The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  Ferox Alpha males are likewise ineligible for entry into the gates

  No gateway will remain active beyond initial energy expenditure

  Repeat human victors will not be targeted

  Ferox males deemed genetically irrelevant are ineligible for entry into the gates

  Proximity overlap…

  Seeing that text was continuing to run across his screen faster and faster, and Jonathan wasn’t sure if he understood a majority of what he was reading, he interrupted. Stop, slow down, Jonathan typed. I don’t understand half of these.

  “No,” Mr. Clean said, “I imagine you wouldn’t.”

  Why rule two—why is the Arena always Earth?

  “Practicality and necessity. The gateway equipment already existed on the Feroxian plane—each gate only needed to be re-targeted to Earth. However, redundancy in time was the main factor. Human combatants experience their battle, followed by a mental reversal back to the moment prior to the gate’s opening. However, the Ferox do not experience this redundancy, as this would eliminate the entire point of the exercise. In the event of a Ferox victory, their bodies must return to the Feroxian plane in the same state they were in upon leaving combat—injuries included. The directionality of the Feroxian gate opening to Earth is the only arrangement that can facilitate a redundancy in time for human victors and lack thereof for a Ferox victor.”

  Jonathan found that this answer left him with more questions than answers. “What purpose does all that serve?” he wrote.

  “The male Ferox’s physical state must be preserved after the engagement in order for them to achieve fertility. They must also bring their trophy—a human combatant’s corpse, covered in their pheromone excretion—for offering and consumption by the female they wish to mate with,” Mr. Clean replied. “If a Ferox male was returned to his home planet and only retained the memory of a battle, he would not achieve the physical state necessary for copulation, nor would the Ferox female achieve fertility without presentation of his offering.”

  Jonathan shook his head. He’d never heard the specifics about the Feroxian mating rituals, but the way that Mr. Clean described the process made it difficult to keep from being disgusted. The whole act sounded as if Ferox males came here to get turned on, aroused by violence.

  “Why is it a rule that Earth’s survivors retain their memory at all, then?” Jonathan asked. “Seems counter to the goal of keeping the human race in the dark.”

  “Correct. It would be a simpler affair if humans never became aware of what was happening to them. Heyer found this strategically problematic if he wished to build any kind of a resistance army in the future. However, he could not demand human combatants keep their memories without providing a valid reason,” Mr. Clean said.

  Jonathan understood Heyer’s angle in this instance. He wanted his army to have experience when the time came. Jonathan had only survived his first encounter with the Ferox out of sheer luck. If he had lost the memory of it ever having happened, he’d have entered his second confrontation blind to what he was facing. What he didn’t understand was how Malkier didn’t see this as a blatant foreshadowing of betrayal.

  So, how did Heyer pull that off? Jonathan asked.

  “With less difficulty than you might imagine. Heyer cannot feasibly attend every engagement, but he must always be present for a man’s first conflict. This is so, in the event of a human victory, Heyer can train him to properly close the gates. If humans did not retain their memories, then Heyer would have to be present for every confrontation. Because of this, the implants are installed such that humans retain their memory. Modifying the device’s settings once it has become part of a host’s active biology is highly dangerous, so again, practicality requires that men continue to retain their memory for the duration of their survival,” Mr. Clean said. “Now, that said, there are also potential uses for human memories to Malkier’s people in the long run. These potential uses are symptoms of rules four and five,” Mr. Clean said.

  “Device compatibility of 43%?” Jonathan asked. “And the Alphas?”

  Mr. Clean nodded, but as he did so, it almost seemed as though the cartoon’s attention had suddenly become divided.

  Explain the compatibility percentage, Jonathan typed faster.

  “Yes, limits had to be set on what degree of power a human should be allowed during a confrontation,” Mr. Clean said. “You have to remember, Jonathan: the expectation is that the human will put up a fight, but still lose.”

  Jonathan shook his head. The injustice of the whole arrangement—seeing how rigged the system was against the human combatants—was infuriating. “Seems unlike the Ferox to want their opponents handicapped,” Jonathan wrote. “They are a lot of ugly things, but cowards never seemed to be one of them.”

  “They have no awareness of these rules, nor do most human combatants. In addition, the Ferox possess an emotion akin to human fear, although the triggers are not identical to those of Man. Their sense of self-preservation is less tied to themselves as individuals, and more to their species as a whole. They fear mass extinction far more than personal injury. When a means to keep the Ferox from dying off presented itself, they were facing down their most innate fear. You can imagine that the Ferox leaders asked few questions about the fairness of the battles when their gods returned to open the gates.”

  Jonathan nodded. So Malkier found a human compatibility max where the Ferox feels threatened enough to achieve fertility, but the human is still unlikely to win. Meanwhile, the Ferox don’t know the fight is rigged for them. Jonathan paused a moment, finding he still didn’t understand something. But, how does any of this mean Malkier eventually benefits from human combatants retaining their memories? You said it had something to do with the Alphas?

