Infiltration (Infiltration Book 1)

by Susanna Rogers

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t let you do this.” He stepped back. “I’ll tell them. I’ll tell your parents everything.”

  I shook my head. What would he tell them? That I was from the future. That I needed to drain the geopositrons from my blood. As if they’d believe him.

  “I have to do this,” I said.

  A strange inner calm overcame me. This must be how it felt when you knew you were making the right decision.

  He staggered back. “I can’t help you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I reached for his hand but he pulled it away.

  That was okay too.

  If I was on my own, that was the way it had to be.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I’m sorry.

  I looked down at the words I’d written on a piece of paper on my desk.

  It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, but I couldn’t explain my situation. Didn’t know where to start.

  I’d spent the afternoon in tears holed up in my room, hoping for another way out, wishing for a miracle, trying to be strong. I was done crying.

  I took off my school uniform, tossed the shirt into the hamper in the corner of my room and folded my skirt before laying it on the bed. I reached under the pillow and found my pajamas, pink and white checked long pants with a matching pink tank top. Pink. When had I become a girl who likes pink?

  Still I didn’t want to be found naked in Altabena. If I was going to be found. I might end up back in New Nation if this didn’t work.

  The note on my desk didn’t seem adequate but I couldn’t think what to add, so I left it. And headed for the bathroom.

  I stood in the doorway. Everything was ready. I’d run a warm bath, the water glistening with a blue tinge in the immaculate white tub. The whole bathroom was pristine, in fact, from the enormous dark brown tiles on the floor to pale ones lining the walls.

  I didn’t want to get the place dirty. Didn’t want to muck things up for everyone more than I already had.

  A bolt of guilt shot through me. If I failed, someone would find me and that was too horrible to think about. I didn’t want anyone to go through what Ben had.

  My cell phone lay beside the basin, the emergency number set to speed dial so I’d only have a few buttons to press when the time came. Earlier I’d placed a razor beside it.

  A large clear plastic measuring pitcher from the kitchen sat on the white tiles that lined the edge of the bath on one side. Empty. It’d be full soon.

  This item had been a problem because I needed to measure 1.3 liters, but the largest pitcher I could find was a liter. My plan was to measure out the first liter, tip the contents into the bath, then gauge the remaining amount.

  How could I be so cool? So calculating?

  My phone rang. Let it ring. It doesn’t matter.

  My stomach clenched, my throat constricted and I dry retched over the basin. I was trying to be calm but my body was telling me otherwise.

  If I lost too much blood, I’d die. Not enough, and the geopositrons would remain; I’d get transported back to New Nation; and be executed. It was a fine line.

  The mirror was in front of me but I couldn’t bear to look at myself and turned to the bath instead. Sliding in, I closed my eyes, held my breath, tipped my head back and let the warm water engulf me.

  I’d heard stories about people who’d killed themselves or tried to. Even in New Nation it happened from time to time. I couldn’t imagine being driven to suicide, how desperate you’d have to be, or how you could think things would never get better.

  But I knew this wasn’t the way.

  Life was too precious, too short, too valuable. There was always a better way, a different choice, and it wasn’t this.

  I was desperate too, only in a different way.

  Desperate to live.

  I thought about Ben. He couldn’t be here. I understood.

  And I longed for him.

  Spluttering for air, I lifted my head out of the water, smoothed my hair back from my face.

  Somewhere in the house a door swished open or perhaps closed. No, surely my parents couldn’t be home, not yet.

  Then footsteps. Someone calling my name.

  Go away.

  Ben stood in the doorway just as he had this morning. What was he doing here?

  He dropped a bag he was holding, crouched by the bath and cupped my face with his hands.

  “Nicola, no.” Urgency in his voice. And despair.

  “It’s okay,” I mumbled.

  “I can’t let you do this.”

  “You have to.”

  He stood and turned away. Slammed his fist on the bathroom cabinet and paced the small room.

  “Fuck,” he yelled.

  He had that right.

  Ben kicked the half-open door. It slammed against the wall, bounced off with an enormous shudder, then ended up ajar. I couldn’t blame him. Better for him to take it out on the fittings than me.

  He dropped to my side. “Please, no.”

  I reached for him and slid one hand along his jaw, his light stubble rough against my wet hand. He covered my hand with his. Though dry, his eyes overflowed with pain, his expression tortured. I hated doing this to him.

  “You can leave,” I whispered. “No one has to know you were here.”

  I saw something in the set of his jaw and the way his eyes hooded over that I hadn’t seen before, not like this.

  “Get out of the bath,” he said.

  “No.”

  “We can do this together.” He pointed to the bag he’d left on the floor. “A blood transfusion. I can take care of it. I stole a few things.”

  I didn’t get it. “You stole a bag of blood?”

  He shook his head. “Couldn’t get hold of any. I got some other stuff though, cannulas and tubing.”

  “How’s that going to work?”

  “Get out of the bath, Nicola.”

  I held his gaze. “Tell me how.”

  “We’re both A neg. Same type. We’ll replace your blood with mine.” He gritted his teeth. “Pull the plug and get out.”

  “No,” I said.

