And if she sometimes found herself thinking about the pilot with the gold eyes and wondering what might’ve happened if she’d only gone to him and explained who she was and when she’d come from . . .

Well. All she had to do was remind herself of the first time she and Ash had met, back in a churchyard in 1913. She could instantly recall the look of disdain he’d gotten in those eyes, the sound of his voice when he told her that, no, he wouldn’t be able to help her.

It was that no she couldn’t stop thinking about. She couldn’t bear to hear it again, not after everything that had happened between them.

And so, over time, she’d gotten better at brushing the other, fonder memories aside.

She’d made her choice. There was no going back now.

2

Ash

NOVEMBER 5, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

Back in New Seattle, near twilight. The sky was a thin, watery green, the same color as the pea soup Ash used to get in his rations back in the war. He could almost feel the weight of it pressing down on him, like a warning of things to come.

He tensed, thinking, Seven days.

Professor Walker had once told him that you could premember something up to a year into the future. It was the “up to a year” part that Ash had been focusing on, recently. Because he’d first seen the prememory of his own death 358 days ago.

Which meant that, at best, he had seven days left to live. Less than that, probably.

Help me find Dorothy, and I’ll go without a fight.

Chandra fidgeted as the guards patted Ash down. It would be easier to ignore the stormy sky if they were standing anywhere other than the docks on the Aurora waterway, which was the seediest part of New Seattle. The city had always had a sex trade, but the earthquake had brought it out into the open, made it seem almost legitimate. Now the motels along what used to be the Aurora highway proudly advertised what they sold.

The misty rain had plastered Chandra’s hair to the back of her neck and sent droplets rolling down her dark skin. She kept her eyes trained on the guards, lips pressed together to keep them from trembling. The two men looked more like hunks of granite than like people. The lines of their faces were sharp and hard, their eyes near black in the strange, green light. Rain glimmered off the assault rifles hanging from their backs.

Gnarled fingers dug into Ash’s pockets and fumbled with the lining of his jacket, searching for weapons.

He let his eyes linger on their rifles for a moment before moving them back to the sky.

“Tornado sky,” his mother would’ve called it.

He could picture her now, standing on their front porch, tapping one of his dad’s Camels out of its pack. She’d stick the cigarette between her teeth, lighting it in her cupped hand as she watched the sky through slits of eyes.