Proxy: An Avalon Novella Read Online Free Page A

they’d finished unloading the first round of barrels for the party.
    Soon after, Celeste assumed her role as servant with remarkable ease, managing to get all the relays for the master control hub and comm into place. The role allowed her to come and go from the palace without passing through the metal detectors. All servants were supposed to have gone through a physical security check at the gate.
    Once the unit was up and running, Danforth and Lizzie hacked into the palace’s security system, Lizzie radiating eagerness like some kind of electrical current. Flynn’s and Shady’s parts would come later.
    Now it was Jeth’s turn to get into place. He approached the long flight of wide marble steps that led up to the massive pavilion lining the front of the emperor’s palace. A row of white pillars, carved in the likenesses of warrior men and women wearing fitted helmets and armor, held up thepavilion’s roof like priests in a religious ritual. The main doors to the palace stood open, with lines of armed sentries sporting the red uniform of the emperor’s personal guard flanking both sides of the doors.
    At the sight of them, Jeth reached up and scratched behind his ear, surreptitiously pressing the communicator patch affixed to his skin. “Heading in. Turning you off,” he whispered.
    “Gotcha, Longshot,” Lizzie’s voice echoed inside his ear a second later. The sound of it made him stumble in shock.
    “What are you doing on the line?”
    “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it covered. Just call me Little Hawk.”
    Jeth grimaced. His little sister, first-time criminal.
    Shoving the thought away before one of the guards noticed the grim look on his face, Jeth pressed the patch again, holding it long enough to terminate the connection completely.
    He willed a confident smile as he stepped into the line for the security check. When he reached the front, he slid his counterfeit invitation out of his back pocket and handed it to a gray-haired man. The man’s bored expression remained in place as he slid the invitation through the scanner. The red light on the scanner turned green at once with an audible beep.
    “ID please,” the man said, still not looking up. Jeth suspected he might start yawning any second.
    Jeth considered cracking a joke, but held back, his new resolution to play it safe echoing in his head. He pressed hisright thumb to the reader and its light switched from red to green in moments.
    “Enjoy your stay,” the gray-haired man said, handing the invitation back.
    “Oh, I plan to,” Jeth said, allowing himself a moment’s indulgence of the old cocky attitude. He’d learned early that confidence could take you through any number of sticky situations. He slid the invitation back into his pocket for safekeeping.
    He passed through the main doors without hesitating, even though he was well aware that full body scanners had been attached to the doorframes to check his person for metal or anything else suspicious. The only things Jeth had to worry about were the contact lens in his right eye and the communicator patch. But the former was too small to show up on a scan, and with the latter powered off, there was no chance of it registering.
    Jeth waited until he entered the grand ballroom at the end of the long main hallway to power the communicator back on. The music, something fast with heavy bass, was loud enough to make the insides of his ears numb. So loud that he couldn’t actually hear himself speak as he said into the comm, “Entry achieved.”
    “Good job, Longshot,” Lizzie said. “You’ve got fifty-three minutes until your rendezvous with Tailspin.”
    “Roger.” This time he left the connection open.
    He slowly swept his gaze over the room, taking in the scene. Hundreds of people filled the center of the dance floor,their bodies writhing and bouncing in and out of rhythm with the music. More people mingled about the buffet tables set around the edges of the room and covered