The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

Heyer shook his head. “Your very reaction is your answer, Grant. You should be grateful. It was a burden that I spared you.”

  “It’s power I was meant to have. You couldn’t have kept me from my birthright.”

  Heyer stared sadly at the floor. “Clearly,” he whispered, before turning to address his brother. “How long? When was the implant installed?”

  His brother’s expression disturbed him—he seemed to find the question amusing. “You think he speaks like this because he is a shadow?” Malkier asked. “You believe your son’s anger is a result of the degradation on his mental state?” Malkier shook his head, seeming to find the sentiment pathetically naive.

  “Grant,” Heyer said. “The implant is only going to buy you a fortnight at best, and in the meantime, the degradation of your mind will distort you in ways you can’t imagine.”

  “My mind is clearer than it has ever been,” Grant said. “And I have plenty of time left to put my affairs in order.”

  Heyer looked back and forth between Grant and Malkier. “What have you agreed to?” he asked. “What affairs?”

  Folding his arms across his chest, Grant stepped to the side of the room that Malkier occupied. “That’s my business, alien.”

  “But, you must see,” Heyer said. “The true Grant Morgan, he will suffer the consequences of your actions. Do you not….”

  Heyer didn’t bother finishing. The shadow clearly found the attempt to sway him out of concern for its other self laughable. The degradation had to have been further along than he’d suspected.

  “That will be enough, human,” Malkier said. “Leave us. I wish to speak to my brother alone.”

  “He hasn’t answered my question,” Grant said. “I want to know why he denied me.”

  Malkier turned an eye to Heyer and sighed. “Tell your son what he wishes to know, brother.”

  Heyer looked away, taking a moment before he answered. “Grant Morgan was unfit for the implant.”

  “Unfit?” Grant’s shadow growled the question.

  “It seems I shouldn’t have to tell you, of all people, that his childhood was poisonous. Grant ties his self-worth to power, believes his sense of justice infallible,” Heyer said. “He suffers delusions of grandeur, thinks that Mankind will love him for being some hero that only exists in his mind—the problem is that he confused the word ‘hero’ with ‘celebrity’ a long time ago.”

  Heyer paused, thoughtfully, before continuing.

  “You see, no one should ever want to call that implant their birthright—no one should seek it out. If I had given it to Grant, it would have required sacrifices he wasn’t capable of understanding.” Finally, Heyer looked into the shadow’s eyes. “It will not give you—or him—what you believe you’re owed.”

  Heyer could feel the Shadow’s stare grow livid. He’d been given the truth he’d asked for, and every word of it had been an insult.

  Heyer knew, Grant had always believed power would solve his problems. Now, this shadow of him possessed the very power of which Heyer had declared him unworthy, and all the man wanted was to use that power to force the alien to change his mind. Unwilling to see that this power would do nothing to help him achieve this, the shadow’s face hardened into defiance.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think,” Grant finally said. “You’re just a parasite pretending to be a man. My father, he’s in there, and he doesn’t see me like you do.”

  Grant’s shadow turned to leave, but paused in the doorway that formed, tilting his head back at Heyer.

  “You’ve picked the wrong man, alien. When he fails, you’re gonna have to admit that to yourself, and my father will know it.”

  Grant’s shadow stepped outside the chamber, leaving Heyer alone with his brother when the cave wall reformed behind him

  “Telling, isn’t it? This shadow of a man? He faces his mortality, and all he cares about is proving himself to an audience in his imagination. His entire species, not even an afterthought,” Malkier said. “What a fragile layer of conscience there is protecting your humans from one another.”

  “He is not my son. Nor is he exemplary of all Mankind,” Heyer said. “And you have not kept me alive to discuss humanities frailties.”

