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Cold air blasted over him, bringing in a flurry of dry, powdery snow that clung to his face and hair and clothes. When he breathed the snow in, it burned his lungs. He couldn’t feel his arm anymore. That wasn’t good.
The ice automobile’s door slid open. It was all automated. All robots. But Sofia hadn’t programmed them.
He didn’t think.
Diego moved forward. He didn’t have much choice. The only other way out of the dome was on the train, and that meant going back to the house, ru
He climbed into the automobile.
The door slid shut. It felt like a prison cell. Diego leaned back in his chair. Checked his injury again.
The robot at the front of the vehicle said, “Are you feeling well, Mr. Amitrano?” in a dull mechanical voice.
“No,” Diego snapped. “Take me back to Hope City. Entrance 59B.” The closest land entrance to the docks, the closest land entrance to Mr. Cabrera’s office.
“Very well, Mr. Amitrano,” the robot said, and the automobile lurched backward, tires rumbling.
Diego settled back. He kept his gun in his lap, but once they were out in the desert, it would be worthless. If this robot decided he should die, then Diego would be dead.
They drove through the ice and snow.
* * * *
Diego slouched in one of the leather chairs in Mr. Cabrera’s office, staring, bleary-eyed, up at the ceiling. The girl had given him something, drops that made the pain in his arm go away.
“Don’t move,” she told him, squeezing water from her rag into a metal bowl from the Florencia’s kitchen. “I’m about to start sewing.”
“Great.” Diego dropped his head to the side. The girl wore all black, her hair rolled up in a knot at the base of her head. Her hands were bare. At the hospital they wore gloves. But Diego couldn’t go to the hospital.
She had a medical emergency kit open in front of her, bottles with rubber stoppers and rolls of white gauze. She’d cleaned all the blood off his arm, and the water in the bowl was stained red.
“Shouldn’t feel anything, with the drops I gave you.” She peered up at him. Lines cracked around her eyes. “But I’ll put a topical on too. You’re lucky it just nicked you.”
“Tell me about it.” Diego turned away, focusing his gaze on Mr. Cabrera’s desk. It was empty; Mr. Cabrera was out on the floor of the Florencia, meeting with a group of city men on his payroll. Diego’d come stumbling in through the back door, waving his gun in the face of the ski
Diego was aware of the girl moving beside him; when he glanced at her, she clutched a needle strung with black thread, and the black thread was sliding through his skin. She was right, he couldn’t feel it, but his stomach clenched up and he looked away, down at the dusty floor.
The door creaked open.
“Everything all right in here?” Mr. Cabrera. Diego grunted in acknowledgment.
“He’s going to be fine.” The girl’s hands moved as if she were playing the violin, back and forth, back and forth. “I gave him something to calm him. Thanks for not slamming in here, by the way.”
“I never slam, my dear.” The door clicked shut, and Mr. Cabrera walked into Diego’s line of sight. “You’ve certainly been having a lot of excitement lately, haven’t you, Diego?”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Diego’s words slurred. Mr. Cabrera arched an eyebrow and sat down behind his desk. He watched the girl work, his eyes following the movement of her hands.
“All done?” he asked after a time, and Diego turned to the girl, who was cutting out a length of gauze.
“Almost.” She wrapped the gauze around Diego’s forearm and secured it with tape. He felt this, but barely. Layers of cloth lay between his arm and her touch.
“Wonderful work as always, Laura,” said Mr. Cabrera with a grin. The girl didn’t return it, only packed up her things. She looked at Diego.
“If that gets infected,” she said, “tell Mr. Cabrera.”
Then she left the office, leaving the scent of hydrogen peroxide in her wake.
Mr. Cabrera laughed. “Laura. I picked her up on the mainland, you know that? I was in Buenos Aires, visiting a contact of mine. There was a spot of violence. It happens. She fixed me up in the hospital, and I offered her a job.”
“Oh yeah?” Diego studied the wrappings on his arm, then pulled his shirt back on, buttoning it up to his throat.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you personally, Diego.”
Diego nodded. “It’s okay.”
“Mr. Martinez had some concerns about all the recent troubles with the electricity. Thought I might have something to help, like I’m some city engineer. I told him the problem’s just that the domes are too old.” He waved one hand. “What happened, Diego? Who shot you?”
Diego turned back to Mr. Cabrera. The dim green lamplight distorted everything and turned the office nightmarish. Or maybe that was the drops.
“That’s why I asked for you,” Diego said. “It’s that andie you hired.”
“Sofia?” Mr. Cabrera gave away nothing, only tilted his head as if her name came as a surprise. Maybe it did. “Sofia shot you?”
“No.” Diego rubbed his forehead. “Her—friend, or assistant or whatever. The one that looks like a man, not the other one.”
“Luciano.”
“Yeah, I guess. He shot me.”
Wrinkles formed across Mr. Cabrera’s brow. Disappeared. “Was Sofia with him?”
Diego shook his head. “Not that I saw. One of the dome’s maintenance drones was, though.”
“Did he see you? Know who you were?”
This hadn’t actually occurred to Diego, that perhaps the andie hadn’t recognized him. But no, he was a robot. Of course he’d recognized Diego.
“I would assume so,” he said. “I didn’t talk to him.” He laid out the sequence of events as best he could; it was difficult with the fuzz from Laura’s drops.
When Diego finished, Mr. Cabrera didn’t react. His face gave away nothing. He might as well have been a robot himself.
“I see.” He stared at Diego for a moment longer, then pulled out a ring of keys from inside his coat pocket. They caught the light, gleaming. “You know you’re like a son to me, Diego.”
Even through the wall of drugs, Diego’s heart swelled. Mr. Cabrera opened one of the locked drawers in his desk and pulled it open.
“Sofia and her—friend—have not earned my trust the way you have. I’m glad you brought this to me.”
He dropped a stack of money onto the desk.
“I’m sorry you’re going to have to send someone else out there,” Diego said. “I probably missed something.”
“Not something you need to worry about. It wasn’t your fault.” Mr. Cabrera peeled away a section of bills, nearly a third of the stack, and slid it toward Diego. “Here. The least I could do.”
“Thank you, sir.” Diego never called anyone sir but Ignacio Cabrera.
Mr. Cabrera smiled and tucked the rest of the money back into his desk. “You got a girl, Diego?”
Diego thought of Eliana stretched out sleeping beside him on the bed, and drinking beer in the blue light of Julio’s, and walking up her stairwell dressed in her professional-looking outfits for work. He thought about her brushing her hair before bed and cooking di
He thought about the first time he’d seen her, at a friend’s party. She’d been dressed all in black, her hair loose around her shoulders. It made her look intelligent, he thought, all that black. He hadn’t known he wanted a girl until he saw her, standing alone next to a lamp, swaying in time to the music. Thought he was too busy being Mr. Cabrera’s right-hand man, too busy being Mr. Cabrera’s son. But he’d gone up to her and asked her to dance, and she’d said yes, and the lights from the party had wrapped them in a warm golden glow. And it had been fucking perfect.