Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1)

by April Daniels

How come nobody’s ever heard of this?” The government has done all sorts of sketchy things over the years, but human testing of a superweapon is screwed up even for the Pentagon. “It’s all still top secret. There were some glitches; all the test subjects died within six months except Granddad. But that’s only for the people who were directly treated with the serum. If you get it through your parents, it only carries a fifty-percent risk of leukemia within ten years of exposure. When I was born, I had three brothers. Now I have one.” “Jesus Christ!” “Ain’t nothing to worry your mind about.” She sets her arm on my shoulder. “I’ve been in remission for ten years, and I get a blood screen every other month.” The complications I’ve been dealing with seem petty and insignificant all of the sudden. I want to say something profound and insightful. What I come out with is, “That sucks.” “Eh, you get used to it. You won’t be telling nobody about this, by the way.” She says this with the kind of vehemence that lets me know that, superpowers or not, this isn’t a subject I want to make her angry about. “We know the serum’s effects are heritable. The Feds don’t, and we aim to keep it that way. They’ve done enough to my family already.”