“That’s awesome,” Regan said. I wanted to tell her that there was nothing awesome about this, but Callaway had restarted the recap screens, and we all watched each other’s recaps in silence. Sam, I noted, never took his eyes off ours, which was unfortunate since it was by far the sloppiest of the lot. While the other partners worked together like a seamless team, Regan and I bumbled along like we’d never done a simulation before in our lives. The whole experience made my skin crawl, and I flashed back to Regan talking about how uncomfortable watching recaps made her feel. I’d thought she was crazy. I didn’t think that anymore.

Finally, the recaps ended, and we were dismissed. I sat back, waiting for the techs to come out to unhook us from the equipment, but after a few seconds, I realized that was different here too. In front of us, Corban and Blake were already unhooked, while Eliana and Tess finished taking off the last of their probes.

“Well, that’s different,” Regan muttered as she started pulling off her own probes and sticking them back on the sensor plate in front of us.

“I think a lot of things here are going to be different,” I said as I hurried to follow suit. Callaway appeared at our side as we unhooked the last of the sensors and handed us each a piece of paper with a neatly printed schedule on it.

“This seems kind of pointless since our group is so small that everyone sticks together,” he said. “But it’s always nice to know where you’re going next. You’ll find all the details about the order of our day here, and as you probably already figured out, you two will be doing all of your classes together. Studying together, practicing together, training together, eating together, you get the idea.”

I glanced down at the schedule. The day was going to go very much like a day at the Academy, with combat training, classes on history, costuming, and disguise, a class that appeared to be similar to the nuance and observation class, and so on. The only difference was that I was going to be doing all of this tethered to Regan.

As I followed her out of the simulation section, I thought again of Colonel Chamberlain. If one man could change history so completely, then the least I could do was try to keep that history intact. To do that, I was going to have to start getting along with Regan Fitz.

Chapter Twenty

Regan