For a moment, Jonathan looked into nothing but darkness below him. Grant had pushed him toward some shaft, and the light from the flat didn’t reach far. He could see where the sides of brick walls faded into what seemed like an empty abyss. His battered body aching, he reached up with his other hand and pulled himself back toward the light.
When his head came back above the floor, Grant was waiting. He’d found a sledge hammer as he walked over to the shaft and had the wooden handle gripped in one hand, the heavy metal head swaying lightly against his shoe as he stared down at him.
“Hey, Jonathan,” Grant said, “When you get to Hell, and you see your dad, make sure you tell him who sent you.”
There was nothing he could do. Grant wielded the hammer as though he was sinking a golf ball with a putter. Jonathan heard the crack, but didn’t feel the pain when it connected. His hands went limp and he felt himself falling—everything going black.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
JONATHAN WAS ON the ground, his limbs laid out awkwardly around the rubble that had come down with him. His stomach felt as though it hadn’t yet realized he’d stopped falling. When he opened his eyes, he found he had crashed through the floor at the bottom of the shaft, punched down into some type of basement beneath. He couldn’t make out much—the only light came from the opening high above. That, and when he had struck the ground, he had disturbed the ancient dust of this place, and it was still a cloud around him. He heard old wooden boards falling to the ground as he managed to get on his feet.
His legs were wobbly. The floor felt almost like liquid, and he reached out in the dark for something solid. His fingertips brushed across a brick and mortar wall behind him.
Needing light, he reached for the zipper on his jacket, pulling it open and allowing the glow of his chest to escape. With some confusion, he realized that Doomsday had not been in the way—he didn’t feel the weight of the chain wrapped around his torso. It was strange… he couldn’t remember having lost it.
As the light touched his surroundings, he saw that he stood in an underground passage—a part of the city that had been built over and forgotten. He’d heard about these tunnels beneath the city. People called them the Seattle Underground. An awareness quickly came to him, and foreboding began to press in at the edges of this thoughts. Nothing about what he saw felt true. He wasn’t really here—he wasn’t really anywhere.
Rylee doesn’t have time for me to be unconscious, he thought. She sure as hell doesn’t have time for me to be dead.
He heard small footsteps running toward him then, somewhere down the passage, outside of where his light allowed him to see.
“Jonathan,” a young girl’s voice whispered.
He peered into the dark, seeing the pink coat before Jess’s face came out of the dark. “Jess,” he said. “I … I can’t be here now.”
She came close, reaching out for his sleeve and trying to pull him in the direction she’d come.
“No time,” he said. “I have to go now.”
She shook her head in frustration as she tugged on him. “Please,” she whimpered. “You can’t leave me. I don’t know what to do.”
He faltered at the fear in the child’s voice, began to fill with indecision. He didn’t want to abandon her. Not Jess—not again. “I’ll come back,” he finally said. “I have to help my friend. She doesn’t have much time…”
The little girl shook her head, pleading that he was wrong. “No, time….” She struggled, the fear making it difficult for her to explain. “You have to believe me. Time isn’t the same in here.”
She tugged on him again, only to be reminded that she didn’t have the weight to budge him. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes—he saw her starting to give up on him. He couldn’t bear the thought that Jess was so afraid he’d leave her.
“Okay, Jess—don’t cry, I believe you,” Jonathan said. “I won’t leave you alone, I promise.”
He let her pull him along, and she followed a seemingly endless stretch of brick wall. In the dark, it was as though they walked along the perimeter of the only solid shape that existed—as though the light from his chest was the only light that had ever touched this place. Finally, something metal caught his eye ahead, and as they drew closer, Jonathan recognized the vault door. The armory? The place where Heyer stored the dormant implants. It was here, exactly how it had appeared when he’d seen it inside of Mr. Clean.
Seeing where she meant for him to go, Jonathan froze in place. Jess, still pulling, swung around when her arm was wrenched by his sudden stop. Jonathan trembled, his feet becoming anchors unwilling to take another step. The door—it was open, only enough that Jess could enter easily. If he had to go inside, he would have to turn sideways and push himself through.
“Jess, am I….” Jonathan paused, his voice trembling. “Am I dead?”
“You haven’t hit bottom yet,” she said, stepping into the darkness on the other side of the door. “You’re still falling.”
He blinked at her, reluctant to move as she pulled on his sleeve once more. “Jess … it was a yes no question.”
The little girl turned and studied his face, confused by his statement.
“Why….” Jonathan swallowed as he looked over her, trying to make out something other than darkness on the other side. “Why does it have to be in there?”
“You’re unconscious,” Jess said. “Don’t you know I can’t trick you?”
She let go of his sleeve and stepped further inside the door. The darkness on the other side absorbed her, became a wall his light could not penetrate.
“Jess,” Jonathan said, hearing the tremble in his voice. “Wait.”
No answer came from within—and the silence chilled him. There was no noise, nothing.
“Jess!”
