The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  “This, of course, complicates our communications. We have to take measures beyond that of simply disrupting their audio recording devices. If we abuse this knowledge too often, they will realize you’ve discovered the location of their cameras. It would be more advantageous for us if they believe you remain ignorant of their presence,” said Mr. Clean. “I can disable their cameras in an emergency, but in doing so, they will know an external entity compromised their systems.”

  Jonathan struggled to process what the video feeds meant for him and everyone around him. He’d always suspected it might be possible, but seeing it confirmed turned paranoia into an impotent rage. All these people he cared about had had their lives invaded for no reason other than their proximity to him. He couldn’t warn them, and he couldn’t protect them.

  “Jonathan, please, mind your emotions. Your face is beginning to show distress.”

  He took a breath, his face turning blank as he locked this anger behind a wall—let it take up residence with all the rest.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Clean said. “The Cell is monitoring the data coming and going through your internet feed as well. I have cloaked our current conversation as a streaming video file for now. Still, you can see we are pushing the amount of time that could lead to suspicion. I recommend you make it a routine to start sitting in this corner when you are doing ordinary activities.”

  Irritation hit him, but he kept it hidden from his face. It wasn’t the breach of privacy alone; it was the time limits, again. Heyer nearly always showed up and rushed off, and Jonathan was constantly trying to keep up with the minutia of their conversations, only to berate himself for not having been quick enough to ask the right questions later. Now, when he thought he was finally going to get unfettered access to some answers, he was, yet again, being rushed.

  He started typing again—faster.

  Today, I returned to the moment of the breach without killing a Ferox. I was activated, went to intercept, but before I could engage it, I was back where I’d stood when the gates opened. I didn’t destroy the portal stone.

  “That is all?” Mr. Clean asked.

  Yes, Jonathan typed. Does it mean something to you?

  “For now, it appears that part of your memory has failed to carry over. There are scenarios where this could occur, but the conditions necessary to cause them should not have been in play. Unfortunately, I am not permitted to discuss said scenarios, but I will compare your perception of events against the activity in the gates.”

  Wait, Jonathan typed. You mean I fought the thing, killed it, but didn’t get my memory back?

  “Yes, that is the best answer I can give at this time.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SATURDAY | OCTOBER 8, 2005 | 8:00 AM | PORTLAND

  OLIVIA SAT IN the sedan across the street from Evelyn Tibbs’ Portland home, finding it to be what she imagined. It was an average-size house in a rather typical suburban neighborhood. The yard was well-kept, likely tended by landscapers. The family wasn’t rich, but Tibbs’ mother was far from poor. There was a rose garden around the outer fence, and Olivia wondered if Evelyn tended to this herself.

  She’d been ready to interview the mother, had almost opened the car door to cross the street, when she’d received a call from the lab. The test results on the body had been completed.

  The corpse her team had taken out of the ground was, as she’d suspected, another layer of mystery. She hadn’t gone in with any expectation, not precisely. Rather, the results would either be exactly what they should—the body of Douglas Tibbs, father of Jonathan, killed in a car accident years prior—or something they’d never seen before, something alien. The body had proved to be neither. Completely human, and yet not belonging to Douglas Tibbs at all.

  This left Olivia reconsidering the two files on the car seat beside her. One for Jonathan Tibbs, and one for Grant Morgan. There was a connection between the two and she was failing to see it. Her first thought had been that perhaps they were half-brothers—but DNA tests had not only confirmed that neither of the men shared parents, but further, that the body of the John Doe they had exhumed from Douglas Tibbs’ grave was completely unrelated to either of the young men as well. This left her with a new cache of unanswered questions.

  Her team had been in Seattle for barely a week before they had gotten the news they had been waiting on. A 9-1-1 call indicated that a man, a student at the university, had been found in a bloody mess in his home, reportedly attacked and sedated by an unidentified, blond male assailant, without any physical injuries to account for the blood loss.

