Touching Claire’s face, her hair, laying that palm against hers.
Nix reclaimed his hand just as a thick white fog began to creep out of the vents in the ceiling, the floor, the walls.
The poison.
Nix took a deep breath. As his lungs filled with air, he could feel Claire slipping out of the fade. The sensation reminded him of pulling back from a kiss, but he couldn’t think of that or of Claire. He cleared his mind of her influence. Of her current objective. Of everything but the two keys in his right hand and the uncovered activation pad with two identically shaped holes.
Nix raised his hands outward, his right hand—battered and broken—loosely gripping Sergei’s key, his left liberating Ione’s from its partner’s grasp.
Can’t let the keys fall.
Nix coaxed the muscles and the bones in his broken hand into holding tighter to the key. Looking at the mangled appendage was disconcerting, but Nix felt nothing. Pain didn’t exist here, and he had no time for it. No time for the fog growing thicker and thicker in the solid world around him.
With careful precision and a mind as blank as an unused chalkboard, Nix maneuvered the keys into place. In the fade, they couldn’t touch anything, but once they crossed over, they’d activate the meltdown sequence. Hands steady, keys in position, Nix began the process of disassociation. The only way he could turn the keys once they’d solidified was with hands that had done the same. Once he’d completed the action, he’d have to bring his hands back. Before, when he’d triggered the poison, he’d a second to think, to concentrate, but now a single second was a luxury he couldn’t afford, assuming he wanted to walk out of this with hands and not just useless scraps of skin on bones. The poisonous gas would eat through his hands, burn them, devour them whole.
Nix didn’t think that. He wouldn’t. Blank slate. No emotions. No hopes. No fears.
Nothing. Nix breathed in, and then he let go. These keys belong to those hands. Those hands are not mine. Those hands kill people. Those hands tried to kill me.
They. Are. Not. Mine.
Activation was instant. So was the pain. Though Nix couldn’t feel it, it was hard not to imagine. Skin bubbling. Acid ravaging. Sirens roaring.
Meltdown initiated.
Those are my hands. They took care of Claire. They’ve brushed her lips. They’ve spared people who deserved to die.
Nix welcomed his hands back into the fade and cradled them against his body, even though he couldn’t feel the searing agony they were owed.
Time to get out.
Nix turned and walked toward the far wall. The sooner he left this room, the safer he’d be. The room was airtight, the gas contained. Once he made his way into the east hallway, he’d be fine. He’d meet Claire, and they’d escape before the building self-destructed.
Claire.
Down in the sublevels, she was faded. He could feel her, the way he always had. Her presence pulled at him, propelled him through fog that couldn’t touch him, through poison that wanted nothing more than to strike him dead.
Claire.
He felt her power. Bathed in it. Drank it. Made it his own. With liquid fluidity, Nix strode toward the east hallway, closer and closer to the chamber’s edges. All around him, the air grew more opaque as the poison snaked out of the vents at steady speed, but Nix didn’t think about the airborne acid or what a much lower concentration of it had done to his hands. There was no pain in the fade, and Nix’s grip on it, his mind’s connection with Claire’s, was rock solid.
Null.
The wave of nausea was instantaneous. It was a thousand times worse than the sensation of watching Claire bring the Null drug into the fade. Not just a drug this time. A Null. Nix stumbled, and the word—snide and ugly and permanent—permeated every cell in his immaterial body. One foot shy of the chamber wall, he forced himself forward, tried not to dwell on what his senses were telling him.
Claire had succeeded. She’d brought the little Null into the fade, and the girl’s presence was every bit as toxic as the poisonous gas. Like a stone tossed into a lake, her energy rippled through the fade. Nix felt it—in every pore, in the air he was breathing, in the pit of his stomach.
Null. In the fade.
Nix couldn’t move. He couldn’t take that last step to the wall, through it, and in the moment he realized he’d lost his fade, the thick haze of acid in the air became—like his own body—all too solid, all too real.
Less than shadow. Less than air.
