When he turned back around, weapons in hand, he remembered all the eyes that were watching him. Collin and Hayden’s mouths still hung open, and they seemed to have been rendered comically catatonic. Leah was in no such state. Her eyes were red with tears she seemed too angry to cry. A weight crept onto him when he saw how badly she needed to understand. He forced himself to look away.
Not Leah, he reminded himself. Just a shadow.
“Where in the hell did that come from?” Rylee asked, seeing Doomsday in his hands.
He nodded his head down at the footlocker. “My father’s weapon,” he said, placing it onto the weight bench as he pulled Excali-bar’s harness over his jacket. He then began crisscrossing the chain over the harness around his chest. Pulling it taut, he soon found that the handle and pointed ends had interlocking pieces. It was meant to be carried this way—could be quickly freed when he needed it.
“No shit,” Rylee said, comprehended its meaning as quickly as he had. She reached for the chain, her finger running over the word Doomsday engraved in the alien steal.
“Yeah.”
“Then how long has this been going on?” she asked.
“Next time I see Heyer,” Jonathan said, “I’ll be damn sure to ask.”
He turned to lift open the garage door and found Leah facing him. His focus wavered again under her gaze, as though she expected him to say something. Cautiously, her hand reached for his cheek. He stopped it, gently as he could, careful of his strength.
“Leah,” he said. “I need you to move.”
Confused and hurt that he had pushed her away, she stepped aside and stared at the floor. He hated enduring it, hated that his actions were making her feel as though she’d become irrelevant to him.
It’s like I am watching you walk off into the dark, she’d said.
He cringed at the memory of her words, felt he had to get away from her. Just a shadow. He reached for the handle of the garage door and lifted it open. Not going to remember, not going to matter. He stepped to the motorcycle, locking Excali-bar into the clips she had welded into place for him.
“I’d do anything to keep you from that place,” he heard Leah whisper.
He stopped moving.
Some coincidences—they were too difficult to ignore. Leah was there now, in his head again, her mind having been thinking of that same shared moment. As always, she could get so close to breaching the walls within him. He couldn’t keep her out; he didn’t know how. He always had to flee. His face softened, and he turned back to her.
“If that is where I need to go,” he said, “then I will.”
“To diffuse the bomb?” she asked, her face uncertain.
Jonathan sighed. “I think I’ve already detonated it.”
Leah stared back, wondering if they truly understood one another when they spoke in metaphor. “But you’re still here,” she said.
He nodded, but heard Rylee calling his name, realized she had been trying to get his attention.
“Stop, Tibbs,” Rylee said. “She isn’t going to remember any of this. It’s a waste of time.”
He swallowed and pulled his eyes away.
“I still only feel one breach,” Rylee said. “What does it mean?”
Jonathan shook his head. “We need to go.”
They hadn’t been on the roads long before Rylee felt the enemy close enough to get a better sense of its exact location. Something was bothering Jonathan more than the two of them being activated while they seemed to face only one combatant—he signaled to her from the bike and abruptly started slowing down. She followed when he pulled off the streets and into an alley, cutting their engines. He looked into the sky, drawing Excali-bar free from the bike, his face hardening in concentration.
“This lone Ferox—it’s not moving like any of the others,” Rylee said. “They usually go straight to ground, look for a population to kill, draw us out.”
Jonathan nodded as he studied the city’s skyline
Rylee had seen the foreboding on his face, heard it in his voice before they had started their engines in the driveway. Stepping up beside him now, she saw nothing had changed.
“No spectators,” she said. “What do you make of this? I haven’t felt it move from that rooftop for about five minutes.”
“This is a trap.”
Rylee frowned. “How do you know?”
He turned from the skyline and studied her. When he spoke, he didn’t answer her question, but asked his own. “How did you know, Rylee?” he asked. “That I was supposed to tell you to leave?”
“Mr. Clean, he warned me that my journal had been compromised,” she said. “Wanted to know why I hadn’t left yet. When I asked him why I would be leaving, he wouldn’t explain, said you were supposed to.”
Jonathan nodded. “There were reasons,” he said, turning to face her. “Good ones. I should have gone through with it, but I couldn’t.”
Rylee searched his face, saw the weight he was bearing. “I’m glad,” she said. “That you didn’t want to.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “I walked us into this, kept deluding myself into thinking you were safer with me. I was wrong.”
The tone of his words was creeping in on her. He sounded as though he was sure they had already lost.
“Tibbs, whatever this is, don’t quit on me before it begins,” Rylee said. “If we know it’s some kind of trap, we can figure it out, dismantle it before we pick a fight.”
There was pain in the way he looked at her, as though he didn’t want to tell her that the trap had already been sprung. “The other night, Heyer explained a lot about how The Never works,” he finally said, frustration building on his face. “For all the good it’s done, I don’t see how we get out of this.”
“Tibbs, you’re starting to screw with my positive attitude here.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Two of us. One Ferox—if it’s what it looks like, then there are two of us and only one ticket out.”