  “Kept you alive? I am not going to execute you, little brother,” Malkier said. “Your betrayals have hurt me more than I ever imagined possible. But, I am not incapable of seeing what drove you. I regret that I allowed you to become so attached to Mankind. I had hoped humanity itself would cure you of your misplaced affections. But….” He crossed his arms over his chest. “The time for you to see them for what they are has passed. I will not allow you to return. After sometime away, when your attachments to them have faded, you will understand. I will try to forgive you your trespasses against me. We will get past this.”

  It had been years since they had been able to tell one another what they truly thought. Far longer since Malkier had spoken to him as though he were his father. It was a disturbing thing to hear what came out the moment his brother was in a position of power over him. His arrogance was so blindly sure of itself that Heyer found he didn’t want to look at his brother.

  “Noble sentiments,” Heyer said. “Do you actually believe them, or are they a show for my benefit?”

  He could feel his brother’s eyes studying him in the silence that followed. “Of what, exactly, are you accusing me?”

  “Fear is the heart alone,” Heyer said softly.

  “What is it you see in the platitudes of our wretched ancestors?”

  “You do not wish to be the last of the Borealis,” Heyer said. “For all your love of the Ferox, you are a god above them. Yet when you grieve for your son, you must hide in the dark, because they cannot offer you any comfort.”

  After some silence, Heyer heard the tapping of Feroxian nails against the Borealis steel box.

  “You believe I give you mercy because I fear loneliness?” Malkier asked.

  “I believe you have many practical reasons to fear my death. But, in the end, when all those fears have been dealt with—an eternity alone is what you will have to come to terms with.”

  “And this doesn’t apply to you?”

  Heyer sighed. “You have me hostage, brother. Yet, you leave this box of human implants in my cage.” He tilted his head over his shoulder. “What is it that you want?”

  “You owe the Ferox a debt of many lives, brother,” Malker said. “But first … you will answer for my son’s death.”

  “How will I answer? You only have yourself to blame,” Heyer said. “If you intend to put that guilt on me, then you are a coward.”

  “Coward? Brother, you are clinging to a desperate hope that I’ve not uncovered the full extent of your betrayals.”

  “You could uncover everything,” Heyer said. “I would still not be responsible for your son.”

  Heyer heard his brother drawing in a long breath.

  “Since your last visit, a question has nagged at me,” Malkier said, then. “Why had my brother, who had shown so little regard for my wellbeing since the day he learned of my son’s conception, come running to comfort me when he died?”

  Heyer shook his head. “I grieved for you.”

  “Did you? Or perhaps your condolences masked your real motives with…” Malkier paused, tapping his claw against the box of implants again. “Noble sentiments.”

  Heyer closed his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “I also had good reason to think that your grief would affect your judgment. I feared you would indulge a fantasy in which Dams the Gate’s death was a crime that Mankind needed to answer for—blaming humanity would be so much easier than seeing your own failure as a father.”

  Malkier took a moment to let his brother’s explanation run off him. “A string of losses followed through the gate after my son,” he said.

  “Yes, and so you sent assassins for Brings the Rain,” Heyer replied. “And they have failed.”

  Malkier sighed. “No, I sent no assassins. At first, I thoug
ht your council wise, and I heeded it. I figured that Brings the Rain would fall on his own—but, I found, a grieving father’s patience is short. Three more bodies came back before I found the first of your betrayals hidden within their remains. So clever of you. When I discovered it, I was uncertain if you broke the letter of our agreement—though I was quite certain that you broke its spirit.”

  When silence followed, Heyer finally asked, “Are you waiting for me to say something?”

  “I was hoping that by now you would realize there is no point in lying,” Malkier said. “Do me the decency of a confession.”

  Heyer sighed. “You imagine you have evidence that I violated our agreement, and expect me to sit here and guess, what….” Heyer trailed off and sighed. “Oh, no, you hope I will confess to crimes you’ve yet to find.”

  Heyer heard his brother’s breath draw in, long, and growing impatient.

