Marianella shivered and drew her legs in closer.

“We can’t let him stop progress, Marianella. Which is exactly what he’s trying to do with this little stunt. So I agree with you. Go into protection—and the safe house is open for you—until we figure out a better plan. But we need a better plan, and we need it before the Midwinter Ball.”

The drone sputtered, a click-pop-hiss coming from its speakers. Marianella straightened up, frowning. But then Alejo’s voice broke through the feedback.

“I know you’ll come up with something,” he said.

The drone’s light faded away. Marianella sighed. She pressed the playback button to pop it back into place. The drone spun in two circles before settling, awaiting her next order.

“The Midwinter Ball,” Marianella said. Her voice echoed oddly around the room. She’d almost died, and Alejo was talking to her about parties. Not that it was any party. It was the key to their fund-raising, and if she didn’t go, it would seem that she had no faith in the domes.

But Ignacio was standing in the way. Marianella burned with anger at Hector’s memory. How could he have done that, slipping just enough of a hint about her nature to Ignacio to be dangerous? It was enough of a hint that if Marianella revealed that she had survived the freezing desert, Ignacio could make the connection. He could go to the authorities; he could accuse her of being a cyborg. And they would believe him. They would come for her.

She wanted her documents with her. They would keep her from being killed.

Marianella drew her knees to her chest, curling in on herself as she had as a child. But she wasn’t thinking like a child. Not now. She refused to abandon her domes, and so that meant she had to deal with Ignacio. She would have to pay him off or agree to work for him. Or she would have to kill him.

The thought hit her like electricity, and she felt a wave of nausea that she’d even had it. No. She was not going to kill Ignacio Cabrera.

But she could give him money. If it meant keeping the dome safe, if it meant she could stay in Antarctica as a human being, if it was a choice between murder and funding a criminal—

She knew what her option was.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DIEGO

Diego stood on the platform until the train rattled off, speeding through the uncanny night toward the next private dome. The silence that settled around him was thick and unnatural. Diego was used to Hope City proper, which was never silent—there was always music playing on the street and people fighting in the apartment upstairs. Being out here, surrounded by false wind and rippling thigh-high grasses, made him nervous.

The house was called Southstar, Mr. Cabrera had said, and that was how Diego had known to get off at this platform. He walked toward the house, his muscles tense, one hand ready to reach for the gun beneath his coat.

The front porch light was on, and three of the windows were illuminated, golden squares floating against the darkness. Diego pulled out his gun. The wind blew his hair into his eyes. Mr. Cabrera had promised no one would be home. “You saw it yourself. We pushed the broad out into the snow, and the whole point is to get you out there before the cops show up.” But Diego wasn’t one to take chances.

He crept forward in the dark.

Nothing stirred. When he stepped up onto the porch, he saw that the front door hung open by a few centimeters. He nudged it open with his toe. Dust and flakes of golden grass scattered across the entrance. He pushed in, gun lifted and ready, listening.

Silence.

This was a clean-out job. Supposed to be easy. Get in, clean out anything that might tie her disappearance back to Mr. Cabrera. They’d already done one pass last night, but Mr. Cabrera was antsy about it since she’d been Hector Luna’s wife, and good ol’ Hector might have tucked away some damning evidence that they didn’t initially catch. He’d been a slippery one.

There was also the matter of the documents that Pablo Sala had tried to show Mr. Cabrera. Even though Mr. Cabrera had decided to kill the woman, he was still curious what those documents might be, and whether or not they might be back in the house. And he was still kind of pissed about Diego killing Sala the way he had, though at least he had bought the story that Sala had tried to fight back and Diego had had no choice. So Mr. Cabrera had sent in Diego to make up for killing Sala but also because Mr. Cabrera trusted him. “Like a son,” Mr. Cabrera had said, and those were always the magic words.

Diego slid forward down the hallway, uncomfortable in the bright, glaring lights. The wind whistled around the open door, low and mournful. Diego checked each room as he passed, but they were all dark and empty. At the base of the stairway, he stopped and listened again.

Wind.

Silence.

No one was here.

He repeated that line like a refrain in his head, trying to calm himself. This was supposed to be an easy job. In, and out with anything that could hold up in a mainland court.

But he’d been here last night; he’d thrown the bag over the woman’s head and shoved her into Mr. Cabrera’s car. And those kinds of jobs were never easy.

This one was even worse. The woman just had to go to Eliana about the break-in, didn’t she? Just had to get her involved. It was the damn mainland. Eliana would take any dangerous job if it paid well enough, all so she could get away from the poor assholes stuck in Hope City. Assholes like him.

Her fucking visa. She hadn’t said much about it lately, but he knew she hadn’t given up. If anything, she was coming close to her goal, probably trying to spare his feelings, make him forget that she was just going to ditch him here in Hope City. It wasn’t like he could ask Mr. Cabrera for a visa of his own, though Mr. Cabrera could have provided one, and probably would have too. But Mr. Cabrera had raised him, given him a life, and Diego couldn’t just leave all that behind for a girl.

He crept up the stairs, his gun still out. He checked each of the doors until he came to the master bedroom. Big king-size bed with a mirrored headboard. Door leading into a bathroom, another leading into the closet. A vanity. A bureau.

He checked the vanity first, yanking open the drawers and running his fingers along their seams, looking for latches. Nothing. He dug through makeup brushes and jars of powder until he found a slim wooden box. When he opened it, the inside glittered, throwing the overhead light into his eyes. A necklace. Diego stared at it for a moment, thinking about how the woman had stared at Mr. Cabrera through the thin yellow of the car lights. She hadn’t even seemed afraid.

Diego snapped the box shut and dropped it back into the vanity. It wasn’t evidence, it was hers. And he wasn’t going to take it.

He checked the bureau next. The woman’s clothes, scented like lavender. No secret latches there either, no documents with Mr. Cabrera’s signature tucked away for safekeeping. If there was any evidence in this house, it wasn’t in the master bedroom. Fine by him. Diego felt like if he spent another second in this bedroom, the woman’s ghost was going to appear, wreathed in white light and pissed the hell off.

Still, he had a job to do.

So Diego made a quick pass through the rest of the upstairs rooms, looking for a library or a study or an office, thinking they might contain a safe. But they were nothing but bedrooms, all looking like no one’d ever slept in them. Back downstairs. A house this size, there had to be a study somewhere—

Footsteps.

Diego froze. He was in the hallway, a few paces from the staircase. The footsteps came from the back of the house, in the direction of the kitchen. Tap, tap, tap. Pause.