Rifter (The Survival Project Duology Book 1) (8 page)

There was no question. That would be it.

She didn’t answer. She tried not to meet his eyes.

He edged closer to her again.

“I can help,” he said, “If you come with me.”

He said it in such a matter-of-fact way. His voice didn’t sound sinister. It was normal, almost relaxed. In the middle of the day you might have thought he was being friendly. Still, her heart began to beat faster, and not in a good way.

She knew that if she shouted out, there wasn’t someone a few feet away who might take notice and even if there were, she’d seen how little notice the people in the park took of her arrival. This was a big city where people kept to themselves. They didn’t want to get involved in trouble. It probably wasn’t that they didn’t care, but that they were scared for themselves. She would get no help.

Anyway, she had no desire for anyone to call the police.

She didn’t want to answer the man, but she felt the need to do something. It was unlikely she could outrun him.

“I don’t need any help,” she said, still not looking at him. She hadn’t even glanced at his face, but she imagined he had a weather-beaten look and hard features, not what was more likely, a perfectly respectable-looking face without any distinguishing features. But imagining your typical bad guy would make it easier when the moment came.

He pulled a packet out of his pocket and then a lighter. He lit a cigarette and let it burn for a moment. The stink of the smoke made her swallow deeply to keep from coughing. Nobody on her world smoked anymore. The pollution-choked atmosphere had put paid to that.

“Oh, I think you do, and I know just how you can make all the money you need,” he said. This wasn’t good. This was so not good.

Before she had time to say anything else, he grabbed her wrist and wrenched her toward him. She tried not to scream, but the pain caused by his grip was intense, shooting the length of her arm, burning her skin.

“Come quietly now. We don’t want to make a scene.”

She could tell from his tone that he thought he’d won, that because she was smaller than him, she was weak. The adrenalin was pumping again.

Mara counted down from five.

She twisted like lightning, bending his arm the wrong way around her back and threw him over her head. The crack of bone brought with it a scream that cut through the dark. Not one of the few people close enough to hear came to see what the commotion was. Mara peeled his fingers from her wrist — he didn’t seem able to do it himself — and she walked away, trying to choke back the retching in her throat. Theory put into practice wasn’t always pleasant, and knowing that something would happen if you made a certain move, didn’t make it any easier when it did.

She couldn’t let herself be that vulnerable again.

She took a decision she never thought she would. She made her way back to the park. It took nearly an hour to find it, but when she arrived, she climbed over the spiked metal fence and started to creep through the bushes. She was half thinking she might go back home right now if she could, but that thought was cut short when she saw the security guards lined up around the disruption. Three of them. And a much bigger taped-off area than she’d created.

She’d known it was a possibility. More than that, a certainty.

She was competent enough to disable one man trying to do her harm, to capture her, if she had the advantage of surprise. But three trained guards, with weapons who would see her coming from a distance? She didn’t stand a chance.

That was a worry for another day.

She found a bench, out of view of the guards, but close enough if needs be. If anyone else attacked her during the night, the guards wouldn’t be able to afford not to investigate and even if that meant that ultimately she couldn’t return home — that thought hitched in her mind paralysing her for a moment before releasing its hold — at least, it meant she’d be safe.

Nine

Leo was nearly asleep when he heard the faint buzz of the entry phone in the distance. The events of the evening had, at first, rattled his brain so much that he couldn’t rest, but then the effect of his heightened emotional state had wrung him so dry, that it came to the point where he no longer had any energy left and had begun to drift off.

For a moment he lay still, confused as to where he was and what he’d heard, but then the buzzer rang out again. He squinted against the dark and his skin protested. He pushed his fingers through his hair and emptied his lungs in a huff. He cursed. Much as he wished it might be Mara returning, it was probably kids, or more accurately teenagers, high on whatever the latest kick was and out to cause disruption to other people’s lives. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d gone to the display screen and there’d been no one there. It was either that, or some busybody from The Department had realised he’d had a visitor.

No. Impossible. They weren’t that clever, or that vigilant. They didn’t know what she looked like. They would think it had been Mayra running out of the flat. He had to believe that, or there was no point in continuing with his plan.

He pushed himself up, not bothering to make himself decent, and wearily slouched through the flat to the front door. He looked at the screen. His eyes went from fuzzy to focus as he stared at the image.

He saw Mara’s face looking up at him.

A cold sweat instantly leached out from his skin.

The image wasn’t sharp enough to see the fine detail, and it framed only her face — her clothes were completely out of view. His heart raced so fast he couldn’t think straight, and because of that he didn’t act as quickly as he should.

Could she have come back?

He soon knew the answer.

“Are you going to let me in? I don’t have my keys. They must’ve fallen out of my bag when I was attacked.”

His heart sank, but now he was well awake. The woman he’d used to remind himself of his past life was home, and she didn’t sound pleased.

Mayra.

“Oh, yes, sure. Sorry.”

Why couldn’t she have stayed in the hospital for one night?

He pressed the button and heard the low humming sound of the door releasing through the speaker. Her face disappeared from view. He had no idea what time it was. He opened the door to the flat and waited for the lift to ping. When she arrived, she stomped past him without saying a word.

“You did tell them you’d left?” he said. Mayra turned. Her sullen face regarded the way he was now leaning against the door frame. It probably wasn’t his best opening gambit, but she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t notice his face, either. Her ire at her own situation was ruling her thoughts and her vision.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, I did. They weren’t pleased, but who cares? All those delightful people fussing over me.” She shivered in disgust. “I hate people fussing over me. Especially, people I don’t know.”

