modern, and so she’d bribed border security to get a few basics shipped in from the Center. The clothes had been expensive, but, at the time, she’d thought they were worth it. Now, with money as tight as it was, she felt guilty about the extravagance.
Dorothy only ever removed her hood when she was in this room, alone, and now she stopped before the full-length mirror that hung from the back of her bathroom door and stared in open fascination at the horror that was her face.
The gash curved from her hairline to her chin like a great, twisted snake. It cut straight through her left eye and arced over her cheekbone, leaving the skin twisted and raised in its wake.
She lifted a hand, tracing the scar with her finger. It felt warm and smooth to the touch. The scar marked her as other, separating her from everyone else as effectively as the rumors about her did. Monster. Cannibal.
Turning, she caught sight of the gown she planned to wear the next night hanging from her closet door. It was a floor-length evening dress made of floaty, ice-blue chiffon, with a fitted bodice and spaghetti straps. Dorothy had seen Grace Kelly wear the dress while watching To Catch a Thief and had insisted they go back for it.
She took the thin fabric between her fingers, frowning. She’d had a thin, silver mask custom-made to cover her scar, and she’d planned to wear it with her hair pinned up, to show off her long neck. She would look beautiful again. The city’s savior.
She’d told Roman that her injury was the reason she’d wanted to make the party a masquerade. She’d long used the same reasons to explain why she still wore the hood, and they leaped easily to her lips:
She didn’t want to give the people of New Seattle any more reason to fear her. She couldn’t save them if they thought she was a monster.
And that was all true. But it wasn’t the whole truth.
With a deep sigh, Dorothy looked back at her reflection, her eyes moving over the twisted scar, the ruined skin.
And, beneath all of that, her face. It was different from the face Ash had known, but still familiar. If he saw her, if any of her old acquaintances did, they’d recognize her at once.
And there was the real reason for the masquerade. Dorothy had insisted on the mask because of Ash, because she knew he’d be there and she didn’t want him to find out who she really was.
LOG ENTRY—JUNE 14, 2074
04:53 HOURS
THE SECOND STAR
I’ve only just returned home, and I’m afraid I’m the tiniest bit tipsy. Nikola and I talked about physics long into the night. We made it through most of his bourbon.
Nikola explained his brush with time travel to me, and I’m sorry to say that I now believe it was nothing more than his brain short-circuiting after a near-death experience, much the same as when people claim that they’ve seen “a tunnel of light” and interpret it as the entrance to heaven. Nikola has not traveled through time, of that I’m certain. I’m no closer to learning the secrets of traveling through time without an anil or exotic matter than I was before all this madness began.
Which isn’t to say that my trip was a complete failure. Far from it. Nikola has gotten me thinking about all sorts of scientific queries I could work on to solve using time travel. Most particularly, he has me ruminating on the future.
Roman and I have taken several trips into the future, but, to be honest, I’ve found them mostly fruitless. Unlike the past, the future doesn’t appear to be fixed. It changes every time I visit. Sometimes the changes are slight, while, other times, they’re monumental.
Of course, I, like everyone, have often wondered how my own actions might change the course of the future. But Nikola pushed me to consider this on a deeper level. He was intrigued about my journeys, asking about specific experimentation I might have done to study my own personal ability to effect change.
He got a strange, puzzled look on his face when I admitted that I hadn’t pursued that line of study very far. It really got me thinking about how I might design a series of experiments to delve deeper into these questions. My mind is on fire.
More soon.
10
Ash
NOVEMBER 6, 2077, NEW SEATTLE
There was a door in the old schoolhouse that they never opened. It was just past the kitchen,