Infiltration (Infiltration Book 1)

by Susanna Rogers

  And we wouldn’t let them.

  Ben’s phone went off several times and he gave me updates: more videos had been loaded, some were going viral; parents had been called to the police station; lawyers were getting involved.

  “Let’s forget about this for a few minutes.” He switched his phone to silent, shoved it into his pocket and took my hand, leading me to the lake.

  The water shimmered in the moonlight in front of us as we dropped down onto the grass. The fresh smell of mulch and vegetation wafted across. The night was too still for waves to lap against the edge of the lake. Only the soft croak of a frog in the distance cut through the night air.

  I could have stayed like that forever.

  I wished I could.

  After a while Ben said, “Earlier, when the car was coming at me…you saved my life.”

  Eyes down, I said, “No, I didn’t.”

  “You threw yourself in front of a moving car and pushed me out of the way. You could’ve died. You risked your life.”

  I’ve already given up my life for you.

  Couldn’t he see that?

  My decision had been made well before I jumped in front of that car. I couldn’t kill him so I had to die. It was that simple and that complicated.

  I lifted my gaze to meet his. “You weren’t going to die then.”

  Ben looked away.

  Back to this. Sure, he was speaking to me again, which was something. But he didn’t believe a word I said. He was never going to believe me.

  Silence. I wasn’t sure if I should be the first to speak, but then I had nothing to lose.

  “I don’t know exactly what would’ve happened if I wasn’t there,” I said. “I only know you weren’t going to die tonight. Maybe you’d have been injured, rushed to hospital, I don’t know. I only know that you don’t die now.”

  He hugged his knees to his chest and looked out onto the lake. “Maybe I was going to die–”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out. Maybe if you weren’t here things would’ve gone very differently. For one thing, maybe more kids would’ve got hurt tonight and maybe that footage would never have made it onto the internet so then there’d be no way of proving what the police did.”

  “Actually, I don’t think that part went very well.”

  “Your presence here changes things, Nic,” Ben said. “You saved me. Earlier, you helped Daniel. You had an effect, created a chain of events.”

  I shrugged. “I probably do have an effect in small ways. I can’t explain it, not exactly. I just don’t think I saved your life. I feel it in my gut. I don’t believe you were going to die.”

  Ben reached for my hand and enveloped it between his. “I’m trying to say thank you.”

  I sat forward on my knees and let my hand drop from his to rest on my lap. He wouldn’t want to hold my hand, not with what I had to say.

  “Let me help you,” I said. “That’s a better way of saying thank you. Look after yourself. Keep a low profile. Cover your tracks. Be more vigilant. Be a hard-ass if you have to. If you need to be the one to throw the first punch, then do it. You can’t expect others to be as nice as you.”

  “You want me to be ruthless. You want me to be something I’m not.”

  “They’ll send someone else. Next time it won’t be me. Next time it’ll be someone who follows orders.”

  I was being too vague. They – I meant my superiors. Following orders – they’d kill him.

  That was what I meant but I couldn’t bring myself to say it, not after the response I’d had from Ben last time I’d tried to explain the situation to him.

  He leaned back on his hands. “So I’ll have to be careful if I want to get by, is that it?”

  Was I finally getting through? Did I dare believe it?

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been taking care of myself for a while,” he said. “Celia and my family too for that matter. I’ll do my best to look after myself and those around me. I can be quicker. Next time, I’ll get in before you and I’ll be the one to thump Moose. I can lift my game.” He added with a shrug, “But that might take some of the fun out of life. I enjoyed watching you punch Moose. It made me proud.”

  His words brought a smile to my lips.

  Ben tilted my chin up with one hand and leaned closer. He pressed his lips against mine, gently this time, and for those few moments we were the only two people in the world. It was only me and Ben surrounded by the night air. No houses, no people, no one else.

  A breeze came out of nowhere, waves lapping gently on the shore before settling back into silence.

  Ben broke off the kiss, his expression contented. “We can make this work.”

  No, we can’t.

  My heart sank. How I wished he was right. How I wished we could be together and stay here in Altabena like two normal teenagers, but nothing about my situation was normal.

  I had no way of altering the time travel program. What’s more, the system could locate me through advanced GPS technology, something I couldn’t escape, and it would send me back, no matter what. My superiors would punish me with death.

  There was no avoiding it.

  I shuffled back, then stood while Ben looked at me. Somehow I’d got used to the idea of death, in theory anyway, though I might not be so stoic when the time came. But losing Ben was different. I couldn’t bear the thought. Couldn’t face him. I had to get away.

  I turned and ran.

  “Hey,” Ben yelled.

  I didn’t know where I was going, toward the road, home perhaps, I had no idea.

  Panting, Ben grabbed me and spun me around.

  “What’s with you?” he asked, his grip firm on my shoulders. “Why did you run away?”

  “I can’t run away,” I said. “That’s the whole point.”

  He screwed up his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ll find me. Whatever I do, wherever I go, my superior officers will always find me.”

