What if it were a boy, and he wouldn’t let you stand up off the ground, because moving might upset your internal injuries? What if he kept his face close to yours and his hands on your shoulders? What if you wanted to fight him, even though you knew he was right?
For reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on, Claire quite liked that Situation. Flipping over onto her stomach, she felt the sun on the small of her back and gave into the lure of the image taking hold in her mind.
Car accident. Blood—not much, because then it would be stupid to refuse to go to the hospital, but a little on the back of her head, and a bruise on her side. The car that hit her peels off, not bothering to see if she’s okay, and then the boy is there, beside her. He comes in a blur and bends over her, until he is all she can see.
His hair is dark.
“Are you okay?” he asks her.
No, that wasn’t right. That was such a normal thing to ask. It would be a much more interesting Situation if her rescuer were a little abnormal. And if she didn’t want to be rescued.
“What the hell were you doing?” he demands, his voice little more than a growl.
“I’m … who are you?” She tries to sit up. “Ouch.”
“Lie still.” He seems to expect that his words will be obeyed. Her eyes flash.
“Don’t touch me. I’m fine. And if I want to get up, I’ll—”
“You got hit by a car. You wandered into the street and got hit by a car. An ambulance is on its way.”
“I don’t want an ambulance.”
He leans down closer toward her, his eyes narrowing, and for a second, she thinks he will kiss her. “Well, princess, that’s too damn bad.”
Princess? Princess?! Claire rears back, ready to tell him what she thinks of his machismo BS, but he grips her shoulders, holding her in place more by the power of his touch than by force.
“Get your hands off me!”
“Be still.” For a moment, the boy’s voice is awful, but then he softens. “You could be hurt. Humor me.”
And then the ambulance came. End of Situation. Claire opened her eyes and rolled back over, just in time for a tsunami of water to body slam her like a professional wrestler.
Curse you, cannonballs.
Claire sputtered and snorted and tried desperately not to drown in her own chair. She blinked violently, and that was the exact moment she heard the voice.
“You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts, young lady.”
It took her a few seconds to locate the speaker: an elderly man with a face creased like a worn leather sofa and brown eyes so dark that she couldn’t make out the pupils. For a moment, Claire assumed that the man was talking to someone else, in part because people, as a general rule, didn’t come up to Claire and start making conversation, and in part because she was positive that she looked more like a drowned rat than someone caught in the throes of thought.
Say something. Respond. Be witty.
As Claire tried desperately to come up with the proper response, the man leaned forward, the intensity of the gaze behind his centimeter-thick glasses swelling, his eyes fixated on a point directly over her left shoulder. Those pupil-less irises flicked left to right, then up and down with a concerted effort that reminded Claire of a squadron of soldiers searching a field in a grid.
“I was just sitting here,” Claire said finally, but the words came out in a whisper.
“Have a way of going unnoticed, do you?” the man asked, his voice not unkind.
Claire nodded, but before she’d even finished the motion, the man glanced away, and something deep inside of Claire told her that he wasn’t going to speak to her again. He’d seen what he needed to see, and now he was going to leave.
As Claire watched him disappear into the parking lot, she couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been looking for, and she couldn’t shake the single word her memory whispered over and over again in the red-haired girl’s voice.
Nothing.
White walls. White floor. White bed. Nothing to look at. Nothing to do.
Tired of the pretense that the door, locked from the outside, could keep him caged, Nix made the decision to fade. With expert precision and unnatural ease, he let go of his grip on the physical world.
He let go of his thoughts, his emotions, his body, his name.
He let go of the hard-earned whispers of pain from his newest cuts.
Less than shadow. Less than air. Nix let go of everything that mattered to him and became nothing—the kind of nothing that didn’t have a right to anything in this world, because it was incapable of giving back.
The world was made of energy. Most people didn’t even realize it was there—inside them, outside of them, everywhere. Except in Nix.
The world could touch him, but he had nothing to give in return.
At his worst, he wasn’t even good enough for gravity.
Less than shadow. Less than air.
Nix faded. He was there, but the world couldn’t see him. Couldn’t feel him. Couldn’t smell him.
Couldn’t hold him down.
For all intents and purposes, he was invisible. Immaterial. Unimportant.
And as only someone completely nonexistent could, he walked straight through the thick wooden door and came out the other side. Keeping his thoughts still, Nix flowed through the halls and safeguards of one of the country’s most secure buildings. This was his domain, the only home he’d ever known. From the outside, the institute looked like nothing so much as a sprawling country manor, but inside, it was state-of-the-art, immaculate, secure: a perfect match for The Society itself—ancient, secretive, a thing of legend, but on the cusp of modern science all the same.
Nix slipped into the shadows. He waited and watched. The Society was a machine with many moving parts, many members. Even those who came within a hair’s breadth of him remained blissfully ignorant of his presence. They were Normal, and he was nothing.
Invisible.
