“I swear to you that this tragedy was not wrought by those seeking Independence for our city. We fight for our freedom not with weapons and bombs but with words and ideas—”
He went on and on, his usual rhetoric seeming empty and hollow. Marianella only listened so that she could piece together clues as to what had happened, her heart beating more quickly than it should.
She knew how to discern truth from Alejo’s political confabulations, and so she learned that an electrical power plant had exploded a little over an hour ago. No doubt the sound of it was what had woken her. It was located on the edge of the city, over in the warehouse district, and there had been several eyewitnesses despite the late hour. Why, Alejo did not say. The power plant was small, routing energy to businesses in the area, mostly suppliers for the summer icebreakers.
Marianella listened with a growing sense of dread. Alejo told beautiful stories, but that didn’t change the fact that there would be an investigation in the next few days. An explosion like this didn’t simply happen. Maybe the Independents had planted a bomb, maybe the robots had arranged for a fire. Her human side and her machine side. Either culprit would connect her to the tragedy—not publicly, but privately she would feel the guilt of that connection.
She listened, Alejo’s words spinning a web around her. And then he said a number.
He said, “We Independents grieve deeply for the twenty-six victims of this horrible tragedy.”
That number stuck in Marianella’s brain and would not leave.
Twenty-six people had died.
Twenty-six people had died either because some Independent wanted to speed up the process or because the robots (Sofia, it would be Sofia) wanted to send a message.
Twenty-six people.
She thought she might throw up. She whispered Hail Marys to herself until the queasiness passed.
Alejo’s speech ended, and the screen faded back into the newsman, his face grim and paternal in the studio lights. “No new information has been uncovered, but we will keep you posted on any future developments.”
Marianella switched off the television.
“Sofia,” she whispered. “How could you?”
“I didn’t.”
Marianella screamed and whirled around, her heart hammering. Sofia stood in the doorway, wearing a ratty old housedress, her hair tangled around her shoulders.
“How long have you been there?”
“Not long. I heard the noise from the television, and I thought it was Luciano. I need to speak with him.”
Marianella took a deep breath and pressed her hand to her chest, feeling her heartbeat slow. “He’s not here.”
“I can see that. I should have checked the tracking computers. He’s probably at the lake. Or the roller coaster.” Sofia didn’t move away from the door. “I didn’t kill those people,” she said.
“Well, you don’t expect me to believe it was an accident.” Sofia was willing to make deals with Ignacio Cabrera; it wasn’t a stretch to believe that she could do this.
“Of course it wasn’t an accident. The power plant robots have thirty layers of fail-safes.” Sofia stepped into the room, sliding forward in the graceful way she had. She stopped half an arm’s reach from Marianella and put her hand on her shoulder. “But they still managed to set the fire that caused the explosion. I just didn’t ask them to.”
“That’s not possible,” Marianella said. Sofia’s hand was still on her arm, warm at the touch. But Marianella felt cold anyway. “I know perfectly well they have to be programmed.”
“Not all of them, apparently. Not anymore.” Sofia gave a faint hint of a smile that chilled Marianella to the bone. “Some of them have been gaining their sentience. Just like we did, all those years ago.”
“Not we,” Marianella said coldly.
Sofia didn’t answer.
“If they did gain their sentience, why—why would they do this? Why would they kill all those people?” She kept her gaze on Sofia. She still thought that this was a lie. After the revelation about Ignacio, she didn’t know what to believe when it came to Sofia. “Are they the ones causing the blackouts? Everyone was saying it was some kind of virus, after Last Night. Alejo had me check up on the ag dome robots—”
Sofia dropped her hand. “No, they aren’t responsible for the power failures. At least, that’s what they tell me.” She looked off to the side, her tangled hair pooling around her shoulders. “But what happened recently? That would be cause for retaliation.”
“Inéz.” The name was steel on Marianella’s tongue.
“Yes. I suppose this power plant was a sort of revenge.” Sofia looked back to Marianella. “I doubt they’d call it revenge, though. They’ve always seen things differently. They’d say they were returning balance to the city, Inéz’s life for the people in the power plant.”
That’s not a fair trade, Marianella thought, and then she immediately felt heavy with shame. She shouldn’t think in terms of balance. Death was death.
“I swear to you,” Sofia said. “I swear to you I didn’t tell them to do it.”
They stared at each other. Marianella tried to read Sofia like she would read a human, but it didn’t work.
She didn’t know what to think.
* * * *
Marianella didn’t fall back asleep that night. She lay on top of her bed, a little transistor radio playing the news for her. It was warm here in her room, from the space heater Sofia had installed for her. Because Marianella’s human body still got cold sometimes.
If only Sofia could respect the humanity of the rest of the city as much as she respected that of Marianella.
The dome lights slowly turned on, draining the darkness away. The radio kept spitting out the same stories, half-formed rumors about the AFF causing the blackouts and other power failures throughout the city. Marianella switched it off, her first movement since she’d come back upstairs. The hazy light reminded her that she couldn’t lie in bed all day.
