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“The broken androids,” Marianella said. “Why? What possible good could—”
“Their parts, Marianella. I was trying to stockpile my own supply to help with Independence. The city didn’t want to bother getting to them. That’s how I first met Pablo, may he rest in peace, even if he was a greedy bastard. He’d been the one to tell me about those poor little broken-down androids and how they were guarded by a sentient comfort girl. So I looked into it.” He shrugged.
“You killed Inéz,” she said, “because you wanted robot parts? Why didn’t you just take hers?”
“That,” Alejo said, “was a scare tactic. I said I was only concerned about the parts at first. I knew about Sofia, sure, but then I started hearing things, rumors about an android working for Cabrera. And I never ignore a rumor, Marianella. That’s why I asked my men to destroy Inéz. I wanted to scare Sofia into submission. I thought it might work on a sentient robot. When it didn’t, I went after her schematics. I needed to know what I was up against.”
Something snapped inside Marianella, a key turning into place. She froze into a cold resolve. He’d known about Sofia all this time and he’d played games. He’d toyed with all of them.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Alejo said, after a pause. “Are you going to kill me, or are you going to get Sofia to do it?”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Marianella said.
“If you go public with this,” he said, “you know exactly what information I’ll be taking to the city.”
They stared at each other across the desk. Marianella thought of Sofia, sitting in operations, watching Hope City unfold in front of her. Marianella had chosen her side correctly after all.
“Good-bye, Alejo,” Marianella said, and then she walked out of the office, climbed into her car, and drove back to the amusement park.
* * * *
Marianella didn’t bother with the locator. It would have been faster, but she wanted the time to meditate on everything she’d learned. She wanted time to assuage her anger. To decide what to do about Alejo.
Right now, he stood in the way of Sofia taking over the city. Sofia still had not cemented her hold on the Independents, which meant there were gaps in her control sprinkled throughout the city authorities. If Alejo continued unencumbered, his deviousness would win him the support of the city. No doubt he pla
He could be killed. The thought made her squeamish, the way it always did. Cabrera’s men had been enough death.
But there was another way, a way of giving up the stalemate. It would fit within Sofia’s framework, of destroying the city from the inside out, and it would remove Alejo in only a few days’ time, without having to worry about interference from those authorities not on Sofia’s payroll.
But that was one of the things she had to think on as she wandered through the worn-down paths of the amusement park, through the gardens and clumps of cottages, past the lake, through the palace, into the operations room. She didn’t find Sofia, and that was good. The walk calmed her and helped her think straight.
The plan, her idea, bubbled in the back of her head. She stopped in the ballroom. It was empty, dust floating through the dome light. She walked over to the windows, knelt down, said a brief prayer. She hadn’t spoken to God in a long time, but she needed to right now. She asked Him if her decision was the right one, and the dome light was warm against her skin, and she knew that yes, it was, because it was the only way that wasn’t evil.
Marianella lifted her head. She looked across the ballroom and thought about the night she had danced here with Sofia, and she smiled to herself. The dust looked like flecks of gold, like fragments drifting down from heaven. She prayed to the Virgin Mary for strength, and then she checked the last place in the palace that she hadn’t—the kitchens.
That was where Marianella found Sofia, hunched over a maintenance drone, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Marianella stood in the doorway and watched her work, watched her hands moving in a blur over the drone.
“What’s wrong with it?”
Only then did Sofia look up, her face pale in the bright lights.
“It’s infected by the virus,” she said. “It’s not sentient. The other drones brought it to me.”
The mention of the virus twisted Marianella’s stomach.
“It’s not exactly a virus, you know,” she said.
Sofia frowned. She knew that, of course she did, but Marianella also knew that admitting to the truth meant admitting that a human had found another way to overcome a robot.
“And as it is,” Marianella said carefully, “you might want to leave it.”
Sofia went very still. She almost looked as if she’d been turned off. Marianella took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen, and Sofia followed her with just her eyes, dark and unblinking.
“Why?” she said when Marianella had come to the counter.
Marianella looked down at the black-and-white marble of the countertop. It gleamed in the lights.
“Alejo did it,” she said.
“What?”
“Alejo is responsible for the blackouts.”
Sofia’s hands still hovered above the drone. She had been in the process of taking out its motherboard, and the lights blinked back and forth in twin rows.
“I should have seen it.” Marianella touched one hand to her forehead. “It was so similar to the way I programmed the drones in the ag dome. He stole the idea from me.” She laughed, once, bitterness rising up in the back of her throat. “That’s not all he stole from me either.”
Without speaking, Sofia slid the motherboard back into the drone, although she didn’t bother to close the shell. Then she walked over to Marianella and looked her straight in the eye.
“What,” she said, “are you talking about?”
Marianella drank in Sofia’s features. “I’m afraid I did something rather ill-advised.”
“Will it be a problem?”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Sofia stepped away. She was beautiful in her old housedress, her hair pulled back. Marianella wanted to reach out and rub her thumb against Sofia’s jawline. Wanted to touch her one last time.
“What’s going on?” Sofia asked.
The room was too hot. Marianella wished her robot parts would activate and bring her body temperature down.
“Eliana and I broke into the apartment of one of Alejo’s aides.”
“Why? Because you were investigating the viruses?”
Marianella nodded. And then she told her what they’d found.
Sofia listened with her head tilted to the side. She twisted a lock of hair back and forth between her fingers. Marianella watched that hair as she spoke. It was a metronome that counted the time to her story.
When Marianella finished, Sofia dropped her hand to the side.
“You know I can kill him for you,” Sofia said.
“No.” Marianella shook her head and then collapsed into a nearby chair. “No, that’s not what I want to do.”
“You’re too generous,” Sofia said. “You told me yourself that he killed Inéz just to frighten us, to scare me out of working with Cabrera. How could you possibly let this man live?”
Marianella sat very still. She remembered praying in the ballroom.
“I don’t want anyone else to die,” Marianella said. “This city, this new city, it’s my dream too. A place for people like me.”
Sofia didn’t say anything.
“And I don’t want it to be founded on blood. Not any more than it has been already.” Tears formed in Marianella’s eyes. She blinked, hoping they would disappear. “I know how to discredit Alejo Ortiz. But if we do it, then I have to go away.”
Sofia opened her mouth to protest.
“Only for a little while,” Marianella said. “While you take the city. I know you can do it. Everything’s already starting to fall into place. Soon, people won’t want to live here. It’ll be easy to convince them to leave. For you to take control. And then you’ll open the doors to all the robots of the world. And all the cyborgs.” She smiled a little, the warmth of pride swelling inside her chest. “Those blackouts he devised, those will help, won’t they? That’s why you shouldn’t treat the drones, not right now.”