The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “That’s the plan.”

  Heyer grimaced, drawing in his breath and trying to be careful of his words. “Jonathan, you cannot purposely set out to create a paradox. Putting the malleability of time to the test is blindly accepting the risk of consequences that could fall, quite literally, somewhere between all and nothing. You cannot consider such a gamble when everyone and everything might pay for it.”

  “I’m not sure we agree. We got Rylee killed, and I’ve got one chance to fix it. I’m not ignoring it.”

  The look on Jonathan’s face, the quickness at which he defied Heyer’s warning, gave the alien considerable pause. He began edging his way in between the portal stone in Grant’s corpse and Jonathan, which, when Jonathan noticed it, only got him a look of incredulity. Heyer was in no shape to keep him from the stone if he couldn’t talk Jonathan down from this ledge.

  “Jonathan, you are upset, you aren’t thinking clearly and you know it,” Heyer said. “It’s the severed bond causing you so much pain that you want to ignore anything and everything to make it stop. It’s the same thing Rylee experienced. Right now, you are an addict looking for a fix.”

  “I’m upset…” Jonathan said in a whisper that seemed to slither its way out of his mouth.

  Heyer regretted the word, seeing how it was offensively inadequate. “I’m sorry Jonathan, I’m not trying to trivialize….” The alien trailed off, fixing Jonathan with his eyes and sighing. “In the end, my forbidding you does not matter, Jonathan. I don’t believe in paradox and neither did Nevric.”

  “What do you mean you don’t believe?”

  “Jonathan,” Heyer said. “You said Rylee knew she had spoken to a future version of you. But, before she came to that conclusion, did she tell you, in any specific way, what you had said to her?”

  Jonathan’s eyes narrowed on him. “No,” he said. “But, she was happy when she caught up to me. She said I got cut off, didn’t finish what I was saying to her. Later, she said things to me, things she only said because she thought I wasn’t going to reme….”

  It hit him like an avalanche—one rock jarred loose, freeing the next, until everything started to fall. Heyer had learned a thousand times over just how infrequent were the moments in life when being proven right had brought him any joy. If he could have ever picked a moment to be wrong it was this one. Seeing Jonathan realize what he had been trying to tell him—he knew the moment of the man’s disillusionment would be burned into his memory forever.

  “Why would there be a future where I….” his voice failed, and slowly, he sat down on the floor.

  “Because there was only ever one future, and you aren’t going to change it,” Heyer said. “You are going to sit here as long as you need. You can ponder it from every angle. And, you are going to see that there was never any winning today—but that there is one way to lose without losing everything.”

  Slowly, Heyer knelt down in front of where Jonathan sat.

  “You make a change, and both of you survive, while Grant and Malkier die. The gates open within minutes of your return from The Never. The world is overrun by the Ferox before we can stop it—millions die. You make a change, and somehow Rylee survives, but you die. Whatever you did to hurt Malkier dies with you. War follows, but it is a war humanity cannot win, because though they may manage to take down some of the Ferox, they cannot stop my brother. Mankind’s resistance is eventually overpowered, and humanity is enslaved for the Ferox—millions die.

  “You make a change, and it plays out in the worst possible scenario: both of you die. All choice you ever had in the matter is lost; you no longer have any part in the future. All that you and Rylee survived up until now has been for nothing, and still—millions die.”

  Heyer looked away, and sighed.

  “Or, you see that Rylee’s sacrifice gave Mankind the one and only outcome where there is hope. You admit that changing it might lessen your pain only to inflict untold amounts of suffering on everyone you care about. That you would be attempting to save one life because you are unwilling to bear the consequences of having lost that life. You realize that Rylee made her choice, and she would still have to make that choice—that maybe it was kindness to let her believe you wouldn’t remember.