  “An auto-transfusion. It’s what they used to do in warzones when they couldn’t get sterile blood. I’ll stick one cannula in my arm and another in yours, joined by some short tubing. It’s got to be short so the blood doesn’t clot. If I’m higher up my blood will flow into your body. That’s what gravity does.”

  We’d been through this. How could he do this? Didn’t he understand?

  Firm. I had to be firm. “A blood transfusion won’t work. I have to drain my blood first. A lot of it.”

  He rummaged around in the bag behind him. “That’s what the other cannula is for. This’ll hurt.”

  That thing looked more like a small pipe than a needle, not that I cared about pain. I cared about living.

  I stared. “We drain my blood and then try…”

  He nodded.

  I reached for the plug, stood in the bath and watched the water swirling down. Ben took my hands as I stepped out of the bath but it hadn’t quite sunk in.

  I let him wrap a towel around me as I sat on the edge, my back to the wall. He held me close. Pressed a kiss to my temple.

  “We still have to measure it,” I said. “I have to lose the right amount.”

  “We can do that. That’s what the pitcher is for.”

  Ben tapped my inner arm looking for a vein, then stabbed the cannula into my right arm. I flinched when I shouldn’t have, then reclined back so my arm was hanging down while Ben placed the pitcher inside the bath.

  My blood flowed.

  So red, such a vibrant color. I’d seen blood before, but never noticed how glossy it was, how rich, how bright.

  I pictured the geopositrons in my blood streaming out of me, my body evicting the microscopic invaders. I wanted to be rid of them. I wanted to live. My life, my way.

  It occurred to me there should’ve been more pain. Maybe there was a
nd I hadn’t noticed yet. Maybe the adrenaline and my body’s natural chemicals were taking over.

  I looked down at the pitcher.

  Seven hundred milliliters.

  Ben was at my side, holding the other two cannulas joined by tubing, exactly as he’d said.

  I looked up at him. “Not yet.”

  His lips thinned. He waited.

  One liter.

  He reached over and tipped the contents into the bath. It looked like a huge red stain on the white porcelain. I’d lost close to a third of my blood. I had to last longer. Had to time this just right.

  I was dozing. Sinking. “Just a little more.”

  “It’s time, Nic.”

  “Too soon.”

  Ben crouched down, slid a cannula into his arm. Blood streamed through the tubing and out of the cannula at the other end, dripped onto the floor in big red splotches. He lifted the other end, fingers pressed against the tubing.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Ben stared at me. “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you.”

  Lips parted, he held my gaze, deliberating. He took short sharp breaths like a weight lifter ready for an Olympic jerk and clean. One more deep breath and his face transformed with determination.

  He picked the free cannula up and stabbed it into my left arm, then stood up so the blood was flowing from his body down through the cannula, through the tubing, down into my body.

  Cold and damp on the outside, I started to feel warmed from the inside out. A pleasant feeling. It made me realize how weak I’d become so soon. How hazy. How weak.

  “This is my blood, Nic,” Ben said. “My life.”

  He was giving me part of himself.

  A heated wave surged through me – an emotion, a bodily reaction, I wasn’t sure. Ben and I were joined together, his blood pumping through my veins, part of him inside part of me.

  And it felt right.

  Two lives intermingling. The ultimate gift. We’d be together forever, no matter what happened. And anything could happen.

  The skin of my inner arms where the two cannulas had been inserted throbbed, the pain intensifying. My blood felt heated, my whole body simmering, nausea rising in my stomach.

  “It burns,” I said. “It burns.”

  “Hang on, Nic. You can do it. Getting rid of blood is easy. Accepting new blood isn’t.”

  Was this supposed to happen? Was my body rejecting his blood?

  I scratched the skin around the cannula in my right arm, gouged gashes in the flesh. More blood. More pain.

  The cannula had to stay. I had to do this.

  My insides were boiling, my internal organs melting, my skin heated from underneath. My whole body was burning.

  Even if this failed, at least I’d saved Ben’s life. At least I’d done one good thing.

  But I couldn’t fail. I wanted to live. I wanted to stay.

  Ben slid his hand onto my face, his fingers scorching. “Stay with me, Nic.”

  Then nothing…

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  My eyes flicked open. Like a switch, from off to on.

  Where was I? What was going on?

  One breath in, one breath out. I was breathing. Not so much breathing as suffocating. Panic rose inside me, swelled inside my chest. My throat constricted, my mouth dry.

  But I was aware. That meant I was alive.

  I heard a small sob. Had that come from me? Did I have the energy?

  Focus.

  A ceiling hovered above me, a fluorescent light fitting pinned to it. I was in a room. But where?

  More panic. Don’t tell me I was back in New Nation. Please, anything but that. Surely I hadn’t gone through so much only to be back where I started.

  I shook my head. The pillow beneath smelled like detergent with a hint of antiseptic. I looked around. Saw pale gray walls that may once have been white.

  I was lying on a bed or a mattress. I felt light, as if I weighed nothing. Except for my hand. I felt warmth and a gentle squeezing.

  Looking across at my fingers, I saw a hand covering mine. I lifted my gaze higher. It was Mom. She was shaking, her face tearstained, her grip firm. Behind her, Dad had his hands on her shoulders as if holding her up.

