The Gate

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  “I don’t actually know what happened,” he said finally. “I sensed that something was wrong just as I began powering up the reactor to open the gate. I’ve tried since then to figure out what that something was or if it was anything at all. All I can remember, though, is this … sinking feeling that something just wasn’t quite right a few seconds before the explosion. And then a blinding light.

  “It seemed that a lot of time passed before I became aware of my surroundings again.”

  He stopped. “I’m a scientist,” he continued after a long pause. “I won’t speculate about what happened—either before or after the explosion. I couldn’t remember anything at all at first—not even my name. I knew there were people around me, or thought I knew. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard them.

  “I finally began to get my memories back after I was …. I can only say that it’s clear I was severely injured in the explosion. I didn’t have any sense of my body anymore until I woke up in this unit. I’m not sure how much of me is cybernetic—most, I think—but I am Devlin Bear. I did survive the explosion and … I remember my research, which, I think, is the most important thing.”

  The silence that followed that revelation was longer than the first. Carly was abruptly swamped by guilt for doubting him. No wonder he seemed so aloof! It must be horrible for him to realize the damage was so extensive that he’d had to have so much of his body replaced with cybernetics!

  “Oh my gosh! Heaven!” somebody near the back gasped out loud, stunning the entire group for several minutes. “The light! So many people that died and were resuscitated have talked about it! And the awareness of others! The energy! It’s the souls! He found the gate to heaven!”

  “You don’t really believe that superstitious tripe?” a man retorted angrily.

  “She’s right! It does sound like the stories I’ve heard about people passing over and then being pulled back! And we know he couldn’t have survived that explosion! It’s the only explanation that makes sense if you think about it! This universe he found … it’s the hall of souls!”

  “Hold on!” Devlin said, trying to intercede before the speculation could get any wilder, appalled that anyone had leapt to such a conclusion based on the little he recalled. “The brain can survive as long as five minutes without the body before it begins to die of oxygen starvation. If I was to guess, I’d say that is what happened. That would explain the sense that I didn’t have a body and also explain why I could hear but not see. Hearing is the last sense to go. The explosion itself was the source of the light—or possibly the death of the ocular nerves …. Clearly the trauma to my body was extensive, but I survived it or I wouldn’t be here to talk about it. No doubt it was complete chaos when the emergency personnel arrived and in the confusion ….”

  “That makes a hell of a lot more sense than that bullshit about heaven!”

  “Because you don’t want to believe!” the first woman said angrily. “You’re like the pessimist who always thinks, because they look at the worst possibilities, that they have a practical outlook—and they’re no more practical than the optimist! You could at least be open-minded enough to consider it!”

  “I don’t believe because it doesn’t make any damned sense! He said he’d discovered another universe and a limitless supply of energy—not people and not souls!”

  “Our life force is energy. He said he sensed other people around him.”

  “He didn’t say anything about going there,” someone else pointed out. “So I’d say the people he sensed were the emergency workers … or possibly hospital personnel.”

  “They don’t send humans into those kinds of situations! He would’ve been surrounded by androids.”

  “He was mortally injured. Maybe he just thought it was other people?”

  “And maybe it was nothing but … hallucinations because he was dying?”

  Before the discussion could get any more heated—and it seemed to be escalating toward real violence, a piercing alarm sounded. When it did, everyone froze for several seconds and then pandemonium ensued. They people who’d gathered sprang into motion, slamming in to each other as they all tried to launch themselves into a run at the same time and flee in different directions.

  “They’re on to us!” Brenda screamed above the racket, grabbing Carly’s arm in a painful grip. “We have to go! Now!”

  The image of rats fleeing through the sewers before a flood flickered through Carly’s mind as she struggled to switch gears mentally and catch up with her body’s flight instinct. She was already running at Brenda’s urging but without a clue of what or who she was running from or where she was going. Within a few minutes, though, she, Devlin, and Brenda were completely alone and everybody else had vanished down a different corridor in the mechanical labyrinth.

  Carly was breathless with effort by the time they’d traversed the first straight away and turned down another. They made two more turns that had her thoroughly lost and then Brenda abruptly skidded to a halt.

  Carly was just glad for the chance to catch her breath until she saw what had caused Brenda to stop so abruptly.

  There was a wall of armed men in full military gear directly in front of them, blocking the stairs Carly realized had been Brenda’s destination.

  Apparently Devlin assessed the situation faster than either of them. He’d been taking up the rear in their flight, but even as first Brenda and then Carly halted, he plowed past them and charged toward the soldiers. “Run!” he growled.

