Sam had drawn a number on the basement wall in grease pencil, big enough to read from the stairs, and he updated it every morning before Caleb was awake. Today it said thirty-one.
"That's the spread," Sam said, when Caleb came down. He had the diagnostic cuff hooked to the old tablet and a fresh chart taped beside the number, and he wore the careful, unhurried manner he used when he was about to tell his brother something his brother would not like.
"Thirty-one percent. That's how much of you the silver's taken. It was twenty-six the morning of the exam, so that's five points in three weeks, and it's not slowing."
"I want you to look at it every day, so it stops being a thing that happens to you in your sleep and starts being a thing you can see coming."
"Because at a hundred, little brother, the spread finishes. The thing the statues are is the thing you are, all the way through. There's no Caleb left over at a hundred. So we watch the number."
