We’re going in.

To a place crawling with Sensors. To destroy files and hard drives and every trace of the Null drug they could find. But first, Nix had to figure out how they’d kept it hidden from him to begin with. He’d been inside their labs. He’d walked their hallways. He knew every inch of that building.

Unless they had other buildings. Other labs. Nix was beginning to suspect what he knew about The Society only scratched the surface. They’d taught him not to ask questions, to never expect answers. He’d known only what they wanted him to know.

We’ll have to find someone with inside access, make them talk.

Nix heard Claire stirring beside him, and he turned to watch her eyes open, to see the recognition in them the moment they locked on to his.

We need a plan—but not today.

The thought surprised Nix. Vacation wasn’t a word in his vocabulary. Nobodies sat and they waited and they bled and they killed. Over and over and over again, until they died. No variation. No vacation.

That’s not Claire’s life. It’s not mine—not anymore.

“Good morning.” She greeted him with a smile. So simple. So sweet.

It was perfect. So perfect that for a moment, he wished he could freeze it, the way the two of them could stop time from the fade.

“What are you thinking?” Claire asked.

Nix smiled back, banishing the drug to the back of his mind. “I’m thinking that we should go somewhere. Like … on a date.” The word felt inadequate and silly to the extent that Nix actually wondered for a split second if he’d mispronounced it. “We should go out,” he amended.

Before we play David and Goliath with The Society, we should have at least one day, just for us.

Claire glanced toward the coffee table, but he put his hand on the side of her cheek, brought her eyes back to face him. Claire tilted her head into his palm.

“Okay,” she said, with another smile—almost shy, twice as sweet. “Where do you want to go?”

Not the graveyard.

Not a dead senator’s midwestern mansion.

Nix’s lack of experience with the outside world was limiting when it came to brainstorming ideas for dates. “Once we fade, we can go anywhere,” he said, hedging to give himself more time to think.

Claire’s smile grew to almost blinding proportions. “Anywhere sounds nice.”

“Anywhere it is.”

Nix cleared his mind. He let everything but Claire trickle out—no drug on the table, no weapons under the porch. No Society. No Sensors.

Just Claire.

Shadow. Air. Nothing. Claire.

A new mantra. New words, pumping through his veins, forming a strange duet with the old one.

Less than—

Shadow—

Less than—

Air—

Nothing—

Claire.

Nix opened his eyes just in time to see Claire slip from reality, and he realized that it didn’t matter how many times he watched her do this. He’d always be completely absorbed in it, entranced by the way the light shined through her body, from the inside out. The expression on her face would always be new to him, precious.

Amazed. Awed. Ecstatic. Blissed.

“Let’s run.” Nix purposefully used her words from that first day, from the first time she’d crossed over.

They ran. And as the world bowed down at their feet, as Nix passed through the forest, as Claire blurred beside him, he accepted the fact that they’d never be Normal. Not even for a single date. Not even for just one afternoon.

They were more.

Anywhere ended up being a boardwalk in a small, touristy town—far enough away from their hideaway that they couldn’t have run there weighed down by solid limbs, but close enough to remind him of the town where he’d found her standing on the sidewalk in stolen clothes.

The two of them stopped running at the exact same moment, in the center of a modest crowd. Eventually, they’d cross back to the solid world. Do normal things. Eat lunch. Play games. Enjoy the view—but not yet.

Like a dancer moving through motions choreographed long before his time, Nix flowed toward Claire, closing the space between them. She met his eyes. Caught his hand, and the moment they touched, time stopped.

We shouldn’t be able to do this. The Society doesn’t know that Nobodies can do this. If they had, they never would have sent me after her, never would have risked—

Nix couldn’t finish the thought. He belonged to the fade and to Claire. There were no worries here. No thoughts. There was only light. And excitement. And the incredible rush that came with absolute power.

All around them on the boardwalk, there were people. Normal people on Normal dates, frozen in the middle of their Normal lives. A woman screamed at her child, her face contorted at an angle so unnatural that it looked like her skin was melting off the bones. A man was using his briefcase to part the crowd. An old man smelled a hot dog, his eyes closed. Nix wouldn’t have given the man a second glance, but for the almost imperceptible light around his face.

Around his nose.

Moving on instinct, Nix put himself between Claire and the man and scanned the perimeter of the boardwalk.

There—a woman walking with her hands held out slightly in front of her body. And there—a twenty-something with his left ear turned toward the crowd. Nix found the remaining two by looking for the energy their powers gave off, visible only from the fade.

Five of them. Seemingly harmless. Spread out across the area. But Nix knew. He knew. He’d seen lights like those before. In the halls of the institute.

Don’t think it. Don’t worry. Don’t. Lose. Your. Fade

Claire, sensing something was wrong, put her free hand on the back of his neck, pulling him closer, forcing him to look at her and only her, as he’d done for her the night before.

“Claire.” He gave the word its due and let himself absorb their closeness, breathe it in and out until he could form the words he had to say. “There are Sensors here. I should have known. The Society never stopped looking for you. For us. I knew they were searching. I saw them—”

Any second, the two of them could lose their fade. Any second, these Sensors could make a move toward completing the job that Nix had left undone.

“We’re here, we’re together, we’re safe.” Claire’s words took on the rhythm of a song. “Just you and me.”

Nix couldn’t shake the fear, the crippling, solid, undeniable fear that Claire was in danger, that they might hurt her.

I can’t let them find her—hurt her—

“I’m going to lose my fade.” He spoke the words directly into her ear. “And when I do, you will, too, so you have to leave.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

He struggled to hold on for just one more minute, just long enough to tell her what to do. “Sooner or later, we would have gone looking for a Sensor. We need information; they might have it, but five on two … the odds …”

Less than shadow. Less than air. Claire.

“Run. Get away from me so I don’t bring you back, too. Go to the cabin. Hide the serum. Bring me a gun.”

Nix held on. Closed his eyes. Concentrated on her smell. Remembered the way she tasted—and the whole time, he prayed she’d do what he said, because he couldn’t forget the limp body he’d carried onto that bus; the way a cleanup team had almost killed her once before.

“Okay.”

The word was the only warning Nix got before Claire pulled away from him and ran. The moment they broke contact, Nix could hear the sounds of time speeding up around them. He felt her absence and knew it was only a matter of seconds before he lost his fade. Weight began returning to his limbs, but he fought it, fought tooth and nail to keep his mind clear, his body immaterial, just long enough to give her a chance—

Nix solidified on the boardwalk. Life went on all around him. The Sensors continued searching, and Nix took a step back. To think. To plan.

He and Claire needed information. The Sensors might have it. But they also might sense him, and they undoubtedly had orders to kill him—or Claire, when she returned—on sight. Five on one, five on two—either way, Nix didn’t like the odds.

They want to hurt Claire.