“Not without you.”
“Ben, I can’t run. I can barely stand. But you can — ”
“No.” He pulled me closer, and I sensed the immediate shift in his electromagnetic signature. Through the fading interference of the cage, I felt not fear but resolve. “I’m not leaving you, Sidney. Not now. Not ever.”
And then he kissed me. The embrace was hard and fast and desperate, like he was trying to pour everything he couldn’t say into that single moment of contact.
When he pulled back, his face wore an expression I’d never seen before. It wasn’t just determination or love or fear. It was all of that and something more.
Something final.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And then he pushed me.
Hard.
I stumbled backward, off-balance and weak, falling away from him toward the gap in the perimeter, falling toward escape.
And Ben turned and ran toward the containment team, toward the phoenix.
“Ben, no!” I tried to push myself forward so I could follow him, but Rebecca Morse materialized from the trees right then, her strong hands grasping me by the shoulders. Where the hell had she come from? Had she been there the whole time, hidden, waiting for the right moment when she could intervene?
“Let me go!” I struggled against her grip, but I had no strength left. None that mattered, anyway. “Ben!”
He reached the containment team, and his hand moved to the electromagnetic pulse generator on his belt. A bright flash exploded in the clearing, a surge of energy that disrupted their equipment for a few precious seconds. The phoenix took advantage of the interruption and wheeled away toward the deeper forest, buying itself some distance.
And the tactical teams closed in on Ben from three directions.
He didn’t fight them. He just let them take him down, pin him, and secure his hands behind his back with swift efficiency.
He’d given himself up deliberately to give me time to escape.
To save me.
Rebecca Morse’s voice came to my ear, urgent and commanding. “Sidney, we have to move. Now.”
I gave a ferocious shake of my head. “He’s captured. I can’t leave him!”
“You can’t help him if you’re captured, too.” She was already pulling me backward, into the cover of the forest. “You’re drained, blocked, and useless in a fight. We’ll regroup and plan. We’ll get him back. But right now, we have to run.”
I could feel the phoenix retreat deeper into the forest, Rosenthal’s containment teams in hot pursuit. Thanks to that damn Faraday cage’s interference, I could barely sense Ben’s electromagnetic signature as they dragged him toward the DAPI agents’ waiting vehicles.
Still struggling against Rebecca Morse’s grip, I watched them take him, watched my worst fear realized in real-time. Ben had been captured by DAPI and was now in Rosenthal’s custody. He would be subject to enhanced interrogation protocols and used as leverage against me.
He was a prisoner because I’d been too weak and too useless to stop it.
“Sidney.” Rebecca’s voice ground against my ear, harder now, as if she was losing patience with me. “I can’t carry you and your equipment. You need to move.”
In despair, I let her pull me into the forest. My last glimpse of Ben showed him being loaded into a black SUV, surrounded by agents, bound and captured, but alive.
We were supposed to face this problem with the phoenix together.
But our together had just been ripped apart, and I had no idea how to put it back.
The safe house was a hunting cabin forty minutes north of Silver Hollow, so isolated that the nearest neighbor was three miles away. Rebecca Morse had driven with ruthless efficiency, taking back roads and fire trails I didn’t even know existed, since we were now far beyond the woods that surrounded my hometown. I’d spent the entire trip slumped against the passenger door of her Suburban, fighting nausea and despair in equal measure.
The Faraday cage’s effect on me ended once we’d gotten a few miles away from the clearing, and the return of my electromagnetic senses should have been a relief. Instead, it just emphasized Ben’s absence. His signature, which had become such a constant presence in my awareness over the past few weeks, was gone. Now there was only static and emptiness where he should have been.
