Chapter 1

The night the heat dome settled over San Riva, the ground temperature climbed toward 122 degrees.

I was keeping an underground cooling station running for more than six hundred residents, begging my husband Julian to send back the rescue crews and the backup batteries. But he was up on the ridge with his childhood sweetheart Celine, at the fireworks show for the Dawn Dome signing.

He said Celine's project was the future of the whole city.

I said the people in the Lower City would not live through the night.

He cut the channel instead and sent every drop of water, every unit of power, and every rescue resource meant for the cooling station up to Celine's glass dome.

In my last life, Celine died in the wildfire smoke. Julian decided I had destroyed her dream, so he locked me, seven months pregnant, in an isolation room with no cooling, and took away my water and my cooling shots, over and over.

"You're the one who's so good at calculating risk, aren't you?

"Then calculate how much longer you have to live."

When I opened my eyes again, the Red Heat Alert was screaming across the whole city.

This time I did not beg Julian to come back.

He wanted to stand with Celine and protect a dome that had been built by draining the Lower City dry. Then let him protect it.

I would take the spare key and restart the old water line they had sealed shut.

He thought I was just an engineer who could not live without him.

But when the cooling station lit up again and the Dawn Dome started losing water, he finally understood. What I was calculating this time was not how much longer I had.

It was how much they owed, and what it would cost them to pay for a whole city's lives.

Not until the last child in the underground cooling station stopped crying did I finally believe that being reborn was not the end of the nightmare.

In my last life, on the night the heat dome sealed San Riva shut, the ground temperature climbed toward 122 degrees and never dropped after dark. I ran into the civil defense dispatch center and pulled back the rescue crews that were supposed to be holding the ridge, and I saved most of the Lower City. But Celine could not accept that her Dawn Dome signing ceremony had been canceled. She left the safe zone alone to livestream, and she died in the wildfire smoke. Julian held her scorched earring all night and did not say a word.

I thought he was only grieving.

Then, seven months pregnant, I was locked in an isolation room with no cooling. He took my water and my cooling shots away again and again, and each time I was about to black out, he had someone bring me back.

"Mara, aren't you the one who's so good at calculating?

"Then calculate how much longer you have to live."

When I opened my eyes, the alarm was screaming over my head.

I ran out of the room and smashed open the emergency glass on the broadcast console.

"Red Heat Alert! All Lower City residents get into the underground cooling station now!"

Outside there was a beat of silence, and then everything broke loose. Wildfire smoke had already crossed the western ridge, and a gray-black ceiling of cloud pressed down over half the city. The ground was as hot as a sheet of iron pulled out of a fire, and a few barefoot children ran crying toward the station entrance. I handed out cooling blankets to the elderly with one hand and started the circulation pump with the other.

A line of red text appeared on the screen: [BACKUP MICROGRID POWER INSUFFICIENT.]

My fingers froze. In my last life it happened at exactly this hour. Julian took every civil defense officer up to hold the ridge. Back then I thought he was fighting the fire.

This time I finally knew what he was really guarding.

I opened his private channel. "Julian, the Lower City is about to lose cooling. Send the backup batteries and the rescue crews back right now."

Noise poured through the channel: music, cheering, and Celine's soft laughter. Julian was silent for two seconds.

"Mara, Celine's project faces its Alliance review tonight. Once the Dawn Dome works, San Riva won't have to survive in underground shelters like this in the future."

I almost laughed. "The future? The people dying down here tonight won't live to see your future."

Celine took the handset, her voice carrying exactly the right amount of hurt. "Mara, I know you don't like me. But I've spent three years on this project, and you can't keep doing this at the worst possible moment—"

"Shut up."

Julian's voice turned icy. "Celine isn't here for you to take your temper out on. I've already given the Dawn Dome priority access to the ridge batteries. Handle the Lower City by the book."

The channel cut out.

The circulation pump gave one dull thud and stopped. Inside the underground cooling station, the temperature began to climb.

My mother-in-law Evelyn stood behind me, her face white, but she still reached out and gripped my shoulder. "If Julian won't come back, I'll go. I raised him. He might ignore you. He won't ignore me."

She turned toward the side door. Watching her walk away, my heart sank. In my last life, after Evelyn died, Julian never even asked where she had gone. This time I could not let her die again.

"Evelyn," I said, going after her, my voice tight. "I'm coming with you."

Evelyn looked at me. Far off, the red glow of the wildfire pushed closer through the smoke.

"Then hurry. It won't cool down tonight. We don't have time."