The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  Rylee shrugged. “Means he didn’t think I would appreciate a pun…” She trailed off, her attention distracted by the chalk marks on the inside of Jonathan’s facade. “What’s this?”

  “Inside joke,” Jonathan said. “Between me and the Universe.”

  He realized then, that the question mark he had drawn the day earlier no longer belonged. After placing Themyscira behind the wall, he reached for a red and a green stick of chalk. Rylee watched him as he erased the mark and replaced it with two new lines, a red and a green.

  She made a point of clearing her throat in protest as he finished.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You can only take credit for one that night,” she said.

  He smiled. “You’ll have to tell me about it.” He wiped away one of the hash marks from his score board, then made a new row half way down the board. He wrote her name and put a mark under it.

  “You’re keeping track of their color?” Rylee asked.

  Jonathan nodded.

  “So many Reds,” she said, frowning. “I’ve only encountered one, well, two if I’m reading your hashmarks for tonight correctly. Both times I was with you. Is that random, just chance?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Jonathan shrugged.

  She nodded, but her eyes grew questioning again as she studied the chalkboard’s markings. “What does the H mark mean?”

  He stopped smiling then. “Let’s talk about it some other time,” he said.

  Quick to pick up on his shift in mood, Rylee didn’t press the question. “Tomorrow, then,” she agreed, but then hesitated. “Wait, no, there is something you need to know. I don’t know if it’s important, but it had never happened before, at least not to me. I think I should tell you now.”

  Great, Jonathan thought, already knowing that if it couldn’t wait, it wasn’t going to be good.

  “The other night, we….” Rylee paused. She bit her lip, her eyes scanning back and forth across the floor as she searched for the right words. “We had let down our guard, while trying to decide what to do with the stones. We didn’t notice….” She sighed, frustrated. Then she looked at him sharply. “There was a man. I saw him step into the sphere with us before the flash.”

  Jonathan blinked, processing her meaning for a moment.

  “People have been around me before,” he said. “Never inside the sphere itself, though.”

  She nodded. “He knelt down over me. I did not like his face.”

  Jonathan frowned in thought. He remembered the first night he killed a Ferox, when Heyer had helped him close the gates. He’d thought the alien had betrayed him in the last moment, because he had stepped away. Thinking about it, now, the alien had been pulling back far enough to make sure he hadn’t been inside the sphere with him. When he’d seen Heyer again, the alien’s act had proven not to be a betrayal, and he’d quickly forgotten it when he had realized he had much bigger problems to consider.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “That can’t be good.”

  Hayden turned to see Jonathan emerge when the door to the garage opened. “So, how did it go with….” he trailed off, seeing Jonathan wasn’t alone.

  “Hayden, this is Rylee,” Jonathan said quietly. “She is a friend.”

  Hayden found himself rather aware that he was wearing a robe, T-shirt, and boxers—also loosely aware that he was watching Superman II. But mostly, aware that the robe wasn’t as shut as it could be. Collin and Paige having gone to sleep, and Jonathan supposedly on a date with their neighbor, Hayden hadn’t expected a visitor this late.

  He wiped the look of surprise off his face as he closed his robe, his shin promptly catching the coffee table as he stood. It hurt, but he let the pain scream in his mind while trying not to show any sign of it on his face. “Sorry,” Hayden said, giving Jonathan a flat look. “Didn’t know we’d have company so late.”

  Jonathan shrugged.

  “It is nice to meet you,” she said.

  Hayden, finding Rylee’s accent rather pleasing to his senses, was already wishing she would do more talking. He realized he had started to smile at her then, and cleared his throat.

  “Collin and Paige asleep?” Jonathan asked, frowning at him.

  “Yeah,” Hayden replied. “I’m just up doing some research.”

  Rylee leaned to glance over Hayden’s shoulder, and when she straightened up, she looked confused.

