Why had she sent a backup team to finish the job?
It was almost as if The Society knew that she’d have this effect on him. As if they doubted that he would kill her. As if they’d feared he would figure out—No.
Nix couldn’t breathe. His chest tightened, and he felt the urge to cut himself to slow the panic that was creeping up his spine.
Claire cried. She laughed. She got upset when he told her to kill him, and she was puzzled when there were things that she didn’t understand.
Claire had never killed anyone.
Now that he had started his mind down this path, there was no stopping it. The facts bombarded him, one by one. Claire hadn’t commanded her neighbor’s attention the first day they’d met. The police had come to her house, but they’d left and never come back, which meant that either Claire had intentionally thrown away the protection they might have provided, or else, she hadn’t had the power to make them stay.
Claire had dreams. Claire had nightmares. Everything she felt went directly to her face, and she felt everything.
She even felt him. His presence.
What if it wasn’t an act?
What if Claire really was what she appeared to be? What if she was just a sweet girl? A sweet, Normal girl who couldn’t even kill someone who’d come very, very close to killing her?
No. Nix was on his knees. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. The rocks in the soil pressed into his kneecaps, and a roll of nausea spread through his body.
“The Society protects Normals from the Nulls.”
Without warning, Nix is nine years old again. His trainer’s name is Ryland.
Ryland has a knife.
“For thousands of years, men with the ability to sense evil in others have banded together to hunt the monsters in their midst.” Ryland twirls the knife around his fingertips, and Nix wonders what the lesson will be this time. A Nobody knows better than to hope that the knife is for show.
“You are the right hand of The Society. You are a weapon. You are a tool.” Ryland brings the knife to skid lightly over the surface of Nix’s skin. It takes the Sensor one try, two to figure out where Nix is standing—but he doesn’t cut him. Not this time. Instead, he spins the blade, offering Nix the hilt.
Then they bring in the corpse. For practice.
Nix came out of it on all fours on the forest floor. Eliminating Nulls was his purpose in life, the altar on which his blood and tears and sweat had been shed. On The Society’s orders, Nix had killed—One, Two, Three, Four. Nulls who valued the average human life no more than that of an ant. Five, Six, Seven—again and again and again, Nix had put them out of their misery and saved the lives they otherwise would have taken—Eight, Nine, Ten.
Eleven was the senator.
And now Claire. When Ione had given him her name, Nix had assumed that she was a monster. When Claire’s file was designated Do Not Approach, he’d known that she was the worst of the worst.
But he’d known wrong. The truth was unfathomable, but impossible to deny. Claire didn’t act like any Null he’d ever seen, because she wasn’t a Null.
Nix lurched forward on his knees, his stomach emptying itself on the forest floor. Everything made sense now. Claire wasn’t the world’s best actress. He was the world’s biggest fool. The Society’s lapdog. Their pet. Go, fetch, they told him, and he did. Go, kill.
But why Claire? What had she done to incur The Society’s wrath? If she wasn’t a Null, why would they want her dead? Nix wanted to go back to the institute. Wanted to beat the answer out of the people who’d sent him here. To surprise them in their beds and make them pay for what he’d almost done to Claire.
She’s just a girl.
Nix sank back onto his heels, tears stinging his eyes. Claire wasn’t a Null. She wasn’t a heartless wretch. She wasn’t a killer. If either of them were a monster, it was him.
Nix couldn’t go back to the cabin. He couldn’t face Claire, but he couldn’t just leave her there either. Alone. Scared. Confused. He had to explain, and he had to ask—
Why could she see him? Why didn’t she seem to notice that he was less?
That’s why they did it. That’s why they want her dead. Because when they told me no one would ever see me, they lied. When they told me I could never affect anyone, they lied.
The next thought—when they told me no one would ever love me—was too much, too fast. And even if it had been possible, once upon a time, it wasn’t now.
The Society had made sure of that.
He’d kidnapped her. He’d almost killed her. She was the first person he’d ever been able to affect in any way, and he’d made her cry.
Claire. Claire. Claire.
Nix stood up, her image pushing out all other thoughts in his mind. He had to go back to her. To help her. To explain.
And then he had to go back to the institute.
For answers.
He left me. He left me. He really, really did.
The longer Claire was alone, the more fully the memory of Nix’s touch evaporated from her skin. It was over. He was gone. She tried to approach the situation rationally, to be glad that he’d given her the perfect opportunity to escape, but she couldn’t shake the knowledge that she’d been left. Discarded. Probably already forgotten.
Again.
Situation: You’ve been kidnapped and abandoned at an empty cabin in the woods. No one knows you’re here. They probably don’t even know you’re missing.
Claire could have daydreamed her way out of this cabin eight times over. She tried to pretend that was all this was: another Situation, a problem to be solved. She searched the cabin (unsuccessfully) for a phone. She gathered her assailant’s weapons one by one and hid the guns and needles and knives under the front porch, in case he came back.
He won’t.
Claire tried not to think those words. She tried not to think about waking up to his eyes on hers. But most of all, she tried not to acknowledge the fact that this wasn’t a Situation—because in her Situations, she was never, ever alone.
Claire left the cabin. She ran out into the woods, but stopped. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going. A thick tendril of panic began to slide its way up her spine. Too many horror movies. Too much Stephen King.
All alone in the woods. Because he left. Because I—
Claire’s head throbbed. Panic rose inside of her. She was five years old again, alone at Walmart. In the park. In the back of her parents’ car, locked in.
McDonald’s.
Every place she’d ever been forgotten.