Текст книги "Our Lady of the Ice"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ELIANA

The bell chimed against the door in Eliana’s office. She was hunched over the open drawer of her filing cabinet, rifling through old files—a former client had called because her husband had showed back up, and the client had a question about the legalities. Eliana looked up at the sound of the bell.

“Oh,” she said, her heart pounding. “Hello, Mr. Gonzalez.”

Mr. Gonzalez stepped into the office. He slid off his hat and hung it on the coatrack. His eyes glowed golden in the dome light beaming in through the window.

“Miss Gomez,” he said. “I was in the neighborhood. I hope you have some information for me.”

“What? Oh, sure. Yeah. Have a seat.” Eliana plastered on a bright smile. Mr. Gonzalez did not return it, only strode forward and dropped into the client chair. He watched her as she jammed the files back into the cabinet; she could feel it, his eyes boring into the back of her head like a gunshot.

She whirled around. “You having a good day?” she asked, trying to buy herself some time.

“Yes. What do you have for me?” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wallet fat with bills. Eliana slid into her seat behind her desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. She’d stuck her notebook in there. It was currently filled with two pages of fake notes that she’d scribbled down three nights ago.

“Not a lot.” She set the notebook on the desk and opened it to the first page. Her handwriting looked huge and loopy and unfamiliar. “Normally I gather evidence—photographs, documents, that sort of thing. But it was pretty much impossible with a robot.”

Mr. Gonzalez watched her and said nothing.

Eliana took a deep breath. “I went down to the park, walked around a bit. It’s creepy.”

“Yes, it’s certainly seen better days.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” Eliana smiled at him, trying to be disarming. He kept his face blank. Not a single hint about who he really was or who he was working for or what he wanted with Sofia. “I couldn’t find this Sofia. I spent a good three hours wandering around the park, and the only robots I came across were those old-fashioned steam-powered maintenance drones, the ones the city doesn’t use anymore. You know the kind I’m talking about?”

Mr. Gonzalez frowned slightly, the first show of emotion she’d seen from him, and nodded. “And that’s all you found?”

Eliana shrugged. “None of the maintenance drones could talk. I tried. Probably looked like a fool, trying to carry on a conversation with one of those things—and, well, I guess I was a fool, seeing as they didn’t actually tell me anything.”

“She was most likely hiding. You can go back, try again. I’ll pay you.”

Underneath her desk, Eliana pressed her nails into the palm of her hand. “I didn’t see any signs there were andies living out there. She’s probably rusted into parts now. Or been stolen away by some rich guy—”

“If that’s the case, then you’ll need to track her down. This is what I hired you to do.” He leaned forward over the desk, and Eliana kept her spine straight, didn’t recoil at all. The air shimmered with a sense of menace.

“If you’re not interested in working with me,” Mr. Gonzalez said, “I can always take my business elsewhere.”

Eliana surged with panic. She sat very still, but inside her chest her heart pounded and pounded. She’d come up with the false information so she could get rid of him and get the second half of his payment, but now she realized she hadn’t thought her plan through. If he went elsewhere, off to one of the big PI offices downtown, they’d find Marianella and they wouldn’t keep her secret. Digging up a cyborg was the sort of thing those assholes lived for. And Eliana couldn’t let that happen.

“Don’t be so hasty,” she said, smoothing out her voice. She folded her hands on the desk. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to track her down. All due respect, she’s a robot, and most of my techniques won’t work with them. But I still might be able to help you.”

“And how’s that?”

Her brain whirred. He wanted a robot, and if she couldn’t deliver the robot itself, what was the next best thing? Information. And that was easy. Robots were nothing but information.

“She was part of the amusement park, correct?”

“I already told you that.”

“Of course.” Eliana waved one hand dismissively and prayed that uneasy feeling she got from him wasn’t the result of him being high up in the city’s bureaucracy. “Here’s what I’m thinking. The city keeps all their old records, as I’m sure you know. I’ve got some contacts down there, so I may—and this is a big ‘may’—be able to yank some of her files.”

Mr. Gonzalez didn’t move. “Is that true?”

Thank God. He didn’t have access to the park files himself. She might be able to salvage this after all.

“Of course it’s true. You’re paying me, right?”

“Yes.” Mr. Gonzalez rapped his fingers against the wallet. “I’d like to see those files very much, Miss Gomez. I’ll pay you thirty dollars for visiting the park, and then five hundred if you can bring me any information about her programming.”

Eliana didn’t flinch. Five hundred dollars. With her savings, that brought her up to the three thousand she needed for a visa, although not a ticket on one of the ships. Not yet.

Her ears buzzed as she answered him, trying to keep her voice calm.

