CHAPTER 16: THE PRICE OF A MIRACLE

Eli lay on the mausoleum floor, staring at his motionless legs.

“Mom?”

Emma touched his feet.

He did not react.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”

Victoria’s wound had stopped bleeding.

The bullet remained inside her, but her heartbeat strengthened.

Eli had transferred more than nerve activity.

He had taken Victoria’s injury into himself.

Adrian lowered himself beside the boy.

“Can you feel this?”

He pressed Eli’s knee.

Eli shook his head.

Terror filled his eyes.

“Am I going to be like you?”

The question struck Adrian harder than any weapon.

“No.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I will fix this.”

“How?”

Adrian had no answer.

They moved Victoria and Eli to a hidden clinic operated by Dr. Naomi Grant, a neurologist Mason trusted from his military service.

Naomi examined them for three hours.

When she finally entered the waiting room, her expression was grim.

“Victoria will survive.”

“And Eli?”

“His spinal cord is intact, but the electrical signals have nearly disappeared.”

Adrian looked through the glass at the boy.

“Can they return?”

“Possibly. But not through conventional treatment.”

Emma understood first.

“Daniel.”

Naomi nodded.

“If Daniel can suppress nerve activity, he may also know how to restore what Eli lost.”

Adrian opened the metal box again.

The silver key had a small groove along one side.

Naomi recognized it.

“That isn’t a key. It’s a neural interface.”

“For what?”

“Some early Vale devices stored memory patterns. Your father funded the research before it was outlawed.”

Adrian remembered Elena’s instruction.

Find the place where your father buried the silver key.

Perhaps she had not meant a grave.

Perhaps she meant something his father had hidden in Adrian’s own mind.

Naomi placed the interface against the implant in Adrian’s spine.

A mechanical click sounded.

Images exploded across Adrian’s thoughts.

A laboratory.

Children behind glass.

His father arguing with Sebastian.

And a younger Adrian signing a document.

Adrian tore the device away.

“No.”

Mason caught him.

“What did you see?”

Adrian looked at the signature in his memory.

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