Our Lady of the Ice (28 page)

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to—be like him.”

“You already beat up one of his men.”

Shame rose fast in Marianella’s cheeks. She stood up in a rush of anger. “That was self-defense.”

“So is this, for God’s sake!”

“And I didn’t
kill
him. I could have, but I didn’t.” She turned to face Alejo, found him gazing up at her with a calm expression that only unnerved her further. “We have to find some other way. If not my money—” She closed her eyes, trying to think.

“We have to do something,” Alejo said. “It’s not just about you—and don’t take that the wrong way. I certainly don’t want to see you dead. But he’s going to try to find you. He’s going to
investigate
you. And once he does that, he’s going to find out about the dome, and he’s going to want to destroy it.”

Marianella took a deep breath. She slumped back down onto the bench beside Alejo. She was no longer angry, only defeated. And Ignacio had defeated her.

“The dome,” she said weakly.

“Yes, the dome.” Alejo leaned in, pitched his voice low. “Let the
AFF
handle it. One assassination, and he’ll be gone.”

Marianella pushed her distaste aside. She had to try another approach. “He’ll be gone, but what about the rest of his organization?”

Alejo didn’t answer.

“Are you going to kill all the rest of them too? The men loyal to him? Surely he’s grooming someone to take his place, and they’re going to want to know why the
AFF
took him out. What if they trace it back to me? The threat of my identity is always there. Always.” Marianella shook her head. “And you can’t just keep killing people to get your way. You
can’t
.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?”

“You go to him,” Marianella said. “You pay him off. I can send you the money. We should have done that from the beginning. He told me flat out that he wouldn’t kill you.”

Alejo leaned back on the bench and crossed his arms over his chest. “That puts my career on the line.”

“So send one of your
AFF
friends to do it!” Marianella threw up her hands. “Tell him I’m part of the
AFF
, that they want to protect their own. I can send the money to you.” She hated that, hated the idea of aligning herself with terrorists. But it was better than letting herself become a murderer.

“You’re willing to let Cabrera think you’re part of the
AFF
?” Alejo laughed. “Not what I expected.”

“These are desperate times,” Marianella said.

For a moment, Alejo let his politician’s mask slip, and he looked sad.

“This is my act of desperation,” Marianella said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SOFIA

“What do you want?” Sofia let the door slam shut behind her. Cabrera was writing something with a ballpoint pen and didn’t look up at her when she walked into the room.

“Hello, Sofia. It’s nice to see you, too.” His pen continued to scratch across his paper. Sofia didn’t sit down. She knew this wasn’t about reprogramming more icebreakers, because if that had been the case, he wouldn’t have told her to come alone, and they would be meeting on the docks, at night—not in his office, during the middle of the afternoon, the day after Marianella had stupidly slipped out of the amusement park to attend a fund-raiser gala for her damned agricultural domes.

“Please, have a seat.” Cabrera finally looked up, his face pleasantly expressionless. He set his pen aside. “I have a proposition to discuss with you.”

Sofia stared at him. The record player was still set up behind the desk. A disc of vinyl gleamed in the office lights, but the turntable was still.

“I don’t need anything else from you,” Sofia said.

Cabrera studied her. “Odd. I thought you were still waiting on something.”

The programming key. Sofia could picture it, the little sphere of burnished metal filled with interlocking numbers. With it Araceli could unlock all the secrets of her code—without it, her plan was much more difficult.

Sofia didn’t say anything.

“Sit, sit,” he said, waving at the chair. “It won’t take long.”

Sofia considered her options. There weren’t many.

She glided forward, sank down into the chair.

Cabrera grinned like he had just accomplished something. “I have a bit of a problem, Sofia.”

“Is that so?”

“I don’t feel like you’ve been entirely—honest with me.”

Sofia thought about Marianella walking through the gates of the park, a panicking Eliana at her side.
He tried.

Sofia didn’t move. “Excuse me?”

“About your”—Cabrera wriggled his fingers, as though conjuring up the right words—“associates. Your less-than-human associates.”

“Less than human?”

“Oh, don’t take it personally, my dear. You know what I mean. I was under the impression that we were partners. That you would keep me abreast of any unusual situations related to the
denizens
of the park.”

Sofia wrapped her fingers around the armchair and squeezed. “That was never part of our arrangement. I was under the impression that I was to be your reprogrammer,” Sofia said. “Which I’ve done. Unfailingly.”

Cabrera stared at her. “You aren’t human, so I can forgive you for not understanding, but a partnership with me is a partnership all the way through. You reprogram my robots, and you warn me of any potential problems from your kind.” He flashed her a grin. “I’ve certainly been keeping up my end of the bargain. Getting those items you requested, yes, but also keeping the park safe from city cullings—”

“You fucking liar. You know there was a culling—”

“That wasn’t the city. Outside my jurisdiction, I’m afraid.”

