Chapter 2 #3
A nod. “Every second of it. She has footage of Sidney channeling enough electromagnetic energy to burn shadow magic out of a dimensional predator. She has readings that show Sidney’s nervous system adapting in real-time to handle power that should have killed her.
” Now Rebecca Morse’s voice was flat with disgust. “Dr. Rosenthal called it the ‘forced evolution protocol.’ Put someone under enough pressure, and their abilities will expand to meet the threat.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s torture.”
“No, that’s science. According to her, anyway.”
Sidney made a small sound, and Ben was beside her in an instant. Her eyes moved under their lids, rapid and distressed. The trembling in her hands had spread to her arms.
“She’s still trying to cleanse the phoenix,” he said, checking the sensors once again. “Her bioelectric field is reaching toward it even now.”
“The connection between them is strong.” Rebecca retrieved her tablet and pulled up another graph. “Look at this. These are the electromagnetic signatures from both Sidney and the phoenix. See how they’re synchronized?”
Ben studied the overlapping waveforms. Sidney’s pattern was chaotic, jumping and spiking, but underneath the chaos was a steady pulse that matched the phoenix’s dying rhythm exactly.
“They’re entangled,” he said. “On a quantum level, maybe. Or something analogous to it in whatever physics governs magic.”
“Which means if the phoenix dies while they’re connected….” Rebecca didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t have to. Ben understood the implication all too well. Sidney’s consciousness was partially merged with the phoenix’s. If that ancient creature died while they were still linked, the psychic backlash could shatter Sidney’s mind.
Or worse.
“How long does it have?” he asked.
“Based on the current rate of corruption?” A small shrug, as if Rebecca knew this was something far beyond her control. “Maybe thirty-six hours. Less if the interference continues.”
“Then we’ll shut down the interference.”
She shook her head at once. “The equipment is distributed across the entire forest. There are more than fifty individual units, each one hardened against tampering and equipped with anti-removal protocols. Even if we could locate all of them, we’d need specialized tools and a lot of time that we don’t have. ”
Maybe she was being too pessimistic. “How much time?” Ben asked.
Rebecca sent him a very direct look then, as if to tell him he was grasping at straws. “Days. Probably more like weeks.”
Ben glanced at Sidney, then at the phoenix, and then back at Rebecca Morse. “That’s not acceptable.”
“I know.” She met his gaze steadily. “But there’s another option. A more dangerous one.”
Of course it was more dangerous. Voice even, he replied, “I’m listening.”
She set her tablet on top of her bag. “Rosenthal’s interest isn’t in the phoenix itself.
It’s in the process of rebirth, the way phoenix fire can consume and remake matter.
She believes that if she can understand the mechanism, she can weaponize it.
She wants to create devices that can disintegrate anything, then reconstruct it according to different specifications. ”
Ben stared at her, not sure he wanted to have heard any of this. “You’re talking about dimensional warfare.”
“Exactly,” Rebecca replied calmly. “If DAPI can control phoenix fire, they can potentially reshape matter at the molecular level. Destroy enemy installations and rebuild them as allied bases. Turn soldiers into something else entirely.” She paused there before adding, “It would be the ultimate weapon.”
“And you’re opposed to this?”
Not even a blink. “I became a federal agent to protect people, not to help the government weaponize things it doesn’t understand.” Her voice was hard as she continued. “What I saw in the surveillance footage, what Dr. Rosenthal wants to do with that information — it’s wrong.”
Ben studied her face, looking for any signs of deception he might be able to find there.
The problem with people who were trained in interrogation was that they were also trained in how to lie convincingly.
But Rebecca Morse’s electromagnetic signature — he could feel it now, could sense the subtle bioelectric patterns that accompanied genuine emotion — seemed sincere.
“What are you proposing?” he asked.
Without hesitation, she replied, “We let the rebirth happen. Here, in this facility, with Sidney guiding the process. If she can help the phoenix complete its cycle cleanly, without corruption, then the interference equipment becomes irrelevant. The phoenix will have already transformed.”
