Nobody (33 page)

As far as precautions went, Claire thought the artillery strapped to their sides was rather extensive, but this wasn’t her realm of expertise. It was his.

“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t ever shoot a gun, and everything else would stay sheathed. So long as we’re in complete control, all we need to do to get the keys is stop time, find the keys, and materialize just enough to take them.”

Claire noticed that Nix said that they needed to find the keys. Not that they needed to find Sergei and Ione.

Ione. His mother.

Claire almost said something, but she decided against it. She knew, better than anyone, that there were some hurts you couldn’t afford to feel.

Nix closed his eyes, and his body grew bright with the fade. Claire’s lips softened, as they always did, and the impulse to join him, to let go, to forget about what they were doing and why, was incredible.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she watched as he spoke. “This isn’t my hand. It’s not me. It’s not mine. It doesn’t belong here.”

Claire watched the fade slowly recede back from Nix’s fingertips, and when he knelt to the ground, he plucked a single blade of grass from the forest floor.

“You try.”

She did. The warmth of the fade came easily and quickly, and with a serene smile, Claire said good-bye to the digits on her right hand. It was much easier than shooting a gun. What was a hand anyway? It didn’t have thoughts or feelings. It didn’t have memories. She’d raised that hand in class, again and again, and been overlooked. Really, in the grand scheme of things, hands weren’t such a very big deal.

“Good,” Nix said, once she’d accomplished the task. “We might lose timelessness when we partially solidify, and we’ll definitely lose it when we split up, but we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Claire saw many bridges in their future, not the least of which was Natalie the little Null. Their future was full of crossings, but for now there was only one detail to be settled, one point on which Claire had no intention of giving in.

“You can’t go anywhere near Ione.”

Nix whipped his head up, but she didn’t give him the chance to stare her down.

“Thinking about my parents makes me lose my fade. She’s your mother, Nix.”

“She’s not my—” Nix’s words caught in his throat as though someone had closed a hand around his throat, and the real world—the solid world—pulled at him.

“You lost your fade,” Claire said, matter-of-fact about the force that had jarred him into silence. “Just now talking about her made you lose your fade. And when you lose your fade, I lose mine. And if we lose it in the institute, then these weapons won’t be for show.” Claire dragged her free hand down to the knife at her side. “Slice,” she said. “Stab.”

She knew how his mind worked. He didn’t want her to kill, and he certainly didn’t want her fighting for her life.

“Fine,” he said. “You take Ione. I’ll take Sergei. If we split up, we won’t be able to freeze time, but we won’t lose our fades either. We’ll meet back, and then—”

Claire saw the moment that it occurred to Nix just how much he abhorred what had to happen next.

“One of us has to go get the kids, and one of us has to initiate the meltdown,” Claire said, picking up where he had left off. “Both of which will require leaving the fade, at least for a moment, and both run the risk of tipping the powers that be off to our presence. If we stick together and go for the kids first, they’ll find a way to block the meltdown mechanism. If we initiate meltdown, the first thing they’ll do is go for the kids.”

“We’ll have to split up. Again.” Nix spat out the words.

Claire knew that neither one of those jobs would be
one he’d willingly have given her, if he had the choice. Nix hated Natalie. Hated Nulls. And he didn’t want her anywhere near one. But the alternative involved partial solidification in a room with gas that could kill her, stripping her flesh from her bones in a heartbeat.

Whatever decision Nix made, whatever task he set her, he’d hate himself for it eventually. And right now they really didn’t have time for the luxury of self-loathing.

“I’ll get the kids,” Claire said quietly. “They’d do the same thing to you that Ione would. And no offense, but I’ll stand a better chance of bringing Natalie into the fade.”

Claire didn’t have Nix’s history with Nulls. She’d already taken the Null serum with her. And she’d survived, basically intact.

“I don’t want you near the Null,” Nix said.

“And I don’t want you to risk losing your hands or your life if something goes wrong when you insert the keys.”

Claire saw the second her words registered on Nix’s face. Both jobs were dangerous, but only one had caused the Sensor to make reference to
instant death
.

Nix closed his eyes in defeat, and for a second, Claire was terrified that she’d lost him. That he’d retreat, close down, block himself off from her in every way that mattered.

Don’t leave me
, she told him silently.
Stay. Fight
.

As if he heard her silent plea, Nix opened his eyes, and placed his hands on either side of her waist, under her
shirt and over her weapons, sending a jolt of heat through her body.

Be careful
, he told her with his eyes, but out loud, he said other words. Massive, undeniable, un-take-backable words that she’d stopped expecting to hear. “Claire?”

“Yes?”

Her heart was beating. She was scared. Not of The Society. Not of tonight. Of this moment. Of now.

“You tamed me.”

Something gave inside of her chest, and it almost felled her. And just when she thought she might have imagined the words, he repeated them.

“You tamed me, Claire. I love you, just so you know.”

The dam inside her broke, and Claire repeated the words back to him, felt them, meant them.

Maybe they’d come out of this, and maybe they wouldn’t, but they had to try, and as Claire brought her lips to his and lost herself in the smell, taste, feel of Nix, she knew that it was worth it.

Live or die, succeed or fail, for better, or for worse—it was worth it.

White walls. White floor. White bed.

Even from the outside of the institute, Nix could smell the pungent odor of disinfectant and feel the walls closing in. Gravel crunched beneath his feet, but there were no flashbacks today. No memories. Just him and Claire and the knowledge that they might not make it out of this alive.

“Ready?” Claire whispered.

Nix nodded. He bowed his head, let reality fall from his body.
Fade. Fade. Fade
. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to Claire’s. Her face was bright with the power of the fade, and the rest of the world paled in comparison. His hands moved to touch her petal-soft skin, and she
reciprocated the motion. They moved in tandem, coming closer and closer to each other, their bodies in perfect sync.