“That sounds excellent,” Eliana said. “I’ll put in the call this afternoon, and I’ll let you know just as soon as I find anything out.”

For a moment Mr. Gonzalez didn’t move. Then he extracted a thin stack of bills from his wallet and laid them on the desk.

“Would you like a receipt?”

“No, Miss Gomez, that won’t be necessary.” Mr. Gonzalez stood up. He had a graceful way of moving. Sophisticated. Cultured. He didn’t seem like a city man at all.

Eliana stood up too and they shook hands over the desk. His palm was cool and dry. Maybe he was with Cabrera after all. No matter. She was going to get rid of him after she handed off the files, and she was going to be rid of this city not long after that.

“Have a good day, Miss Gomez.” He tilted his head down, a genteel sort of bow, and then turned and left the office.

She watched him leave. When the bell twinkled into silence, and his shadow had disappeared from the window in her door, she dialed Maria’s work number. Maria answered on the second ring, her voice harried.

“Hope City budget office, how may I direct your call?”

“Maria?”

“Eliana? Jesus, I haven’t talked to you in ages. Thought you might have finally caught that ship to the mainland without saying good-bye.”

“I’ve been busy. I do have a favor. I can pay. A lot.”

“Oh, I can’t talk right now, sweetie! Listen, I’m meeting Essie at some party down at the warehouse district tonight. Why don’t you come? Better than just calling me up at work asking for favors, right?”

Eliana laughed. “Sure, yeah. I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy—”

“Hey, working girl, I’ve got it.” Maria’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I seriously can’t talk right now, though. Party’s at the old Azevedo supply warehouse. Eight o’clock. I’ll meet you out front.”

“Sure thing.”

They said their good-byes, and Eliana set the receiver back into the cradle. Her office seemed empty and cold, like Mr. Gonzalez had turned it into a vacuum. She shivered, then stood up and adjusted the radiator. It rattled more insistently against the wall.

A warehouse party tonight. This was the last thing she needed, to go hanging around the warehouse district. But Maria’d be more inclined to help her if Eliana showed up in person, and she wanted those documents. She wanted to get rid of Mr. Gonzalez.

*  *  *  *

Eliana took the train into the warehouse district. It was crowded with people looking to celebrate the start of the weekend—women in furs and shiny sparkling dresses, men in Italian suits. Most were riding the train to its final destination at the docks. Hardly anyone stepped off with Eliana at the warehouse district.

The Azevedo warehouse was located in the middle of things, a big stone building that was probably among the first built here, when Hope City was to be just an amusement park. The warehouses had stored building materials and robots for the park, and then when the park had closed, the warehouses had mostly closed down as well, save for a scattered handful along the edges of the district that were used for storing supplies for the power plants. Eliana’d been to the Azevedo warehouse once or twice before; Essie’s artist friends threw parties there when they could wheedle someone from the city into giving them a permit. Essie’d claimed it was easier to do in the winter. Bread and circuses, she’d said, knocking back her drink. Eliana didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but she figured she had the general idea.

The Azevedo warehouse was hung with strings of multicolored lightbulbs. Light poured out the windows and flooded over the sidewalk. Music thumped distantly in the background. Something modern and unlistenable, no doubt, rock and roll from America and folk songs from Argentina, all of it run through cheap speakers for that Antarctican Independence distortion.

Maria wasn’t there yet. Eliana leaned up against a broken streetlamp and lit a cigarette. People emerged out of the street’s darkness in groups of threes and fours, all pressed close for warmth. Half of them were in fashionable mainland-style clothes, sheath dresses and skinny ties, and the other half wore the sealskin coats and handmade sweaters favored by the pro-Independence movement. Most of the artists in Hope City were pro-Independence, from what Eliana could gather. Personally, she didn’t care enough to take sides, and she’d thrown on a simple black mainland dress herself. No sealskin for her.

Eliana was almost done with her cigarette when Maria spilled out of the warehouse entrance, her hair already damp and shining with sweat. “Sorry, sorry!” she cried, running over to join Eliana. “I lost track of time in there.” Her heels clicked on the cement. She was dressed more or less the same as she had been on Last Night.

“It’s fine. I was just about to go in and look for you.” Eliana smiled. “So what exactly is happening with this party? Some of Essie’s friends?”

“Yeah, the musicians.” Maria looped her arm in Eliana’s, and together they walked inside. The sound blasted across Eliana as soon as she crossed the threshold; it was as bright and riotous as the multicolored lights hanging outside. Old park equipment was stacked up around the edge of the building so that people could dance in the center of the room, although the music was difficult to dance to.

“Jesus Christ,” Eliana said, shouting.

