Rifter: The Survival Project Duology, #1

By Juliet Boyd

Sometimes, the only way to change your life is to travel.

Eighteen-year-old Mara Scott has been given a chance to find a solution to her world’s climate and pollution problems. She is to travel to another world, an alternative timeline, in the hope that lessons can be learned. She’s far from the first and uppermost in her mind is the fact that her boyfriend, Leo McNaught, travelled six months earlier and never came back.

She's under no illusion. She knows this is a dangerous mission.

But Mara finds herself distracted. The probability of her being able to find a solution is nothing compared to the probability of seeing Leo, or rather, a version of Leo. Yet, that is what happens.

Her heart ruling her head is not a problem she had expected to encounter.

Rifter, the first novel in The Survival Project, alternate-world series, is a fast-paced ride that delves into lost love and betrayal.

Buy Rifter today and become immersed in Mara’s journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Juliet Boyd
• Release date: Oct 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519934383

Juliet Boyd

Juliet lives in Somerset in the south-west of England. She used to work in administration, but now writes full-time. Her main writing interests are fantasy, science fiction, weird fiction, horror and flash fiction. Details of her work are available on her website.

Book preview

One

Mara blinked hard. Her head felt woozy and her legs were unsteady, jelly-like almost. Her breath came short and panting, and that, mixed with the effects of the adrenaline high buzzing through her veins and the shock of hitting the atmosphere, a breathable atmosphere, disoriented her. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, not a leisurely stroll, sure, but the confusion she was feeling now was not good. She closed her eyes and huffed out a deep breath in an attempt to calm her body and her emotions. Yes, she was emotional as well, teary, on the verge of sobbing. She tried not to think about the fact that in order to expel that breath, she had freely breathed in the air around her without any kind of filter to eliminate the toxins. It had seemed such a simple concept. It should have been natural, but it wasn’t. She had to accept that she could breathe this air without experiencing any problems, straightaway, and be done with it. She had to shutter off the automatic reaction that told her she needed to put on a mask, quick. If the air had been bad, the sensors at the entrance to the rift would have told them that it wasn’t safe to travel. And it was silly to focus just on the atmosphere. There was so much else she could worry about. But she had to force herself not to do that, either. If she allowed herself to analyse any of what had happened to her in the last five minutes, she was likely to panic, and panic wouldn’t help her mission.

She opened her eyes again.

You’re here. You did it. Focus on that.

She blinked back a tear at the same time as a smile began to form on her lips.

The sound of her erratic breathing no longer filled her ears.

The air wasn’t entirely fresh, or sweet, but it wasn’t dry like the air-conditioned, filtered kind she’d survived on for most of her life. And it was safe. That was the most important thing. Safe air.

Okay, first things first. She had to get her bearings.

Mara scanned the area around her. The place where she’d landed. She needed to commit everything she could see to memory as quickly as possible and remove herself from the site before she was spotted.

First tick, she’d landed not only close to civilisation, but slap-bang in the middle of a town, or perhaps, a city. That meant she could stay. She hadn’t had a wasted trip.

Second tick, she was unharmed, if you didn’t count the physical and emotional response she’d had to the journey.

Third tick, she looked normal. Observing the people in the vicinity, she wasn’t dressed in a way that might cause alarm.

She lifted her arm and angled her brac to take a picture of the precise location in case it was night when she returned and the haze wasn’t as apparent as it was now. She wouldn’t be able to view the picture, but it, and any others she took, would have the exact coordinates of the location attached to the file, and that she could monitor. She bookmarked the file and laboriously typed in ‘Disruption’ on a carousel keyboard. They’d been forbidden from using the R word in case they didn’t survive and someone else took charge of the brac — someone who might have the knowledge to decipher its contents and its purpose. Disruption was unlikely to mean anything to them, but rift almost certainly would.

That was assuming that someone on this world spoke English, of course.

Her location had the appearance of a large park, and judging by what she could see beyond the boundaries, it was located in a city, not a town. In her experience, although that was severely limited, the scale of the buildings was much too large for a small town. But which city? And which country? All those hours studying city landmarks might actually have been worth the effort, if she could find one she recognised — something that wasn’t ambiguous, like those arches that existed in many European cities.

But site identification could wait. The first thing she had to find out was which language she should use. Please let it be English, she whispered. She needed to choose a subject, a person, and listen in without making it obvious.

There were plenty of people milling around, others sitting on benches. They looked comfortable and contented. It felt so wrong. It wasn’t what she was used to. This was the reality of what it was like to live somewhere where the atmosphere wasn’t poisoned. Freedom to do what you wanted, where you wanted. It was like being in a dream.

