Chapter 8 - A Crack in the Stone
The rubber mallet struck the end of the masonry chisel with a dull, heavy thud that reverberated straight through the metal examination table and up into Leo’s spine. A hairline fracture spider-webbed across the grey plaster casing encasing his right wrist, releasing a fine cloud of white dust that smelled sharply of limestone and chemical hardeners.
"Hold still," Dr. Vance ordered, his voice devoid of any emotion as he lined up the blade for a second strike. "If you jerk your arm now, the chisel will take your radius bone right along with the cast."
Leo squeezed his eyes shut, biting down on his lower lip until he tasted the metallic tang of blood. Every instinct screamed at him to thrash, to fight, to break free, but the cold weight of the hardened material kept him pinned like a butterfly in a display case. He could feel the pulse throbbing wildly in his fingertips, trapped inside the suffocating, dark prison of the mold.
Maya stood a few feet away, her hands tightly clenched into fists at her sides, her knuckles turning bone-white. She watched the rhythmic, mechanical motion of her father’s mallet striking the steel tool over and over again, her breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
Thump. Another fracture split the plaster on the left cuff.
"Dad, stop! Look at his skin!" Maya suddenly cried out, lunging forward to grab her father’s wrist before the mallet could descend a third time. "You're cutting right through his dermis! There's blood seeping through the seam!"
Dr. Vance paused, lifting the chisel a few inches. He glanced down at the grey block encasing Leo’s left hand. Sure enough, a small, dark red stain was beginning to bloom along the lower edge of the plaster where the abrasive mineral had rubbed the skin raw against the cold steel table.
"He chose to look where he didn't belong, Maya," Dr. Vance said, though he lowered the mallet slightly, yielding just an inch to his daughter’s desperate intervention. "When you poke around in locked vaults, you have to accept the structural damage that comes with the unearthing."
"I didn't mean to find it!" Leo gasped, his voice trembling violently as pain lanced up his forearms. "The flash drive was sitting right on the corner of the desk. I thought it was my assignment backup! I swear I didn't copy any files, I didn't send anything to anyone!"
Dr. Vance stared down at Leo for a long, agonizing moment, weighing the truth in the desperate kid's eyes. Slowly, he laid the chisel and mallet down on the tray with a soft clatter. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, black encrypted flash drive—the very one Leo had picked up off the desk an hour earlier.
"If you didn't copy the files, Leo, then how did you know the patients from the county hospital were logged under numerical designations instead of names?" Dr. Vance asked softly, holding the small plastic drive up between his thumb and forefinger like a suspended executioner's blade.
May you like
Leo froze, the blood draining entirely from his face. He hadn't just seen the folder; he had read the first three pages before the door had creaked open.
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