“I’m so scared,” I whispered. Saying it out loud made it that much more real, that much harder to shove down and ignore. “I’m more scared than I’ve ever been. More than when the shadow stalkers attacked Silver Hollow, even more than when DAPI captured you. This is different. This is about losing who I am, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to hold on through the merge.”
The faintest of smiles touched the corners of his mouth. “I know. But you’re going to do this anyway because you’re Sidney Lowell, and you don’t know how to be anything except brave.” He pressed his forehead to mine, and in that moment, our electromagnetic signatures merged so completely that I felt as if we were sharing the same space. “And I’m going to be there with you. I’ll give you something to hold on to when the fire gets too hot and you can’t remember why you’re fighting to stay yourself.”
I wanted to believe him. I did believe that he believed what he was saying, but he still had no real idea of what we were facing. “The ritual will be excruciating. My grandmother was unconscious for three days after anchoring a clean rebirth, and her nervous system was damaged for weeks. This is going to be so much worse. I might not be conscious. I might not even recognize you during the merge.”
He didn’t blink. “Then I’ll recognize you for both of us. Sidney, I didn’t survive being DAPI’s prisoner just to lose you to dimensional fire. We’re doing this together. Both of us. Just like we’ve done everything else since I arrived in Silver Hollow.”
The certainty in his voice somehow made the churning emotions within me calm a bit. I was still terrified, but having Ben beside me, his electromagnetic signature wrapped around mine, made all this insanity feel possible. Maybe I could hold on through the merge if I had his presence as an anchor.
I kissed him then — desperate and grateful and frightened all at the same time. His arms came around me, and for a few seconds, I let myself forget about phoenixes and portal networks and impossible rituals. I just wanted to be Sidney kissing Ben, his warmth solid against me, his presence the best kind of anchor I could ask for.
This might be one of the last times I got to kiss him as fully human Sidney. Tonight, or whenever I emerged from the rebirth, I might be something else entirely.
I was going to hold on to this moment and file it away in my consciousness so deeply that no amount of dimensional fire could burn it away. The way Ben’s hands felt against my back…the way his lips moved against mine, gentle and fierce at the same time.
If I lost everything else in the merge, I was keeping this.
When we finally pulled apart, Rebecca Morse was standing in the cabin’s doorway, looking more awkward than I’d ever seen her.
She sounded brisk enough when she spoke, though. “Sorry to interrupt, but we have a problem. Eric Hargrove just contacted me. Rosenthal is mobilizing every team she has to find you before you can attempt the phoenix ritual.”
Reality came crashing back in, and I pulled away from Ben reluctantly. As much as I would have liked to stay in his arms forever, it was time to focus on the mission instead of my personal fears.
I brushed the back of my hand across my eyes and wiped the tears away. “How long do we have?”
“Maybe six hours before she locks down the entire area around the portal. She knows that’s where you’ll have to go.” Rebecca crossed the room and went to the table that held her maps and communications equipment. I had no idea whether she’d slept at all the night before, but she seemed cool and efficient as always. “Hargrove says the artificial portal is operational but unstable. They’re pushing it past safe parameters, trying to extract more power.”
Of course they were. Rosenthal had never met a situation where she wouldn’t try to wring out every last ounce of power. I supposed it was too much to hope that her overreach would wreck the gateway without us having to do anything at all.
“How do we destroy the artificial portal?” I asked.
“Clean phoenix fire, apparently. If you can complete the rebirth and emerge with clean fire, the resulting energy surge should overload the artificial portal’s systems.” She picked up her tablet from the table and moved through a few screens until she stopped on a schematic of what I guessed was the DAPI facility. “But it has to be clean fire. The corrupted version would just feed the artificial portal and make it stronger.”
No pressure.
I looked at the phoenix curled near the woodstove, its contamination so thick now that only its head remained clean. Shadow veins pulsed through almost all of its feathers, and I could feel the wrongness of it all the way across the room. The creature could barely hold its head up, and its wings trembled when it tried to shift position.
“That poor thing can hardly fly. Its wings are failing. How are we supposed to get it to the portal?” I moved closer to the phoenix and knelt beside it. I could feel its exhaustion, the way it was fighting just to stay conscious. “It might not survive the journey.”
Ben didn’t hesitate. “We’ll carry it. Between the three of us, we can manage. I’ve carried heavier equipment through worse terrain.”
“And when Rosenthal’s teams find us? When we’re carrying a dying phoenix and trying to reach the portal through territory she controls?” I looked over at Rebecca Morse. “What’s our plan for that?”
“We fight,” she said, clearly not worried by such a prospect. Maybe she thought her FBI training would give her an advantage over a bunch of hired goons, but even she had to realize we were grossly outnumbered. “Eric Hargrove will create a diversion and do his best to pull some of the tactical teams away from the portal site. But there will still be a lot more of them than there are of us. Rosenthal has at least forty agents deployed in the area, and she’s calling in more.”
Forty agents led by a woman who’d already captured Ben once and knew exactly how to manipulate me.
I reached out to touch the phoenix. The creature knew it was dying and understood that it might not survive long enough to reach the portal. But it was going to try anyway, because that’s what phoenixes did. They burned and re-formed and kept going, no matter how impossible the odds.
I needed to do the same.
“Then we’ll leave in an hour,” I said, as I climbed back to my feet. Oddly, my legs felt steadier now that I was determined on this course. “That will give us time to eat something and gather supplies. Once we start this, we’re not stopping until the ritual is complete or we’re all captured.”
“Or dead,” Rebecca added, her tone flat.
“Or dead,” I agreed, and the words didn’t scare me as much as they should have, maybe because I was already planning to dissolve into dimensional fire. Physical death seemed almost minor compared to losing my entire identity. “But if we’re going to die, we’re taking that artificial portal with us. And we’re giving the phoenix a chance to be reborn clean, the way it was always supposed to.”
Ben’s hand found mine, and our fingers laced together. His entire being seemed to pulse with determination and fear and a fierce protectiveness. I squeezed back and held on to that connection.
