Chapter 6 #2
“I keep seeing it,” she said quietly. “The corruption. The way it’s spreading through the network like…
like gangrene. And the Dragon’s rage — it wasn’t personal, Ben.
It didn’t hate us. It just didn’t care. We’re so small to it, so insignificant.
It would burn Silver Hollow the way we’d burn an ant hill that was infesting our garden. ”
“But it gave us a chance.” He looked up at her, his hands resting on her knees. “The unicorn intervened, and the Dragon listened. That has to mean something.”
“It means we have seven weeks to do the impossible.” Her voice broke on that last syllable, and she closed her eyes.
“Ben, what if we can’t? What if Gregory won’t stop, and Rosenthal won’t help, and we run out of time?
Everyone I love — my mother and grandmother, still trapped on the other side.
Eliza, and Hope, and all the people in this town who don’t even know what’s coming… .”
“Hey.” He rose to his feet and then sat beside her on the bed so he could pull her into his arms. She came willingly, her head finding its familiar place in the curve of his neck, her hands catching in the fabric of his flannel shirt. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“No,” he admitted. “I can’t. But I can promise that we’ll fight like hell to stop it. And I can promise that whatever happens, you won’t face it alone.”
She was quiet for a moment, her breath warm against his throat. Then she pulled back slightly, her clear gray eyes finding his in the darkness.
“Show me,” she whispered. “Show me that we’re still here. That this is still real.”
He understood what she was asking for — not just comfort, but connection. The reminder that, despite everything, they were alive and together and still capable of holding onto each other.
He kissed her.
It started gently, a brush of lips against lips, but quickly deepened into something more urgent. The day’s fear and exhaustion didn’t disappear — nothing could make that happen — but it receded, pushed back by the simple reality of touch and warmth and the person he loved most in the world.
Their bioelectric fields began to synchronize, slowly at first, and then with increasing intensity.
The scars on his chest and arms responded to hers, the dimensional burns recognizing their mirror image, and soft light began to bloom in the darkness.
Silver-blue from him, gold from her, the colors twining together like living things as their connection deepened.
Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt, and he helped her undo them, shrugging the flannel off and letting it fall to the floor.
The silver tracery of his scars caught the light they were generating together, the circuit-like patterns glowing faintly against his skin.
She traced one of the lines with her fingertip — the one that ran from his collarbone to the center of his chest, right where Rosenthal’s weapon had struck — and he shivered at the touch.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked softly.
“Sometimes. When the electromagnetic fields are strong, or when you’re using a lot of power.” He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “It’s worth it.”
“Ben….”
“I mean it.” He looked into her eyes, making sure she could see the truth of what he was saying. “That moment, when I stepped in front of that beam…I didn’t think about it. I just knew that I couldn’t let it hit you. And if I had to make that choice again, I’d make the same one. Every time.”
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “That’s not fair. You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me and then act like it’s no big deal.”
“I’m not acting like it’s no big deal. I’m telling you that you’re worth it.
” He cupped her face in his hands, feeling their bioelectric fields pulse together, stronger now than they’d been even a few minutes ago.
“Sidney, before I came to Silver Hollow, I was…I was going through the motions. Making videos, chasing stories, pretending that the work was enough. But it wasn’t.
I was lonely and scared and convinced I’d never find anyone who understood the parts of me that didn’t fit into the normal world.
” He paused there, struggling to find words he’d never voiced aloud before now.
“You changed that. You changed everything. So yeah, I’d step in front of a hundred weapons for you, because a world without you in it isn’t one I want to live in anyway. ”
The tears spilled over, tracking down her cheeks, but she was smiling — a small, trembling smile that made his heart ache in the best possible way.
“That’s either the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me, or the most terrifying,” she said.
“Can it be both?”
“I think it has to be.”
She kissed him then, and the light between them flared bright enough to cast shadows on the walls. Blue and gold intertwined, illuminating the dark room with something that looked almost like sunrise.
