The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  Heyer spun in time to watch his brother do the same on the other side of the fallen tree. Malkier, grinning as they made eye contact, did not delay a second before pouncing for him. Heyer swept past him as he landed, changing to an offensive tactic. He brought his elbow into the back of his brother’s leg, causing his knee to jerk forward from the blow. Malkier lost his balance, forced to kneel. Heyer moved to take hold of Malkier’s arm opposite the leg knocked out from under him, and pulled powerfully, swinging his brother hard into the broken tree that now laid out across the clearing. Malkier crashed into the wood, the force bending the fallen trunk into a V as he connected.

  Malkier shook his head, dizzied by the attack, half sunk into the splitting trunk of the tree. Heyer took the advantage, assaulting him directly, launching forward and kicking his brother in the chest. It finished the job, sending him all the way through the trunk. The fallen tree snapped a second time into two massive logs as Malkier’s body shot out the newly made gap and into an unyielding, rocky cliff face.

  Malkier flopped down into the dirt.

  Heyer waited, walking over to his brother, a casually smug grin on his face. “We should stop. We risk the Feroxian reproductive response should we continue.”

  Malkier rose to hands and knees, saw his brother’s smug expression, and began to laugh. “It has been too long,” he said. “You haven’t slowed down a bit.”

  Heyer tilted his head. “You are too hard on yourself.” He smiled in a sporting manner. “You’ve never been too agile in these woods. Too much bulk.”

  “You are careful with my pride,” Malkier said. “There is no need—I will have my chance again.”

  Heyer nodded.

  Malkier raised his hand, a human gesture, a request for assistance in getting to his feet that he didn’t really need. Heyer stepped forward, happy to complete the ritual.

  At the last moment, Malkier’s hand moved, not reaching for Heyer’s palm but forming a vise like grip on his wrist. Heyer flinched in surprise, half expecting his brother intended to keep fighting now that he’d lulled him into assuming the combat over and had a solid grip on him. Heyer moved to brace himself, in case his brother tried to throw him off balance.

  Malkier’s free hand suddenly burst forth from beneath him and clamped down around the arm he held. Heyer felt an unfamiliar pinch, skin breaking over his bicep. A powerful pain erupted within his muscle, shocking him. Weakness spread over him, seeming to radiate out from the arm into his core. Pain surfaced throughout his body, a feeling unlike any he had experienced in years.

  He found it difficult to balance and fell to his knees as his brother released his grip, standing to rise to his full height above him. Alarmed, unsure what was happening, he looked to the arm where his brother had grabbed hold of him. There was a metal band surrounding his bicep. It was Borealis steel, seamless and skintight, clamped down around his skin like a bracer. He could feel thick needles embedded beneath, forced through his exterior skin. Whatever the device was doing to him, he found he was unable to stand.

  “That will be all Cede,” Malkier said.

  Groggily, Heyer’s eyes fought to focus, his brother no longer a single image in front of him but two figures that seemed to swim in circles in his vision. He grew ill, nauseous. He looked to the floor in an attempt to center himself. The forest receded and the cave-like structures of Malkier’s vessel returned. Shortly after, a rectangle of light fell over him, as though a doorway had opened behind him. Footsteps approached, rubber soles on rock. The outline of a human shadow stepped into the light, growing larger as a man approached.

  “You imagine it was hurtful to find that the mother of my child betrayed me, brother?” Malkier asked. “But what I have learned about my own blood—these things were heart breaking.”

  The man’s shoes stepped into his vision. A young man’s shoes.

  “Tell me, human, is this him?” Malkier asked. “Is this man your father?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  RIVERS PINCHED HIS eyelids shut, having stared too long at the video feeds. “I’m sorry, but what they are saying isn’t easy to make sense of,” he said. “I’ll review the tapes again, slow it down.”

  “I do not question your ability,” Olivia said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  He was momentarily caught off guard by her physical contact, never having seen Olivia show her team such a comforting gesture.

