Rifter (The Survival Project Duology Book 1) (16 page)

Social media was such an easy way in.

“Mara, you silly thing.”

She had broken one of the prime directives. Don’t make friends with anyone who might miss you when you’re gone, or who might leave a trail of your presence, however insignificant. Basically, don’t make friends.

Now, she was going to have to tell this Kerry something more than the pathetic back story she’d been given. He remembered how bad she was at elaborating on the details. She was going to tie herself in knots if she tried to keep the truth from this man. He considered for a moment. No. She wouldn’t keep the truth from him. Mara would tell him everything and he’d likely think she’d gone out of her mind.

And abandon her? Possibly.

Leo wondered just how much research she’d done, seeing as she was sitting in a cafe in the middle of the afternoon, with only one more full day left before she had to return home.

Was she no longer the perfect student? Had her halo fallen?

Or had she already realised how doomed this world was? Welcome to the reality of alternate worlds, Mara, they’re not much of an alternative.

Whatever, he needed to move quickly in case the man dumped her.

He accessed Caroline’s account on one of the sites Kerry belonged to and posted a message for him. He knew Mara would understand the significance of the name. He needed to meet her on her own and he needed to play on the feelings she used to have for him. That was the only way his plan was going to work. He had to get close to her and he had to play clever. And if she denied him, he would use brute force. Then, he booked the room.

He needed that brac.

He needed to stay detached, but to pretend otherwise. The only way that was going to happen was if he told her the truth. It was risky, but worth it.

He looked down at his clothes. He should wear something less restrictive than his suit in case things got violent. He couldn’t go back to the flat to get changed. Mayra might be waiting for him and he was in no mood to deal with her.

While he waited for a reply, he made his way to Oxford Boulevard, dashed into a department store and bought something more casual to wear. He changed immediately in the store toilets and dumped his suit in the bin. He wore a cap to cover his hair and sunglasses to shield his eyes, in an attempt to be less recognisable to anyone following him. There was little else he could do to change his appearance.

As he finally stepped out of a side exit into the street, Caroline’s phone beeped in his pocket.

Twenty

Mara found it impossible to settle. She and Kerry had returned to the hostel by a circuitous route, just in case Leo was following them, but they still hadn’t seen him. They were both now sitting on the edge of her bed. She was staring into space, not saying a word. She knew why she was unable to interact, it was because she was exhausted, frightened and confused.

Kerry was trying his best to coax information out of her without much success. Even though she’d promised him an explanation when they were out on the street, back in the relative safety of the hostel, she was no longer sure that was a good idea. Not the truthful kind of explanation.

“Mara, are you listening to me?”

She was listening to him, but she was also listening to the voices in her head. If she did let him in on the secret of why and how she was there, where should she start? How could you tell someone you were from another world without them splitting their sides laughing, or being so disgusted with your lies that they never spoke to you again? Not only that, she knew that telling someone who you really were, and what you were doing, was the worst possible decision when you were on a mission — well, maybe not the absolute worst. She was racking them up.

Gordon’s words passed through her mind again.
‘Think about it. If someone talks about inter-world travel and they’re believed, they could change the future of that world completely.’

Seriously, did that matter?

She had always thought it was a double standard of the highest order, because that was exactly what they wanted to do. They wanted to change their world for the better with technology, with ideas, taken from a place that wasn’t their own. These things couldn’t only work one way. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Anyway, all she would be doing was creating another strand in the fabric of history, she wouldn’t obliterate what might have happened, because that would happen in another reality. Probably.

“Mara, please speak to me.”

She couldn’t hold back any longer. She had to tell him something. She twisted her body toward him and fixed her gaze on his eyes. They were alone. No one else could hear. It was truth, or lie. “I’m a traveller,” she said.

He looked confused. Understandable. His idea of a traveller would have a rucksack over the shoulder, a decent pair of hiking boots and a map.

“You’re not a student?”

“Not in the sense you mean.”

“Then, what sense, Mara? Are you breaking the law in some way? Because that guy, the way he looked at you, it was like he’d seen something bad.”

Mara pulled the clip out of her hair and began to open and close it in a constant rhythm. How far should she go? How much could he take? He seemed level-headed enough. He had to be practical, he travelled on his own. And people who travelled, they wouldn’t be the small-minded ones who couldn’t accept concepts that were alien to them.

She was trying to reason too much. In the end, her reply came out in one of those involuntary blurts that characterised emotionally distressed people.

“I don’t belong in this world. I came from another place.”

Kerry rubbed his face with his hands. The tiredness from earlier, from not having slept last night, was beginning to filter back onto his face.

“You live abroad?”

“No.”

“Then, what? You’re saying you’re from another planet? Well, come on then, show me your true form. What are you? A lizard? A gelatinous glob? A shape shifter?”

“Don’t.” She tried to stop the smile forming on her face. This was serious, after all. But there was the hint of a grin on his face as well.

“Don’t what? You’re the one who mentioned science fiction, not me.”

“I know.”

She had. She’d told him, in a roundabout way, that what she was going to tell him was unbelievable. And what did people think of when science fiction was mentioned? They thought of alien creatures. They thought of spaceships. They thought of dystopian worlds.

“A different reality. I came from a different reality.”

He shook his head, as if trying to clear an impossible fug from his brain.

“You mean all that time-splitting-off stuff? No you didn’t, Mara. I’m not an idiot. We don’t have the technology for that kind of thing. Even the scientists can’t agree whether or not it would be possible, or how it would be possible.”

