Nobody (22 page)

Abigail, sensing her friend had run dry, took several breaths before replying. “There’s a safe built into the desk.”

The desk?

Claire met Nix’s eyes, and an unspoken obscenity passed between the two of them, followed by an urgent mandate:
fade
.

Claire squeezed her eyes shut. Shut her mind down. Thought of what Nix had said. About triggers.

Nothing. You know what that feels like. Reach for it. Grab it. Make it yours
.

Instead of thinking about how unimportant she was, Claire thought of the fade. She thought of running. She thought of being nothing.

And the next instant, she was.

Nix couldn’t fade until Claire did, and for one horrible moment, he thought that she’d be too held in place by the exchange Sykes’s daughter and her friend were having to let go. Nix wouldn’t have blamed Claire if she couldn’t
shrug off reality in the face of Normal girls. For all Nix knew, girls just like them had walked all over Claire at her old school.

Beside him, Claire’s eyelids closed and then fluttered. The tension melted away from her jaw. She stopped nibbling on her bottom lip.

She’s fading. Three … two … one …

Footsteps approached the far side of the desk, and Nix realized that Claire wasn’t the one risking exposure.

Less than shadow. Less than …

Claire
.

Once she crossed over, thinking her name was enough to bring him into unreality beside her. She stayed, crouched behind the desk, but Nix shook his head at her and stood up.

“They can’t see us. Can’t hear us.”

Claire climbed to her feet, her tangled hair looking more like a halo for the light shining off it. “I’ve never been this close,” she whispered, “to … Solids.”

“Normals,” he corrected. She took a step toward him, and Nix felt his heart—his transparent, weightless, nothing heart—leap in his chest. If they touched, if her hand brushed his, if he reached for her—they’d leave the time line behind. The world would freeze around them, and nothing else would matter.

Nothing
.

Nix wanted to touch her, badly, but he didn’t. They
couldn’t touch in the fade without stopping time, and if time stopped, the scene unfolding around them—the one they desperately needed to understand—would freeze.

Nix met Claire’s eyes, and she nodded to show that she understood, then took a step back.

“Mother dearest doesn’t even know this is here,” one of the Normal girls was saying. “She went through the other safes when he died. Looking for booze, probably. Or money. She didn’t think he’d have hiding spots inside his hiding spots.”

“Enough with the soliloquy, Abs. Open it!”

Nix felt the urge to swat at the solid girls, like they were flies or a bad smell that needed to waft away. Listening to them took effort; their words were an annoyance. The need to touch Claire, to shrug off time, was overwhelming.

But he couldn’t. He had to let time run its course. Let Sykes’s solid daughter saunter over to the senator’s desk and press a hidden button. Let the top of the desk shift to reveal a secret compartment.

“Tapes, tapes, tapes … drugs!” The one called Abigail sang as she rifled through the contents of the compartment.

“What’s on the tapes?” The one called Courtney asked.

“Who cares? All I know is this stuff is killer strong. The second it hits you, you don’t feel anything.”

Don’t feel anything
.

The words would have made Nix sick to his stomach if he’d processed them, but he couldn’t let them be real, didn’t dissect their meaning. Not here. Not now.

Now was Claire.
Claire, Claire, Claire
and
fade, fade, fade
. They were invincible, untouchable, eternal.

So long as nothing else mattered.

“God, Abby, what
is
that stuff? It looks disgusting.”

Nix didn’t look. Couldn’t look at the drug Abigail Sykes had pulled from her father’s desk. Instead, he looked at Claire.

Hazel eyes.

Freckles.

Lips made for reading out loud.

“It may look like tar, but it feels like heaven. Don’t worry, though, there’s just enough left for me and Justin. You don’t have to get your hands dirty, Miss Priss.”

Looks like tar. Feels like heaven
.

Nix reached over and touched Claire’s hand with his own. A wave of power exploded in the air between them, and the solid girls froze.

Looks like tar. Feels like heaven
.

The clock on Sykes’s wall stopped moving. Nix ran his thumb slowly over Claire’s palm. With his chin, he gestured toward the desk. The compartment. The frozen Normal girls. In a single motion, he and Claire crossed the room, walking on the balls of their feet, silent and deadly, two hunters on the prowl.

Claire’s eyes zeroed in on the vial in Abigail Sykes’s hand, and she shuddered.

“Empty,” she said. “Dull.”

Nix concurred. The liquid in that vial was nauseating. The mere sight of it threatened to pull him out of the fade.

“Close your eyes,” he told Claire. “Close your eyes and don’t look at it. Don’t listen to it.”

“There’s something wrong with that drug,” Claire said, eyes still open, voice hoarse. “Do you remember what you told me? When we first figured out what I was? You told me that the world was made of energy, and that there were two kinds of wrong.”

Nobody.

And Null.

Don’t think it
, Nix told himself.
Don’t even think the word
.

But the thought had been planted, and even in the fade, even touching Claire, he had to follow it to completion. The Society studied energy. The Society’s scientists had used Nix to test countless theories about the way that energy worked. And when Nix had gone back to the institute the day before, he’d seen a Sensor with small round scars
—needle tracks
—on his arm.

Nix dropped Claire’s hand, and the world around them fell into motion, as if time had never stopped. Understanding crashed into his body, and he lost his grip on the fade. Gritting his teeth and trying to regain a clear
mind, he flashed into physicality one second and back into nothingness the next.

“Did you see that?”

One of the Normal girls blinked several times.

“See what?”

Nix held his breath. He’d only lost his fade for a second.…

“Huh?”

“You said you saw something.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, did you?”

“No.”

“Okay, then.”

Words, words, words. Solid people and their incessant talking. Nix tried not to think about the rest of it. About what Abigail Sykes held in one hand.

About that other kind of wrong.