  “I’m not looking to be coddled, ma’am,” he said, rewinding the footage of Rylee and Jonathan sparring. “Look, we have two camera angles in that garage outside the one that faces the cabinet. Half the time, they aren’t facing either of them—the other half, Ms. Silva is speaking while she is upside down. I am only getting snips of the conversation, but without any context, I can’t fill in the blanks with any credibility.”

  “Take a break, Rivers. I’ll have the techs take the footage apart. See if they can get you something better to look at.”

  Rivers sighed, but nodded. “It might help.” He squinted at the screen, confused and frustrated.

  “Something in particular troubling you?” Olivia asked.

  “The conversations. Here, for instance—it’s like Jonathan is telling her that she is handicapped for being female, but….” Rivers shook his head.

  “Yes?”

  “Look at his face. How could he be saying anything remotely close to that?” Rivers asked.

  Olivia watched the feed for a moment, eventually nodding her agreement. “No. He looks impressed, and hardly able to hold his own against her.”

  “Exactly. And Rylee—well, she doesn’t strike me as a woman who would listen to such talk. Rather, she who would put him in his place for it.”

  Olivia paused thoughtfully. “If anything,” she said. “Miss Silva is holding back. What about the footage from the night before?”

  “Just as strange,” Rivers said. “The lights were off while they were speaking. What is disturbing is the camera is equipped with night vision and it never triggered. I had to download the digital footage and run filters on it after the recording to brighten it. They weren’t very generous with keeping their mouths toward the camera in that instance either, but what I could make out didn’t fit their body language at all.”

  Olivia narrowed her eyes in thought. “Keep working on it. We need to know for sure if the video is being compromised. If so, everything we’ve seen could be misdirection.”

  There was a knock in the doorway behind them, and Rivers saw Margot waiting. She looked as though she had exciting news, but wasn’t sure if she should interrupt to share it.

  “Margot, please come in.” Olivia said, removing the hand she’d left on Rivers’ shoulder. “You have progress to report?”

  Margot nodded. “The odd behavior in the satellite systems,” she said. “Today, there was a similar ping. A login from a peculiar external source we couldn’t trace, coupled with a short usage of the system.” She looked at the monitor that Rivers and Olivia had been reviewing. “A few minutes after that footage, actually.”

  “Excellent work,” Olivia said. “Would you please excuse us a moment? I would like to discuss this with Rivers alone.”

  Margot nodded, glancing between the two of them once more in a curious manner as she backed out of the room.

  “So, right about the time these two pull a package out of that cupboard,” Rivers said, “a package that we know never entered the building by any standard means, an unknown account accesses the GPS system.”

  Olivia nodded. “If what she has uncovered is correct, we may only get one opportunity to exploit this before The Mark realizes we’ve found a piece of his methods. So, this stays between the three of us until I say otherwise.”

  Rivers nodded. “Of course.”

  “For now,” she said, “I’m calling in Leah. If Evelyn Tibbs continues down her current path, we may need to take action.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  TUESDAY| OCTOBER 11, 2005 | 1:30 PM | SEATTLE

 
“YOU KNOW,” RYLEE said, “most guys give flowers.”

  She watched Jonathan tense and then try to hide it, the same way he always did when she made the slightest flirtation. For now, he would humor her with a smile and pretend she wasn’t hinting.

  “I’m not much of a florist,” Jonathan replied.

  She’d been watching as he stood over a series of plastic tubes of varying sizes in the garage, each filled with a filmy, black liquid. It smelled of chemistry and metal work. The process of coating her rattan with a layer of black oxide was not something that she’d previously seen any necessity in. The weapon was easy enough to hide within her coat. Still, it was one less thing she’d ever have to explain if the situation came up, and she’d liked the grip it gave Jonathan’s demolition bar.

  “I had to keep Excali-bar close—couldn’t run home every time I needed it,” he said. “This was the easiest solution. The way the steel reflects the light draws too much attention otherwise.”

