I remember the first time I truly felt like I had no control over the world around me.

I'd been on my first tour, out on a reconnaissance mission that was supposed to go smoothly for a newbie medic like me. I'd been barely nineteen, freshly engaged, and still trying to wrap my head around where I was. I believed in what I was doing, and growing up in a military family, was aware of the risks.

Knowing something and then knowing it, however, were two totally different things.

Needless to say, my unit had been attacked in an area that we'd thought was safe. None of us had been prepared for the assault, and we'd lost two soldiers before I'd even had a chance to get to them.

It was my first time witnessing death firsthand, deaths that I knew weren't my fault, but that I still blamed myself for. Logically, I knew that if I would've gone after them, I'd most likely have been killed too, and even if I hadn't, I most likely couldn't have saved them anyway. It hadn't taken away my guilt though. I told myself that there was nothing I could've done, that the entire thing had been completely out of my control, and a part of me knew it, remembered how the chaos had felt.

That was one of those moments that had forever altered my way of thinking, my way of seeing the world, and I knew it wasn't only due to the deaths, but rather the stark realization that I had no control over any of it.

This was another of those times.

I leaned back against the tree, my mind caught in an endless spin as it tried to make sense of my situation. A part of me still wanted to believe that it was all a show, the figments of a mad man’s imagination. He was tricking me. It had to be that. It couldn’t be anything else.

But it wasn’t like I could actually prove him wrong. My ankle made it almost impossible to get up on my own, and at the moment, I wasn’t even sure if it would help. If Gracen was as deranged as I knew he must be to expect me to believe his story, he would be on me before I managed to get more than a few steps. And based on what I'd seen, there wasn't anyone around who'd hear me if I yelled for help.

I looked over at him as he lay on the ground in the protection of the brush, his hat cocked over his eyes as he snored. He'd fallen asleep for about an hour before but had already woken twice at the slightest sounds. Between my ankle and not knowing the terrain, I had little hope of being quiet enough to escape without him knowing it.

I rested my head against the tree behind me, weighing my options. I knew my training would be next to useless with my ankle, unless he was stupid enough to come too close. It was the cane that worried me. It was a weapon that could be an issue if he was willing to use it. At that moment, I wished I'd revealed to him that I was a woman. Men had a habit of underestimating women, so if I tried to do something, he would probably try and grab me instead of using the cane. That would put me at an advantage.

I watched him turn over, and when the next couple gunshots fired without waking him, I knew this was my most likely opportunity. I rolled over slowly, the twigs under me snapping as I moved. I kept my eyes locked on his back, seeing if the sounds would wake him. I remembered how my father could sleep through a marching band, just to wake up at the sound of my brother’s cough from across the hall.

I prayed Gracen wasn’t similarly tuned to breaking twigs.

When he still didn’t move, I risked pushing myself up, placing most of my weight on my good leg as I used the tree for support. The pain in my bad ankle had subsided, but I decided against trying to see how much I could use it. With any luck, I could get far enough without testing it too much, and, by morning, I'd be far from here, and the swelling would have gone down.

I started to move in short hops, looking back once or twice to see if he'd woken up, but his back was still to me, and it didn’t seem like that was going to change. Feeling bolder, I quickened my pace, quickly pushing through the trees until I found myself on an open plain.

That was when I realized that Gracen wasn’t crazy after all.

There was no highway. There were no flashing lights from distant ambulances or the honking of cars. There were no towering buildings in the distance or the familiar Boston lights shining back at me. As far as I could see, the city I knew didn't exist.

I could see Boston, but it was nothing like the Boston I knew.

Gunshots blasted again, and I finally realized what was weird about them. They weren't the gunfire I'd become accustomed to in the army. Those weren't modern guns. Even if there was some sort of rational reason for why I kept hearing shooting from Boston, I could think of no reason as to why they'd be using old-fashioned guns.

I didn't know how or why it had happened. I had no explanation for any of it, but it didn't matter.