  “We can leave, Nic.” His eyes glimmered with promise. “We can run away together.”

  My mouth fell open but I couldn’t get the words out.

  “We can go to LA or San Francisco and start afresh,” he said. “I can find a job and study at night school.”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s always a way. You said I should keep a low profile and cover my tracks. We can do that together.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  He grabbed my shoulders. “Then make me.”

  “Where I come from, the GPS technology is very advanced,” I said. “Everyone’s movements can be traced. In New Nation, my superior officers can check my exact location at any time. It’s the same for everyone. We can all be located at any time. There’s no hiding. No lying.”

  “Is the GPS unit in your PR device? We can ditch that, destroy it.”

  “There’s a locator in the device but that’s not how they track me.”

  “Then, how? Tell me and we’ll work it out.”

  “The GPS locators are minuscule. They’re called geopositrons.”

  Excited now. “Is it some sort of computer chip under your skin? Is that it? We’ll find a way to get rid of it.”

  “You can’t see the geopositrons,” I said calmly. “They’re microscopic and they work in conjunction with each other, hundreds of thousands of them.”

  “Are you saying they can’t be removed?’

  “The geopositrons are in my blood, Ben.”

  “In your…?”

  “They’re in my blood. They’re part of me. The only way to get rid of them is for me to lose all my blood. In which case I’ll die.”

  That was my point. Whether my superiors got to me or I tried some other method, either way I’d be dead.

  Blood is life.

  Blood is death.

  And I didn’t have a way out.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I looked up from my cereal bowl to see Ben Tanner standing in the kitchen
doorway in his school uniform, his keys in one hand. It was the stuff of dreams – handsome guy swings by my house unexpectedly on his way to school. And it was the stuff of nightmares.

  Still, it seemed perfectly natural seeing him in my house though he’d never been here before. He was the sort of person who fit nearly anywhere.

  Mom swept past him and took her seat at the table. “You didn’t mention Ben was giving you a lift to school.”

  Ben stepped forward. “I wanted to surprise Nicola.”

  I glanced up at him from my plate. “You’re full of surprises.”

  “No, actually that would be you.”

  Mom and Dad shared a glance across the table as if they both knew what was going on. If only things were that simple.

  “I’m sure Nicola won’t be long.” Dad smiled, though clearly sizing Ben up. “I take it you’ve seen the papers?”

  Ben nodded. “And the television news last night as well. Phones have been going wild across the neighborhood too.”

  Not ours. We hadn’t been here long enough, but I’d kept up with the news on the internet and talked to Lauren and Ben yesterday.

  The headlines read, Police Start Riot and Blame Students. A neat summary. The news services confirmed what I’d thought from the start, that police provided transportation for a group of young people from out of town, encouraged them to crash the anti-curfew party and had then beaten innocent, unarmed teenagers. They’d also used their firearms unnecessarily though luckily no one had been shot.

  Dad pointed to the newspaper. “People are outraged that a group of kids was attacked. The Commissioner of Police has made a public apology and the government has decided against a curfew. They crossed a line and now they’re backing off.”

  For now. I knew they wouldn’t let up, that they’d try again, that they wanted to control the people any way they could.

  Excited, Lauren had phoned me this morning because Today Magazine had accepted the article she’d written and was already promoting it on the internet as an impassioned, personal tribute. It was never too late for some bad press for the government.

  Maybe we did have control over our future. Maybe we didn’t have to accept the way things were headed if we didn’t like it. We had choices. We could change things.

  I knew the direction the world was headed. Maybe things didn’t have to be that way if we didn’t let them.

  Or maybe we deserved what we were going to get. I didn’t have all the answers.

  A phone buzzed in the background and my mother jumped in her seat. Mom, I’d almost forgotten about her. She went straight to the cupboard bench top where she’d left her phone and picked it up. His eyes glued to her, Dad slid his coffee mug onto the table. Ben knew better than to speak.

  Her back to us, her shoulders relaxed and the tension left her body. As she turned, her pale eyes were wide, her lips curling to a smile of disbelief.

  “The test results have come back,” she said. “Doctor Simmons said he’d text me as soon as he got them. I’ve got the all clear.”

  I felt the tension leave my body as if I was having an instant replay of what Mom had just been through. The cancer hadn’t spread. She was going to be okay.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said.

  Dad stood, put his arms around her, spun her around and kissed her on the mouth, then held her at arm’s length, beaming. Somehow the scene seemed strangely familiar.

  “We have to celebrate,” he said. “I’ll take you to that fancy restaurant on Carson Lane. We can have a bottle of champagne. Tonight. Let’s not wait.”

  “Sure.” Mom threw her hands up, then her face clouded over. “What about Nicola? We can’t leave her behind.”

  “Yes, you can.” I stood from the table. “In fact, you should. You deserve it after everything you’ve been through.”

  I gave her a big hug, held her tight. Pressing my eyes shut, I wished for a long and happy life for her. For Dad too. Maybe wishing could make it true.

