Rifter (The Survival Project Duology Book 1) (2 page)

She moved as close as she dared and crouched down. That was the moment she realised there was something oddly familiar about one of the men. It was the way he moved. The way he cocked his head to the side. It was … Her breath hitched in her throat. He had the same almost-black hair, albeit slightly less tousled.

He had his back to her, so she couldn’t be sure.

She waited.

Wild thoughts sprang into her mind. She shook her head trying to dispel them, but she couldn’t. She inched closer, more than she should. Close enough to see the detail of their faces. Close enough to see … He turned around to face her hiding place and it was all she could do not to scream out. She dug her fingernails into the soil. His piercing blue eyes didn’t see her, but she saw them.

Leo.

Impossible.

The man she was looking at was everything she remembered, except he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. This wasn’t someone she hadn’t seen for six months, since he’d travelled through the rift and never returned. This man was not nineteen years old. He was mid-twenties, perhaps. Filled out, more muscular. More age to his skin. More worry on his face.

But he was the same man.

Just not
her
Leo.

Parallel world. Parallel people.

She had been led to believe the likelihood of seeing someone you knew was so small you’d need hundreds of decimal points to write it down.

She bit at her lip and waited.

If Leo had returned to her world on schedule, it would’ve been one of those coincidences she could’ve brushed off. Not lightly. She’d still have needed a good dose of sensible pills to do it. But when the man you loved had been taken away from you and you saw an identical man right before you, you made involuntary connections in your brain. Connections that said it could be him. It wasn’t logical, of course it wasn’t, but she couldn’t help it.

What was logical, possible, was that the identical man might have followed a similar career path. Same brain, conditioned by a different world, with a slightly different outcome, but not unrecognisable.

But none of this was what she should have been thinking about. Her biggest problem now was going to be how she got back home. If they knew about disruptions, they would monitor this one until it disappeared, and that would happen either when she returned, or on the dot of seventy-two hours from the moment she’d left. If she couldn’t get to it without being seen, she wouldn’t be returning.

She fingered the stun clip in her pocket. This would be the perfect time, while they were still confused. She could knock them out and return straightaway, before anyone else came to see what was going on. She could. But she couldn’t. That would be interfering in the life on this world. Wouldn’t it?

But so would staying.

She hated paradox theory. And paradox denial theory. It didn’t matter who was right, either way, things got screwed up.

And it was Leo. A Leo. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt him.

She tore her gaze away and focused on his colleague. A dark-skinned man, with hair cut tight to his head, a round face and a big grin. He was talking on his device. When he’d finished the call, he turned toward the disruption.

“So, that’s really one?” he said, staring into the hazy vista before him. “You can travel through that to another world?”

She felt numb, and for the first time, real fear. She now had irrefutable confirmation that they knew what the disruption was.

It was unsettling how her perception of this world had changed in an instant. This world was no longer a place of wonder and light and living, it was becoming a terrible nightmare, a trap, a prison, and she’d been there less than half an hour.

“What? Yes. But that’s not what we need to worry about. It’s whoever came through. Someone definitely came through.”

She should have been happy to hear Leo’s voice, but his words only condemned her situation more.

“I’ll go and ask some of these people if they saw anything.”

“Okay.” Leo watched the man walk away. “You do that, Atwood,” he said, “because everyone will have seen.”

They knew that people came through rifts. Not only did they know about rifts, but they were out actively looking for someone who’d travelled through.

She considered the stun clip again, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Leo looked at his device, pressed a few keys, cursed loudly, then stuffed it into his back pocket and began to walk back from the direction he’d come.

This was her chance, maybe her only chance to leave, to return home.

But she didn’t leave.

All thoughts of the mission left her head and her irrational emotions took over.

Two

“Leo,” said Atwood. He was sitting at his desk, which was located directly behind Leo’s, a bit like children in a classroom, “Are you looking at this?”

Well, obviously, he wasn’t. Atwood could see his screen from where he was. Leo glanced back, not really taking much notice other than that Atwood was staring intently at something, but he often did that. He was conscientious, a model employee. The truth was, nothing remotely interesting had happened for months and he didn’t suppose anything had then. The disruptions had all but dried up, and seeing as tracking them was the sole purpose of The Department, it made the days drag on. All they were able to do was analyse previous events. There were only so many times you could try to find something new in the same data.

Atwood tapped at his screen with his nail. “Leo, I think we’ve got one.”

Leo raised his eyebrows. Obviously, Atwood meant he thought he’d discovered a disruption. Leo wasn’t convinced.

“What?” he asked, dragging the word out as he swivelled his chair to face his colleague.

“An anomaly,” he said.

Leo didn’t want to move. He was quite comfortable where he was.

The thing was, Atwood wasn’t a joker like some of the others. If he said he’d located a disruption, he would genuinely think he had. He’d done that a dozen times already and he’d only been working there seven months. But at least he was trying, very. Leo was only ever conscientious when he was forced to be when he was at work, and even though his legs ached to move in the other direction, Atwood’s face was such a mixture of seriousness and excitement that he couldn’t ignore it.

“You really do need to see this,” he urged again.

Leo got up and looked over Atwood’s shoulder. He focused on the screen. Even though the angle meant the sun glared across the image, he could see that there was a blip — a very distinctive blip, the right kind of blip — the location of which was a few hundred yards from where they were. He knew exactly where that blip was. Golden Park.

“No way,” he said, in an almost whispered tone of disbelief.

