She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw her hands over her eyes and demand that Roman turn off the headlights. She wanted to unsee everything that lay before her, even as she knew it was impossible.

She would remember this forever. She would see the imprint of it on her eyelids every night as she tried to fall asleep. The blackened, broken-down Fairmont would be the last image that haunted her on her dying day.

“Remember,” Roman said. “This is just one possible future. It’s not definite.”

“What the hell happened to make it look like this?” asked Mac.

“We . . . don’t know for sure.” Roman seemed to weigh his words carefully before adding, “Before I left the Chronology Protection Agency, the Professor was theorizing that another earthquake could hit the city in the next five to ten years. Possibly more than one earthquake. He thought that the movement of tectonic plates might be so great that they would set off a wave of volcanic activity.”

Dorothy turned to him, frowning. “An earthquake can cause a volcano to erupt?”

“Yes,” said Roman. “The Professor predicted the eruption of Glacier Peak, Mount Baker, and Mount Rainier for sure, but those might not be the only ones to blow. There’s also the Yellowstone Caldera, the supervolcano. Maybe even the Aira Caldera, in Japan.”

Mac laughed, the sound low and bitter. “Explain to me how the hell we’re going to avoid all of that?”

Roman stared out the window. “It’s just one possibility,” he said again.

Mac shook his head, peering into the black for another long, searching moment.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said. “Take me back.”

Roman flew them across the barren landscape and back into the anil. The tunnel of stars and purple clouds and black sky spun around them, and then Roman piloted the time machine through the tunnel walls, and the air around them thickened, growing heavy and wet. Water pounded against the windshield, making the glass creak—

NOVEMBER 7, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

—and then, a second later, they were surfacing, and New Seattle’s familiar skyline lay before them. Milk-white fog hung over the surface of the sound. Choppy waves rose to greet them, slamming over the Black Crow’s windshield as they hovered above the water. The city looked like nothing in the distance. Like darkness layered over more darkness. It was only when a far-off boat wove through the buildings that she could see the shape of the skyscrapers cutting into the night, the glimmer of light off windows.

Roman lifted his head and sniffed the air. Dorothy smelled it, too: brine and salt and the sweet, dank scent of mold. It was the smell of New Seattle, and it crept in through the time machine’s thick windows the second they exited the anil.

Home sweet home, she thought, numb.

Roman flew the Black Crow to the Fairmont garage and, landing, cut the engine. Dorothy’s eyes moved, restlessly, over the clouded windows and rusted pipes. It seemed strange, she thought, that this place should look so normal after everything she’d seen.