Nobody (31 page)

Nix stared at “Natalie.” In the picture, she looked on, vaguely interested, as his little brother and sister struggled against the hands that held them in the baby-size dunk tanks.

Her indifference wasn’t because they were Nobodies.

It was because she was a Null. Discovering that some of his victims had been Normals hadn’t changed Nix’s feelings toward those he’d killed who weren’t. Murderers. Serial killers. Psychopaths.

I’ve killed, but I can stop. They can’t. They can’t ever stop
.

“You realize she’s a monster,” Nix said evenly, trying not to let his thoughts show on his face. “That she’s doing this to you.”

“She’s not. She’s a child! And she’s sweet. She is …” The man—who didn’t seem like a Sensor any longer—was equal parts adamant and broken. “If you want them, you have to take her. I can give you the North American institute. I can give you weaknesses, blueprints, anything you want or need. Just promise to make her safe.”

Nix could do that. He could lie. And The Society could come apart at the seams, just like that.

“We promise.” Claire beat him to it, and Nix cursed himself. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t lie. Not about this. She’d made the promise with every intention of keeping it, and she would never understand that a little, little girl could be dangerous.

So dangerous that The Society should have known better than to think it could keep her caged.

“If she’s as sweet as you say,” Nix said slowly, “then why don’t the other Sensors see it? Why don’t the scientists?”

Claire arrived at the answer before their captive actually articulated it. “If there’s a Null-2, there must be a Null-1, right? A serum that protects people from a Null’s powers? Are you taking it?”

The man shook his head.

“
Were
you?”

He nodded. Nix felt something, akin to pity, in the pit of his stomach.

“And when I stopped taking Null-1, that’s when I met Natalie. The real Natalie, not Subject N-632.”

Nix looked back at the little girl. She was small. And powerful. And sooner or later, she’d be dangerous.

But that wasn’t his problem, and it wasn’t Claire’s. It wasn’t the little boy Nix’s or the little girl, Nix’s—and if this Nix had his say, it never would be. They’d never feel
a large hand in the small of their backs, pushing them toward that first kill.

Terrifying. Horrifying. Addictive
.

Nix ground his teeth. The Nulls of the world weren’t his problem anymore. They weren’t his responsibility, and if this Sensor wanted little Natalie, the ticking time bomb, he could have her. It took Nix less than a second to come to the decision that for Claire and the little ones, he’d gladly sell his soul. Go against everything he’d believed in once.

Not. My. Problem
.

“Fine. The Null lives. The Society—this portion, at least—dies. Now tell us everything we need to know and get the hell out of here.”

Claire let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding. She’d promised to save the Sensor’s Natalie before it had occurred to her that Nix might not agree to do it, and that realization had cut her nearly in two. Because Null or not, manipulative or not, born wrong or not, Natalie was just a little girl.

A little, little girl who couldn’t help what she was any more than little Claire had been able to help being left and forgotten and ignored.

Null drug. Black hole. Hurts. Wrong
.

Claire thought of Evan Sykes’s miracle drug. Null-2—made with little Natalie’s blood—had turned Abigail’s father into a pod person. Uncaring. Manipulative. Cruel.
For a moment, Claire was overcome with a still-frame daydream, chilling in its simplicity: Natalie smiling.

She’s just a little girl
.

“The institute is extremely secure. You’re familiar with the upper level; it’s nearly identical to the sublevels. For both, Sensors are scanned by an entire team before being allowed into or out of the building, and only a handful of Normals have the kind of access necessary to travel past the first floor. Besides Ione and Dr. Milano, no Normals have access to the sublevel entrance at all. You’ll have to fade to get in unannounced, and with a subset of the security team on the serum, there is an increased chance that your presence will be detected.”

Claire focused on what their informant was saying. He sounded as if he’d practiced these words many times, as if he’d whispered them to Natalie as a bedtime story when he’d promised, again and again, to get her out.

“You weren’t able to see through our fades,” Nix cut in. “You didn’t stop taking the Nobody serum, correct? Just the Null one?”