  With rubber gloves, he reached and pulled the rattan from the chemical bath, then knelt over some newspapers they had spread on the floor. He picked up a piece of steel wool, cleaned off the excess material adhering to the weapon.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Jonathan smiled—a real smile this time. Rylee was becoming fairly adept at spotting the difference. This was how he looked at her when he felt he’d been useful to her. Rylee smiled back, but the moment he looked away, her expression dropped back to irritation.

  If it makes you so damn happy to be useful to me, I can think of better ways, Rylee thought.

  Then, not for the first time, she decided she needed to be straight with him.

  “Tibbs—”

  “Wanna hand me the armor plates and we’ll get them started?” Jonathan asked. “Sorry, what were you about to say?”

  Rylee put the smile back on before he turned to look at her. “Uh, nothing,” she said, reaching to hand him the plates of alien metal that had manifested in the cupboard the night before. When he turned away, she closed her eyes and grimaced in frustration. It wasn’t the first time her nerve had slipped.

  “Rylee?”

  She opened her eyes and noticed him watching her in one of the mirrors. Oh, crap, she thought. She shook her head, laughed awkwardly at being caught making a face, and quickly changed the subject as he began to frown at her. “So, you just asked him for these? And he agreed, no questions asked?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “My experience is that if he can help, he does. It’s the ‘can’ part that becomes an issue. I once asked him for a space gun and he looked at me like I was a jackass.”

  Rylee giggled, then frowned at Jonathan. “Why do you think he names them?” she asked. “Excali-bar, Themyscira….”

  Jonathan looked up from his work. “You know, you never told me what Themyscira means.”

  “That’s true, I didn’t. So, names—why do you think he does that?”

  Jonathan narrowed his eyes, tilting his head curiously at her not-so-subtle attempt to avoid the question. “So, you’ll tell me your Ferox nickname but not this?” He asked. “That is interesting…

  After he trailed off, a short staring contest followed.

  Finally, Jonathan bit his lip. “So, I’ll be right back, have to go look something up on the—”

  Rylee groaned.

  “Fine, okay, I looked it up once,” she said. “It’s got something to do with Amazon women, and an island, and…” She paused to clear her throat. “Wonder Woman.”

  Rylee expected him to laugh, but he seemed to find it more interesting than comical.

  “You know, I don’t think it’s Heyer who does the naming,” he finally said. “Now that I’ve spent some time with him, I think they’re Mr. Clean’s contributions.”

  Mr. Clean had been the next thing he’d had to explain to her, when the stack of alien metal showed up the previous day. Which, apparently, was why Jonathan fingered the button on his watch every time they discussed anything about the alien. The A.I. had come through; Jonathan, upon leaving the vessel the other night, had asked if Mr. Clean could create armor pieces out of the alien steel that were molded to the same specs as those already built into their motorcycle jackets—an idea he had gotten from watching some ancient gladiators fight Ferox in an alien arena.

  Jonathan hadn’t seemed sure the request was feasible when he asked, but the A.I. found the project only a minor time expenditure. Mr. Clean had located the manufacturer’s specs and created replacement inserts that were the exact shape and size of the plastic and metal that originally came with their protective gear. He hadn’t had Rylee’s gear with him at the time, but apparently, the computer had found this obstacle insignificant as well. Mr. Clean had simply analyzed footage taken from the surveillance team, compared her coat to items on the internet, found its match, and that was the end of it. Perfect replicas for the shoulder, forearm, and spine guards. Jonathan had said it was the first time in memory that having their lives constantly under surveillance had had any useful side effects.

  Rylee didn’t know if it was necessary to blacken these pieces, as no one would see them once they had replaced their counterparts beneath the leather, but Jonathan said that she had shown him so much in training, given him so many ways to sharpen his skills, that he felt like he should bring something to their efforts other than a bed to sleep in. She could see he found the work comforting and she could understand. There was a connection between being a fighter and maintaining her armor and weapons. The discipline, parallel to how they maintained and trained their bodies, gave her a consoling sense of readiness.