  Carly jumped at the bellowed command. She wasn’t certain of which direction to run when she didn’t know the layout of the complex like Brenda obviously did, but she whirled to head back the way they’d come. Brenda nearly knocked her down charging past her.

  With the loud sounds of a mighty scuffle behind them to spur them on, they pounded back along the corridor. Carly was running so fast, she ran right past an intersecting corridor that Brenda veered into. By the time she’d managed to skid to a halt and backtrack, Brenda had disappeared.

  Panic threatened to overtake her, but after pausing a moment to catch her breath, she began to jog down that corridor searching for another. She turned down the first she came to, but she saw no sign of Brenda. Stopping again, she debated whether to backtrack and try to find Brenda or to continue and hope she was going the right way.

  The sound of pursuit behind her settled the matter. She began running again, trying not to think about the consequences if she got so lost she couldn’t find her way out of the labyrinth.

  She discovered that was one worry she could dismiss. The next time she took a turn, she ran smack into a group of soldiers. She tried to fight her way free and run, but it was a lost cause.

  Chapter Eight

  Carly didn’t know if she was more shocked at being arrested at all or stunned and terrified to discover the men who’d captured her actually were military and not police in riot uniform or security guards, which would’ve been her preference by far. Somehow the fact that it was a military capture was a lot more scary … particularly when they began questioning her about the groups’ plans, the name of the leader of the ‘terrorists’, and what her role in the group was. At first she was too shocked and appalled at the accusations they kept flinging at her to gather her wits. Later she was just plain exhausted and confused because no matter what she said, they kept right on questioning her, asking the same things over and over but merely rephrasing the questions every time.

  She didn’t see anyone else. She had no idea if she was the only one of the entire group that had been caught or if they’d managed to net everyone.

  She didn’t particularly care about the strangers in the group, though. She wanted to know if Devlin and Brenda had been arrested, as well.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t dare ask. She wasn’t naming any names! It was just plain outrageous that she’d been taken into custody. No way was she going to land anybody else in the situation she’d found herself in when the bastards had no business arresting
any of them.

  She didn’t know what the group might have done in the past, but they certainly hadn’t seemed to have any criminal agenda. The leader—she assumed the man talking had been—hadn’t suggested anything at all but informing the public of what the government was up to.

  They had the right to assemble! They had the right to free speech! How dare their government pull such a stunt!

  And would anybody ever know?

  Or was she just going to ‘disappear’ like the people Brenda had told her about?

  During the short periods when she was allowed to rest, she divided her time between worrying about disappearing and how they might make her disappear and the rest worrying about Devlin and Brenda—mostly Devlin. After a while she was so exhausted she ceased to worry about dying or disappearing at all. She was just too tired to be afraid, but that didn’t stop her from worrying about what might have happened to Devlin.

  She demanded legal representation until she was hoarse and it fell on deaf ears. She was told she couldn’t have a lawyer.

  Suddenly she had no rights? What the fuck?

  She thought nearly a week passed before she was removed from her cell and, instead of being taken to interrogation again, she was escorted to the spaceport and put on a prisoner transport to be taken back to Earth. They didn’t tell her why they were taking her. They didn’t even tell her they were taking her. She assumed they were, though, when she was taken to the spaceport. She couldn’t think of any other place they might be taking her.

  She caught a glimpse of Devlin as they shoved her into the transport tube. It sent a brief surge of happiness through her and then renewed fear—for him.

  She thought of very little else while they made the trip from the moon colony to Earth, her mind churning with speculation and worse case scenarios that made her sicker to her stomach than the sharp descent and powerful grip of Earth’s real gravity did.

  That was traumatic enough, though, that it distracted her for a short time. She’d been stationed on the moon colony for three years and it was first experience with Earth’s gravity in all that time. Somehow, it hadn’t been nearly as hard to adjust to the artificial gravity on the moon.

  Ignoring the lingering effects of the landing and her physical discomfort as her body tried to adjust to the abrupt change, Carly began searching for Devlin as soon as she was released from the tube she’d been transported in. Disappointment flooded her when she didn’t see him but hope surged again when she was escorted to the gangplank.

  Emerging from the ship was an assault to the senses. The heat and smells of Earth, the pressure and gravity, the brilliance of the sunlight even through the heavy pall of smog that filled Earth’s atmosphere were jolting enough. The sounds nearly deafened her, though.

  It took her a few minutes to sift through the barrage to her senses and figure out what the noise was and when she did fear was uppermost at first.

  There was a virtual sea of people crowding the tall security fence surrounding the landing port, all of them apparently shouting at once until it was nearly impossible to figure out what they were screaming about. Abruptly the cacophony became a chant, however.