  “Right,” Jonathan replied. “Anyway, I know it’s late, but Rylee needs a place to stay for a few days, maybe longer, so do you mind if—”

  “No, not at all,” Hayden said. “Sounds brilliant.” Sounds brilliant? Hayden grimaced, wondering where the word choice had suddenly come from. What am I, British? He continued, “I mean, Collin and Paige won’t mind. They’re chill…” Did I just say “they’re chill?” Crap, I’m smiling again.

  “Thank you,” Rylee said. “It’s very kind.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “I’ll talk to them tomorrow,” he said, turning to Rylee. “You should take my room.”

  Damn, Hayden thought. I should have offered my room.

  “So, how long did you plan on being up doing ‘research?’” Jonathan asked, looking from the television set, to the couch, and back at Hayden. “I’ve got work in the morning, could use some sleep.”

  “This is unprecedented,” Olivia said, watching the feed from Jonathan’s living room.

  Rivers saw satisfaction on her face. It was hard to miss, given Olivia usually remained so unreadable. “The team has never maneuvered two subjects into meeting?” Rivers asked.

  Olivia’s eyes remained on the monitor but her look of satisfaction slipped away. “We have not confirmed with any certainty that Ms. Silva is a new subject. If so, then she is the only female The Mark has taken an active interest in, to our current knowledge. More importantly, this is the first instance we’ve observed of two of The Mark’s contacts actively seeking one another out,” Olivia said. “As for your question, the complications with arranging such encounters are rather numerous and highly unpredictable.”

  Rivers nodded. He could imagine—bringing two people together over a large distance, maneuvering them into close enough proximity to interact, manipulating them to actually do so without having had any prior knowledge of one another and no initial motivation to socialize, and meanwhile managing not to create any suspicion that their strings were being pulled in the background. The logistical challenge of such a concerted effort would be enormous, and any operation would have a high failure probability. Even if they were successful, there was no way to know if anything would be gained from the exercise.

  Yet, Rivers observed that Olivia had not actually denied that such an attempt had ever been made.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” Rivers said.

  She glanced at him, face still unreadable, with the exception that she looked him head to toe before she spoke again. “It has been accomplished, by manipulating the stationing of soldiers, confirmed subjects of The Mark, within the armed services,” Olivia said.

  “Was anything learned?” Rivers asked.

  “Yes, but not in regards to them having any awareness or knowledge of their shared experience,” Olivia replied. “What was interesting was the degree of each man’s resistance. For no reason that we could infer, those who have encountered The Mark make a great effort to stay within the general region that their encounter took place. This remains true right up to the moment that their whereabouts become unknown.”

  “Hmm. So none of them want to leave town.”

  Olivia nodded. “Correct. Rylee would be the first instance of a subject choosing to drastically change location, seemingly without prompting from The Mark. Her decision may open a wide range of possibilities, beyond that of merely observing her interactions with Mr. Tibbs.”

  Rivers nodded. He fell into contemplation over Olivia’s words, and after a few moments, she seemed to pick up on his silence.

  “Please share your thoughts, Agent River
s,” Olivia said.

  “Rylee is the first female instance we’ve observed, and the first to leave town,” Rivers said. “Jonathan, though male, shows significant departure from the basic profile of all the other males we know The Mark has had contact with.”

  “Have you inferred something from this?” Olivia asked.

  He let out a breath of vexation. “No, ma’am,” Rivers said. “I am simply annoyed that there seems to be something in front of us, and I can’t see what it is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SUNDAY | OCTOBER 9, 2005 | 2:30 AM | SEATTLE

  HEYER BLINKED BACK into existence on the roof top of a six-story brick building. He staggered a moment, shaking off his fatigue, before stepping toward the roof’s access doorway. The door opened for him as he approached it.

  Heyer owned the property, and like his brother’s home on the Feroxian plane, the top floors of the building were a camouflaged parking space for his vessel. To a plane passing over or a person on the street, nothing was out of the ordinary—the building looked like any inner city domicile.