Nix had to think the words, had to fade before the poison ate clear through him like termites through wood.
Less than shadow—
Agony. Hands burning. Clothes dissolving. Can’t take a breath. Not a single breath. Skin melting. A thousand knives. A thousand knives for every square inch of skin.
LESS THAN SHADOW. LESS THAN AIR.
It hurt. And then the next second, it didn’t, and Nix, welcoming the relief like an old lover, stumbled through the wall of the fail-safe chamber, out into the east hallway, where it was safe. No more poison to eat its way through his skin. Still, Nix didn’t let himself think about the Null in the fade, or the angry, gaping redness of his wounds.
Fade. Fade. Fade.
Claire. Claire. Claire.
It was nice here. Peaceful.
ClaireClaireClaire.
And then he saw her, waiting for him in the east hallway. Not Claire.
Ione. She was standing there, waiting for him, like she somehow knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the one responsible for the sirens now echoing through the hallways, the mechanical voice advising evacuation.
A shadow.
That was all he’d ever been to her. Killing targets or being eaten alive by poison, that was all he’d ever be. An afterthought. Less than human. A means to an end.
This time, Nix couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t conjure up Claire’s image, couldn’t even remember the searing, all-consuming pain that awaited his solid form. All he could see was Ione. His mother—and as Nix’s tortured limbs solidified and he collapsed on the ground at her feet, he realized in the screaming, bleeding, cavernous hallways of his mind that his mother was holding a gun.
Nix is gone.
The knowledge that Nix had left the fade weighed Claire down. It tore at her and picked at her seams, but she couldn’t let herself unravel, couldn’t let go of her grip on the fade.
On Natalie.
On the twins.
The dark-haired little duo anchored her here: their similarities to Nix, their differences. Already, she knew them. Knew their solemn smiles. Knew that she wanted to rock them and push them on swings and read them stories. Bandage skinned knees, put training wheels on their bikes.
They were hers. And they were faded, and Claire clung to that, even as her other self, the girl she couldn’t be, stopped breathing, heart rate accelerating as the possibilities, horrible possibilities, wormed their way into—
A small hand wrapped itself around Claire’s. She looked down, and the little boy—like Nix, so like Nix—refused to meet her eyes, as if he expected, fully expected her to pull away.
“Thank you,” she whispered, refusing to remember how much Nix, her Nix, had always wanted to hear those words.
Nobodies don’t get thanked.
Claire’s mind settled enough to notice that when the little boy had taken her hand, time hadn’t stopped. Whatever otherworldly connection she shared with Nix didn’t extend entirely to his siblings; either that, or the little Nobodies just didn’t have that kind of power yet.
“Are we leaving?” Natalie asked, bouncing on the tips of her toes. “I want to leave. Let’s leave.”
“Almost,” Claire said. “First, we have to run.”
Run to meet Nix in the eastern hallway. Where he’d lost his fade. Where he was waiting for them. Where he’d be okay.
“Let’s run,” Claire said again, anchoring herself on those words, not allowing herself to consider the possibility that Nix might not be okay, that somethi
ng might have gone wrong.
“Run?” Natalie asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Run.” Claire didn’t give any more explanation than that, and the children, in the way of the very young, didn’t seem to need it. Claire ran, the little boy’s hand in hers, the girls on their heels—
Straight.
Toward.
Nix.
She didn’t hear the sirens, didn’t notice them, didn’t register the fact that they meant that Nix had succeeded in his mission, the same as she had at hers. Because suddenly, the things Claire couldn’t think in the fade became a reality, one that wouldn’t be denied by any amount of pretending or imagining that it wasn’t so.
Nix wasn’t the only one in the hallway. Ione was there, and Nix wasn’t, wasn’t—
Claire couldn’t move, couldn’t even remember the word run. Thoughts tore through her brain like lightning, searing her body from the inside out.
Nix. Ione. Bleeding—him, not her. Holding a gun—her, not him.
