Jonathan smiled. “So, why wasn’t The Cell able to figure this out either?”
“That is where this becomes interesting,” Mr. Clean said. “It appears that at first the bureaucratic minutia surrounding a human fatality was allowed to play out. A Death Certificate was made, a funeral held, insurance policies paid out or canceled, mail stopped, bank accounts closed. Months later, someone began chipping away at any record that might confirm Rachel Delacy had ever existed. Eventually, the only people who would have known she’d ever lived were those with actual memories of her. These people had no reason to notice when records started disappearing from databases and filing cabinets.”
Jonathan nodded along. “So, the short version, you were as convinced as everyone else she was dead until she showed up here and bled on you.”
Mr. Clean was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, he chose his words carefully. “Jonathan, clearly you have been aware of a lot of this information. Yet, you refrained from divulging a majority of this to the extraction team. My inference is that your intention was to keep this woman’s identity unknown to us.”
Jonathan took a long breath.
“General Arthur Delacy had the resources to implement an identity eraser of this scale. Leah and her father’s involvement with The Cell wasn’t a choice they made to acquire alien tech—it was a rescue mission.
“I don’t need to tell you,” Jonathan said. “You’re aware of how and why Peter Delacy died on September 1st, 2003.”
Jonathan had never been sentimental about dates. Still, with enough time in The Never, he’d put it together. When her shadow told him the date of her brother’s disappearance, he’d realized it was the same date, weeks earlier, that she had come to see him in his garage. She said she didn’t want to be alone that night. She didn’t want to think about what day it was.
Mr. Clean nodded. “Yes, General Delacy’s first born son—Leah’s brother. The police report filed that night is still in my records. Rachel claimed that her brother vanished in front of her.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said with a shake of the head. “When Heyer gets it wrong, he really gets it wrong.”
“I . . . I don’t follow,” Mr. Clean said.
“Heyer said once that he didn’t worry that someone would notice if I just disappeared,” Jonathan said. “He said that for the most part people would convince themselves that they’d remembered wrong. If they didn’t, no one would believe them. Eventually they wouldn’t believe themselves.
“Leah never stopped believing what she saw with her own eyes . . .”
“That does appear to be the case,” Mr. Clean said. “But . . . you know that she wasn’t a person of interest because of her witnessing the disappearance of Peter Delacy.”
Jonathan nodded.
“So, you did intend to keep her identity from—”
“No,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” Mr. Clean said. “All logic indicates this is a top priority.”
“I knew there was no keeping it from you. But I didn’t want—I can’t have this discussion tonight.”
Jonathan closed his eyes. He took a while before speaking. “Mr. Clean, I had all the time I could ever have asked for to plan. But . . .”
He shook his head.
“I still don’t know what to do about her.”
Jonathan climbed the stairs and stepped in front of the door he’d been dreading all night. He did not want to come here unless he was sure that any problem remaining could wait until morning. Once inside, he didn’t intend to leave until he was asked.
When he knocked, Shane opened the door.
“Thank you for waiting with him,” Jonathan said.
He nodded, stepping outside to let Jonathan by, then shut the door behind him.
Like many of the cargo containers, this one was a mobile barracks. This one just happened to be furthest out from anything else in Hangman’s Tree.
Jonathan had ordered it be kept unoccupied for as long as possible. In the days to come, he wanted its single resident to have as much privacy as he could give.
Mr. Silva didn’t know any of that.
He was pacing anxiously when Jonathan entered and looked as though he may have been doing so for a long time before he’d arrived. He stopped, a look of recognition on his face when he saw Jonathan. “You’re Evelyn’s kid. She showed me a picture.”
Jonathan nodded, then stepped away from the door into the room. He held out his hand. “Jonathan Tibbs.”
“Joao Silva.”
Joao shook his hand, but not without hesitation. Jonathan didn’t begrudge him, the man had every reason to be nervous after what he’d been through tonight.
“They tell me you’re in charge here.”
Jonathan nodded. “That’s . . . that’s not important right now.”
He backed up a step and took a seat on one of the bunk beds.
He held out a hand to the bunk across from him, inviting Joao to sit with him.
“Look, Jonathan, I’ve seen enough tonight to know I’m out of my depth. I don’t want to be mixed up in any of this, and I don’t plan on being any kind of problem to you or your people.”
“You aren’t in any danger, Joao,” Jonathan said. “No one here wants to harm you.”
Joao nodded, but the anxiety didn’t leave his eyes. “But, I’m not exactly free to go either?”
Jonathan shook his head and sighed. “No, I can’t let you go yet. I suppose that makes you a prisoner. It’s a predicament. I don’t have a quick solution, but I promise you’ll go home safe as soon as possible.”
Understandably, Joao was less than comforted by the answer.
“All I want is my daughter. Everyone says you’re the only one who knows where she is. Please, tell me, point me in the right direction, you have my word you’ll never hear from either of us again.”
Jonathan closed his eyes. He tried to keep his face from contorting in grief, but he was already beginning to fail.