  “Sometimes, brother, you imagine plots when a request is no more than what was asked.” Malkier said. “But fine. The evidence was the wounds. Each kill was accomplished, at least in part, by a weapon that seemed it must be more resilient than earthly means—a crude spear. I suspected something made from Borealis steel. Yet, there were trace metals left behind, and Borealis steel would leave no trace. So I thought I must be wrong. Then I had Cede run an analysis.”

  Heyer knew, then, where his brother was going with this.

  “You used elements only found on Earth, but forged them in the same manner as Borealis steel. The weapon he used to tear open my son—only you could have given it to him.”

  For a moment, Heyer said nothing. The truth was that he hadn’t yet considered if such a thing put a degree of guilt at his feet. Though the moment was short lived, it was enough proof to Malkier that his suspicions had been right.

  “Brother,” Heyer said. “If a gladiator dies in an Arena because he wishes to prove he can fight, do you blame the blacksmith who forged the weapon that killed him?”

  “I do if it gave his opponent an advantage he should not have had,” Malkier said.

  Heyer shook his head. “It would be a fine point, but I know the story of how Dams the Gate was killed, and your son fell to a man’s fists. You have my word—the weapon only ended his suffering.”

  “Even if that is true, your intentions matter, brother.”

  “No, that is what you ignore—my intentions had no bearing. Dams the Gate was forbidden from entering the Arena. I did not arm the man with any notion of the weapon being used against your son,” Heyer said. “Your son is dead because you failed to keep him out of harm’s way.”

  Heyer could hear Malkier’s breathing behind him, growing heavier with anger the longer they spoke.

  “And the bonded pair, brother?” Malkier asked.

  Heyer brought his hand to his forehead, his fingers cold against his head. “I am here today to report that the issue is being resolved. I have not yet discovered how they became aware of one another—it occurred during my absence. I have ordered them to separate from one another,” he said. “But Malkier, it is as irrelevant as the rest of your accusations. The bond was not active when your son entered the—”

  A powerful thud erupted in the room as Malkier’s fist struck the box of implants. “Jonathan Tibbs!” Malkier yelled.

  Hearing his brother speaking the name struck fear in Heyer, forced him to finally turn and look his brother in the eye.

  “What? Did you hope that your son would neglect to mention that name brother? Or did you think that I never bothered to learn the birth name of Echoes the Borealis?” Malkier yelled.

  Heyer waited, fearing his brother’s anger, but when Malkier spoke again, his voice was quiet with malevolence.

  “I remember the day I told you my son had been conceived. I thought you would be happy for me, that our agreement would be void just this once. But the way you looked at me….” Malkier trailed off as Heyer closed his eyes. “Do you honestly think me so naïve that I would believe that, after I killed the man’s father, his killing my son is some coincidence?”

  Heyer already knew—already felt the defeat. He would try, and each word would be a waste of breath.

  Nothing he could say would convince Malkier that he’d had no hand in Dams the Gate’s death. His brother had just enough evidence to draw this conclusion, too many reasons to believe. In a way, Heyer could hardly hold it against him. He didn’t feel innocent. Though his guilt was, as his brother had said, a matter of his intention. Heyer was not guilty of violating any letter of the law, but he had violated its spirit. It came to one ugly truth: Heyer had never believed that Dams the Gate deserved to die, but he did believe that his brother deserved to feel every bit of the pain that death had brought him.

  “I know you helped him, brother,” Malkier said.

  “Malkier, please,” Heyer whispered. “Jonathan does not know who his father was. I admit I desired revenge for the father, it’s true. But I never acted on it. There is no justice in killing a Ferox child who had nothing to do with how he was born.”

  “No.” Malkier shut his eyes, shook his head slowly. “Don’t stand there and give me words I know you’ve practiced. I want to know, if this man was so important to you, why you didn’t kill me when I was bleeding in front of you? Why did you wait until the only thing you had left to hurt me with was my son?”

