Chapter Ten
As I lay in bed trying to keep my eyes open, Wentz’s words played over and over again in my head.
With a little more time, I can manipulate the abnormality—maybe even change it…
Everything made perfect sense with the confirmation that Wentz might be able to manipulate the Six mutation. I bet Denazen’s interest in the notes on Dromin12 was more about starting a new Supremacy trial than it was about curing the old one. If Wentz was as brilliant as they said, and he really could manipulate the abnormality, that might result in a successful Supremacy trial. One without the side effects.
I slipped into the darkness, thinking about Anderson and uncle Marshal and the kind of damage they could do if they got their hands on Wentz’s research, and still somehow managed to dive into Devin’s dream instead of my planned trip to Ginger to update her on what I’d found.
The landscape was different from last night. I entered the dream, stepping into a brightly lit ballroom. It was crowded and soft music filled the air as men in tuxedos twirled girls in fluffy gowns around the middle of the room. Looking down at my own attire—a pair of black boxers and a T-shirt decorated in tiny skulls—I frowned. This wouldn’t work. I imagined the tux I’d seen my dad wear when he’d accepted an award for Journalist of the Year. A moment later, I was looking slick in shiny shoes and a well-tailored penguin suit. Not the most comfortable get-up in the world, but hey, I looked sharp.
I entered the room, and searched for Devin. When my eyes found her standing in the corner, it was all I could do not to hyperventilate. Her chestnut hair was swept atop her head, several curly strands falling on either side of her face. The dark purple dress she wore hugged her midsection tight, then fanned out at the waist and fell to the floor. Each time she moved, the skirt swayed, revealing a hint of silver at each toe.
Heart spazzing like a jackhammer gone rogue, I crossed the floor and made my way to her, one step at a time. A part of my brain was getting a kick out of this. I was in a dream. Someone else’s dream. And here I was getting ready to piss myself over talking to some girl.
Dez would be laughing her ass off if she could see this.
“Hey,” I said, stopping in front of her. Awesome. Now my palms were sweating. Did dream sweat stink?
God, I hoped not.
She turned, startled as if seeing me for the first time, and her face fell. Not exactly the reception I’d hoped for. For a second, I worried I’d reverted to Cain, but when I glanced down at my hand and saw familiar skin marred with long forgotten scars, relief washed over me.
“Brandt?”
“Forget me already?” I joked, and tried to take her hand, but she pulled away.
“What are you doing here? You have to leave. Now!”
“Leave? What are—”
“Deeeeevin…” a voice boomed. It echoed through the room, over the music and noise of the crowd, and bounced off the walls, but no one else seemed to notice. There was an unearthly vibe to it that screamed of danger and venom.
I didn’t get the chance to ask her about it. She took my hand in hers, hiked up her puffy dress with the other, and started to run. We wove in and out of the crowd on the dance floor, all twirling and dipping, completely oblivious to our escape.
Around the corner and down an impossibly long hallway, we burst into a bleach-white room. The sounds of the party drifted away, replaced by a soft, consistent beeping and a stinging smell that made my eyes water and nose itch. The room shimmered and stretched, the edges blurring for a moment before things took on a more solid shape. When it was over, we were still wearing the clothes from the ball, but instead of being at the party, we were in a hospital room. The acrid smell of antiseptic and bleach filled the air, along with the trapped, nearly claustrophobic feeling I got as a child whenever Mom brought me to see my sick aunt.
Devin let go of my hand and stepped up to the thin white curtain. Pulling it aside, she sucked in a deep breath and said, “It was my fault.”
I came up beside her. The man in the bed lay motionless, chest rising and falling in sync with the beeping machines. He was pale, with the same chestnut-colored hair and a thin scar that ran from his right cheek down to his collarbone. I turned to check the door, but it was gone. We were surrounded by four solid, windowless walls.
“Your father?” I guessed, ignoring the uneasy feeling in my gut.
She pulled the covers up around his shoulders and fiddled with the edge of the pillow case. There was such a staggering amount of guilt in her eyes. It made me want to sweep her into my arms and not let go. “We were in an accident.”
I pulled her from his bedside, taking both her small hands in mine. “How is that your fault?”
She turned toward the other wall as a door appeared. When it opened, the same guy from last night’s dream stepped through. He grabbed her from me and spun her toward the wall. “I warned you,” he snarled. “But you didn’t listen. This is all your fault.”
Josh stared at her, silent, as she turned her head toward me. “I’d broken up with him. He was my first boyfriend,” she admitted. “I was young and I didn’t know any better. He was mean—abusive. After almost three years of his controlling, erratic crap and constant threats, I finally got the strength to walk away. He asked me to meet him. He wanted to give me some stuff back…” Her eyes fell back to her father’s bedside. “I didn’t want to go alone. I was afraid of him. I asked my dad to come…”
Josh laughed, and I realized in this dream, he was a manifestation of her guilt. “I cut her brakes. I told her she’d never be able to leave me.”
“We hit a tree,” Devin continued, keeping her eyes on her father. “The passenger’s side airbag went off, but the one on the driver’s side failed.”
“You can run from me, but you can’t hide. I’ll find you,” he said, wrapping his hand around her throat. “Wherever you are now, I’ll find you.”
Sheltie’s rule to never interfere in the course of someone else’s dream forgotten, I stepped forward and punched Josh in the side of the head. He went down hard, and lay motionless at my feet. The horrified expression and unadulterated terror in Devin’s eyes as she backed away told me she fully expected him to get back up. That’s what he always did, I imagined. In her dreams, he was always there. Always stronger. Always in control… But I was in control now. That a*shole wasn’t going anywhere.
When it was clear he wasn’t going to make another move, she raised her head and our eyes met. “I’m a horrible person.”
