Our Lady of the Ice

She was so close to an Antarctica for robots.

Carefully, she reached into Luciano’s chest cavity and removed his core engine, snapping the wires free as she had done for herself a week ago.

Luciano’s eyes blanked out, and his jaw went slack. Sofia glanced over at the rotary display. Everything looked fine. She disco

Sentience came back into his eyes. “Oh,” he said.

“I have your core engine,” she told him. “It won’t be long now. Lie still.”

“Did you lie still?” His voice was flat and childlike.

“Of course not, but I should have.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Your mind will clear in a moment.” Sofia drew her hand away from Luciano’s cheek and left streaks of black fluid against his skin. “I need to do the reprogramming now.”

“All right.”

Sofia carried the core engine over to the worktable. Hearing Luciano’s voice like that, flat and purposeless, gave her a hollow feeling she did not like. Soon, she told herself. Just a few moments more, and he would be whole for the first time in his existence.

She cracked open the core engine. The insides refracted the overhead lights onto the wall, an eerily beautiful display of golden light. Then Sofia grabbed the other micro-engine and began the slow process of dismantling the core engine, piece by piece, and refitting the micro-engine to be reprogrammable.

It took a long time.

The reprogramming itself did as well. It was a much more involved process than what Araceli had done for Sofia, because Sofia did not have access to Luciano’s complete schematics. But she and he had been produced in the same year, and their differences were largely inconsequential to what Sofia wished to do. In truth, he had fewer restrictions than she, since his role at the park had been more multipurpose.

After the afternoon at the Florencia, when Sofia had informed Araceli that she would be reprogramming Luciano, Araceli had begged her not to do it without a programming key or his schematics. But Luciano had insisted.

“I want to be like you,” he’d told Sofia as they’d stood in Araceli’s workshop.

“Are you almost done?” Luciano asked now. His voice was thin, and it hurt Sofia to hear it.

“Almost.” She glanced up at the rotary display. Another line of code fell out of existence.

“I was only curious,” Luciano said. “Don’t feel as if you have to rush.”

She hated that so much—that complacency, the dull feeling of not wanting to be a bother. No more. No robot would ever be like that again.

Finally, Sofia came to the end of Luciano’s code. She held the micro-engine aloft. The hydraulic fluid gleamed on her hands. The micro-engine was not much to look at, it was so old-fashioned. All those clockwork gears. But it was working for her, and it would work for him.

Sofia carried the micro-engine over to Luciano. He was still lying on his back, and he looked over at her expectantly. “Is that it?” he said.

“It is.” Sofia set it inside his chest. “I’m going to co

Luciano didn’t respond.

Sofia hooked the micro-engine in, one wire at a time. With the last one, Luciano’s eyes rolled back until there was nothing but white in his eye sockets, white veined faintly with light. Sofia took a step back, her hands hanging at her sides, dripping hydraulic fluid everywhere. Was that what she had looked like? It was terrible.

And then Luciano blinked, and his eyes went back to normal, pupiled and full of sentience. He sat up with a quick lever-like motion and looked around the room. He looked at the walls, at the dismantled core engine, at Sofia’s hands.

“I feel brand-new,” he said, and smiled.

Sofia smiled back at him. With Cabrera dead, she’d be able to take his place in the ecosystem of the city, and from there she could work her way into Hope City’s infrastructure, destroying from the inside out. Quietly, but cataclysmically. All the humans would fall.

And now that Luciano was free, it could finally begin.

*  *  *  *

Sofia and Luciano sat side by side at a bar in downtown, near the city offices. They were facing a window so Sofia could watch the pedestrians walk by, humans in mainland-style clothes and neatly styled hair and a general air of superiority that Sofia found irritating—especially considering that the dome lights were dim and the shadows were long as if it were evening. But it was not evening. It was the middle of the afternoon.

“What if they don’t arrive?” Luciano asked.

“They will.” Sofia did not take her eyes off the window. “They won’t want to give up the benefits that come with aligning themselves with Cabrera.” Sofia had seen that much already, in the week since Luciano had been reprogrammed and she’d begun the slow, careful procedure of taking over Cabrera’s business, the second stage of her plan. She had started by paying off his contacts in the police department. They were all mainland supporters—the Independent cops wouldn’t dirty themselves for Cabrera. But she’d find a way to control all of the police department soon enough.

Cabrera’s old police contacts were happy to be rid of him, and she could tell in their meeting that they thought she would be easily controlled. As much as it pained her, she didn’t correct their error. She even made the same arrangement with them as she’d had with Cabrera, about the music and only playing songs from after 1936. Let them try to control her that way. They’d meet with a nasty little surprise. But she knew it was good to let them think they had the upper hand.

She wasn’t sure Cabrera’s city men would be so easy.

Footsteps against the tile—the waitress, coming back around to ask if they wanted to order anything.

“No,” Sofia said before she could ask. “We’re not interested in ordering.”

The waitress blinked at her with huge owl-like eyes. Then she frowned.

“Our friends will certainly order something,” Luciano said. “But I’m afraid we have a special diet.”

“Right,” the waitress said. “Well, I’m going to have to ask you to leave if they don’t get here soon.” She tucked her pencil behind her ear and turned around, although she glanced at them over her shoulder. Sofia glared at Luciano.

“Perhaps we should bring money in these situations,” he said. “Meeting at the Florencia was so much easier.”

“I’m not going back to the Florencia, not yet.” Sofia turned her gaze to the window.

Luciano didn’t say anything. Sofia stared out at the street. A group of men in dark suits and hats was walking toward the bar. They had the look of cullers, of city men.

“They’re here,” she said, just as the group converged on the bar. The door swung open and cold air billowed inside. Sofia twisted in her chair so that she could see the city men better. One of them caught her eye and nodded. Sofia turned away from him.

“It’s them,” she said.

“I apologize for our tardiness.” The city men were at their table now, their human scent wafting off them, mingling with the scent of food from the kitchen. The one who had caught Sofia’s eye was speaking. “These electrical issues—well, we’ve been having several meetings about them, as you can imagine.”

Sofia could not imagine, but she only gestured at the empty chairs and said, “Please. Sit.”

Three of the city men had come over to the table. Two others sat in a booth across the room, staring down at the menus.

“Assistants,” said the one who had spoken first, the one Sofia assumed was the leader. “They know about our arrangement with Mr. Cabrera, and are quite adept at keeping quiet.”

The other two nodded and murmured in agreement.

“Mr. Cabrera is dead,” Sofia said. “So I couldn’t care less about your arrangement with him. This is about your arrangement with me.”