The Gate (7 page)

She discovered she needn’t have
worried. The moment they had the privacy to talk without being
recorded Devlin dropped any pretense of having romance on his
mind.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,
Carly. There’s a lot that I don’t understand, but there’s one thing
I’m certain of and that is that I’m not a cyborg. I’m not a
machine.”

Carly looked at him pityingly. “Devlin
….”

His expression tightened. He gripped
her upper arms. “Don’t! I am Devlin Bear. This isn’t programming or
AI. I know who and what I am.”

He sounded so certain Carly felt a
flicker of doubt. “It isn’t possible ….”

He released her and raked a shaking
hand through his hair. Carly felt her belly execute a strange
little quiver at the gesture and more doubt than before. “Why isn’t
it possible?”

Carly swallowed with an effort.
“Because you … Because he died.”

His lips tightened. She could see the
frustration and anger in his eyes. “According to reports—maybe.
That doesn’t mean it was true.”

Carly felt her heart skip a beat. “You
mean to say you remember …? You know you didn’t …. I mean. Oh god!
I don’t know what I mean!”

He smiled faintly. “You aren’t
convinced I’m a cyborg.”

It was statement not a question and
Carly felt a mixture of embarrassment and distress. “I would
absolutely love to believe you really are Devlin Bear because
….”

He lifted his dark brows.
“Because?”

Because she was in love with a man that
no longer existed, had fallen in love with him after he’d died! She
couldn’t say that. She knew he was a cyborg, but he seemed
absolutely real to her and all she could think was how absolutely
crazy it would sound to Devlin, the real Devlin, to have some
stranger tell him she’d fallen in love with his Sim. “Well, I mean,
Brenda is a friend. And it would be wonderful for her to discover
that it was all … just some kind of bizarre mix-up.”

Eagerness flickered in his eyes—and
understanding that made Carly’s cheeks redden with discomfort.
“Sooo—you at least admit it’s possible?”

She felt her throat close with misery.
She struggled with it. “Possible. But not very likely,” she said
sadly. “You were positively identified.”

The excitement vanished from his eyes,
but he frowned thoughtfully. “Body parts.”

Carly felt a little queasy at the
reminder of what Brenda had said. She managed a nod.

“There was an explosion in the lab. I
imagine it was pretty messy. That still doesn’t rule out the
possibility that I survived it. For whatever reason, someone wanted
me to disappear.”

Carly really hated to play devil’s
advocate. “But someone else didn’t want you to so they took you to
a facility for treatment and then lost you at some point and you
ended up in the factory where I’d ordered a cyborg that looks just
like you?”

He blushed, with both anger and
embarrassment.

“I’m sorry that sounds so condescending
and sarcastic, but you do see where I’m coming from? It’s just too
farfetched to be believable.”

“I don’t know the circumstances, but I
do know who I am. So as ridiculous and unbelievable as it may sound
to you, something happened.”

Carly stopped him when he would have
stalked out. He glared at her when he turned to look at her
questioningly and she allowed her hand to drop from his arm. “I
know you’re confused and angry but, for both our sakes, we have a
role to play. We came in here for makeup sex. You can’t leave
looking like a thundercloud. And you’re supposed to be my
companion. If we don’t make an effort to look like we’re both happy
with the situation, Trude is liable to report you as
defective.”

His skin darkened again. He seemed to
wrestle with himself for a moment and then began to pull off his
clothing.

Startled, Carly blinked at him in
surprise.

He gave her a look. “You should strip.
I don’t think Trude is going to believe we fucked in the shower
with all of our clothes on.” His full, sensual lips curled in a
devilish smile. “You might want to do some that gasping and moaning
you usually do when we have sex.”

Carly felt her face redden. She
narrowed her eyes at him, but she obliged with some loud panting
and moaning. “How was that?” she asked dryly after a few
moments.

He shook his head slowly, crowding her
against the lavatory. “Not realistic enough. I think we’re going to
have to work on that.”

It was amazing the way he could make
her heart rate speed from zero to sixty in two seconds
flat!

She tried reminding herself that he was
a cyborg and programmed to respond to that kind of prompt, but her
brain went out of gear the minute he started stripping her clothing
off.

Chapter Six

It wasn’t wild and frenzied like it had
been the first time and impatience had begun to dominate her before
he had her fully undressed. It was replaced by anticipation as soon
as he began to stroke her skin lightly and explore her with his
lips.

He’d just managed to fully seat his
cock inside of her when Trude intruded. “You have exceeded the
maximum time limit. Are you injured?”

The voice was like a frigid drenching
of water. A shockwave went through Carly. “What?”

Devlin withdrew. “Your HESS may have a
malfunction,” he said coolly. “It overrode emergency programming by
90 seconds.”

Carly blinked at him in dismay, unable
to process what he’d said at first.

He adjusted his clothing. “You did say
that the home security system had limited access to this area of
your apartment and was only allowed to override if you were out of
range for more than thirty minutes?”

Carly gaped at him in
disbelief.

“I am allowed to assess situations and
determine if there is reasonable doubt regarding the safety of my
charge.”

“What reasonable doubt are you
referring to?” Devlin asked coolly.

“I am not required to respond to
cybernetic units.”

That comment sent a jolt through Carly
to rival the first. It sounded downright condescending and
deliberately insulting. “Why did you intrude?” she demanded when
she recovered sufficiently to gather her wits.

“You argued with the unit. There was
the possibility of violence since there had been earlier
indications of malfunction of the unit.”

They hadn’t argued!