“And Rosenthal?”
“Will lose her primary experimental subject,” Rebecca replied calmly. “She’ll still have the surveillance data, but without an active phoenix to study, her research becomes theoretical. That will make it much harder to sell to the military.”
Ben looked down at Sidney again. Her face was pale except for the dried blood caked beneath her nose, and her breathing had gotten shallower. “That assumes Sidney can actually help the phoenix. She nearly died trying to cleanse five percent of the corruption. There’s much more than that left.”
“I know,” Rebecca said, still almost preternaturally calm. “Which is why we need time. And why we need you.”
“Me?” he asked, not sure what she meant.
She reached for her tablet and pulled up another graph. This one showed three waveforms instead of two — Sidney’s chaotic pattern, the phoenix’s steady pulse, and a third one Ben recognized as his own bioelectric signature.
“Your electromagnetic field stabilizes Sidney’s,” Rebecca explained. “When you’re close to her, her power becomes more focused, more controlled. That amplification effect I mentioned earlier? It doesn’t just make her stronger. It also makes her more efficient.”
The three waveforms on the screen moved in synchronization, creating a pattern that was more stable than any of them individually.
“So you’re saying I can help her control the cleansing process.” The logical part of his mind didn’t want to believe any of this, but it was hard to ignore what his own eyes were telling him.
“I’m saying you’re essential to it. Without you, she’ll burn herself out trying to purify the phoenix. With you, she has a chance.” Rebecca closed her tablet, adding, “But it will be dangerous…for both of you.”
Ben thought about all the insane things that had happened since he’d arrived in Silver Hollow — the appearance of the unicorn and the arrival of the phoenix, the way he and Sidney had worked together to save the town from shadow stalkers, and how her abilities seemed to have grown stronger when he was near.
How he’d started to feel her presence like another sense, as natural as sight or hearing.
Dr. Rosenthal had engineered their meeting. She’d manipulated events to bring them together. But what he and Sidney had built since then — the trust, the partnership, the connection that went deeper than either of them had expected — that was real.
That was theirs, and theirs alone.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
Something about the set of Rebecca Morse’s shoulders seemed to relax a little. “First, we wait for Sidney to wake up. She needs to understand what’s happening, what’s at stake. This has to be her choice.”
“And second?”
“We hope no one finds us before we’re ready.”
Ben looked at Sidney, still lying unconscious on the examination table.
On the other side of the room, the phoenix was similarly immobile, its fire guttering lower with each passing minute.
Then his gaze moved to the medical equipment and their jury-rigged sensors and everything they’d need if they were going to attempt something as insane as guiding a phoenix through its rebirth cycle.
He had no idea how long that might take. He could only hope that no one on Rosenthal’s teams would choose that precise moment to monitor the readings from a research station that supposedly had been defunct for longer than he’d been alive.
The phoenix stirred again, and this time, it managed to lift its head. Those ancient eyes fixed on him, and he felt something brush against his consciousness. It wasn’t words or even images. Just a sense of profound urgency mixed with something that might have been hope.
Help her. Help us both.
“I’m trying,” Ben whispered.
Rebecca Morse touched his shoulder. “You need to understand something else. Something about why Dr. Rosenthal wanted you here specifically.”
He turned to face her. Rebecca’s dark eyes — such a contrast to her pale blonde hair — showed a strange sort of compassion.
“Your electromagnetic compatibility with Sidney isn’t random.
It’s genetic.” She was still holding her tablet, and she swiped a finger over its screen, pulling up another file.
“DAPI has been tracking hereditary patterns in bioelectric signatures for twenty years. Your family tree intersects with Sidney’s six generations back. ”
“You’re saying we’re related?” he demanded.
“Distantly. Genetically, you’re more like seventh cousins. But electromagnetically?” She showed him a chart that appeared to compare two sets of DNA. “You share specific genetic markers that govern how your nervous systems process electrical signals. That’s why your bioelectric fields resonate.”
