Nobody (29 page)

Unfaded. In public.

A passerby slowed down, his eyes on Claire sprawled out on the ground and holding a weapon, his brows furrowed, as if he couldn’t quite process what he was seeing.

“Claire?” Nix whispered. “Gun?”

Claire bit her bottom lip and then nodded. Nix placed his hand over hers, and without ever changing its aim, he transferred the weight of the gun from her palm to his.

The Sensor—the last man standing in this team of five—nodded and closed his eyes, waiting for the axe to fall, but instead of putting a bullet between his eyes, Nix spoke, his words the sweetest sound that Claire had ever heard.

“Why don’t we go someplace a little more quiet?” Nix stood and stepped in front of Claire, placing his body between hers and the Sensor’s. “I think we have some things to discuss.”

Society operatives had standing orders to self-destruct rather than risk exposure. Hidden somewhere on his person, their captive doubtlessly had a small white pill—deadly and discreet, for situations such as these.

“Hands where I can see them,” Nix said softly, his gun resting on the small of the older man’s back, reinforcing the point. There was no way was he letting his captive fall on the metaphorical sword before explaining what exactly had just happened and how the hell it landed on the
possible
side of the possible-impossible divide. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the information they needed to destroy the Null drug and associated research, to bring The Society to its knees—cripple it the
way he’d personally crippled most members of this man’s team.

Moving quickly and drawing little attention, Nix forced the Sensor into a back alleyway, Claire on their heels.

Revealing yourself to a Nobody probably doesn’t even count as exposure
.

If this Sensor did attempt to take his own life, Nix doubted it would be because The Society’s secrets had been compromised.

It would be because the Sensor had failed.

Three members of this man’s team were incapacitated—permanently. The fourth was dead by his own hand. And yet, the Sensor seemed remarkably unconcerned.

We can’t scare him
. Nix realized that this might make torturing information out of the man difficult. Nobodies were assassins, not specialists. They trafficked in death, not fear.

“I imagine that you’re coming to realize your predicament, much as I’ve come to realize mine.” The Sensor’s tone was completely conversational.

“You shouldn’t be able to imagine anything about us,” Nix replied evenly. “My words should fall deaf on your ears. You shouldn’t care enough to wonder what we’re thinking.”

“Oh, I don’t. Not concretely. But abstractly? Well, I’ve always found the idea of Nobodies fascinating.”

Nix rolled his eyes. It was just his luck that their hostage was one of
those
.

“So, no. I don’t care what you, personally, are thinking. I can’t bring myself to really pay much attention to you at all. But if I take a step back from the situation and think about an abstract, pretend Nobody who is in an abstract, pretend situation very much like yours, then with some mental wrestling, I can come to conclusions.” The man paused. After a long moment, he continued, “I imagine that most people in your situation would have certain questions.”

“You think we’re people?”

Nix felt his heart clench at Claire’s question. Her tone of voice told him that she was all too ready to believe that of all the members of The Society, they’d somehow found the one who thought Nobodies were human, same as anyone else. Nix angled his body, wanting to shield her from the inevitable response.

“Do I think you’re people?” The Sensor repeated the question and shrugged. Clearly, his ability to put himself in others’ shoes didn’t extend quite that far.

“The Society considers us monsters,” Nix said, willing Claire not to take the man’s apathy personally. “They use Nobodies to kill Nulls, but if there weren’t any Nulls, they’d be using the Sensors to kill us.”

On some level, Nix had always realized this. It was just that before, he hadn’t cared.

“Frightfully hard to kill, Nobodies. Not much cleanup work, which is nice, and the police never seem to follow up on leads, but your kind is damn hard to get a lock on. Makes extermination difficult.”

Nix closed his eyes, unsure whether he should take advantage of the Sensor’s chattiness, or put him out of his misery now. “That’s why The Society sent me to kill Claire. The best chance they have of killing a Nobody is using another Nobody to do it.”

“I can’t say that I was involved with that decision, but the logic seems sound.…” The Sensor trailed off. Clearly, the gun wedged into his back wasn’t quite incentive enough to keep his attention from wandering.

