Jinx was walking ahead of them the minimum distance that still allowed running to remain a plausible plan if the situation turned ugly.
Proxy watched her calculate that margin in real time. That, in its own way, was a kind of sincerity.
They had been walking for roughly two minutes through corridors, with large processing units on both sides and overhead strip lighting running at half power. The fight sounds kept arriving in periodic waves from outside.
Nyx had been quiet for those two minutes, which was not her usual condition, and the quiet had the distinct feel of something being prepared rather than something absent. Silence, in her case, was never just silence.
She bumped her shoulder against his arm.
"You did not deny it," she said.
He looked at the network. "There was no productive point to it."
"Not denying something is the same as accepting it," she said, pleasantly.
"They are not the same thing," he said.