  “Release Devlin Bear! Release Devlin Bear!”

  “Let our people go! Let our people go!”

  A jolt went through Carly—surprise, elation, confusion.

  Ok, a little indignation that they weren’t also screaming for her release!

  As her senses adjusted, though, she noticed a lot of people in the crowd were holding and waving placards. Despite the determination of her escorts to rush her from the ship to the transport waiting for them, she managed to catch a few of the words scrawled on some of them.

  ‘Saint and Savior not terrorist!’

  ‘Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s Door!’

  ‘Jesus saves! And Devlin Bear showed us the way!’

  ‘Love not hate!’

  ‘Devlin Bear—miracle worker!’

  The sentiments being waved frantically didn’t remove her confusion. That only deepened.

  The mob surged against the fences as she was shoved into the transport and sheer terror surged in Carly’s heart at it flashed through her mind that all of them were about to be trampled by the frenzied crowd. She caught a glimpse of the fence toppling at the force being exerted against it. Her heart was thundering in her ears as the guards shoved her into a seat. It began to beat harder still as the transport began to rock, barely moving at first and then rocking harder and harder. Abruptly, the transport toppled. Despite the restraints that had been used to secure Carly to her seat, she was pitched from it. Before she could get her bearings or wrap her mind around what had happened, the doors were wrenched off the transport.

  Most of the guards, since they hadn’t been chained as she was, were sprawled on the roof of the vehicle, but several managed to get their firearms and fire off wild shots as people crowded inside. Screams rent air as the deadly missiles found targets, but even as those hapless victims fell, more people crowded forward. In a few moments, the guards had vanished, dragged from the vehicle by the mob. And then more crowded inside the transport and began pulling and battering at the seat Carly was chained to.

  They ripped the entire seat out with her in it since they had no way to break her restraints.

  Carly was too frightened to scream as she was dragged out and then passed through the crowd still dangling from her seat. As scary as that was, it paled when the military managed to bring in reinforcements and began firing into the mob.

  Like the tide, the throng that had rushed the fences and attacked the military transports surged away, carrying her with them.

  * * * *

  Carly was still so shaken hours later, still so wrapped in shock at what had happened, that she could only stare at the cracked concrete walls that housed her blankly. Her mind was working at light speed but not really arriving at any conclusions. Nothing but flashes of the events of the last few hours filled her mind.

  She jumped all over when the door abruptly opened and surged to her feet, her mind screaming ‘flight’ even though there was nowhere to run to. As the shadowy figure in the door stepped forward, though, and just enough light filtered in behind him to make him recognizable, relief and hope ousted the primal urge to flee.

  “Devlin!” she gasped, rushing toward him.

  He opened his arms to her and coiled them around her tightly when she flung herself against his chest.

  “Devlin! I was so scared!” Carly muttered. “I thought I was never going to see you again!”

  “That makes two of us scared stiff,” Devlin said, amusement threading his voice. “That has to be the scariest rescue ever executed in the history of mankind!”

  Carly stiffened. “Rescue?”

  Devlin pulled away far enough to examine her face. “Of course it was a rescue, baby! What did you think?”

  Relief flooded her. “I don’t know. I couldn’t think at all.”

  Devlin cupped the back of her head and tucked her snuggly against his chest. “To be honest, it’s still scary,” he muttered. “They think I’m so kind of …. I don’t know—miracle worker, saint. Religious icon.”

  “I didn’t think anybody believed in any of that anymore,” Carly muttered, feeling uneasiness begin to erode the relief she’d been feeling.

  “They seem to think I’ve been … resurrected, or at least come back from the dead,” he responded wryly. “Brenda managed to escape the net and was smuggled back to Earth along with some of the others. They managed to convince the religious sects that were still active that I was proof of afterlife, and that I’d managed to find Heaven. From there it spread like wildfire. Apparently, everyone’s been waiting for a miracle and they’ve decided I’m the miracle.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I love you, woman. I think I’m glad as hell I got another chance at life. I don’t think I’ll ever figure out exactly what happened.”

  “Wait! Say that again!�
��

  Devlin chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll ever figure out ….”

  Carly pulled away and frowned at him. “Not that part!”

  He tried to look innocent. “The part about getting another chance?”

  She glared at him. “Damn it, Devlin!”

  He glared back at her. “I didn’t hear you say anything.”

  Carly gaped at him, but she felt her face turning red. “I wouldn’t think you could question my feelings—not after the lengths I went through to get you in my bed!”

  He lifted his dark brows. “Soooo … you’re in lust with me?”

  Carly felt her face heat even more. “Oh, I am! Definitely.”