I took her hand again and pulled her to the side. Closing my eyes, I imagined the picnic area of Memorial Park back home. When I opened them, we were seated on a blanket surrounded by sandwiches and cold soda. The crisp air smelled of fall, colorful leaves littering the ground all around us. They twitched in the breeze, tumbling across the blanket and dancing away.
“What—how did you do that?”
I winked. “I’ve got moves like Jagger. Now why would you say you’re a horrible person? What happened to your father was his fault, not yours.”
“Shortly after the accident, a man came to see my mom and me. He said he could help us—help me.”
“Help you, how?”
“He knew about the accident. He knew about Josh. And…he knew about my ability to mess with computers.” She picked up one of the sandwiches and pulled off a piece of the end. “Of course, Mom totally freaked. She denied it till her face turned blue, and finally the guy left. The next day, he caught up with me outside of school. I don’t know how, but he knew our money was running low, and Dad’s care was killing us. The bills were piling up, and the mortgage was late. He offered to help.”
And I had my answer. That’s how Denazen had secured Devin’s trust. By swooping in and playing the White Knight. A part of me felt vindicated. I knew she wasn’t being manipulated for anything as trivial as greed or power. Devin wasn’t the standard Denazen material. They’d snowed her. Manipulated her into service by offering something she wanted. Something she needed. “Pay for it, you mean?”
She let her head dip low, hair falling like a curtain to hide her face. With a deep breath, she said, “He said he’d have my dad moved to a special facility and promised he’d get the best care possible. Then he said he could give me a fresh start. A chance to put Josh and the whole mess behind me…”
“What did he want in exchange?”
“Me,” she said simply. “They wanted me to work for them. Some special place where people like me—I guess there are more of us out there than I thought—help them…do things.”
“Do things?”
Her face fell. She hesitated, looking from me, then down to the sandwich. Picking off another piece of the crust, she sighed and flicked it away. “They want me to steal information from this company.”
“What kind of information do they want you to steal?”
She shrugged. “They want everything I can find on something called the Dromin12 serum. And the worst part? They’re pitting me against one of the other guys at the boarding house.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’ve made it a race. Sent two of us in—but not together. The first one of us to get the information wins.”
I’d never been a good liar, so I hoped I was doing a convincing job of acting like I had no idea what she was talking about. “Wins?”
“If I find the information first, he says he has someone that can heal my father. I guess he made a deal with Cain, too. He’s the other one they sent in.”
“So what, like a game?” I hoped the disgust in my voice masked the guilt. She needed to find the formula before me to save her father, and I needed to find it before her to save Dez and the others, as well as keep it from Denazen. As far as twisted, this pretty much took the cake.
She reached out to grab a bright red leaf as it blew past. Picking it up, she twirled it between her fingers for a moment before the wind took it and shifted the edges of her gown. I could have imagined her in something more practical when I changed the scenery. Jeans or something functional, but the truth was, she looked amazing in that dress. I didn’t want to miss a minute.
Frowning, she said, “Yeah. That about sums it up.”
“So this Dromin12 thing he wants you to find—what is it?”
“I don’t know, but this place they want to steal it from? It’s a genetic research facility. Anderson…I don’t trust him. I don’t know what they’ll do with this stuff if I get it for them.”
“So you haven’t found it yet?”
Her expression fell further. “No. I thought it’d be easy—go in, hack a computer or two, and boom, but it’s nowhere to be found. I’ve searched every machine in the place.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t have a lot of time, either. If Cain finds it first, Anderson won’t help my father.”
More guilt. I would find it first. I had to. With the formula incomplete there was always a chance it wouldn’t work, but I couldn’t think like that—and I couldn’t feel guilty. Not about this. Ginger had to know someone who could help Devin’s dad, while Dez and the others had no other options. “You think they’ll do something bad with it?”
She narrowed her eyes. And just like that, the Devin I knew from the waking world was there. Strong, confident, and willing to put up with no one’s shit. “I know they will. The whole thing is shadier than night. This place has secrets coming out the ass, and what other reason could they possibly have for gathering people like me to use? It screams conspiracy. I knew in the beginning they were up to no good, but I didn’t care. Not if they could help my dad. It was selfish, hence the horrible person thing…”
I smiled. Devin wasn’t some clueless victim. She’d had a handle on it all along. Her circumstances had just stuck her between a rock and a hard place, looking for a way to help her family. I understood completely because that’s exactly what I was doing. “There has to be another way. We’re Sixes, Devin. There must be someone out there who can help your father. Someone not under Anderson’s thumb. Is there anyone you can trust?”
She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head, grim. “No. There’s no one there I trust. And really, there’s no time left. Like I said, they sent in someone else—and he’s not the type to care about what they’ll be doing with this Dromin12 thing. He’s only out for himself and whatever Anderson promised him.”
Ouch. The answer prickled, but I couldn’t do anything about it—not without telling her the truth. And the truth wasn’t something I could do. There was too much riding on my purpose here. Chances were, even if she slipped, Anderson wouldn’t know enough about me—Brandt me—to put two and two together, but it wasn’t a risk I could take. I still had hopes we could make Wentz’s formula work for a cure, but even if that wasn’t possible, I couldn’t let Denazen get their hands on it.
In the distance, my alarm rang, and I could feel the pull of the waking world. I was ready for it this time. “It’s morning.”
She looked disappointed. “Already?”
“Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, eh?” The sound got louder and I knew I had to hurry. “Listen, keep an eye out for help. This sounds like it’s big. You can’t do it alone.”
“Well, what about you? Maybe you can find me?” She winked and wrapped her pinkie around the edges of her dress and my heart hammered up against my ribs. “Maybe you could come undercover. We could be a team.”
“I—”
Luckily, the alarm pulled me from the dream before I had to make an excuse for the fact that I was already there with her.