“I asked if you had any questions, seeing as this is your first simulation test,” she said.

There was the slightest titter of a laugh to my left, and Brown narrowed her eyes at the guilty cadet. The laughter cut off immediately, and I felt an embarrassed flush creep up my neck and into my ears, turning them beet red.

“No, ma’am,” I said, making sure not to look in my mom’s direction. If I was embarrassed, I’m sure she was too, although, knowing her, she would be sitting as cool as a cucumber. Why couldn’t I have inherited her unflappability instead of her hair color?

“If there aren’t any questions, please take your seats,” said Professor Brown. I sat down, swung my legs onto the supports, and put my arms on the armrests as a tech came forward to place the simulation wires with their sticky cold pads over my legs and arms. Elliot hesitated for a second before finally climbing into the chair next to mine, resigned. A moment later, the countdown began, and I hazarded a glance in my mom’s direction. She sat, the picture of a professional, but there was a tightness around her eyes that let me know she was a little worried. My vision went black. The simulation had begun.

Chapter Nine

Elliot

I opened my eyes in the past. When exactly in the past? I had no clue yet. Usually we had this information before a simulation began. We were told what event our simulation would be of, and then we were given the week to study and prepare for it. That was the part I was good at, the studying and preparing. Unfortunately, for a sim test we had no time to prep. It was all about thinking on our feet, about using our instincts and our training.

A quick glance down showed me that I was wearing fitted brown pants with high kneesocks and a white button-up shirt. I was in a room with a tall, soot-stained ceiling. A large furnace and bellows were set up at the far end of the room, complete with stacks of horseshoes and bits of iron. Okay, I thought as I worked to calm down my racing heart, I was in a blacksmith’s shop, and judging from the rudimentary-looking tools hanging on the wall, I was somewhere in the 1700s. My white shirt was smudged and dirty from sitting in the soot, and I brushed myself off and walked over to look out the window. The sun was just beginning to set, and the street outside was primitive, nothing more than packed dirt between poorly built wooden houses.