Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The phoenix’s corrupted fire cast shadows across Sidney’s unconscious face, and Ben didn’t know what scared him more — that she wasn’t waking up, or that his EMF reader had just risen past levels that shouldn’t exist outside a nuclear reactor.
“Come on.” He shook her shoulder again, harder this time. At first, he’d touched her almost timidly, but now his desperation made him rougher than he’d intended. “Sidney, please.”
Nothing. Her pulse was steady under his fingers, but her skin had gone clammy, and the blood from her nose had dried in dark tracks down to her chin. When he’d pulled her away from the phoenix ten minutes ago, she’d been convulsing. Now she was completely still.
The phoenix stirred, and the orange-black fire surrounding it pulsed brighter. Every time it moved, the corruption spread a little farther through those magnificent wings. Ben watched another feather succumb — pure gold transforming to sick amber threaded with shadow.
Definitely halfway contaminated now. Maybe a whole lot more.
Waiting hadn’t done a bit of good. Now he had no choice but to reach out for help.
His fingers began to scrabble for his phone, buried somewhere in the satchel he’d brought with him, and then he remembered that the EMP must have fried every electronic device within a two-mile radius.
Except, somehow, his equipment. The sensors he’d pulled from his laptop bag — some of which were pieces left behind by Dr. Rosenthal’s team — were all working, all screaming warnings about energy levels and electromagnetic interference patterns that violated every law of physics he understood.
Which, he had to admit, wasn’t a whole lot.
He’d been teaching himself as best he could, but his background was in archaeology and cryptozoology, not quantum electrodynamics.
What he needed right now wasn’t working sensors, though. He needed a hospital. He needed some kind of assistance, although he wasn’t sure whether modern medicine could even help Sidney.
He needed —
“Ben Sanders.”
He spun toward the voice, one hand already going to the knife on his belt before his brain caught up and recognized Agent Rebecca Morse as she stepped into the clearing.
She wore cargo pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt instead of the severe suits that had been her uniform when she was conducting her investigations in Silver Hollow, although her blonde hair was pulled back as tight as ever.
Behind her, the forest was starting to show hints of approaching dawn, the black sky softening to charcoal gray along the eastern horizon.
“Agent Morse.” Ben didn’t lower his hand from the knife.
After everything that had happened over the past few weeks — DAPI surveillance, government interference, Sidney nearly hauled away for “enhanced interrogation” — his trust in federal agents had worn pretty thin.
He knew that Rebecca Morse had been disgusted by Sonya Rosenthal’s methods and had even taken a leave of absence after Rosenthal was safely relegated to a desk job three thousand miles away, but knowing and trusting were two very different things.
Rebecca Morse’s gaze moved from him to Sidney, then to the phoenix, and he watched her face cycle through several expressions too quickly for him to read. Shock, for sure. Maybe calculation.
Awe.
“Rebecca,” she said briefly, although Ben wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to think of her as anything except “Agent Morse.” She went on, “My equipment picked up an electromagnetic pulse three hours ago. I’ve been tracking the source since then.
” She took two steps closer and kept her hands visible in an obvious attempt to soothe his jittery nerves. “Is she alive?”
“Sidney? Yes. But she won’t wake up, and I can’t — ” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat and forced himself to try again. “The phoenix is dying. When she tried to cleanse the corruption, it overwhelmed her nervous system.”
Rebecca Morse knelt beside Sidney and checked her pulse, then pulled a small flashlight from her belt and examined her eyes, all her movements professional and efficient, like someone who’d administered field first aid plenty of times before.
When she straightened, her expression was sober but determined.
“We need to move her — both of them, actually.” She gestured at the phoenix. “There’s a facility fifteen miles north of here. A man named Daniel Jessop had a research station there — it’s been abandoned since the sixties, but the structure’s intact. More importantly, it’s off DAPI’s official grid.”
“‘Off the grid’?” Ben stared at her, trying to process her words and have them make sense. “But you’re with DAPI.”
“I used to be with DAPI,” Rebecca corrected him. “I’m on leave right now, and when I come back, I’m being reassigned to the Sacramento field office. That doesn’t mean I agreed with everything Dr. Rosenthal wanted — wants — to do.”
