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.

Claire bent her head forward, fighting back the panic, and then she felt a breeze on the back of her neck, saw a shadow on the forest floor. Slowly, she turned.

Nix.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I promise. And I’m not going to ask you to hurt me. Just listen.”

Claire stumbled backward, but she couldn’t help the words that came out of her mouth. “You came back.”

People didn’t come back. Not for her.

Claire scanned his face, but the lines of his expression held no answer. His lips were set into a narrow grimace, and there was a tension in his jawline that she couldn’t quite diagnose.

He was either angry or desperate. Happy to see her, or shattered from the inside out.

“Claire, we need to talk.”

There was a night and day difference between his tone now and the terse orders and accusations he’d thrown at her before. This was Nix being gentle.

This was the stuff of Situations.

Claire swallowed, and for the first time, she wished that she didn’t have such an overactive imagination. She wished that things were black-and-white and simple and real. That he’d never tried to kill her, and that she didn’t believe, deep down, that she might not have been his first.

“I’m not like other people, Claire.” The assassin said those words easily—too easily, like they didn’t matter. Like he’d said them so many times that they may as well have been the tattoos on his skin. “I’m not like other people, because I was born wrong. It’s hard to explain, and it’s probably going to sound crazy, but you just have to listen to me.”

“I’ll listen.” She took a step toward him, and he jumped back.

“You can’t do that. You can’t come so close. You can’t … touch me.” He choked on the words. “I can’t be near you.”

He didn’t want her. Of course he didn’t.

He just wants to tell you something. He doesn’t want to touch you. Why would anyone want to—

“You don’t want to touch me, Claire. You really don’t.” The symmetry of his words and her thoughts stopped the onslaught in Claire’s head. Nix looked down at the ground, then back up at her. He kept his distance. “Everything in the world has an energy. Most people can’t see it, they can’t smell it, they can’t feel it. They don’t even know it’s there. But a small percentage of humans can sense it. They’re called Sensors, and for thousands of years, they’ve been studying the pattern. They know how energy works. They know what it does. And just by looking at you—smelling you, listening to you, whatever—they can tell when something’s wrong.”

The back of Claire’s neck tingled. A montage of images played in her mind: the red-haired girl at the pool holding the palm of her hand up to Claire’s face; the old man scanning her body in a pattern that seemed more military than not.

“There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?” Claire didn’t wait for him to answer. “That’s why you tried to kill me.”

Nix closed the space between them in the span of a single heartbeat. He placed his hands on either side of her face, forcing her to look at him.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Claire. You’re perfect.”

She closed her eyes and leaned into his hands. She wanted to believe what he was saying. And for a half of a half of a second, she did.

Nix knew he shouldn’t touch her. He didn’t deserve to. He’d almost killed her. And even if he hadn’t, she deserved to know the truth—that he was nothing. That he wasn’t worth even a moment of her time.

But his hands were hot. Her face was soft. And when she leaned into him, the pressure cascaded over his entire body. It only lasted for a fraction of a second, but Nix imagined it lasting longer, becoming something more.

No.

He jerked his hands away, fisted them by his side. He couldn’t. Couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t touch her. He was a killer, and she was perfect. He was Nobody, and she was everything.

“I work for an organization. They call themselves The Society. And they did send me here to kill you, Claire.” Nix paused, letting her absorb his words. “They made me think that you were something you weren’t. A Null.” He could tell by the look on her face that he was getting ahead of himself, confusing her, so he forced himself to take a step back, to explain the things he’d been taught from the cradle, the things she’d never known.