Rifter (The Survival Project Duology Book 1) (13 page)

He had cursed the moment the haze had dispersed and the disruption faded out. He cursed it again now.

He had known Debra was callous from the moment he met her. She and Gordon had a lot in common. Gordon, the man who decreed whether you lived or died, whether you travelled or remained trapped.

Gordon had been a stickler for timing. Leo had known that. He wouldn’t have waited more than a few seconds, if any, over the allotted seventy-two hours that he deemed was safe for a rifter to remain on another world, even though the rift might have remained open for much longer on its own. It was too much of a risk that someone would be shredded, he said, but no one knew for sure if that were truly what would happen to someone in a rift that was losing its connection to another world, or exactly what he meant by shredded.

No shredded body parts had ever come through the rift, and there were people who hadn’t returned.

Gordon had a lot to answer for.

The Project Director, for that was his title, had feigned a caring attitude during their training, although not overly sentimental, and everyone fell for it. He became almost like a father figure to them. They were all young, far away from their families, and vulnerable to idolising someone who purported to want to save their world.

It was all an act.

Leaving someone stranded on another world. Pretending that it didn’t matter that he’d cut off their only chance of escape when there might still have been time. What kind of a man did that?

He just wanted guinea pigs to do his bidding. He didn’t care about their safety. He didn’t care if they returned.

He had to pay.

Debra, as well. But later.

He’d soon learned that she was the kind of woman who’d perfected her male characteristics in order to progress through the organisation and, as far as he could tell, she had loved every minute of it. Her decisions were never questioned by anyone, not even the Prime Minister, as far as he could tell, to whom she reported directly. She didn’t go for pretence. She was no mother figure. Every decision she made was to do with reaching targets. You were never under any illusion that the decisions she took were anything other than what was necessary to achieve the objective. She had no room for emotions or sentiment.

They were all surprised that she was married. Rumours were she’d been married since the age of eighteen. She even had a child, although when she saw him was anyone’s guess. Sometimes, they tried to imagine the husband for fun — never when they were in The Department for fear of the cameras. General consensus was, he was either so much worse than her that you would never want to meet him in person, or so meek it would be embarrassing to be in his company when she was around. Either way, he would have little or nothing in common with Leo and his colleagues.

One thing at a time.

He toyed with the idea of taking the brac with him and visiting the disruption on the slight off-chance that being near to it would reactivate its sensors. He knew it was a vain hope. He was so tempted. Even if it did come back to life, he couldn’t act upon it without a distraction. There were guards on site and they were all armed.

He might still try it, but he needed to do something else first to increase the odds of him succeeding.

Practise made perfect and he’d been too lax lately by a significant margin.

Fifteen

Leo heard the faint click of the door closing behind him, but he didn’t look. His concentration was absolute. His gun was perfectly aimed at the target in front of him, the outline of a man. Average height. Average build. Not much of a match for a security guard, but still, he needed to practise and this was his only option. He’d already taken ten shots, all clustered around the heart and head, apart from one where a random thought crossed his mind just as he pulled the trigger and his aim had wavered a little, causing the single shot to land in the right shoulder.

That random thought had concerned Mara, of course.

He would’ve preferred to have been practising to wound, rather than kill, but that wasn’t the norm. Trying to hit an arm or a leg, or to hit somewhere that was not life-threatening, was not what people did on this shooting range. He took the next shot, another one straight through the forehead, and put the gun down. He removed his ear defenders and protective glasses, and turned around. As expected, he saw Atwood standing there. He was looking hurt.

So, they’d realised where he was. Someone had told them after he’d signed in, no doubt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Atwood.

Leo had to take a punt at what Atwood had been told, but by the look on the man’s face, he assumed it was everything, as they saw it.

“Why would I? You’ve only been here a few months. I hadn’t told the others in eight years.”

It was a flippant reply, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t in the mood for detailed explanations.

“But ….” Atwood kicked at the floor as if they were outside and there were stones at his feet. He seemed genuinely upset, but it could’ve been an act.

“What did Mayra say?” said Leo. Atwood would probably have been in on the questioning. “Or aren’t you allowed to tell me?”

His partner shrugged.

“She said pretty much what you’d told Debra. She still thinks the person who attacked her might be some long lost twin, except she’s beginning to think the twin was angry with her for some reason.”

It was Leo’s turn to shrug. “A logical progression, I suppose.”

“Man, you’re cold. Do you actually love her?” Leo didn’t answer, which he supposed gave Atwood the information he wanted. “We’ve tried to put her mind at rest, it’s not like we wanted her to know the truth, but we didn’t have any alternative to suggest. This is so messed up, Leo. Did you even think about the consequences?”

Leo raised his eyebrows. Of course, he’d thought about consequences. It was pretty much the only thing he’d thought about for years.

“When did you turn into Debra?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it? I’m not going to father any children with her and even if I did—”

He shrugged again. It was a mistake saying that, because it implied he’d thought about it, but he enjoyed the taunting.

“Don’t talk to me about different realities, Leo. That’s no excuse. You have responsibilities.” Leo had never seen Atwood angry before, but that was definitely the vibe he was getting. His usually friendly face was pinched and tense. His voice had a slight bark to it, in contrast to his usual mellifluous tones. “You deliberately sought her out, knowing she wasn’t the same person. You used her and she hasn’t got a clue about it. That’s so wrong.”

It might be fun, but antagonising Atwood didn’t serve any purpose.

