Our Lady of the Ice

Diego parked his car in front of the Hibiscus. He shoved the address into his pocket. Opened the glove compartment. Looked at his gun. His stomach felt queasy like he’d eaten too much.

He took the gun.

There was a bit of wind here, although it was cold and icy. He walked up the sidewalk to the front door, still limping a little from his injuries. A girl sat on the stoop, a bathrobe tossed around her shoulders, a book on her knees that she was reading by flashlight. She glanced up as he approached and squinted at him in the dark.

“You here for Laura?” she asked. “Hope you enjoy kicking me out of my own bloody apartment.” She scowled down at her book.

“I’m not here for Laura,” Diego said. He tossed his cigarette out into the gravel courtyard. “I’m here for Maria.”

The girl shrugged and turned back to her book.

The door was unlocked. The girl didn’t say anything as he stepped into the musty foyer. There wasn’t much to it, just some cramped stairs and a row of mailboxes. Maria lived on the fifth floor. He might as well start walking.

The stairs creaked beneath his feet, and he had to lean up against the banister to steady the ache in his back. As he passed each floor, he heard voices—television and music from the radio, women singing and a couple arguing. But the fifth floor was silent. Diego made his way to Maria’s apartment and knocked on her door.

She answered right away, yanking the door hard like she’d forgotten it was chained. She peered through the crack, and her eyes widened at the sight of him.

“The hell do you want?” she said.

“I need to talk to you about Eliana.”

A moment’s pause. Suspicion wafted off her.

“Please,” he said.

The door closed, the chain rattled. When Maria opened the door again, she opened it all the way, positioning herself in the doorway so that he couldn’t come into her apartment.

“You want to talk out in the hall?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Christ, what happened to you?” She gestured at her eye. Diego knew his own was still swollen and bruised.

“Nothing you need to worry about.” He was aware of the gun shoved into the waistband of his pants. He had no intention of using it. Not tonight, anyway. “I’ve been to her apartment a couple of times, and she’s gone. Been to her office, too. It’s all shut up tight. There’s a sign on the door that says closed until further notice. What’s going on?”

He watched Maria carefully. He didn’t know if Eliana had told her about what had happened at the gala; he’d decided to start off lying just in case she hadn’t. Well, not lying exactly. Reshaping the truth. He had gone to Eliana’s apartment and to her office. But he knew what was going on.

Maria’s expression didn’t change. She always looked a

Eliana must not have said anything.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Maria said. “I figured you’d know more than me anyway, since she was spending every waking moment with you earlier.”

“I wouldn’t say every waking—”

“Oh, shut up. She told me she was working some case and had to stay undercover. I don’t know much more than that.” She shrugged. Shifted her weight. She had left something out, Diego could tell. She acted too casual about not knowing much.

“So that’s it,” he said. “She’s working on some case and didn’t tell anybody.”

“She told me.”

Diego scowled at her.

“If you don’t have anything else to add,” Maria said, “I’ve got things to do.”

Diego couldn’t think of a response fast enough. Maria said “Guess not” and shut the door in his face.

For a few moments, Diego just stared at the burnished numbers nailed to the door. So Eliana’d told Maria she was working a case. Maria definitely hadn’t been lying about that. There was just something she wasn’t adding, and Diego doubted he’d ever know what it was.

Still. If Eliana hadn’t told Maria the truth, it was because she didn’t want Maria to know. To protect her, probably. Eliana was that sort of girl.

Diego pulled out another cigarette and lit it before trudging back down the stairs. The girl with the book and the flashlight was still sitting on the stoop, but she didn’t even glance up at him when he left the building. He walked down to his car and leaned up against it, smoking and looking at the lights in the windows. It occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t putting so much thought into this assignment because he didn’t want to find out that Sofia hadn’t killed Marianella, that he was going to have to bring Sofia in for the reprogramming. He kept thinking about the horror he’d seen on Eliana’s face when she’d realized what he was at the party to do, and part of him couldn’t believe he was still trying to do it.

Diego hurled the cigarette into the darkness and climbed into his car and drove away. At first he thought he was going back to the smokestack district, to break into Eliana’s apartment or her office and see what he could find. But he got to the smokestack district and he kept driving. The tenement housing gave way to squat, abandoned storage facilities and crumbling skyscrapers. The patches of grass and trees gave way to cement. And the air got colder. He could feel it creeping into his car.

He reached down, turned on the heat.

Mr. Cabrera had wanted Marianella’s death confirmed as soon as possible, but Diego wanted to have a fucking beer first, and he realized he hadn’t been driving to the smokestack district at all but to the Horse and Cart, a run-down little bar next to one of the service exits. The Horse and Cart had been there since Hope City had been just a nameless, empty dome, some developer’s dream of the future. Then Autômatos Teixeira had moved in with their robots and their amusement park, but the Horse and Cart never shut down through it all.

The sign cast red light across the parking lot. It made the ember in Diego’s cigarette burn orange. Diego pushed into the bar, keeping his head low. There were only a few guys there, mostly workers for the storage facilities, going by their jumpsuits. He took a chair next to the jukebox and ordered a beer. Lit another cigarette. Every muscle in his body ached.

Diego had been afraid of this happening from the moment he’d first met Eliana at that party a year and a half ago. They’d talked for an hour outside, and he’d looked at her in the shadows and thought that if he let this go further, she’d be in danger one way or another. And he’d almost walked away, then and there, just left her standing in the dark. But he was too selfish, and he hadn’t.

And now here he was. Mr. Cabrera knew who she was and wanted to kill her after Marianella was taken care of. Mr. Cabrera, who might as well be his father. It wasn’t fucking fair. He shouldn’t have to do it. Not to her. Anyone else, he’d do it. But not Eliana.

One of the storage workers came over to the jukebox and put on one of those Spanish covers of some British rock-and-roll song. Diego half-recognized it. The worker bobbed his head in time to the music, hair falling over his eyes. He seemed to be studiously avoiding Diego. Exactly what Diego liked about this place.

He took a long drag on his cigarette.

And then all of the Horse and Cart started vibrating like an earthquake, and then it flooded with white-hot light.

Diego stumbled out of his chair, his ears ringing. He couldn’t hear the music anymore, just the muffled thump of its beat. The guy at the jukebox wasn’t there—he’d raced across the room. An explosion, Diego realized, like a gunshot but more. It’d been so sudden, he hadn’t known what was happening. The bar wasn’t shaking anymore, but the light was still there, red-yellow and flickering. Fire. Fucking fire.

Diego limped across the room. The workers were all crowded around a window, shouting curses at each other. He couldn’t see much, only the red-yellow light.