  “I never actually asked for the rattan,” Rylee said. “He came upon me training with it once, and a day later, it showed up. If I’d known he took requests, I might have thought of this earlier.”

  Jonathan looked up at her thoughtfully as he wiped his hands off on a cloth. “You said you usually gave him the silent treatment? What are those conversations like?”

  She felt a touch of joy leave her when he asked, but shook it off before he worried. “The way Heyer speaks,” she said. “He doesn’t lie, and yet you sense you’ve been lied to.”

  Jonathan gave a knowing nod.

  “We didn’t talk, not after he implanted the device. I didn’t see him again until the night I was activated. The first time I had to fight, I barely survived it. Then, there he was again, damn alien, telling me I have to break this stone. After what I saw that night…” Rylee took in a long breath. “I didn’t want any part of it.”

  Jonathan nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I’ve had a similar moment.”

  Rylee, shook her head. “Don’t assume….” She trailed off.

  She hadn’t told this story to anyone; there had never been anyone to share it with. When she realized she wanted Jonathan to hear it, she found the words didn’t come to her easily. “He never warned me how it would feel, the pain of it. I knew, when it started, that everything he’d warned me of was coming to pass. I was scared, seeing the Ferox for the first time—didn’t want to face it. Instead, I ran to my father. I was like a child hoping he would tell me it was all a bad dream, that there was no such thing as monsters.

  “I think he wanted to. I could see it on his face,” Rylee said, grimacing as she remembered. “He wanted to protect me. But it didn’t take long to see there wasn’t much choice. I showed him the strength I had, told him everything I knew about what was happening on the streets as the Ferox’s slaughter continued.” Rylee shook her head. “But I couldn’t get myself out the door, and my father didn’t want me to go. He knew when the guilt of what I wasn’t doing started to outweigh the fear. I think it was the one time I had ever seen him wish that I would let the fear win. He knew he couldn’t stop me. Once I’d made a decision, he couldn’t have even restrained me physically if he had wanted to. But, he refused to let me go alone.”

  She saw Jonathan’s face. He closed his eyes in pain for her, already knowing what she’d seen that night.

 
“It happened when I hesitated, took a hit that I couldn’t shake off. The Ferox got me cornered,” Rylee said. “My father gave his life distracting it. He was….” She sighed. “I mean he is a strong man, and fast for his age—trained and taught martial arts his whole life. Still, he only lived as long as he did because the Ferox assumed he would be as easy to dispose of as everyone else it had encountered that night. My father managed to escape its claws long enough for me to get on my feet.

  “I saw him stumble. He couldn’t keep his footing when the Ferox could make the entire Earth shake underneath him,” she said, looking away. “It crushed him. Didn’t even bother to see its foot finish the job before turning its eyes back to me. Seeing it, broke something inside me.”

  She shed a tear, but wiped it away with the heel of her palm before Jonathan would start thinking she was weak.

  “It wasn’t permanent, of course, but I didn’t know that yet. I couldn’t get over seeing him murdered, because when it happened, I didn’t think it was something that could be undone. It was too real to me to be forgotten, like a nightmare that sticks with you. Too much of a contradiction, having seen it to be so final and then suddenly not. I never told anyone again, when I was activated. I didn’t want to risk seeing someone I cared about die.”

  Jonathan didn’t look at her, but he nodded slowly. She wondered, then, if she’d been too quick to chastise him for making assumptions. The pain she confessed seemed to resonate with him. When Jonathan moved his eyes, it was not to her—instead, he glanced to the cupboard where they hid their weapons.

  “That was how he got me, you know,” Rylee said. “When Heyer finally showed up, he found me holding my father’s body. I was damn near catatonic, until he said I could fix it all if I broke the stone.”