  He’d been looking at the keyboard as he typed, and when he came back to the screen, Mr. Clean’s face was more distracted. “Jonathan, I am noticing that multiple terminals are now monitoring your internet line. The Cell has taken notice of how long you have spent in their blind spot. It is prudent that we continue this conversation at a later time.”

  Just quickly, answer this one question.

  “There is no shortage of individuals with lower compatibilities. Malkier originally saw no advantage in keeping the outliers—that is, those with substantially lower compatibilities who had survived despite the odds being heavily stacked against them. He wanted them disposed of, so their devices could be retrieved and re-implanted in hosts more psychologically ideal to serve his goals. However, because of the compatibility max, finding a human capable of—”

  Mr. Clean stopped speaking momentarily.

  “I am sorry, Jonathan. We will finish this conversation at another time. Leave the corner immediately and do not initiate communication with me again. I will contact you at a more appropriate time.”

  The screen returned to his normal desktop.

  Dammit! Hastily, Jonathan slammed the screen shut and threw the laptop back onto his bed.

  He regretted the action, having forgotten that his behavior was being filmed, but the unanswered questions were infuriating. Why had the gates already existed on the Ferox world but not on Earth? Why was there a time redundancy on one side but not the other? But…

  What purpose could human memories possibly serve for an Alpha Ferox? Jonathan wondered. Given the recent gaps in his own memory, this question bothered him more than the rest.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LEAH HELD A glass of wine she had yet to touch, an endearing grin on her face as she watched Jonathan.

  “Again!” Jack said.

  They sat in her dining room, the boys locking hands over their empty dinner plates in an epic battle of thumbs. Jonathan was playing a part for Jack, always allowing the little boy to win in the end, but only after putting on a performance of intense struggle. Her brother was a mixture of laughter and focus as the competition continued. She felt her grin waver for a moment when the reservations returned; those moments where her mind broke th
e spell and she remembered this wasn’t real—that she was playing a part as well.

  Jonathan pinned Jack’s thumb and started to count down, letting the kid bring all his efforts to escape. Soon, Jack would have the upper hand, or thumb, as it were, and Jonathan would pretend to be shocked when the underdog somehow turned the tables on him. What Leah found so fascinating was that the boys never seemed to grow tired of seeing this story play itself out. Jack may have still been young enough that he believed they weren’t following a script, but Leah was quietly studying Jonathan’s every nuance. He clearly had something invested. He didn’t want to break the little boy’s illusion.

  It played out the same each time. Jack let out a roar, as though he were Bruce Banner turning green, suddenly having the strength to break free of the bigger man’s thumb as he became the Hulk. Meanwhile, Jonathan would begin to struggle, losing his grip with wide-eyed disbelief. That was when she’d see what she found so fascinating. It was so important to him that the young boy believed he could call on something inside of himself, something with the power to change a losing situation.

  She’d lost count of the number of times the two had played this out. When they started the countdown to another round, she looked at the clock and saw that it was approaching Jack’s bedtime.

  “You two think you can put the war on hold for dessert?” Leah asked.

  Her little brother’s eyes lit up with the promise of sugar. When she saw Jonathan’s eyes turn to her, she gave the subtlest of tells, puckering her lips faintly enough that Jack would never catch the flirtation. The little boy wouldn’t notice the unspoken words that the adults had shared with a glance. One look at each other being enough to replace an entire discussion and make them allies in orchestrating events that would expedite the child’s bed time.

  “Dessert is a pretty serious reason for a cease fire,” Jonathan said. “Truce?”

  Jack looked at him with narrowed eyes, as though he suspected Jonathan’s thumb would pounce if he dropped his guard.

  “If we keep going,” Jonathan said, “my thumb might be too tired to hold a fork.”

  Jonathan had to agree that they would both let go on the count of three before Jack released his hand, and Leah returned from the kitchen with three slices of cheesecake.

  Jonathan grinned at her like a co-conspirator as he ate his dessert, though the smile didn’t hide an eagerness to be alone with her. She didn’t let it show, but there was something subtly different about the willingness to let her see that in his eyes. He looked at her without wavering. There had been a time when he had lacked the courage to own the desire his gaze betrayed when they caught one another’s stare. It had been as though the question of whether or not he had permission to look at her so candidly had finally been answered. That question had only ever existed in Jonathan’s head. He’d always had her permission. It had just taken him a frustratingly long time to realize it.

  Their looks across the table made it increasingly difficult to remember the child was there, made each bite of the rich dessert a struggle with patience; every moment, a tease.

  “Time for bed, Jack,” Leah said the moment the boy finished placing the last bite on his plate into his mouth.

  “Awww—” Jack started to complain.

  They were ten blocks away, standing in the basement of what had once been a neighborhood grocery store. When the business had gone under and the property foreclosed, the building had been scheduled to be demolished. Instead, Olivia’s team had bought the space through an intermediary with no traceable link to any government entity funding their operations.