“Ready,” Nix said, his lips an inch from hers. He caught her hands in his. He felt her breath on his face and warmth spread out over his body. The smell and sound and feel of Claire faded banished everything else from his mind. The world went still around them.

Fade. Touch. Stop time
.

“Now or never,” Claire whispered.

They turned, and without another word, they flowed hand in hand toward the building. Past the gates that kept visitors out, through the thick wooden doors, through the foyer, through the dozens of Sensors, frozen in the process of screening everyone who entered. The glints of light reflected in the Sensors’ faces and hands flared in reaction to the presence of two Nobodies, but the Sensors themselves remained motionless.

Step one
, Nix thought, tightening his grip on Claire’s hand,
infiltrate the institute
.

Claire squeezed his hand. The last time he’d come here he’d lost his fade, but there was no danger of that now—not when they were together.

Step two: acquire the keys
.

“We have to split up,” Claire whispered. Those weren’t the words he wanted to hear, but even as she dropped his hand and took a step back away from his body, he could
still feel the ghost of her touch on his face, his arms. Nix felt himself sliding back into the time line as easily as they’d left it, and as the world sped up around them, the urge to reach for Claire’s hand again took on a life of its own. But if Nix did that, if he took hold of her and refused to let go, they’d have to go together to get the keys, and that would mean seeing Ione. Nix couldn’t risk doing that. Couldn’t look at the woman who’d bartered away his life. Couldn’t think about her. Couldn’t allow her name into even the deepest recesses of his mind.

Nix turned his back on Claire, took one step away from her and then another. He pictured her face, like an artist sketching it onto a blank page. He was faded; so was she. No matter where they went or what they did next, Claire was his.

For the rest of his life, for the rest of hers, they belonged to each other and nothing could touch them. Not gravity. Not physics. Not Sensors.

Three steps. Four. Five.

The pace of Nix’s steps built, until he was running. Through the walls and the hallways, the rooms and the labs and the corridors. This was the institute he knew, the one he’d paced, a ghost in the shadows, for years. Only this time, as Nix ascended from the first floor to the second, from the second to the third, he moved with purpose. He was going to find the All Sensor, to get his key. Nix wasn’t an eavesdropper, an interloper skulking in the
walls of the apartments The Society kept for people who mattered. He was a man on a mission.

Keeping Claire with him in his mind—the way she looked when she slept and the way she looked when she danced through trees and crowds and the way she smiled, more with the left half of her mouth than the right—Nix felt a surge of power. Like The Society was playing on his territory, instead of the other way around.

We’re not David. We’re Goliath
.

Moving quickly, Nix pushed himself through the door to the top-floor apartment, his feet forming no impression on the thick, lush carpet under his feet. He’d snuck up on targets this way, looked into their eyes, and solidified only long enough to deliver The Society’s death sentence, again and again.

If he’d been anyone or anything else, Nix’s heart would have skipped a beat and pounded against his rib cage to make up for it, but he was calm, cool, detached. He walked through the foyer, through the living room, through the kitchen, and back to a bedroom, crossing invisible lines he’d never crossed and bringing himself face-to-face with his prey.

Sergei.

Nix observed his target for one second, possibly two. He couldn’t tell, from the fade, whether Sergei was short or tall, fat or thin, because the halo of light that ringed his face was more than just a sheen of energy. It was blinding.

Everything in this world has an energy.…

Nix allowed the light to wash over him and forced himself to look through it. All Sensor or not, powerful or not, his target was a man. A solid, pitiful man, sequestered so deep in his own burrow that this was the first time he and Nix had ever been in the same room.

Dispassionately, Nix scanned the man’s body, staring through the light, refusing to blink his immaterial eyes. He was looking for a key. Small. Black. Star-shaped end, embedded with microchips.

Gotcha
.

Nix saw the outline of the key—little, unimportant, solid—and it took him a moment to realize where exactly the object he was searching for was. He’d half expected Sergei to wear it on a chain around his neck, but this wasn’t a man who took chances. The key was there; Nix could see it, but instead of lying under Sergei’s shirt, it was embedded under the skin of his neck, just above his collarbone.

Small. Black. Star shaped
.

A thin white scar betrayed the surgery that had placed the key under a thin layer skin, and even faded, Nix’s mind did the math. Grabbing the key, tearing it from this man’s flesh—that was an act accomplished easily enough with fingers that slipped in and out of the fade. But as the bulging flecks of light around his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands testified, this man was more in touch with
energy than anyone Nix had ever met. The chances that he wouldn’t notice a pair of hands, even if they belonged to a Nobody, as they tore open his throat—

Slim to none
.

Nix took a single step back from his target. The gun strapped to his side tempted him.

Shoot him. Kill him. Take the key
.

It would be so easy; the Sensor couldn’t see Nix coming if he was dead, couldn’t raise an alarm that might tip the rest of the building off to Claire’s presence before the game had even begun.

Nix closed his eyes, picturing Claire. Feeling her. Seeing the world through her eyes.

Somewhere in this building, she was key hunting as well. He could feel her, in his blood and in his mind.

I am what I choose. I won’t kill unless I have to
.

In one lighting-quick movement, Nix thrust his arm through the dense flicker of light and into Sergei’s neck. The fade fell from his hand and Nix closed his fingers around the key and pulled. The skin that held the treasure in place gave way with a sound like the tearing of wet cardboard. Nix set his mind to reclaiming the hand—and the key—but before he could bring them back into the fade, a massive, calloused fist caught those five thieving fingers in a bone-crunching grip.

The hand has the key
, Nix thought.
And Sergei has the hand
.