Dark Stars by Danielle Rollins (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

direct access to the anil itself. It involves using the earth’s energy to access the power of the anil wherever you stand in time and space.”

The Professor pushed his glasses up his nose with a flick of his hand. “To be perfectly honest, I thought he was mad! I thought it was impossible. But if it worked, it would mean that there was a way to travel through time that wouldn’t upset the earth’s tectonic plates, a way to stop the earthquakes once and for all. But it’s tricky science. I’d only just finished the prototype when your friend arrived.” The Professor’s eyes shifted to the door on the other side of the room, almost like he expected to see Dorothy standing there. “She told me I was needed here. So, I came.”

Ash stared down at his palms. He didn’t know what to say. It made sense, all of it, and it killed him to know that they could have found the Professor weeks ago, if only they’d looked harder, if only they’d trusted that he was still alive.

He closed his eyes and saw the Fort Hunter rooftop, Zora’s devastated face as she realized that her father wasn’t there. He felt like he might be sick.

“I—I thought you were dead,” he admitted, his voice thick. “Zora, too. We all did.”

The Professor slid his glasses back up his nose. His eyes, behind the lenses, looked deeply pained. Ash waited for him to ask about his daughter, but he didn’t.

“I had no intention of causing either of you so much heartache,” he said instead. A small, sad smile. “I was trying to prevent all of this, believe it or not.”

Ash nodded, understanding. He did believe it. Time travel, he was starting to realize, had a way of muddling things, of messing things up.

The Professor removed a small, silver gun from his coat pocket. It was strange-looking, almost like it had been cobbled together using spare parts from his ship, but the Professor held it in his palm like it was something precious.

He said, “Humans travel through time more easily than a clunky ship. All we need to do is take a small amount of EM into our bodies, which this gun allows.”

The Professor tilted the gun, and Ash could see that there was a very small amount of exotic matter stored inside, held in place by a clear glass capsule.

“That thing really works?” Ash asked, skeptical.

“It brought me here,” the Professor said. “No bumps or bruises, no horns growing out of my head.”

Ash rubbed the back of his head. He felt uneasy. It was something about that tiny bit of exotic matter stored inside the Professor’s gun, the knowledge that there was so much power stored inside of something so small. Anyone could get their hands on it.

He wet his lips and said carefully, “If someone like Mac Murphy were to get ahold of this thing, there’s no telling how—”

A creak on the other side of the room, the sound of a door opening. Ash stopped talking and looked up.

Dorothy and her mother stood framed in the doorway. Looking at them, Ash realized he couldn’t say exactly how long they’d been there. It was entirely possible that they’d been listening this entire time.

“If you two aren’t too busy,” said Dorothy. “I believe we might have a plan.”

Part Four

There’s no place like home.

—The Wizard of Oz

31Dorothy

NOVEMBER 13, 2077

Dorothy and Ash stood on the docks overlooking the Puget Sound. The night was still, and the only things that disturbed the flat surface of the water were the distant boats circling the anil. Dorothy counted the ripples as they drifted toward her, sending water lapping against the docks.

“They think we’ll be coming through the anil,” Ash said, pushing the damp hair from his forehead. It wasn’t raining, but the air was still thick and wet. Dorothy felt her own cloak sticking to the back of her neck, her hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks. She shivered.

“It appears that way, yes,” she said. In actuality, they hadn’t needed to use the anil at all. The Professor’s new technology meant they were able to appear a comfortable distance from the Fairmont itself, on a bit of old docks that Dorothy happened to know were rarely used. From here, they could see what was happening at both the anil and at the hotel, without getting close enough to be spotted.

That, of course, wouldn’t last. It wasn’t part of the plan.

Ash touched the spot below his ribs, gingerly, grimacing, and Dorothy felt a moment of doubt. He shouldn’t be here. He was still injured; they should’ve given him more time to recover. They’d had plenty of it back in 1913, after all. Time.

But Ash had insisted on moving sooner rather than later. He didn’t like the idea of hiding out in the past.

“Anything can happen while we’re here,” he’d told Dorothy. And then, nodding at the Professor, he’d added, “Look at him.”

She supposed he’d had a point. The Professor had spent a single day in 1980 but, by the time he found his way back, an entire city had fallen apart. And so, she’d agreed to return sooner rather than later.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it, she thought, taking in Ash’s pale skin, the sweat on his brow. Surely, things would have been fine if he’d given himself even a week longer to recover?

“Let’s get this over with,” she said, and her eyes flicked back to the waiting Freaks. She felt her heart begin to hammer inside her chest. “Come on.”

Ash nodded and lifted his arms above his head, and, together, the two of them stepped out of the shadows.

The night was heavy with fog, making it difficult to see how many Freaks had converged on the docks in front of the old hotel. Dorothy could make out the ghostly lights of the hotel windows, and the hazy shapes of people moving, but nothing else.

She held her breath as they drew