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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 The girl in the photograph was pretty, somewhere in her twenties with big hair and out-of-date clothing.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.”
    “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