Split Infinity (13 page)

The side door to his garage is slightly open when I knock. It brings a slight shimmer of deja vu that makes me smile.

No answer comes, so I knock again. ‘Mason?’ I slide the door further open and stick my head in, enjoying a breeze from the air-con. Of course, the room’s empty.

I’m three steps inside and facing the spot behind the couch when Mason’s shape appears to one side, further back from where I expected and behind an armchair near the fridgepad.

‘Boo!’ he shouts, landing solidly on both feet. A gasp escapes my mouth. Dammit. He got me again.

His shoulders are square, his chest smooth and slightly tan leading down to that flat stomach, cute belly button …

I drag my eyes to his face. ‘No fair!’ But I’m grinning.

Mason lets out the best-sounding happy snort. ‘Gotcha, didn’t I? I was thinking about catching you out and then I remembered you said I first jumped from standing behind the couch, so then I thought …’

Clever. My eyes narrow. ‘I’ll get you back.’ I grab a blanket that’s scrunched on the floor and throw it at him. His shape is so perfect that he looks like he’s been sculpted from synth-marble.

Mason wraps the blanket around his waist and when he glances up again, our eyes meet. The whole world seems so slow around us.

‘I …’ A word comes out before I know what I’m saying. I only know that I don’t want this moment to end.

Something causes the door to move and a gust of hot air makes us turn as time speeds up to normal again.

‘Heeee-ey.’ It’s Boc: tall, broad and already in the way. His one word starts out high but then drops in tone when he sees me.

‘Hey,’ Mason and I say at once, but our words come rushed, as if we’ve been caught out. Mason’s standing here with just a bare chest and a blanket wrapped around his waist. And I’m pretty sure I’m bright-red.

Boc doesn’t know how to skip yet, so he hasn’t been part of our jumping bubble. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since finding out he turned me in in the other timestream, and something hardens in me:
You. Absolute. Piece. Of. Scum.
Calling him out for what he did would feel so great right now. But I can’t do that without giving the game away. Getting him back will be way better than yelling. And that means keeping my cool now.

Besides, I’m not letting Boc mess up this night with Mason.

‘Hey, mate,’ Mason says again, grabbing his shorts and glancing at me.

Boc crosses his arms. ‘Been skipping again?’ Beads of sweat stand out on his hairline.

‘Yeah, heaps.’ Mason gestures my way, shorts on now. ‘And Scout too.’

I’m expecting a nod from Boc, or even just a shrug, but his eyes dart to me just like they did last time and stay fixed.

I stare back as uneasiness prickles the back of my neck. What’s going on? He still thinks I’m the woman from the cave, a seasoned time skipper. Why the surprise that we’ve been skipping?

‘Really?’ Boc frowns my way before turning to Mason. ‘You mean, you’ve actually seen her jump? Not just on the grid?’

‘Yeah, heaps.’ A smile, just for me. ‘Pretty much every day these past two weeks.’

The fact that we’ve been so accurate has made it easy to add gaps to my grid, so Boc shouldn’t suspect a thing, even if he’s been watching.

He still seems confused.

‘Anyway,’ Boc turns back to Mason, ‘I was going to ask if you want to come climbing with me and Amon again?’

Again, Mason glances at me. ‘Bit hot.’

‘There’s a cool change due tonight. We’re meeting tomorrow at two.’ Boc lets his arms drop. ‘Training at the climbing centre, and then drinks at the end.’

A shrug from Mason. ‘Sure. I guess.’

‘Come on, Mase. You’re ready to climb without a harness. You just need some confidence.’

‘Is that all? Co-ordination might come in handy too.’ Mason laughs.

Boc’s face changes completely as he grins. But then he turns to consider me and his grin fades. It’s as if he’s trying to work me out.

My skin turns cold. The row of dominoes is teetering, threatening to fall again. What have I missed?

‘Okay,’ Mason says finally. ‘Want to join us now?’