“‘Wants to do’?” Ben repeated. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I thought she was finished. I thought the government washed its hands of her and stuck her in a desk job somewhere.”
Rebecca’s expression was almost pitying, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to destroy any illusions he might have been harboring about how those sorts of things actually worked in the real world. “You know what they say — whenever a door closes, a window opens.”
Meaning, he supposed, that Rosenthal had found a way to continue her work, probably backed by a completely different department. That was the problem with something as big as the U.S. government — the right hand often didn’t know what the left was doing.
Rebecca Morse continued to gaze at him steadily, and the frankness he saw in her stern but not unattractive features made him lower the knife.
“Ben, I can help you,” she went on. “But we have maybe twenty minutes before Rosenthal’s tactical team arrives.
The EMP knocked out most of their communications, but they’ll have backup systems restored soon.
When that happens, they’ll come here in force, tracking the source of that pulse. ”
The phoenix made a sound — not quite a cry, more like wind through a dying fire. Another wave of corruption spread through its wings.
Ben gazed down at Sidney’s unconscious face, then looked over at Rebecca Morse.
He wanted to believe her, but….
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“You don’t.” Her voice was flat. “But if you stay here, Sonya Rosenthal will take Sidney into custody, dissect that phoenix to understand its biology, and use everything she learns to weaponize dimensional anomalies. So you can trust me, or you can watch that happen.”
The clearing went quiet except for the phoenix’s labored breathing and the distant sound of tree branches moving in the pre-dawn wind. From inside his satchel, Ben’s equipment beeped softly, recording data he’d probably never have time to analyze.
“Fine,” he said. “But I’m carrying Sidney.”
“I’ll handle the phoenix.” Agent Morse pulled a thermal metallic blanket from her pack. “This is woven with electromagnetic shielding. It should contain enough of the fire signature to keep us off Rosenthal’s sensors.”
Ben gathered Sidney into his arms, and her head lolled against his shoulder. She weighed less than he’d expected — or maybe adrenaline was making him stronger. Either way, he held her close and waited while Rebecca wrapped up the phoenix.
It lay there without resistance as she gathered it in the shielded blanket. That worried Ben more than anything. A healthy magical creature should have fought, should have refused to be handled by strangers. This one just lay there, fire guttering like a candle in the wind.
They moved fast through the trees, Morse navigating with the confidence of someone who’d studied these woods extensively. Ben kept checking Sidney’s breathing, counting each rise and fall of her chest. Still alive, thank God. Still with him.
“How long have you been watching us?” he asked after several minutes of silence.
“DAPI’s had surveillance on Silver Hollow for six months, maybe more.
It’s hard for me to say, since Sonya Rosenthal didn’t exactly confide in me.
I might have been assigned to this project, but we weren’t best buddies.
” She ducked under a low branch and adjusted her grip on the wrapped phoenix.
“But after I went on leave, I thought it a good idea to monitor your town as best I could. I couldn’t shake the feeling that things weren’t over. ”
No. They definitely weren’t. Not by a long shot.
However, he decided to focus on something else Rebecca Morse had said.
“‘Six months,’” he repeated. It was a lot longer than he’d thought. “So…long before I even arrived in town.”
Her shoulders tensed, but she kept walking.
“The unicorn brought me to Silver Hollow,” Ben continued. Anger had begun to build inside him, hot and sharp. “And what about the symbols Sidney and I found all over the forest? Was the guy we saw on the trail cam one of yours?”
Rebecca stopped walking and turned to face him. In the growing light, he could see the conflict in her expression.
“One of Sonya Rosenthal’s,” she corrected him.
“DAPI had one of their agents carve those symbols not too long after you arrived. Dr. Rosenthal wanted to see what it would do to Sidney’s abilities to have conflicting energies in the forest, whether unbalancing the portal would cause her gifts to go into overdrive.
But beyond that, she wanted someone with your expertise, your background, and your…
.” Rebecca hesitated there before adding, “Your specific electromagnetic signature.”
Ben stared at her. Sidney’s weight in his arms felt heavier now, more real. “What the hell does my electromagnetic signature have to do with anything?”
“Keep moving,” Rebecca said, and turned away. “I’ll explain at the facility. We’re running out of time.”