Tremble (Denazen #3)(11)
“So they didn’t monitor them at all?”
“There wasn’t any reason to. The trial was conducted in private; none of the volunteers knew the names of the other participants. When nothing happened right away, they were informed the experiment failed, and they were released—Denazen found the fatal flaw in its formula and knew the members would all grow sick and die.”
“But Penny Mills didn’t.”
Ginger shook her head. “No. She didn’t. Recently they discovered she was the only one still alive. Of course they went after her, but by some miracle, she evaded them. They assumed Penny’s survival was genetic and searched for the blood. What they found was a component that bypassed the side effects as well as bridged a gap in Wentz’s research, making a successful trial of Supremacy possible and curing Kiernan.”
“So we find Penny Mills and, what? Get her to bleed on me?” If they thought I was drinking some chick’s blood, they were in for a surprise. I’d start digging my own grave now.
“The blood alone won’t cure you because it stopped working after a while. However, with Franklin Wentz’s formula and some of the blood, we can duplicate a cure.”
“They had the blood in storage,” Mom mused. “That would be why there wasn’t much to go around. The vials are only several ounces. They take them from all Residents.”
“And since they can’t find Penny, they have no way of getting more,” Dax said.
I hated to be the naysayer of the group, but someone had to put it out there. “If they’ve already started producing the new trial—which uses the blood—what are the chances there’s any left for the cure?”
“Henley has confirmed that a small amount remains.”
It bugged me that she kept calling him Henley. His name was Brandt—no matter what his outside looked like. And worse than that, I hated that she’d involved him at all. If Dad were to get his hands on someone like Brandt, with his soul jumping ability, the potential damage could be catastrophic. Denazen could simply kill Brandt off a thousand times, allowing him to gather multiple Six abilities, giving them an all-powerful weapon.
This whole thing was a disaster and I was torn. On one hand, I wanted to try talking some sense into Kale. If anyone could get through to him, I was sure it’d be me. On the other hand, while I’d always been a little careless with my own life, ten others were now on the line. “Okay, so we need to get the blood, like, yesterday. But say we do find this Penny Mills chick—we need the formula Denazen stole from that Wentz guy.”
“Technically we don’t need the formula. We have something better. We have Wentz,” Ginger said with a grin. “He’s been here for about a week now.”
“He’s here? As in, right now? How have I not seen this guy?”
Mom rolled her eyes. “He’s a little bit…different. Ginger set him up in a lab on the third floor. He doesn’t come out much.”
I hadn’t known we had a third floor.
Ginger tapped her cane against the floor. “We need that blood.”
“And Denazen has the blood. Maybe Kale can help with that. He’s obviously been on the inside. Maybe if I talk to him—”
Alex snorted. “Are you really that stupid? You saw what he did to that guy last night! What the hell makes you believe he’d think twice about doing it to you? In case you missed it, you’re nobody to him anymore. Worse than nobody. You’re the girl he blames for all this. The person he hates.”
I flinched as if each word were a physical blow. Knowing it was one thing, but hearing it was another—especially from Alex.
His eyes widened and he shook his head. He’d gone too far and he knew it. Alex had always acted first and thought later. Most people got better with age—he’d gotten worse. “Dez…”
Alex could be a dick—hell, he’d perfected it to an art form—but I knew he was only trying to keep me safe. He was wrong, though. Kale would never hurt me. Not really. He might not remember my face, but I’d seen something in his eyes at the party. Something deep down that could never let me go. Kiernan was proof of that. She had to dress like me, make him call her a name that sounded like mine, and had to redirect his anger by slapping her crappy name on me. All I needed was a little time and an opportunity.
I turned away from Alex and focused on Ginger. “If I could just get him alone… It seems like we’d have a better chance pursuing Denazen to get the blood rather than a woman who could be God knows where. The world is a big place. Kind of the ultimate needle in a haystack, don’t ya think?”
She shook her head. “We find Penny and the others first, then we’ll deal with him. It’s late December, Deznee. You’ll be no good to Kale if something happens to you. For the moment, he appears to be safe.”
She was right. My birthday was only a few months away, and whether I admitted it to them or not, I was beginning to show signs. I asked Mom once why it happened at eighteen. She told me that the way she understood it, there was a protein in the original formula that kept replicating. By the time the subjects reached eighteen, it was too much for their bodies to handle. The sand in my hourglass was almost gone.
I hadn’t felt Kiernan hit me with the knife at the party, and I couldn’t be sure if it was Supremacy—or stress—but lately I found myself easily distracted, my mind wandering to nonsensical things. Other than the little Mom knew, we had no one to ask about the stages of the Supremacy decline. We just had to wait it out and take things as they came. Finding Penny Mills was the logical first step.