Boc shakes his head. ‘Nah. Catch you.’ Another glance my way, and then he’s through the door with gust of hot air. A waft of honeysuckle lingers after the door closes behind him.

‘Want a drink?’ Mason asks.

‘No, but thanks.’ Has Boc noticed a delay before the gaps appear in my timeline? Has he worked out that I’m adding them myself?

Mason’s swipes the fridgepad and pulls out two cans as a rich blast of cool hits me in the face.

‘Here, try this.’ He holds out a can but I shake my head, adrenaline rising. I have to do something. I can’t risk Boc working me out.

‘Sorry, I …’ For a moment I think about telling Mason what happened with Boc. But I can’t waste time explaining now. If there’s still a chance I can save Boc from working me out, I have to try.

Swallowing back the burn of frustration, I search around for an excuse. ‘I forgot about something. I have to go.’ Lame. But it’s the best I can do.

Mason’s arm sags. ‘Really? Now?’

‘Yeah.’ I try to find a way to explain but come up short. ‘Sorry.’ I’d do anything to stay with Mason right now. This is
our
night.

But I can’t stay. Not until I sort out what’s going on with Boc.

‘I’ll call you, okay?’

Then I’m out the door and into the furnace of afternoon heat. The waft of honeysuckle follows me all the way down the street.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
FEW BLOCKS FROM
Mason’s street I find a taxi rank with a row of bench chairs under a shade canopy. Two women are sitting, fanning themselves with their hands. The taxi request post is glowing amber, which means a bit of a wait.

I wheel my bike to the far end of the bench and sit next to it. This is as good a place as anywhere to work out what Boc’s been doing. I already have him tagged so that I can check his movements quickly. I’ve only just brought up his dot on the grid when there’s a clunk from one of the buildings behind us. A slow beeping alarm sounds from a local produce market across the street.

Frustration burns and my hands drop. Right now, I’m meant to be with Mason. I’ll suggest that we skip through the worst of the heat then we’ll end up on the roof together, lying side by side as we gaze into a sky that never ends, talking about the never-ending lifespan of starlight …

But I push all that out of my mind. Unless I deal with Boc, I’ll never be free.

One of the women stands and does a quarter-turn, shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘Blackout, you think?’ barks the other woman. She starts swiping the request sensor over and over. As if that’s going to make any difference.

My compad beeps.

‘Where are you?’ Mum asks as soon as I answer.

‘I’m fine,’ I say.
On my way home
. That’s what she wants me to say, but I can’t tell her that. Blackout or no blackout, I need to deal with Boc as fast as I can. Holding my breath, I slink away from the bench seats in case Mum hears the women in the background.

‘I’m at Mason’s,’ I finish, and bite my lip. That’s what I told her last time. The alarm is still going across the street but it’s a low tone. I’m not sure if she can hear it.

‘They’re saying it’s almost the whole city,’ comes Mum’s voice.

‘Fantastic.’ Don’t think she can.

‘Might take them a while to fix this one, so I want you to stay put. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Can I speak to Mason’s mum or dad?’

I glance at the women. ‘They’re not here.’

‘Ask them to call me when they get in?’

‘Yep.’

‘And stay inside, all right? Bad things happen when there’s a blackout.’

Almost as confirmation, there’s a jolt in the smartcars on the road in front of us as they move into a single lane and an ambulance streaks past.

I take another step back from the noise of the road. ‘Mum, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’

‘All right.’ She seems distracted. Then, clearer, she says, ‘Bye, sweetheart.’ The screen switches to red as she signs off.

‘Hey, you okay?’ One of the women has been waiting for me to finish on the phone. ‘Need help getting home?’

If she knew I was illegal there’s no way she’d be saying that. I shake my head, and then nod at my bike resting against the bench. ‘I’ll be fine, thanks.’

The women head off together on foot, giving up on a taxi, so I’m left on my own. Just me, the lunatic traffic and the alarms.

