Split Infinity (9 page)

Here, there is no future and no past. Every moment exists at once. But every now and then I catch a glimmer of time, a spark of memory. Staring into a sky that never ends. Arms around me, holding me tight. Sharing pancakes.

Home. It’s like the faintest breath of cool against your cheek on a summer evening after a heatwave, a promise that relief exists just over the horizon.

So now, with all that I have left, I follow: an idea so faint that it’s almost out of reach. But it is something. And that is so much more than nothing.

Even as I turn towards its breath, I feel it strengthen. The pulse quickens, calling to me. I know it’s there, this shoreline that will take me back. And with this certainty comes hope; my memories form into fragments of the people I once knew. Mason. Alistair. Kessa.

Their pull grows clearer until I’m accelerating towards them, a single point in time. A place. A home.

It’s familiar, and layered with possibility. I’ve been here before.

Mum.

CHAPTER TEN

W
ITH A LURCH
, I’m sucked up to the surface, recoiling as my lungs expand. A wave of reality washes over me as I open my eyes.

It’s night. I’m breathing hard and hot all over, bedclothes flat beneath me. It brings a sudden sense of deja vu. I’ve been here before, felt this already.

I’m sitting upright, but I topple backwards at the shock. My hands catch me and contract around softness, trying to make sense of all this. I should have returned to the street where Mason and I were caught. Where am I now?

When
am I now?

I regain my balance and one hand lifts to my mouth, finding lips and skin, reconnecting with the things I know. It slides down my neck and keeps going to rest on my chest, the truth of my own heartbeat.

It’s racing at a million miles an hour. I’m here. I’m alive.

Light from a streetlamp shines through the edges of the blind, enough to see. Pale legs stretch before me. They seem strange somehow, part of a world beyond me.

Clumsily I clamber onto the floor, expecting it to give way or swallow me completely. Each sense is overtaken by fresh reality. The rug is soft and warm beneath my palms, cushioning my knees. So many details clamour for attention that suddenly it’s too much. The world tilts and spins.

I only just make it to the bench before I puke into the sink. My guts contract, spewing out of me.

I’m clutching the bench, panting, when it’s over. I wipe the spit from my chin and examine the remnants of my stomach now splodged around the drain. The stench of it seeps into my nostrils. I’m breathless and sweaty. Brown lumps and soft jellylike bits. That looks kind of like lentil and veg soup …

Weird. The last thing I ate was a ration bar.

It’s only as I turn on the grey-water tap to rinse the mess that I get a memory-flash of blood dripping into a hole in a dismantled sink.
The crunch of a glass blade against my chip, digging hard into my flesh.

It’s like the remnants of a dream, raw with emotion but difficult to hold in my mind. I lift my arm and peer at it in the dull light. There’s no wound anymore, just the faded line I drew on with make-up. And I
remember
drawing it on. The moment is clear in me, as if it were days ago. The pencil pressing against my skin and the hope that it would help me pass as any other citizen …

I rub my wrist, wiping away the make-up. Trying to understand. But all I see is clean, clear skin. There’s no wound, no scar. My wrist is as smooth as the day I was born.

It’s only now that I look around properly, registering where I am. Our sink. Our room.

Our bed. And …

‘Mum?’ I only make it a couple of steps when I pull back and gasp, a hand pressed against my mouth. She’s
here
. One arm is draped across her face, the way she always sleeps.

A sob escapes from somewhere deep and I fall onto the bed, scrambling across the bedclothes.

She lifts her arm from her face and her eyelids flicker open for a moment before squinting closed again. ‘What is it, Coutlyn?’

Tears brim in my eyes as I sink into her, hooking my arms around her neck, burying my face in her hair, holding onto the truth of her. ‘You’re here. You’re really
here
.’

Wherever this is. Or
when
ever.

She’s holding me tight, returning the hug. Her head tilts towards me, half-smiling as if I’ve gone mad. ‘Of course, Coutlyn. I haven’t gone anywhere.’

