Nobody (34 page)

In the fade, Claire couldn’t hate Ione. Not for Nix, and not for herself. She couldn’t let herself feel anything about the woman standing in front of her. All she could do was stare at her, very pointedly
not
wondering how it was that someone so clearly
unspecial
could have given birth to someone like Nix.

Ione wasn’t a Sensor, and she wasn’t a Nobody. She was Normal. Plain. And she had something that Claire wanted, very much, hanging on a solid chain around her solid, insignificant neck.

The key was small and delicate, and from the fade, Claire had a very hard time seeing it as important at all.

I need it. We need it
.

Claire, her mind full of Nix, her body aching with the remnants of their last kiss, remembered why she’d come, and like a dancer stretching herself into an arabesque, she moved forward on tiptoe, her feet barely touching the floor. Ione paused to straighten her skirt, and Claire sidestepped, eyes on the key. She reached out one faded, iridescent hand, placing her fingers just above the key’s surface.

This isn’t my hand. I don’t have a hand. I am a handless, fingerless Claire
.

The digits in question solidified and grasped the key.

That key is a part of that hand. That key is like a finger to that hand, and THAT HAND IS MINE
.

Under her emphatic declaration, Claire’s hand re-entered the fade, and for the millionth time, she was grateful for the amount of time she’d spent convincing herself of one thing or another, playing games inside her head that made fading and all that went with it a piece of cake.

Ione, completely unaware that she’d been robbed, continued on the path she’d been on when Claire had found her, tossing dyed-blond hair over one shoulder and power-walking down the hallway.

Straight through Claire, who had her key.

Get the key. Give it to Nix
.

Claire let his image fill her mind, until she was propelled unerringly and irresistibly toward him.

Up through ceiling. Up through floor. Up, up, up.

To Nix
.

Nix should have been concerned. Sergei, who Nix had now ascertained was roughly the size and build of a bear, had a crushing hold on his hand.

Except, of course, the hand wasn’t Nix’s.

Fade, fade, fade
, Nix told himself.
Don’t look at him. Don’t think about him. Just reclaim the hand and be done with it
.

“Tricky little Nobody, aren’t you?” Sergei’s voice was rough—more like a chain saw than gravel. “Partial solidification. Impressive.”

If Sergei noticed that he was bleeding profusely out of the neck, he didn’t give any visual indication of it, and Nix found himself drawn to the Sensor’s eyes and incapable of blocking out the man’s voice.

“I assume you’re Nix. One of them anyway. You lived here. Tried to kill yourself once. Typical.” Sergei’s words were hard-won. Even for the most powerful Sensor in North America, it took a great deal of effort to remember specific facts about someone who didn’t matter in the least. Those four sentences were probably all Sergei had on Nix—

And they were enough.

Enough to make him think about things he didn’t want to think about—

Make it messy, they’d told him—and he had. And then he’d come back to the institute and turned the knife on himself
.

“Claire.” Nix said her name out loud. If he could think about her, he could stay faded. Out of Sergei’s reach. Invincible, but for his solidified hand. “Claire.”

The second time he said her name, she appeared, rising up through the floor like an angel, or a ghost. She was on him in an instant, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her head in his chest, giving him every reason in the world to stay exactly where he was.

“You’re mine,” she said, banishing Sergei’s venomous words as time froze around them. “You belong here. You
belong to me.” Claire grabbed his arm, his solid arm, and then she met his eyes.

“I love this arm.” She trailed her eyes down the length of the limb. “I love that hand.”

This hand has touched Claire. This hand is mine, the way that I am hers
.

Nix’s hand faded, and so did the key. Because that key was their future. His and Claire’s. It was a part of them. A part of the only
us
he’d ever have. Claire locked her hands around his elbow and pulled, and together, they stumbled backward, Nix whole once more.

His hand should have hurt. It was doubtlessly bruised, possibly broken, but there was no place for pain in the fade.

“Key.” Nix stated the obvious, staring down at his hand.

“Key,” Claire replied, removing her hand from his arm and holding up the key she’d retrieved.

In reality, Sergei, frozen one second and moving the next, sensed that he’d lost his grip on Nix’s psyche and roared, an enraged bull seconds away from storming through the china shop.

Nix’s first impulse was to reach for Claire and stop time again, to buy himself precious seconds to think, but any way you sliced it, eventually, the two of them would have to split up again, and Sergei’s motion would pick up right where it left off, alerting the rest of the institute
to their presence. There was no way of stopping him. No way of keeping him contained.

The Society can’t know we’re here. The first thing they’ll do is hide the children. Or eliminate them
.

Nix moved quickly. In one fluid motion, he withdrew a gun from his side. He took aim. And he fired.

My choice this time. Mine
.

Nix didn’t dwell on it. He didn’t look to Claire for her reaction. They’d set this thing in motion together, and he knew without asking that they were going to see it through.

The feel of cool metal in his hand brought Nix fully into the present.

“Here,” Claire said, pressing her key into his palm and using her fingers to close his around it. “Now you have both of them.”

That was all she said. She didn’t say the other things, the obvious ones. Nothing about what he had to do next: initiate the meltdown; nothing about where she was headed: to the sublevels hidden deep underground and the little ones Nix couldn’t allow himself to think about.

Nothing about the dead man on the floor.

Because at this point, there was nothing left to do but finish it.

Claire pulled herself away from Nix. Without a word—
no good-byes
—she willed herself downward—down through floors and ceiling, ceilings and floors and layers and layers of earth to the sublevel basement that had existed under Nix’s feet for years.

