“Power’s been spotty all day.” She looked up, eyes flicking over Ash’s boat, where there were still only two—not three—passengers. She seemed to hesitate before asking, “No luck at Mac’s, then?”

“What do you think?” Ash didn’t look at her but jerked the motorboat’s engine off, perhaps a little too forcefully. Spitefully, he asked, “You?”

In answer, Zora merely balled up a piece of notebook paper and threw it at him. It missed, and they were both silent as they watched it sink below the black water.

“I hope that wasn’t important,” Willis said. He was sitting on a stool in the shadowy corner just behind Zora, his pale skin and hair seeming to blend with his surroundings despite his massive size. He was whittling something. The hunk of wood looked like a toothpick in his monstrous hands.

“It was just a grocery list from two years ago.” Zora shoved her black braids off her forehead. “Eggs, milk, and Toaster Strudel. God knows why he kept it.”

“Toaster Strudel? Oh my God, remember before the earthquake when you could just go to the grocery store and buy Toaster Strudel?” Chandra crawled out of the boat, grunting as she sent it rocking beneath her. There were a few black-market stores and shops around, but they stuck to the necessities: drinkable water, fish, protein bars. If they wanted anything else, they had to seek out an official Center-sanctioned trading post, and they were expensive.

“I used to love those limited-edition maple brown sugar ones,” Chandra continued. “God, they were so good. I’d sneak out and eat them after everyone else went to sleep.”

Willis looked up, eyes narrowing. “That’s why we were always running out.”

“Don’t look at me like you didn’t steal extra cans of LaCroix from the kitchen and hide them under your bed.” Chandra leaned over the side of the dock, staring forlornly at the spot where the shopping list had vanished. “You should really keep that stuff. It’s history. Memorabilia from before the flood. Could be valuable someday.”

Ash squatted next to Zora and stared down at the pile of mildewed paper that represented their last hope of saving this drowned and desperate city.

It didn’t exactly instill confidence. Printouts from Roman’s laptop lay stacked on top of old notebooks, all of it mixed up with lists and drawings from the Professor’s office, pages torn out of his journal. It looked like Zora had been jotting things down, too. Ash recognized the slant of her handwriting on a scrap near the top of the heap and tilted his head to read what she’d written.

What the actual hell does any of this mean?!

He grimaced. That was disappointing. “No closer to understanding the math part, then?”

“Let’s see, did I earn a degree in theoretical physics since I last saw you? No, I did not.” Zora groaned and pressed her fingers over her eyelids. “What I’d give for one single textbook, but no. Old grocery lists I have in spades. But actual books?”