At three minutes, they could see the clearing in the distance. Dorothy watched the younger Roman stumble out of his tent, carrying his sister in his arms.

At two minutes, he dropped to his knees. The Roman beside her started running faster, pulling ahead—

And then he tripped. The root seemed to come from nowhere, tangling around his ankle and bringing him down, hard, in the mud. He gasped and struggled to push himself back to his hands and knees, but it was no use. The mud was thick, and it was everywhere.

“No,” he said finally, standing.

Dorothy followed his gaze and saw his younger self kneeling in the clearing, his sister dying again.

Dorothy thought she understood.

“Do you remember holding her in your arms?” she asked.

Roman closed his eyes. “I can’t.”

She tried to keep her voice gentle. “You felt her die. Remember?”

Shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“If it were possible to change this, you wouldn’t be able to remember her dying because we already would’ve gone back and prevented it from happening.” She gripped his arm. “Time is a circle, remember?”

She thought he was going to push her away. But he lifted his own hand and dropped it over hers.

For a long while, they stood in the rain.

38

Ash

NOVEMBER 8, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

Zora was staring at him, her mouth agape.

After a moment she said flatly, “That’s impossible.”

“I know,” said Ash. They’d pulled their motorboat up to the dock just outside of Dante’s, but Zora had refused to go inside and let Ash order a much-needed drink until she’d bandaged up his open wound using a torn-off bit of her shirt and he’d told her everything.

She didn’t believe him.

“You’ve read my father’s research,” she said. “You can’t enter an anil without any exotic matter. Only two people have ever even tried, and one of them died while the other—”

“—was flayed by the intense winds inside of the time tunnel,” Ash finished for her. “I know. I’m not arguing with you. All I’m saying is that I just went through an anil without any exotic matter.”

“And even if you had any exotic matter, you would have needed to incorporate it into a protective vessel, like a time machine,” Zora continued, seeming not to have heard him. “Long before my father came up with the plans for the Second Star, he thought that exotic matter might have stabilizing effects inside of an anil, but he found that when the material wasn’t properly incorporated into the design of his ship, it failed.”

Ash dropped his face into his hands, groaning loudly. “Zora,” he said. “You’re lecturing.”

Zora blinked at him. “Sorry. It’s just that . . . well, this doesn’t make any sense. Why are you different from my father, and all the other scientists who’ve tried and failed? It shouldn’t—”

“Be possible?” Ash untied the bandage around his ribs and then retied it tighter. There was already blood leaking through the fabric, a deep, dark red. “Yeah, you might have mentioned that.”