“Do you know how to shoot?”

It had never occurred to Claire that it might be more complicated than pulling a trigger. She said so, and moments later, they were outside, and he was going through the steps, one by one.

“Close one eye. Look down the barrel. Grip steady. Arms straight.”

It took her three tries to hit a tree. He showed her how to reload, and they fell into a pattern: shooting, reloading, his hands steadying her body against the kickback.

“If you shoot from the fade, the bullet crosses into reality once it leaves the gun—unless you actively try to keep it immaterial. Assuming you let the bullet go, you can take out a target without ever giving them the opportunity to lay a single finger on you.”

Claire thought back to aiming the gun at the rogue Sensor as he injected himself with the serum for the second time. She hadn’t thought about killing, or mechanics, or what any of it meant. She’d moved on instinct.

And if he hadn’t killed himself, she might have done it for him.

Nix doesn’t want me to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want him to do this.

It had to be done.

“So that’s the plan?” Claire asked softly. “We go in, guns blazing, and pick them off one by one? Shoot Ione and Sergei, take their keys, and be done with it?”

She’d do that. For the little black-haired boy and the little black-haired girl. For Natalie, who couldn’t help what she was. For Sykes and Wyler. For Nix. For herself. For their future.

Nix shook his head. “If we shoot Ione or Sergei, someone will figure out that we’re there, the entire place will go into lockdown, and we’ll lose our chance to grab the children. No one can know we’re there. The weapons are just a precaution.”

As far as precautions went, Claire thought the artillery strapped to their sides was rather extensive, but this wasn’t her realm of expertise. It was his.

“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t ever shoot a gun, and everything else would stay sheathed. So long as we’re in complete control, all we need to do to get the keys is stop time, find the keys, and materialize just enough to take them.”

Claire noticed that Nix said that they needed to find the keys. Not that they needed to find Sergei and Ione.

Ione. His mother.

Claire almost said something, but she decided against it. She knew, better than anyone, that there were some hurts you couldn’t afford to feel.

Nix closed his eyes, and his body grew bright with the fade. Claire’s lips softened, as they always did, and the impulse to join him, to let go, to forget about what they were doing and why, was incredible.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she watched as he spoke. “This isn’t my hand. It’s not me. It’s not mine. It doesn’t belong here.”

Claire watched the fade slowly recede back from Nix’s fingertips, and when he knelt to the ground, he plucked a single blade of grass from the forest floor.

“You try.”

She did. The warmth of the fade came easily and quickly, and with a serene smile, Claire said good-bye to the digits on her right hand. It was much easier than shooting a gun. What was a hand anyway? It didn’t have thoughts or feelings. It didn’t have memories. She’d raised that hand in class, again and again, and been overlooked. Really, in the grand scheme of things, hands weren’t such a very big deal.

“Good,” Nix said, once she’d accomplished the task. “We might lose timelessness when we partially solidify, and we’ll definitely lose it when we split up, but we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Claire saw many bridges in their future, not the least of which was Natalie the little Null. Their future was full of crossings, but for now there was only one detail to be settled, one point on which Claire had no intention of giving in.

“You can’t go anywhere near Ione.”

Nix whipped his head up, but she didn’t give him the chance to stare her down.

“Thinking about my parents makes me lose my fade. She’s your mother, Nix.”

“She’s not my—” Nix’s words caught in his throat as though someone had closed a hand around his throat, and the real world—the solid world—pulled at him.

“You lost your fade,” Claire said, matter-of-fact about the force that had jarred him into silence. “Just now talking about her made you lose your fade. And when you lose your fade, I lose mine. And if we lose it in the institute, then these weapons won’t be for show.” Claire dragged her free hand down to the knife at her side. “Slice,” she said. “Stab.”

She knew how his mind worked. He didn’t want her to kill, and he certainly didn’t want her fighting for her life.

“Fine,” he said. “You take Ione. I’ll take Sergei. If we split up, we won’t be able to freeze time, but we won’t lose our fades either. We’ll meet back, and then—”

Claire saw the moment that it occurred to Nix just how much he abhorred what had to happen next.

“One of us has to go get the kids, and one of us has to initiate the meltdown,” Claire said, picking up where he had left off. “Both of which will require leaving the fade, at least for a moment, and both run the risk of tipping the powers that be off to our presence. If we stick together and go for the kids first, they’ll find a way to block the meltdown mechanism. If we initiate meltdown, the first thing they’ll do is go for the kids.”

“We’ll have to split up. Again.” Nix spat out the words.

Claire knew that neither one of those jobs would be one he’d willingly have given her, if he had the choice. Nix hated Natalie. Hated Nulls. And he didn’t want her anywhere near one. But the alternative involved partial solidification in a room with gas that could kill her, stripping her flesh from her bones in a heartbeat.

Whatever decision Nix made, whatever task he set her, he’d hate himself for it eventually. And right now they really didn’t have time for the luxury of self-loathing.

“I’ll get the kids,” Claire said quietly. “They’d do the same thing to you that Ione would. And no offense, but I’ll stand a better chance of bringing Natalie into the fade.”

Claire didn’t have Nix’s history with Nulls. She’d already taken the Null serum with her. And she’d survived, basically intact.

“I don’t want you near the Null,” Nix said.

“And I don’t want you to risk losing your hands or your life if something goes wrong when you insert the keys.”

Claire saw the second her words registered on Nix’s face. Both jobs were dangerous, but only one had caused the Sensor to make reference to instant death.

Nix closed his eyes in defeat, and for a second, Claire was terrified that she’d lost him. That he’d retreat, close down, block himself off from her in every way that mattered.

Don’t leave me, she told him silently. Stay. Fight.

As if he heard her silent plea, Nix opened his eyes, and placed his hands on either side of her waist, under her shirt and over her weapons, sending a jolt of heat through her body.

Be careful, he told her with his eyes, but out loud, he said other words. Massive, undeniable, un-take-backable words that she’d stopped expecting to hear. “Claire?”

“Yes?”

Her heart was beating. She was scared. Not of The Society. Not of tonight. Of this moment. Of now.

“You tamed me.”

Something gave inside of her chest, and it almost felled her. And just when she thought she might have imagined the words, he repeated them.

“You tamed me, Claire. I love you, just so you know.”

The dam inside her broke, and Claire repeated the words back to him, felt them, meant them.

Maybe they’d come out of this, and maybe they wouldn’t, but they had to try, and as Claire brought her lips to his and lost herself in the smell, taste, feel of Nix, she knew that it was worth it.

Live or die, succeed or fail, for better, or for worse—it was worth it.

26

White walls. White floor. White bed.

Even from the outside of the institute, Nix could smell the pungent odor of disinfectant and feel the walls closing in. Gravel crunched beneath his feet, but there were no flashbacks today. No memories. Just him and Claire and the knowledge that they might not make it out of this alive.