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“I can only imagine,” she snapped.
He fell silent and leaned back in his chair. He reminded her of a shark, something lean and dangerous.
“The point I’m trying to make,” he said, shrugging, “is that—well, I guess I don’t need you anymore.”
The buzzing started up again. Marianella blinked. Of course he needed her. This was as much her project as it was his.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“We were doing it in secret, Marianella! That was the whole point! We couldn’t hire city engineers to program the robots, and, like you said, there aren’t enough Independent engineers for that kind of project. You had the money and you had the—the skills, and I’m grateful for them, I am, but—”
Marianella couldn’t breathe. “But the design, the plants, all of it—they were all my ideas. I—”
“It was my idea,” said Alejo. “It was my whole damn platform during the election! Build agricultural domes, build self-sufficiency. I know you remember.”
“That’s not what I mean!” Marianella’s voice was shrill, nearly hysterical. He didn’t understand, or he didn’t want to understand—she had used her nature to build something to help humans, to show she wasn’t a robot. And now Alejo Ortiz was going to tear it away from her. “It’s my design,” she said, which came nowhere close to expressing the rage she felt in this moment. “You can’t cut me out of my own design. At least say I was part of the engineering team.”
“No one would believe that!” Alejo said. “Some pretty socialite who knows enough to build a dome? Come off it, Marianella.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
Alejo paused. He fixed her with a cold, u
“What?” she said.
“I’m guessing you took a stroll in the snow and saw your design. Am I right?”
Marianella glared at him.
“I know I am. I had to go look at it too. So you know that half of your design has been blown to hell and the other half is frozen. Now, who do we know who would do something like that?” He tilted his head, smiled at her. “Who do we know who has the capacity to blow up parts of Hope City?”
“You and I both know it was Cabrera. It was revenge—”
“Exactly. Cabrera, and his problems with you.”
Marianella stared at him. “What are you saying?”
Alejo leaned back in his chair, his face stony and cold. “You attacked one of his men,” Alejo said. “If we’d tried to make a deal with him straightaway, or if you’d let me just take care of it, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
Marianella heard the blood rushing in her ears. The room spun.
“Are you blaming me?” she whispered. “You think I wanted this to happen?”
“I’m just saying,” Alejo said, “that by the time the AFF took their offer to Cabrera, it was too late. He refused to deal, because of you. We have to do these things early. We should have looped him in from the begi
“And that’s why you lied?” she said. “Why you cut me out?”
“You’re a liability, Marianella. I like you, but you’re a fucking liability. There are always going to be people like Cabrera in the world. Independence won’t get rid of them. So I thought it would be better if the ag dome team understands that. And that means everyone on the team.”
Marianella blinked, and tears fell down her cheeks. She hated herself for it. Her face burned with humiliation.
“I’m going to ask you to leave,” Alejo said, leaning over his desk. “That press conference, let that be your last hurrah. It’s as good a swan song as any. I just can’t risk you anymore.”
Marianella shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, I won’t. If you kick me out of this, I’ll go public with the truth about your election money. I’ll take it straight to—”
“And I’ll go public about you being a cyborg.”
Marianella froze. It was the first time he had used the word in her presence, and it brought with it a sharp burst of pain, a dizziness, a rush of blood.
“This is what you would call a stalemate,” Alejo said. “We’ve both got our secrets, and we’ll both keep the other’s. No hard feelings.”
Marianella shook. Her anger and frustration boiled close to the surface. And she was crying, silently, tears dropping over her face at odd intervals.
Everything she’d worked for during the last year was gone. It had exploded and then it had frozen, and now it was being dragged away from her.
“I’m sure Ruben would be happy to escort you back to the amusement park if you’re worried about security.”
Marianella’s thoughts were a haze. Ruben was one of the AFF bodyguards. Alejo was kicking her out of his office.
Eventually, she moved according to some other, baser principle. She stood up, steadying herself on the edge of the desk.
“How could you do this?” she said.
She curled her fingers around the edge of the desk, tighter and tighter, until the wood splintered. Alejo watched her like he’d expected it.
“We do what we have to.” Alejo’s voice was flat. “That’s what it takes, to get Independence.”
Marianella stumbled out of his office, her tears turning the world to mist.
* * * *
When Marianella returned to the amusement park, she went straight to the operations room. Sofia wasn’t there, but Marianella brought up the robot scans and waded through each one. Marianella’s heart was beating too fast. Her robot parts could barely control it.
Her rage was a core of heat inside her chest, ignited by Alejo Ortiz. It had grown in the taxi ride on the way back to the park. He didn’t want her anymore, not her knowledge, not her skills, not even, apparently, her money. All because she had demanded integrity from him.
The scans finally dinged on Sofia, recognizing her by her faint aura of electronic feedback. She was down by the ice lake. Marianella left the palace immediately.
It was a fifteen-minute walk to the lake. With each step blood pumped more firmly through Marianella’s veins. She was too angry to pray, to even think about God. She only wanted Sofia.
The lake was a sheet of silvery ice, frozen from underneath and glimmering in the slow-falling twilight. It was surrounded by tall, pale white reeds that rattled as Marianella walked through them. They weren’t living things.
Sofia was out on the ice, walking with slow measured steps, her legs and feet bare. She looked up at the reeds’ rattle and then stopped, watching. Marianella reached the edge of the lake. The ice looked ancient, veined with dark cracks. She supposed it would hold her weight. It held Sofia’s.
And what did it matter if it didn’t? She could climb her way out easily. She wouldn’t freeze to death within minutes, the way a human would.
She took a deep breath and stepped out onto the ice.
Sofia still had not moved. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders. Her face was as perfect and as beautiful as a china doll’s. She said nothing until Marianella was at her side.
“I see Cabrera didn’t kill you.”
“Alejo stole the ag dome from me.” Marianella felt dizzy, saying those words out loud.
“What?” Sofia frowned. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that why you left the park in the first place? To go lay claim to your dome?”
“In the press conference he held about the explosion. He denied that I built it. And now he’s going to build new domes, using my designs and my drones.” Marianella smiled ruefully. “After all, he insisted when I built them that my drones recognize his authority as well.”
Sofia stared at her for a long time, not speaking. The cold, still air settled around them. The ice felt like it belonged to something living.
And then Sofia reached over and smoothed down Marianella’s hair. She cupped her hand around the curve of Marianella’s neck. Her touch was cold, but Marianella didn’t care. It was perfect.
“That’s what humans do,” Sofia said. “They use you up.”
Marianella closed her eyes. She thought about what her life had been like before the procedure, back when she was still human. There weren’t many memories from that time, and the ones she did have were dull and worn down at the edges. She didn’t know if that was the fault of the procedure, or the fault of her humanity and its inability to hold on to the past.