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She didn’t let herself think about Diego.
“Well?” Mr. Gonzales said. “What do you think?”
Eliana picked up the envelope and opened it. She ran her thumb over the edges of the bills, her breath hitching in her throat. “What do you mean by ‘interesting’?” she asked.
“I’ll let you know if I hear it.” Mr. Gonzalez stared at her, his gaze heavy, stifling. “Will this arrangement work for you, Miss Gomez? If not, I can take my business elsewhere.”
Eliana kept ru
“One question,” Eliana said. “Does this have anything to do with Ignacio Cabrera?”
“The gangster? Don’t be absurd.”
Eliana nodded. She tossed the money onto the desk like it didn’t concern her. “Good. I’ll take the assignment.”
* * * *
A few days went by while Eliana thought about the job. Mr. Gonzalez had said he’d come back to her office in a week to see what she’d learned. But a fucking robot would notice her wandering around the amusement park, so it wasn’t as if she could borrow Essie’s car and case the neighborhood. Eliana sat at her desk, doodling on her notebook paper, underneath the place where she had written Sofia and andie and amusement park. The photograph stared at her, Sofia’s eyes dark and glossy. She really didn’t look like an andie at all.
Meanwhile, Eliana scrounged up the deed to that storefront by the docks, and Mrs. Quiroga actually conjured a smile when she stopped by the office for the meeting. It was more satisfying than Eliana had expected.
Finding the runaway son was trickier—mostly, Eliana suspected, because he didn’t want to be found. As she rode around town, asking questions about the runaway, half her thoughts were always with that beautiful andie Sofia. She couldn’t turn the job down. The fifty-dollar retainer wasn’t enough money on its own.
One afternoon, Eliana was holed up in her office, making phone calls to all the bars on Hope City’s east side, since she’d gotten a lead about the runaway taking up work as a dishwasher. But so far, she hadn’t found anything.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s got brown hair, tallish—” The bell chimed. Eliana glanced up. At first she couldn’t place what she was seeing. A woman. A familiar woman.
Lady Luna.
The man on the other end was saying that their only dishwasher had black hair, and Eliana managed to sputter out a “That’s not him” before dropping the telephone back into the receiver. It was Lady Luna, dressed in sleek mainland clothes, her blond hair hanging loose to her shoulders.
She was coated in ice.
The ice sparkled across her skin as she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. Her steps were slow and jerky and punctuated by a horrible cracking sound, like her body was falling apart.
“Hello?” Her voice was rough and whispery. “Ms. Gomez?”
“Lady Luna?” Eliana stood up, kicking her chair away from the desk. “Are you—are you okay?” Her voice echoed in her head.
Lady Luna focused in on her.
“There you are,” she said.
Eliana opened her mouth. Lady Luna shuffled forward. Her hair clinked as she moved, catching the light, throwing off sparkles.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Eliana said, voice shaking, “what happened to you?”
Lady Luna shambled up to the desk. She looked around the room with a dazed, empty expression. Then she looked toward Eliana, and her pupils contracted into points. Creepy.
“Why did I come here?” She collapsed into the client chair. The dome light hit her, and dots of white light appeared all over the walls of the room. “I should have—” She looked at Eliana again. “I hope you’ll help me.”
“Lady Luna?” Eliana couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. “What— Are you okay?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?” Lady Luna put on a strained, painful-looking smile. “I would be—very much obliged.”
A request for a cigarette was so normal that Eliana knew exactly what to do. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out her pack and her lighter. Lady Luna didn’t move. It seemed like it hurt her, moving. So Eliana stood up, walked around the desk, and placed the cigarette between Lady Luna’s lips. Lady Luna gazed up at her. Her pupils were still contracted, and something about her eyes seemed wrong. Dull. Distant.
Eliana stared at her, looking for the tells she had found on Luciano, but Lady Luna didn’t give herself away as a robot. Of course not; she’d never had those tells. Eliana flicked the lighter, touched it to the tip of Lady Luna’s cigarette. The ember flared; smoke twisted toward the ceiling.
Lady Luna took the cigarette from her mouth and blew out a stream of smoke.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit in need of fire at the moment.” She reached distractedly for her hair and pulled on a thin frozen chunk. It broke in half.
Eliana jumped.
“Fuck.” The word sounded elegant in Lady Luna’s soft voice. She tossed the broken hair to the floor. It hit with a clank.
Eliana slumped back against the desk.
Lady Luna smoked her cigarette without speaking. Eliana watched her. When the cigarette was burned down almost to the filter, Eliana handed her the ashtray, and Lady Luna snubbed it out.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Are you a robot?” Eliana blurted.
Lady Luna took a long time to answer.
“No,” she said. She traced her fingers over her hair again. The ice was starting to melt and it left dark puddles on the floor. “No, not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
Lady Luna closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come here.” Her voice wavered and her eyes opened. “You were right to warn me about Ignacio.”
“Cabrera?” Eliana felt cold.
“Yes, he tried to kill me.” A pause. “But he was unsuccessful.”
Dread gnawed at Eliana’s stomach. “Did he throw you out of the dome?” God, did Cabrera do that? Did Diego? Eliana tried not to think about Pablo Sala. Mr. Cabrera had him killed. If Diego was just an errand-ru
Lady Luna nodded.
“And you survived?” Eliana was dizzy. “This has to do with your stolen documents, doesn’t it?”
Another pause. A drop of water slid down Lady Luna’s hair. “Yes,” she said.
“I don’t understand. It’s fine if you want to tell me you’re a robot. I won’t—”
Then Eliana gasped.
Lady Luna looked away, her face blank.
“You’re part-robot.”
The faintest hint of a smile, bitter and hard. “Part-robot. I like that better than the official term. But yes, that’s what I am.”
The office went silent save for the rattle of the radiator, the drip of melting ice. Eliana stared at Lady Luna. Cyborg, that was the official term. She’d heard about cyborgs before. They were ba
“Does it shock you?” Lady Luna’s voice was soft and melodious, the voice of a human.
“No.” Eliana wanted to seem polite.
“I’m glad to hear that.” Lady Luna pressed her hands against her lap. “I really didn’t mean to burden you with this. I can, of course, pay for your discretion, as I did with the documents.”
Eliana almost said that wasn’t necessary, but she caught herself at the last moment. It was good business sense, to take the money to keep a secret she would have otherwise.