“This meeting can do nothing further to save the country,” the man in front said, his voice heavy and sad. The reaction of the crowd was immediate. As though it was choreographed, cries of outrage rang out, and I wished I’d paid more attention to what the guy was saying. Like the mob it was turning into, the people around me all started moving angrily toward the too-small exit. I was forced along with the tide, squished and squeezed as someone in the front of the room begged for everyone to come back, informing them again and again that this meeting wasn’t over. I hated to break it to him, but this meeting was most definitely over.

After what felt like an eternity of pushing and shoving and enough up-close-and-personal encounters with body odor to last a lifetime, I was finally outside in the mercifully fresh air. Well, fresh-ish air, I conceded. The heavy smell of wood smoke and cooking food was almost as overpowering as the smells had been inside the meetinghouse, but under it all I could smell a saltiness I was pretty certain was the ocean. An icy wind whipped past me, almost taking my hat before I could smash it more securely onto my head.

As the crowd dispersed into the streets of what I was almost positive now was Boston, Massachusetts, in seventeen hundred and something or other, they grew quieter. Some of them grouped together, talking in low voices before disappearing into the doorway of a house or down a side street. Meanwhile, I just stood there in front of the meetinghouse like a goober as the crowd thinned out around me. I was lost. I didn’t know who I should follow, or even which way the harbor was, and weren’t there a lot of harbors in Boston? Which one had been the one that had the tea party? All of my bravado from hijacking Elliot’s simulation test was draining away, and I was left with a familiar feeling of uncertainty. Only this time, that uncertainty was lined with panic. Because if I didn’t beat Elliot in this, he would go on to the next level of the Academy, and I’d be left behind, waiting for whatever awful future the letter forecasted to come true.

Squaring my shoulders, I caught sight of one of the last groups of colonists moments before they turned down a side street, and I broke into a jog to follow them. I might not know where the harbor was that held the infamous ships of the British East India Company, but they sure did. It was time to hunt down that Butterfly.

Chapter Eleven

Elliot