  “If you cannot change her fate, the only thing you have left to give her is a lie. You let her believe that she made her sacrifice without ever putting her death on your shoulders. That you would have protected her no matter what, just as she chose for you.” Heyer looked at him, with as much kindness as he could. “I understand if, at this moment, you place it last amongst all you must consider. But the Jonathan I know—he wouldn’t risk the unknown. He would listen to reason. He wouldn’t purposely choose to create a paradox, potentially destroy all life, to save one. Jonathan, only an omniscient being could make that choice and call it moral. You and I, mere men, cannot.”

  A few moments passed in silence before Jonathan spoke.

  “Old man, you’re so quick, see it all from every angle,” he said. “But if you are so damn smart…” He closed his eyes, seemed to shiver with anger. “Where was this cold, hard logic when your brother was bleeding in front of you? Why couldn’t you see what you would have stopped then?”

  Heyer’s face soured, but he nodded. “I never claimed to be perfect, Jonathan,” he said. “I’ve made mistakes that cannot be undone. Call me a hypocrite. Fine. But for a moment, imagine if you could have been there to tell me what would happen. Do you think that, after I killed my brother, you would be surprised to find I hated you for it?”

  Jonathan looked at the stone, still glowing red, attached to the shadow’s corpse, waiting for him to destroy it. “I need time to think,” he said.

  “I understand, but I don’t believe you’ll find any solution we—”

  “No,” Jonathan stopped him. “You’ve got so much advice, old man… tell me what you say to a person you’re about to let die for you?”

  Heyer looked away. “You know her better than anyone, Jonathan. What do you think she would have wanted to hear?”

  “I got the memo, Tibbs,” Rylee said as she turned away from Jonathan.

  Leah watched him, but everything seemed to be moving too fast. He couldn’t process how the scene he’d stepped into a few moments earlier had escalated to the point that Rylee wanted to walk out the door.

  “I can’t stay here, should have already left,” she was saying.

  Leah wasn’t sure what she hoped for at this point. If Rylee left now, it was possible Jonathan would believe that she’d merely acted out of jealousy. The thing was, she didn’t know if it would matter. The Cell, unable to learn anything from watching the two interact, would see an opportunity. Rylee wouldn’t make it far before they took her into custody. After that, they would get information from her one way or another. As for Jonathan, she no longer knew if he would fare any differently.

  “Might as well get on with it,” Rylee said.

  Jonathan stepped toward her. “I hadn’t decided any—”

  He hesitated, a look of disorientation like he’d forgotten where he was for a moment. His hand was still held out to reach for Rylee, and he stared at it a moment before his eyes shot up to her. Something came over him. He’d stopped mid-stride, his face no longer uncertain, but somehow—breaking. He was struggling not to let it happen, but a tear ran down his cheek. He exhaled as though he were in physical pain, each step toward her like he walked on broken ankles.

  Rylee noticed the change as quickly as Leah, her anger from a moment earlier falling away when she saw the way he was looking at her. She had hardly finished turning around when his hands reached her.

  “I was never going to tell you to leave, I never wanted it,” Jonathan said. “And I don’t give a damn what a tired old man forbids. He’s afraid, and he runs! He’ll keep us running with him until we don’t have any will left to fight.”

  Leah didn’t know what he was on about, but Rylee showed no confusion. If anything
, she seemed to light up from the way he was looking at her—the way he spoke. When Jonathan pulled her close, he gripped her so tightly it must have hurt, and she didn’t seem to want him to stop. Leah stared at his face over Rylee’s shoulder. He closed his eyes—she knew it was only then that his words stopped being lies.

  “I don’t want to run—don’t want his fear. I’m not gonna let us lose this war,” Jonathan said. “We don’t cease to exist, Rylee.” His eyes opened, and his tears flowed unrestrained. “And I’m sorry I didn’t—”

  Leah gasped—he was suddenly standing alone, his arms wrapped around empty space. Leah felt her body go stiff with disbelief. It was the same as it had been with her brother.

  Rylee—she was just gone.

  When he fell on his knees, Leah couldn’t speak or move. Jonathan’s hands reached up—became claws digging into his skull. She heard his voice, low, angry, and pleading.

  “You couldn’t… just needed time… seconds… seconds… god dammit.”

