Our Lady of the Ice

And then one of the park Klaxons began to wail.

At first Marianella thought it was from Luciano’s repairs, that the machine had broken him. Her eyes flew to the ticker-tape machine, but it still tapped out the same unending rhythm.

Sofia and Araceli both leapt to their feet.

“We have to get to operations,” Sofia said. “I told you we should have installed the surveillance computer here as well.”

“That was impossible. We didn’t have the parts.” Araceli jogged over to the repair box speaker. “Luciano! It’s Araceli. We’re not taking you out—it could mess up the re-musculature. But we’ll lock up the workshop and I’ll stay here to watch over you.”

“What’s going on?” Marianella asked, her heart hammering, her computers reining it in, suppressing that very human fear. Her hand went to her necklace. “Lock up the workshop?”

“It’s a culling.” Sofia was standing by the door, putting codes into the locking system. She looked at Marianella from across the room. “You’ve never seen one before.”

“A culling,” Marianella whispered.

“You don’t need to worry. Their sca

“How do you know for sure?” Marianella’s voice was breathy with panic.

Sofia put in the last of the codes, and the doors slid open, a red light blinking overhead. She looked at Marianella. “Because I know the sort of sca

“We?” Marianella looked back at Araceli and the repair box, and then she understood. They’d come here first otherwise, because they’d see the steam belching into the air.

And then they’d take Luciano.

“Yes, we. I told you, they aren’t looking for cyborgs.” Sofia marched across the workshop and grabbed Marianella by the hand. The light above the door was still blinking red, blinking faster now. “The whole workshop’s about to go on lockdown. Come on.”

“They could be looking for me,” Marianella said. “Ignacio could have seen me, he could have figured it out. An anonymous tip, that’s all it would take.”

Sofia took her by the hand. “It’s a culling. I wouldn’t do anything to put you in danger.”

And she yanked Marianella out of the workshop just as the blinking light went solid. The doors slammed closed with a loud reverberating clang, and Marianella and Sofia stood out in the bright floodlights.

The park was silent and still. No Klaxons, no robots, no men from the city.

“You wouldn’t put me in danger,” Marianella whispered, “but you’d put yourself.”

Sofia pulled her forward on the path, heading in the direction of the Ice Palace. “The Klaxons sound anytime someone unauthorized opens the gate.” Sofia walked more quickly, and Marianella stumbled after her, terrified. She was too vulnerable out here in the open. “Every robot here has the alert system worked into their programming. Even the stupid little entertainment robots. So they know to hide.”

They were jogging now, their feet pounding with panicked urgency against the cobblestone paths.

Marianella felt dizzy.

Sofia stopped abruptly. She closed her eyes. For a moment Marianella felt a disturbance on the air, a transmission she couldn’t quite see.

“Inéz will help.” Sofia nodded, and then pulled Marianella along. “We need to get to the operations room so we can see where they are.”

“Inéz?” Marianella’s thoughts spun around and around. She clutched at her cross. “I thought she was out of the park! Why wasn’t she helping Araceli?”

“Because she was tending to the robots in storage.”

They came to the garden at the edge of the Ice Palace. Marianella’s machine parts were doing all the breathing for her, her lungs expanding and contracting so that she wouldn’t be out of breath. She didn’t believe these city men would see her as human. She wasn’t human.

Inéz stepped out from behind the trees and smiled at Marianella like she wanted to ask if Marianella needed anything.

“Stay here,” Sofia commanded. “Inéz, I’ll transmit to you where to find the cullers. They should be headed for the workshop, but it’ll be another fifteen minutes before they make it.”

Inéz nodded. Sofia didn’t explain anything further to her; she must have done it through the transmission while they’d been ru

But Luciano. She wouldn’t let them take Luciano.

Sofia disappeared around the bend.

“Don’t let them see your face,” Inéz said.

“What?” Marianella’s chest rose and fell. She stared at the place where Sofia had been. “My face?”

“You’re famous,” Inéz said calmly.

Marianella looked at her.

“They’ll recognize you as Lady Luna. That would be unfortunate, yes?”

Marianella nodded. Her whole body was shaking. She’d faced down Ignacio Cabrera and yet she couldn’t stop shaking.

Because this was different. Ignacio only wished to kill her. These men—they could learn her secret. They could destroy her.

“The roller coaster,” Inéz said, voice sharp. “Come.”

She took off down the path.

Marianella hesitated. It happened too fast, the transmission from Sofia. She stared at the path, hoping Sofia would reappear. But there was only stillness.

“Marianella!” Inéz called out. “Come! Please! There are three paths away from the workshop. We need one for each path.”

Of course. One for each path. Marianella choked back her fear and joined Inéz on the path toward the roller coaster. She could already see it, twisting up over the park, dark wood against the white sky.

“Where’s Sofia?” Marianella asked. “Do you know?”

“Intercepting them at the penguin pond,” Inéz said. She stared straight ahead, focused. “She’s going to bring them to the roller coaster, and then we’ll fan out, drawing them away from the workshop.”

The plan didn’t make any sense to Marianella. It wouldn’t coalesce inside her head. She only saw fragments of it—vulnerable Luciano, Sofia racing through the open park, a man in a gray suit cutting Marianella open and finding the machinery that took away her humanity.

Marianella whispered a Hail Mary, the prayer that always brought her the most comfort. The Virgin had once appeared to a pair of Antarctic explorers trapped on the ice, in the years before the city was built. She came to them covered in ice and wrapped in furs, a mother of Antarctica. Marianella wondered if the Virgin ever came to cyborgs, her holiness shot through with machinery. Robots didn’t need her. But a cyborg was not a robot.

Maybe she would come to Marianella today.

Marianella whispered the prayer over and over. Inéz said nothing about it, out of deference, most likely, because, like Luciano, she would see Marianella as mostly human. The prayer calmed Marianella’s nerves, enough that she became aware of her surroundings again. Aware that they were at the base of the roller coaster.

“Quiet, Marianella,” Inéz said politely, laying one hand on Marianella’s wrist.

Marianella tensed. Her body shuddered as it drew her defense mechanisms to the fore. She took a deep breath. The white paint covering the asphalt glittered beneath the dome lights. The roller coaster lurked like a sleeping dragon.

“They’re approaching soon,” Inéz whispered. “Sofia is bringing them straight to us. Be prepared to run.”

Marianella nodded. Her muscles were imbued with a sudden energy from her computer parts.

Silence.

Stillness.

And then, Marianella’s ears perked—footsteps. She heard footsteps.

Sofia burst out of the path, her dark hair streaming out behind her like a comet.

Two men followed.

For a moment Sofia was there in the light, a blazing streak of power, and then she disappeared into the overgrown path leading to the gardens.