The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2)

by T. Ellery Hodges

  “It’s typical for hackers to use an alias. I searched the various government intelligence departments’ computer crime records but was unable to find a substantial link to the alias ‘Mr. Clean’. The team didn’t believe there was a hacker out there skilled enough to fool our best analysts, but I am working off the assumption that they’re wrong. That this alias is nowhere on record because he, or she, is that good. What if Jonathan is talking to someone technologically savvy enough to pull the wool over our eyes? An accomplishment for a man, sure, but a seemingly small one for an alien that can teleport all over the globe.”

  Olivia nodded again, though this time she appeared almost irritated to him.

  “Like I said, it was only a hunch.”

  “And a fair one,” Olivia said. “It troubles me because of the predicament it creates.”

  “Ma’am?” Rivers asked.

  “We now have two options, Agent Rivers. If we remove the blind spot and cut off the possible contact, reason dictates that if your theoretical ‘Mr. Clean’ exists, he will notice that we’ve become aware of him. If Jonathan ceases to sit in that corner, we can also assume he is aware of the cameras. Alternatively, we can maintain the illusion that we are not suspicious of the activity, and see how it plays out. The question is, do we want Jonathan talking to this theoretical ‘Mr. Clean’ so we might observe the results, or do we want the communication to cease immediately?”

  “Yeah,” Agent Rivers said, “I see the predicament.”

  “For now, we’ll let it play out,” Olivia said. “Set our efforts to confirming this Mr. Clean is more than a hunch before making a move.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SATURDAY | OCTOBER 8, 2005 | 9:00 PM | SEATTLE

  JONATHAN OCCUPIED HIMSELF with dishes as he waited for Leah to put Jack to bed. He heard her when she was at the child’s door.

  “Love you, Jack,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  “Hall light?” Jack asked.

  “Okay, ’til you fall asleep.”

  The exchange brought Jonathan back to childhood. He’d been afraid of the dark at Jack’s age as well. Leah had told him she’d lost her parents. She’d had to step into the role of a mother. Jonathan had been an only child, but he didn’t imagine that siblings could easily flip a switch and act another part. Leah seemed to manage, and he respected her for being what Jack needed her to be.

  He wondered if he’d misunderstood that day in the garage, when she asked him not to get attached. Had he taken the comment too personally when it had nothing to do with him? She’d needed something for herself and hadn’t pretended she could be anything else. Maybe she didn’t want him getting attached because she was already stretched too thin?

  Suddenly, he felt so shortsighted. Not because he’d ever thought badly of her, but because it took him so long to see such an obvious reason for putting a buffer between them. The thoughts dominoed, and he saw that there were a lot of good reasons to keep him at a distance. Jonathan hadn’t exactly been a pillar of stability, or even sanity, the last few months. Even if Leah had been an ordinary, single twenty-something with no responsibilities, Jonathan could see what he might look like—a glaringly bad decision. The shortcomings Leah knew about paled in comparison to the ones he could never tell her. He thought about the blank side of the scoreboard hidden in his garage. One bad day would be the last time Leah ever saw him. If he was being honest with himself, he was being selfish. He should have been the one telling her not to get attached.

  The guilty thoughts evaporated when she returned. She had a look in her eyes that he’d seen once before. He reminded himself that he wasn’t a saint as her fingers beckoned him to follow her into the living room, where they would be far enough away from the ears of the not-yet-sleeping child.

  “What happened to you, Jonathan?” she asked as he followed her.

  She asked it casually, as she always had in the past. When his roommates or his mother asked him a question like that, they were reminders that a wall had to remain between him and everyone else. Leah had always been different. When she asked him a question, she had a way of making it feel as though she’d meant to give him a gift, a chance for him to say something she sensed he desperately needed to say.

  “I know. I could have left things … less vague,” she said. “I did want to see you again, but for awhile you were never around, I mean, not just out, but—”

  “I know,” he said, stepping into the living room behind her.

