Nobody (32 page)

Taking the Null drug into the fade had sent a shock up Claire’s arm. It had stirred something in her stomach, made her nauseous. She wondered what taking a live Null with her would do.

“X-17 and X-18?” Nix hissed, enmity dripping from
each syllable like blood from the tip of a blade. “They’re not numbers. They’re kids. And there’s no way I’m taking a Null to the fade. You said it yourself: Null blood and Nobody blood are powerful, tricky things. What do you think is going to happen if we take a body full of Null blood into the fade?”

Nix tried to calm the revulsion in his gut. He’d taken Claire into the fade, back when he’d thought she was a Null—but that was before he’d felt what it was like when Claire brought the Null drug with her. Nix couldn’t push down the surge of disgust he felt, just thinking about it now.

He hated Nulls, and the fade was sacred, and The Sensor had called his little sister X-17.

I can’t even look at Null-2. Claire had to hold the vial. I have a sister
.

The thoughts blurred together in Nix’s mind. Claire pressed her body lightly to the side of Nix’s, and all up and down the left half of his body, Nix felt the gentle reassurance of her presence. The fury simmering beneath his surface calmed, still ready, still hot, but contained enough that he could put it into words, feel it without putting his body into motion.

All the Sensor cared about was the little Null. Demented
by the girl’s powers, he was willing to sell out the principles for which Nix and his siblings had been bought, trained, tortured, and enslaved.

I believe their trainers call them Nix
.

X-17. X-18. Nix and Nix. Nothing. Nobody.

Nix hated this. Hated that The Society could still hurt him. Hated that he wanted to scream. Hated that he couldn’t get the children’s cherubic faces, distorted by the dunk tanks, out of his mind.

Nix had never had a family before. And now he had one, and all this man cared about was the Null. The Null who’d been practicing God knows what with his little brother and sister. Nix couldn’t think about the fact that the children were probably as Null-struck as this pathetic excuse for a man beside him.

Saving Natalie might be a necessary evil—but that didn’t mean Nix wanted to think about it. About what Natalie could do. About what she might do, if she grew up into a bright-eyed, red-haired woman.

Necessary evil or not, Nix couldn’t swallow the idea of bringing
that thing
to the fade. The one place that Nobodies mattered. The only place where the real world couldn’t touch them or hurt them or mess with their minds. Sanctuary. Paradise.

“Covering Natalie with your collective powers is the only way to get her away from the scientists. Do you know what they do to her? They make her bleed. They
hurt her. They make her hurt things. She doesn’t like it. She wants out.”

For a moment, the Sensor’s face changed, and his tone and words became someone else’s. Nix could almost picture the girl from the photograph saying these things.

They’re hurting me. They make me hurt things. I don’t like it
.

And then the Sensor snapped out of it, and his words became his own again. “You need me if you want to destroy the institute.”

“Why?” Nix kept his voice even. “We know about the keys. We know where the children are. We know about the self-destruct mechanism. Why do we need you?”

Beside him, Claire’s mouth dropped open slightly, and Nix realized that the idealistic part of her
wanted
to save Natalie. Wanted to believe that she was just a little girl. And that was exactly why Nix couldn’t let Claire anywhere near the Null. Tender hearts were child’s play for Nulls, and Claire was an open book.

The Sensor clearly didn’t—couldn’t—feel betrayed that Nix was already reneging on his promise. Instead, he continued speaking in the same calm, neutral tone. “You need me to destroy the institute, because I can make your files disappear from the mainframe. The computer systems are set to automatically upload all content to off-site backup hard drives the moment the self-destruct sequence is initiated. Milano’s possessive enough of his
research that he hasn’t uploaded it to the mainframe yet, so destroying the institute will destroy the formulas for the serums. Your files, on the other hand, are in the computer, and Ione has activated certain security protocols to remind us of your existence and the threat you represent. After the institute is destroyed, there will inevitably be some kind of investigation, most likely spearheaded by the European office. They’ll go through everything, talk to everyone. The people involved will likely forget about you and almost certainly won’t be able to provide any kind of details, but unless I destroy the electronic trail, you’ll have the whole of The Society nipping at your heels.”

With great effort, the Sensor flicked his eyes to Nix’s face and then to Claire’s, and Nix got the message loud and clear.

“Tonight, when I go back to the institute, I’ll remove your files from the computers and upload them on to an external hard drive. If you bring me Natalie, I’ll give you the disk. Ione and Sergei will go down with the blast, and in the chaos of reorganization, the two of you and X-17 and X-18 will almost certainly be forgotten in the aftermath.”

Unless, of course, the Sensor saved the files and gave them to the remaining branches of The Society, which he would gladly do if Nix didn’t give him Natalie in return.

“We give you Natalie. You give us—all of us—our freedom.” Claire put the terms of the agreement into words.

“Yes. Save Natalie. You must.” The Sensor’s eyes took on that fevered look again. “And the only way you can save her is to make her fade. She’s bright, so bright, so beautiful, that she’ll be hard to hide. The world won’t want to let her go. But there are four of you. Unprecedented. Absolutely unprecedented. You’re strong. You can save her. I know you can.”

Nix’s lip curled upward, and his fingers curled down, driving his nails into the skin of his palm. Fading was power. Energy. Release. It was his. The one thing that no one could take away. The only thing the universe had given him to make up for all it had taken away when he’d been born terminally unimportant.