Maze.

Labyrinth.

Claire knew a dozen words that would have been appropriate for the sublevels of the institute. Natalie’s Sensor had given Claire a good idea of where the children were housed, but faded, Claire couldn’t concentrate on words or paces or north northwests.

This way
.

Claire didn’t need directions. She didn’t need a plan. The same thing that had always allowed her to feel Nix set her on an unmistakable path.

Toward them.

Three steel doors, locked from the outside. Five armed men, standing guard. Two-way mirrors. White noise, layered with a sound that Claire couldn’t pinpoint, blared from speakers. If she’d been solid, she might have found it distracting, but the fade had its own kind of music.

This way
.

Layer after layer, door after door, Claire made her way toward those Like Her. The institute had its treasure buried so deep that trying to get to it in solid form would have been like getting to the innermost layer of a set of Russian stacking dolls.

Cage inside a cage inside a cage
.

For Claire, it was nothing. And for the first time, it occurred to her that if they could fade, all of these safeguards should have been nothing for Nix’s siblings, too.

Unless there was something—someone—they weren’t willing to leave behind.

Unable to fully entertain the thought, Claire walked through a final steel door and into a large room with four white walls. In one corner, there were three white beds; the opposite wall was lined with mirrors; and in the very center of the room, three silent children sat in a triangle formation, their backs to one another. Natalie was facing the door.

The little Null’s eyes didn’t register Claire’s presence, but as Claire came forward, the other two occupants of the room whirled around.

They can hear me through the fade
, Claire thought.
They can see me. Just like Nix
.

Natalie, unaware of what had caused the other children’s reaction, noted her objection to such behavior. “Don’t move. That’s the rule. If you break the rule, you’ll get punished. If you get punished, they might break you. We can’t play when you’re broken, and I don’t want to turn the jump rope myself.” Natalie’s voice was high and clear, and even from the fade, Claire realized that it had a sweetness to it, a quality that would have been compelling if Claire had been solid.

We can’t play when you’re broken
.

Claire found herself wondering what exactly
broken
meant. And why exactly Natalie’s biggest concern with her playmates’ potential for
breaking
was that they might be too battered to turn her rope. For the moment, though, Claire couldn’t think about Natalie, couldn’t ponder her words. All she could do was look at the little boy and little girl who flanked her side. And the moment she met their eyes, Claire knew that she was going to lose her fade.

She said a brief prayer that up on the main floor of the institute, Nix didn’t lose his.

If he does, he’s dead
.

That was the thought that greeted Claire the moment
she became solid. It was terrifying, paralyzing, and all consuming, and she didn’t have time for it. The guards watching this room might not register her presence immediately, but if they were taking the Nobody serum, if they’d been partially inoculated to her powers, they’d notice her eventually, and all hell would break loose. She had to get the twins and Natalie back to the fade before that happened.

And the sooner she got back to the fade, the safer Nix would be.

“Who are you?” Natalie demanded, not bothering to look Claire in the eye.

Claire smiled at her. “I’m Claire,” she whispered. “I’m here to take you all away.” And then, to Natalie’s absolute shock, Claire turned her back on the little girl and brought one hand up to gently touch Nix’s siblings—shoulder, arm.

Brush the hair out of their faces.

Look them in the eyes.

“I’m Claire,” she said again. “I’m here for you.”

“You’re here for me,” Natalie said helpfully. “I told him to get you. I don’t want to play this game anymore. I want to leave.”

“We’re all going to leave,” Claire said. “All three of us. And to do that, we have to work together.”

“They have to leave, too,” Natalie agreed. “They have to leave because they’re mine. I don’t like it when they’re gone.”

The two little Nobodies—Claire couldn’t bear to think
of them as Nix and Nix—moved closer to Natalie, their little bodies nearly touching hers.

They love her
.

To Claire’s surprise, Natalie closed the gap, grabbing each of the other little ones by their arms, a little too hard.

“They have to come, too. They’re mine.”

Like they were toys. Or dogs.

It didn’t seem to have occurred to the little girl that Claire might want to get her companions out of her own accord. Then again, chances were good that the children had never met a grown-up—or almost grown-up—Nobody. Natalie had never seen anyone who would have given either of the Nixes the time of day.

“I would never leave them behind,” Claire told Natalie solemnly, and then she made eye contact with first the little girl and then the little boy. “Never, ever, ever.”

The distinct sound of rattling—locks churning, doors opening, yelling—interrupted Claire’s promise.

“We’re going to go away now,” Claire told Nix’s little siblings. “We’re going to go somewhere no one can ever hurt you, and Natalie’s going to go, too.”

“We tried,” the little boy said. “We tried and tried, and Dr. Milano got mad, because we couldn’t do it. But if we do it, they’ll take Natalie away.”

“Nobody’s taking Natalie away,” Claire said, and then she was struck by the double meaning of the sentence she’d just uttered.

Nobody
is
taking Natalie away
.

“I can fade, too,” Claire told the children. “And if all three of us fade, and if we make Natalie a part of us, the very most important part—”

Natalie smiled, and the expression, though aesthetically adorable, was chilling to Claire. Natalie was used to being the most important part. She couldn’t fathom being anything less.

Doesn’t care about anyone else. This could end badly. This could end very—

“Let’s close our eyes,” Claire said, her tone making her feel like either a preschool teacher or a drill sergeant, and unsure of which.
“Less than shadow. Less than air.”

It wasn’t her motto, but she was betting it was theirs, same as it was Nix’s. The Society would have taught it to them, made them believe it, the same way they’d taught it to him.