The pitch black seemed to swallow the sound just as it had the girl. Not even an echo came from beyond the door, as though nothing existed inside. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he realized he had refused to abandon her. This fear would keep him from entering, and every second it held him there would take him closer to the moment when any choice to act would be taken away from him. Jonathan found his breath quickening, trying to find the courage to follow her into the unknown.
It’s like I am watching you walk off into the dark. I see you alone in an empty, black place, Leah had said to him. I’d do anything to keep you from that place.
He knew he’d done this to himself. He never wanted to fail anyone, but there was one being, one symbol, in existence that he could not bear to fail again. Now, she was forcing him to make a decision. There had to be a reason—it could be no coincidence, but it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t leave her to harm while he still breathed. He trembled, but he forced himself forward and started to slip into the darkness on the other side.
The moment he cleared the threshold, his boots touched a smooth, hard floor and he knew he was no longer in the dark. The air felt warmer, and as he opened his eyes, he saw that he stood in the storage room again. All his father’s possessions were laid out around him. The glow from his chest gave off all the light he needed, and fresh memories from having visited this place the night before seemed to fill in the details that had been vague in all his dreams. Jess waited a few feet inside, looking marginally relieved that he had followed.
He turned back to the door, seeing it was still slightly ajar behind him—but now, he could see the hallway from where he had entered. This place … it was no longer cloaked in an impenetrable darkness. It was an illusion, only meant to appear as such when standing on the outside.
Jonathan knew, though he wasn’t sure how, that he had entered a locked away place within his mind. That he had put up that wall. That he had made the only entrance a vault door that he feared. Yet, now that he stood inside, he felt no danger from this place. He didn’t know why he had done this. What could he be so afraid of that he’d gone to so much effort to lock it behind such a barrier? The little girl studied him anxiousl
y while he asked himself these questions, as though she read his thoughts and worried he would be angry with her.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Jess said.
He knelt in front of her, slowly putting his hands on her shoulders to comfort her. “Jess,” he said gently. “Did you hide this place?”
Her lips quivered, but she nodded.
“Why?”
“Don’t trust it,” she said. “Don’t know why it’s here, what it wants. But there is nowhere else to go now.”
Over the girl’s shoulder, a light moved at the back of the room and caught his attention.
“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Why don’t we trust it?”
Her eyes shined with tears as she stared back at him. “It isn’t you. It shouldn’t be here if it isn’t you.”
Jonathan looked back at her a moment before he nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
He stood and walked around the truck parked in the center of the room as Jess followed him.
“You can wait here,” he said. “You don’t have to come.”
She shook her head. “I have to know what you decide.”
He frowned, unsure what she meant, but kept walking. The light came from a man, his back turned to them as he stood with one hand resting atop the footlocker. The box remained where Jonathan had found it in reality. The man wore a blue-collar shirt and pants with brown boots. The faint glow of what could only be an alien implant embedded in his chest cast its light over the table. Jonathan came to a stop a few steps behind the man and Jess stepped aside. Quietly, she crawled onto the canvas covered hood of the truck to sit, watching the man with distrust.
“If you want to hear it,” Jess said. “I can let it speak.”
Jonathan stared at what he knew could only be his father and memories began to pry themselves lose. All those pieces he had been unable to isolate within the cluttered noise of his conscious mind. What Heyer had said to him months earlier—he remembered the words as though the alien were there, speaking them to him, now, for the first time.
With the assistance of artificial intelligence, it took me over ten years to make that one adjustment.
Douglas turned to him slowly as Jonathan began to grasp why he was here. His father had been taken from him by the Ferox ten years before. Jonathan had never been sentimental about dates, never had a reason to connect the two, not until he’d uncovered Doomsday hidden in the footlocker.
He remembered sitting beside the alien on a park bench.
It is not removable, Jonathan, Heyer had said. I could not recover it without killing you.
Jonathan looked down at the light on his chest. All those dreams, those visions of his father trying to help him. He’d believed them to be nothing more than his subconscious trying to comfort him.
The information about the state of your mind is applied. The result is, you retain the memory….
Finally, Jonathan spoke.
“The first time I saw you in my head was the night Heyer implanted the device.”
He looked at the glow on his father’s chest, the shape identical to his own.
“My device … it was yours,” Jonathan said. “You’ve still been inside of it.”
His father nodded once.
“Dad?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Douglas grimaced, glancing at the little girl sitting on the truck with annoyance. Jonathan frowned for a moment before he understood.
“Let him speak, Jess.”
The moment permission was given, a barrier he’d not previously perceived dissolved between them.
“Son,” Douglas said. “It was never for lack of trying.”
Hearing his father’s voice left him at a loss for words. The sound comforted him in ways he hadn’t expected. Douglas removed the old rag from his back pocket, wiping his hands as he began to explain.
“I didn’t know what I was at first—that I had died. Ten years for you had gone by in an instant for me. I thought I was some kind of ghost before I started to make sense of where I was.” He let out a short laugh. “I wasn’t wrong. Depending on how you look at it.”
