Rifter (The Survival Project Duology Book 1) (6 page)

The wardrobe held a small number of female clothes as well as male. Mayra’s clothes. She grabbed a shirt and put it over her t-shirt and she quickly traced her lips with a bright-red lipstick, then she wiped it off again. She was supposed to have been attacked. She wouldn’t be dolling herself up, would she? She tied her jacket around her waist by the arms, hoping it looked casual and like something Mayra would do. She removed the clip from her hair, stuffed it in her pocket, and ran her fingers through it to give it more body.

‘
If you’re confident, people will believe you.’
It was another thing Gordon had said so many times. ‘
Pretend that you know what you’re doing and people will believe that you do. It will get you out of scrapes nine times out of ten.’

He’d never said what happened if your time was number ten.

She didn’t want to know.

She took a couple of deep breaths, fixed what she hoped was an upset look onto her face, and walked out of the room. She had no idea whether or not he knew about Mayra’s attack yet, but she had to be prepared.

The moment she stepped out into the corridor, she felt a hand around her arm, pulling her close. It was Leo. “Hey,” he said.

Before she could move, his lips were upon hers and she found that even if she could have resisted, she didn’t want to. She closed her eyes and tried to remember. And she did. His lips felt the same. The connection between them felt unbroken. And her breath was taken away from her, completely. She tried repeating over in her head that this wasn’t
her
Leo, but it didn’t work.

When he pulled back, he looked at her with a quirk to his eyebrow.

“New look?” he said.

She scraped her teeth across her bottom lip.

He hadn’t asked about the attack. He couldn’t know yet. Mayra had to still be unconscious. That wasn’t good. She tried to put it out of her mind.

She couldn’t speak. She didn’t want to speak. She had no idea what to say, and if she did speak, her voice might be different. She hadn’t heard the woman’s voice, apart from a strangled scream as she fell, and that was no indication of anything. When she screamed, she’d sounded like a banshee. If she risked talking, she risked giving herself away, and ….

But she had to say something. It would be really odd if she didn’t.

“You don’t like it?”

He shrugged.

She almost laughed. No difference there.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here so early. I was going to cook pasta.”

Okay, so he definitely didn’t know. He put a bag on the counter and took a pan out of the cupboard and proceeded to fill it with water. It seemed a little early to be eating an evening meal, but she had no idea what the habits were on this world.

“That okay with you?”

She nodded. Best to play along until she could find an excuse to leave.

He thought she was Mayra. He really did.

And the next thought that entered her mind was the most dangerous one yet.

She could afford to stay longer. She could find out all sorts of things if she stayed. More about his work. More about his life. More about how similar he was to the man she loved.

Had loved. She had to keep reminding herself.

But what if Mayra called now? What if she chose this time to call him and tell him of her misfortune?

Sweat began to trickle down the back of her neck. It was too risky to stay.

“What are you standing there for? Come and sit down. Take the weight off your feet.”

He gestured to a counter almost as big as the dining table in the other room, which had bar stools strategically placed around it, one a little out of place. She pulled one out across the other side from where he stood, and sat. A few minutes more wouldn’t matter, would it? She couldn’t just walk out without an explanation. That really would make him suspicious. She nervously twirled at a strand of her hair, then flicked it back quickly when she realised what she was doing. Mayra probably didn’t do that.

He cocked his head at a bottle of white wine sitting on the counter, followed by a strong shake of his head. “No, we shouldn’t. Not midweek.”

She nodded her head in agreement. Drinking was absolutely not allowed when you were on a mission. She couldn’t cloud her thinking, not even for a second and any alcohol was likely to have a very bad effect on her, seeing as she’d only ever drunk it once last Christmas and on her eighteenth birthday, and that was only a single watered-down glass each time.

The silence dragged out as he went back to the stove. It was coming to the point where she had to say something else, or be caught out. She lowered her voice and let the words rasp against her throat.

“What sauce?”

“Arrabiata,” he said in a fake Italian accent, “And so much garlic it’ll make your hair stand on end.”

She snorted. It seemed he had the same childish sense of humour, and some of the same tastes. Garlic had never really been her thing, but Leo could never get enough of it. He would’ve put garlic on his breakfast cereal if it had been available, which, of course, it hadn’t. She’d always thought it was purely because the food tasted so bland otherwise. Maybe she was wrong about that. It only went to emphasise how closely related the two versions were. But that wasn’t a good thing, she reminded herself again. It would’ve been better if he only ate health foods and worked as a labourer in a factory. That would have meant that she’d stumbled across another world that might hold hope. What they needed to discover was a world that had taken a vastly different path, to a much better outcome.

She knew she wouldn’t be the last rifter to risk their life.

“Your choice. Eat in here, or trays?” he said.

“I’m not very hungry.”

“You have to eat.” His voice hinted at frustration.

She looked longingly across at the saucepan. She did have to eat. She hadn’t eaten since coming through the rift and that was several hours ago, and she hadn’t had breakfast before she left because her stomach was churning like a whirlpool, and because there was no time, but she wasn’t desperate. She shook her head. Any commitment to a longer interaction was bad. This was supposed to have been a fact-finding mission, not a social engagement.

“But I got some of your favourite Parmesan.”

What was she supposed to say to that? That’s nice? If she wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t hungry, no amount of Parmesan would make a difference.

She’d never tasted Parmesan. She’d heard of it. She had this old box that her grandmother had given her, that she used to keep a few little things in to remind her of home. It had once contained a block of the cheese. You could even smell the faint tang of it if you stuck your nose in really close. She called it her memory box. It was fragile and almost fell apart every time she touched it. She’d snuck it into the bottom of her rucksack when she left home. Leo was the only one who knew she had it.