“What happened back there?” Claire asked him tentatively. “With the—”

Nix knew she was going to say
with the lights
, but he didn’t want Claire to tell this Sensor that they could see the source of his powers. Maybe The Society knew about the flicker that indicated a Sensor’s power in the fade and maybe it didn’t, but Nix wasn’t going to be the one to let that information slip.

And neither was Claire.

“What happened with your partner?” Nix said, finishing her question without giving anything away.

The question wandered in and out of the Sensor’s mind, until he seemed to come to it on his own. He obliged Nix, intentionally or otherwise, by speaking his thoughts out
loud. “Erikson was young and stupid. This generation—they have no respect for the old ways. The principles on which The Society was founded.
Protection. Invention. Discretion
.”

Nix snorted. At one point, he’d believed in The Society and its principles. Now the only thing he believed in was standing beside him, her nose crinkled and her hazel eyes opened wide.

“The Nobody serum was designed to make Sensors more sensitive to Nobodies. In small doses, it allows us to catch a whiff, so to speak, of things that might otherwise escape our notice.”

“Us,” Claire said, caught halfway between bluntness and blatant curiosity.

“Nobodies are—in the abstract, mind you—quite terrifying. The Society of Sensors has been around for thousands of years, and this serum is the first step we’ve successfully made toward immunizing ourselves against your powers.”

Immunization? That was what they were calling it?

“This serum,” Claire said slowly. “With it, people can … see us?”

Nix heard the hope in her voice, and his own chest tightened in response.

“See you? Yes. Remember you? For the duration of the dose, yes. Care about you? No.”

For someone who was dealing only in abstracts, the Sensor was remarkably astute. And cruel.

Nix dug the gun farther into the man’s back, leaving marks, bruises. Physical effects to match the wounds of Claire’s the carelessly uttered words had picked open.

The Sensor gave no visual indication that he felt the barrel digging into his back. “In answer to your earlier question, I suppose that I don’t believe that Nobodies are monsters. Or animals. I believe your lot in life is incredibly sad and that in most cases, termination in childhood is a mercy.”

Termination in childhood?

“There were others?” Claire asked. “Like us? And you killed them?”

“Me, personally? No. I’ve been off active duty for a decade and the only reason I’ve been recalled is that Ione and her people deduced that my academic fascination with Nobodies might make me more willing than the average Sensor to pilot the serum.”

Which serum?
Nix wanted to ask, but he held his tongue. All in due time.

“But there
were
others, like Nix and me, and The Society killed them?” Claire’s tongue moved freely.

The Sensor looked vaguely uncomfortable. “The Society has existed, in one form or another, for most of recorded history. The majority of our mandates were written in a harsher time.”

Nix ground his teeth together and bit back the urge to smash the butt of the gun into the back of the man’s head.

“And you can’t change the mandates?” Claire asked softly. Nix could tell by the look on her face that she was picturing little Nixes, little Claires.

Terminated in childhood.

“Nobodies are quite rare. Relatively speaking, our discovery of their existence was quite recent. The things we could have accomplished with that information during the Crusades! But, alas, it wasn’t to be, and when the Roanoke experiment went south, your numbers dwindled. As far as The Society has been able to tell, there haven’t been more than a handful of Nobodies per generation since. Not enough to merit a large-scale revision of well-established precedent.”

“You kill us because you’re too lazy to revise the rules? Because the effort just isn’t worth it, for just a few lives?”

Nix wove his free hand through Claire’s. In the fade, the gesture would have stopped time; outside of it, the physical contact served no purpose but comfort. Nix had been given a lifetime to get used to The Society’s attitude. It wouldn’t have mattered how common Nobodies were. No one at The Society would have cared enough to change procedure.

“We don’t kill all of you,” the Sensor said, quite cheerful. “Consignment is an option for Nobodies located before the age of five.”

Consignment.

White walls. White bed. White floor.

Life in a lab.

Trained to kill as soon as they could walk.

