“No. You’re more like a tuning fork. Your presence helps her abilities resonate more clearly, more powerfully.” Agent Morse’s voice softened, and she went on, “Sonya Rosenthal specifically wanted someone with your electromagnetic profile in Silver Hollow. She wanted Sidney’s abilities pushed to their maximum so she could study what happened.”
Ben glanced at Sidney again, his gaze focusing on the way her hands still trembled.
The rage inside him burned as hot orange and streaked with black as the phoenix itself.
“She engineered this,” he said, his voice flat. “Rosenthal wanted Sidney stressed, wanted her abilities strained. That’s why there’s been so much interference in the forest. She’s been deliberately destabilizing things.”
“Yes.” Agent Morse returned the tablet to her bag, her expression almost resigned. “The surveillance equipment DAPI hid in the forest isn’t just passive monitoring. It generates electromagnetic interference designed to disrupt the natural flow of energy through the portal network. Dr. Rosenthal hypothesized that increased instability would force Sidney to use more power more frequently, giving us better data on her capabilities.”
The phoenix stirred in its electromagnetic blanket, and a pulse of heat spread through the room. One of Ben’s sensors started beeping urgently.
“It’s destabilizing,” he said as he checked the readout. “The corruption’s at seventy-three percent now.”
Rebecca Morse stood at once and moved to the phoenix’s table. She pulled back part of the blanket, revealing one wing. In the harsh fluorescent light, the corruption looked even worse — shadows crawling through living flame like infection through a wound.
“The interference equipment has been running for two weeks,” she said quietly. “This phoenix has been trying to complete its rebirth cycle for those two weeks, and every time it gets close, the interference corrupts the process.”
“Jesus Christ.” Ben stared at the suffering creature, and his mouth tightened. “Rosenthal did this deliberately.”
“After her defeat when the griffin was here, she needed a crisis, something that would prove her theories were accurate. Something that would force Sidney to use extreme power, that would push her abilities past their normal limits.” Rebecca shook her head. “What better crisis than a dying phoenix? An ancient creature connected to the portal’s fundamental stability, slowly being killed by artificial interference?”
Every moment since he’d arrived in Silver Hollow — the strange occurrences, the increasing instability, Sidney’s growing powers — all of it had been engineered, orchestrated by people who saw him and Sidney not as human beings but as test subjects to be poked and prodded as necessary.
“The night Sidney fought off the shadow stalkers, when she was trying to send the griffin home,” he said. “Rosenthal was recording that.”
A nod. “Every second of it. She has footage of Sidney channeling enough electromagnetic energy to burn shadow magic out of a dimensional predator. She has readings that show Sidney’s nervous system adapting in real-time to handle power that should have killed her.” Now Rebecca Morse’s voice was flat with disgust. “Dr. Rosenthal called it the ‘forced evolution protocol.’ Put someone under enough pressure, and their abilities will expand to meet the threat.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s torture.”
“No, that’s science. According to her, anyway.”
Sidney made a small sound, and Ben was beside her in an instant. Her eyes moved under their lids, rapid and distressed. The trembling in her hands had spread to her arms.
“She’s still trying to cleanse the phoenix,” he said, checking the sensors once again. “Her bioelectric field is reaching toward it even now.”
“The connection between them is strong.” Rebecca retrieved her tablet and pulled up another graph. “Look at this. These are the electromagnetic signatures from both Sidney and the phoenix. See how they’re synchronized?”
Ben studied the overlapping waveforms. Sidney’s pattern was chaotic, jumping and spiking, but underneath the chaos was a steady pulse that matched the phoenix’s dying rhythm exactly.
“They’re entangled,” he said. “On a quantum level, maybe. Or something analogous to it in whatever physics governs magic.”
“Which means if the phoenix dies while they’re connected….” Rebecca didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t have to. Ben understood the implication all too well. Sidney’s consciousness was partially merged with the phoenix’s. If that ancient creature died while they were still linked, the psychic backlash could shatter Sidney’s mind.
Or worse.
“How long does it have?” he asked.
“Based on the current rate of corruption?” A small shrug, as if Rebecca knew this was something far beyond her control. “Maybe thirty-six hours. Less if the interference continues.”
“Then we’ll shut down the interference.”
She shook her head at once. “The equipment is distributed across the entire forest. There are more than fifty individual units, each one hardened against tampering and equipped with anti-removal protocols. Even if we could locate all of them, we’d need specialized tools and a lot of time that we don’t have.”
Maybe she was being too pessimistic. “How much time?” Ben asked.
Rebecca sent him a very direct look then, as if to tell him he was grasping at straws. “Days. Probably more like weeks.”