Faded, Nix could see the way the light played off one man’s eyes, a woman’s fingertips, the odd nose.
Sensors.
To the average person, they would have looked just like anyone else, but faded, Nix got a visual reminder that Sensors were different, that of all of the Normals in the world, they were the only ones who stood a chance of recognizing him for what he was. Most people had no idea that there was an energy to life, an underlying, immaterial something that made them who and what they were. But Sensors were different: sensitive to the presence or absence of energy. They could smell it, taste it, feel it—the particular sense varied from person to person, but one constant remained. Sensors knew energy, recognized aberrations. And still, they walked by Nix, unaware of how easily he could have reached out and punched his immaterial hand through their bodies. They couldn’t see him. Couldn’t feel his presence in the pads of their fingertips or the buds of their tongues. Unless he was solid and they were looking for him—and why would they? Why would anyone?—his lack, his deficiency, his presence went unnoticed.
It was just as well that Nix was faded. Sensors and Nobodies didn’t mix well.
“The old man is certain?”
From the conference room behind him, Ione’s voice broke into Nix’s thoughts, and he read in her tone and words that she’d found his next mark: another name to be slipped under his door, another life for his hands to snuff out.
Nine months. Six months. Two.
The time in between his assignments was shrinking.
Not weeks now, not months. Days.
“Cyrus confirmed the diagnosis that his sixteen-year-old apprentice made this morning. He’s quite satisfied with this demonstration of Mariah’s progress as a Sensor, but obviously upset with his own performance. To find this girl there, in his zone, lazing about a swimming pool, right under his nose—Cyrus was embarrassed to have missed something like this up until now.”
“Well, these things do happen.”
Nix processed Ione’s words. The Sensors must
have found another Null.
Nix’s grip on absolute nothingness began to waver. He still blended. He was still unimportant. He was still deadly. But in mere moments, he’d lose his fade and be solid again. Real.
They always brought out this reaction in him. Not Ione, who’d been the director of the institute for as long as Nix could remember, or the Sensors, who’d been the backbone of The Society for thousands of years, but their topic of conversation. Nulls. Psychopaths. The ultimate somebodies. The terms were as meaningless as the scientists’ theories as to how and why it happened that some people were born with an enhanced ability to leave their marks on others—and immune from being marked in return.
Nix didn’t need to know why. He hated Nulls, hated that as little as he could affect anyone else, he could affect them less.
Soulless, broken monsters.
Master manipulators, devoid of human compassion.
Animals that had to be put down.
That was what Nulls were. That was why Nobodies existed—to hunt them. To protect the rest of the world. The Normals.
With his last moments at full power, Nix slipped into the conference room. Rematerializing fully, he walked forward. If he’d been a normal person, Ione and Richard, one of the oldest Sensors, would have felt his stare as a physical thing.
They didn’t.
Instead, Nix was able to sidle up to them undetected. Standing eerily close, he leaned forward and whispered a single word into the backs of their necks. “Mine?” he asked, something like and unlike anticipation in his voice.
If he’d been anything or anyone else, his sudden appearance would have made them jump, but Nobodies couldn’t inspire fear. Or hate.
Or any emotion, really, other than a vague discomfort.
“Oh, it’s you.” Ione turned to look at the area just over Nix’s shoulder. She probably thought she was looking at him, but she was wrong. “You’re not to leave your quarters on your own.”
Nix shrugged. He knew every inch of this building, knew it better than they did. What were they going to do? To punish something, you had to see it. You had to care about it. You had to catch it.
The Society had other uses for him.
“My target?” Nix asked, nodding toward the folder and taking it as a foregone conclusion that he’d be the one assigned to the case. Normals like Ione—the kind who could give and take energy, affect other people and be affected by them, love and be loved—didn’t stand a chance against this kind of psychopath, and a Sensor wouldn’t fare any better.
To take down a Null, you needed a Nobody. And Nix was one of a kind.
Without another word, Ione passed him the file. With that single motion, the thing she’d ordered was as good as done.
The Null—whoever she was—was as good as dead.
I wonder what Ione and Richard see when they look at me, Nix thought. Not the tattoos, one line for each of his kills. Not the scars, the ones he’d given himself. Not danger. Not Nix.
He could have pulled a knife on them, and still, their adrenaline levels would have stayed exactly the same.
Nix dropped his eyes from their faces, and his fingers tightened around the file. So what if he was as good as invisible, even to the only people in the world who had genuine motivations to see him? That was exactly what made Nix so incredibly proficient at his job.
Nobodies were born assassins.
3
Claire’s resolve to have fun and be sweet was wavering. It had been two days since her encounter with the old man at the pool, and she’d dutifully returned each day, sunbathing and reading and thinking her way through every variation of at least five different Situations. No one had spoken to her. No one had stared intently at a point just over her left shoulder. Her tan was progressing nicely.