  He needed to rest, found himself using the handrails along the stairs. Heyer had spent a sleepless night watching over his brother. It had been Malkier that had pushed him to go, not because his presence was a burden, but because they couldn’t let too much time pass without keeping an eye on Earth’s combatants.

  Upon his return, the number of losses in his absence had been more than expected. He had been alarmed until he realized the date. The unpredictable passage of time, a symptom of making unscheduled jumps back and forth between the Feroxian and Human planes, had been unkind to him. Shortly after his arrival, Mr. Clean had begun forwarding Heyer around the globe to replace implants for the nodes where human combatants were now needed. He’d been on his feet another day, jumping from city to city, replacing the fallen.

  His Borealis implant did a lot to stave off exhaustion, but seventy-two hours awake was pushing it—his mind was not meant to lose that much sleep. If he didn’t stop, he’d soon be putting himself in danger. Not of actual physical death, but rather of increasing the chances of his mental fatigue resulting in poor judgement. Still, traveling and exhaustion weren’t the only factors taking their toll. Putting new combatants into play most often left Heyer with the sense that he was handing out death sentences—each implantation weighed on him.

  Over a month had passed on Earth since he had left, and as he made his way down the stairs, he plotted out his next few days. After getting up to speed with Mr. Clean, he needed to speak with Jonathan. That kid had been busy—a little too busy, it had turned out. Heyer hadn’t been aware of the full extent of it until he’d returned home.

  Unfortunately, after he followed up on Earth’s issues, Heyer would have to return to the Feroxian plane. No one made wise decisions within the weeks of losing a loved one, but Malkier and Heyer knew when they had entered into this arrangement that they could take no time off for bereavement. The worlds they protected required them to be impervious to such things, or at least to present themselves as such.

  Still, that was the first type of rational thinking to leave a mind when it faced staggering grief. Heyer had no point of reference for the long-term effects he might expect from his brother. Malkier’s assimilation into the species had been the first of its kind. Their ancestors, though capable of it, had had no desire to take a Ferox body as their host. No other Borealis in recorded history had been implanted into the Ferox species.

  Heyer entered the door to his living quarters as it opened for him. There was an unlikely combination of furnishing from all over the world and through time. A rug from China, a table from 18th century England, a television from Best Buy.

  “Please,” Heyer said, as the television set clicked on, “report.”

  Mr. Clean’s smiling visage filled the screen, but the cartoon quickly directed an uncharacteristic look of concern at him—a computer projecting the appearance of human sympathy, through a cartoon caricature, for the sake of an alien inside a human body. There had been a time when Heyer had seen Mr. Clean’s attempts as disingenuous. However, the truth was, the computer had no programmed requirement to make an effort at consoling him—so even if the A.I. failed to play the part well, it was still making the effort of its own will.

  “You don’t look well,” Mr. Clean said.

  “I need to sleep,” Heyer said. No point in denying it—the computer wasn’t really making an observation based on appearance. Mr. Clean had known he wasn’t well—he could read his body’s vital signs straight off the device implanted in his chest.

  “It might be best to speak after you have rested,” Mr. Clean said.

  This gave Heyer a moment’s pause. If the computer was making a judgment call about his ability to cope with what it had to report, then something serious had taken place—something the computer wanted him to be at his best to bear the stress of.

  “How bad?” Heyer asked.

  “Can’t be calculated, really,” Mr. Clean said. “I was forced to make contact with Mr. Tibbs.”

  Heyer tilted his head at the screen. The list of contingencies in which Mr. Clean would take such action was short. Heyer’s death or capture were the main two, but seeing as neither had occurred, something more obscure must have taken place in his absence.

  “Why are you just now telling me this?” Heyer asked.

  “The situation is troubling,” Mr. Clean said. “But its time sensitivity can accommodate a night of sleep.”

  Heyer sighed, but he didn’t want a show of impatience to prove Mr. Clean’s point correct. “I am quite capable of hearing your report. What has happened?”

