A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

last time he tried. “Ondrea Noble, please?” he asked of whomever picked up.
    Caitlin put a hand on Felix’s shoulder, uncertain if she wanted him to reach Ondrea or not.
    “Can you at least tell me if she’s there?” Felix asked. “Yes, there . In the building? Does she work for Marquand at all anymore?” A pause. “Look, I understand you’re only— No, I’ve already left my number, but I’m trying to find out if—” Felix rolled his eyes and presumably listened to a few more sentences before, “Why not? Because I don’t remember , that’s why not! Look, if she’s still there, just give her the message, alright? Yeah, you’ve been a gargantuan help.” He hung up and met Caitlin’s eyes. For a moment, neither spoke.
    “I think we’re going to need to go hunting for her,” Felix said.
    “Do we have time for that? They said it would get worse if you don’t do something.”
    “I remember what they said.”
    “You don’t have to keep telling me things you remember, Felix.”
    “What about what I won’t remember if we do what Horizon suggests? I’ve lived with the donor’s memories in my head for years, Caitlin, they’re a part of who I am now. And they can’t even be sure I’ll keep all my own memories if they take out the implant!”
    Horizon had analyzed the damage to Felix’s implant and been unable to come up with an easy fix. Removing it entirely was their best option; it would stop his short-term memory loss and maybe even return to him the experiences of his own life that he’d begun to forget.
    “And the longer you wait to do it, the higher the risk of that is. Right now it’s a minimal risk. You don’t even know if Ondrea can help! What if it takes a week or more to track her down and she doesn’t have any other options?”
    “What if she does and I don’t find her?”
    She grabbed Felix’s arm. “You really believe she will? Gideon is the only one she cares about. She said helping Gideon wouldn’t hurt you!”
    “We didn’t exactly do it by the procedure she gave us either, you know.”
    “After what she did with Gideon, Marquand probably fired her, at the very least. She might not even have access to the project data.”
    “Caitlin, she did what she did on that project in order to resurrect her brother. She would have made her own records.”
    “Perhaps. But will they be of use?”
    Felix started to say something. Instead, he took both of her hands and sat her down beside him on the brick edge of a raised enclosure that fostered a maple sapling. “Ondrea owes us. Everything in my head, what’s mine and what isn’t, it’s who I am now. Do you want to see that die? See me die? I don’t.”
    She squeezed his hands. “Felix, if I knew for sure she could help us, I’d be completely in the saddle with this. As it is? It feels to me like a choice between saving most of you, or risking losing all of you. Call me a selfish bitch if you like; I can’t help how I feel.”
    Felix gave what almost seemed like a chuckle. “I would, but then I’d have to kick my own ass for calling you names, and I haven’t had a chance to stretch adequately for that.”
    “Felix,” she began, uncertain how to follow it up. She’d dragged him into this whole mess to help Gideon. Maybe she didn’t deserve to have a say in how to get Felix out of it.
    Bollocks.
     
    It had been sheer luck that he had stumbled on Felix Hiatt’s conversation. Before leaving the concealment behind the parked ambulance where he had stopped to eavesdrop, Adrian Fagles made a quick note about what he heard. Leather Oxfords clacking on the pavement, Adrian resumed his course to the hospital to learn what else he could of Michael Flynn’s condition personally.

 
IV
    DAHLIA MILLER opened the door, walked into the blackness, and closed it behind her. A whisper of the late-September chill outside made its presence known. The faint sliver of city light that sliced through the curtains only accentuated the