He grabbed his shopping bag and pulled out a blue and green box with swirly gold lettering.

Her jaw dropped.

The reaction was instinct more than any conscious thought.

“Leo?” she said.

“Yes.”

And in that second she saw it. Something she recognised that wasn’t just a facsimile of the man she’d loved.

No. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a trick. Or she was imagining things that weren’t there.

She had to get out. Quickly. No choice. Go.

She had never meant to be quite so violent, but she couldn’t help herself. She flung her body over the counter, vaulting it like a gymnast, and grabbed at the saucepan filled with nearly bubbling sauce, but she didn’t try to hit him with it. Instead, she threw the contents right into his face, not with the intention of scalding his flesh, but in an attempt to temporarily blind him. It worked. Of course, it worked. How could it not? She grimaced as the liquid hit him and he screamed and doubled over in pain. She’d chosen the sauce, rather than the boiling pasta water, because she thought it might not be as hot, but then she thought about how it would stick to his skin and she winced, mirroring the pain.

She wanted to reach out and touch him, to comfort him, to soothe his pain. Instead, she ran back through the lounge. She was out the door in seconds. She used the stairs, not wanting to risk a lift that stopped on every floor, or took precious seconds to arrive, and took the steps three at a time. It wasn’t just a feeling of flying she experienced, some footfalls missed the mark leaving her foot to jolt against a much lower target. But her body was strong. They’d made sure of that. And she didn’t falter.

As she pushed her way out the door of the block and into the street, she heard him call, perhaps from the top of the stairs, she didn’t know.

“Mara. Please come back. We need to talk.”

Mara?

She shook her head. She must’ve heard wrong. It was easy to do. One letter. She was reading too much into everything. What she was thinking was impossible.

She didn’t turn round. She began to run along The Embankment with one aim only, to get as far away from him as she could. Ambling tourists, and workers who’d been for after work drinks and were now beginning to stumble home, criss-crossed along the pavement, impeding her progress. Blindly she carried on, not knowing where she was going, or even if he was following her. When she got to the first bridge, in a split-second decision, she decided to cross. If she went too far in the direction she’d been going, she’d end up a long way away from her escape route. She estimated she was a couple of miles from the disruption already, and in her current situation, that was too far. It was clear that she might need to make a dash for home. Her home. Her other world.

On the other side of the water, she turned back in the direction she’d come from. And she ran, and ran, until her legs were weak with the effort and her lungs struggling to take in enough air to breathe.

She stopped in front of the giant Ferris wheel. There were even more tourists there, waiting in a long queue for a ride. She took shelter behind them so that she could look back to see if he was following. Her eyes scanned frantically, so much so that she wasn’t properly focusing.

‘You’ll never know how true panic feels until it happens to you.’

She wished Gordon were there right now, beside her, telling her what she should do next. She began to calm down. Panic slowly turned into despair. Everything was going wrong because she’d let it. “Head. Head. Head.” She said, “Always go with your head.” She should have fought her way out of the flat the moment he arrived back, not pretend at being his girlfriend. She’d been asking for trouble.

Anyone watching her would think she was crazy.

It took another twenty minutes before she could convince herself that Leo wasn’t following, but that didn’t mean that others weren’t.

She moved into the shadows and began to walk.

If she couldn’t sort out her feelings and leave them behind, then she would have to work out a way to leave this world earlier than planned. It wouldn’t be easy, but if she didn’t, she would put herself and The Project in danger, and that was the one thing she couldn’t afford to do.

Seven

Leo immersed his face in the cold water he’d run into the bathroom sink and held his breath. His skin still felt like fire, even though he’d thrown a whole tray of ice cubes into the water as well. It hurt like hell. He thumped the rim of the sink so hard everything on the glass shelf above it rattled. He lifted his head, gulped in a breath and dunked his face again.

It had been a stupid move. He’d frightened Mara before he’d had a chance to ease her into the truth, and then he’d compounded his mistake by calling her by her real name. It was a lot to take in, he knew that and it had been too soon to come straight out and admit to her who he was. He’d wanted to get her onto his side first. It would have been easier that way. Now, he’d pushed her away.

He needed to breathe again.

He stood up straight, water cascading from his nose, his chin, and looked at his reflection in the mirror. His skin was very red, the kind of red that might have warranted a trip to the hospital under normal circumstances. He couldn’t afford to do that. It was possible the ice had made it look worse than it was. He truly looked horrendous.

He gently ran the tip of his fingers across his lips. He recalled the kiss.

He dunked his face again.

He imagined she was running as far away from him as she could get. It was what he would have done. He couldn’t blame her for her self-preservation instinct. Everyone had it. And instincts were difficult to subdue when fear was involved.

He surfaced again, grabbed a towel and dabbed at his skin. Small globs of sauce still clung to his eyelashes, making them feel heavy, and dripped from his hair onto his clothes, leaving a pink-tinged stain behind. The smell of the garlic, that he was sure was originating from the lining of his nose, was no longer pleasant.

He thumped the sink again and the water rippled.

He’d assumed too much. He’d gone too far.

“Simple. I should have kept it simple.”

The Parmesan box had been too specific. The Parmesan box contained memories. He’d thought it might give her a good sign. Something that she could cling onto and believe in. Honesty would’ve been better. What his actions had done was instil horror into her. He’d seen it in her face.