Claire didn’t even try to hold on to the fade. Nix’s body wasn’t his body anymore. It was—holes, full of holes. His skin was the color of a scream, stuck in someone’s throat.
Brutal.
Agonizing.
Red.
Like someone had turned him inside out. Like he was dying.
Bang.
It took Claire a moment to realize that the sound was a gunshot, and by then the bullet had already caught Nix in the shoulder—God, he was already so hurt, why would anyone—Claire turned her anguished face toward Nix’s mother and she saw the answer in the neutral set of her lips, the uneven focus of her eyes as she took aim at Nix again.
She wasn’t aiming for his shoulder.
Even though Nix wasn’t faded, even though Ione could physically see him, she couldn’t quite focus on him enough to tell exactly where he lay—so she was just going to keep shooting until a bullet found his heart.
Claire cocked her own gun, unaware of the fact that she’d even raised it. Behind her, the kids scattered, the Nobodies frightened by the fact that she’d ripped them out of their fade the moment she’d lost hers, and Natalie upset with the turn their little game had taken.
“Shoot him again, and you die,” Claire said, her voice low. She meant the words. She meant them, but when Ione turned and aimed her gun back at her, Claire found herself staring into blue, blue eyes.
From the fade, Ione hadn’t looked this much like Nix.
“If it could move, it would shoot me,” Ione said, her tone conversational. “Because of you.”
It, as in Nix. Ione’s son.
Claire felt her grip on the gun tighten.
“But you, you won’t shoot me. That’s the problem with Nobodies after the kill point. They get used to thinking of themselves as human.” Ione glanced down at her watch, unafraid and making a show of it. Mere feet away, Nix writhed, and Claire knew that this woman’s words were eating away at him, same as the poison.
Shoot her, Claire. Just shoot her. But she couldn’t. This woman was Nix’s mother.
“This whole building is going down,” Claire said. “In—”
“Two minutes,” Nix croaked.
Claire kept her voice even, choking back a sob. “If you leave now, you might make it out.”
Ione shook her head. “I was responsible for this building and everyone who works here. I was responsible for all of you. My superiors take responsibility very seriously, and I have no time to construct a cover story of the appropriate depth. Whether I make it out or not, I’m dead.” She smiled. “If I kill him, you’ll be distraught. You won’t be able to look away from his body. And as long as you’re looking at his body, you won’t be able to fade. And if you can’t fade, then you’ll die, too. This is my mess. The least I can do is clean it up.” She paused. “Oh, what the hell. I’ll just kill you now.”
I need to fade. I have to fade. Power, remember the power. You’re invincible, you have to be invincible, but how can I—Nix lying there, Nix hurt, God, hurts so much can’t leave him can’t move can’t—
Claire heard the sound of a gun cocking. The sound of a bullet firing. It took her a second to realize that the gun in question wasn’t Ione’s, and it wasn’t hers. The bullet sliced through Ione’s skin, burying itself in her skull, and the woman fell backward, crumpling to the ground, empty eyed, and unaware that she had lost.
Slowly, Claire turned in the direction from which the bullet had come. Nix was lying on the floor, his hands still useless, struggling to make it to his knees. And standing beside Nix, an oddly neutral expression on her face, was Natalie.
Holding a gun.
She just saved my life, Claire realized.
“I liked it better before,” Natalie said, the beginnings of a pout on her face. “When we were running and things felt funny. The lady’s gone now. Can we go back?” In a single, dainty motion, Natalie sat the gun back down beside Nix and bounced back to her toes.
Can we go back?
Such a sweet voice. So innocent. So happy, for someone who’d just killed.
Not important. Doesn’t matter.
Claire ran to Nix. She knelt beside him. “We have to go—”
“Can’t. Hurts.”
Talking was agony for Nix, and listening to him was agony for Claire. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t leave him.
Nix coughed. “One minute. Have to go. Get them out—”
“I’m not leaving you.” Claire bit back the urge to hit him, to hug him, to cover his body with hers and absorb his pain.
I can take it away. I can take it all away.
