Or maybe it just made her feel powerful to know that she could pull them back to her whenever she wanted, like puppets on a string, even though deep down, most parents knew that there was something wrong with their Null. Even as children, Nulls’ hugs were empty. They were unmoved when Mommy accidentally sliced open her finger. Instead of reaching for the Band-Aids, they leaned forward to get a better look.
No compassion.
No empathy.
Defective. The ying to his twisted yang, a Nobody’s polar opposite in every way. I should have killed her.
He was going to kill her. Only …
She’d seen him. She’d noticed him. And even after she’d started screaming, she hadn’t pulled the attention of the woman with the dogs. She could have, if she’d wanted to. Nulls commanded attention—and adoration—as much as Nobodies repelled it. But this Null hadn’t fought back.
She’d just stood there, staring at him. Not over his shoulder. Not through him. Directly at him.
And, God, it felt like someone had poured Icy Hot over his entire body. Like being hooked up to an electric chair.
It. Wasn’t. Real.
Nix had always known that Nulls were dangerous. That they could make you feel and do things that you didn’t want to do. But until this particular Null had caught him, none of his marks had ever had the chance to use their powers on him.
None of them had ever seen him coming.
As potent as Nix’s ability to fade was with Normals, it was ten times more powerful with Nulls. Nobodies walked through the world unnoticed, and Nulls saw only what they wanted to see. Nix couldn’t affect anyone else, and this girl—this Null—couldn’t be affected by the plights of others. He should have been able to walk up to her with a whirring chainsaw without meriting more than a second of her attention.
He should have killed her.
She should be dead. Nix found the thought unsettling. He’d never failed to carry out an assignment before, and he told himself that was why she kept him up at night. Why he hadn’t faded completely since their eyes had met for the first time. Why he’d opened her file and read her name over and over again, even though she wouldn’t have one for long.
Claire.
Claire Ryan.
The girl he was going to kill. Number Twelve. Today.
Nix picked up the gun and then set it back down. He was an excellent shot. He could hit targets. He could shoot marks. He could put bullets into hearts and keep them from pumping, and into skulls, just between the eyes.
But killing that way wasn’t what he’d been trained for.
It wasn’t what she deserved.
No, Claire deserved something a little more personal. She’d used her powers to make him feel like something, to make him feel worthy and noticeable, and then she’d taken it all away the moment he had realized that she was pretending. That if her life hadn’t been at stake, she wouldn’t have feigned noticing him at all. She’d used her unnatural aptitude for manipulation on him.
So he was going to use his abilities—all of them—on her.
She wouldn’t see him coming. She wouldn’t know what hit her, but when his needle pierced her arm, when she felt that tiny little prick and then nothing—then she’d know who and what he was.
She’d know that Nobody had killed her, and he’d leave her body on the sidewalk, for the police to puzzle over—natural causes, they’d say—and her parents to sob over with equal measures anguish and relief.
“Today, Claire,” Nix said softly. He talked to himself so seldom that the sound of his voice had him looking over his shoulder to make sure that no one else had heard.
Not that anyone would pay it much attention if they had.
For the past three days, he’d stayed close, biding his time. He’d watched her. He’d waited. But now he couldn’t wait anymore. The day before, he’d seen people near Claire’s house. He wasn’t close enough to get an ID on any of them, but he could tell from the way they moved, from the unmarked van they drove, that The Society had sent a cleanup team. Nix’s superiors only had one Nobody, but they had many soldiers.
Sight. Smell. Taste. Sound. Feel.
When Sensors were too old or too young for active duty, they worked on their own, scouting for The Society in zones, looking for aberrations in the world’s pattern. But when they were in their prime, Sensors worked in groups of five, one for each of the senses. Together, they were perceptive to the point of being prescient. They identified Nulls. They safeguarded The Society and its institute. They unraveled the mysteries of the universe, one data point at a time.
The Sensors were the ones who’d trained him.
The world has an energy to it. Everyone and everything—people, objects, animals, plants … even rocks and dirt and molecules of air—they’re all made up of energy. And when they interact with each other, they leave their marks on the world, and it is through that exchange of energy that all happenings happen. That love blossoms. That connections are made.
Do you know why we call you Nix, child?
He hadn’t. Not at the age of three. But by four, he’d learned.
It’s because you’re nothing. You have no energy. You leave no trail. As far as the world is concerned, you don’t exist. And you never will.
The Society had raised him.
The Society had trained him.
The Society had given him a purpose—or as much of one as a Nobody could have. When they told him to kill, he killed, and in the days, weeks, months in between, he molded himself into a better killer: quicker, faster, more untouchable. He let Society scientists poke and prod him so that his deficiencies might be fully understood, so that those working for the greater good might squeeze every last drop of data out of his flesh, his bones, the abilities he had that real people didn’t.
And even though it did Nix no good, even though his emotions had and could have no effect on Ione or the Sensors or the many scientists who’d used him as a lab rat, he hated them for it.
Empty hatred, because he didn’t count.
Claire is mine.
The thought was savage, feral in a way that usually had him tearing at his own flesh, desperate to feel something that mattered. Something he could count on. Something that wouldn’t cease to exist, just because no one cared that it was there.
Claire was his.
These Sensors were out of their league. They thought that because they knew about energy, because they could sense it, that made them less vulnerable to the kind of monsters The Society was created to combat. They thought that knowing what this girl was gave them the advantage.