The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  When he finished sweeping the apartment, he kept some of the GPS trackers intact. Made a point of wearing them when he didn’t care if The Cell knew where he was going. He purposely left a camera operational in his bedroom. It was located near the ceiling, behind a ventilation duct that looked down on his bed.

  He pulled out a set of binoculars and stood at his window in the living room, looking down at the car parked outside his door. He recognized the two agents now relieving the men who had been watching when he was down on the street. While he stood at the window, he turned the binoculars to the windows facing his loft on adjacent buildings. Every few weeks, he’d notice the glass of a window he’d previously been able to see through had suddenly become opaque. It was important to keep an idea of the buildings they were likely using to watch from. Olivia might be standing behind one of them right now, looking back at him.

  There you are, Princess.

  Now, for good reason, he couldn’t trust anyone, not since he’d headed down this road. There had been a few attempts, he suspected, to insert a mole into his private life. A pretty new girl calling herself Diana had shown up at work. She’d been a little too forward, a little too interested in coming home with him. He never allowed her in his home, only agreed to go back to her place and see how far she was willing to take the ruse. That had repeated itself a few times before, he assumed, Olivia realized she was wasting a highly-trained and educated government asset to save him the trouble of calling a prostitute.

  Grant had been like a pig in shit playing with the girl as she tried to endear herself to him. What did Olivia think, that a pair of tits would get him to tell his whole life story? That he didn’t know what she was after, that he hadn’t seen her methods of getting that information? Fine, he would play that game, make up a few bullshit leads for them to follow. Grant was good at bullshit. What he couldn’t believe was just how long Olivia had let it go on before Diana suddenly stopped coming to work, never to be heard from again. It just so happened that she disappeared the day after Grant had slipped, got her name wrong. He’d been leaving her apartment and said, “Thanks, Paige. I enjoyed that.”

  Oops. Sorry, Princess, I guess you know I’m on to you. Must be so deeply infuriating. That I knew who he was long before you’d even heard the name. Is it? Frustrating?

  In the end, it was why he’d decided to leave the camera in his bedroom’s ventilation. The day after Diana disappeared, he’d called an escort service and asked for a dark-skinned brunette in business attire and glasses. He’d instructed the operator that he wanted the girl to respond to the name Olive. He always made Olive keep the glasses on, made her face the foot of the bed so she was right in front of the camera. He wanted Olivia’s whole surveillance team to see him pounding a carbon copy of their boss. He wished he could have been there, seen her face when she watched the footage.

  Bet you lost that composure of yours? Tell the truth, Princess, Did you get excited?

  Thinking about it, now, he was worked up enough to call and see if Olive was available this evening, but something on the television set caught his eye. Two news networks, both reporting an emergency broadcast.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FRIDAY | OCTOBER 7, 2005 | 4:45 PM | SEATTLE

  THE DAY HAD begun to give way to evening as Jonathan stood, wearing an orange vest and hardhat, beside his foreman. Another employee of Mr. Donaldson’s demolition crew operated the heavy yellow backhoe, digging out a ditch of broken up concrete and moving it into a trailer bed. The foreman was explaining where the materials were being taken while he pointed out the various safety procedures that came with operating heavy machinery.

  Since being hired, Jonathan had yet to operate any equipment unsupervised, only watched and listened as those who were signed off on the machines trained him. Until recently, he had been assigned to small housing jobs in the suburbs. Either way, he was learning a lot and finally making enough money to keep his debts from increasing.

  “Gotta keep your mind on what you’re doing when you operate this….” His foreman’s voice trailed off, or rather Jonathan stopped listening as he felt the twitch in his chest.

  Damn, he thought.

  His jobsites had already proved, on other occasions, to be one of the last places he wanted to lose control over his motor skills. During a previous activation, when his legs had stopped supporting him, he’d tumbled into a ditch much like the one currently being dug out by the backhoe. Unlike this ditch, he’d nearly been buried under the rubble a bulldozer had been pushing in. Luckily, the crew had stopped the driver before it had come to that.