“I ordered Shane not to speak of her. It had to be me . . .”
The alien never had to go through this part.
“. . . Joao, I owe your daughter my life . . .”
Heyer’s soldiers disappeared—and that was that.
“. . . the world owes her . . .”
No one told the parents. The spouses. The brothers and sisters. No one ever got a reason.
“Your daughter . . . Rylee . . . she’s . . .”
They were just gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DATE |TIME: UNKNOWN | FEROXIAN PLANE
“THE BLEEDING HAS stopped,” Cede said.
Malkier, consumed with concentration, returned to the present. He looked down and pondered the shape of black smears on the floor of Cede’s inner sanctum.
His blood—he’d ignored that slow drip from the opened scar on his face until it had ceased on its own. Hadn’t noticed that as he paced back and forth his own feet had tracked it, smeared his black footprints until they had formed a triangle on the cave’s floor.
The war had begun less than seventy-two hours ago, and at each vertex of that blood triangle, Cede displayed all they knew of the events that had followed. Each represented one of his opponent’s opening moves.
Three isolated incidents from which he was to see his brother’s game.
As a machine of war, the Ferox were a locomotive. Whatever stood in their tracks would be obliterated. The operator of a locomotive didn’t worry about blind spots—what might come at him sideways. The only direction of consequence was forward.
After hours of pacing his triangle, two things were certain.
His brother was laying a boulder on the tracks and he would not allow Malkier to learn the size or shape of it. This made the next move his, and it came to one question: Did Malkier believe there was anything Heyer could do to stop him?
He had believed his brother’s capture had saved him from needing an answer. Without Heyer, Malkier’s leadership and ancestral technolog
ies would allow the Ferox to crush Earth’s resistance easily. Even the small army of enhanced human combatants was little more than a nuisance.
However, his brother’s allegiance had never been a foregone conclusion. Having grown suspicious of Heyer’s activities for some time, the story brought to him by Grant Morgan’s shadow had finally relieved Malkier of any further doubts. His brother had chosen humanity over his own blood.
As such, he’d begun plans to deal with a battleground that included his brother. When Heyer had allowed himself to be captured, Malkier had been relieved to know he was off the board.
Then—he’d escaped.
Of the three vertices displayed, the one that held the least mystery was the device his brother activated while prisoner inside of Cede. Heyer’s physical form slipping through the security net, while impressive, had been a secondary function. The primary function was that of a beacon. When Heyer had activated the device, a signal was sent from the Feroxian Plane to Earth. A signal telling Mr. Clean to initiate a sequence of events on the human plane. While the consequences hadn’t been apparent instantaneously, within a few hours Cede knew that Heyer had severed almost all channels of travel into the human dimension.
For Malkier, this vertex served as a reminder that his brother was putting in motion a scheme he’d been preparing for years. To sever said channels so quickly, Heyer would have had to have traveled to each of the ancient Borealis satellites stationed inside the human dimension and rigged them to be disabled upon activation of the beacon.
Of course, there was one exception—the gateways.
By their very nature, neither Heyer nor his AI could sever them as a point of entry. As long as the gateways remained on the Feroxian Plane surrounded by the Ferox Tribes, they were under Cede’s surveillance and control. Had Heyer attempted to tamper with or destroy those gateways his treason would have been revealed long before he accomplished anything of use to his cause.
This move was tactical. Simply Heyer blinding him to what took place on Earth. However, Heyer had pulled a curtain between the dimensions, not a one-way mirror. His brother had now effectively blinded himself to what took place on the Feroxian Plane as well.
That vertex was the least concerning to him. He understood it and required no great feat of imagination to know how it had been done.
The remaining two vertices were a mystery.
The next was all the information they had about the twenty-eight mutilated bodies left on his tribe’s gateway. An isolated occurrence thus far as none of the other gateways had become the site of similar massacres. This event was terrifying. Every detail about how it was done was supposed to be impossible.
First was the number dead. At any given time, a gateway’s queue seldom exceeded seven. Cede’s analysis had confirmed that the bodies represented Ferox from four other tribe’s gateways along with his own. This meant that in the time between Malkier’s departure and his waking in the breeding pits, five gateways had merged their queues, every Ferox inside had been killed, and all of the remains had been returned to the gateway of the prophet.
No coincidence. This followed immediately after his brother’s escape.
No coincidence. Each of those queues had been targeted to Brings the Rain.
No coincidence. Twenty-eight bodies, delivered to his doorstep, immediately after he’d killed the woman.
Cede had yet to come up with a theory as to how the AI, Heyer, or even Jonathan Tibbs himself could have put such a thing in motion. But there was no denying the message.
Seeing what befell his people, Malkier had immediately sent word to all the tribe’s leaders that no more combatants were to enter the gateways without the prophet’s command.
Normally, this would have created tension throughout his people, as this would leave each tribe’s Alpha to deliver the news that their gods forbade them to enter the gates. But timing was on the prophet’s side. Having already decreed that every available fighter was to join the Pilgrimage, the Ferox understood that they were being gathered to take the Promised Land. On the verge of fulfilling the prophecy that meant salvation for their species—none objected.
