Most terrifying of all, perhaps, was the fact that I didn’t know exactly how to stop it. I was not inside the anil, but “aligned with it” according to Tesla’s instructions, which I’d interpreted to mean inside the Cascadia subduction zone. I was getting desperate. My hands were shaking, and my skin felt like it was going to burn off, so I did the only thing I could think to do. I got the hell out of the subduction zone. Luckily, my symptoms stopped progressing immediately, and I was able to get myself back to the workshop without further harm coming to my person. My hands and feet were still badly injured, but after a few weeks rest they seem mostly back to normal.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had little to do except think.

How did my experiment go so badly wrong? The only thing I can come up with is that I didn’t manage to inject the exotic matter into my person just right. When I was first building the Second Star, it was crucial to work the EM into the vessel in such a way that it fused with the overall structure of the machine. That must be true when it comes to injecting the EM into your person, too. When I injected the EM, I must have done so in the wrong place. The exotic matter didn’t entirely fuse with my body and, thus, failed to protect me from the energy of the anil.

It seems that I must go back to square one.

8

Dorothy spent the remainder of her evening curled up on the lumpy twin bed. She’d found an old notebook and a stubby pencil in one of the dresser drawers, and she was using them to scribble down everything she could remember of the days between seeing Ash at the Fairmont ball, and finding his blood-spattered boat outside the anil.

There’d been all those trips into the past . . . the meetings she and Roman had taken with Mac Murphy . . . broadcasts to the city . . .

Once she’d written down everything she could think of, she sat back, frowning. She’d been busy these last few weeks. She couldn’t have found time for secret rendezvous with Ash, even if she’d wanted to.

Sure you could, said a voice in her head. You did.

She gnawed on the end of her pen, her gaze returning to the Professor’s journal pages, scattered across the bed around her.

Willis wanted her to come up with a plan. But, so far, the only idea she had involved stealing something priceless and well guarded from a vicious gang of thieves and attempting to perform a deadly scientific experiment that only one—possibly two—people have managed to accomplish in all of history.

It was mad. She was mad for even thinking of it.