A lot.
I gathered my abilities and pushed.
Behind us, I could feel their tactical radios squeal with feedback, even as their GPS units flickered and died and their night vision goggles went dark. For about thirty seconds, DAPI’s teams would be operating blind, their technological advantages stripped away.
But those thirty seconds cost me everything.
My vision went completely dark. Not double anymore, but just gone, as if someone had thrown a switch in my brain. Blood poured from my nose in a hot rush, and I tasted copper at the back of my throat. My hands started trembling so violently that I had to clench them into fists to keep them from flailing.
“Sidney!” Ben’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “Talk to me. Are you — ”
“Blind,” I managed. “It’s temporary…I hope. Keep driving.”
The SUV lurched over something large, and I felt my stomach drop as we went briefly airborne. When we landed, the impact sent white-hot pain shooting through my skull, and I bit down so hard that I tasted blood again.
“There’s a creek bed ahead,” Ben said. “I’m going to follow it north. The water should hide our trail.”
I nodded, or at least, I tried to. My head might as well have weighed a thousand pounds, and the simple act of moving it sent waves of nausea rolling through me. Through our connection, I could feel Ben’s terror mixing with utter determination to get us out of there. He was more scared than I’d ever sensed him before, but he kept driving anyway.
It wasn’t as if we had any other options.
My vision started to return in patches — gray shapes that might have been trees, the green glow of the dashboard, Ben’s sharply etched profile illuminated by the instrument lights. Not great, but still better than total darkness.
“How long?” I asked.
“Before your vision fully returns? No idea. How long before DAPI gets their equipment working again?” He glanced over at me, his jaw tight. “Also, no idea, but I’m guessing not long.”
I reached out with my senses, trying to track the tactical teams. The effort made my head pound and my vision gray out again, but I managed to locate them. Still behind us, but spreading out, forming a search pattern.
“They’re adapting,” I said. “Going analog. We bought ourselves maybe five minutes.”
“Then we need to use those five minutes wisely.”
Ben guided the SUV through the creek bed, the water splashing up against the undercarriage. The sound was too loud, would attract attention if anyone was close enough to hear. But we didn’t have any better options.
My connection to the phoenix pulsed weakly, and I could feel its distress surge. Something was happening at the facility.
Something bad.
“The phoenix,” I said. “It knows DAPI is close. It’s panicking.”
I could sense the creature’s mounting terror as it seemed to detect the tactical teams approaching the facility. The electromagnetic interference from their equipment was making the corruption worse, destabilizing what little control the phoenix had left over its fire.
“Ben,” I gasped. “The phoenix is losing it. The interference from DAPI’s equipment — it’s making the corruption spread faster.”
“Can it escape?”
I reached deeper through our connection, feeling the phoenix’s desperation as if it were my own. It was still mobile, still capable of flight despite the corruption. But it was disoriented, struggling to find a direction that felt safe.
“It’s trying to,” I said. “But it doesn’t know where to go. The interference is everywhere.”
I closed my eyes and tried to send the phoenix a mental image of the forest, which offered at least a spurious sense of safety, since I had no idea exactly where we were going, only that we planned to take refuge in there somewhere. My depleted state made the effort agonizing, and fresh blood poured from my nose. But I felt the message reach the creature.
Understanding. Recognition. Hope.
“It’s coming to us,” I whispered. “Following the connection.”
A moment later, I sensed it — the phoenix launching itself into the air, its contaminated fire flaring as it struggled to stay aloft. Behind it, I could feel DAPI’s confusion as their target suddenly escaped.
