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“What! Why!”
Marianella shook her head. “Because it’s not safe yet.”
And then she’d driven to Alejo’s office.
He was in there, tucked away in the back hallway. She could sense him—smell him, with her activated machine parts. Pine trees and European cologne wafting through the recycled air.
“How much longer will it be?” Marianella asked. She’d been waiting for five minutes, and it had been torture waiting even that long.
“I told you, Lady Luna, he’s meeting with some men from the city. Without an appointment—” The secretary lifted her hands, questioning. “He’s a busy man these days.”
“Yes, I imagine he is.” Marianella crossed her legs, patted the side of her hair. Adrenaline surged through her. Seeing that business card calling for her disposal had coalesced into the strength she’d used to rip the door from its hinges. But that one act hadn’t been enough to burn up all her anger.
She stood up.
The secretary glanced at her over the typewriter, agitation making her vibrate.
“I told you, it will only be a few moments,” she said.
“No, it won’t.” Marianella strode forward. She walked quickly and purposefully, and she kept her head held high. The secretary shrieked behind her and followed.
“Lady Luna, he doesn’t want to be disturbed!”
“I don’t care.” Marianella flung his office door open. There were no city men in there. Just Alejo. He looked up at her, his face blank. The secretary babbled apologies at Marianella’s side, and for a moment Marianella felt sorry for her.
“See?” Marianella said, in as sweet a voice as she could muster. “His meeting’s all finished up.”
Alejo glared at her. Marianella went in and shut the door, leaving the secretary out in the hallway.
“You’re a liar,” she said.
“Technically,” he said, “Rosa is.”
Marianella walked forward and sat down across from his desk. Her heart pounded; heat flushed in her cheeks. She kept seeing the bomb in Andres’s apartment. Alejo had done that. Alejo had asked for that.
Alejo was a monster.
“What do you want?” he said. “Is this about another donation? You know you can just send them—”
“You destroyed the agriculture dome,” she said.
Alejo fell quiet, and his face went slack. The silence in the room buzzed.
“You tried to have me deported,” she whispered. “And then you destroyed all my work.”
Alejo shifted in his seat. He brushed his hair back with one hand. Looked at one of the walls.
“It was brave of you,” he finally said, “to come here. To accuse me of that.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. You did it.”
He looked at her. There was that glitter in his eyes that should have told her all those months ago that something was wrong with him. He was no better than Ignacio.
“Someone’s been snooping,” he said.
Marianella let out a long breath. “Why did you do it?” she whispered.
Alejo sighed. He threw up one hand, pinched the bridge of his nose. Shook his head. Stupid human politician tics. “I had to,” he finally said. “When Cabrera tried to kill you at the Midwinter Ball, I knew I couldn’t fuck around anymore.”
Marianella stared at him in horror. Then she leapt to her feet and pressed her hands into the top of his desk and leaned close to him, pressing so hard, her hands indented the wood.
Alejo jumped, glanced down at the marred desk.
“You bombed the dome.” Saying it aloud was painful. It made the truth become real.
He didn’t answer.
“All our work.” Marianella stumbled away from the desk. “All my work. You destroyed it—because of Cabrera?” She looked up at Alejo. The room spun. “I don’t understand. What did you think this was going to accomplish? That you could just beat him to it, and that would be okay?”
“No!” Alejo shook his head. “I wanted to blame him for it, don’t you understand? Show the people that the dome was possible, and turn the tide against him. Show them they don’t need his food. All politics are theater, remember?”
Marianella collapsed back down in her chair. Her mechanical parts clicked and whirred inside her, trying to calm her heartbeat.
“I wanted to make a deal,” Alejo said. “But you kept refusing. I knew this was going to happen. If Sala had just done his job—”
“Yes,” Marianella snapped. “I’d love to hear your justifications for that, too.”
Alejo slumped back in his chair. He looked tired. Old. “It’s the same thing,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a danger, your involvement with Cabrera—”
“It wasn’t my involvement!”
“Your husband’s, then! Christ, does it matter? I thought if I could get you sent to Asia, it would smooth things over for all of us, and you’d have a happier life there anyway, getting to live with your own kind.”
Her own kind. Marianella glared at him. “Did it ever occur to you that I consider humans my own kind? That that was the reason I was helping you in the first place?”
“I didn’t think about it that much, for God’s sake. I just needed to get you out of the city before Cabrera found out. I knew you wouldn’t go on your own. I’m sorry that Sala turned out to be a selfish prick. He was trying to get paid twice, I figure, once from me and once from Cabrera. I paid him up front to get the documents. Big mistake.” Alejo rolled his eyes. “This was supposed to be easy.”
“Easy?” Marianella took a deep breath. Alejo was still hunched up in his chair, his eyes wide. He was pulling away from her, like he was afraid of her. And why wouldn’t he be? He was right, she wasn’t human—humans had never been her kind. At least he hadn’t killed her. At least he’d thought he’d been trying to protect her.
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” she said, her voice sharp and cold. “The virus that makes the maintenance robots malfunction, was that you too?”
She had spat the question without thinking, but she realized, as soon as she asked it, that the suspicion had always been there, in the back of her mind. And when Alejo gasped and stared at her, she knew she was right. He was responsible for the blackouts. It had never been Sofia, had never even been the maintenance drones.
She stood up, forcing her movements to be slow and measured despite her surging anger.
“Why?” she said. “What good could that possibly do?”
“It makes the people realize they need us.” Alejo peered over the desk at her. “Same as with the explosion.”
“The city was right.” Marianella could hardly think straight. “All this time—it really was the AFF.” She turned away from Alejo, her heart pounding. Her feet didn’t seem to touch the floor. “But you made me check up on the ag drones, you were so worried.”
“I thought they might have gotten infected.”
Marianella looked at him over her shoulder. He gave a shrug. “It’s a hard thing to control. And at that point I didn’t want the ag domes failing. The explosion had always been the contingency plan, you know. In case we couldn’t buy off Cabrera.”
“I don’t understand.” Marianella shook her head, trying to jostle her thoughts free. “I can’t believe you would do that and put all those people in danger just to convince them of something they already know—”
“Actually, a lot of them don’t already know it. And what the fuck do you care, living out in your private dome? This is why I didn’t tell you about it from the begi
“I know you’ve only made things worse. You’ve thrown the city into chaos.”
“I did what I had to.” He looked up at her. “So tell me, are you going to kill me yourself, or are you going to get that robot bitch to do it for you?”
“Her name’s Sofia,” Marianella said. “Which you would know. You’ve been investigating her.”
Alejo laughed. “You have been busy playing detective! Well, yes, I was investigating her. At first it was because I needed her robots, the ones she’s got squirreled away in park storage—”