“Hey, Abby? If your dad … if taking this made him all … cold and stuff—”

“He did that on his own. This makes it better.” Abigail sounded intrigued. Addicted. Drunk on power, just by looking at the vial she held in her hand. The needle. “It’s mine.”

“Okay, okay, I get it. Your drug. You want to have its narcotic babies. Whatever. Just … save some of it for Justin, ’kay? You promised you would.”

“Courtney.”

“Abigail.”

“Abigail!” Someone other than the girls spoke the name. Mrs. Sykes, Abigail’s mother, yelled up from downstairs, reminding Nix that the girls weren’t the only Normals in the house. “Answer me, Abby! I’m not kidding, young lady. I’ve had just about enough of …”

The girl in question rolled her eyes. She stuck the vial and the needle into the band of her skirt and rolled it over twice. “Mother calls,” she drawled. “You better duck out the back, Court. You know how she gets after her afternoon nip.”

“Abigail Andrea Sykes!”

“Gotta run.” Abigail Andrea Sykes haphazardly slung the top to the hidden safe, setting it on the path to closing, and, Courtney on her heels, flounced out of the room. Moving more quickly than Nix would have believed possible, Claire leapt to catch the hidden drawer before it closed, nothingness melting off her body just in time.

“Gotcha.” Claire’s word echoed in the now empty room, and Nix’s body tensed. If the Normals heard, if they turned around …

They didn’t. Of course they didn’t. And a moment later, he and Claire were alone.

Nix shuddered and let go of his own fade, coming to stand beside her in the real world—in front of the desk, looking down into the hidden safe.

Tapes.

Tiny, tiny tapes and an old-fashioned Dictaphone.

Claire met his eyes. “How much do you want to bet that these have something to do with The Society?”

Nix nodded. “How much do you want to bet that whatever drug Sykes was pumping was their doing, too?”

Now that he was solid, Nix couldn’t keep himself from thinking about what they’d seen.

That drug is wrong. There are two types of wrong
.

It was impossible. Ten kinds of impossible. And yet, as Claire slipped the first tape into the recorder, turned the volume down low, and pressed play, the unthinkable wormed its way further and further into Nix’s thoughts.

This stuff is killer strong. The second it hits you, you don’t feel anything
.

Abigail’s words echoed in his mind, until they were replaced by the voice of a dead man, coming from the Dictaphone.

“You have to give me something to work with here, Ms. Casting.”

“I have given you something to work with.” Ione’s voice. Nix would have recognized it anywhere. “The Society has provided very well for you, Mr. Sykes. Or do I need to remind you just how well?”

“Your previous efforts have been appreciated.”

“Without us, you’d be malingering in the state senate.”

“And without you, I wouldn’t have this pretty, pretty
voice. I wouldn’t be so very convincing. And I wouldn’t be poised to make your little proposition happen.”

“You do not want to threaten me, Senator.”

“I’m not threatening you, ma’am. I’m simply … requisitioning new resources. Persuasion alone won’t be enough to get me appointed to the head of the oversight committee. That’s what you want, isn’t it? I need to prove that I take a hard line on domestic terrorism. I need to offer the three-letter men something.”

“Our deal was for you and you alone.”

“You misunderstand me, Ms. Casting. I’m not asking for …
refreshments
for the CIA. What I’m asking for, well, let’s just call it reconnaissance and threat-removal supplies.”

“I don’t take your meaning, and you should probably count that as a blessing.”

Nix could hear the tension in Ione’s voice. He’d never gotten this kind of reaction out of her himself. He never would.

Not even if he found her in a back alleyway.

Put his gun in her face.

Tried to make her beg for the mercy she never showed anyone else.

“What I need to become integral to the CIA is a weapon, ma’am. X-17 would suffice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your, shall we say,
operatives
aren’t as closemouthed
as you think they are, Ione. You’ve been holding out on me.”

“We’ve been providing you with power and influence. A word from me, and that ends. You saw what happened to Madsen when he resorted to blackmail. Very messy business, that.”

Jacob Madsen. Seven. Ione had told Nix to make it messy, and he had.
Knife in his hand. Blood everywhere
. The realization that it was a message—a warning—shouldn’t have surprised Nix, but it did.

“If you cut me off, Proposition 42 will fail.” Sykes sounded confident. Clearly, the warning had gone to waste.

“There will be other propositions,” Ione said, her voice light and cavalier. This was a tone that Nix had heard before; this was the Ione he recognized.

“You don’t want to play with me, Ione.”

“I made you. I can unmake you.”

“Bribery. Murder. Illegal experimentation. Human slavery. I know the location of your little institute. I know what you’re hiding in the lower levels there. You will continue to provide me with the serum, or I swear to God—”

“No need to swear, Mr. Sykes. We’ll take care of you.” She paused. “We always have.”

And then there was a dial tone. After a moment, Sykes’s voice came on. “If I die, even if it appears to be of natural causes, send an investigative team to 446 Nesturn Avenue,
62145. This is Evan Sykes—and that woman doesn’t know who she’s messing with.”

End tape.

For a moment, neither Nix nor Claire said a word, and then, finally, Claire broke the silence. “It’s like something out of a bad movie. ‘This is Evan Sykes, and she doesn’t know who she’s messing with.’ He sounds like some kind of egomaniac.”

“He sounds like a Null,” Nix corrected, but this time, the single word took on new meaning. Because Evan Sykes wasn’t a Null—not when he lost those elections early in his career. Not when he paid attention to his wife and daughter. Before he became—how had Abigail put it?—a pod person.

Before he became persuasive.

Before The Society had made him into the perfect plant.

“The drug.” He said the words out loud and waited for Claire to catch up, but she didn’t know enough about Nulls to see the pattern. Didn’t realize how incredibly impossible this was.