  When Jonathan Tibbs had been identified as The Mark’s target, her team had gone into action, keeping the event out of the media, taking over jurisdiction of the investigation, and later, doctoring and removing the medical records. The general public was not to become aware of the strange circumstances surrounding the incident, if Jonathan was to be observed properly.

  At the time, Grant had been romantically involved with Jonathan’s roommate. It had seemed a fortuitous coincidence that an army specialist stationed at the nearby military base was already in position for her team to take advantage. Only later had it come to light that Grant was not there by any random chance, but was, in his own amateur way, investigating Jonathan as well. Grant had seemed convinced that Jonathan was a dire threat. What wasn’t clear was why.

  The only link she had been able to find between the two men were their fathers. Grant had been adopted by his aunt and uncle after his mother had died in childbirth. The father had been unknown, or so it was thought. Later, a private investigator uncovered that Grant’s mother had been involved with a member of the same strike team sent to Libya under Douglas Tibbs’ command. The name that the P.I. had given was of one Jeremy Holloway—and his involvement with Grant’s mother took place in a suspicious nine-month period before Grant was born. The problem was, precious little could be uncovered about Mr. Holloway, almost as though every record of the man had purposely been removed. However, seeing as Grant had no one that would miss him should he disappear, the time she was willing to allow for passive observation to give answers was drawing to an end. Grant, she had no doubt, would not resist for long under interrogation.

  Perhaps Grant’s confession could provide her with some much needed answers concerning Douglas Tibbs. Jonathan’s father was thought to have died stateside in a car crash when Jonathan was thirteen. The body had been beyond recognition, and the truck he’d been driving completely engulfed in flames after the gas tank had exploded. The body of the John Doe back at the lab was, in fact, horribly burned—still, DNA had been retrievable. What was interesting was that dental records had been a match. Someone had gone to some trouble to make it appear that Douglas Tibbs had died in that car crash.

  It was easy to assume that the father had faked his own death. The problem was that the story didn’t line up with anything The Cell knew about Douglas Tibbs. Before his death, if Olivia were to assume that he was, in fact, deceased, he’d been a responsible father and husband, the owner of a successful auto repair business, and a veteran discharged from duty twelve years earlier. Why would he fake his death, leave his wife and son grief stricken, and never show up anywhere on the grid for nearly ten years? Surely, given the body had been a decoy, she would have to give the command to start an investigation into his current possible whereabouts, but Olivia was highly doubtful that any trace would be found.

  As Olivia watched the house now, she wondered: Did Evelyn know of it? Had the mother been a party to whatever cover up had occurred or was she completely in the dark? Given what she had just learned, Olivia’s preparation for this interview now felt incomplete and she was not in the habit of letting things play out as they may. However, she was reluctant to reschedule. She’d come out here personally, and itched to be back in Seattle where she could control events should they get out of hand. So, she sighed and made her decision, reaching for the door handle and stepping out into the street.

  Evelyn heard t
he knock at the door and was thankful for a distraction. She’d called Jonathan’s cell phone again, only to hear the phone ring and go to a frustratingly full voicemail box.

  She imagined Jonathan taking the phone out of his pocket, looking at the caller ID, and pressing the ignore button. That was an image that pissed her off to no end.

  Kid, you must know you’re only making it worse for yourself, she thought. Her son couldn’t hide from her forever. She’d drive up to Seattle and camp on his lawn until he came home if he kept this up much longer.

  Composing herself, she made an effort to withdraw from her righteous parental indignation, setting the phone back on the receiver to answer the door. She found a woman with immaculately pressed clothes, a handful of manila folders, and a professional smile standing on her doorstep.

  “Thank you,” Evelyn said, moving to shut the door as she did so, “but I’ve found Jesus.”

  “Ms. Tibbs?” the woman asked. “Evelyn Tibbs?”

  The use of her name caused her to pause with the door half shut. “Yes.”

