Not a pleasant turn of thought, and he hoped it didn’t show in his eyes. “Do you do other things for the neighborhood?”
“Some. Not enough.” She braced her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “We have activities to keep the kids out of trouble. Clothing drives, job postings, recycled tech, community meals. When it’s very hot or very cold out, we open a floor for shelter. And then … there are the books.”
“The books?”
“Books, Captain. Things you read?” Her playful smile returned. “We can distribute digital files for free, but we also have a machine that can print copies for cost. And Maya helps the people who have material they want to turn into a book.”
He liked her smile. Not just because it softened the forbidding angles of her face, but because of the careless edge of challenge in that mischievous expression. It was rare to see someone confident enough to challenge him.
He sipped his coffee and eyed her over the rim of his mug. “So … you’re like a pre-Flare library.”
“Exactly.” Her voice dropped. “But is that really what you want to know?”
“It’s part of it. You’d be surprised how much I just learned.”
“Would I?”
“Mmm.” Knox set down his mug and leaned forward. “The Crypt could have set you up in a nice apartment with all the luxuries, especially if you’d sold everything in there as exclusives to rich collectors. I’ll bet you didn’t, though. You digitized all those old books and movies, all that music, and you hand it out to people for free. You sank your liquid cash into expensive technology, but now that you have the market cornered on supply, you barely demand anything for access. You print books at cost. Preserve people’s food for next to nothing.”
She tilted her head in expectation of his judgment.
He leveled a finger at her. “You’re an idealist. You think you can put good out into the world and make things better.”
“Sort of.” Her dark eyes bored into his. “You didn’t have to interrogate me for that. I admit it.”
He leaned closer, and even though everyone else was asleep, he lowered his voice to a soft rumble. “You’ve tangled with the TechCorps before. I’ve seen Maya’s file, and Christ knows what they did to Dani. You know that’s not how the world works.”
“Maybe.” She finished her tea in one gulp and turned the cup over on the rough tabletop. “But I’m going to keep trying. Even if it changes nothing.”
There was no bleak cynicism in her warm brown eyes, none of the hopeless nihilism of a soldier still fighting a losing war simply because they didn’t know how to stop. Nina could entertain the possibility of failure, but she didn’t really believe in it. Not yet.
One question hung in the silence between them. She was waiting for him to ask it, and he hated having to. He wasn’t used to stepping into a situation without a full biographical and psychological profile on every person involved. Knowledge was power, and in this arena, and with Conall’s help, Knox had always been very, very powerful.
He curled his fingers around the tin mug until he felt the soft metal bend under his punishing grip. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I believe they used to call it North Carolina.”
Not what he’d meant, and she knew it. “If you don’t want to answer the question…”
“Not everything is a matter of preference, Knox.” She paused. “Honestly? I’m not sure I know how to answer it. It’s complicated.”
It was the first hint of vulnerability he’d seen in her. She turned toward the firelight, offering a profile lit with flickering shadows. Sharp cheekbones, a sculpted jaw, dramatically tilted eyebrows, a straight nose above full lips …
She was an exquisite trap. He knew it, and he still couldn’t stop himself from stepping into it. “It’s okay,” he said softly. Anything to banish that helplessness from her eyes.
“Is it?”
“Everything’s complicated these days.”
Her brows drew together in a curious frown. “Your situation seems pretty simple. I mean, the hard part’s past you, right? Now all you have to do is survive.”
“You think survival is simple?”
“Sure. It’s the most straightforward thing that exists. The strongest drive we have.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Everything else can get sticky. But survival is what it is.”
Said the woman who’d faked Maya’s death instead of claiming a two-million-credit reward. Maybe she’d never been desperate enough to understand. “Survival’s simple. The complicated part is deciding what you’re willing to do