Even before she speaks I know this; she’s been here this whole time. It’s me who’s been gone. It’s me who was lost. I pull away, transfixed by every detail. She’s thinner than I remember, her cheeks still sunken from a lifetime of sharing her rations with me.

I wipe my face. ‘What’s the date?’

She hitches herself up on one elbow and flicks on the bedside lamp. ‘Scout, it’s the middle of the night. I don’t know. Thursday, I think.’

As if that’s any help. But I can see her properly now. I cup her face in my hands, drinking her in.

The way I need to hold onto her reminds me of the way she held me the first time I showed her I could skip. If only I’d taught her how to do it too, she would have been able to escape the fire. She would have survived.

I pull back and run a hand over the back of my neck. My head hurts. It makes no sense, being here with Mum. Our room back the way it used to be. But there’s no denying the sensation that I’ve been here before.

I think back. I was lost in the tunnel and somehow I found a way out, but it’s not where I should have returned. It’s as if I’ve fallen into an
old
return, an earlier point in my timeline, and reconnected with the person I used to be. But I’m not exactly the same, now I have two sets of memories to sort through: one from here and another that’s fading, like a dream.

‘Sweetheart, are you all right?’ Mum reaches for my forehead. ‘Are you sick?’

‘Sort of … I threw up. But I’m okay now.’ I think.

Mum’s hand slides down to my cheek. ‘Are you hot? You had a nightshirt on when we went to bed …’

I glance down vaguely, and reach for a loose sheet at the end of the bed, tucking it under my arms like a strapless dress and tying it tight. I’m so used to being naked by now that I barely noticed.

‘Yeah, I must have been.’

‘Want me,’ Mum asks with a yawn, ‘to get you a pain block?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ Then I change my mind. Maybe that will distract her while I work this out. ‘Actually, do you mind?’

Mum’s slow to get out of bed, yawning first and stretching. She doesn’t even consider making me get it myself. I watch her stand and pad softly towards the cold cupboard. She’s here. She’s
safe
.

Kneeling on the bed, I grab my compad from the bedside table and sit back with my feet tucked under. The screen flickers to life and my spine tingles as I read the date: Thursday 15 September 2084.

So, I was right. And actually, I remember this night clearer than most.

It was my first-ever time skip.

My head feels light as I hack into the grid, my window into now. First I zoom out to check our street. Other than residents in their homes, no-one is on the street, no police. Alistair is in the next room, right where he’s meant to be. Kessa and her sister are in their tiny bedroom at the end of the street. I zoom out and find Mason in his room at home. Safe. He’s not masked from the grid anymore; it looks like he’s asleep in bed. Boc is a couple of blocks away; they’re both tagged with ‘???’. No warrants for arrest anywhere.

Amon and Echo are harder to find because they haven’t been tagged so I track across to the climbing centre over the past weeks and pick out Amon straightaway. That’s totally his climbing routine and, besides, he’s always partnering Boc. Now I trace him from the climbing centre to his home, to Echo and their parents.

Amon’s still here, alive.

They all are. I close my eyes with one hand pressed against my chest, and let it all sink in. My whole body feels light.

Every moment exists at once. It just depends where you are in the universe when you see it.
Did Mason say something like that?

Except. My eyes open. He hasn’t said that yet. The blackout hasn’t happened. We haven’t spent the night together on his roof. Not yet. So far, none of it has gone wrong. Amon hasn’t been killed; none of us are tagged for arrest. The firestorm hasn’t happened.

Which means I have a chance to fix everything.

I press my eyes shut and think back. So many dots marked deceased. But when? I don’t even remember reading the exact date. All I know is it was a few months after I jumped.

Mum’s not quite so slow as she returns with the pain block.

‘Thanks, but …’ I drop the tube of gel on the bedside table. ‘I think I’m okay now.’ I shuffle back on the covers as Mum settles into bed. ‘Listen, Mum. There’s something you need to know.’ Right now she has no idea that time skipping is even possible.

She tucks her feet to one side and turns to check her compad. ‘Scout, it’s nearly two in the morning. What’s going on?’