  There had been an excessive amount of care put into the location, with every detail of its preparation overseen by Olivia herself. The walls were soundproofed to excess, with mesh metal wiring covering the inner surfaces to help block signals in or out. The only hard lines in were Internet and surveillance feeds. Olivia allowed herself no illusions—The Mark may have already been well aware of the location. Still, she’d gone out of her way to make sure that protection from any manner of eavesdropping humanity had at its disposal was in place. Every computer had been stripped of camera and microphone. Cellphones and radios were not allowed on the premises. She assumed, because there was no way to be sure, that The Mark may have had the means to know every detail of the information that came into the facility, but that didn’t mean she would allow it to be any easier for him to know what her team had made of said information.

  At the moment, Olivia watched the monitors intently with Agent Rivers beside her. He was doing his best to explain the minutia of Leah and Jonathan’s dinner conversation from the surveillance camera feeds. His interpretation was limited, as lip reading wasn’t an exact science. The art of it was complicated by cameras not being in the ideal position to see a speaker’s face, or the simple act of a person’s hand being in front of their mouth as they spoke. That, and it was hard to watch everyone’s mouth at once. Rivers failed to make out every uttered line, but the conversation taking place in the presence of the child was unlikely to tell them much anyway, and he could review the tapes to get a better transcription later, when they weren’t watching the screens in real time. Regardless, Olivia could read the situation fairly well from context.

  She had become rather fascinated watching Leah work. She studied how their asset swayed the subject with her body language so naturally. Olivia could manipulate, and did so regularly, but she had no use of seduction in her day-to-day dealings.

  Olivia followed Leah on the monitors when she left the table to retrieve dessert, waiting to see if she’d falter or fall out of character once out of sight.

  Agent Rivers spoke then, breaking her concentration. “Wherever you found her, she was an excellent decision. I’ve never seen an agent this young able stay in character so….” He paused, seeming to search for the right word. “Convincingly.”

  Olivia nodded without taking her eyes off the monitor. “Wasn’t my call. She is an outside contractor brought in from the private sector. A direct order from above. We call her by her assumed identity because we don’t have a real one,” she replied.

  “I’ve never heard of an order so outside of normal procedures,” Rivers said. “I mean, consultants on technical matter is fairly standard, but your main asset with direct access to the subject?”

  “Yes. At the time, I put in a formal objection and was overruled,” Olivia replied. “However, once I had more information, I came to see why her involvement was strategically wise.”

  “Is it within my pay grade to ask what changed your mind?” Rivers asked.

  “Normally, no, it would not be.” Olivia said. “Seeing as how it’s a complete absence of information, I see no reason you can’t be aware. Frankly, my commanding officer is rather proud of this asset.”

  “Absence of information?” Rivers said.

  “Leah and the young child,” Olivia said, pointing at Jack on the monitor. “They do not exist.”

  Rivers’ gaze slipped off the monitors momentarily, and Olivia could feel his curiosity frowning at her.

  “With approval, I was permitted to launch a full inquiry into the identity of both Leah and the child. I found out later permission was granted as an exploratory exercise.”

  “Intriguing,” Rivers replied. “What did you find?”

  “Almost nothing was uncovered, and what little there was led nowhere,” Olivia replied.

  He seemed to ponder this for a moment before drawing a conclusion. “Command went all out removing any possibility of her identity being discovered. He knew your record, that you had never failed to achieve results, and so he allowed you to launch an inquiry to see how successful the removal of their identities had been?” Rivers asked.

  Olivia nodded. She was becoming increasingly pleased with Agent Rivers’ ability to keep up. She would see to it that the man was given a promotion, possibly made lead on the next identified person of interest. For now, she considered him an ideal protégé.

  “You sa
id ‘almost nothing’,” Rivers replied.

  “There was one hit. An image brought up by facial recognition software. It was a picture of Leah stepping out of a vehicle in Jefferson, New York a little over a year ago. The image was immediately removed once I reported it, but I was allowed to follow all leads that could be explored from confirming where she had been. No ties were found to the area or the nearby military base, and the vehicle was untraceable. My suspicion is that she received some type of training at the site.”

  “So, were they pleased or annoyed that you found something?” he asked.

  “I imagine a little of both,” Olivia replied. “But I do not consider the investigation closed.”

  Her attention returned to the monitors, as it appeared Leah had left Jonathan alone while she put the child in pajamas and made sure he brushed his teeth. Jonathan stood in the kitchen, placing plates in the dishwasher.

  “What do you think about the recent peculiarities in Jonathan’s behavior?” Olivia asked.

  “Not a believer in coincidence. Ms. Silva’s appearance, Jonathan starts sitting in the one corner we happen to be unable to monitor. This Mr. Clean,” Agent Rivers said, “I have a hunch.”

  “I entertain all hunches.”

  “We monitored his internet feed today when he started using his laptop. It gave me some concerns,” Rivers replied. “The activity on the net looked like a random combination of pornography searches while he listened to streaming music. Seemingly standard profile for a man his age, except Jonathan hasn’t behaved like a standard profile since this investigation began.”

  Olivia nodded in agreement of the observation.

  “Then, he abruptly became upset and walked away from the machine. We’ve reviewed the sites he visited—none of the material appeared particularly offensive. It got me thinking of Mr. Clean.”

  Finally, she turned away from the monitor; her curiosity now piqued enough to take her attention from Leah tucking Jack into bed.