  Another sob. From Mom. What had I done to them?

  She reached across and soothed my hair with her other hand. “It’s okay, honey. Just try to relax.”

  “Where am I?”

  “In a hospital.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Take it easy, Nicola,” Dad said. “Mom’s right. You need to relax.”

  Relax? How could I relax?

  Maybe there was another way of working this out. I glanced around. No windows, no clock, no idea what time it might be. It could still be late evening, or the sun might be up, or days may have passed for all I knew.

  I pressed my eyes shut. No, it couldn’t be midnight or one in the morning. I couldn’t have failed. I had to have made it. Surely I couldn’t have put my parents through all this, only for me to vanish from the face of the earth in a few hours. That’d be too cruel. That wasn’t what I wanted.

  Eyes wide open, I stared at my mother. “What time is it?”

  “We’re so glad to have you back. Just take it easy.”

  She must’ve seen the fear in my face, in my expression, in the tendons straining in my neck. This was anything but easy.

  I jerked my head up. “Just tell me what time it is and I’ll calm down.”

  Dad put his hand on my forehead, pressing my head back onto the pillow. “It’s six in the morning. You got through the night.”

  I’d got through much more than that.

  It had worked.

  I couldn’t believe it, except I could. The relief was too much for me. The air left my body and a low groan escaped my body.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asked.

  I nodded. I’d never been better in my life. My new life, starting today.

  Mom swayed on the spot. Her lips tight, she tried to hold it in but clearly that wasn’t going to work. Her body shook and sobs overtook her.

  “We thought we’d lost you,” she said between whimpers.

  Guilt washed over me. I had done this to her, caused this pain.

  Behind her, Dad stood up straight. Though his expression was even, a muscle in his jaw flinched. He was being strong, for his wife, for his daughter, but there was no hiding what I’d done to him, to them, my family.

  A hundred emotions rolled over me. Never before had I felt so good and bad at the same time. My heart raced. My heart was beating, here in Altabena. I’d made it. I hadn’t meant to hurt them.

  “We know what you tried to do,” Dad said. “And we’re sorry.”

  They were sorry? Poor Dad couldn’t even say the word, couldn’t admit out loud that he thought I’d attempted suicide, though there was no other rational explanation for what had happened.

  No, I wanted to say. That wasn’t it at all. I wanted to live so desperately. I wanted life and this was the only way I could have it.

  “It’s hard being a teenager,” Mom said. “I remember now, but I’d forgotten. There was so much pressure on you with moving to a new town, and changing schools and making new friends and trying to fit in. We should’ve kept more of an eye on you. Then we could’ve been there for you.”

  “Don’t blame yourself.” I shifted my gaze from her to my father. “You guys are wonderful.”

  “Things got too much for you.” She’d stopped sobbing, at least. “There’s a huge world and everything looks scary when you’re a teenager.”

  She had no idea how vast the universe was, no idea how serious my adversaries, no idea what I’d been fighting.

  “You got that right,” I said.

  Now she’d started it seemed there was no stopping her. “You don’t have the life experience that we do. I’m not saying we’re better than you, just older. We know you can ride through the hard parts of life and that you’ll make it. You’
re such a bright girl and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, so much to look forward to. College, career, family, travel. There’s a lifetime of fun and excitement coming your way. It’ll be hard work at times too but that’s just the way it is. Anything can happen. There are so many possibilities.”

  “There are,” I said.

  It was all ahead of me. Now.

  “However bad things seem, they always get better,” she added.

  My parents were too kind and my guilt ran deep. Mom was so grateful to have me back that she couldn’t say a bad word. Dad too.

  I cleared my throat. “One more thing. What about Ben?”

  Dad raised his eyebrows. “You know he saved your life by calling an ambulance?”

  I nodded. He had saved me.

  He must’ve got rid of the cannulas and tubing before the paramedics arrived, must’ve come up with a convincing story and taken care of the details.

  “He’s outside in the hallway,” Dad said. “He wouldn’t leave.”

  Ben…

  My reason for being here.

  He was the future.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ben and I kept to the back of the room. I’d been to military funerals before, but never a civilian one and this was my first visit to a funeral parlor, also my first big outing since getting out of hospital. I’d been to school, of course, but that didn’t count.

  The chapel by the crematorium wasn’t such a bad place. Padded benches and chairs were laid out in rows in front of a small podium. The walls were mushroom colored, the carpet a rich burgundy, the tones soothing. Maybe I did like shades of pink after all.

  Earlier the guests had been milling around, a healthy buzz in the air. The room was silent now except for the sound of heavy breathing and the occasional sob. Every seat was taken so Ben and I remained standing. A crowded room meant we wouldn’t be noticed, exactly as we wanted.

  At the front, the funeral director took over and the first of the speeches began. I couldn’t help but notice how personal this was, how intimate, despite the number of people here. It wasn’t like a military funeral where some general talked about the values of the armed forces and the virtues of New Nation. Here the speakers spoke heartfelt words about the ninety-year-old man who’d died, a brother, father, grandfather; a man who’d lived a good life and had people who loved him.