Sofia darkened. Marianella had seen one of Alejo Ortiz’s men
that day. The
AFF
, then? Sofia hated the idea that another group of humans could force themselves into the park. She would have to investigate further.

“I had a problem a few weeks back, however. It happens. I thought I was successful in dispatching with it. My methods have never failed me before.”

“Your methods?” Sofia loosened her grip on the armrests. Her programming was well suited to making her seem to know less than she did.

“You don’t want to hear about this, do you?” Cabrera waved his hand. “You’re programmed to be a lady. I wouldn’t want to upset you.” Another cold glittering grin. “Suffice it to say, my problem is still very much alive. Plus, she left one of my best men bleeding in an alley last night, despite her small stature. Putting all that together, I’m forced to conclude that she must be one of yours.” He leaned forward, pressing his hands into the desk. “I’m really rather upset that you didn’t mention her, especially considering how high-profile she is. This is what I mean, about you not understanding our partnership.”

“Maybe your methods aren’t as successful as you think.” Sofia’s brain churned, wild with information and the memory of Marianella’s face.

Cabrera stared at Sofia for a moment. Then he laughed. “I locked her outside the dome, Sofia. That’s what I
do
. A human would have frozen to death in under an hour. Hardly enough time to find her way back inside. And yet.” He spread his hands over the desk. “Here we are. I saw her last night at a fund-raising gala for the agricultural domes. Now,
why
would a robot—or in this case, a cyborg—want to build an agricultural dome?”

“Why does a robot want anything?” Sofia folded her hands in her lap. Marianella was a fool, going to that party. She still had too much human in her.

“I have an answer to your question.” Cabrera tapped his fingers against the desk, one finger at a time, slowly and then quickly. The rhythm of a tango. Sofia watched his fingers and wanted to rip his hand from his arm.

“The answer to what?” The rhythm was already beating into her brain, luring the programming out.

“To what a robot wants.”
Slow, slow. Quick, quick, slow.
“It’s whatever a human wants. Isn’t that right, Sofia?”

Sofia closed her eyes. The tapping stopped. “You’re talking about Marianella Luna, I suppose? The woman on the advertisements?”

“Ah, so you do watch our television.”

Sofia opened her eyes. “She’s an heiress. An aristocrat. She’s not a cyborg.”

Cabrera tapped the rhythm out again.
Slow, slow. Quick, quick, slow.
“Aristocrats can’t survive the frozen desert.”

“Are you sure?” Sofia said. “Your sort certainly treats them as if they can.”

Cabrera paused, then roared with laughter. “Amusing, Sofia. Very amusing. I’ve never much gone in for that sort of thing myself. Landed gentry and the like. Too European. I’d rather find a new way of doing things.” He pushed back in his chair, turning toward the record player.

“No,” Sofia whispered.

“It’s just music, my dear.”

The record crackled and the music started, and Sofia flushed with relief because it was an old song but not one she’d ever been programmed to.

“See?” Cabrera smiled. “Just music. Now. Back to my proposition. Marianella Luna. I need her dead.”

“Then kill her.” The words were flat and tinny in her mouth.

“I can’t,” Cabrera snapped. “That’s my entire fucking point. I toss her out into the snow, and she shows up a few weeks later, not even missing any of her fingers or toes. She carries on like nothing happened. I only know one sort of creature that can survive in that type of weather.”

“A penguin?” Sofia said.

Cabrera fixed her with a cold stare. “Last night I sent Diego to shoot her in the heart. Even cyborgs have hearts. But she left him bruised and bleeding on the cement. Then disappeared.” He paused. “Do you know where she ran off to?”

“No.”

The music crackled in the background.

“I thought you might say that.” Cabrera reached over and lifted the needle and then dropped it.

Music exploded in Sofia’s thoughts, and then her thoughts didn’t belong to her anymore.

It was “
Yo Soy La Morocha
,” and it shot desire through her like a poison. Her whole body was burning, and when she looked at the man behind the desk, with his cold smile, she saw only a client.

“What would you like me to do?” she said sweetly.

The room was too hot. She began to undress, unbuttoning her blouse, slipping off her shoes. She unrolled her stockings, pulled them off one by one. The client stared at her, unmoving. She wondered if she had displeased him in some way.

“What would you like me to do?” she asked.

The client reached over and pulled up the record needle.

The silence was beautiful and terrible. Sofia gasped and pulled her blouse closed. Rage coursed through her.

“I’ll kill you,” she hissed.

“No,” Cabrera said. “You’ll kill
her
. Marianella Luna. Kill the human in her and then get that little human freak who lives with you to dismantle the rest of her. Otherwise—” He dropped the needle, and the music came back in and Sofia forgot herself, desire burning her up from the inside.

Silence again.

“Do you understand?”

Sofia glared at him, fury hot inside her.

“This should be easy for you, shouldn’t it, my dear? Just imagine she’s all human.” He dropped the needle, and the music prickled over her skin and she stood up and shimmied out of her skirt.

Back to silence.

“Do you understand?” Cabrera said.

