Chapter 16 - THE LAB UNDER THE QUARRY
We fell twelve feet into white light.
Noah landed badly on his shoulder.
I landed on Noah.
He made a sound that would have been funny anywhere else.
“Sorry.”
“Later.”
The room beneath the house was enormous.
Glass partitions. Surgical lamps. Server racks. Stone statues standing on wheeled platforms like patients waiting for appointments.
Eli Trent was there.
So was Katie.
And three others I didn’t know.
A woman in a hotel uniform.
An older man with one shoe missing.
A teenage boy.
I looked at Adrian across the room.
“What did you do?”
“Not me.”
He stood beside June, one hand resting on her shoulder.
She looked terrified but unhurt.
Celia stood behind them, crying silently.
Adrian nodded toward the statues.
“Your mother.”
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
“She lost control over the years. Some were accidents. One tried to rob her. One was a doctor who ignored her warning. The boy broke into a cabin where she was hiding.”
My stomach turned.
“You kept them.”
“I preserved them.”
“Like things.”
“They are things until you restore them.”
Noah pushed himself up with one arm.
“Let June go.”
Adrian looked at him.
“No.”
Simple. Almost childish.
I stepped forward.
“Tell me what you want.”
“You know.”
“Say it.”
Adrian rolled up his sleeve.
Stone had spread to his collarbone.
“Reverse me.”
“You’re not fully petrified.”
“Not yet.”
“And if I can’t?”
“You can.”
“You don’t know that.”
He smiled.
“Your mother did.”
Celia flinched.
I caught it.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Adrian’s expression sharpened.
Celia looked at me.
Then at the floor.
“Selene reversed Adrian once.”
Silence.
My skin went cold.
Adrian said, “Celia.”
She kept talking.
“He forced her to do it after she partially petrified him the first time. That’s why the damage returned. The reversal wasn’t complete.”
“What did it cost her?” I asked.
Celia’s mouth trembled.
“Her memory of you.”
The room disappeared for a second.
I heard my mother’s last phone call in my head.
Her asking my birthday twice.
Her calling me Melissa.
I had been angry.
I had hung up early.
Adrian said, “Sentiment is expensive.”
I wanted to kill him.
That frightened me because it felt clean.
Easy.
June looked up at him and bit his hand.
Hard.
Adrian shouted.
She ran.
Noah moved at the same time.
A guard fired.
The bullet hit the glass beside my head.
My glasses flew off.
Across the room, Noah turned toward the sound.
And looked straight at me.
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