  It hurt to hear. His words—his half-finished thoughts. She remembered how her own had come out broken by breaths she’d choked on instead of breathed—questions that she never fully finished asking, and had never known exactly who it was she expected to answer. Collin and Hayden looked on without understanding what they had seen. When Leah finally took a step toward him, she didn’t know how much time she’d let pass—only that his roommates would have nothing to offer him. They were bystanders in a moment for which they had no basis to understand.

  Leah whispered his name gently when she knelt beside him, and he reached out blindly toward the sound of her voice. She found herself grateful when he held onto her, when he let her pull his head against her shoulder. It wasn’t until he did so that she realized how scared she’d been—how close she had been to Rylee telling him everything, to Jonathan suddenly seeing her as his enemy. She may have been hoping for too much. Perhaps she was just the only anchor he had in that moment. Perhaps he was reaching out for her because he was simply in no state to decide friend from foe.

  When she spoke to him, each response he gave was slow, as though he were answering her from the other side of a gulf she couldn’t cross.

  “Jonathan, I want to help you,” she said.

  “You can’t help me.”

  It hit her like cold water—Peter’s words all over again.

  “Tell me where she went?”

  “Gone,” he whispered.

  “Gone? Gone where? How do we get her back?”

  “We don’t.”

  Leah’s voice began to tremble. “Why?”

  His head shook slowly against her, and his voice grew faint. “Leah, leave it alone.”

  Leah swallowed and pulled his head away from her shoulder. “Please, don’t say that to me.” Her eyes pleaded with his. “I need to know.”

  Jonathan looked at her as though he couldn’t believe she was forcing him to say the words out loud. “She’s dead, Leah.”

  Tears began to flow before she could speak. “No. I heard what you said to her. I saw you.”

  Jonathan didn’t look at her, didn’t speak.

  Collin’s voice seemed to come out from nowhere, reminding her they weren’t alone. “Leah, come on, stop,” he said. “Look at him, he’s … a mess.”

  Leah had never stopped looking at him, hadn’t blinked, and hardly registered his roommate asking her to stop. “I know when you’re lying, Jonathan,” she said. “I want to know where they are, and if they’re dead, I want to know why.”

  Leah felt it, the moment something changed in him. She realized that the wrong word had come out of her mouth. She should have backed down—she’d pushed too hard because it all brought her back to Peter’s last words. Jonathan’s jaw clenched. He turned cold—looked at her with a hardness he’d never had for her on his face.

  “They,” Jonathan said to her.

  The room fell silent as they stared at one another, but the quiet was short lived.

  An unnatural light appeared over them, and an obscured shape dropped through a cloud of red and black. Leah lurched away as it hit the floor with a dull thud and rolled toward them—felt her back hitting the cabinets as she watched in stunned shock.

  Jonathan had not moved as the shape came to a stop beside him. The cloud around it began to dissipate, and a man wearing all black became visible as the red and black surrounding him faded away into nothing. She saw his face, knew immediately that she was finally in the same room as the man she had been hunting all this time. His eyes were closed, his blond hair a disheveled mess, and—he was bleeding.

  “You lost your hat,” Jonathan whispered.

  The Mark didn’t move, seemed completely unconscious. Leah’s gaze became desperate, looking past Jonathan to the closest vent where she knew a camera would be watching, her eyes screaming for The Cell to act before they lost this chance.

  “Um… Frappuccino … acid…” Hayden mumbled.

  The alien hadn’t moved, and Jonathan’s face began to falter the longer it went on. “Heyer?” he asked.

  Leah couldn’t tell if The Mark was even breathing. She suddenly found herself growing terrified. If Jonathan was wrong about Rylee and Peter, and The Mark was dead, any chance of finding out what had happened to her brother might be lost.

  Jonathan reached for him, rolling him flat on to his back. “Don’t even think about it…” she heard him whisper as he reached for the man’s neck looking for a pulse. “Old man, if you die on me now…”

  He must have found a pulse, because he closed his eyes and let out a small breath of relief before slapping the blond man across the face. When he got no response, he tried it again.

