They got into the SUV. He started the engine while she spread a map across her lap, tracking their route back to the research facility with one finger. She shook so badly that she had to use both hands to hold the map steady.
“Ben,” she said as they began to bump their way back toward the forest road. “What Lewis said, about this maybe killing me — ”
“Don’t.”
Her mouth tightened. “We have to talk about it. If something goes wrong, if the phoenix’s rebirth starts to pull me under, you need to promise me that you’ll break the connection.”
He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak. “I’m not promising that.”
“Ben — ”
“No.” He pulled onto the access road, gaze scanning the area for DAPI vehicles. “I’m not going to promise to let you die. We’ll find another way.”
Her unfocused eyes stared out into the forest. “There might not be another way.”
“Then we’ll make one.” He glanced at her, saw the blood still crusting her face and the way exhaustion pulled at her delicate features, making her look far older than her twenty-seven years. It didn’t matter, though; she would always be beautiful to him. His voice grew firmer as he added, “That’s what we do, Sidney. We find solutions to impossible problems.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then her hand found his on the steering wheel, her cold fingers wrapping around his wrist. A very faint smile tugged at her lips.
“You’re right.”
They drove through the gathering dusk, heading back toward the research facility and the dying phoenix. Behind them, somewhere in the forest, Rebecca Morse was creating chaos to cover their escape.
Lewis’s files rode on the back seat, and Ben wondered if the information they contained would be enough to combat DAPI’s pattern of escalating aggression. He and Sidney were facing an enemy with nearly unlimited resources and no accountability, fighting to save a creature that existed beyond the normal boundaries of physics.
The odds were impossible.
But when he looked over at Sidney — bloodied, exhausted, still fighting despite everything DAPI had done to her — he felt something steady and certain settle deep in his gut.
They would find a way. They had to.
Because the alternative was unthinkable.
Chapter Five
The headlights cut through the gathering dark as Ben drove us back toward the Jessop facility and I tried to pretend I wasn’t seeing double. One road, not two. One dashboard, not a ghostly overlay. My vision had been deteriorating since I’d knocked that drone out of the sky, and no amount of blinking seemed to fix the problem.
“How’s your head?” Ben asked, his voice carefully neutral in a way that I knew meant he was actually very worried.
“Fine,” I lied.
His hand found mine on the seat between us, and I felt the familiar resonance of our electromagnetic fields synchronizing. It helped — not enough to clear my vision, but enough to push back the nausea that had been building ever since we’d left the fire tower.
“Sidney.”
Something in his tone told me he’d lost patience with convenient misrepresentations. “I’m seeing double,” I said, relenting. “My pupils are still uneven, I probably have a concussion, and I definitely shouldn’t be channeling any more power for at least forty-eight hours.” I squeezed his hand and tried to summon a lopsided smile. “Is that better?”
“Marginally.” He took a corner too fast, and I had to swallow hard against the surge of dizziness that followed. “How bad is the phoenix?”
I’d been trying not to think about that. Ever since I’d woken up in the medical facility with our consciousnesses entangled, I’d been able to sense the phoenix like a second heartbeat underneath my own. Right now, that heartbeat was weakening.
“Worse,” I said. “The corruption’s spreading faster than we thought. I think it knows we’re running out of time.”
Ben set his jaw, but he didn’t reply. What was there to say, after all? We had maybe twenty-four hours at most before the corruption became irreversible, and I was already so depleted that jamming a single surveillance drone had nearly knocked me unconscious.
The odds weren’t looking very good.
We pulled onto the access road that led to the facility, and I immediately sensed something wrong about our surroundings. The electromagnetic signatures in the area had changed — there were more artificial signals, more concentrated patterns of electronic activity.