The whole city tends to go stir-crazy during a blackout, partly because the water swipers go into lockdown at the same time. But for me they’re not so bad. Most of my life I’ve haven’t had access to rations, so it’s just business as usual. And I can always get water from the cave in the park.

I pull up Boc’s worm on the grid in real time. He made it home about ten minutes after leaving us. I’m pretty sure he went straight to his comscreen, at least he was just sitting in the one spot for another ten minutes, so I hack straight in and find a terminal with co-ordinates on the grid that match Boc’s location.

It’s offline right now, but when I track back to the past few days, I’m able to patch in and see exactly what Boc was doing.

My heart stills when I see. It’s exactly what I feared: he’s been all over my history map, inching his way through each of my visits to Mason’s garage and also while I was at home. Even the tag Boc used makes me wary: ‘CR’. Just my initials, like I’m a science experiment or something.

I’m not sure how close he is to figuring me out, but just the fact that he’s watching makes me feel like a hunted animal. I drop the compad in my lap and look up to the sky, trying to decide what to do. Heat shimmers in the air around the edge of the canopy of the taxi shelter. If he hasn’t worked out yet that I’m illegal, he’s not far off.

That means it’s him or me.

All around me is movement; people hurrying along the footpath, another ambulance screaming past, lights flashing. I check the map, stash the compad and hook my backpack over a shoulder.

There’s no way my set-up is going to work unless Boc knows how to jump. I can’t hang around any longer, waiting for him to learn.

I have to teach him how to skip.

Boc’s house is walking distance from Mason’s so it takes only a few minutes to get there. When I’m a few doors away, I stop riding and put one foot down on the gravel while I check the grid. Boc has moved about a metre sideways away from his comscreen. Probably sitting on his bed and using his compad is my guess. No-one else is home.

Good. I pull into his drive without pausing and stash the bike beside their front deck. Boc’s house is even more flash than Mason’s. An external elevator waits beside the driveway, ready to take people up the next two floors.

I suck in a breath, and push it out hard. The air is warm in my lungs. Wiping my hands on my shorts, I step right up to the front door and swipe the entrypad with the chip pressed between my middle finger and palm.

Silence. Nothing moves. But he must have heard. Right now, he would be checking the screen, trying to understand why I’m here. In my mind I go over the words I’ve been practising.

Without warning, the door slips up soundlessly. It’s one of those mod ones that go up rather than sideways and the novelty of it catches me. Just for a moment. The house must be fitted with its own solar batteries for it still to be working in the blackout.

My focus narrows on Boc’s dark eyes, the broad angles of his face. His forehead creases and he crosses his arms, but I sense doubt about him, confusion. He has no idea why I’m here.

‘Hi. I just had a thought.’ I cross my arms too. Cool air wafts out in waves, still holding back the heat despite the blackout. ‘You still haven’t learnt how to time skip, right? I think I know why you’re having trouble. I’ll help you, if you want.’

I’m careful with the words I use; brushing past the idea that he’s a slow learner. I’m pressing on a sore spot without digging in. I know Boc hates that Mason learnt to skip before him.

His arms loosen, but then his jaw goes hard. He’s interested, I can tell. I’ve hit the right nerve.

‘Okay, I guess …’ His face changes. ‘Where’s Mase?’

A glance over my shoulder, buying time to think. ‘Yeah … the blackout. Don’t think he was keen to come out.’

That’s pretty much true for every citizen, almost a non-answer, but it seems to satisfy him.

‘Yeah. Sucks, eh?’ Boc’s top lip curls up and my heart accelerates. Was that about the blackout, or has he already worked me out?

I take a breath and push it back down. Unless Boc already knows my secret, this might be my last chance to push him off the scent. Acting like I have something to hide is only going to make him more wary.

‘So, what do you think?’ Somehow I find a smile, my eyebrows tight and too high. ‘Do you want to hear my idea?’

Boc steps back and motions me further into the house. ‘Sure. I’ll take all the help I can get.’