  Heyer swallowed, looked into his brother’s eyes and searched for the Borealis inside the empty white slits. “Because I still loved you,” he said. “I understood why you did what you did. You keep calling Grant my son even though you know he is not truly my child. But if you think I’ve never been a father to a man, you’re wrong. I’ve watched them grow old. I’ve watched them have grandchildren. So, yes, I walked away from you, and I grieved for the man you killed, and when it was over, my love for my brother was gone and all I had was regret.”

  “Regret….” Malkier trailed off, growing quiet before he turned away. He slowly walked toward the wall where Grant had left, but stopped there before leaving. “If the memory of this man meant more to you than your own brother,” he said, “then you should have left it alone. Now, you’re going to live knowing your revenge killed his son.”

  The door opened, and Malkier took a single step before Heyer spoke.

  “Brother, do not go after Brings the Rain!” Heyer yelled. “He can kill you.”

  Malkier stopped, turning back to Heyer. At first, it was clear that Malkier thought the claim absurd, but as he studied Heyer, his head tilted with what became uncertainty.

  “You’re afraid, brother,” Malkier said. “What I can’t tell is if it’s because you are bluffing, or because you are telling the truth.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  WEDNESDAY| OCTOBER 12, 2005 | 2:30 PM | SEATTLE

  WHEN RYLEE AND Jonathan had finished going through the box of his father’s possessions, the floor was covered with scattered photos and keepsakes. Disappointingly, they found no other images of the man kneeling beside Douglas.

  Jonathan sat next to the contents of the box, holding a beret that had belonged to his father. It was black, a symbol of the armed forces placed on the forefront. Knowing it was issued to his father, Rylee noticed a sentimental respect for the small piece of fabric.

  “Put it on already,” Rylee said, a touch of impatience in her voice after having watched him stare at it for a while now.

  Jonathan shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t even know what it represents. I don’t want to treat it like it’s just a piece of clothing.”

  She looked disappointed, but nodded.

  Jonathan stood, stepping across the room to place the hat carefully into his cigar box beside his father’s watch, and gently closed the lid. Rylee began carefully putting the contents of the box away as she watched him stare out the window at Leah’s house.

  “It’s not Heyer,” Jonathan said.

  “Of course it is,” Rylee said. “There is no mistaking it.”

  “It is the man Heyer is
implanted inside. But it isn’t him. You can see it in the man’s eyes, his posture. He was still human in that picture.”

  Rylee studied the framed photo. Jonathan wasn’t wrong—there was a normalcy to the man in the picture uncharacteristic to that of the alien.

  “When I first saw Heyer, I knew something was off. A part of me kept screaming in warning that he shouldn’t be there, but I could never figure out why,” Jonathan said. “After he revealed what he was, I thought I had somehow picked up on his nonhuman qualities—that my instincts had been telling me he was unknown and dangerous. Either that or that I had somehow caught glimpses of him watching me in the past, but I stopped thinking about it once I knew what he was.”

  He looked away from Leah’s house and turned back to her.

  “I asked him, though,” he continued, his forehead wrinkled in thought. “Actually, it was the first thing I ever really asked him. He was restraining me, putting me under at the time. I asked how it was that I seemed to know him. I remember seeing this smile on his face—just for a moment—before he said that I shouldn’t.”

  “You think he lied?” Rylee asked.

  “No,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. “He’s only ever lied to me once, and technically that was his shadow in The Never. I think the true Heyer goes out of his way not to lie. Which makes me wonder why he didn’t say ‘you don’t’ or ‘you can’t.’”

  Rylee thought about his recollection. “Yeah, he said ‘you shouldn’t.’” She looked down at the man in the frame again as though he might suddenly give her an explanation.

  “Maybe what my memory couldn’t dredge up for me that night was that picture. Maybe it saw a face that should have aged but hadn’t.”

  Rylee shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible.”

  Jonathan’s eyes caught something, then. He stepped back from the garage window, staring down at another photo of his father on top of one of the stacks. He reached for it, his eyes widening as he rubbed his chin. The picture seemed of no special consequence to Rylee, just an image of Douglas standing next to his luggage, perhaps the day he’d come home from Libya.