It’s only when she mentions the time that I realise how deranged I must seem. High on adrenaline, throwing up in the sink, a blubbering mess. I have to be smart about this. I already know from last time how she’ll react when I show her a skip. Tears and panic.
I thought I’d lost you. Don’t ever do that again …

There’s months before the firestorm. I’ll make sure she’s nowhere near. But what about other wildfires, after that? Floods? How many more dangers are lurking?

Even more important than saving her from this fire, I realise, is teaching her how to skip. Once she can do that she won’t need me to warn her about anything, she’ll be able to save herself.

‘I’ve got something to show you, okay? You have to see this.’ I slip backwards off the mattress and find a place on the floor, ready. ‘So it’s like a … a magic trick, okay?’ That’ll do, as a start. ‘I’ve been working on a magic trick.’

She hitches herself up higher. ‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Yeah. It’s really good.’ I untie the strapless-dress sheet, and hold it at shoulder height in front of me. ‘It’s a disappearing trick, right?’

‘Okay,’ she says slowly.

‘On the count of three.’ I throw the sheet over my head so that all she can see is my shape. ‘One, two …’ I call from underneath, ‘… three.’

I drop away easily. It’s a familiar place, skimming on the surface of time.

With a single breath I return, bursting into now and landing solidly on top of the sheet, aware that I’m a clear three seconds ahead from when I dropped away. Maybe my future has been stripped away, but the months of training are still with me.

Mum is sitting upright on the bed, her hand covering her mouth. ‘My goodness, Scout. How did you do that?’ She lets out a laugh.

‘I know, right?’

‘I thought they did that with mirrors or something.’

‘No, it’s um …’ I lift a hand, wondering how I’m going to explain this. ‘I’ve been working on it for ages.’

‘So, tell me.’ Mum shuffles around to face me, one leg tucked under the other. ‘How do you do it? That looked real, like you
actually
disappeared.’

‘Yeah. It’s hard to explain.’ My nightshirt is still on my side of the bed, so I pull it on to buy some time.

The last time I showed her how time skipping works, she totally freaked out. But already it’s going better. One step at a time. I have to be sure she stays calm, relaxed about the idea of time skipping. If I do, she’ll have a chance of learning how to do it herself. I’ve already worked out that stress and worry are only going to make it harder.

‘Can I show you some other time? I’m working out a way to teach other people. Maybe I can test some ideas on you?’

‘Of course.’ Mum’s expression changes. ‘Is anything else going on?’ Maybe it’s not as bizarre as the truth, but a magic trick in the middle of the night is still borderline crazy.

‘No. Mum, I’m fine.’ I run a hand through my hair, suddenly tired. ‘I must still be hyped after yesterday is all.’

When my whole world came to an end.

‘Think you can sleep?’ She’s watching me closely now.

The familiar worry-creases have formed on her forehead, but then her face relaxes as I nod. She switches off the light, then flops an arm over her eyes again.

I snuggle into the sheets, knees to chest, holding onto the sound of her breath, the sense of her here, solid beside me. There’s no way I’m falling asleep. My heart is pounding. The world that once seemed wide and open suddenly seems fragile, the future broken so easily.

For ages I just lie in the dark, listening to Mum’s breathing deepen and slow. Images echo like dream fragments from another place, another time.

Your mum died, Scout.

Subject is unresponsive …

It’s like processing a nightmare. I’m safe, but my heart still races, the dream still clings to me, the desperate fight to escape. To survive.

I roll over and pull the chip from a drawer in the bedside table, checking that it’s still there. I promised the woman from the cave that I’d make the chip count for something. Here’s my second chance. But this time is different. Going to school hardly seems to matter anymore. I have to save the people I love. And if I can, I’ll find a way to save thousands I’ve never even met. I slip the chip back into the drawer and roll onto my side, going over the details I know about the firestorm in my mind, calculating how much time I have.

Eight months? Maybe less. Already I can feel the pull of the future, time dragging me forward: seconds ticking to minutes, minutes slipping into hours. Into days. Into weeks.

Until a whole life ends in a breath.