“Tell me about it.” Maria led Eliana through the crush to a cluster of tables built out of old brass pipes. A white bedsheet hung on the wall behind them, and someone was projecting slides of the Antarctic desert onto it, the snow painted over with garish, unnatural colors. Every now and then words flashed on the screen: Their power plants are our cancer! Their blood should freeze!

Essie sat at the table alone, drinking a beer.

“She’s here!” Maria cried, and Essie lifted her head and waved. She was in full Independence regalia tonight, her boxy dress cut out of sealskin and shaped at the waist with a rough-hewn, handmade belt.

“Oh my God,” Maria said. “I’m so glad you could make it. It’s been forever. And with all the blackouts lately, I was starting to get worried.”

“Me too.” Essie peered up from her drink as Eliana slid into the seat next to her. “It’s the mainland, you know. They’ve got the city under their thumb. They want us to know who really controls the power out here.”

“Politics.” Maria rolled her eyes. “Couldn’t we escape it for just five minutes?”

“You’re at an Independence party,” Essie pointed out.

“It wasn’t the blackouts. I’ve just been busy.” Eliana didn’t feel like listening to the two of them bicker. At least it was easier to talk here—the music was across the room, swallowed up by the big empty space of the warehouse. Essie waved her hand, and a bar girl came over and took their orders.

“So busy with what, exactly?” Essie asked. “Saving up money to sell out to the mainland?”

“It’s not about selling out,” Maria said. “She just doesn’t get that this place is home. Isn’t that right, Eliana?” She leaned close. “Why have you been ignoring us? Is it Diego?”

“No.” Eliana made a face at her. “I haven’t seen that much of him lately.” This wasn’t entirely true; she had, after all, seen more of Diego than she had of either of her friends. But that was because he showed up unannounced at her apartment. “I’ve been working.”

“So my guess was right, then.” Essie frowned and looked away. She always got like that when Eliana talked about leaving for the mainland.

“You break any big cases lately?” Maria leaned forward. “Anything—interesting?”

“No, not really.” Eliana tried to make her voice sound bored. She’d already learned that if she didn’t answer that question in the negative, Maria would hound her for details until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “I do need your help with something, though.”

“What? A case?” Maria perked up. Even Essie seemed more interested now.

“Yeah, I need a fake of something. To serve as a kind of—plant—for this thing I’m working on.”

“A plant?”

“Yeah, like a decoy.”

Maria leaned back in her chair. The lights from the projection spilled across her face. “A plant of what, exactly?”

“Schematics for an old amusement park robot. They don’t have to be real. I just need you to make them look official.”

“Oh.” Maria slumped down. “I thought you wanted something exciting. Like you were going to take down half the city council. But just some robot schematics?”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

Maria laughed. “I’m teasing! Sure, I could probably do something. Honestly, I’d probably be able to find the original without a lot of trouble.”

Eliana blinked. Mr. Gonzalez was willing to pay five hundred dollars for something Maria could pick up on her own? She’d thought the park robot schematics would be more closely guarded, that Maria would have to sneak around—

If Mr. Gonzalez was a city man, why didn’t he get them himself?

“I don’t need the original,” Eliana said quickly. “But if you want to find it and copy it and change up the schematics somehow—that’d be perfect.”

Maria grinned. “I feel like I’m doing something illegal.”

“That’s because you are,” Essie said.

“Not really,” Eliana said. “Giving me the real schematics probably is, but she’s not, and it sounds like no one would care anyway.”

“Whoever hired you cares.”

“Yeah, but he’s—” Eliana waved her hand through the air. “I shouldn’t talk about this, you know.”

“Oh, come on,” Maria said.

“I really shouldn’t. But there’s something off about him.”

“Hence the fake schematics,” Essie said. “Interesting.”

The bar girl brought them their drinks. The music had shifted into something resembling a traditional tango, although it was still filtered through with feedback from the speakers. Essie listened intently, nodding her head as if she were at a speech or a lecture.

“People are trying to dance,” Maria said, pointing at a couple weaving their way across the empty space.

“Of course they are,” Essie said. “That’s the entire point. To force people to perform a dance to a culture they should have no part of.”

Eliana resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Maria didn’t, and Essie frowned when she saw.

“You don’t understand anything.”

“It’s just a tango! And they’re messing it all up!”

Essie screeched with frustration. Maria laughed and said, “I’m sorry. I just don’t care about all this stuff—”

“Stuff! It’s your whole life!”

Eliana tuned out their argument. Her thoughts went back to Mr. Gonzalez. She should have the fake schematics soon enough, and she’d definitely slip Maria a bit of payment for helping out.

An eruption of noise filled the warehouse, so loud that the walls rattled.

Eliana thought it was the music at first, reverberating through the speakers, but when the noise faded away, it was replaced by screaming, although the screaming sounded distant and far away. Her ears were buzzing. People were crouching down on the floor, and some were running toward the exit, and everyone was panicking.