  Jonathan didn’t know if he could die in the middle of the transition. For that matter, he didn’t know what happened if he died before a Ferox got the chance to try and kill him. Would the time line simply stay in place? Would the Ferox get pushed back through the gates to its home world? Or would it be diverted to one of those alternate nodes that Heyer had mentioned? These were a few of the untold number of questions he lacked the answers to, because the alien still hadn’t found time to stop in for over a month.

  Jonathan used the few seconds he had before his body stopped obeying to look for a safe spot where he could fall to the ground. Hopefully somewhere that he wouldn’t be found writhing in pain as the transition took control. Stepping away, he put as much distance between himself and the heavy equipment as he could, setting his eyes on a half-demolished cinder block wall a few strides away. His muscles quit responding just as he cleared the wall. He managed to land on his back, the hard hat protecting his head coming off and rolling to an awkward stop behind him.

  There was nothing mission-critical in avoiding his coworkers, but he preferred not to have them see him in pain when there was nothing they could do. He had transitioned in front of them often enough to know he didn’t want to see the helpless panic that always entered their eyes before his vision failed him, nor their confused expressions when he got to his feet. He had decided to stop wasting time giving explanations to people who were never going to remember.

  When the activation had run its course, he felt control of his nervous system returning. He opened his eyes to the overcast sky and drew in a long breath. The brief moment, he found, helped to take the edge off his body’s immediate adrenaline surge after feeling as though it were being burned from the inside out. He glanced down at the source of the horrible pain and saw the power surging through the lines running over his torso. The familiar orange glow was there, wisping out faintly from beneath his t-shirt. No matter how many times he experienced the shock, he would never get used to being a glow stick.

  The Ferox’s presence came to his attention then, and his face hardened as the compass in his mind pointed him south. He sprang to his feet and headed to where he had parked Eileen, his old motorcycle, on the street outside the demolition zone.

  As he broke into a sprint, his foreman yelled to him. “Tibbs! There you are. Where the hell you going in such a damn hurry…?”

  The man’s voice had already receded into background noise. Jonathan filtered out the unimportant and focused on the task at hand. He pulled the work vest from his body as he ran, shredding through it as though it were newspaper before thrusting himself into the air. He cleared what remained of the construction zone and the fence separating it from the parking lot. When the ground absorbed his landing, a cracking thud shook the space immediately around him. Experience reminded him to put his hand out and grab Eileen’s handle bars before the disturbance rocked her over. The motorcycle really didn’t need another dent, even if said dent would only exist for the short time that the gates remained open.

  Beneath a cargo net on the bike’s rear he retrieved his jacket, careful not to let his strength tear the lining as he slipped into it, then tossed his helmet to the ground before hitting the ignition. He didn’t bother with the headgear when he was activated anymore—it only got in the way. The first time he’d had to engage the enemy without getting the helmet off first, he had found it limited his visi
on. For that matter, the first clean punch the Ferox landed on his face had shattered the helmet to pieces.

  Jonathan threw his leg over the bike, and checked that Excali-bar was safely locked into the carabiners welded to the side of the bike’s frame. He’d coated the weapon in a black oxide to hide how the alien steel caught the light. He got enough questions as it was just for driving around with an oversized demolition bar. Luckily though, he didn’t have to re-coat the weapon after each use. Whenever he sent a Ferox corpse back through the gates, the staff was like everything else in this time bubble outside of Jonathan’s memory—completely untouched by the incident.

  Small favors like this and a bit of sarcasm helped get him through the day. If he had to risk his life killing interdimensional trespassers while his friends and family continued to become more alienated by his increasing instability and off-putting behavior, well, at least the job came with free self-repairing gear and no clean up. For that matter, fuel was essentially covered while he was on the job. He’d set five or six different beasts on fire with the exact same gas can and flare this month. Jonathan often heard it was important to find the silver lining in things.

