And I told them about Ben. About the way his bioelectric field resonated with mine, amplifying my abilities, and how he’d stepped in front of Rosenthal’s weapon without hesitation, taking a blast meant for me. About the scars we both carried now, the connection that let us share thoughts and sensations when we were fully synchronized.
About the fact that I loved him, and he loved me, and he was the anchor that had kept me sane through the darkest months of my life.
Once I finished talking, a heavy silence descended. My mother’s presence had grown increasingly distressed as I spoke, her consciousness radiating guilt and grief and a fierce, protective anger that I recognized from every time someone had hurt me as a child. My grandmother, by contrast, had gone very still, her sharp mind processing the information with the same clinical concentration she’d always applied to problems she intended to solve.
“The dimensional burns from the phoenix merge,” she said at last. “How extensive are they?”
“My forearms, mostly,” I replied. “And some on my back and shoulders.” I paused for a moment, remembering the weeks of pain, the slow healing, the way the unicorn’s touch had gradually transformed those strange, translucent flame patterns into something almost beautiful. “They don’t hurt much anymore. And they glow sometimes, when Ben and I are synchronized.”
“Show me.”
I wasn’t sure how to show her anything in this place where none of us had physical bodies, but I reached for the memory anyway — the image of my scarred arms, the delicate fern-like patterns that traced from my wrists to my elbows. I felt my grandmother’s consciousness wrap around the memory, examining it with the same intensity someone might use to examine a specimen under a microscope.
“Phoenix fire,” she murmured. “It rewrote your bioelectric structure at the cellular level. You’re not entirely human anymore, Sidney. You’re something new.”
“I know.” The words sounded steady enough, even though the reality of them still sometimes hit me at odd moments — when I accidentally shorted out an appliance by walking too close to it, or when I sensed an approaching car from over a mile away. “The merge changed me. I can feel the whole portal network now, like a map burned into my brain. I can sense when the connections are strong and when they’re weak.” I hesitated before realizing I needed to tell them everything I could. “I can feel the corruption spreading from Welling Glen.”
“The Dragon’s vision,” my grandmother said, her voice sharpening. “You mentioned that it showed you the infection. How much did you see?”
“All of it.” I remembered the overwhelming flood of images, the golden web of ley lines going black and gangrenous, the other guardians struggling against an illness they couldn’t understand. “The corruption is spreading faster every day. If we don’t stop it at the source — ”
“Cauterization,” my grandmother broke in, her voice grim. “The Dragon will burn away the infected section to save the rest.”
“Yes. We have until the Winter Solstice, no more.”
Another silence, but this one felt different — filled with purpose rather than weighted with grief. I could feel my grandmother’s mind at work, sorting through possibilities and discarding them, searching for the angle that would give us the best chance of success.
“The man responsible who’s responsible for all this,” she said. “Julian Gregory. Tell me more about him.”
“He’s some kind of tech billionaire,” I told her. “He’s drilling into the ley lines near Welling Glen, trying to extract dimensional energy for some sort of power source. He’s recruited Dr. Rosenthal to help him, but she knows it’s dangerous — she’s scared, even if she won’t admit it.”
“What else have you found?”
Not a lot, unfortunately, but the little we had was better than nothing. “We have someone on the inside of his computer network. A scientist named Eric Hargrove — he used to work for DAPI before Rebecca convinced him to defect. He’s been tracking Julian Gregory’s progress and feeding us intel.” I paused for a second, realizing how much had changed since they’d disappeared. “A woman named Rebecca Morse is helping us, too. She’s former FBI, former DAPI. She’s the one who turned against Rosenthal during the phoenix incident.”
“You’ve built quite a team.” There was something almost like approval in my grandmother’s voice. “And your father?”
The question caught me off guard. “You know about that?”
“We felt it when he returned to Silver Hollow…the edges of his consciousness brushing against the portal’s energy, even though he has no abilities of his own.” Another pause, and then she said, “He’s been watching for a long time, hasn’t he?”
“Seventeen years.” The old hurt rose inside me, but it felt distant now, muffled by everything else that had happened. “He says he left to protect us, that being a mundane made him a liability.”
My mother spoke next, her voice soft and sad. “He wasn’t wrong. It was one of the reasons our marriage fell apart, even before he left. He couldn’t be part of our world, not really, and it ate at him. He hated the helplessness of watching us face dangers he couldn’t understand, let alone fight.”
“He’s fighting now,” I said. “He and Rebecca have been planning tactical approaches to Gregory’s camp, figuring out how to disrupt the drilling operation. He’s — ” I broke off there, not sure how to describe the complicated tangle of emotions I felt toward the man who had abandoned me and then spent seventeen years watching from the shadows. “He’s trying.”
“Then we’ll give him a chance to prove himself.” My grandmother’s voice was brisk, practical. She had no time for dwelling on the past when there was a future to save. “Sidney, there’s something you need to understand about this place. About the Waiting Place.”
“The Waiting Place?” I echoed.
“It’s what the guardians have always called it. The space between dimensions, where consciousnesses can exist without physical form.” She gestured at the silver mist around us, although “gesture” was perhaps the wrong word for the way her presence shifted and indicated. “We’re not the only ones here.”
As if her words had summoned them, the mist around us began to change. The silver luminescence brightened, taking on hints of other colors — gold and green and deep purple, shades that reminded me of the glimpses I’d caught through the gap in the veil. And within that brightening light, I sensed other presences beginning to gather.
They came from all directions, emerging from the mist like ships materializing out of a fog bank. I felt them before I saw them, consciousnesses that bore the same resonance as my mother and grandmother, the same connection to the portal network that ran in my blood. Guardians, I realized. Other guardians from other portals, drawn by the signal Ben and I had created when we opened the way.
“They felt the call,” my grandmother said quietly. “The Dragon’s distress signal, amplified by your connection to the phoenix fire. They’ve been gathering at the boundaries of their own waiting places for weeks, hoping for exactly this opportunity.”