Read Online The Gate by Kaitlyn O'Connor - Free Book Online Page A

swayed toward her, Brenda seemed
to withdraw and he stiffened. “It is me, Brenny.”
    She looked skeptical and his expression
tightened.
    “I don’t know what happened or how it
happened. There are still things I can’t remember. But I know I’m
not just a machine programmed with your brother’s
memories.”
    “You … Dev died. There is no way he
could’ve survived. It just isn’t possible.”
    Devlin started to respond and paused.
His expression tightened. “The HESS is trying to break the patch I
uploaded. It will have it in a matter of seconds. Find a place
where we can safely talk.”
    Carly stared at him in dismay, unnerved
at the suggestion that they were getting in deeper and deeper
trouble, but Brenda looked even more suspicious.
    “If you aren’t a cyborg, how could you
do that?”
    Devlin shook his head. “I didn’t say I
wasn’t more cybernetic than human now. Whatever happened I was
majorly FUBAR. You’re right about that. I just said that I was in
here, Brenny. I am here. I am your brother.”

Chapter Seven

    Carly still didn’t know if she truly
believed that the man she’d fallen in love with still existed
inside the cyborg shell that she’d bought or if she just wanted to
believe it and he’d managed to quite the threads of doubt with the
things he’d said and done. It would’ve been easier to know her own
mind if she hadn’t wanted so badly to discover that Devlin was
alive and she had the chance of finding the love she
wanted.
    Because she realized that, even if it
was true, she only had a chance of it.
    She had fallen for the Sim lover that
had shared her bed so many lonely nights. She’d gotten the chance
to know him intimately and then come to know the other side of him
through Brenda and even the history she’d dug up
herself.
    As unconventional as learning the man
had been, she knew Devlin Bear as well as anyone could possibly
know another person. She thought it was entirely possible that she
knew him better because of the unconventional way they’d met and
she’d learned all the intimate details about him. If they’d
actually met and gotten to know each other in the traditional way,
it might have been years, if ever, before she’d come to know him as
she did now.
    It hadn’t been that way for him. She’d
chosen his Sim. He hadn’t gotten to know hers.
    And she was afraid that the way he had
gotten to know her didn’t show her in her best light or allow for
the possibility of him falling in love with her.
    In fact, as dismaying as it was, the
circumstances might make it impossible for him to care for her at
all.
    Even future tense.
    She felt guilty for even focusing on
that, though, when his situation was so … well, bizarre.
    She should have her mind on more
important things—like survival, she thought uneasily as they
followed the guide that had been sent to take them to the meeting
that had been arranged.
    They’d entered a different way than
before, but they were still in the mechanical labyrinth of the
colony.
    It was dangerous. Any doubts she’d
entertained before that there was an organization of rebels that
were dead serious about toppling the government stranglehold on the
populace had vanished. As long as it was nothing more than
suspicions and hadn’t involved anything more than the occasional
‘secret’ meeting between her and Bren, she’d comforted herself with
the belief that the group was nothing more than a handful of
malcontents that got together to complain.
    That comforting illusion had begun to
fall apart almost as soon as she’d taken her obsession over Devlin
to the next level.
    The lighting was poor in the room they
were led to, but sufficient to make it clear that the room was
filled with people. She wondered if the lighting was deliberate to
help conceal the identity of the rebels.
    They were told to wait near the
entrance.
    “We have reason to believe our security
measures may have been breached and time isn’t a luxury we