  He gunned the engine and set off. Motorcycle safety was no longer much of a concern—his strength and balance allowed him to push the bike’s limits, and once he hit the freeway the needle on his speedometer quickly bounced over the 100 miles per hour mark. At least, he assumed it had. Really, he no longer bothered looking down to check, but kept his attention on avoiding collisions.

  Since the Ferox had started coming with regularity, there wasn’t a definitive pattern he could identify, no time of day that was more regular for them to show up. They had increased in frequency until he seldom got more than a twenty-four hour break in between. These assaults had become too frequent for him to ever feel safe for long. Yet, a part of him he didn’t think wise to indulge felt, for better or worse, satiated by it—almost addicted to it. He already felt that part of himself now, creeping up behind his eyes and whispering to him to push the throttle harder.

  Cars blew past—humanity seeming an endless stream of obstacles for the moment. Had this been some other ride, his mind might have wandered. Jonathan might have found himself thinking how every person on this road believed that they were the good guy. That each of them got up every day and did the best they could with what was put in front of them. How each tried to improve their lot in life without consciously hurting anyone else’s. If they could remember what Jonathan was about to do for them, they would probably have called him a hero.

  The truth was, he was off to end the life of a creature that had come here because it had no other options. Sure, the Ferox were monsters—killers. But the person who might confuse him with a hero was just rooting for the killer who was on their team. The people he passed didn’t have to give any thought to the likelihood that had they been born a Ferox, he would be their enemy.

  Jonathan, at least the part of him that recognized the truth in the matter, had to simplify his moral dilemma: One of us has to die, and I’m not ready to let it be me.

  He heard sirens then, and frowned as he saw the lights of a police car in his side mirror. That was quicker than usual, he thought. He sometimes wondered what got their attention first—the speeding or the helmet violation? Just as he noticed the cops, he felt the alien signal’s location move in his mind. The Ferox was through the portal and heading away, toward the west, just as the freeway was about to lose its usefulness.

  He turned for the off ramp, hit the brakes, and gripped the clutch, letting the drag of his tires slow his momentum. The tires screeched as he took the turn far too hard, and as the guardrail of the ramp drew near, he put his foot out between the wall and the bike. His leg took the force against the wall as he planted his other foot on the freeway and brought the bike to an abrupt stop.

  He began shifting back down to first gear as he looked to the west, trying to get a visual sign of the Ferox. It felt close, maybe four or five blocks away, but there were too many buildings blocking his view. Turning his head back the way he came, he saw the flashing lights of his pursuers catching up to him. They weren’t of much concern as long as he kept enough distance between them, but he didn’t want them boxing him in once they figured out he had no intention of pulling over. It wouldn’t stop him, but dealing with the obstacle would slow him down.

  He dropped back into gear and sped down the ramp. Within seconds, he was in the city, running a red light and causing an accident in the intersection as several cars slammed on their brakes to keep from hitting him.

  Five blocks became four, four became three, and then he heard its call.

  Challenger!

  The translated word forced its way into his consciousness, borrowing his own internal voice in sync with the Ferox’s growl. It no longer unnerved him, more or less just helped bring his A-game to the surface.

  Finally, he saw his enemy out in an intersection in front of him. A Red, its back to him as it raged to get at civilians trapped inside their car. The door gave the Ferox little trouble before tearing from its hinges. Jonathan poured on the throttle as he aimed Eileen’s front tires for the creature’s back, freeing his clutch hand and reaching down to grip Excali-bar.

  He prepared to leap from the bike, leave the motorcycle on its path to rip into Red’s back and give it a taste of the fight it had pick—

  Something tugged at his consciousness, a sensation he’d never felt before causing momentary disorientation. It felt as though the compass in his mind had suddenly become unsure of where the signal was coming from, even though he had the Ferox in sight. Before he knew what to make of it, he was torn out of the moment entirely.