Sofia felt whiplashed, slung back and forth between independence and slavery. Her clothes lay in puddles around her. Cabrera still held the needle, the record still spun in slow treacherous circles, like a shark swimming around and around a sinking boat.

“I will always have this,” Cabrera said lightly. “You do realize that, correct?”

Sofia didn’t answer.

“I’m actually giving you a choice,” he went on. “You like that, don’t you? Thinking you have a choice. Would you like to hear what that choice is?”

Sofia gathered up her skirt and stockings, her arms shaking.

“Would you?”

“Yes,” she said, grinding her teeth together until they sparked inside her head.

“You leave my office and you find her in this icebox we call a city and you kill her for me. And everything carries on the way it was before. That’s option A. Option B is you leave my office and you don’t do anything and I use my secret weapon here”—he nodded at the record player—“to get you nice and compliant so that one of my engineers can reprogram a new song into your pretty little robot brain, a song that’ll force you to kill her. That’s your choice.”

He dropped the needle again, only this time the music was safe. It didn’t transmit any hidden codes.

Cabrera looked at Sofia. She pulled her clothes to her chest, trying to cover her bare skin. The room was no longer too hot, but too cold. Even though Sofia didn’t feel the cold.

“Well?” said Cabrera. “Which option do you choose?”

Sofia considered her options, robotically, one by one. She considered every possible angle. Cabrera was wrong, as he so often was—he had given her more than two choices. Because he didn’t realize how adept she was at obfuscation.

“I’ll kill her,” Sofia said.

Cabrera smiled.

*  *  *  *

Sofia rapped on Marianella’s bedroom door without stopping, a
bang
,
bang
,
bang
that no human could manage without hurting herself. She was numb—from the music, from Cabrera’s threat. She’d either be a murderer or a murder weapon.

No.
No.
She banged harder on Marianella’s door. No human would ever tell her what to do again.

Shuffled footsteps. Sofia stopped knocking, and the door swung open. Marianella stared at her. She looked exhausted, her clothing rumpled and her eyes ringed in dark circles.

“Sofia?” she said in a slurred voice, like she’d been sleeping.

“I need to speak with you.” Sofia didn’t wait for an answer; she pushed past Marianella into the dim bedroom. “It’s about Ignacio Cabrera.”

The door swung shut.

“What about him?” Marianella’s voice had lost the blur of sleep; it was strained now, nervous. “My God, Sofia, what do you know?” She stared at her. “You went to see him, didn’t you? Just now?” She dug her hand into her forehead like she had a headache. “
Why?
I told you, Alejo and I know how to handle—”

Sofia grabbed both of Marianella’s hands and squeezed them tight. Marianella looked up, her eyes shiny with tears, and the sight of them made Sofia hurt inside.

“He called me over,” Sofia said, “for a meeting. I had to go. That’s the nature of my arrangement. And he—” She wasn’t sure she would be able to say it. Not now, not looking at Marianella straight on.

Marianella always did that to her.

“What?” Marianella cried. “What is it?”

“We have a problem,” Sofia said carefully.

Marianella’s eyes went wide and scared. “He wants you to kill me.”

“Yes.” Sofia squeezed Marianella’s hands.

Marianella sucked in a deep breath, and that act of breathing made Sofia aware of how vulnerable Marianella was, if you knew the right places to stab, to hit, to dismantle.

Which Sofia did.

Silence filled the bedroom, thick and choking. And when Marianella broke it, she said exactly what Sofia didn’t want to hear.

“Did he program you?” Marianella’s voice was flat. Empty.

Sofia closed her eyes. It was a fair question—she was still programmable—and she couldn’t begrudge Marianella asking it. But it hurt anyway, a hurt like coming out of the music.

“No.”

Marianella sighed with relief, a long whoosh of air that hurt Sofia even more.

“He gave me the option of doing it on my own first.”

“Are you going to?”

“No, of course not.”

Marianella closed her eyes, and her lips moved silently, the first lines of the Hail Mary.

“You didn’t think I was going to kill you, did you? I mean, really?” Sofia reached out, tentatively, and pressed her hand against the side of Marianella’s face. Marianella leaned into her touch, sighing, and with that, Sofia stretched her arm around Marianella’s shoulder and drew her close. She wanted to feel the warmth and softness of her body, wanted to feel that blood pumping through Marianella’s veins. It was the strangest sort of comfort.

“I don’t know what I think, Sofia.” Marianella laid her head on Sofia’s shoulder. “I just— How could you do it?” she asked. “How could you work for that—that monster?” She turned her head just enough that her hair brushed across Sofia’s shoulder. “You may not care that he kills humans, but he just asked you to kill a cyborg. And what do you say about that?”

“I had to work with him,” Sofia said. “It’s part of my plan.”

“Your plan, your plan!” Marianella pulled away, whirled to face her. “You’re helping Ignacio Cabrera, the man responsible for starving half of Hope City, just so Araceli can mess around with your programming?”