“What happened?” Maria was right next to her, but her voice was muffled, like she was speaking through a wall. “What was that?”

Essie shook her head. Her eyes were wide.

Eliana smelled something burning.

“We should go,” she said, pushing away from the table. Maria and Essie followed, their hands linked. People rushed toward the doors, cramming up against one another—like during the power failure on Last Night. But all the lights were still on, and the projector still ran its bright images against the wall, and there had been enough flickers in electricity that people were used to them by now.

Eliana, Maria, and Essie pushed through the doorway, out onto the street. The chaos was worse here, people shouting and running into the alleyways. Gray smoke hung thickly on the air, and the scent of burning was stronger, more pervasive. Alarms clanged wildly.

“Look!” Although muffled, Maria’s voice was sharp and shrill. She jabbed her finger off to the side. Eliana whirled around. She didn’t see anything at first, just more people dressed in party clothes. And it was snowing.

Snow.

Fear paralyzed her. If it was snowing, then the dome had broken open. But no. This wasn’t snow. It was gray and smoldering. It was ash.

“There!” Maria shrieked. “Can’t you see it?”

“I don’t—” Eliana shook her head and stumbled backward. Everyone was looking where Maria was pointing, but Eliana only saw the drifts of ash.

Overhead, the dome glass had gone dark with the rush of maintenance robots.

“God, you call yourself an investigator? There.”

And then Eliana saw it flickering through the building.

The glow of fire.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MARIANELLA

Marianella woke from a dream she couldn’t remember. She lay in her bed, afraid to move. The palace was silent save for the soft whir of the generators, but Marianella was certain that she should listen for something. Something had woken her. She was sure of it.

She slid out of bed and pulled on an old silk dressing gown, left over from one of the old park hotels, and peered out her window. She had a view of the southern half of the park, but she didn’t see anything unusual, only the soft glow of the garden below.

Marianella closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the glass. If she were a robot she could play back through her files and find whatever had woken her. But she wasn’t a robot.

Something was wrong.

Then she heard the wail of a siren.

Immediately, Marianella opened her eyes. She saw nothing outside but darkness. The siren wailed and wailed and then faded away.

Something had happened.

But it hadn’t happened here.

Marianella breathed with relief, and her breath clouded the glass. She had been afraid of another culling, another death. She had gone to sleep thinking of Inéz, and now that she was awake, she thought about her again. Inéz was gone, the roots of weeds and flowers growing around her. The cullers—the city’s men, Alejo’s men, Marianella still wasn’t sure what to think—had never come back for her.

Marianella took a deep breath. When she had told Sofia about the wires, about recognizing the culler, Sofia had frowned and said, “This has happened before. We have an entire warehouse of broken androids because of men like that. That you recognized him means nothing. You spend your days with humans.”

Another siren picked up, far away in the distance. The siren was joined by another, and then they both faded away.

It was probably nothing. A car collision, an accident with one of the icebreakers at the docks—

Then why had she woken up?

The feeling of wrongness lingered. Marianella pushed her hair away from her eyes. Sofia kept radios down in the command center, but didn’t Luciano have a television set tucked away somewhere? She knew he liked to watch the mainland telenovelas sometimes.

She left her room, her bare feet padding softly against the cold tile floor. The palace was dark, and not even the nighttime maintenance drones were wheeling about. Perhaps they were still unsettled from the culling too. Inasmuch as they could feel unsettled.

It didn’t take Marianella long to find Luciano’s television set. He didn’t frequent many rooms in the palace—mostly the operations room, when Sofia needed him, and the kitchen, and the little suite of rooms that had once made up the palace tearoom. She found the television in the Rose Room, perched precariously on a stack of old display cases. Luciano wasn’t there. Marianella had gathered from Sofia that he was spending his time down at the frozen lake, alone. She wondered if he was mourning Inéz.

Marianella switched on the television.

The reception was not good here, and the picture shimmered with static. But it was a news program, the word “LIVE” blinking across the bottom of the screen. Marianella let out a little gasp and turned up the sound.

“Still no word on the source of the explosion, although the city will begin its investigation as soon as the wreckage is clear.”

Explosion?

Marianella thumped the side of the television, and it went momentarily gray from the shock. “Where?” she shouted. “Who?”

The newsman looked at the camera as he spoke. “Alejo Ortiz has already appeared publicly to deny rumors that the explosion was tied in any way to the Independence movement. We go now to footage from his press conference.”

Marianella took a step backward, shivering. Alejo materialized on-screen, standing on the dais in front of the city office, doused in white light. He looked as if he had been dragged out of bed. Seeing him was like being dropped into cold water.

“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 robots 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.