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The applause died down. Marianella stepped back. She was dimly aware that something was off, not in the crowd but in Alejo, but she couldn’t quite tease it out.
“The real tragedy in all this is not just the loss of the dome but the loss of the hours of hard work that was put into its creation by my men.”
Men? The buzzing intensified in Marianella’s head. What men? The dome had been built by robots. Robots that she’d designed, that she’d built.
“But even so, we remain secure in the knowledge that if we built the dome once, we can build it again!”
A thunderous round of applause. Camera bulbs flashed, one after another. Something was wrong. There had been no men.
When he had introduced her, he’d only talked of her financial contributions, not of her intellectual ones.
Marianella suddenly couldn’t breathe.
“Here they are,” he said, and gestured to the men in gray suits, the ones Marianella had thought were assistants. “The best engineers our city has to offer. That ag dome was not built by mainland ingenuity but by Antarctican brilliance.”
Marianella’s vision filled with a blinding white light. She dug her nails into her palm, deep enough that her robot brain took over and siphoned the pain away. Distantly, she was aware of Alejo’s voice, rising and falling over a buzz of static feedback.
“This is a setback, certainly. But it will not curtail us completely. I can assure you that the explosion was not caused by a malfunction but by a terrorist, set on stopping us on our path for self-sufficiency. This entire city was built out of human ingenuity, and it was human ingenuity that built the food dome.”
He glanced at her when he said “human ingenuity.” She was certain of it.
“It will be human ingenuity that will rebuild it. For those of you who thought Independence was a logistical possibility, I give you the wreckage of my creation”—Marianella took a deep, gasping breath—“as proof that we can build our own nation here on the ice of Antarctica. Don’t look at this as a tragedy but as a victory. The terrorists who bombed the agricultural dome killed no one, because death was not their intention. Only destruction. Destruction of a dream made real. We will build that dream again.”
For a moment, there was only stu
“Lady Luna! Lady Luna!”
Marianella turned toward the reporters. Lights flashed at her in quick succession and she had to stop herself from throwing up her arm and ru
She realized she was money, she was a pretty face for the advertisements, she was nothing.
“Lady Luna, will you be sponsoring the next dome? Lady Lu—”
Marianella stepped off the dais and walked away from the crowd. Her scarf fluttered behind her, and her quick steps loosened her hair from its bouffant. A tear streaked down her cheek; she reached up and wiped it away. Mascara smeared across her fingers. She couldn’t let anyone see her like this, and she knew that if she stayed out in the open much longer, someone would chase her down.
She walked to the end of the block and hailed a taxi. The tears fell faster now, leaving hot trails on her face. The taxi pulled up to the curb, and the driver did a double take when he saw her.
“Uh, where to?” he asked, averting his eyes. Marianella climbed in.
“Alejo Ortiz’s office,” she said. “At the corner of Main and Fifty-Seventh Street.”
The driver nodded and jerked back the handle on the meter. Marianella watched the number click upward through the haze of her tears.
“Everything okay?” the driver asked.
“Everything’s fine.” She said it as sharply as she could, and he didn’t ask any more questions.
After ten minutes, they came to Alejo’s office.
The building glinted in the dome light. The windows were darkened, but Marianella knew he’d be back soon enough. Alejo always came up to the office to regroup after press conferences.
She walked up to the office’s big glass door and pulled it open. The receptionist was gone, the lobby empty. The building had the abandoned feel of an office closed down for a holiday weekend.
All the lights were off, but Marianella had been here enough times that she didn’t need them. She followed the hallway until she came to Alejo’s office. The door was locked with a city-style electronic lock, and Marianella pressed her hand against it and sparked it open.
Inside, she flicked on the light and then turned the chair at his desk around so that she was facing the door. She sat down.
And waited.
She didn’t wait long. Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. As much as Alejo liked being the center of attention, he knew how important it was for him to come back to his office, to strategize, to see how he could swing the explosion to his advantage.
She wondered if he’d even noticed she’d disappeared.
When she heard the voices out in the hallway—male voices, gibbering with excitement—her anger flared again. She straightened her back, crossed her legs.
“What the— Did you forget and leave the light on, Ivan?” Alejo appeared in the doorway, although he was staring down the hallway. “Get Ruben. This might be some kind of—” He turned his face toward his office. “Oh,” he said.
“Hello, Alejo.” Marianella’s voice was cold and flat, and it made her feel more inhuman than she already did by Alejo’s hand.
“I was worried about you.” He smiled, his voice smoothed over. He stepped into the office and clicked the door shut behind him, but he didn’t walk closer to her. “I was afraid you’d gotten snatched off the street. I was about to send the bodyguards out to look for you. Figured you wouldn’t want me to call the police.”
“Shut up,” Marianella said.
Alejo blinked. Her anger surged inside her, rushing through her veins.
“You cut me out,” she said. “You gave credit to a bunch of actors. They were actors, weren’t they? You and I both know there aren’t enough Independent engineers in the city to do that kind of work. That’s why I designed the robots in the first place.”
He didn’t look away from her. She had to give him credit for that.
“Yes,” he said. “They were actors.”
It was the answer Marianella had expected, but hearing it still felt like a punch in the stomach.
“I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear.” He peeled himself away from the door and walked over to his desk. Marianella followed him with her gaze. He sat down. She turned her chair around and faced him. Her heart beat too quickly, and her machine parts were already kicking in to calm it.
“Why?” Her voice cracked.
“I thought the truth would raise too many questions. Don’t you think it’s better this way, that you’re the financial contributor? It fits in more with the whole Lady Luna eccentric heiress thing.” He waved his hand around.
“You could have at least made me part of the team.”
Alejo sighed. “Look,” he said. “People know what exploded. The city tried to rein it in, but people figured it out.” He stared at her, unwavering. “And they’re impressed. Really fucking impressed. No one thought it was possible.”
Marianella felt a twinge of pride.
“I was getting calls two hours after it happened. Everybody knew I’d been campaigning for it, and God, the thrill of hearing them talk as if I’d done it, as if I’d—”