  With her free hand, the woman at her doorstep reached into a pocket, producing a business card and holding it out to her. “My name is Melissa Hart. I am here on behalf of the U.S. Army’s Historical Records Department, and I was hoping I could ask for a few minutes of your time.”

  “In regards to what?” Evelyn asked, accepting the woman’s card.

  “We’ve had an unfortunate mismanagement of records and we are attempting to reconstruct them,” Melissa said. “This is in regards to your late husband’s time overseas in 1984.”

  She appraised Ms. Hart for a moment, taking in a deep breath. Evelyn wondered if this would actually prove a better use of her time than staring angrily at the phone. “If you are looking for details about conflicts he was engaged in, he never spoke about it,” Evelyn said. “I respected his silence on the matter.”

  “I understand, but I was hoping that you might be able to assist us with names and faces. Perhaps provide some photos if it’s not too much trouble,” Ms. Hart said. “If it’s a bad time, I could come back later.”

  After a moment, Evelyn shrugged, stepping out of the doorway. “I’ll make coffee,” she said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SATURDAY | OCTOBER 8, 2005 | 8:00 AM | SEATTLE

  THE HOUSE WAS quiet. This wasn’t strange for a Saturday morning, but Jonathan had never completely outgrown a certain sensitivity to being alone in his home. It was more of a left-over tick these days than anything, but the absence of another human being was something he always seemed to notice.

  As he made his way down the stairs, the loss of his memory the day before continued to concern him. He was being placed in yet another situation where control was out of his hands. He was left with no other option but to continue life as usual and hope Mr. Clean could fix the glitch before he was activated again.

  Paranoia kept eating at him. Jonathan thought he had accepted that he had to trust the alien’s choices, but the AI’s inability to pass on information left him unable to ignore that he was, again, being manipulated. He couldn’t shake a suspicion that the real reason Heyer had ordered Mr. Clean to withhold details was because Jonathan had learned something he shouldn’t have in his last activation. Something he wasn’t supposed to know.

  Had his memory been kept from him intentionally?

  He put the thought aside for the umpteenth time. He had to trust Heyer. Regardless, from what he understood, the only individual capable of remembering what played out within the gates was the survivor. Clearly, that had been him. As far as he knew, there was no way for Heyer to know what Jonathan had witnessed before the gates closed. Of course, that whole chain of thought depended on Jonathan’s altogether incomplete knowledge of how the gates worked.

  He needed his memories.

  If he continued to lose them when he closed the gates, he would be cut off from his greatest asset: the very knowledge and experience that kept him alive. He reminded himself that there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and pushed the thoughts away. For now, the best thing for him was to focus on the things he could control.

  “Stay diligent in your training,” had been the alien’s parting words to him.

  He’d followed that advice. He had pushed himself, managing to add another ten pounds of muscle in the month that followed. With every Ferox slain, the truth in Heyer’s words became more certain: he could be stronger than any opponent the Ferox had faced. Jonathan had begun to experience that edge—with every pound he gained, the space between maximum Ferox strength and his own grew wider. If he lived long enough to be the size of someone like Lincoln, his personal trainer, then any Ferox who entered the gates would be sent back to its people unrecognizable.

  He overheard Collin speaking to someone in the driveway, and realized he’d been mistaken thinking the house empty. The voice that replied was unique, feminine, and foreign. He didn’t recognize the owner, nor could he place the accent. He stopped next to the door, wondering if he would be intruding.

  He couldn’t remember Collin ever having a girl over to the house. His roommate had been hopelessly infatuated with Paige since she’d moved in. Usually he was all for rooting for the underdog. Unfortunately, neither Hayden nor Jonathan thought it wise for Collin to ever act on his feelings, both doubting that Paige would return them. Jonathan thought Paige was either well aware and pretending she didn’t notice, or was simply blind to what she didn’t want to be true. That said, if Collin had met someone, he might be doing them all a favor and saving them from an awkward living situation.

