Page 74 of Gorgeous Misery

I point at him. “That’s the logical conclusion, right? But that’s not what Adam wants you for. No one really cares about Indie’s trigger anymore. They think it’s over. She bounced back. Kind of. She’s stable now. No. Adam wants you to kill Carter, Merc. Kill Carter and save Donovan.”

“But if we kill Carter,” Harrison says, “then we lose the guy who has all the information.”

I point at him. “I never thought you were a stupid man, Harrison. But I have seriously underestimated you over the years.”

“Thanks?” He smiles at me. And I figure this is going way better than I could’ve hoped. I mean, I was kinda worried about explaining all this to people who, for all intents and purposes, have no real clue about what the Company actually is.

But they are following along quite well.

Harrison, obviously. Since he likes to play fill-in-the-blanks. But Merc’s silence says way more than his words ever could.

He gets what I’m saying here. And I haven’t even said it yet.

“So.” Merc paces across the room, then turns on his heel to face us. His next words come out as a sigh. “What’s this shit about the cure?”

“Well, this is where those Boston people come in. You see, Johnny Boston’s woman—her name is Megan—she’s a Company scientist. Kind of. Her father ran some genetic program out in the Caribbean and she was part of this crazy plan to make people immortal.”

Harrison’s laugh comes out like a bark. “What?”

“At the very least, they were working on longevity. Life extension. And they had some success with rats. Don’t laugh.” I point at Harrison. “Because it was a true breakthrough. It was never gonna work on humans, don’t get me wrong. The whole thing is stupid as stupid comes. But Megan’s father was fed up with his role in all this Company bullshit and he turned this success into something real. An injection. Which didn’t prolong life, it actually fucked up a lot of shit inside the Company elites who were taking it.”

“Whoa.” Merc puts up both hands in a full-stop motion. “Back up. What the hell?”

“It’s complicated. But basically, the doc set them up with an injection they took on the regular. Like monthly or something. I’m not real clear on the protocol, it doesn’t even matter. The injection made them sick but as long as they kept taking the injection, no one even knew they were sick.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” Harrison says. Yeah, he’s way smarter than I ever gave him credit for. “They stop taking the injection, then they get sick.”

“Exactly.”

“So they had them by the balls,” Harrison adds.

“Good and fucking tight.”

Merc is nodding like he’s beginning to understand. “Is this what happened to the elites then? When all those people suddenly died a couple years back.”

“No. Not exactly. See, the elites aren’t as stupid as we think they are. Or maybe they are? But they are super fucking suspicious of everything and everyone because they are such lowlife pieces of shit, they assume everyone around them is a lowlife piece of shit too. So they gave these injections to all their kids as well. An insurance policy, I guess. Because they made sure that Johnny Boston’s niece had that same injection. It’s kinda hard to kill your brother’s kid, even if it is for the greater good.”

“Oh, fuck,” Harrison says.

Merc actually grabs his stomach. Like he’s gonna get sick.

“Don’t worry, Merc. Trust me, if your kids had those injections, they’d have died years ago like the others.”

His relatively calm expression turns into panic. “The others?” It’s not a good look for him.

“I’m not being callous here, but the whole let’s-kill-the-Company-for-good take-three operation, AKA the estate massacre that went down a few years back, actually worked. For the most part. But there was a lot of collateral damage.”

There is a sudden heaviness in the room with us as Merc and Harrison try to picture what this might’ve looked like. I’m sure they are seeing Santa Barbara in their minds. Or Kansas. But neither of those two attempts even come close to what happened during the estate incident.

I look down at my feet. I don’t need to try to picture it. I was there.

And so was Wendy.

Seventeen days before Gwendolyn Gale turned seventeen, something horrific happened. Something none of us thought she’d come back from.

But I pulled her through.

She’s still here.