I stared up at him, at the dark stubble on his chin, at the shadows under his eyes. “They did all this on purpose?”
A single nod. “Rosenthal wanted a crisis, something that would force you to use your abilities at maximum power so she could study what happened.” His jaw tightened with anger as he added, “The phoenix has been suffering for weeks because of DAPI’s equipment.”
While I’d been trying to get on with my life, running the family pet shop and attempting to come to terms with my abilities — and falling for Ben at the same time — this ancient creature had been slowly dying. It had been tortured by artificial interference designed to push me into exactly this situation.
“That’s not all,” Ben continued, as though he knew he needed to get everything out before he lost his nerve. One finger moved over the back of my hand, and I realized he was trying to comfort himself as much as me. “The reason I came to Silver Hollow in the first place — the unicorn sighting — DAPI fabricated it. And then they carved those letters in the trees to further destabilize you.”
The room tilted even though I was still lying down, and I gripped the edge of the examination table to try to steady myself. “What?”
“Rosenthal recruited me specifically. She knew about my research, my background, and….” The words trailed away there, and he drew in a breath, seeming to gather himself. “And my electromagnetic signature. Apparently, I resonate with your abilities in a way that amplifies them by ten to twenty percent. That’s why they wanted me in Silver Hollow. That’s why they engineered our meeting.”
I thought about every moment Ben and I had shared since he’d arrived in town, how we’d worked together to save Silver Hollow from the shadow stalkers. The way my abilities had grown stronger after we’d spent time together.
And I thought of how I’d started to trust him, to care about him, to let myself feel things I hadn’t felt since losing my mother and grandmother to the portal and the world beyond it.
Everything orchestrated. They’d manipulated us.
“So none of it was real,” I said.
“No.” Ben’s hand tightened on mine, and he leaned in a little closer, his eyes imploring me to believe him. “Sidney, no. What DAPI did — bringing me here, setting up the circumstances — that really did happen. But what we built? That’s ours. They can’t engineer feelings. They can’t manipulate the kind of connection we share.”
I wanted to believe him. But how could I trust my own emotions when everything that led to them had been a lie?
“They’ve been watching me for months, ever since I came back here after my mother and grandmother disappeared,” I said, knowing how bitter I sounded. “Recording everything. Studying me like a lab rat.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “Yes,” he replied. “And it gets worse. From what Rebecca Morse told me, DAPI is tracking forty-seven different sites that have some kind of electromagnetic anomalies occurring there. Silver Hollow is just one of them. Rosenthal has a massive surveillance network tracking every dimensional anomaly in the Pacific Northwest.”
Jesus. How many times had I used my abilities over the past couple of months? DAPI had been there the whole time, recording and analyzing and using me as an experimental subject without my knowledge or consent.
The thought of that violation made me glad I hadn’t eaten anything recently. Otherwise, I was pretty sure I would have leaned over the side of the exam table and thrown it all up.
“I’m going to kill her,” I whispered, a rage utterly unlike me taking hold, burning and fierce as phoenix fire. “I’m going to find her, and I’m going to make her — ”
“Sidney.” Ben cut me off there, his voice gentle but firm. “I know you’re angry. I’m angry, too. But right now, we need to focus on the phoenix. If it dies while you’re still connected to it, the psychic backlash could shatter your mind.”
I looked at the wrapped bundle across the room. Even through the electromagnetic shielding of the metallic blanket that surrounded it, I could feel the phoenix’s pain. It had become part of me during that brief moment of connection in the forest, and now I couldn’t separate my consciousness from its suffering.
“How long does it have?” I asked.
His mouth thinned for a second, but his tone was even enough as he replied, “Maybe thirty hours. Less if the interference continues.”
It could have been worse. On the other hand, it could have been a lot better, too. “Then we have to shut down the interference.”
He shook his head at once. “According to Rebecca Morse, there are more than fifty units scattered across the entire forest. Even if we managed to locate them all, we’d still need days or weeks to disable them.”
Well, that was just great. “So what are we supposed to do?”
He didn’t hesitate, only said, “We let the rebirth happen. Here, where the interference can’t reach. Rebecca thinks if you can guide the phoenix through its cycle cleanly, then the corruption will burn away during the transformation.”
I thought about how I’d felt when I’d tried to cleanse just five percent of the corruption surging inside the phoenix. My nervous system had overloaded, and I guessed I must have come close to death, or they wouldn’t have brought me here to recover, would have instead just taken me home.
“There’s so much left,” I said. Tears of frustration burned my eyes, and I angrily blinked them away. “I can’t — ”
“You won’t be doing it alone.” Ben’s fingers tightened on mine again. “My electromagnetic field stabilizes yours. When I’m close, your abilities become more focused and efficient. That amplification effect Rosenthal wanted to study? It works both ways. You make me stronger, and I make you more controlled.”
I looked at our joined hands and sensed the subtle resonance between our bioelectric fields. He was right. When Ben was near, my abilities didn’t merely get stronger — they also got clearer. The constant electromagnetic noise that usually plagued me faded into something manageable.
“They engineered this, too,” I told him. “You and me working together. That’s what Rosenthal wanted all along.”