Claire knew what Nix was really asking. They needed to know just how potent the serum was. Their informant hadn’t been able to see them in the fade. His partner had only been able to do so after his third dose. If this was the serum’s normal efficacy, it wasn’t much of a threat.

Yet.

The Sensor cleared his throat, a gargling sound that
reminded Claire that he was human. And old. “I’m still on the Nobody serum. It’s probably the only reason that I was able to integrate the information I’ve been able to gather about the two of you. I have a horrible attention span, and my senses and memory aren’t what they used to be—”

“What are the chances of someone at the institute pulling an Erikson?” Nix asked, cutting the man off and moving on to his next question without segue.

The Sensor was nonplussed. “Erikson was remarkably stupid. One does not obtain a position on the institute’s security force with that kind of stupidity. No one else will double up doses—not without Dr. Milano’s approval, and he won’t give it until the full effects of a single dose are documented. No one will be able to see through your fade, but they might be slightly more aware of your presence on an instinctual level, and once you stop fading, they will be more likely to explicitly register your existence and less likely to ignore you than they otherwise would be.”

For what seemed like the hundredth time, the Sensor shrugged. Claire felt Nix seething beside her, and she leaned into him, trying to intuit why.

He wants answers. He wants to be alone
.

Nix couldn’t stand to feel emotions around other people. He’d been taught that he didn’t deserve them. Sensors were the ones who’d imparted that lesson. And right now Claire could see, in the lines of Nix’s body and
the set of his jaw, that he was trying very hard not to feel anything.

Not to think of the little girl Nix and the little boy Nix being turned day by day into weapons.

Not to think of the things that little Natalie might do once they let her go.

“Thanks for the warning, but we don’t need it.” Claire was surprised to find her voice textured in complement to Nix’s. Lower. Darker. Even. “We want the real information. What’s The Society’s Achilles’ heel? How do we destroy the institute? Both levels, all of the drugs.”

The Sensor ran one of his knuckles up the bridge of his nose, like a person who’d worn glasses for many years before switching to contacts. “The Society has a fail-safe mechanism. An insurance policy against exposure. If any individual branch is threatened with imminent and widespread exposure—if the press break in, or the police start making arrests, or anyone infiltrates the security far enough to get ahold of classified files, the directive to meltdown is given.”

“Meltdown?” Claire found herself sickly fascinated with the idea.

“The entire institute is equipped to self-destruct within a five-minute window. Once activated, the self-destruct mechanism cannot be undone. Five minutes after activation, the building and anyone inside are dust.” He paused. “Both levels.”

“What’s the catch?” Nix asked the question before Claire could get to it. “Why would The Society make it that easy to take the institute down?”

“Who said that activating the self-destruct mechanism was easy?” The Sensor shook his head and clucked his tongue. “I assure you, it’s not a simple matter of pushing a red button. Were that the case, I would hardly have to enlist Nobodies as help.”

Claire didn’t respond to those words. Neither did Nix. Eventually, the Sensor elaborated.

“To activate self-destruction, you need two keys. The keys are in the possession of the two heads of the institute, who must agree that the breach of security is severe enough to merit meltdown.”

“Ione.” The muscles in Nix’s throat visibly tightened as he spoke the name, and Claire felt her own clenching in empathy.

“Ione has one key,” the Sensor agreed. “And Sergei has the other.”

“Sergei?”

Claire arched an eyebrow at Nix, surprised that there was someone at the institute who he’d never met.

“Sergei is an All Sensor. The only one in North America. He’s a bit of a recluse, but his powers are unparalleled, so his position at The Society has never been in question. He lives in a penthouse on the top floor of the institute. If you explored it, you probably didn’t find it to your liking.
Very plain, very severe. Sergei is a dangerous man, and he finds Nobodies rather … aversive.”

Claire thought of the four Sensors she’d seen since coming after Nix. “I’m guessing that by
All Sensor
, you mean that he—”

“Is gifted in all five senses? Yes, quite. He’s from an old Society family—the bloodline goes back to the old country and then some. He’s also remarkably lethal. He doesn’t leave the institute and he doesn’t enjoy being around people—sensory overload, you see. You’ll need to infiltrate his quarters and find his key. It will likely be on his person; Ione wears hers around her neck.”