Never had the word delightful been said with such distaste.

He felt like she might be angling for an apology for leaving her there, but he didn’t oblige. None of this was actually his fault — at least, not directly. He hadn’t caused the rift to open. He hadn’t been the one who sent Mara through. It was his fault that he’d hastily arranged lunch with her in the hope that the rifter might see them and let their curiosity overtake them, but he hadn’t orchestrated Mara’s actions. Even he wasn’t that clever. He’d expected her to follow him.

They didn’t kiss in greeting. They hadn’t done that for a long time. They had got to the point where their public face was very different to their private one.

“I’m parched,” she said, “The tea in that place was like dishwater.”

Of course, she’d drunk dishwater many a time. He’d seen her with her head over the washing-up bowl, lapping away at it like a dog, only that morning.

She walked straight to the kitchen, him following close behind, and filled the kettle with far more water than she needed to boil, unless she was having a pint of tea. He rubbed at his eyes whilst berating himself for having his head in a different world. When he opened them again, she’d raised her head and was sniffing deeply. Her nose wrinkled. It didn’t look cute. “Didn’t you put the extractor on when you were cooking? Christ, you screw everything up. I can’t believe your mother never taught you this stuff. We’re not in the Dark Ages.”

The room did smell sour. He’d tried his best to clean up the sauce that had been plastered across everything, but he’d hoped the cleaning lady would have time to give the room a once over in the morning, before Mayra came round. He’d known his efforts wouldn’t be good enough.

“I had an accident.” He shrugged as he spoke. It would account for the smell and with any luck she wouldn’t ask what accident and how. She had far more important things to discuss.

He was correct.

She still hadn’t noticed his blotchy face. Even though he hadn’t looked, it had to still be red from the scalding. It felt uncomfortable.

“So, aren’t you going to ask me what happened?” she said.

He looked at the clock on the wall. It was five past one. He wasn’t in the mood for long, drawn-out explanations. He needed to be sharp the next morning. He needed to be rested.

“You’ll have to talk to the police about that. They can deal with it.”

He’d said it without really thinking. She’d probably already spoken to them.

She turned to look at him, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “You don’t even want to know?”

He rubbed at his eyes again, hoping she might get the hint. “Of course, I do, but it’s late.”

A sound similar to a dog choking up grass came out of her mouth. Her hands moved to her hips. She bent over toward him, her face tarnished with a scowl.

“So, you don’t want to know that some freak double of mine appeared behind me, no warning, and shocked the hell out of me? It was like, Christ. I nearly peed my pants.”

He tried to look surprised, but he couldn’t manage it.

She straightened up, her eyes even wider now. She raised an accusing finger at him.

“You knew?”

“No, I didn’t know.” That wasn’t a lie. At the time he hadn’t been certain.

Mayra poured hot water onto a chamomile teabag and slammed the kettle back onto its base.

“Where did she come from?” she asked.

“What?”

“The other woman? My doppelganger?”

“How would I know? I don’t work for the police.”

“You work for the MoD. That’s the same.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She slammed her teaspoon down into the sink and let it clatter before responding.

“Do I have a twin? That’s it, isn’t it? Your stupid Government secret won’t-tell-me-what-you-do agency did a check on me when I started going out with you, didn’t they? That’s the kind of thing those places do, isn’t it? All secrets and spies. Like your life isn’t your own. When they did their checks, did they find out I had a twin?” Leo resisted shaking his head for fear of extending her deliberations. She turned on her heel for a moment and then turned back. “Am I adopted? Was I farmed out because my parents couldn’t afford to keep two babies? They didn’t want me. My parents didn’t want me. Or my mother. Was my mother single? Or is the other woman the one who was abandoned? But why did she hurt me? Does she want revenge?”

Eventually, he had to intervene. She was revving herself up so much, it wasn’t healthy.

“No. Mayra, you’re reading too much into this.”

“Then, tell me, Leo. How the hell do I have a double?”

He tried to backtrack. To return sanity to the situation.

“I don’t know. Even if it were true that you’re a twin, they wouldn’t have told me.”

“You could ask.”

“No, I couldn’t. Those files are secret. Look, Mayra, lots of people have near doubles. There are too many people living on this planet for that not to be a thing. Think about it. It’s like,” he clicked his fingers, “I know, music. There are only a certain amount of notes and combinations, which is why some tunes sound so similar to others. People are the same. Was she the same height? The same build? That’s the kind of thing that makes an exact double. Other similarities, the ones that we notice on the face, are simply coincidence, or maybe some long lost family connection going back hundreds of years.”

He wasn’t sure he’d made himself clear, but at least his explanation, plucked out of the air at a moment’s notice, seemed plausible.

Mayra screwed up her face as she considered what he’d said.

“Right, well, that doesn’t alter the fact that she attacked me.”

For someone who’d been zapped, she was surprisingly alert.

“And you’re sure that she did?”

“Leo, I was unconscious when I was found. That kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident, or this.” She pulled up her sleeve to show the angry red welt the stun clip had left on her skin.

Leo grabbed her shoulders to curtail her endless gesticulating.

“Okay, maybe she simply freaked out because she was scared, like you.”

Mayra shook her head.

“I wasn’t scared. No, I was. I was freaked, but I didn’t react by giving her a shock. She gave me an electrical shock, Leo, not a quick slap round the face. Who does that kind of thing? Isn’t it illegal for people to carry tasers?”