“I’m sorry, Six-Eight-Four,” Vanik says quietly. “From what I’ve ascertained since arriving here, the bullet lodged in his heart. He’s clinically dead—not even Camelot’s healing power could bring him back now. The life support he’s hooked up to is only so that his cells stay alive enough to … enough to …”

To harvest.

That’s what Vanik isn’t saying. Like he’s afraid of my reaction.

He should be. “Why?”

He knows what I’m asking. “Did anyone ever tell you about your father’s ability?”

I move my gaze from my dad—my clinically dead dad—to spear Vanik with my eyes. Despite the tears swiftly lining my lashes, or perhaps because of them, he visibly recoils from me.

“Since you implied a week ago that he was alive, but I found out this morning that he was murdered nearly three years ago by a man who no one remembers, I haven’t exactly had the chance to find someone willing to share that information.”

“In my defense, I thought he was alive,” Vanik says. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that that was his attempt at an apology. “Christopher Scott was a good man. A good Speaker. A good father to you, at least before he and Melody made you believe them dead and set you on a path to end up at Lengard.”

“That’s not what happened,” I say, but I don’t explain further. In the back of my mind, I’m amazed by how far the web of deceit goes, by how deep the security guard’s manipulations spread. Vanik hasn’t once mentioned Riley, as if he doesn’t even know—or more likely, remember—that my parents had another child before me. I wonder what else he doesn’t remember, how much of his own life might have been influenced by the unknown man.

“Well, whatever happened,” Vanik continues carefully, “from what I’ve ascertained, the reason he’s lying here is because we’ve all been strung along for years. You, me, your father. Who knows who else. All because of what we each can do.”

“What can my dad do?” I ask. Then I amend, more quietly, “What could he do?”

“Christopher Scott was perhaps the most powerful Speaker in existence. Even more powerful than you and your Creator ability. But what he could do was never something that I had any desire to chemically engineer, never had a need to replicate.”

“Answer the question, Vanik,” I snarl.

He sends me a warning look—which I return—and says, “Your dad could take away the Speaking abilities of others, Six-Eight-Four. All it took was a single word.”

The room starts spinning around me all over again.