Free The Gate by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

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