He could feel a smile forming on his lips, so he gritted his teeth together with such ferocity it hurt. Relief coursed through him. At least, something was going right. He wanted to cross his fingers. He wanted to send a silent prayer to the god of rifts. He wanted to go and investigate on his own.

But none of those things happened.

Maybe, if he’d been the one keeping an eye on the screen, he would’ve been the one who had discovered the rift. Then, he could’ve engineered a different outcome, as in, not telling anyone and going on his own. But he hadn’t. He’d been thinking about what he was going to get for his evening meal on the way home, and about the box of electronic parts that had been delivered to his flat the day before.

But, there was a rift, and Atwood had discovered it, and now things would be more complicated.

There were no more words between them. There was a procedure and they were going to follow it. If a disruption formed, it was their responsibility to be first on the scene, and that couldn’t have been easier, given the location. They didn’t even have to contact anyone, because there were others whose role it was to inform their boss. All they had to do was to press the button on the wall as they left. He let Atwood do it. It was his find.

They ran for the stairs, because they knew the lift would take too long. There was no need for a car either — Golden Park was easily within running distance. Using any kind of transport would only slow them down. Leo checked his holster, not because he thought his gun might not be there, but merely for comfort.

“Bit of a coincidence,” said Atwood, through deep breaths, as they pushed through the rotating door and out into the bright sunlight of an August morning. He assumed Atwood meant it being so close.

“Yes,” he replied and pushed his legs to move a little faster. He didn’t want to have a conversation, because it would slow him down. There really was no time to lose if they were going to see who had come through. Every second lost was a chance wasted.

As they ran, he scanned the face of every person they passed, hoping for some form of clue. He wasn’t looking for signs of guilt so much as simple recognition of their features. Or their recognition of his. Eight years wasn’t long enough for people to change so much that you wouldn’t recognise them, or to forget they ever existed.

But none of them registered with him and no one gave him a second glance.

Good. He didn’t need Atwood getting suspicious.

They entered the park and slowed down a little. If they moved too fast they might miss something vitally important, a piece of evidence, the sight of someone running away. Atwood pointed to where the disruption should be, although he already knew, and they approached cautiously. Neither drew their gun. Open use of guns was something that needed another layer of permission and much more planning.

Leo saw the ripples, like a heat haze in the sun, distorting his view of the trees up ahead. He saw the yellow tape, so whoever it was had a conscience. A lump came unexpectedly to his throat. He pushed it back down. Emotion won’t help you, he thought. Keep a professional detachment. But he’d waited so long.

They stopped close to the disruption. There was no one looking suspicious. Atwood stared at the tape, raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything. No one was running, apart from a jogger in full kit and headphones — that was unlikely to be a disguise. He could feel the rush of static from the electrical forces make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He imagined the hair on his head would be looking pretty wild, as well. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch the disruption. He wanted ….

Atwood glimpsed something and pointed. There was a slight indentation, a footprint, in the mud, softened by rain the night before. Small. Most likely a woman’s.

A woman’s.

He closed his eyes for a moment and heard her voice.

He couldn’t let himself think that way. It was a footprint. It could be anybody’s footprint. There was more than one woman on The Survival Project.

“So, that’s one? That’s an anomaly?” said Atwood, breaking into Leo’s thoughts.

“What? Yes.” He felt a sob leave his throat. He almost couldn’t breathe. He didn’t trust himself to act wisely yet. “But that’s not what we need to worry about. It’s whoever came through. Someone definitely came through.”

“I’ll go and ask some of these people if they saw anything.”

“Okay.” Leo watched as Atwood walked away. “You do that, Atwood, because everyone will have seen.”

Leo made a cursory glance around the area and thought he saw someone in the bushes. It was the merest flash. He said nothing. He kept his gaze moving as if he hadn’t noticed.

Please, he thought. Please.

If it was her, maybe she would seek him out. If it were him in the same situation, that’s what he would do, if only out of curiosity. He’d be dying to know if both worlds created the same person with the same personality. Wouldn’t anyone? He was the one who had the advantage, because she didn’t know the full truth, and he needed to keep it that way, for now.

His best option was to let things play out naturally for the first few hours. Pursuit wouldn’t get him what he wanted, and Atwood would undoubtedly get involved, but waiting might.

He knew her. He knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

He turned away. He needed a plan. He pulled out his phone and pretended to try dialling a number.

He knew the support team would already be on their way. He’d let Atwood do the necessary. He waved at him as he walked past and Atwood nodded back.

“Lunch date,” he said, “She must already have left.”

Atwood shook his head.

“Debra will have your guts.”

Leo shrugged. Atwood smiled.

“Some people have lives outside of work,” he said.

Three

To attempt to find your counterpart in a different reality, and interact with them, was expressly forbidden. Apart from the obvious issues — changing the future on the other world, alerting other cultures that weren’t ready to the presence of rifts, the danger to yourself — it wasn’t a part of Mara’s mission. Although, she hadn’t tried to find anyone. It was them who had come looking for her. It was an excuse of sorts and she was pretty sure she could argue the case with Gordon, if it came to it. She knew she wouldn’t win. He would say that her safety was more important than finding out what these people knew about rifts. That her research was supposed to be covert, not out in the open shouting, ‘Look at me, I’m here.’ The trouble was, Gordon worked on theory. She was the one doing the practical, and she had her own mind, her own thoughts, her own ideas. It bugged her that this world was actively researching rifts and knew about rifters. Such knowledge could endanger The Project. Surely, Gordon would understand that.