Situation: What if your boyfriend’s evil mother was wearing the key to the kingdom around her neck, and you had to get it to save the world? What if you knew that he couldn’t do it, because seeing her would tear him apart and make him vulnerable?

What if you had the chance to kill her?

Claire shook her head. Actually, physically shook it. Because as much as she wanted to hurt The Society and the people who’d hurt Nix, she didn’t want to be the type of person who could think of murder and smile.

“So we get the keys,” Nix cut in. “What do we do with them?”

The Sensor started talking about the location of the self-destruct trigger, and Claire, with no frame of reference with which to ground the directions, found herself
tuning out, picturing Nix’s mother. His little brother and sister.

Natalie.

“I know the location you’re describing.” Nix’s voice broke into Claire’s thoughts, and she forced herself to concentrate on the present. “Never knew what it was, but I know where it is. Getting to it won’t be a problem.”

The Sensor replied, addressing his comments to the space just over Nix’s left shoulder. “It’s not getting to the mechanism that’s the problem, although I assure you that no one besides a Nobody would have the ability to do so without the proper security clearance.” The Sensor paused, and Claire prepared herself. If getting to the mechanism wasn’t the problem that meant that there
was
a problem. And problems, when they involved The Society, tended to be deadly. Just ask Senator Wyler. Just ask Evan Sykes.

“The chamber in which the trigger is housed is rigged. The moment one of the keys is inserted, poisonous gas is emitted into the room. It reacts to flesh like acid, can eat through any protective materials you might wear in an attempt to circumvent your skin’s melting off your body, and a single breath is fatal. Death is instantaneous to anyone inside the fail-safe chamber when the key is inserted.”

After she got past the mental image of a skeleton leaking skin, Claire could not help but see the flaw in the
logic of such a system. “Why would Sergei and Ione ever agree that a meltdown was necessary if it meant they had to die?”

The Sensor chuckled. Nervous laughter that Claire suspected had nothing to do with the fact that he was talking to people who mattered no more than the average ball of dust and everything to do with the fact that he was planning the destruction of all that had ever mattered to him. At the request of an eight-year-old girl. “Ione and Sergei are immune to the poison. They’ve been taking it in very, very small doses since they ascended to power. It takes two years to develop the immunity, and it’s part of the screening process for promotion. If you die because of the treatments, you’re fired.”

The Society doesn’t care who dies
, Claire thought dully.
It kills Nobodies. They kill Nulls. They kill their own without a second thought
.

Claire was caught between wanting to shiver and wanting to growl. She was fifteen. Nix wasn’t much older. The Society had been around for thousands of years, and there was no one else to stop it. Stop
them
.

Nix and Claire had to do this.

They were going to do this.

“Gas can’t poison what’s not there.” Nix’s voice regained a bit of its edge, and Claire felt it on every inch of her skin. “The mechanism isn’t Nobody-proofed.”

The Sensor shrugged. “Design flaw, I suppose. Though,
of course, one must solidify to insert the keys, and then fade again within an instant to avoid certain death.”

Clearly, the idea of putting a Nobody in danger wasn’t a problem for the Sensor.
Shocking
, Claire thought. Out loud, she said, “So we activate the mechanism. What next?”

Nix laid his hand on the back of her neck, and Claire felt his appreciation that she could be his voice when he didn’t have one and ask the questions on the tip of his tongue.

“While one of you initiates the self-destruct sequence, the other will need to go to B-4. The children’s quarters.”

I know what you’re hiding in the lower levels there
. Those were the words that Sykes had used to threaten Ione. The ones with which he’d signed his own death warrant. The Society kept children in the lower levels of the institute, and Sykes had wanted a slice of the Nobody pie. A pet assassin of his very own.

The Sensor continued, “I’ve snuck a look at Milano’s files, and the math is straightforward enough. Three Nobodies should be strong enough to cover one Null for a very short period of time, if the Null is willing. Natalie has been practicing with X-17 and X-18. She’ll be ready.”