  “When I saw that girl putting her hands on you,” Leah said as she turned to look at him, “I thought, maybe….”

  “No,” Jonathan said. “I couldn’t…” He trailed off, not because he didn’t know the words, but because he hated the idea of speaking them.

  No matter how vague things had been left between them, the idea of looking for affection from another woman was a mistake he would only make in a nightmare. Yes, he was human, and, yes, he wanted someone, but doing something that could hurt the chance of being with the girl standing in front of him was a mistake he would never even imagine making.

  He would fail at speaking the words because he wasn’t ever going to deliver them the way he felt them. He would smile, or laugh, or be too vulnerable to look her in the eye—the words would be forced through a filter of cowardice, him trying to pretend he didn’t take his own feelings seriously.

  So he took a breath and looked at her with all his longing. He hoped that if she could just be Leah, the girl who always saw through him, then he wouldn’t need to say anything at all. After a moment, he saw that she was the one who almost shied away, who was almost unable to hold his gaze. Then Leah bit her lip and stared right back, her eyes narrowed in a playful way.

  “You think you can get away with looking at me like that forever,” she said, “but someday I am gonna want you to use your big boy words.”

  He smiled. “Anyone ever accuse you of being overly perceptive?”

  “I like how you look at me when I’m busy being perceptive,” she said, and then added, “Subject changer.”

  He stepped closer, and her face became an invitation as she matched his steps.

  Leah pushed against him, pinning him to the wall. Her lips pressed hard against him. Her mind raced ahead, impatient to lock him behind her bedroom door.

  When he broke contact, it came without warning, left her gasping as suddenly Jonathan pushed her back, his arms bracing to keep her away. Being severed from him was startling, jolted her with confusion. She felt a moment of anger—until she saw his fear.

  “Leah, step back,” he whispered.

  The look on his face froze her. Something was terribly wrong, but she couldn’t escape the moment that had preceded the change so quickly. She couldn’t bring her faculties back in line to understand the danger he seemed to suddenly see.

  “Back up, Leah,” Jonathan repeated, his voice urgent, forceful enough that she obeyed without thinking.

  As soon as he didn’t need his arms keeping her out of reach, he rolled away, using the wall to support his quaking legs. He was heading abruptly for the door, one hand reaching clumsily for the handle while the other held his chest.

  Finally, Leah found her voice: “Jonathan?”

  He stumbled out of the house and she followed, not knowing what else to do. He struggled through three more steps before he tried to turn, then collapsed, falling on his back onto her lawn. The disturbing manner in which it happened shot adrenaline though her, shattering the lingering myopia of lust and confusion. It was as though he had died, like his brain had unceremoniously disconnected from his body. She almost screamed, but caught the sound in her throat, only to hear a muffled cry escape her.

  In the dark, she was seeing something impossible. Jonathan’s blood—she could see it beneath his skin, lighting up in his veins as though it had caught fire, the orange glow pulsing stronger with each beat of his heart. Leah didn’t remember moving, but found herself kneeling in the grass beside him. He was in agony, the visceral pain vi
sible on his face. She was hypnotized as lines began to take form on his chest. The light was so concentrated there, unmistakable beneath the fabric of his shirt.

  She knew she was finally seeing what Jonathan hid, but in that moment, she couldn’t have cared less. He was in so much pain—all that surfaced in her was a desperate need to do something. Fear and helplessness drowned out her thoughts, a terrible question now at the forefront of her mind. Was this how it would happen? Was this the moment he’d be lost to her, where she’d be left staring at an empty patch of grass.

  No, she’d seen it happen when Peter was taken. It hadn’t been anything like what she was seeing now. She had to cling to that thought, use it to force down the rising helplessness. She had to do something. She had to see what was forming on his chest.