And yet …
Claire was already counting down the days until school started, even though the logical half of her brain knew that three days into the school year, she’d probably start counting down the days until summer. It was, quite frankly, depressing—no, not depressing, she’d already had her two minutes of wallowing this summer, so it couldn’t be depressing—but it was certainly less than ideal.
With a light sigh, Claire slipped off her nightgown and began to put on her bathing suit. For lack of a better plan, she was going to stick with routine and she was going to be happy about it if it killed her. She slid into her bikini top, adjusting the straps on her shoulders. In a show of daring, she’d chosen white today instead of blue, but the clasp on her white suit was bent out of shape, and her fingers felt as thick as sausages as she reached back and clumsily tried to coerce the two straps together.
I will not be undone by a bikini.
The second the thought formed in her mind, it was replaced by an overwhelming sensation of pinpricks on the back of her neck. She froze, her fingers holding tight to the clasps of her suit, and the chills intensified, each individual pinprick sprouting legs and crawling like a spider down her spine.
Someone is looking at me.
Claire didn’t move. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t finish clasping her suit. She just stood there, motionless, holding the top in place, very aware of the fact that she was alone in the house. That she was always alone in the house. That no one would notice if something bad happened to her.
That no one would know if she disappeared.
Claire felt goose bumps rising on her arms, like there was something inside her body fighting to get out. Slowly, she turned, her long brown hair brushing her shoulder as she did.
It feels like feathers on my shoulder. It feels like someone is about to grab me, but there’s no one here.
She stopped breathing.
It feels like there’s someone outside.
Claire forced herself to breathe. She crossed the room, raised her hand to the curtain beside her bookshelf. She closed her eyes.
I can do this.
She stood there, the curtain pulled, the morning light shining down onto her face for several seconds as she worked up the strength to open her eyes.
You are the dumbest person who has ever existed, she told herself. Have I not taken you to eight million horror movies in the last five years? Stand there, with your bathing suit top unclasped in the back and your eyes closed, because you think someone is spying on you. Fabulous idea. Really. As your encore, are you going to run into a dark alley?
And yet, she couldn’t open her eyes. The chills turned to something hot and sharp on her skin, each one shattering like glass and crackling along the surface of her body. She could feel her hands shaking. She could feel someone staring at her, a phantom gaze carving its mark into her flesh. She could almost imagine a face on the other side of the window, but she couldn’t open her eyes.
She just couldn’t.
His mark was, without question, the dumbest creature on the face of the earth. Like a deer caught in headlights, she stood there, frozen to the ground, the perfect target. He could see her heart beating beneath her caramel-colored skin, her entire torso jumping with each erratic pulse, as if it wanted him to know exactly where to put the bullet.
Nix wasn’t normally one for leaving entry or exit wounds. He was a silent killer—poisons, asphyxiation, air bubbles straight to the heart. But for whatever reason, The Society had classified this girl Code Omega, a designation given to the most dangerous, most disgusting, most putrid Nulls.
Omega meant do not engage.
Omega meant kill from a distance.
More often than not, Omega meant making it bloody.
This in mind, Nix studied his prey dispassionately, wondering what twist of fate had brought her to the window. Did she sense the danger? Had she killed enough on her own to recognize the taste of death in the air? Did she know that after today, she’d never kill again?
The gun in Nix’s hands was heavy and cold. His finger slipped easily over the trigger—too easily, and he checked the silencer. It was an unnecessary precaution, but one he took nonetheless. He??
?d been watching her—this girl in the window—for too long. He’d allowed himself to become distracted by the shadow of her body.
I’ve never killed someone my age before. Not a girl.
It didn’t matter. If this Null was Code Omega, she was a plague, and he was the only cure. Nulls were manipulative. They played with the emotions and hopes and dreams of others, without ever feeling any empathy or real emotions of their own. They were empty shells that mocked what it meant to be human. They were incapable of thinking of anyone or anything else, and sooner or later, they always killed.
Less than shadow. Less than air.
Nix held tight to the cover of his own invisibility. He couldn’t think about this girl as a girl, and he couldn’t think about her as a monster. He couldn’t afford to think about anything, couldn’t allow himself the luxury of personhood if he didn’t want to get caught.
He needed to stay in the fade.
The world might never know how dangerous this girl was, but once the deed was done, they’d know that she was murdered. They’d wonder who would do such a horrible thing. They would never know why it had to be done.
They would never thank him.
You are nothing. You are nobody. You will never matter to anyone, and the only way you can make a difference in this world is to kill.
A woman pranced past him, walking three dogs on two leashes. The third dog ran unleashed, and it was the one that paused, for an instant, in front of him. And then it shook its head, sneezed, and ran on. Nix lifted his arm. He aimed his gun just under the edge of his mark’s white bathing suit, which lay lightly on her skin, held on by a hand behind her back.
He saw the suit as it would be—coated in blood.
Nix moved to squeeze, picturing the bullet entering her chest, the heart underneath her sun-kissed skin stilling.
The trigger pressed back against his finger.