She guessed it was a meal break as she could see several people eating from plastic boxes. Midday, probably. None of the them were looking her way, too intent upon their own lives. They were all doing something else as well as eating. Reading. Listening through ear buds. Interacting with handheld devices. It was almost like she was invisible. Another fact she’d learned from the books, people in cities didn’t often talk to people they didn’t know. In fact, they actively avoided their eyes. She had thought this disturbing and callous when she’d read it, but this demonstration wasn’t nearly so bad in reality, and it was definitely to her advantage at that moment.

Had they really not seen anything? Or did it happen every day on this world? No. She couldn’t believe that.

She looked back at the disruption. She bit at her lip. The location was too public. She took out the roll of yellow tape from her pocket and wrapped it around several trees so the area was enclosed. It was the best she could do. Still, no one took any notice of her.

She squinted up at the sky and any dark thoughts she had disappeared. From where the sun was located … she silently gasped even thinking it … it was definitely the middle of the day. It was so bright. She remembered some words of wisdom from Gordon — his advice, some of it last minute, some of it drilled into her time and time again, was never insignificant — and she dug into another pocket for the shades to protect her eyes, which were wholly unaccustomed to the glare of sunlight. But she didn’t put them on straightaway. She wanted to take in what was around her first. She wanted to experience what it was like without any filter. She wanted to remember this moment forever.

She noticed how vibrant the shades of green were, from the manicured lawns beneath her feet, to the bushes, the flowers, the trees. How perfectly they were all formed, with not a twisted stem, or a decaying trunk amongst them. She marvelled at the abundance of benches, a statue that stood proud in the distance, the noise of unfettered activity all around her. The wildlife.

Birds. There were birds pecking at the ground. Big grey things that cooed loudly and seemed not a bit scared of the people walking amongst them.

It was much more than she could ever have imagined.

The old books and the images on the archive didn’t do it justice.

And the best thing of all was the light that bounced off every surface enforcing the fact that the world was clean and alive.

It was the kind of place you might never want to leave.

Her hands clenched into fists.

That was a dangerous thought she needed to banish straightaway, or pay the consequences with needless anguish when it came time to return to her home. She couldn’t stay in this place, however enticing it might seem. This was not her world.

For survival, she said, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, and because she was the only one who needed to be told.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy herself while she was here.

Her brac beeped loudly. She started, but no one else seemed to have heard. It was a two-tone signal that she’d heard many a time. It was a warning. A prompt. She’d already stayed in one place for too long. It was Gordon chivvying her along without even being there. She imagined his wagging finger before her and smiled.

By rote, she went through the arrival procedures.

First, she checked that the anchor was secure. It had landed dead centre on a sturdy tree trunk. It wouldn’t move unless through force, or the felling of the tree, which she thought highly unlikely and, given its position a good three feet above her head, there was little prospect of finding the anchor gone when she returned. There was little prospect of her being able to reach it, either, but that was a problem for later.

She lifted her brac and pressed the combination of keys to start the full monitoring procedure. After the requisite thirty seconds, a green light came on. The rift was stable.

She checked the display that counted down the time until she had to leave.

Ten minutes gone already. Much too long.

But still, as far as she could tell, no one was looking. Not one person cared who she was or what she was doing.

In this world, she was insignificant.

She picked a direction where there were people and started to walk, slowly. Language. There was a man sitting on a bench and talking into a device. She took a route behind him, where she could stop momentarily and listen. She didn’t have to stop, his voice was loud enough from several feet away. English. The accent was different, but the words she recognised. It was a relief. Although she was reasonably good at languages, and had mastered seven to conversational level, speaking in your native tongue was so much better.

She continued to walk. She took a tarmac path, heading towards a gate, a wrought iron affair, ornate and befitting of such a place. But the second she stepped onto the street beyond, she heard something behind her that made her stop. It was the sound of heavy footsteps, running. She dared a glance over her shoulder. No one was following her. The footsteps were a little further away. She could see two men, suited as you would expect old-style businessmen to be, heading for … they stopped at the spot she’d just left.

No, that couldn’t be right. No one official could have spotted the tape that quickly and come to look. And why would you run? And why wouldn’t you go after the perpetrator?

Her thoughts moved on to other possibilities and time slowed down. Every movement took on greater significance.

One man looked from side to side, maybe looking for her, maybe not. The other stood with his hands resting on his hips and looked straight ahead, at the disruption.

Panic gripped her, but not the kind of panic that made you run, it was the kind that rooted you to the spot. They’d stopped at the disruption. Specifically there. Her only way back home. They were looking at it as if they knew it was there and what it was. She couldn’t leave. She had no choice. She had to know what they were doing.

It could only be bad.

Mara wiped a bead of sweat from her lip and ducked back into the park. She waited behind the cover of a tree, trying to calm her breathing, again. When she felt under control, she moved closer, using the cover of the bushes that followed the line of the railings around the edge of the park. She could hear nothing of the general hubbub around her anymore, only the words scrolling through her mind. They know about disruptions. They know about disruptions. They know about disruptions.

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