When Sofia arrived at the garden’s center, overflowing with flowers and thick green vines, a maintenance drone was waiting for her in a pool of yellow lamplight. It would have registered her entering the park, and now it came to her, awaiting instructions.

The maintenance drones couldn’t speak in human voices, but Sofia didn’t need them to. She knelt beside the robot and pressed her palm against its sensor. She transferred an image of Yellow-8, boxy and long-limbed. And then she flooded the drone with instructions. Find Yellow-8. Bring him back. She knew how improbable her instructions were. But she needed to try.

The maintenance drone responded. The drones had tried to retrieve Yellow-8, when they’d learned who had been taken. But it was too late.

Too late.

Sofia slid her hand off the sensor. She was empty.

“Thank you,” she whispered, reverting back to her old ways, her facsimile of humanity. She stood up. The maintenance drone blinked at her for a moment longer, then zipped up into the air, disappearing into the night.

Sofia was alone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MARIANELLA

Marianella sat at her vanity, a lipstick in one hand. She didn’t move to apply it, only stared at her reflection. The last few days showed on her face: dark half-moons below her eyes, thin lines radiating out from the corners of her lips. She sighed and dropped the lipstick and leaned back on her stool. The party was to start in a little over an hour. Luciano had agreed again to play at being her butler, even though the circumstances weren’t so dire this time around. Still, with his help, she’d managed to set up everything for her guests. But she wasn’t ready.

Everything had been too much this week. Losing her documents, learning that some man knew what she was. She’d seen the news of Pablo Sala’s death in the evening newspaper three days ago and the relief had been sweet and sudden and then swallowed up by guilt. It was a sin to celebrate the death of a human being like that. But he had known what she was, and if this stranger could know, then she had to assume there were others.

And she was certain that if there were others, they would be tied to Ignacio Cabrera. Hector must have told him somehow, sent word along before his death that Marianella kept a painful truth locked away in the safe in the library. The thought made her sick to her stomach. But Hector was one of only three humans she had ever told her secret, and she trusted the other two more than she had trusted her late husband.

At least she was certain that Ignacio didn’t know what her documents revealed, not if he’d sent someone to steal them. Because if he knew what she was, he wouldn’t need the proof of her documents. It was a secret strong enough that even a rumor started by a gangster could be enough to undo her.

“Marianella?” Luciano appeared in the vanity’s mirror, holding a vase of flowers. “These were sitting in the kitchen. I presume you want them in the main room?”

Marianella plastered on a cheerful smile, then twisted around in her stool. “Yes, that would be lovely, thank you.”

But Luciano didn’t move away. He studied her for a moment, then said, “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know how upsetting this last week has been.”

“I have to pretend with everyone else. I might as well start now.” Marianella turned back to her mirror and picked up her lipstick. Luciano moved out of sight of the reflection and walked silently to her side. He set the flowers down on the vanity. She glanced up at him, turned her gaze back to her reflection, applied her lipstick.

He knelt beside her. “If you ever need help,” he said, “Sofia would be happy to send it.”

“Sofia’s gone mad.”

“No, she hasn’t.”

Marianella dropped her lipstick and smoothed the flyways that had escaped from her curls. “Maybe you’ve gone mad right along with her. Inéz, too.”

Luciano laughed. He was programmed to do that, she knew, if anyone said something that sounded like teasing.

“I haven’t gone mad. I meant about Ignacio Cabrera. I’m sure Sofia would set aside your differences if you needed help.”

“We don’t have differences. We just—” Marianella couldn’t put it into words, not in a way that Luciano would understand. She was neither human nor robot, but something in between, and she had chosen to live as a human, however dangerous and precarious that might be. It was easier. “Besides, what does Sofia know about Ignacio Cabrera? I’m shocked either of you have even heard of him.”

She stood up with a swish of her skirt and checked the time—a little under an hour now.

“I merely meant we could provide protection, if you needed it.” Luciano offered an arm and Marianella took it without thinking. They left the bedroom together. “At the very least, Sofia has maintenance drones at her disposal, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind lending them to you.”

“That’s not necessary.” They descended the stairs. All the lights were switched on, the chandelier sparkling. “I’ve already programmed mine to watch out for Ignacio’s men. Besides, I’m a television star now. I doubt he’s brave enough to try anything too drastic.” Marianella wasn’t entirely convinced of that herself, but she didn’t want to worry Luciano.

“Well, if you suspect he knows of your nature—” Luciano detached from Marianella’s arm and gave a bow. “I’m sure we could be of service.”

Luciano would do all sorts of things for her—help her with a party, pretend he’d been the one to hear the scratching the night of the break-in. He would always be of service. Sofia wouldn’t.

“I doubt he knows,” Marianella said. “If he even suspected, he would simply inform the authorities of those suspicions and that would be enough to launch an investigation.” And he hadn’t done that. Not yet. “At any rate, I’ve moved the documents for the time being. They are the key, I think.”

Luciano nodded as they walked into the main room, the largest in the house. One wall was a window that looked out over the wheat field, and Marianella kept the theremin and record player there. Right now the main room was frozen in time, poised and waiting for the party to start. Flowers dotted the furniture, bottles of liquor sat at the wet bar. The scene was incomplete without people.

“Oh!” said Marianella. “You forgot the flowers upstairs.”

“I never forget things,” Luciano said. “I merely thought you required my attention more than the vase. I’ll fetch it now.”

Marianella laughed, even though she didn’t know if it was really funny. Luciano smiled at her and disappeared into the hallway. Marianella collapsed onto the sofa. She hadn’t thrown a party since Hector died, but she knew she couldn’t stay withdrawn from society for much longer. The winter gala season would be starting soon, and those galas, as silly and frivolous as they were on the surface, were the best ways to raise money for the agricultural domes. The wealthy were always more generous during the winter—a way of showing off. Already Alejo Ortiz had telephoned about the Midwinter Ball, which had been the most successful fund-raiser last year. He expected her to attend, and this little party was Marianella’s way of stepping back out into the world.

And so she had Alejo to thank for her reemergence. Alejo and his project. That’s what he’d called it when he’d asked her to his office nearly two and a half years ago. Behind those closed doors he’d seduced her with the idea of Antarctican independence. “There’s a reason this place is called Hope City,” he’d said. “Sixty years ago we lived in one of the wonders of the world. Why shouldn’t it be a wonder again?”

Her father had called her a wonder of the world, after the surgery that had changed her. He had been wrong. But she saw in Alejo’s idealism a chance to create a real wonder, a place where human beings could live in the frozen desert. A chance to prove her own humanity.