“Traditionally, once they reach a certain age, Nobodies become more recalcitrant. Hardly worth training …”

“Stop.” Nix couldn’t take watching Claire’s face as she heard the Sensor’s careless words.

This was the big mystery they’d set out to solve. The reason Nix had begun looking into his previous kills. Because he couldn’t imagine why The Society wanted Claire dead. And even though they’d considered this answer on their own, even though they’d considered it likely—

Hearing it out loud was different. Especially for Claire.

“You must be thinking about killing me,” the Sensor said, turning around, so that Nix’s gun was pressed into his stomach instead of his back. “I would imagine that, in the abstract, someone in your position might want to kill someone in mine. But you’re not likely to meet a more knowledgeable source on The Society’s infrastructure, or one more sympathetic to your cause.”

Nix gouged the man in the side, and beside him, Claire winced.

“
Sympathetic
was perhaps the wrong word,” the man wheezed. “Forgive my imprecision of language and allow me to rephrase. I feel nothing for either of you, but my feelings toward Ione and the heads of the South American and European institutes are not what one would call
positive. The Sensors they’re producing are subpar at best and dangerous to Normals at their worst.”

“Like the one who blew up,” Claire said blithely.

The Sensor inclined his head. Nix tried to follow the conversation, but found himself stuck on the idea that there was more than one institute. That there might be more to The Society than he had seen.

That there might be no place on earth outside The Society’s reach.

What I knew was the tip of the iceberg. This isn’t David and Goliath. This is David versus Goliath and a few dozen of his closest friends
.

“We have a drug.” Nix hadn’t meant to admit that out loud, not yet, but he had to know. “It gives Normals some shade of a Null’s powers—and their indifference to others. A U.S. senator was killed because of it. If you’re so familiar with The Society’s infrastructure, you can tell me where the drug is made, who knows about it, and how far this thing has spread.”

“Ahhh … the senator would be Evan Sykes, I suppose?” the Sensor said, thinking out loud. “I’d heard he got issued the first dose of the Null-2.”

“Null-2?” Claire asked.

“The Nobody serum is at stage one: it helps inoculate us to your powers, but doesn’t give us any of our own. As you saw with my impetuous young partner, trying to distill the ingredients into higher concentrations proves
somewhat … fatal. But the scientists have made significantly more progress with the Null drugs. Null-2 is the second stage: it doesn’t just protect against powers. It induces them.”

The Sensor wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.

“Nulls are easier to study than Nobodies, you know. Especially once they started piloting Null-1.”

“What do we do?” Nix issued a very specific question. “About the serum?”
To destroy it and take The Society down?
Nix didn’t say the last part out loud, but figured that it was implied.

He figured wrong.

“Well, I wouldn’t advise taking it. Energy is tricky. Nulls and Nobodies … I’m not sure what you’d get if you mixed them. The results would be unpredictable. Anything could happen, really.”

Nix thought of the feeling of unease and disgust that had rippled its way through the fade when Claire had crossed over holding a vial of Null-2. The way that vial had changed colors, reacting to the fade.

“What do we do with the serum
to destroy it and take The Society down
?” This time, Nix was explicit. “We’re going to eradicate the serums, and then we’re going to expose The Society. You’re going to tell us how. The government? The media? The police?”

The Sensor shook his head. “The Society has plants
everywhere. It’s strong, boy. Old. Many branches, many powerful people. And even if you could expose us—ask yourself this: do you really want the government to know that you exist? That Null-2 exists?”

The Sensor wasn’t asking Nix anything he hadn’t already asked himself, but still, it rankled. Nix had been The Society’s assassin for three years. He had no desire to play that role for the U.S. government and no confidence that it would be able to resist using him in exactly the same way.

“If we can’t expose The Society, what will it take to make them stop coming after us?” Nix asked, trying not to sound desperate. Not to feel it. Everything they’d done, everything they’d discovered—and still, they weren’t safe.

Weren’t ever going to be safe.

The Sensor didn’t reply, and Nix sighed. “In the abstract, what would it take?”