She wasn’t surprised by his response. It was the same response anyone on this world would have, unless they worked at that Government department, the place where this world’s Leo spent his working days.

She didn’t have much to show him that would prove what she said was true, but there was one thing. She pushed her sleeve back and held up her arm. On it was her brac. “Look at this. It’s not some fancy watch. This is my lifeline to my world. See this?” She pointed to the counter. “It’s counting down the time before I have to return. I can only stay here for seventy-two hours or I’m stuck. Forever. This, is my location. This, is my body monitor. I have another device around my middle. It’s a back-up.” She lifted her t-shirt briefly to show the thin band secured just below the level of her heart. “I can take pictures with the brac,” she clicked to take a picture of Kerry, “But I can’t look at them. I can’t communicate using it, except in an emergency, and then only if I’m right by the disruption where I can try using Morse Code,” she pressed a button, bleeping out a rhythm, “But the uncorrupted signals aren’t guaranteed to get through. When we step into the rift, the in-built signal from the brac, the readouts of the monitors, become clearer, and that’s how Gordon knows it’s one of us returning. If he simply sees a blip on the screen without a brac signal showing a heart monitor, he’ll close the door.”

She paused for a moment. She’d mentioned the disruption, but hadn’t explained it, that was probably a mistake. He was still staring at her, with a look of incredulity on his face, but not a complete let’s-lock-her-away expression.

She decided to continue.

“The disruption is where we come through from one reality to another. It’s like a gateway to this world. Wormhole, do you use that expression?” He nodded. “It’s the entrance to a wormhole. We call wormholes, rifts. The rifts were discovered about thirty years ago, but we haven’t been able to travel with any success for more than about ten years. We don’t do it for fun. We do it because my world is dying.”

There was a long pause. The kind that’s probably only a minute, but feels like an hour. Head down, she flicked at her nails while she waited for him to respond, avoiding his eyes.

“Climate change?” he said, “That’s why you were doing the research?”

She nodded. He hadn’t completely discounted what she’d said. She still didn’t dare look him in the eyes.

“We’re trying to find a world that has the solution, so that we can implement it before everything’s gone.”

“And when will that be?”

She wasn’t sure whether he was simply humouring her, or whether he believed her, but there was no point in holding anything back now.

“Well, it’s a little like the debate about whether or not climate degradation would affect the world in the first place. The discussion you’re still having. Nobody agrees about how long it will take before it’s impossible to survive. Some people don’t even believe it will ever happen.”

“And what do you believe?”

“I’m no scientist.”

“But you must have an opinion.”

He was leaning toward her, she could feel it, the slight warmth from the proximity of his body filtered through her clothes. She lifted her eyes up. He looked genuinely concerned.

“I believe it will happen, but I don’t want to think about the timing. It makes it too real. If I put a date on it, then it has a countdown, and I don’t want to spend my life counting down, even if it turns out I’ve got it wrong.”

She turned toward him properly again. She’d dumped so much information on him in a few minutes that he surely couldn’t process it. But he stared at her. He stared at her like he was searching into her soul.

The concern in his eyes was … hypnotic.

“And the man? The one we saw in the coffee shop? Who’s he?”

Mara sucked in a deep breath and huffed it out. She knew she was going to have to explain that as well, but she wasn’t looking forward to it, because she didn’t really understand what was happening when it came to the Leo on this world.

“Leo,” she said, “That’s his name. He’s your world’s version of the man I used to love.” She stopped for a second, realising she’d used the words ‘used to’ without even thinking. She used to love him. That wasn’t strictly true. If she ever found the real Leo,
her
Leo, she was almost certain she’d welcome him with open arms, but that was never going to happen. All she had was a faint shadow of him who was now chasing her and trying to find out who she was. “The Leo I knew went through the rift about six months before I did, but he never came back. I’ve been mourning him for all of those six months. And, in my stupid, messed-up brain, I thought I’d found him again. At least, a little bit of him.”

Kerry grimaced.

“That’s a bit freaky, don’t you think? You just happening upon him?”

As if the whole thing wasn’t freaky to Kerry. He really was taking this well.

“It’s not just freaky. It’s downright impossible. The likelihood is in—” she didn’t finish the word, but he did it for her.

“Infinitesimal?”

“Yes. But it’s worse than that. There’s another version of me as well, and he lives with her.”

Kerry rubbed at his face again and took a deep breath.

“Okay. I guess that makes sense, doesn’t it? If this is a … what do you call it? A parallel world? Then you’re bound to have similar lives. There will only be small differences. That’s how it works, isn’t it? This world is so similar to yours, that’s why the same people exist.”

“No. That’s just it. We don’t have similar lives.
My
Leo and I, we don’t live in London. London doesn’t exist like this anymore. It’s a shell of its former self, a place where people scrape by. We live in a special facility that’s out in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. We never met here. We went there separately. This world isn’t parallel in that sense. It’s completely different. And on my world everything is already destroyed. Civilisation is only just surviving. We don’t have blue skies. We don’t have anything you’d describe as coffee. The buildings are made of different materials. The timeline’s different.”

She could feel her emotions ramping up, the distress in her voice causing her to screech the words. Kerry grabbed at her flailing arms, which she had no idea were flailing, and held them calmly until she quietened a little.

“So it’s different, apart from the people? That has to be possible. Every option is possible, isn’t it?”