As what Jonathan said sunk in, the sounds of the city seemed to get swallowed—drowned out as she began to share his fear.
“Rylee, if that is how this plays out, you’re going back. I don’t want to hear—”
“Oh, like hell,” she cut in, and continued before Jonathan had a chance to argue. “Look, we don’t know anything for sure. Even if you’re right, no one is drawing straws. We break the stone together.”
Jonathan swallowed, sighing as he looked down at the ground. “I already thought of that,” he said. “I think it could be exactly what they want.”
“What? How is that even a trap?”
“Rylee, this is happening because of me.” He closed his eyes in frustration. “I killed Malkier’s son, and ever since, he has been trying to return the favor by rigging which Ferox come through the gate—sending assassins. He never expected me to survive it, thought I was a fluke and one of his Reds would kill me before Heyer realized what he was trying to do.”
Rylee gave him a confused look. If there was a connection between this and what was now happening she didn’t see the goal.
Jonathan sighed. “I failed. The one thing Heyer asked me to do was to ask you to leave. I should have obeyed, should have realized we weren’t any safer just because Malkier was in another dimension. I may as well have handed myself over to him.”
“I don’t follow how that gets him you?”
Jonathan nodded. “We get that stone, and I see three options,” he said. “One, you use the stone and I stay behind, the gates close, and I cease to exist inside The Never. I’m dead, Malkier gets what he wants. Two, you break the stone, and I step into the gates as it closes.”
Rylee nodded. “Like the man who entered the day we met?”
“Exactly,” Jonathan said. “I don’t cease to exist, but I deliver myself to the Feroxian plane where he gets to kill me himself. Malkier wins. Which brings us to option three: we break the stone together.” Jonathan shook his head.
“Yeah?” she asked. “What h
appens then?”
He looked away. “We’d be leaving it to chance. One of us would go home, the other to him. Rylee…” He grimaced. “Malkier knows that if he can’t have me, killing you is the next best thing. I’m not taking that chance.”
She wanted to tell him that he had everything ass-backwards. Instead, she stared at him, not knowing what she could say to budge him, and knowing she wasn’t having any part of a plan that left him behind. But there was nothing to say.
We’re just gonna go in circles…
Rylee’s thoughts ground to a halt. Going in a circle.
The words Jonathan had spoken to her before. She’d wanted him to finish apologizing, but he hadn’t known what she was talking about after catching up to him in The Never. Rylee suddenly realized, it was not that he didn’t remember, but that he hadn’t said those words to her yet. Jonathan wasn’t going to die in here—he wasn’t getting left behind. If either of those things had happened, he couldn’t have said those words to her. No, she simply would have seen him disappear before she entered.
“Jonathan, I couldn’t live knowing I left you behind, but…” Her voice softened into a whisper. “You left out the option where you admit you should leave me behind, because you’re the only one who doesn’t have to live with it.”
She could see he didn’t immediately follow her, that what she’d realized had never occurred to him.
“Jonathan, I would have to remember leaving you to die, but you entered The Never before me. You aren’t going to remember what happened in here,” she said.
Jonathan’s face paled as he understood. She watched him retreat, suddenly step back from her as though the words had made him ill. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No way.”
The rain, the sounds of the city, started coming back then. The world was coming backing into focus, less muffled by the panic of her thoughts. Rylee grabbed hold of his shoulder rougher than she had intended. “Look, we don’t know anything for sure yet,” she said. “Let’s deal with the problem we know is real before we focus on problems we may have only imagined.”
His eyes came to linger on the hand she had placed on his shoulder. In a moment, he closed his eyes and nodded his agreement, though she could see it had been a struggle.
“We might not have to figure any of this out,” Jonathan said. “Heyer showed me where Mr. Clean is stationed—as long as he exists in here, he should be able help us.”
Rylee nodded, showed a confident smile. “That signal has hardly moved since we stopped. Whatever is waiting for us up there, I think it can wait a minute longer,” she said. “I need to tell you something.”
She took a long breath, bracing herself for what came next. His face had already softened, and, despite herself, she found she was fidgeting reluctantly the moment she knew he’d heard her vulnerability.
“I’m worried now, that you won’t remember,” she said, shrugging. “But if I don’t make it out, I can’t risk never telling you. I don’t want to hurt you, put any more pressure on you, but at least in here, I’ll know how you took it.”
He held her eyes a moment before a faint smile touched his lips. “Feeling me out because you know I won’t remember?” he asked. “You know, if we live through this, you can’t just tell me things knowing I’ll forget them if you don’t like how I react. It’s not fair.”
“I totally promise…” Rylee said playfully, “that you won’t remember I promised not to do that.”
His smile grew. He looked down to the alley floor as though reliving a memory. “But you’ll remember,” he whispered when he lifted his eyes to hers.
Rylee nodded, taking a last moment to look at him before she spoke. “You can’t trust Leah,” she said.
He took a long breath and let it out slowly, but he waited for her to explain.