Magical ability seemed to run in Sidney’s bloodline, so he’d already halfway guessed that there had to be a genetic component to all this. “Rosenthal knew about our connection when she recruited me.”
A nod. “She specifically searched for someone with your combination of traits — technical expertise, electromagnetic compatibility, and professional credibility that would make your documentation believable.” Rebecca Morse sounded almost bitter. “You weren’t chosen randomly. You were targeted.”
The phoenix made another sound, weaker this time. Seventy-four percent corrupted now.
Sidney’s hand twitched, her fingers curling as if reaching for something.
“We need to set up a perimeter,” Ben said. “Security cameras, motion sensors, whatever you have. If Rosenthal’s people somehow manage to figure out that we’re here, I want a warning.”
“Already on it.” Rebecca turned away from him and began to pull equipment from her pack, what appeared to be compact surveillance devices that she started placing around the room’s entrance. “These will give us five minutes’ warning if anyone approaches down the main corridor.”
“What about the other entrances?”
“There are three. I’ll lock them down after I finish here.” She paused. “Ben, if this facility is breached, I won’t be able to protect both of you. You need to be prepared to run.”
“I’m not leaving Sidney.”
“Even if staying means getting captured?”
He looked at Sidney’s unconscious form, at the blood on her face and the way her body trembled with exhausted effort. “Especially then.”
Rebecca Morse studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
“Fair enough. But let’s try to avoid that scenario.
” She finished placing the last sensor and headed for the door.
“There’s food and water in the cabinets.
Medical supplies if you need them. If something happens to me, you have to get Sidney and that phoenix out of here.
Use the maintenance tunnel. It exits three miles north of here in an old lumber yard. ”
“Where will you be?”
“Creating enough noise to draw their attention away from you.” She offered him a grim smile. “I’m good at creating noise.”
Then she was gone, and Ben was alone with Sidney and the dying phoenix — and two hours that felt like two minutes.
He pulled his chair close to Sidney’s examination table and took her hand. It was still trembling, still channeling electricity that made the hairs on his arm stand up. But it was warm and solid…and here.
For now, anyway.
“I need you to wake up,” he said quietly. “I need you to wake up and tell me what to do, because I’m a scientist, not a miracle worker, and what you’re attempting here is definitely in the miracle category.”
The phoenix’s fire pulsed weakly, and his sensors registered another spike in the corruption level.
Maybe thirty-six hours wouldn’t be enough.
Especially since Sidney still wasn’t waking up.
He checked her vital signs again — pulse steady, breathing regular, but no response to stimuli.
Her brain activity was normal on the monitors Agent Morse had set up, but there was something else showing on his electromagnetic sensors.
A feedback loop between Sidney and the phoenix, growing stronger and more synchronized with each passing minute.
They weren’t just entangled. They were merging.
“Damn it, Sidney.” He squeezed her hand gently. “What did you do?”
The phoenix answered with another pulse of corrupted fire, and this time Ben felt it, a wave of heat and pain and desperate need that crashed into him like a breaker on the shore.
The creature was suffering, had been suffering for weeks while DAPI’s interference equipment slowly poisoned its rebirth.
And Sidney, in her compassion and power and stubborn refusal to let something die on her watch, had connected herself to its pain.
If he couldn’t wake her up soon, if he couldn’t help her complete what she’d started, the corruption would spread to her, too. If that happened, it would destroy her from the inside out.
The phoenix’s fire guttered lower.
Sidney’s hand twitched in his, and her eyes moved again under their closed lids, faster now. The trembling in her hands had spread to her whole body, and the electromagnetic readings from his sensors were spiking erratically.
“Come on,” Ben whispered. “Come back. Please.”
The phoenix lifted its head and looked at him with those ancient, knowing eyes. And he understood what it was trying to tell him.
Sidney wasn’t unconscious. She was elsewhere, following the connection between her consciousness and the phoenix’s fire, diving deeper into magic that no human was meant to touch.
He couldn’t wake her up.
He could only wait and hope that when she finally surfaced, there was still enough of Sidney left to come back to.