Chapter 10 - NOAH LEARNS WHAT ADRIAN REALLY WANTS
Eli Trent could feel everything.
Adrian made sure Noah understood that.
“He hears us,” Adrian said. “Touch produces sensation. Temperature. Pressure. Pain, presumably.”
Noah stared at the statue.
“You’re insane.”
“Possibly. But not about this.”
Adrian opened a tablet showing brain scans of mineralized subjects. Flickers of activity. Tiny storms inside impossible skulls.
“Selene reversed one man in 1999,” Adrian said. “He remembered every second.”
Noah swallowed.
“Why didn’t she reverse the others?”
“Because she went blind in one eye doing it.”
The door opened.
A woman in blue scrubs entered carrying a tray of syringes.
Noah stared.
“Doctor?”
“Formerly,” Adrian said.
The woman avoided Noah’s eyes.
Adrian rolled up his sleeve.
There were gray veins beneath his skin.
Not bruises.
Stone.
Noah looked closer.
“What happened to you?”
“Selene.”
Adrian’s voice lost its amusement.
“During our last argument, she caught me for less than a second. The process stopped at my shoulder because she looked away.”
He flexed his fingers.
Barely.
“It has progressed every year since.”
“You’re dying.”
“Yes.”
“And you think Mara can reverse it.”
“I know she can.”
Noah almost laughed.
“So this giant mythology speech is because you’re scared.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“Everyone is scared when they are honest.”
“Good. Be scared.”
Adrian stepped close.
“I do not need your wife dead, Mr. Hale. I need her cooperative. You are leverage.”
Noah looked at the camera.
“You think she’ll come alone?”
“She always does.”
“You don’t know Mara.”
“I knew her mother.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Adrian smiled without warmth.
“No. Mara is softer.”
Noah thought of his wife dragging an armed man through a store after turning him to stone.
He almost said it.
Then didn’t.
Adrian left.
The woman in scrubs remained to check Noah’s blood pressure.
Her name badge said DR. CELIA WREN.
Noah waited until Adrian’s footsteps faded.
“How many people has he done this to?” he whispered.
Celia kept her eyes on the cuff.
“Don’t.”
“How many?”
Her hands shook.
That was answer enough.
Noah lowered his voice.
“Mara will come. He’ll hurt her.”
Celia’s lips pressed together.
“You don’t understand what she is.”
“I don’t. Neither do you.”
Celia looked at him then.
Noah saw exhaustion. Shame. Something cracked open.
She slipped a small metal object beneath his palm.
A scalpel blade wrapped in gauze.
“You have about eight minutes,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired of hearing the statues scream on the monitors.”
Then she walked out.
Noah started sawing through the zip tie.
Across the room, Eli’s stone finger moved one millimeter.
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