She stood up, walked across her room, and lifted the rosary from her vanity. The beads shone in the light. They were moonstones, worn smooth by her fingers. Her grandmother had given her this rosary when she’d been confirmed, and she’d prayed with it through her transformation from a human into a cyborg, and through her marriage to Hector and her transplantation to Hope City.
Today, she knelt beside one of her windows and cracked it open to let in the thin cold air. She pressed the rosary between her palms and thought of Inéz lying broken on the ground. She thought of the news report, the number twenty-six. She thought of the maintenance drones, their possible sentience. She thought of Sofia, lost in this world of humans.
And then she prayed.
When she finished the rosary, her head felt clearer, her thoughts brighter. Despite her nature, she was still mostly human—that was the whole reason she had built the ag dome with Alejo Ortiz, to prove her humanity. Sofia didn’t understand that. Even if she hadn’t programmed the maintenance drones to cause the explosion, she didn’t disapprove of their actions. And that was what worried Marianella, what made her want to pull away from the park, from Sofia, from all of them, and just put her trust back in Alejo and in Hope City.
Marianella left her room and went for a long winding walk through the park. She would need to contact Alejo, to see if the explosion would affect their plan for the Midwinter Ball—or for paying off Ignacio. The rumors of her heartbroken walk into the desert had begun to take. Alejo had already sent a maintenance drone with a bundle of cards from well-wishers and a recorded message saying he hadn’t heard a peep from Ignacio Cabrera. But this explosion—maybe it would change things somehow. Especially if the city, if Alejo, found out that it had been the robots who’d caused it.
The deeper she threaded into the park, the more Marianella’s thoughts plunged further and further into the idea of the explosion. The r
obots had done that. They had killed twenty-six innocent people. At least the AFF only targeted mainland politicians. Important figures, men who had done something. Not workers going about their evening jobs.
She’d been walking for fifteen minutes when she came across a figure sitting on a bench in the aurora garden, by the lake. It was Luciano. The garden itself had long ago gone to seed, and the brilliant aurora australis colors of the flowers had been subsumed by a thick, rambling greenery.
“Hello, Marianella,” Luciano said, lifting his head toward her. She could see the faint seam in his face where the old skin met the new, but Araceli had done a good job repairing him.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Marianella said. She would have thought that she didn’t want to be around a robot right now, but Luciano’s presence didn’t bother her.
“You’re not. You can join me if you wish.” Luciano closed the book he had in his lap and set it to the side. Marianella picked her way through the overgrown path and sat next to him on the bench. For a moment they occupied a companionable silence, staring out at the frozen water. There was no wind in the park, and so not even the plants moved. All Marianella heard was the faint whisper of her own breath.
“You’re upset,” Luciano said.
“What?” Marianella blinked. “Oh, no. I mean—” She shook her head. He was programmed to notice, so it was silly trying to deny it. “Yes, I am. The last few hours have been difficult.”
Luciano turned toward her slightly. “Because of the explosion?”
“Yes.”
“Sofia told me it was the maintenance drones. That some of them are starting to evolve, the way we evolved.”
Marianella looked at him. “She told me that too.”
“You thought she programmed them to do it.”
Marianella didn’t answer.
“She wouldn’t program them to kill anyone.”
“Wouldn’t she?” Marianella looked at Luciano. “She offered to kill Ignacio Cabrera for me. When she’s done using him, of course.”
Marianella felt queasy saying that out loud. Not simply because of what it implied about Sofia, but because of what it implied about Marianella, that for half a second she had considered it as a possibility. Kill Cabrera, and all her problems would go away. Except she knew they wouldn’t. There would be the guilt, for one.
“Cabrera is a different matter,” Luciano said. “She would not program the maintenance drones to kill people in the city.”
Marianella sighed, slumping against the bench. Maybe there was truth to that. If all Sofia wanted was to kill humans, she just had to program the maintenance drones to turn off the electricity. That would be the end of humanity. But she was far cleverer than that. If Sofia killed the entire city, she risked the mainland dropping bombs on the domes.
Marianella closed her eyes. The overgrown tangle of the garden felt claustrophobic, despite the expanse of the lake only a few paces away.
“Her plans are more complex than that,” Luciano said. “Surely you know—”
“Complex?” Marianella said. “She wants the same thing the city officials want, really, just in reverse. A place for robots instead of humans.”
“It would be a place for people such as yourself, too,” Luciano said softly.
Marianella fell quiet. He was doing the same thing Sofia always did, including her in those plans for the future. But Marianella didn’t want to be included in their revolution. She had designed and built an agricultural dome, meant to sustain human life. That was to be her legacy. Not a smoldering pile of ash in the warehouse district, not the souls of twenty-six people severed violently from their bodies.
She would handle Ignacio in her own way, in the civilized way. She would not kill him.
Luciano picked up his book and reopened it. His head tilted down over the pages. Marianella gazed up at the white dome overhead. Maybe the Midwinter Ball was a frivolous thing in the wake of everything that had happened. But it was a reminder of the work she had done. Alejo wanted her there for financial reasons, but she understood now that she was going to go for personal ones, for moral ones.