  Still, Jonathan wasn’t going to wait around to start the day. He figured he would only be interrupting long enough to say hello and be on his way. When he entered, he saw the garage door was up. Collin leaned over his bike in the driveway, fully engrossed in conversation with a woman, who was straddling a motorcycle of her own.

  Her back was to Jonathan, her sports bike parked facing the street. She wore a heavy, leather-armored jacket, in the same style as the ones that Collin and Jonathan owned. Despite her covered arms, Jonathan could see she was an athlete. He’d learned to recognize the signs. It was her posture and the broad muscle of her shoulders. Her hair was straight, long, a natural black, and held in a tight braid that ran down her back such that it left the skin of her strong neck exposed.

  “You should be ashamed,” she said, “letting him buy that thing. It’s a disaster.”

  Jonathan still couldn’t place the strange accent. It sounded almost Italian to him, yet calmer, slower. Her voice made talking seem more like an amusing pastime than a necessity for communicating.

  “Trust me, I tried to talk him out of it,” Collin replied. “He named her Eileen, after the old woman who sold it to him.”

  The woman snorted. “Yeah, fits perfectly—thing has one foot in the grave.”

  Jonathan nodded to himself in understanding, then braced himself to be mocked as he stepped into the garage.

  “Tibbs, where have you been hiding this girl?” Collin asked upon seeing him. “I thought I was your only cool friend.”

  “Uh…” Jonathan frowned. He’d been about to ask Collin a similar question.

  The girl turned, pivoting gracefully as she dismounted the motorcycle and put her boots to the pavement. She was close to his age, her skin olive and face attractive. If Jonathan had known her, he wouldn’t have forgotten. It caught him off guard for a moment and her dark brown eyes grew wide, her lips curling into a playful and pleasing smirk at seeing him. He felt a bit transparent, thinking her amusement must be because of the way he was reacting to her.

  “Hello, Jonathan,” she said.

  He felt embarrassed immediately, at a complete loss for how the woman knew him by name. It still seemed impossible that he could forget such a face and voice, but he clearly knew her from somewhere. Perhaps they had shared a college class.

  “Hi, um, I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “I’m having trouble remembering your name.”

&n
bsp; Her eyelids drew down, eyes seeming to fill with sass. She drew in close to him, close enough that he had to resist the urge to step back. He was unsure if it would be rude. She was clearly foreign by birth and some cultures simply had smaller personal space bubbles. He swallowed while politely trying to hide the discomfort of her standing so close.

  “Games, Mr. Tibbs?” she asked, her dark eyes watching him with an intensifying gaze. “Why don’t you think a bit harder? I don’t have a lot of interest in playing games today.”

  Jonathan was going to apologize again, insist he wasn’t playing at anything. However, her confidence, assertiveness, and the sudden formality of her words triggered an alarm in him.

  He was sure he’d never met her. Yet she clearly recognized him—she knew his name, where he lived. It occurred to him that this woman could very well be a member of The Cell. Her words suddenly felt like a veiled warning to remove his friend from their conversation. Perhaps she was here to tell him that the surveillance was over, that no one had been fooled by his sitting in the corner of his room last night. His mind began to race, his eyes doing the same, scanning the streets out in front of them, looking for signs that she wasn’t alone.

  I’m a damn fool, he thought. I should have planned for this.

  Now, all he wanted was to get Collin away from her. He had to protect his roommate from getting pulled into his problems. If she was giving him the chance to keep Collin from witnessing his arrest, he had to cooperate.

  Jonathan cleared his throat and kept his expression calm, trying not to let his paranoia off the leash until he was certain this woman was what he suspected. “Collin, can I get a moment alone with my friend here?” he asked.

  Collin looked disappointed, but he shrugged it off. “Sure,” he said. “But if you’re planning on taking the bikes out, come and get me?”