The results were worth it. Maya pulled up her stool and lifted a book from the box at her elbow. The cookbooks were in high demand, but she always had to baby the conversion a little to get the images right in a digital version. In the first few trials, she’d excluded them, but it turned out people really liked pretty pictures of food, so who was she to deny them?
She lined up a book titled Twenty-Minute Bread with Clean Flour and started the scanner. The bright green cover was distinctive of the 2030s, when the Energy Wars had been raging and the environmental cost of everything from clothes to cars to flour had become a highly politicized battleground. No one even called the artificial stuff clean flour anymore—thanks to the TechCorps, it had become the norm. If you wanted real flour, ground from wheat or other grains, you had to dip into the black market.
Most people didn’t bother. The fake shit worked fine, which would make this book very popular.
Maya tapped her fingers as the pages began to appear on her monitor. She was skimming the images when the softest scrape of bare feet on concrete sounded behind her.
Panic jolted her, but her training under Nina had been intense and her instincts were well-honed. Also, Dani hid guns everywhere. The closest was under the table, and Maya had it in her hand a second later as she spun toward the noise.
Huge, dark eyes stared at her from a pale face under brutally short hair. The kid was frozen in the middle of the warehouse, her unblinking gaze fixed on Maya’s pistol with a calm acceptance that ripped her up.
Babies shouldn’t look so unsurprised to see weapons pointed at their damn faces.
“Sorry,” she said, engaging the safety again and sliding the gun onto the table. “You startled me. I thought you were upstairs with Tia Ivonne.”
The kid blinked again. Maya didn’t even know her name. Hell, Maya didn’t know if she had a name. Or if she spoke English.
Or spoke at all.
Moving slowly, Maya walked over to the cooler they kept stocked with bottled water. She always kept a few soft drinks tucked in the back, their carbonated sweetness one of the few guilty pleasures she’d been unable to give up from her cushy life up on the Hill. Luckily, she still had some left over after Rowan’s visit, so she retrieved two chilled glass bottles and offered one to the kid. “Try this. It’s sweet and bad for your teeth, but I love it anyway.”
After an endless moment, the young girl reached out and took the bottle. Her brow furrowed as she stared at the top, and Maya demonstrated twisting the cap off. “If it’s too tight—”
The girl twisted effortlessly, and the top came away slightly bent. Concern shadowed her eyes, but Maya just laughed. “Okay, so you’re super strong. Don’t worry, Nina is, too. She gets frustrated and breaks things more often than we admit.”
Understanding sparked in the girl’s eyes, followed swiftly by relief. So she did understand English. That was something. Maya tilted her head toward the scanner and nudged a second stool toward the table. “Want to help me? I’m scanning books.”
Another hesitation. A nod. The kid carried the glass bottle over to the stool with painstaking gentleness, then sat the same way, as if she really was concerned she’d destroy it. A suspicion kindled in Maya’s gut, but she settled onto the stool and watched the kid take her first tentative sip. “It’s okay, you know. If you broke something upstairs in Tia Ivonne’s apartment.”
Startled green eyes met hers, and Maya knew she’d guessed right. “Hey, as long as you didn’t break her, things are just things. We can replace things, okay? No one’s going to be mad at you.”
An endless pause. Then, in a voice wrapped in a dread that settled in Maya’s bones, she whispered, “I pulled the handle off the faucet. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t punish me.”
It took everything in her for Maya to keep her smile steady and easy. The rage crawling under her skin needed an outlet, but not here. Not with her. “No punishment, kiddo. We’re not even going to get mad. You might get teased, though. I teased Nina for a week last time she twisted so hard she broke a handle off something.”
“Teased?” The voice was a little louder. “Does it hurt?”
Fuck.
“No, honey.” Maya didn’t reach out. She didn’t try to hug the kid. That would have freaked her out at this age. “Teasing’s just … being silly with someone you care about. No one is going to hurt you. I promise.”
After a moment, the girl nodded and took another sip of her drink. “Do you need to know my designation?”
The ghost floated up through her memory, Birgitte’s cool voice. She’ll need a name.
Her designation is DC-031.
A name, Ms. Linwood. Every person deserves a name.
I know you’re supposed to bond with her, but … Well, this might be easier if you don’t think of her as a person, Ms. Skovgaard.
It might also be easier if you were unemployed.
My apologies. Would you like us to provide a name?
No. She’ll take care of it.
The kid’s intense gaze was still fixed on her face, so Maya shoved back the memory of a conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard and answered the question carefully. “Only if you want to share your designation with me.”
That earned her a considering look, as if the kid wasn’t sure what to do with having a choice. When she finally answered, it was with dull acceptance. “I’m JHX-7.”
In the Franklin Center, where Nina had grown up, designations had indicated genetic lineage. The Professor had also given them the initials JH, an indication that they actually might share the same DNA. The seven could mean there were seven of her or she’d been the seventh try. Either possibility churned horror through Maya.
But at least she knew how to handle this. “That’s not who you are, you know. Mine was DC-031, but it’s not who I am.”
“You have a designation?”
“Had.” Maya said it firmly. “A designation is something they give us to define our place in their world. A name is something we take to define ourselves.”
After a moment of fidgeting with the glass bottle, the girl peeked up at Maya. “I can pick a name?”
“Hell yeah.” Maya smiled around the ache in her throat. “We’ll call you anything you want.”
“What if I choose wrong?”
“There is no wrong. If you try a name and decide it doesn’t work…” Maya shrugged. “You pick a new one. And then we call you that.”
The girl’s mouth formed a silent O of wonder. Her brow furrowed a moment later. “How did you decide?”
“Wait here.” Maya hopped off the stool and crossed to the bookshelf where she’d been hoarding her special finds. The Rogue Library of Congress bounty had created something of a logistical nightmare in the best possible way, leaving Maya hip deep in a barely organized tangle of ancient treasures. But she knew exactly where the box filled with dozens of brightly colored children’s books was, and right there at the top …
The cover was still surprisingly vivid, showing a young girl in a spacesuit against a background of stars. Maya had stared at a digitized version of this book a thousand times, imagining that this girl with her glowing, brown skin and determined eyes and softly curving face and world-saving brilliance could be her.