  “I observed some imbalances in the closure of the gates. Irregularities that should not have taken place given I believed that the proper variables were not in play. When I contacted Jonathan, he too was somewhat aware of a problem. He reported that, in his most recent activation, he had no memory past a few moments into the confrontation. As might be expected, he was quite alarmed.”

  Heyer pressed a finger to each of his weary eyelids. “Overlap?” Heyer asked out loud. “Did the Portland node travel out of bounds? End up in Seattle within range of Jonathan?”

  “My first assumptions as well, but that didn’t account for the strange readings reported from the gates.”

  Heyer stiffened, his body growing more tired even as it grew still. He worried he already knew the answer, but needed Mr. Clean to confirm his fears. “What accounts for it?”

  The screen split, Mr. Clean’s image scaling to the left-hand side while the space left on the monitor was replaced with video footage borrowed from The Cell. At first, he only saw Jonathan talking to someone in his driveway, but the person was not within the camera’s line of sight. Then, just as he’d feared, Rylee Silva stepped into view.

  When Jonathan had told him the name of the Ferox he had slain on his second engagement, the kid had given him the first real shock he’d had in a decade. The news had rendered him somewhat speechless and without an immediate contingency plan, even if only for the few minutes it had taken to regain his wits and begin damage control. Now, it seemed that while Heyer had been out dealing with the fallout of Jonathan’s last bit of news, the boy had managed to multiply their problems.

  Heyer pinched his eyes shut, feeling an uncharacteristic rise of frustration welling up in him. “Of all the thousands of problems Rylee could cause while I was away,” he said, “why did it have to be the most difficult one to contain?”

  “I’m not sure if that question was rhetorical. Philosophically, the size of an issue is rather difficult to measure. Statistically, this occurrence is not as improbable as it may app—”

  “Mr. Clean,” Heyer interrupted. “If you want to say you told me so, you don’t need to disguise it with over-sophisticated rhetoric.”

  “Noted,” the computer replied.

  “Are you being smug?” Heyer said. “This is potentially a serious problem.” The alien closed his eyes the momen
t he said it, realizing that this is potentially a serious problem had been the exact words Mr. Clean had used before Heyer had made the call to initiate Rylee Silva’s implant.

  “My apologies,” the computer said. “Perhaps an inappropriate moment for attempting levity.”

  Heyer let out a tired breath and tried to focus. “How many times have they bonded?” he asked.

  “Twice,” the computer replied. “How successful each bonding was remains unclear.”

  “Inbounds,” Heyer replied. “You have my permission to redirect any traffic targeting Jonathan and Rylee to other nodes.”

  “As you know, redirecting will lead Cede to notify Malkier of an issue,” Mr. Clean said. “Their second overlap occurred this evening. I currently calculate a window of three to five days before either should be seeing another inbound. What is curious is that the statistical improbability of both Jonathan and Rylee being activated within moments of one another has been overcome multiple times. Their proximity to one another is playing a role in this. It seems that the closer they are physically, the closer together the times of their activations. The bond is one of the only novel variables that might account for this.”

  The computer’s phrasing troubled him immediately. “One of the novel variables?” Heyer repeated. “Mr. Clean, what other novel variables have occurred?”

  “An isolated incident,” Mr. Clean said. “I monitored the organic weights passing in and out of the gates. In their first overlap, the numbers were considerably off.”

  “Off?” Heyer asked. His tired mind raced for an explanation but the possibilities that came were all too theoretical. “This is my fault.” Heyer sighed, reaching to put his fedora back on his head. “I will speak with Jonathan … now.”

  “Sir, I advise against this. You would be putting yourself at risk. You are visually showing fatigue. The Cell may attempt to take advantage if they suspect you are vulnerable. I recommend a minimum eight hours of slumber. Both Jonathan and Rylee are currently asleep themselves, and all of the other house occupants are present. I will awaken you should there be unexpected activity,” Mr. Clean said.