“I’m trying to fix my mistake.” Hargrove pulled something from his lab coat pocket — a security badge. He set it on the desk. “This will get you through any electronic lock in the facility except the main entrance. There’s a service exit on the second sublevel in the northeast corridor. It’s monitored but not guarded. If you can disable the cameras — ”
“Sidney can,” Ben said. “If she gets inside.”
“She will. Rebecca Morse contacted me an hour ago.” Something came and went in the scientist’s expression as he spoke Rebecca’s name, but it was gone before Ben could begin to analyze what it might have been. “They’re planning an infiltration for two o’clock this morning. There’ll be a system malfunction at exactly that time.” Now Hargrove actually met Ben’s gaze. “I’ll create the malfunction. It’ll cause eight minutes of security blackout. That’s all I can give you without revealing my involvement.”
All very handy — maybe too much so. What if this plan was nothing more than a way to get Ben to reveal his true feelings about the work they were doing here?
He figured he might as well be direct. “Why are you doing this?”
Hargrove’s mouth went tight. “Because Rosenthal won’t listen. I’ve been telling her for weeks that the extraction rate isn’t sustainable, that we’re causing catastrophic damage to the global portal network. She won’t stop until she has her weapon, no matter how many supernatural sites collapse.” He drew in a shaky breath before he added, “I got into this field to understand these phenomena, Mr. Sanders. Not to destroy them.”
God, Ben hoped that was true.
He picked up the security badge and felt its weight. As far as he could tell, it was real, not a fake. Hargrove was risking a hell of a lot by giving it to him.
“The notes I was writing,” Ben said. “If Rosenthal’s guards find them — ”
“They won’t. I’ll arrange for waste removal tonight. Anything in your trash will be incinerated.” Hargrove glanced at the door. “I have to go. Two o’clock, northeast service exit, second sublevel. Sidney will need to jam the emergency alert system first, or the entire facility goes into lockdown.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Good. And Mr. Sanders?” The scientist paused at the door. “I’m sorry about all this. I should have stood up to Rosenthal months ago.”
Not an easy thing to do, especially if your livelihood depended on staying in her good graces. “You’re standing up now. That’s what matters.”
Hargrove nodded once, then slipped back into the corridor. The door locked behind him with its soft electronic beep.
Ben stood alone in his cell, holding the security badge for a moment before he slipped it into his jeans pocket. There was no way to communicate with Sidney or Rebecca before two in the morning, and he didn’t have any real resources except his brain and whatever information he could provide.
But he had intelligence and a potential ally. And he had approximately ten hours to prepare for a rescue attempt that might save him, Sidney, and the phoenix — or might get all of them killed.
He sat back down at the desk and memorized every detail of what Hargrove had told him. The service exit location, the eight-minute window, the need to disable the emergency alerts. It was all critical intelligence that Sidney would need.
Then he tore the notes he’d been writing into small pieces and dropped them in the waste bin. If Hargrove was as good as his word, they’d be destroyed before anyone could read them. If not — well, at least he’d tried.
Ben moved to the window again. Not much had changed — it was far too early for the sun to have begun to set — but staring at the forest steadied him somewhat. Out there somewhere, Sidney was recovering and preparing to do something dangerous and probably suicidal to get him out.
Which meant he needed to be ready. He needed to have every piece of information memorized, every escape route planned, every contingency accounted for.
He’d made a career out of documenting the impossible, finding patterns where others saw only chaos. Now he’d apply those same skills to breaking out of a classified government facility and destroying an artificial portal that threatened the entire supernatural ecosystem.
Just another day in the field.
Ben almost smiled at the thought. Then he settled in to wait for darkness…and the rescue attempt that would determine whether any of them survived the next twenty-four hours.
Chapter Nine
I woke late that afternoon and stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling for a moment before I remembered where I was — Rebecca’s safe house, the only refuge we could currently trust. My body ached in ways that had become grimly familiar over the past three days. The little house was sparse and utilitarian at best, but at least it had an actual couch instead of cold stone. Unfortunately, the constant awareness that Ben was miles away in DAPI custody made even the marginal comfort feel like a betrayal.
I should have been suffering along with him.
But I wasn’t the only one resting in the small, dim room. The phoenix had settled near the cabin’s woodstove, its corrupted fire casting orange-and-shadow light across the worn floorboards. How it had gotten there, I wasn’t sure, but I guessed it had somehow managed to follow Rebecca and me to our current hiding place. She must have brought it in and made sure it was comfortable while I was still in a slumber that might as well have been a coma.
Even half-dead and contaminated, the phoenix radiated enough warmth to make the space bearable. From it, I sensed an exhaustion that matched my own — two wounded creatures hiding while our enemies regrouped.
I pushed myself upright and fought a wave of dizziness. Although I’d regained some energy while I slept, I knew it wasn’t nearly enough, that I was maybe at forty-percent capacity at best. That might be sufficient for minor use without too much cost, like sensing electronics within my limited range. It definitely wasn’t enough to mount a rescue operation against a fortified DAPI facility.
Not even close.