“You’re right. It is wrong. But what you don’t understand is that I thought I could love her. I thought it wouldn’t matter, but she’s not the same person. Mara is much more easy going, better educated, more accepting, more intelligent, but if I close my ears and simply look at her face, I can imagine she’s almost the same person. There were times when that was the only thing that kept me going.” He should have added, ‘After the way The Department treated me,’ but he didn’t.

He’d almost shocked himself at how easily the lies were forming. He had never been able to pretend she was Mara. Not truly. Atwood relaxed a little, but it was clear he wasn’t completely satisfied with Leo’s answers.

“But you’re just going to carry on as if nothing has changed, aren’t you?” Atwood stepped forward and grabbed Leo by the collar. “I don’t care what you tell her, but you let her go, you hear me? She’s a nice lady and I don’t want to see her hurt when she finds out the truth. You can’t play with people like that.” Atwood let go of the collar and pushed Leo away, but he wasn’t finished. “And if you don’t, then I promise you, I’ll find a way to tell her myself.”

The door slamming behind him as Atwood left the room echoed around the stark walls. Leo handed the gun back to the impassive assistant, who had just witnessed what had to be one of the strangest encounters to take place on a firing range. There was no danger in him having heard what had been said, he would be held to a confidentiality agreement, like everyone else who passed through the range. It was certain that the conversation would have been recorded, and no doubt, would be analysed in great detail by Debra’s team.

What irked him, though, was that he should have been better prepared for the day a rifter came through. The time that had passed since his trip through the rift had made him lax in his attitude and his plans. Honestly, he had never expected it to take this long. He should’ve been on the range every week. He should’ve been in the gym every other day, rather than just on a Sunday morning. He should’ve worked out more contingencies. He’d assumed everything would go his way. That he would’ve met up with Mara, she would’ve melted in his arms, and … There were to be no more excuses.

If there was time, he would do as Atwood had suggested. He would get rid of the woman he didn’t love, rather than just disappear, but if there wasn’t? Or he found some way she could be useful to him, then, so what? He was pretty sure she’d never really loved him, either.

Sixteen

Mara stared up at the domed ceiling of the library in awe. The sunlight shining through the glass lit up the place as if they were outside. It was magical in a way, but she also found the place intimidating. Even Kerry was impressed, although she could see the dark circles deepening around his eyes and the way he blinked, often, to keep the tiredness from taking hold. Looking through lots of dry, analytical books wasn’t going to help much with that. It was kind of him to have come with her, she certainly wouldn’t have attempted the tube trains without him, but she shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t fair. But it did make her less conspicuous. She was no longer a single woman trying to find her way around the city. Kerry pulled a selection of titles for her from the shelves without her having to ask.

It took a while to decide which books to focus on, because there was simply too much information, but even the titles of the books on offer indicated to Mara just how torn the people of this world were about what would happen in the future. Everything from the causes behind climate degradation, the politics that interfered with it, or helped in some cases, why people were reluctant to accept it, and the outright denials. She pulled out a selection from Kerry’s choices, some about the perceived causes, some about the suggested solutions and they sat down at one of the desks. She browsed through the contents pages, looking for anything that might help, and then jumped straight into chapters she thought might be interesting.

Mara had perfected her speed reading technique as part of her training and skimmed the texts with ease. She knew she would have to commit the facts to memory rather than copy the pages, because they didn’t want to get thrown out before they’d finished by her trying to photograph the pages with her brac. There were signs everywhere about what was and wasn’t acceptable and she didn’t want to fall foul of anything that might make her journey back impossible — getting thrown in jail being one, not that there weren’t already barriers — and she couldn’t carry copies back with her. They didn’t have suitable pockets for that.

What she read was depressing in the extreme. The patterns were the same, much as she’d suspected. An industrial revolution, with little care for the amount of resources used then, or for many years afterwards. An abundance of fossil fuels used in preference to the alternatives of natural power, such as wind, sun and water. The depletion of the ozone layer at an alarming rate. A population explosion. Technological advancements that needed an increasing amount of energy to power them. No solutions had been found here that they hadn’t already tried on her world. And the biggest problem of all, it seemed governments were just as resistant to wholeheartedly working to solve the problem as they had been back home.

When it came down to it, human beings were their own worst enemy.

But she knew that already.

“Please let them do better at this than we did,” she whispered.

She didn’t have to worry that Kerry might have heard her plea. She looked up from her study to see that his head was leaning slightly forward, but that his eyes had closed. She looked at her brac. Three hours she’d been studying and it seemed like only minutes. For a moment, she scrutinised his face instead. He definitely looked much better after shaving off his beard. His features were gentle, his laughter lines were pronounced, and he was gorgeous. She would’ve watched a film with him in any day.

She prodded him in the arm and he snorted like a pig as he started. Several people turned round to look, but Mara ignored their disapproving glances, stifling her own giggle.

“How about we finish up here and go and find somewhere to have something to perk us up? Strong coffees. My treat. I think I’ve got everything I need for now, and everyone needs a break from studying,” she said. That wasn’t entirely true, she could have continued studying for hours, but if she was only going to read the same things over and over again, there seemed little point. She still had nearly a hundred pounds left in her pocket. She could easily afford to pay for something for them both.

“Was I asleep?” he asked, looking a little startled.

“Yes.”

He rubbed at his eyes. His lids still looked heavy. “Sorry. It hasn’t made me feel any better.” He sighed and pushed himself up. “Strong coffee. It’ll have to be very strong coffee. Double, double, double espresso.”