  “Dammit!” Jonathan suddenly exclaimed, getting off his feet and rushing over to the counter top. He began rifling through the cigar box where he had always emptied his pockets, dumping the contents and staring in disbelief. Unable to find whatever it was he was looking for, he drove his fist down in frustration. The bang made Leah jump, finally giving her the wherewithal to move. She began to crawl toward the blond man, but froze when Jonathan suddenly spun. His eyes didn’t go to her; they went to the same vent that she had looked at a moment earlier, with just as much desperation.

  “Mr. Clean! What, are you taking a damn nap? I need a little help here!” he yelled.

  The lights suddenly went out in the garage. Jonathan’s breathing began to race as he looked around the room to each of their faces before focusing on Hayden.

  “Hayden, I need you to get your car,” he said.

  “Wha … but—”

  “Questions later.”

  “Jonathan, man, slow down—isn’t that…” Collin said, looking at him dumbfounded. “The blond man, the hospital, the guy you said…”

  “Hayden! Car keys!” Jonathan yelled. “Collin, you gotta help me. We’ve gotta move him….”

  They all heard it coming—the sound of boots on pavement outside. The roommates looked at him with fear growing in their eyes as Jonathan stopped moving. He turned to Leah one last time, but the way he looked at her hurt. He was just so disappointed.

  He exhaled, his shoulders dropped, his eyes closing as the sound of boots drew nearer. “Guys,” he said. “Tell them whatever they want—they’ll know if you try to lie.”

  “What is that supposed…” Collin didn’t finish—the garage door shot up and shouts came at them.

  “Down on the ground!” a man yelled. “Hands behind your back!”

  The door to the house opened, followed shortly by the side door on the garage. Most of the men looked like SWAT, black fatigues and assault rifles. Some wore suits.

  “Do it now!”

  Leah obeyed, beginning to crawl forward.

  There were so many guns aimed at him, but Jonathan—he just didn’t look at them the way a man should. He wasn’t afraid. He stood at the center of the garage, knowing he was trapped on all sides, and yet there was defiance lingering in his eyes while Leah and the roommates crawled on the ground to d
o as they were told.

  “Get down on the ground now!”

  She saw a chill run up his spine, his eyes narrowing as he looked to each man holding a weapon on him. Then, he seemed to do the math. Leah exhaled in relief as he slowly began to kneel and place his hands on his head. His face went blank as he stared down at the floor—he became a wall.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  THURSDAY| OCTOBER 14, 2005 | 8:30 AM | SEATTLE

  THE TEAM WAS efficient. Zip ties went around each of their wrists, tying their hands behind their backs. Leah watched as both Collin and Hayden looked on with panic before black bags were placed over each of their heads. Four of the men wearing black fatigues approached, looking like pallbearers as they carried a black box only slightly wider than a casket. Leah recognized the exterior—the smooth surfaces were constructed from the same material she’d seen on the semi truck’s trailer in The Cell’s loading bay.

  Men got Collin and Hayden on their feet, escorting them out of the garage toward the driveway. She never saw a bag go over Jonathan’s face, but before Leah was blinded, she saw one of The Cell’s men put a knee into his back to knock him to the floor. She felt men on each side, lifting her to stand and escorting her out to the driveway. They hadn’t gone far before she heard a vehicle door open, and was told to step up.

  She heard the door shut behind her before Rivers’ voice instructed her to sit. Once she had, the bag came off. She was in the back compartment of an armored car. There were two benches running along each wall and three monitors showing various camera feeds from Jonathan’s garage toward the front. After he cut her wrists free, Rivers sat on the bench opposite her while Olivia watched the proceedings from a porthole in the vehicle’s door.

  “You alright, Leah?” Rivers asked. “From what we saw, that got intense.”

  She blinked at him for a moment, having more trouble than usual processing everything so quickly. “How…? How did you get here so fast?” she asked.

  “Dumb luck,” Olivia said, not sounding very thrilled about it. “We began mobilizing as soon as your altercation with Ms. Silva started to turn to fisticuffs.”