  A pang of guilt shot through me because I had something on my mind and it’d be easier if they were out of the house. There was always something else. I was never going to get used to having all these emotions coursing through me.

  Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “You don’t look excited about the idea.”

  “I’m…calmly excited. And happy for you.”

  The pang of guilt in my gut twisted like a knife. What would happen to them after I’d gone? How would they cope?

  If only there was more I could do for them. If only I had more time.

  I looked across at Ben waiting patiently by the table and made my way toward him.

  “Congratulations on your good news,” he said to my mom.

  “I’m sorry, Ben,” she said. “I forgot you were there. We were just…”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “He knows.”

  He knows a lot more than you do. That damn guilt shot through me again. I didn’t want to let them down.

  Ben asked a few questions about my mother in the car on the way to school. He didn’t say much about anything else.

  Student parking was off campus on a vacant lot separated from the school by a small area of bush. It probably would’ve been just as easy to walk the whole distance to school but the car still ruled supreme in this country. Everyone wanted to drive and sometimes Ben did too.

  He closed the door behind him and slung his school backpack over one shoulder. I was already waiting for him at the front of the car, my bag on the ground beside me.

  “I was thinking,” he began.

  “That’s all I’ve been doing,” I said.

  “We should make the most of our time together. Maybe things won’t be as bad as you suspect. Like with your mom. You thought she was going to be seriously ill but that didn’t turn out so bad. Maybe we’re worried about nothing and things will sort themselves out. In the meantime, we should enjoy every moment.”

  “I’ve only got tonight,” I said. “This is my last day.”

  In the early hours of Tuesday morning, I’d be transported away.

  “No, it can’t be.” Ben’s face fell. The bag slipped from his shoulders and he grabbed my arms, gripped them tight. “We’ve got to find a solution. There has to be a way.”

  I held his gaze, my eyes telling him there was no easy way out. He got the message and dropped his hands.

  Calm now, I said, “I have no way of altering the time travel program. There’s no escape.”

  Ben’s brow furrowed, anger in his eyes. “You told me that before.”

  I understood his frustration, his anger too. I felt it deep in my bones, my veins, my life blood.

  “There might be a way,” I said.

  “What is it?” A flash of hope in his eyes. “You’ve been telling me I should let you help me. It works both ways. Let me help you too. There must be something I can do.”

  “If I drain the right amount of blood from my body, the geopositrons will be flushed out with it,” I said.

  Silence.

  “You’ll die, Nicola.”

  “It’s the only way I can live,” I said. “The geopositrons work in conjunction with each other. They’re too small to work autonomously. Together, hundreds of thousands of them send tiny electric messages to each other to form a mass, but it has to reach a critical size to function.”

  “What’s the minimum size?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many of the damn things are there in your blood?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “That’s a lot of things you don’t know.”

  It didn’t make any difference. I had to do this. I had to try. If it came down to it, I’d rather die trying.

  “It’s risky,” I said. “A risk I have to take.”

  A muscle in Ben’s jaw flinched. “You can’t do it.”

  “You might be the one with the photographic memory but I was paying attention in science class. I weigh just over fifty kilos. That’s 3.3 liters of blood i
n my body.”

  He shook his head. “No, not that stupid fucking science assignment.”

  I remembered the details. I could lose up to forty percent of my blood and survive. The problem was picking the exact cut off point. Another not-so-minor problem was being conscious at the time so I could call for help.

  “What about a blood transfusion?” Ben asked.

  “It won’t work.”

  Ben grabbed me by the shoulders. “I can steal some blood. From the hospital. The casualty department is bound to have some. What blood type are you?”

  “A Rh negative.” I shook my head. “Forget it, Ben. I have to get rid of the geopositrons first. I have to get rid of those suckers or I’ll get transported back. A blood transfusion would only dilute the concentration of the blood I was losing. Besides, no doctor is going to help me drain the blood from my body, no matter what story we concoct. That’s why I need your help.”

  Shaking, Ben dropped his hands. “I can’t help you. This is beyond me. There are so many issues with accepting blood. It’s a foreign substance. Your body will reject the proteins in the blood. I can’t give you a transfusion. I don’t even know where to start.”

  I stared up at him through lowered lids. “That’s not what I need your help for.”

  He covered his face with his hands. “This is fucked up.”

  I peeled his fingers away but he shook my hands off.

  “I can’t do this again, Nic,” he said.

  “Again?”

  “You don’t know what it was like. My mother…I was the one who found her.”

  Maybe I should’ve guessed but I’d had no idea. My heart sank for poor Ben. He’d been so young.

  “I saw her and she was gone,” he said. “For years I had flashbacks, heart palpitations, panic attacks. I kept thinking if only I’d got home sooner, if only I hadn’t gone to football practice that afternoon, if only I’d been quicker, she’d still be alive.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know that now.”

  What had I asked him to do? Was there anything that could’ve caused him more pain?

  “I’m so sorry, Ben. I don’t expect you to help, not after that.”

  Realization in his eyes. “That’s why you wanted your parents to go out tonight.”