Null. Faded
.

To Nix, it was blasphemy. Like sleeping with a dead animal. Like rolling over and exposing your soft underbelly to a beast that wanted to tear out your entrails. It was stupid, and it was wrong.

Necessary evil
.

Nix gritted his teeth and clamped down on the roar of emotions circling each other in his gut.

It’s not my job to kill Nulls. Not anymore. It’s not my responsibility to turn myself into a monster so the rest of humanity can live free and clear
.

Numbly, dispassionate, Nix nodded his assent. If this was the cost of freedom, so be it. Nix met the Sensor’s eyes, even though the old man didn’t quite reciprocate
the gaze. And then he said the one word that set things fully and irrevocably in motion. “Tonight.”

The Sensor nodded. “Tonight. The information I gave you says where. And remember: no Natalie, no files.”

Null. Null. Null
.

Refusing to look at the Sensor or at Claire, Nix turned and slipped into nothingness, feeling like he’d left a chunk of himself behind.

Claire nibbled on her bottom lip, trying to find the right thing to say—like there was a right thing to say in a situation like this. Nix hadn’t uttered so much as a single word to her since they’d let the Sensor go.

He’d headed back to the cabin. Claire had followed.

He’d lifted one of the panels on the wooden floor, revealing a weapons cache much bigger than the one Claire had kept under the porch. She’d silently knelt beside him, laying out the spread as he unearthed wires, rope, and needles. Knives. Guns. Darts. An ice pick, several bags of white powder, and a variety of explosives.

“Take off your clothes.”

Nix’s voice washed over Claire’s body. Deep. Reassuring. It wasn’t until the words disappeared from the air that she realized their content.

“Take off my …?”

“I would give anything to leave you here. To keep you safe. But one of us has to initiate the meltdown while the other one gets the children. This isn’t a job for one Nobody. It’s a job for two. And even if it wasn’t, you’d come. Where I go, you follow. Even if I could keep you safe, you wouldn’t want it. I know you—you won’t even stay away from the Null.”

Null. Null. Null
.

If Claire hadn’t already known how Nix felt about Nulls, the venom he put into that word would have told her more than enough.

“Take off your clothes,” Nix said, repeating the order. He stood and stalked out of the room, returning a moment later with two pairs of pants and two shirts: one for him and one for her. Not bothering to expand on his earlier command, he followed the advice he had given her, stripping off his shirt.

Sleek. Stone cold. Hard. His stomach looked like it had been carved from marble. Every muscle was tensed. Taut.

Ready.

Biting her bottom lip again, Claire brought her fingers to the end of her own shirt. Nix wrapped an Ace bandage around his middle, and with expert fingers, he began to weave and tie knots in it, twisting and turning the fabric to form pockets. Claire watched the motion, hypnotized, her own limbs still frozen.

Dagger.

Darts.

Some kind of double-edged blade.

Nix tucked the weapons into his makeshift halter. One wrong move, and he’d slice himself open.

Guns were strapped to his ankles. Wires were wrapped around his wrists. Claire stared down at her own hands—miniature compared to his. After an elongated moment, she lifted up the end of her oversized shirt, revealing an expanse of suntanned skin underneath.

Without a word, Nix came to stand behind her. Wrapping his arms around her body, he strapped a knife to her side, his fingers brushing against the flat of her back as he did.

“Do you know how to use this?” he asked.

“It’s a knife,” Claire replied. “You stab it.”

Nix almost smiled. Almost. He tapped her jugular. “Slice,” he said, and then he trailed his hand over her shirt and down her chest, until it rested inside her rib cage. “Stab. If you can’t reach the torso, go for the femoral artery. Here.” He indicated the place on her leg, his touch light. Then, carefully, he turned her around to face him.

“Hopefully, you won’t need to use the knife. From the fade, you won’t be able to.” And with those words, he went and picked up two guns. One for each of her ankles. Finally, he gave her back the SIG.

“Do you know how to shoot?”

It had never occurred to Claire that it might be more complicated than pulling a trigger. She said so, and moments later, they were outside, and he was going through the steps, one by one.

“Close one eye. Look down the barrel. Grip steady. Arms straight.”

It took her three tries to hit a tree. He showed her how to reload, and they fell into a pattern: shooting, reloading, his hands steadying her body against the kickback.

“If you shoot from the fade, the bullet crosses into reality once it leaves the gun—unless you actively try to keep it immaterial. Assuming you let the bullet go, you can take out a target without ever giving them the opportunity to lay a single finger on you.”

Claire thought back to aiming the gun at the rogue Sensor as he injected himself with the serum for the second time. She hadn’t thought about killing, or mechanics, or what any of it meant. She’d moved on instinct.

And if he hadn’t killed himself, she might have done it for him.

Nix doesn’t want me to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want him to do this
.

It had to be done.

“So that’s the plan?” Claire asked softly. “We go in, guns blazing, and pick them off one by one? Shoot Ione and Sergei, take their keys, and be done with it?”

She’d do that. For the little black-haired boy and the
little black-haired girl. For Natalie, who couldn’t help what she was. For Sykes and Wyler. For Nix. For herself. For their future.

Nix shook his head. “If we shoot Ione or Sergei, someone will figure out that we’re there, the entire place will go into lockdown, and we’ll lose our chance to grab the children. No one can know we’re there. The weapons are just a precaution.”