  She forced herself to move, crawled over him, and pinned each of his shaking forearms under her knees to control his seizures. She grabbed hold of his shirt and pulled, breaking through the buttons. Light spilled out, no longer dampened by the thin layer of fabric, and she flinched as her eyes attempted to adjusted to the sudden brightness. A moment later, he suddenly went dead still, his limbs unmoving beneath her, his writhing gone. The light in his chest flickered out, disappearing. She blinked and felt herself shivering in near-silence, only to hear a sigh slip out of him as though his lungs had taken their final breath.

  She was jolted when the glow returned, becoming solid, brighter, and constant.

  With his face illuminated in the orange glow, Leah tentatively reached for his cheek, but her hand stilled as she saw movement beneath his eyelids. Finally, his eyes opened and looked back at her.

  Resurfacing out of the fire of activation, Jonathan slowly came back to himself. It was a disorientation he had experienced enough times to know when something felt … different.

  He could still sense that difference in the fog of his returning thoughts. There had been something at the onset, as though the push to initiate had been taking hold of more of him. The thing was, previously, he couldn’t imagine that there was anything more for the device to burn through. He knew, somehow, that every time he’d been activated in the past, the device had been holding something back.

  Not clear on where he was, he noticed the ground felt soft beneath him, the air cool, and that his hands were held down. His vision cleared, and Leah’s face was the first thing to come into focus. She breathed heavily, her face illuminated, turned orange by the glow from his chest. He saw she’d been crying, though she didn’t seem aware of the tears even as they ran down her cheeks. Not knowing what else to do, he smiled up at her. The concern on her face broke, her lips trembling when they smiled back. She breathed as though she had forgotten how and was just now remembering.

  “You’re still here,” she whispered.

  He realized, then, that she must have seen him go through the entirety of the change—he knew it appeared as though he’d been dying. “Where could I go? You’re on top of me.”

  She gasped, smiled, and whimpered all at the same time—a sound one only makes when one believes they are on the brink of witnessing their worst fear, only to have that fear go unrealized. Her eyes travelled back to the inhuman energy beneath his skin. Her hand reached out, shaking and unsure, coming to rest over the exposed glow of his chest.

  “Warm,” she said.

  He was about to tell her it was an understatement, that a moment ago he’d felt like a furnace, but when he looked down, his words caught. The lines—they were brighter, glowing stronger than they ever had. A development he’d have given more attention to had movement not then pinged like radar against the alien instincts in his mind. The position of a Ferox, not yet in focus, brought reality back down on him. The smile fell off his face. Leah must have noticed the change in him, because fear began returning to her expression.

  “What is it?”

  “I have to go,” he replied.

  Within a few seconds, he felt her putting weight on the hand touching his chest. “No. No way—not until you tell me what just happened,” she replied.

  “I need you to get off me, Leah,” he said, as gently as he could.

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Leah,” he said. “It’s dangerous. I could hurt you by accident. Do not make me move you.”

  Defiance came over her face—a look that said, I dare you to try.

  “People are going to start dying. I don’t want to see that,” Jonathan said.

  Her defiant expression flinched at his tone and he could see that she believed him. She only hesitated a moment longer before easing off him. “What people?” she asked.

  He waited until she was a step back before he stood. He looked down at his chest, and back into her eyes. She seemed to be struggling to keep from looking down, and under different circumstances, he’d have found the role reversal more entertaining. Instead, he found himself carefully pulling the shirt closed; embarrassed of the attention it drew off his face.

  Standing, now, he realized he was having trouble telling exactly where the Ferox was, that the signal was taking longer to grow certain. He was only sure that it was somewhere in the city. He shut his eyes and moved his head slightly, as though it were an antenna and he was trying to get better reception. This was odd. He normally felt where the enemy was the moment he was fully conscious. Slowly, the signal began to clear, accelerating into focus swiftly as it did so. Jonathan’s eyes shot open as the reason he’d had trouble resolving the location became absolute.

  He turned in disbelief, taking a few steps toward the city as though he’d heard a bomb denoted in the distance.

