Making a frustrated sound, Vanik turns from the table and storms toward us. He then seems to check himself, shifting back to his previous self-assurance as he points to a closed door opposite the one he came in through. “Throw her in with him and watch her closely while I go and make sure we won’t be interrupted. I won’t risk Melody and her team showing up to save the day. Not before I’m ready.”

Even if I could talk right now, I wouldn’t tell him that my mum isn’t coming, that she has no idea where we are. If the threat she poses keeps Vanik distracted, even if only for a few extra minutes while I try to clear my head enough to think, enough to move, I’ll take what I can get.

“Enjoy your family reunion,” Vanik says smugly to me as Ward drags me away. “For what it’s worth.”

His words don’t make sense. Riley is in this room, and my mum isn’t here at all. But my hazy mind doesn’t linger on trying to understand, not when my eyes see something impossible just as Ward opens the door and hauls me into the next room.

Vanik’s face—it’s changing.

Just like when we were in the catacombs and Cami’s physique melted like candle wax, the same thing is happening again.

In the space of mere moments, it’s not Vanik standing before me at all.

It’s the security guard.

The man who stole my memories.

The man who sent me to Lengard.

The man who murdered my father.

“I’ve waited nearly three years for this day,” he tells me, his voice like oil, his eyes like the blackest night. “It’s good to see you again, my little weapon.”

And then the door slams shut between us.

I’m staring at the door; staring, staring, staring as I try to wrap my head around what I just saw. Around what just happened.

If that wasn’t Vanik, then who—

“Six-Eight-Four?”

I try to shove Ward away, but my limbs are still useless, my aching head foggy and unable to tell the difference between dream and reality. That must be what is happening here, some kind of hallucination, because when Ward steps away of his own accord, leaving me lying on the cold, tiled ground, the next person I see is the one who I thought I’d been chasing since the catacombs.

“Six-Eight-Four?” Vanik says again—the real Vanik—as he approaches. He’s much more disheveled than the so-called Vanik in the other room, his chin covered in stubble, dark circles beneath his sunken, bloodshot eyes, his hollow cheeks little more than paper-thin skin over bones. “Can you talk? Can you move?”