Ben wasn’t sure how long they lay there, tangled together in the soft glow of their mingled light.
Long enough for Sidney’s breathing to slow and deepen, her body relaxing into sleep with the kind of suddenness that spoke of total exhaustion.
He held her for a while longer, watching the play of blue and gold across the ceiling, feeling the steady pulse of their synchronized bioelectric fields.
But sleep wouldn’t come for him. His thoughts kept circling back to the Dragon’s images — the spreading corruption, the countdown to the Winter Solstice, the cold certainty of what would happen if they failed.
Seven weeks to stop a billionaire and convince an ancient force of nature that humanity was worth saving.
No pressure.
Eventually, he eased himself out of bed, moving carefully so as not to wake Sidney.
She stirred slightly and murmured something unintelligible, but she didn’t open her eyes.
He pulled the covers up around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her temple, then grabbed his flannel shirt from the floor and slipped out of the room.
The hallway was dark, but light spilled up from the first floor, warm and yellow, coming from the dining room. Ben paused at the top of the stairs, listening. Voices drifted up to him, low and intent. Finn and Rebecca, still awake, still working.
He made his way down, skipping the third stair out of habit so it wouldn’t creak and possibly wake Sidney, and found them hunched over the dining room table.
A topographical map had been spread across the surface, its corners anchored by coffee mugs, and Finn was pointing to something while Rebecca studied a tablet in her hands.
They both looked up as he entered.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Rebecca asked.
“Too much to think about.” Ben pulled out a chair and sat down across from them, then leaned forward slightly so he could study the map. The Aetheris camp was marked in red, with Gregory’s drilling site a crimson circle at the center of Welling Glen. “What are you two working on?”
“Trying to find an angle,” Finn said. His dark eyes were shadowed with fatigue, but there was something alert in his expression, something that reminded Ben of a hunting dog that had finally caught a scent. “The Dragon’s emergence changes things. Look at this.”
He took the tablet from Rebecca and handed it to Ben.
The screen showed a series of charts that followed electromagnetic fluctuations over the past three weeks, the same kind of data Eric had been tracking from Oregon.
But the patterns were different now, chaotic where they should have been orderly.
“The lunar cycle,” Ben said slowly, beginning to recognize what he was seeing. “It’s completely disrupted.”
“Exactly.” Finn leaned forward and pointed to a specific section of the chart.
“Under normal circumstances, the portals follow the moon — opening on the new moon, closing once it begins to wax, sealed tight for the rest of the moon cycle. That’s been the pattern for as long as Emily Thompson’s journals go back.
But the Dragon’s awakening has scrambled the system. ”
Ben studied the chaotic lines, the spikes and valleys that seemed to follow no discernible rhythm. “So the portals are opening and closing at random?”
“Not random,” Rebecca said. “Finn noticed something. The instability increases around certain dates — solar events, primarily. The autumn equinox caused a major spike.” She paused, and Ben saw something sharpen in her expression. “And the models predict an even larger one around Halloween.”
“Samhain,” Finn added. “The old Celtic festival marking the boundary between the light and dark halves of the year. It’s one of the traditional times when the veil between worlds was supposed to be thinnest. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t matter, because the lunar cycle would override any solar influence.
But with the Dragon disrupting the pattern… .”
“The portal could be accessible on Halloween.” Ben set down the tablet, his thoughts already racing ahead to the inescapable conclusion. “We could reach Sidney’s mother and grandmother.”
“We can do even more than that.” Finn pulled the map closer and traced a line from the Lowell house to the portal site.
“Emily’s journals mention other guardians — families like my ex-wife’s, protecting portals all over the world.
Sidney saw them in the Dragon’s vision. If we could coordinate with them somehow… .”
“We might be able to fight the corruption from both sides,” Ben supplied, excitement beginning to replace exhaustion. “We could hit Gregory’s operation here while the other guardians work to contain the spread at their own sites.”
Rebecca nodded. “It’s a long shot. But it might be the only shot we’ve got.”