  “Gotta keep your mind on what you’re doing when you’re operating this rig,” the foreman explained.

  Jonathan staggered forward for a moment, then halted suddenly, looking around the construction yard like a rabid animal with his fists still clenched. He couldn’t sense anything—the beast wasn’t there in his mind, it had disappeared.

  “Tibbs,” the foreman said, looking back at him, “you all right, man?”

  Jonathan’s eyes were still circling the work yard, trying to get his bearings. When he looked to his foreman, he found he had his palm raised between them as though he were telling the man to be patient.

  Then he realized his device wasn’t activated.

  Keep it together. Jonathan swallowed, pulling his hand back to his side.

  He was safe, it seemed—back where he’d been activated—but Jonathan had grown accustomed to having a moment to prepare himself for return to normal life. Without it, he’d been thrust back to the moment of activation while still in the mindset that he was a split second from entering a death match.

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan managed, noticing the concern on his foreman’s face deepening. “Sorry, I… I just got dizzy for a sec.”

  The man gave him a suspicious look. “That happen often?” he asked.

  “No,” Jonathan said. “Never.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FRIDAY | OCTOBER 7, 2005 | 7:00 PM | SEATTLE

  LEAH SAT AT the edge of Paige’s bed while they talked about plans for the weekend. She’d tuned out of the conversation after hearing a motorcycle turning up the drive. It could have been Collin coming home from school, but the engine sounded like Jonathan’s junker.

  A girl wouldn’t have to worry about you getting clingy or overly attached, if… if she were looking for someone who wouldn’t get clingy, or overly attached.

  The words had been repeating in her head for weeks now. She had been forced to leave the statement out of reports, as she couldn’t have explained her thinking to The Cell. Her conscience, assisted by inebriation at the time, had stolen her good sense. Then her mouth had been dense enough to go along with it. Now, without fail, it seemed to Leah that those words were said at the worst possible time. Certain tactical complications had followed.

  The Cell was pleased with her progress fo
r the most part. She had managed to infiltrate Jonathan’s social circle ahead of schedule. Perhaps this would have been more challenging if Leah actually fit The Cell’s expectations—some fantasy from a Bond movie, an intelligence asset who had spent years training for undercover work. The reality was that she had some training, but that the role she was playing now was only a few fabricated documents and a fake name away from who she was anyway. What Olivia’s team didn’t know about her past had simply been filled in with assumptions that came with her clearance level—the less they knew, the grander said assumptions tended to be.

  Unfortunately, editing her reports was no longer as easy as simple omission should she wish to keep The Cell in the dark about any particular interaction. There were no audio recordings, but within the last month, Olivia’s team had managed to complete a full network of hidden surveillance cameras within Jonathan’s home. If one of Olivia’s team wanted to know exactly what Paige was saying right now, her recollection needed to be a close approximation to what the lip readers had transcribed. Attempting to lie would be dangerous.

  However, though they forced more discretion in her actions, the cameras had proved a necessity. For Leah to do her job, she needed Jonathan’s face to be an open book, had to feel what he felt, know him better than she knew herself. With Jonathan unaware of his every moment in the house being recorded, his behavior became something she could study without drawing unnecessary attention to herself. So she spent every moment she was able reviewing the footage, considering every expression, his body language, how he reacted to those around him.

  Leah had always had an insight into people, the type that most found difficult to learn even through training, and Jonathan was the easiest sort to read. He was terrible at lying, so terrible he’d probably given up on it at an early age. When he had something to hide, he omitted it. If pressed, he retreated behind a wall of silence. That wall was Leah’s challenge, and The Cell’s newest solution to the failures of previous operations: a very indirect approach, which relied on her understanding of Jonathan and the trust she had built between them. Leah, in short, was the one who decided what the right questions were and when to ask them—when to push, and how much pressure to apply.