That left the Ferox who had already entered the gates. They were beyond his reach, soon to be casualties of a war they did not know had begun. Open war had been declared; a fair fight no longer awaited any who entered The Never.
Until he knew what happened to the twenty-eight—any individual sent into The Never would be selected with great discretion.
Now, Malkier stood at the third vertex—the most troubling of them all.
“Play it again, Cede,” Malkier said.
Without a word, Malkier relived the last conversation he’d had with his brother through Cede’s projections. His brother’s words of warning: Do not go after Brings the Rain! He can kill you. He is more than the bond, you have no idea how dangerous that man is.
Malkier stepped on wet floor, reminded again that he had returned from The Never injured once again. He had survived Echoes the Borealis—been able to push the incident out of mind as he awaited the birth of his child. Whatever circumstances had left him temporarily vulnerable, the knowledge of how he’d been harmed died with the father inside The Never. Yet now, somehow—the son had known how to harm him.
Once again, this left no room for coincidence. Heyer’s warning made it clear that he had known Jonathan Tibbs to be a threat to him. None of this explained how Brings the Rain came to possess the knowledge to hurt him.
A man lived and walked the Earth with the knowledge of how to kill a Borealis. This was unacceptable, but he dared not lead the Ferox to Earth before the situation was resolved.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
OCT 16, 2005 | 5 AM | HANGMAN’S TREE
Leah wasn’t surprised. Okay, maybe she was a little surprised but, she knew she shouldn’t have been. After her arm was stitched up, Beo and Mito escorted her to a holding room. Nothing quite as fancy as the sterile plastic prison she’d briefly shared with Jonathan, but rather more the mundane. A small room behind a locked door with a bed and the necessities.
Unable to sleep, she’d lain awake so long she assumed it must be morning by now.
The door opened suddenly. There had been no sound of a key disengaging a lock. While she’d never had any intention of escaping, when the door opened so noiselessly, she wondered if the only thing that had kept her in that cell all night had been the honor system.
Jonathan stood in the doorway.
He looked like himself again, cleaned up and wearing ordinary street clothes. Meanwhile, she was still barefoot and wearing the same clothes she’d been rolling through the dirt in when the giant metal worm hit the facility. Still, Jonathan looked as though he may have gotten less sleep than she had last night.
Uncertain, she rose slowly off the bunk. With no idea how the next minutes were meant to go, she waited for him to give her a clue.
“I’m sorry about this, the guys . . . they didn’t know what to do with you,” Jonathan said.
Leah nodded. “But . . . you do?”
He paused, then shrugged. “I know you don’t need to be in here.”
With that he stepped back out of the doorway to clear her a path.
Hesitant at first, she began to walk toward the door. When they were an arm’s length apart, she frowned at a new scar that ran through his eyebrow. That wound had been as fresh as the one on her arm when they arrived here. Yet, his skin looked as though it had healed weeks ago, while hers was still held shut with stitches.
If he knew what the look she gave him asked, he didn’t offer an answer.
He seemed to have something else troubling his mind.
“I’m . . . I’m used to calling you Leah, but if you’d rather I didn’t?”
She knew what he was asking. Leah was her middle name before it became her deception—her armor. Whether he meant to or not, the thought of him calling her by her birth name would feel like a punishment every time he said it.
“No one
calls me Rachel anymore,” she said. “Please, just call me Leah.”
Where am I? Leah wondered. Where do you hide a place like this?
They were still inside some vast warehouse. She couldn’t see the full length of the place. That, and some of the building dimensions didn’t quite seem to strictly obey the laws of physics. Some rooms seemed to be a part of the actual building, but they walked past rows upon rows of cargo containers that had clearly been integrated more recently.
Jonathan had a seemingly intimate knowledge of the layout. She had no idea how that was possible, considering his every move had been watched by The Cell for months. He’d never been off their radar long enough to be this familiar with the place. Like the scar over his eye, she added it to the list of things she didn’t understand about what was going on.
“Are you in any pain?” he asked, looking at the bandage on her arm.
“Oh . . . no, it’ll be fine,” Leah said.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No . . . not really.”
“You lost blood. You should probably eat something.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Well, then maybe a shower and some fresh—”
“Jonathan—” Leah said, then sighed, before starting again. “Jonathan, you’re being very kind. Thank you . . . but all I want is answers.”
He had a knowing look. “Be patient, I know what drove you all this way, Leah. I’m not the person you came here to interrogate.”
A shiver ran though her. “The alien, he’s awake?”
“He’s still recuperating—was only conscious for a moment,” Jonathan said. “But he’ll live.”
“But you’ll let me talk to him?”
“You have my word,” he said solemnly.
She didn’t know what to say, not immediately. He had just promised to give her the very thing she had been hunting for the last two years—and she believed he meant it. She was struck by the realization that this journey was nearing some end. She didn’t notice she’d stopped walking until he looked back at her from a few paces ahead.
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