To my surprise, though, she wasn’t alone behind that desk today. Sitting to her left was the mysterious professor who had whispered in her ear, and to her right was Professor Green looking smug about something.

“Sit,” Commander Fitz said, and Elliot and I obeyed immediately, both of us perching on the front edge of our chairs like we were about to take flight.

“Now then,” Commander Fitz said, taking her own seat behind her desk. “It is time to discuss your simulation.” She leaned over and pushed a button on her desk and the entire wall behind her flickered to life. It was a recap screen, smaller than the one in the recap review room, but still impressive. It showed a split screen; on the left was a frozen image of Elliot crouched in a blacksmith’s shop, and on the right was the image of that big meeting I’d Glitched into.

This was going to be ten kinds of terrible, I thought, crossing my arms over my chest. My mother slipped out from behind the facade of Commander Fitz for a second to shoot me a disapproving glance, and I immediately unfolded them and placed them on the chair’s armrests. No use making this worse for myself than it already was.

“You will watch your recap, and then we will address some of the issues that came up during this test,” Commander Fitz said, and hit play.

The beginning was fine. I had to admit that Elliot’s quick thinking was pretty impressive, while I bumbled around, obviously clueless about what was going on or where exactly I was. To my credit, though, I did find my way onto the correct ship just in time to see Elliot hack into his own leg. The previous split screen melded into one as our simulation test collided in a bloody mess.

I glanced at Elliot from the corner of my eye to see his reaction to this, but his face didn’t give anything away. I wondered who’d taught him not to fidget, because he was doing a killer impression of a statue. Although his face was looking almost as pale as the version of himself on the screen, so he wasn’t a complete robot. I should have found this comforting, but I didn’t. I wondered again why, of all the people at the Academy, my future self had thought it was a good idea to lump me with this guy. Why Elliot Mason? Remembering the letter made my insides squirm.

The simulation jumped back to a split screen as I stomped away from Elliot and followed the Butterfly belowdecks. What would my mom say if she knew that her own daughter was a time-traveling criminal? That one of the only reasons I’d spotted the Butterfly on the screen, or the one in the Lincoln simulation for that matter, was because I’d been tipped off by my future self.