Ash knew he wasn’t expected to respond to that. Zora had been complaining about their lack of books for weeks now. The Professor used to have shelves and shelves of old textbooks hanging around before the earthquake, but Zora hadn’t been able to locate any of them with the rest of his notes. She’d never studied physics or calculus in school, and since their crappy, dial-up Internet had stopped working for good last week, she had no way of boning up on the subject now.

Unfortunately, that meant that most of her father’s notes read like gibberish. Chandra had tried to help her out with some of the simpler equations but, as she liked to explain, medical science wasn’t the same as time-traveler science.

“Call me if someone needs their kidney removed,” she’d told Zora. “Otherwise . . .” And she’d shrugged, making a face at the nonsense equations.

“What kind of scientist keeps stacks of trash in his office, anyway?” Zora muttered, grabbing a few crumpled sheets of paper. “Receipts and old lists and doodles of tap-dancing ladybugs . . .”

Zora rubbed her eyes with two fingers, leaving dirt smudged across her nose. “I was crazy to think I could do this without him. The world is doomed. We’re doomed. I should just . . . give up.”

“Give up,” Ash muttered, almost to himself and, all at once, he could feel the weight of the day settling over him.

Motel room windows, and Mac’s leering smile, and Mira’s cocked head.

But where else would we go?

He raked a hand over his face. Seven days. At most, he only had seven days left in this wretched, cursed place.

Oh, how he wished for more.

Rage tore through him—not there one moment, everywhere the next—and it mingled with the disappointment and the frustration and that damned hope, which he couldn’t get rid of, even now. He stood and began knotting the boat up to the dock, his motions jerky and rough. It felt good to take out his aggression on something, even if it was just a rope.

He noticed, in a detached sort of way, that the others had gone quiet. He looked up and saw Willis hunched over his whittling, knife gone still, and Zora staring down at one of her father’s papers without reading it. Only Chandra was gaping at him openly. She’d never been good at subtle.

“What?” He didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it did, and he hated himself a little for it.

Zora sniffed. “You seem a little off.”

“I’m fine.”

Chandra snorted.

“We could all use a break,” Willis said, placing his whittling on a small table beside him. Now that it wasn’t hidden inside his massive hands, Ash could see a man’s head and shoulders taking shape in the wood. “Dante’s?”

Zora stretched her arms over her head, yawning. “I’d be down for a drink.”

“And a shower,” Chandra said, wrinkling her nose.

Zora shot her a look, and Chandra shrugged.