Sudden light pressure on her shoulder made Claire jump and dragged her away from her thoughts. The children—the little Nobodies—had placed their hands on her shoulder, their eyes on Nix.
“Less than shadow,” the little girl said, her eyes seeing everything, taking in too much.
“Less than air,” the boy said, looking at Claire, only at Claire.
“Less than shadow,” Claire said, saying the words for Nix, because he could not. “Less than air.”
Her own mantra went unspoken. She didn’t need it. All she needed was Nix, and that need exploded in her head like an aneurysm, until she couldn’t see or feel or hear anything else. She faded to nothing, absolute nothing, and she pushed it outward to Nix, pulling him home, where he belonged.
In unison, the twins joined her in the fade, and when they reached out to Natalie, Claire pressed her lips to Nix’s forehead.
“It doesn’t hurt here,” she whispered.
He didn’t move. But with his last wisp of energy, he embraced the fade and pushed it outward.
To Natalie.
Nothingness was sweet relief. The silence was absolute. And when the institute exploded around them, Claire didn’t feel it or see it or wonder at the fact that an entire building could be reduced to dust in a heartbeat.
Instead, she picked up Nix and gathered the children to her side, and together, they left the ruins behind. Not flying. Not running. Just floating—silently, slowly, delicately, like ashes on the wind.
28
Nix was about ninety percent sure he was unconscious. The world was hazy, and the taste on the tip of his tongue was sweet. An abandoned road stretched out on all sides of him, and no matter which direction he turned, there it was, a path to nowhere.
A path to nothing.
A path to a wall of light.
Energy. So bright.
The words were familiar, but Nix couldn’t quite place them. Couldn’t remember what brightness looked like.
His senses collapsed onto each other. Nix tasted blue. He heard yellow. He smelled music. Sunscreen and cinnamon, the sweetest melody.
Claire.
The single word stopped him in his tracks
I don’t have feet. I don’t have a body, but I was walking. Toward something.
He began moving again. He had to. It was time to go.
Brighter. Light. Blue.
Quiet. P
eaceful. Still.
Everything.
As he moved, Nix’s memories collapsed the same way his senses had, until the past and the present and the future were all one thing.
I don’t have a body.
He didn’t even have a head. And as his own voice got quieter and quieter in his mind, that sweet melody wafted back into his consciousness.
Claire.
And that was when Nix knew. He knew what he was walking toward, and he knew that he wasn’t just unconscious. He was dying, and this was the end. Infinity. Everything.
It was soothing. Tempting. Painless. Free. And it had its jaws clamped around him.
Death had him, and it wasn’t letting go.
Nix forced himself to think. To imagine. To picture Claire. Her eyes were brown, flecked with amber and green. Her hair was light brown, but shone golden in the sun. She never made the exact same facial expression twice. She fit perfectly under his chin.
Claire.
Death did not roar. It did not fight him. Because death knew that it was going to win. That he was going to die. And that the best he could do, the only thing he could do, was picture Claire and hold fast to that picture and force himself to wake up one last time.
To say good-bye.
By the time they landed at the rendezvous point, miles away from the remains of the institute, Claire’s psyche had been stretched past its limits. The strain of holding Nix in the fade, when his mind had left his body, was compounded by the concentration it took to keep Natalie immaterial.
He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s got to be okay.
The fear that he wasn’t was absolute, and Claire couldn’t fight it any longer. Solidity came like a rush to the head, and she collapsed onto the ground, Nix’s body too heavy for her now that they’d crossed from weightlessness into gravity’s sordid grip.
Nix is dying.
Claire refused to believe it. His shoulder was bleeding. His entire body was covered with burns. There wasn’t an inch of skin left untouched by The Society’s poison.
It ate him.
But Claire didn’t see it that way. She refused to see it that way. She saw Nix. Her Nix. The way he’d looked the first time she’d seen him, standing outside her bedroom window with a gun. The way he looked as he’d painstakingly fashioned firewood into a bookshelf.
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