Jonathan’s face didn’t hide the fact that he didn’t understand while he watched Douglas put the rag back in his pocket.
“The last thing I remembered was being in the middle of a fight with a Ferox. An Alpha that had no place coming through the gates. It was unlike any I had encountered in a decade. My thoughts were of you and your mother when the reality that I was dying set in.” Douglas looked away, flinching a bit as he dredged through his final memory in life. “There was this flash, white, a lot like when the gates close. I thought it was over… but things didn’t turn out that way.”
“You didn’t cease to exist?” Jonathan asked.
“Well, fairly certain my body went to the Feroxian plane. My mind was a different story. The night Heyer implanted the device in you, I found myself drowning in thoughts and emotions that just didn’t belong to me. I felt your presence, your heartbeat weakening, and your fear becoming my own. I could hear the old man speaking. When I heard him say your name, I realized he wasn’t talking to me.
“I was helpless, though—you couldn’t hear me. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to no longer have a mouth of your own. I kept trying to think my words at you,” Douglas continued, tonguing his cheek. “Obviously, that didn’t work. But the moment before your heart stopped, I suddenly had form. I found myself sitting beside you in our old Ford. Reliving this memory—you asking me for a dog, of all things.”
Jonathan swallowed. “It has to be close. So close death can’t tell you apart.”
Douglas nodded. “I knew what Heyer had done, didn’t know if I would get another chance,” he said. “There was so little time, so much you needed to know, but it was the only thing I had time to say.”
“It was enough. Those words saved my life.”
Douglas swallowed, pursed his lips, and nodded. “When you lived through the implant, it took a while to understand how I’d reached you. Most of the time, I’d only see glimpses of your life. But, whenever the device was active, I was there, watching through your eyes.” He swallowed again. “I could feel your abandonment… your anger. I saw you forge them into strength.”
His father looked away, seeming to need a moment before continuing. Finally, he took a long breath.
“I didn’t give up, though, and every once in a while, you gave me form again. When I finally figured it out, I felt like an idiot. It was when you dreamed—when you slipped into a memory we both shared, a moment from when I was alive. You could hear me and, slowly, I found that if I didn’t push too hard, I could show you things.”
“Those dreams,” Jonathan said. “The tactics against the Ferox, things I couldn’t have possibly known.” He looked up suddenly. “The Alpha. You were trying to warn me.”
Douglas’s gaze was distant as he nodded. “There was a steep learning curve, figuring out how to reach you. If your mind became suspicious, realized I was showing you something that came from somewhere other than yourself…” He looked over at Jess and smirked. “I became a threat, and I got locked out.”
“But, what changed? Why can you speak to me now?”
“I don’t pretend to be an expert, but my guess is that you’ve been knocked unconscious while the implant is activated,” Douglas said. “But…”
His father trailed off as he looked to the little girl on the truck’s hood.
Finally, he said, “You’ve also come to a moment where your intuition no longer knows the rules. She is drowning in conflicts she can’t resolve. You’ve convinced her she can’t trust herself.”
“She?” Jonathan asked, turning to study the little girl on the hood, as though suddenly able to see her with different eyes. “Are you saying my intuition…” He grimaced, shaking his head as he looked for the words. “Is a little girl in a pink hoodie?”
Douglas laughed. “Son, I’ve learned two things for sure, trying to understand your
head,” he said. “The first I already mentioned: There is nothing you distrust more than external influences trying to tell you what to do. If you suspect for a moment that you’re being manipulated, you do everything you can to lock out the source.”
Jonathan was watching Jess as his father explained. She shrugged, but nodded at him.
“Second, you give everything a damn face,” Douglas said. “And you know, it’s confusing as hell when you subconsciously decide to re-cast their roles.”
Jonathan looked to the ground, his eyes wide as he let this sink in. “My intuition is a little girl in a pink hoodie,” he repeated.
“Emasculating?” Douglas laughed. “Imagine it from my end—the last couple days, my every attempt to reach you has been thwarted by a 3rd grader.”
Jonathan smiled, finding he couldn’t help laughing at himself, and for a moment, everything happening in the waking world slipped out of his thoughts.
“You see what you want to, son,” Douglas said. “The reality of Jess, alive and happy at that gym, gave you what you needed to start forgiving yourself for failing her that first night you entered The Never. She began to fade away as a symbol of your guilt after that—you turned her face into something you could still help. Frankly, I’m happy about the change. That zombie version of her gave me the creeps.”
Jonathan nodded, though his expression became troubled as concerns resurfaced. “Why would Heyer hide who you were from me?” he asked.
He could see his father’s expression grow bitter, and he sighed before he answered. “The old man always has his reasons. He’s been waiting. I’ve seen it in the way he ponders your actions, looking for signs that you’d become aware…” Douglas trailed off, closing his eyes in frustration. “But he’s the only one who can explain himself. You’ve learned, faster than I did, that getting angry at him is a waste of energy. So, if I were you, I’d resist the urge to deck him until you hear what he has to say. After that, you can decide if it’s worth breaking your fist.”
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 53
