Dad brought the straw up and jammed it into his mouth. “I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.” He went to the window, pushed aside the thick orange curtain, and checked the parking lot. “I agreed to take on the boys’ project because I was in a bad place at the time. Your mother and I—” He cut himself off. “I mean, Sura and I… we’d been divorced for a while, but she was still a large part of my life, and we were fighting again…. Anyway, I wanted to get as far away from everything as I could. I heard about the project at the farmhouse and agreed to take it on before I knew what it entailed.”
He ran his hand over his graying hair, smoothing it down. “And then when you came along…” He shook his head, the hair falling out of place again. “Well, I was stuck at that point. I didn’t think you’d ever find out. At least not the way you did.”
“Riley said I was altered, too. Is that true?” Dad looked at me grimly, confirming it with a nod. “When did I have treatments?”
“You had treatments twice a month, in your food.” He eyed me, waiting for the information to sink in.
“The lemonade.” He’d given me treatments in my lemonade, the only tradition we had. Sam and the others had been going through withdrawal since they’d left the lab. I’d had headaches, too; I’d thought they were from the stress.
Dad continued. “The alterations you went through were minimal. I suspect you might be stronger than the average girl of your build. But mostly you are connected to the boys on some level even I can’t understand. And they will listen to you without fail.”
“What about Trev? Was he altered the same way? Do I have sway over him?”
“Why do you ask?”
I told him about Trev turning on us. The news hit him the same way it had hit me.
“Wow. I had no idea. Trev’s treatments were different, yes. I thought they were testing a different drug on him, to see how he would interact with you and the others. I never would have guessed he was working for the Branch.”
“It explains a lot, though. I can’t ever remember him listening to me when it made more sense not to. The Branch wouldn’t have wanted him to be under my control.” I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Why were they taking the boys from the lab in the first place?”
“They were going to move them to another facility and leave you at the farmhouse to test the connection across states. Connor wanted to push the program to the limit before—”
“Before selling it.”
Dad sighed. “I try not to get involved in all that. I just like the science. Or, at least I did.”
He pinned his straw between his index and middle fingers. “I knew what he was doing, you know.”
I looked up. “What?”
“Sam. I knew that he was trying to escape. The straws. I knew.” He massaged the bridge of his nose. “All those years I kept them down there, and there wasn’t a single day that went by that I didn’t imagine what it would be like to let them out and let you go.
“It took me a long time to even accept what I was doing. It helped that Sam and the others didn’t remember a whole lot. And you helped. You kept my mind off things. I’d come upstairs and you’d be there waiting for me, and for a second I’d forget about the boys in the lab.” Dad eased into the chair in the opposite corner of the room, propping his elbows on the armrests. “I owe you all. I wish there was some way I could make it up to you. I really do.”
“We have to get them back,” I said. “Sam and Cas.”
Dad shook his head. “I don’t see how we could, Anna. I’m sorry. The Branch will try to clean out their memories again, and with Sam…” He shook his head.
“What?”
“They’ve already pushed him to his limits. His memories have been altered more than the others. He was having memory flashbacks even in the lab. I didn’t record that, though. I worried about what they’d do to him if they found out. I suspect that without the suppressant, the flashes will get worse….”
I went cold all over.
Dad must have noticed the look on my face, because he said, “They have gotten worse, haven’t they?”
“What will happen if they try to wipe him again?”
Dad shook his head in a way that said he wasn’t sure what the answer was, but it wasn’t a good one. “It’s best if we don’t get involved. You are free. Nick’s free. That’s more than I could have ever hoped for.”
I got to my feet. “Tell me what will happen to him, Dad. You have to tell me.”