Page 34 of Soulmarked

“You think I don't know that?” Sterling's voice was razor-sharp. “You think I like sitting on my hands while people die? But there's a bigger picture here, and you're too pigheaded to see it.”

“Then help me see it,” I fired back. “Because from where I'm standing, we have a job to do, and backing down isn't part of the description.”

Sterling stood abruptly, looming over the desk. “Consider this your one and only warning, Cross. You keep this up, and whatever happens next is on your head. I can't protect you and won't try if you're determined to commit suicide.”

I closed the file and stood, squaring my shoulders. “Noted, sir.”

Sterling stared me down, something like disappointment mixed with grudging respect in his expression. “Your daddy would've knocked some sense into you by now.”

I smiled thinly. “Guess I'm lucky he's not here then.”

Sterling didn't argue. That was almost worse than any warning he could have given. The weight of everything he wasn't saying followed me out of his office like a shadow.

The bullpen was filling up with morning shift agents, their voices a dull murmur of case updates and coffee requests. A few glanced my way as I passed, but most gave me a wide berth.

If they only knew.

Alana was waiting at my desk, her posture radiating the kind of focused intensity that meant she'd found something. She was one of the few people in the department who didn't treat me like I had some contagious form of career suicide. Probably because she was just as obsessed with unexplained patterns as I was, even if she approached them from a more analytical angle.

Her tablet was already in hand, dark eyes sharp behind stylish frames. No good morning, no small talk. Just: “You need to see this.”

I dropped into my chair, taking a sip of coffee that had gone from terrible to actively hostile. “Tell me it's good news for once.”

Her snort said everything about that possibility. “Define 'good.'” She spun her tablet around, pulling up a map of the city overlaid with data points I didn't immediately recognize. “Because if by 'good' you mean 'evidence that Phoenix is definitely up to something way above our pay grade,' then sure, it's fantastic.”

The map filled with glowing markers, each pulsing with a steady rhythm that made my eyes hurt if I looked too long. Something about the pattern tugged at my memory, but exhaustion made it hard to focus.

“What am I looking at?”

“Phoenix has been occupying abandoned buildings all across the city.” She tapped the screen, highlighting five specific locations. “They've installed unusual equipment at each site,drawing far more electrical power than any legitimate operation would need. And look at the pattern they're forming.”

I leaned closer, forcing my tired brain to concentrate. The markers formed a rough pentagon across Manhattan, each point corresponding to a property Phoenix had quietly acquired through shell companies. There was something familiar about this arrangement, something I'd seen recently but couldn't quite place.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, leaning closer to the screen.

“It gets worse.” Alana's fingers flew across her tablet, pulling up files marked with classification levels that would give our cybersecurity team collective heart attacks. “Every victim so far? They were all tied to something called 'Project Ascension.' And based on what I've managed to decrypt...” She hesitated, which was never a good sign from someone usually so direct.

“Define 'worse.'” I prompted, though part of me really didn't want to know.

She scrolled through recovered document fragments, each one making my blood run colder than the last. The technical language was dense, but certain phrases jumped out like neon warning signs:

Experimental energy field generation... Theoretical quantum displacement... Multiple subjects viable for project protocol...

My stomach churned as possibilities clicked into place. “This reads like some kind of experimental physics project.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth as I considered what Phoenix might actually be attempting.

Alana nodded grimly, her usual skepticism replaced by genuine concern. “That's what I thought too. But this isn't standard research. These power readings are off the charts, and the equipment they're installing... I've never seen anything likeit. Whatever they're building, it's designed to create some kind of field or portal.”

The implications made my head spin. If Phoenix was really attempting some kind of experimental physics breakthrough using these five points across the city... No wonder Sterling had tried to warn me off. This wasn't just corporate crime anymore, this was potential catastrophe on a massive scale.

I drummed my fingers against my desk, mind racing through scenarios, each worse than the last. “Who else knows about this?”

“Officially?” Alana's smile held no humor. “No one. These files don't exist, this project doesn't exist, and if we start asking the wrong people about things that don't exist...” She let the sentence hang.

“We might not exist either,” I finished. “Yeah, that tracks with how my week's going.”

“What do you want to do with this?” Alana asked, her voice low. “Official channels aren't an option, not until we have more concrete evidence.”

I stared at the pattern on the screen, knowing there was more to this than experimental physics gone wrong. But Alana didn't need to know that part yet. Her data and analytical skills were invaluable, but dragging her deeper into this would put her at risk.

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