The Gate (9 page)

“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.