She wasn’t a robot. She wasn’t like Sofia.
Attending that silly ball would be her proof.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ELIANA
Eliana paced back and forth across her office, smoking. A week had passed since she’d seen the explosion at the warehouse. She had followed the story, listening to all the different theories—Independent terrorists to computer error to human error. An electrical fire.
The whole thing unnerved her. Accidents happened, and she could accept that. She had gone into a dangerous line of work, and she could accept that as well. But the combination of the two, the idea that she could die as the result of an accident that she had no control over, that she had been so close to an accident that she had had no control over—that was upsetting. It left her shaky, like Hope City was pulling apart at the seams. She’d always wanted to get to the mainland so she wouldn’t be trapped here, and now it felt like being trapped could be dangerous.
The bell on her door clanged. Mr. Gonzalez walked in. Took off his coat, his hat. His golden eyes stared at her from across the room.
“Mr. Gonzalez!” She forced out a bright smile. “I wasn’t expecting you until later.”
“Yes, well, my morning meeting was canceled. You said on the phone that you had everything ready.”
“That I do.” Eliana finished her cigarette and immediately lit another one, hoping Mr. Gonzalez wouldn’t see her hand shaking. Despite the explosion, Maria had come through with the fake schematics. The promise of ten easy bucks had managed to transcend any anxiety from near-death experiences. Actually, she’d told Eliana when she’d dropped off the schematics, the explosion had made it easier. “Everyone’s in a tizzy down at the city offices.” She’d laughed, although the laugh had been forced. “No one noticed me using the mimeograph machine.”
Mr. Gonzalez walked across the office. His footsteps echoed against the wooden floors. Eliana stopped pacing and stood beside the window, nervously running her fingernails over the inside of her palm. Smoke wreathed her head like a shield.
He sat down in the visitor’s chair.
“It’s sitting on the edge of the desk there.” Eliana gestured with her cigarette.
He gave her a quick smile, then opened the file and read through it. Eliana watched him. Her spine seemed to vibrate inside her skin. She sucked hard on her cigarette. She trusted Maria to do a good job, but she didn’t trust Mr. Gonzalez not to recognize a forgery.
He set the file down on the desk, and Eliana’s chest tightened.
“Excellent work, Miss Gomez. I’ll admit I had my doubts, but I do think this information is far more useful than any observations you could have found at the park.”
He reached into his coat and extracted a thick envelope. He dropped it onto the desk. Eliana stared at it for a moment. She had smoked her cigarette almost down to the filter, but she knew she couldn’t light another without giving anything away.
“What I owe you,” he said.
Eliana stared down at the money, dizzy. It wasn’t just money. It was a way off Antarctica. Her way off Antarctica.
She dropped her cigarette into the ashtray, picked up the cash, and thumbed through it. She’d never held so much before, not even when she’d broken into people’s houses as a teenager. That had been for kicks, mostly. And now here she was, taking so much money for a forgery.
Eliana was pretty sure this was the most dishonest thing she’d ever done. At least with stealing, the mark knew what had happened.
“Do you need anything else?” She hoped he would say no.
Mr. Gonzalez considered her question. He was still flipping through the faked documents. “As I said, this is far more useful than I was expecting.” He nodded. “I should be able
to work with this, yes.”
Eliana didn’t answer. She thought about her gun, shoved away in her desk drawer. Second to top, beneath the drawer with the money.
Mr. Gonzalez stuck one hand out over the desk, sideways. She stared at it for a few seconds before realizing he wanted to shake.
She reached over, grabbed his hand. His palm was cool and dry. Unflappable.
“It was enjoyable working with you, Ms. Gomez. I’ll be in touch if it turns out I need anything else.”
Eliana found her voice and gave as flirtatious a smile as she could muster. “Promise you won’t go to the big downtown agencies?”
Mr. Gonzalez smiled back, the cold empty smile of a businessman. “You’ve certainly impressed me, Ms. Gomez.”
He turned and walked out of her office. She hoped out of her life, too.
When the door slammed shut, Eliana sat very still, staring down at the envelope of cash. Her blood felt cold, as icy as the northern winds howling outside the dome. She could buy a visa. Just a few cases more, and she’d have the ship ticket too, plus a bit more to start her new life. Mr. Vasquez had told her that she could call him, if she ever found her way to the mainland. He’d probably be able to give her a job. It wouldn’t take long. Soon, she’d be able to leave everything behind—
Diego. His face came to her like a dull thump in her chest. She could leave the city behind, and she could even leave her friends. But now that she had the money, the reality of leaving Diego settled in. It hit her much harder than she’d expected. She’d thought idly about convincing him to come with her. Now she understood that this would never actually happen.
Eliana picked up the envelope. It was heavy and cool in her palm, the paper slick. She pulled out one of the bills and held it up to the overhead light, where the blue ink glowed.
* * * *
When Eliana came home from work that afternoon, she found Diego smoking on the stoop of her apartment building, his body hunched over the glowing ember of the cigarette. It was colder than usual out. Darker, too.
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