sagging paint, wondering how long it would take before she was awoken by a torrent of some ceiling pipe’s runoff.
                  “Duke expressed frustration in an interview earlier this week with his complete lack of leads regarding the terror attack of the coronation ceremony . . .” Dyna Logan went on quietly from the radio.
                  This was the fourth day since Legacy had seen anyone from Chance for Choice. Rain hadn’t visited at all, but she had mentioned before leaving for work, Monday morning, that the hospital would likely be flooded and her shifts unusually burdensome. More noticeably, though, Dax had not visited either. Legacy had been lonely and bored, and more than once drifted down to the bar for comfort. Its patrons called it “the oil den,” she now knew. She kept it to a single drink minimum, worried what she might do under the influence of too much Calm. Abandoning Glitch’s for the comforts of home had been insanely irresponsible.
    She’d returned once since, to gather a burlap sack set out by her parents. It’d originally been sent home with her from the prison tower of the Taliko Archipelagos, jammed with her hosiery, boots, jacket, and a glass blunderbuss called a color cannon, magenta paint still sloshing in its chamber. Her parents had jammed some clothing on top of all this and left it on the porch for her.
    Thankfully, she now wore the coppery, vinyl tank top and pleated skirt, a (clean) garment which was the staple of