A chill went through Carly as she
considered the implications.

If Trude could override at will, how
often had the system monitored her in a room that was supposed to
be completely off limits? And was there any place at all that
anyone could be assured of complete privacy?

* * * *

Carly was staring glumly at her monitor
without really registering what she was looking at when Brenda
caught her attention by nudging her in the ribcage with her elbow
hard enough it punched the air from her lungs. “What?” she asked
crossly.

Brenda lifted her brows in surprise and
then returned Carly’s angry look with one of her own. “We need to
talk,” she responded in Arapaho.

Carly didn’t especially want to talk to
her friend, but she merely nodded. “See you at lunch.”

Brenda rolled her eyes. “It is
lunch.”

Startled, Carly glanced at the time on
her monitor. “Oh.”

She dimly noted signs of agitation in
Brenda as they got lunch at the cafeteria and headed to their
secret place, but she barely registered it and had no trouble
‘acting casual’.

She’d known when she ordered the cyborg
that she was going to be playing at having a real relationship
instead of actually having one, but it had seemed like the best
solution at the time to a problem that couldn’t be
resolved.

Because she couldn’t have the man she
really wanted.

She hadn’t considered that it would
just make her feel worse, but it did. She thought it might not have
been so bad if she hadn’t had to prompt Devlin/the cyborg to behave
like her lover. She could’ve pretended it was real then.

She frowned. She shouldn’t have had to
tell him, damn it!

He was supposed to have come already
programmed to adore her!

Not that she had anything to complain
about regarding his performance! He’d really knocked her socks
off!

But it had been tainted by the
knowledge that she’d prompted him and she just couldn’t enjoy it
like she wanted to knowing it was a performance to prevent Trude
from reporting him as defective and her as a nut case.

Not that she was at all certain that
there was any way to avoid that particular threat anymore. She
didn’t for a minute believe that Trude had been convinced there was
the possibility that their disagreement might escalate into
violence instead of ending in a round of makeup sex. She’d known
that Devlin was laboring under a good bit of distress because she’d
been there during the very unhappy reunion with his sister, but he
had seemed completely in control by the time they’d reached her
apartment—not on the verge of going berserk!

And she didn’t believe Trude wasn’t
able to evaluate the situation or that the surveillance system had
been thrown by her reference to makeup sex.

Trude had simply decided to use the
override protocol to snoop!

She would’ve been worried about her
state of mind herself at becoming suspicious of the HESS except
that the comments Trude had made hadn’t sounded mechanical and
unemotional at all as she’d come to expect.

“I’m in trouble,” Brenda announced as
soon as they’d reached the secure location. “Actually we might all
be in trouble.”

Jerked abruptly from her own thoughts
of trouble brewing, Carly stared at Brenda in dismay, wondering for
several moments if Brenda had heard anything about what had
transpired at her apartment. “In trouble?” she echoed. “How? What
kind of trouble?”

Brenda’s lips tightened. “The door
wasn’t shut! I think we compromised that entire location when we
used it for a meeting place. The group does too and they’re totally
pissed off with all of us for using it as a personal rendezvous and
possibly compromising everybody’s safety.”

Carly held up a hand to halt Brenda.
“Wait a minute! You’re saying you’re part of the rebel
alliance?”

Brenda gave her a disbelieving look.
“How do you think I got that info for you? How do you think I knew
about secure meeting places?” she demanded sarcastically.
“Honestly, Carly! You need to get your head out of your
ass!”

Carly glared at her indignantly. “I
didn’t think you were in the middle of it! I thought you just knew
people that knew about rebel hangouts!”

Brenda shook her head. “That’s not
important now. The important thing is that we compromised the
location and it was our primary meeting place—well, connected to
it. We actually met a lot deeper in the labyrinth, but it’s still
too hot to meet there anymore.”

“Why do you keep saying we?” Carly
demanded indignantly. “We didn’t do anything! You’re the one that
jumped Devlin before he could even get in the door!”

Brenda’s face darkened. “He caught me
off guard when he called me Bunny. Nobody ever called me that but
Dev and it used to totally piss me off!” she added in an irritated
mutter.

“Don’t start that again!” Carly said
angrily. “I don’t know how he knew it! You never told me that so
there’s no way I could’ve known and I don’t know why it would’ve
been in the companion Sim. Actually, I don’t know how it could’ve
been in any of his records. Why would they make a note of something
like that?”

Brenda looked like she might cry for
several moments. “That’s just it. I thought about it and thought
about it after …. Well, afterwards. And I can’t think of how he
could’ve known unless ….”

Carly lifted her brows questioningly
when Brenda stopped. “Unless?” she prompted.

“Unless, somehow, he really is
Dev.”

* * * *

Ignoring her discomfort, Carly smiled
at Devlin brightly. “I brought my best friend, Brenda. We’re going
to do a three-way in the shower. Come on.”

The look on Devlin’s face might have
been comical if Carly hadn’t been so worried about the possible
repercussions. His lower jaw went slack and then hi face slowly
turned redder and redder until even his ears were red. He blinked
at her several times, flicked a glance at Brenda, and then looked
at her again. “I’m sorry, what?”

Instead of trying to give him a broader
hint, Carly headed toward the bathroom with Brenda on her heels.
Devlin looked leery, but he followed them in. The fit, with three
of them, was so tight Carly had to stand in the shower and that
seemed to make Devlin more uneasy.

It made her uneasy, too. Trude must be
calculating the possibilities at that very moment.

“How do you think it’s possible that
you could really be Devlin?” Brenda said bluntly.