The Gate by Kaitlyn O'Connor Read Free Book Online

funded!”
    “It just doesn’t make any sense because
we don’t know what it was about!” Brenda countered. “That doesn’t
rule out their involvement. Someone thought he was getting too
close to something they didn’t want exposed.”
    Carly frowned. “He isn’t Devlin, Bren,”
she finally said gently. “I just used the sim that was so much like
him and had the company develop a cyborg that resembled him. There
was no DNA involved and even if there had been the cyborg won’t
have his memories.”
    She felt guilty as soon as she said
that because the cyborg had planted a seed of doubt in her own
mind. He’d seemed damned convincing—even though she knew it just
wasn’t possible that he could actually be Devlin.
    “So it won’t hurt for me to meet him,”
Brenda pointed out with a touch of triumph. “In fact, it might be
the healthiest thing I could do. It would clear my mind of the idea
that, somehow, he was Devlin.”
    Carly chewed her lip thoughtfully. She
still felt like it was a very bad idea, but she also thought Brenda
had a point. Maybe it would be better to eliminate the idea that
the cyborg was anything but a facsimile of Devlin? “I think we
should play it safe, anyway. I mean, if there’s anything to your
theory about Devlin’s death, I don’t think we should take any
chances. We’ll need a safe place to meet.”
    * * * *
    There were still disturbing holes in
his memory, but Devlin had remembered enough to be distinctly
uneasy as Carly guided him through the unfamiliar complex. He
remembered her—well enough he had to wonder how those memories had
eluded him. What bothered him was that the memories he had of her
were … more like dreams than reality. He remembered making love to
her, many times, and yet they were almost like … out of body
experiences, real enough he felt heat wash through him when the
images flowed through his mind, but almost more as if they’d
happened to someone else, as if he’d been a spectator instead of a
participant.
    Truthfully, the more he remembered, the
more confused he was and the more uneasy and filled with
dread.
    He’d remembered the accident, the
point, he was certain, where everything had changed for him. He
knew that had to be the event that had caused his memory loss and …
well the strange hard-to-accept things that he’d experienced since.
Or thought he’d experienced.
    The surfacing of that memory had
created more confusion and uneasiness, though, not cleared things
up for him as he’d thought it would. He remembered thinking
something just wasn’t quite right just before he’d powered up the
reactor to open the gate. Even now he wasn’t certain what that
‘something’ was. It might have been no more than intuition or a
‘sixth sense’ that something just wasn’t quite right. He thought,
though, that some part of his mind had detected the ‘something’ and
just hadn’t had time to figure out what that something
was.
    Still hadn’t, because it was still
maddeningly elusive.
    Something told him, though, that
whatever it was that had gone wrong and caused the ‘accident’
wasn’t an accident at all.
    Someone had tampered with his equipment
and it was impossible to put that down to a benign, unintentional
meddling.
    He was as certain as he could be that
it was completely intentional. What he wasn’t certain of was
whether or not he was supposed to be caught in the explosion and
that meant that someone might not be happy to know he’d survived
it.
    Those thoughts led him to another
unpalatable question about his current situation.
    How had it come about that Carly
believed he was no more than a cyborg? She’d ordered a companion.
He didn’t doubt that she was telling the truth, but how was it that
he’d arrived instead of the companion cyborg she’d
expected?
    Some truly bizarre mix-up at the
hospital?
    He dismissed that after a moment since
it was impossible to develop any kind of theory to explain
it.
    As unpleasant as it was