But to do that, I had to go deeper. I had to merge more completely with the phoenix until there was no difference between us, until Sidney-consciousness and phoenix-consciousness became one thing.
Terror surged through me. If I merged that completely, I might not be able to separate. I might lose myself forever in the fire and become something that was neither Sidney nor phoenix but some hybrid creature that remembered being human but wasn’t anymore.
Ben’s electromagnetic signature pulsed nearby. Warm. Steady. Human. An anchor I could hold on to even as everything else burned away.
With you, I tried to send through our connection. Still me.
I sensed his response, even though I couldn’t hear words anymore. Just emotion. Fear for me. Determination to protect me. Love so fierce it made my re-forming consciousness ache.
Hopefully, it would be enough.
I dove deeper into the merge.
The phoenix’s memories opened to me like flowers blooming in those old time-lapse nature films they made us watch back in grade school. Centuries of rebirth cycles, each one a death and reformation. Guardians through the generations, women whose electromagnetic signatures had resonated with dimensional energy. My grandmother, calm and certain even when facing impossible odds. My great-great-grandmother, fierce and protective in ways that reminded me of myself. Others whose names I didn’t know but whose presence I recognized through the phoenix’s recollection.
They’d all anchored clean rebirths, or at the very most, a rebirth in a phoenix that was barely contaminated. None of them had attempted what I was doing. None of them had merged so completely that the boundary between guardian and creature disappeared.
I was alone in this.
The corruption fought me — shadow veins that didn’t want to be burned away, that clung to the phoenix’s essence like parasites refusing to release their host. Each time I pushed clean fire toward them, they pulled back and dragged their contamination deeper into the creature’s consciousness, where it was harder to reach.
This wasn’t going to work. Not like this. I needed to be more phoenix than Sidney to burn away corruption this deep.
I needed to die and be reborn with the creature.
Yes, the phoenix sent through our merged awareness. Together. One fire.
I let go of the last barriers protecting my identity and let myself dissolve completely into the phoenix’s consciousness until I couldn’t tell where I ended and the creature began.
Sidney-phoenix. Fire-girl. Guardian-creature. Something new, something that had never existed before.
The corruption burned.
It was agony beyond anything I’d ever experienced. The shadow veins fought dissolution, each one sending shockwaves of pain through our merged consciousness. But now I could reach them, could touch the wrongness with fire that was both mine and the phoenix’s, burning away the twisted energy and replacing it with clean patterns.
Ninety-three percent. Ninety-two. Ninety-one.
Each percentage point of corruption I burned away cost me something. Memories fading at the edges. Personality traits blurring. The boundaries between what made me Sidney and what made the phoenix itself were getting harder to distinguish.
I was losing myself.
But I was also saving the creature. And through our merged awareness, I could sense the portal network stabilizing, the global system of supernatural sites responding to clean fire instead of corruption. Energy was flowing properly again instead of being siphoned into Rosenthal’s artificial portal.
Hold on, I told myself. Or the phoenix told me. Or we told ourselves. The distinction didn’t matter anymore.
Somewhere distant, I heard shouting. Weapons firing. Ben’s voice, sharp with command. “Rebecca, east side, three contacts!”
DAPI had found us. The trap was springing.
Part of me tried to surface, tried to return to my body and help defend against the attack. But I was too deep in the merge, and I couldn’t separate now even if I’d wanted to. My consciousness was tangled with the phoenix’s, and pulling free now would kill us both.
Trust partner, the phoenix-part-of-me sent. He protects.
More weapon fire, close enough that I could sense it through my electromagnetic abilities — even though those abilities didn’t work the same way anymore. Now I sensed the guns’ signatures like foreign patterns in a field of fire, wrong-shaped and harsh.
Ben’s voice again. “Sidney, I need you to stay merged. Don’t try to come back yet. I’ve got this.”
He didn’t have it. I could sense at least twenty electromagnetic signatures converging on the clearing, surrounding our position and cutting off any escape routes.
