Rounding a corner, I almost ran headfirst into two cadets. I mumbled an apology and was about to keep going when I caught a glimpse of their expressions and stopped. Both of their young faces were drained of color, their hands visibly shaking as they fumbled to zip up their jackets. I recognized them as being a few years below me, but I couldn’t remember their names. It was obvious that their recaps and repercussions had been bad ones, I thought, trying to place each of them in the simulations I’d just watched. The boy I recognized from a pretty bloody World War I battle, and I thought the girl was the one who’d gotten herself killed during the Kennedy assassination. I could have been wrong, though. I could sympathize. Watching myself die on-screen, even if it was just a simulation, always made my insides go cold and hard, like I’d swallowed an iceberg. These kids looked like they’d swallowed the one that had taken down the Titanic, and I couldn’t help but feel a tug of sadness for them. They’d never asked for this life. None of us had, and it wasn’t the first time I wondered what it would be like to have a life other than this one. To have the freedom to choose my own path based on my strengths instead of being crammed down one that seemed to do nothing but highlight my weaknesses. I shook my head, pushing the thought away. I was a Glitcher. I was the daughter of the commander in chief. I didn’t get an option of another life, and I’d decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to let that sour the one I did get. This was the hand of cards I’d been dealt, and I was going to play it for all I was worth, even if that meant watching the same recap of Lincoln’s assassination until I died of embarrassment.

Long gone were the days when someone could be born with the time-traveling gene and go unaccounted for. Everyone saw the mess that made, and it had taken years to get history straightened back out. Some things had been too far gone to correct and history had just had to bear the scars. Germany was still upset about the whole Hindenburg mess, but as our professors were quick to point out, the world needed a tangible reminder of what happened when time travelers pranced through history like a bunch of unchaperoned kindergartners on a field trip. Thankfully, right around the time that Mayhem started recruiting, the government stepped in and started regulating things.