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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.
    Still, doing nothing about Kale, when Kiernan was throwing him right under our noses, would be hard—if not impossible. At least for me.
    I stuffed down the lump threatening to crawl up my throat and tried one last time. “He’s not safe with Denazen. No one is safe with Denazen. What about the damage he does before we get to him? How will he live with himself? He killed someone last night.”
    “Do you really think he’d want you pursuing him if there was a cure to be found? He’d want you to find it first.” Mom leaned forward. I didn’t miss her hand resting atop Dax’s and I felt an irrational pang of envy. My hand was cold. And empty. “He won’t be able to live with himself if we don’t find it in time because you went after him instead.”
    Again, I wanted to argue, but they all made sense. Annoying, piss-me-the-hell-off sense, but still. Sense. This was hard for my mother, too, even if she wasn’t showing it. She’d raised Kale inside Denazen like her own child. But one of the few things I’d learned about Mom in the short time we’d been together was that she was coldly logical when it came to sizing up dangerous situations. Emotion took a backseat. It made sense. So many years with Denazen taught her to push her feelings aside to get through tough situations.
    I sighed and kicked at the edge of the chair. “Fine. Where do we start?”
    “Penny Mills will take some time. She’s deep underground and Denazen, with all its resources, has been searching unsuccessfully for her since October.” Ginger pulled out another picture. Scribbling an address on the back, she handed it to me. “In the meantime, we start tracking down the others.”
    The girl looked about my age with an infectious smile and bright blue eyes. Her long brown hair was twisted into an artful knot with a pair of wooden sticks to hold it in place, and there was a blue smudge across her right cheek. Paint. She looked happy, and I wondered how long ago the photo had been taken. Where was she now? Did she even know about Supremacy?
    Was she even alive?
    “Deznee, I’d like you to take Alex and go to Kelpsbergh. That’s the address we have for Ashley Conner.”
    “What’s her 411?”
    “Looking over the bit of information Henley provided, it would seem she’s a remote viewer.”
    “What’s that mean?” Alex asked, taking the picture from me.
    “Ashley sees things that are happening in other places. She’s living with foster parents who I assume are Denazen agents, but I can’t be sure, so proceed with extreme caution.”
    I stood and took the picture from Alex. “We can save time if I check out Ashley and Alex beats down the door of another. Two birds in half the time.”
    Ginger narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going alone. I’m not asking you to make out with him, for Christ sake.” A truly wicked smile slipped across her lips. “I suggest you leave now before I insist you take Jade along as well.”
    That was all the motivation I needed. As much fun as it was to watch them snipe at each other, I wasn’t in the mood. I grabbed Alex’s arm and headed for the elevator.

5
    It took us almost an hour with traffic, and I laid into Alex in the car for siding with Ginger about Kale. He and I once had an intense relationship—until he cheated. I found out later it had been an act, staged to keep me