“In the footage Mr. Clean showed me, Leah didn’t just read my journal,” Rylee said. “She probably couldn’t—I’ve written all the entries in Portuguese since I was a little girl.”
She could see on his face that he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this, but knew he couldn’t run away.
“She brought a camera with her,” Rylee said. “I saw her take pictures of every page. She told me she was jealous, that she needed to know who I was to you. But, I just don’t know…”
She saw the conflict in his eyes.
“Leah’s a photographer, she…” He paused. “She usually has a camera on her. It could be a coincidence. Maybe when she saw it wasn’t in English, she took the pictures so she could translate it?”
Rylee had to fight the urge to tell him he was being naïve, refusing to see what he didn’t want to see. “Maybe,” she said, trying to be gentle. “But isn’t it more likely that she isn’t who she says? Look, even if I am wrong, Leah knows things…” She trailed off, biting her lip. “Things about us.”
She reached for him slowly, taking hold of his neck to pull him toward her and kissing him gently. He tensed but didn’t pull away, and the uncertainty he always seemed to feel when she touched him stung her.
“Rylee,” Jonathan said. “I—”
She closed her eyes, shook her head to stop him from speaking. “I never told you everything, about the first time we met,” she whispered. “You were so different, though—I need to know what changed, why you haven’t been the same.”
She pulled close to him and rested her head on his shoulder.
“After we’d killed the Ferox. I didn’t even know your name, I didn’t understand—didn’t trust you. I was afraid you knew more about what was happening, that if I let you close the gates, I wouldn’t get any answers. I wanted control over the situation, and wanted to get you alone, somewhere off the streets. So I took the stones, made you chase me to a roof top. It didn’t take long to see that you didn’t understand what I was doing. That more than anything you were worried about the stones, or that I was going to leave you no choice but to take them from me.”
“Oh, man,” Jonathan said. “Please tell me I didn’t try.”
Rylee smiled faintly. “You didn’t have it in you, that much I could tell. You kept stepping closer to me, and I was yelling the whole time, demanding to know who you were, why you weren’t surprised to know there was another like you, what your part was in Heyer’s scheme. You kept inching closer and closer, and I was supposed to be wary of it, but I wasn’t. You started yelling back, demanding we close the gates, that I could trust you. The angrier we got with one another, the more I couldn’t ignore it—the more I wanted to push you, to see you try and take the stones by force. When you put a hand on me, I was ready to throw down, but when our skin touched….” Rylee trailed off.
“We weren’t in control,” Jonathan said.
She nodded. “I didn’t want control, I needed you….” Rylee didn’t finish the thought. “I felt alive, needing you that badly.”
Jonathan closed his eyes, nodding though his face was pained. “We were…” He paused. “Intimate, then?”
She softened at his awkwardness, but nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who I was at that moment. It’s not fair to you that I can’t remember.”
She swallowed. “I still feel this. But I can see you fighting it, walling me off. You didn’t hesitate before, you didn’t hold back. I can only think that you didn’t have a reason to keep me away. That something happened in between, when you forgot me.”
“Rylee, it isn’t real,” Jonathan said. “Heyer told me—these implants push us to want things we might not truly want if we were in control. I wanted to tell you, but there were reasons—still are—that I was afraid to take that risk.”
She heard him swallow.
“But once I knew, I couldn’t let us act on it. It would have been taking advantage,” he continued. “And I knew I was supposed to tell you to go. I didn’t want to make it that much harder.”
Rylee fell silent a moment. As she processed what he’d said, she knew he was holding back, that he hadn’t given her
the whole story. “Jonathan, I’ve never lied to you. Never given you a reason not to trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
“Then why are you lying to me? Sure, fine, there were risks, you didn’t want to take advantage, sounds all noble on paper, but you were holding back before Heyer could have warned you of any of it.”
“Okay,” Jonathan said, exhaling the word. “That night, Leah and I, we’d been—were in the middle of….” He stalled. “The moment before I was activated … when I entered and when I left, we were….” He closed his eyes, still unable to find a good way to explain.
“Oh, god, please stop babbling,” Rylee said. “I get the picture already. Actually, I don’t have to picture it—Mr. Clean showed me the footage.”
The look of relief that she wouldn’t force him to explain was priceless. She found herself trying not to laugh, despite it all. “Thank you for trying, at least. To be honest, I’m not jealous.”
A moment passed between them.
“Okay, I’m not that jealous,” she corrected. “I was afraid it was something a lot worse than the redhead.”
He seemed to look at her crooked, unsure if he understood her.
“That way we saw into one another. The way you found me in that motel room,” Rylee said. “I was afraid that you had looked into me and saw something ugly, something you didn’t want to touch. That all you had for me was pity.”
Jonathan shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, his fingers gently tracing the line of her implant down from her shoulder toward her heart. “There was nothing inside of you that I didn’t recognize inside myself. I meant what I said, Rylee. You were never weak. These damn devices, once the bond took hold—it pushed you in all the worst ways. It would have done the same to me. I know it.”
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 50