  “Jonathan, please,” Leah said. “Tell me what’s going on. What people?”

  He spoke, though he knew she’d never understand, that she’d never remember. “There’s two of them,” he whispered.

  This—it wasn’t supposed to be possible. Hadn’t Heyer said as much? He had to move, but after three steps toward the garage, he hesitated.

  “Jonathan? What does that mean? Two of what?”

  He heard her—she’d followed him, was standing right behind him now—but there was no point. He couldn’t take the time to explain. If he died tonight, he would disappear right out of her arms. He should have listened to the guilt when it told him he was being selfish.

  “Jonathan?”

  He forced her voice out, brought his mind to focus on the signals. One wasn’t far, but it was already on the move, headed away from him. The other was further away, but….

  “It’s not through yet,” he said.

  There was a chance, if he moved fast enough, that he could keep them isolated. He just had to hope he could take down the first quickly. If the second made it through and found him still fighting the first, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE WIND RUSHED past as he closed the distance, pushing the bike as hard as he dared on the suburban streets. Leah had watched him, standing in the opening after he’d torn the garage door off its rails. She’d stared, her fear turning to anger the more her questions were returned with silence. He’d gotten into his gear, pulled Excali-bar from the closet, and dropped the decoy on the floor.

  He’d been able to ignore her eyes on him until he’d gone to start the bike and found the key suddenly missing from the ignition. Then he’d had to look at her, standing with the keys in her fist a few steps away.

  “Leah, give them to me,” he’d said.

  She was shaking, conflicted, trying to take control over the situation, trying to slow him down. “You’ve done this before,” she’d said, and he heard her voice growing louder. “I can tell you have. You aren’t even scared, doing things like you’ve done them a hundred times.”

  “Give me the keys, Leah.”

  “How is that possible?” she asked, her words coming out as though she were becoming unhinged. “How could you hide this from everyone?”

  “Dammit, Leah!” he yelled.

  She recoiled when he yelled, and it ate into h
im. He closed his eyes, got control of his voice. “You aren’t going to remember any of this.”

  Leah swallowed, face contorting in confusion. “But you will?”

  “Yes, only me—always me.”

  “How—”

  “Leah!” The clock ticked in his eyes. “Please don’t make me take them from you. Every second you keep me here is … killing me.”

  He put his hand out, and she walked to him slowly, stopping when the keys were hovering above his palm. She looked him in the eyes. “Tell me. What I can’t remember,” Leah said. “Make me believe you.” She watched as his eyes raced between her and the keys, waiting for her hand to open. “Promise me?”

  He let out a heavy sigh, wishing that time had not been so stacked against him, and said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” He glanced at the keys again, and Leah shook with frustration—knew, even then, that he was refusing to promise her anything.

  “I would have believed you,” she’d said, letting the key drop into his palm.

  He’d driven off then, as fast as he could. He’d never be able to tell Leah anything if he was dead, and now he needed her as far from his mind as possible.

  He skidded through a turn, barely avoiding oncoming traffic as he hit the busier streets near the city. Maneuvering more and more dangerously as the roads grew wider, he finally came to a steep hill leading to a freeway overpass, one of the few ways to get over the I-5 freeway that ran through downtown Seattle. He gained speed, accelerating down the incline, weaving around cars until he was on the overpass. Unexpectedly, the Ferox that had been on the move changed directions—its signal suddenly rocketed toward him instead of away—headed for the freeway traffic underneath him.

  His foot hit the brake and the bike swerved, back tires skidding around behind him, until he was perpendicular with the oncoming traffic. He took hold of Excali-bar, freeing it from the motorcycle as he brought his foot down and released the handlebars, allowing the bike to slip out from under him and become a spray of sparks headed down the overpass. The steel of the old bike shrieked—drivers slammed on their brakes and Jonathan ignored a cacophony of back-end collisions as he ran across the lanes and reached the overpass’s narrow shoulder.