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She listened, Alejo’s words spi
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 i
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.