Tremble (Denazen #3)(10)
…
Showered and dressed, I found everyone clumped in the living room talking quietly. Dax and Mom looked cozy on the couch, while Alex was crammed into his beanbag chair—an essential piece of furniture for every living room, according to him. Ginger sat in her normal armchair by the door, wooden folding tray upright in front of her. There were a lot of Sixes under our roof, but the people gathered here had formed a sort of leadership chain. We were the enforcers of Ginger’s little army.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, flopping down next to Mom. There was a renewed energy humming through my veins. Having seen Kale last night and getting Brandt back this morning had recharged my batteries some. A direction and a goal. We were facing one hell of a mountain, but I had my climbing legs back and wanted to get started. “How are we gonna use the info we have to get Kale back?”
“We’re not,” Ginger said. She picked a manila envelope off the tray beside her and waved it back and forth, accidentally smacking Vince as he walked in the room.
“Come again?” I’d heard her wrong. Had to have.
“We’re not going to do anything about Kale. At the moment, he’s not a priority.”
The temperature in the room plummeted and everything blurred to a filmy haze. “Not a priority? You’ve gotta be shitting me!” I jumped up and jabbed a finger at Mom, who seemed oddly unbothered by Ginger’s words. “Tell me she’s kidding.”
Mom opened her mouth but Ginger, with a stern look and sharp shake of her head, cut her off.
Wow. So my own flesh and blood wasn’t going to side with me? She’d raised Kale inside Denazen as though he were her own for Christ’s sake. “He’s my priority. If he’s not a priority for you guys, then he’s one for me. The only one.”
“Deznee—” Ginger tried, but I steamrolled her.
“No way. No excuses. This is crazy. He’s your grand—”
“Dez!” Alex roared. He slammed the coffee table, rattling the cereal bowl Vince had just set down. “Sit down, shut up, and let her finish.”
I glared, wanting nothing more than to punch him, but sank onto the couch. Lately Alex seemed to have subscribed to the Church of Ginger. He backed her decisions—even when they made no sense. Made excuses for her—even when it was obvious that she was wrong. And now he was ready to let Kale flop in the wind because Ginger said so?
Okay. Maybe that one wasn’t such a big surprise, given the shared animosity between the boys.
Ginger cleared her throat. “As I was trying to say, there are more pressing matters. We know Kale is unharmed. He’s not going anywhere for the time being. Denazen is going to move on the Supremacy subjects swiftly.” She shot a glare in my direction. “In case you’ve forgotten, Deznee, that includes you and Brandt.”
I hadn’t forgotten. I’d tried, but I hadn’t forgotten. They wouldn’t let me. Mom was constantly bringing it up, working it into conversations at the most random times, and Ginger dropped hints on an almost daily basis.
“We haven’t long to find them.” She ripped open the envelope and leafed through a file, pulling out a wallet-sized black-and-white picture. Handing it to me, she said, “We must get to this woman before they do.”
Reluctantly, I took the picture. I was still pissed—but curious. The girl in the photograph was pretty, somewhere in her twenties with big hair and out-of-date clothing. I flipped it over. In small, blocky handwriting, it said, Penny Mills, 1974. “Who is she?”
“She is the last remaining survivor of the first Supremacy trial.”
Alex took the picture from me and let out a wolfish whistle.
I snagged it back and rolled my eyes. “Ew. She’s, like, old now.”
Across the room, next to Dax, Mom cleared her throat.
“Older,” I corrected quickly, waving the picture at Alex. “Too old for you.”
Dax snickered and threw his arm around Mom’s shoulders. “Smooth.”
I coughed and turned back to Ginger to avoid Mom’s stare. I’d made the mistake of mentioning makeup to her once, and she thought I’d implied she looked old. Didn’t take it very well. “Didn’t Denazen kill everyone from the first trial? That’s what Dad said…”
Ginger took the picture from me and stuffed it back into the envelope. I didn’t miss how she snapped the file shut, either, as I leaned in to get a closer look. “This is the one that got away. She is, in part, how Marshal Cross was able to cure Kiernan.”
I froze. “Kiernan?” This must be what Brandt was talking about. The component. “You mean this chick has the cure for the crazies? She can save us?”
“She is the cure. Like Kale’s blood renders Sixes pliable, Penny Mills’s blood cancels the negative effect of the Supremacy drug. From the information Henley gathered, we believe they combined it with a formula stolen from a scientist named Franklin Wentz to create the third generation.”
“If she escaped back when the first trial went live, how did they get her blood?”
“Henley said they didn’t know about the blood until June. Each Resident has a vial on file. Mills’s was lost in storage, and because they thought her dead, they had no reason to go looking for it. You see, the first trial’s symptoms were ten times worse. After it was clear that batch wasn’t viable, they simply turned them lose and let them fade away.”