CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

New York City

Moses slammed his fist into the kitchen floor. He was in excruciating pain. This was all he could think of to do to relieve the pain. It was the worst thing he had ever felt, the worse thing he would ever feel. Every fiber and molecule of his being was transforming, his DNA snapping apart and refusing. He was evolving before Philip's eyes as he sipped his coffee at the table. He was watching over Moses, making sure nothing dangerous happened.

Moses slammed both fists into the kitchen floor, this time cracking the tiles and bleeding a few of his knuckles. Again, he pulled them up and back into the floor before he realized his bleeding had stopped and his knuckles and fingers were covered in dust. When Moses tried to wipe it off it was clear, this was not dust. His hands were becoming stone. Moses screamed as the sensation took a hold of him. It stretched across his entire body, but Moses did not want to become a freak. He yelled and clawed at his face to keep it off of him. His stone fingertips cut the skin from his forehead down to his nose and cheeks, ending at his chin.

Philip got up to restrain Moses from doing anymore harm to himself. Once he got his arms pulled back, Moses revealed his bloody face, his blood was leaking out slowly and blowing away as dust, and the pupils in his eyes were grey with a steady pulse of light in the center. Philip stepped back horrified. And Moses finished his transformation.

He covered his face like a monster and got up running and stumbling into the window. Moses broke through the double-plated shatter proof skyscraper window glass like it was a movie prop. He sank like a stone down towards the street. Philip tried to catch him and teleport away but did not anticipate his sheer weight and density. Philip tried again, this time prepared to compensate when Moses told him to leave him be. Philip wanted to ignore him, but he seemed to be accepting his new condition.

Stolen story; please report.

Philip appeared on the side of the road out in front of Moses' apartment building and made sure it was clear of people. Not that Moses needed it, he converged with the stone cold ground floor with thunderous impact and then got up and walked away unharmed. His boots were obliterated between his stone heels and the earth beneath his feet. His grey bare feet walked on shattered debris and glass as it snapped and burst into thin air under the pressure.

Moses wiped the dried blood from his face; and he could feel that his wounds were already scarring up, filling with a dark grey coagulation. It didn't hurt anymore, not even when he put his fingertips into his facial lacerations. Some of his face and most of his body except for his extremities were still flesh. He knew it would not be long until his entire body was covered in stone. Moses did not want to lose his humanity and would try to prolong it as much as possible.

Philip could not believe it, the time was finally at hand. Moses was the first to feel the effects of the Two Suns. Philip knew there was little to no chance that it was just a coincidence his last name was Stonethrower.

"This is unbelievable."

"Tell me about it." Moses held his hands out and looked at them front and back.

"Well, what're you waitin' for?"

"What?"

"Aren't you gonna try it?"

Moses pulled his fingers together and could feel the pressure rising in his palms. Philip closed his eyes and locked in on Moses' perception. He used the similar sensations from his pulse blasts to make the link.

Moses pulled the massing rise in tectonic tension out of his body through his hands, flinging it forward. Two stone tablets went hurling through the air like boomerangs, crashing into the store windows surrounding them on both sides.

"It's time."

"Time for what?"

"Our meeting with the President."