I was in the past. In 1775 Colonial America, to be specific.

I tried to remember what I'd read in my brother’s book and realized that walking towards Boston would either get me killed or worse. The battle would be across the river, but still too close for comfort. Even if the British soldiers assumed that I was a man, I doubted they'd be inclined to be compassionate to someone sneaking around the night before a battle.

Even though I now knew that Gracen was telling the truth about where – when – I was, he was still a stranger, and I didn't know where his loyalties lay.

I did, however, know that I'd feel more comfortable with colonists than I would with the Brits. I didn't know where the army was, but I figured I would have better luck finding a “rebel” colonist out there somewhere than trying to sneak past the British army in Boston. My ankle was slowing me down, but I didn’t stop moving. I needed to get as far away from here as possible, especially since I knew exactly what was going to happen tomorrow.

I found a road, keeping to the tree-line as I followed it, ready to hide if anything seemed out of the ordinary. My training was starting to kick in, my senses more alert, the darkness around me slowly becoming more comforting. I tried to make as little noise as possible, stopping as often as I needed to rest in the hopes that I wouldn’t collapse from fatigue. The truth was, I didn’t know half the extent of my injuries, and I had a feeling that my ankle was the least of my worries. The knot on my head throbbed in time with my pulse, which wasn't exactly comforting.

I heard the sounds of footsteps ahead, and I quickly pushed deeper into the woods. I crouched down, making sure to keep my weight off my bad ankle, and watched the road. I listened closely, and soon, the sounds of men came closer. A few minutes later, they appeared, their coats brown, their muskets held against their shoulders as they patrolled down the road.

Brown coats, not red ones.

Colonials.

This was my chance to get with people I'd be able to trust. I pushed myself to my feet, but just before I could make my presence known, something hard hit the back of my head.

My knees buckled as the world around me started to go dark, and the last thing I knew before I passed out was that a pair of arms kept me from going to the ground.

* * *

I came to with a deep, excruciating pain in the back of my head that made everything else I was feeling in my body seem like mild aches.

My vision swam in and out of focus, and when I was finally able to blink the world back into proper view, Gracen was sitting a few feet away from me looking like he'd just been to hell and back. His hat was missing, his curls in wild disarray. His overcoat was draped over his shoulders like a cape, and he was holding his cane in both hands.

I tried to move, and it was only when I couldn’t that I realized my hands had been tied together behind my back. The ropes dug into my skin, and I had a feeling that even if I were able to break free, the numbness would render them useless for a while.

I glared at him, but he merely raised an eyebrow in response.

“Untie my hands,” I demanded.

His grip on his cane tightened even as his frown deepened. “Do you have any idea what you could have done?”

“I have a pretty good idea, actually,” I hissed. “I'm not as stupid as you seem to think I am.”

“You almost got us both killed,” he hissed back. “You’re a sympathizer, aren’t you? Or is it more than that? Are you a spy? A soldier?”

“None of the above,” I said. And it was true. Technically. The army I was a soldier in didn't actually exist yet. “I just needed to get away from Boston.”

“Why?” Gracen asked. Then, before I could decide whether or not to answer, he spoke again, “On second thought, don’t answer that. I can’t risk being seen with you. My family can’t be tied to sympathizers.”

I struggled against the ropes, stopping only as they dug deeper into my skin. There was no way around it. If I wanted to leave, I’d have to talk my way out of this.

“Listen, I’m grateful for what you’ve done,” I started, “but I can’t be here. I need to get home. There’s no reason for me to be here.”

He shook his head. “I can’t let you go now. It’s too dangerous, and since I’m the only one of us who seems to understand how much, you’re staying put until dawn.”

I regarded him carefully, weighing my options and quickly realized that I didn’t actually have any. “What then?” I asked.

“Then you will be free to go,” he said. “You shall go your way, and I shall go mine.”

I wanted to tell him that dawn would be a little bit too late, that the gunfire we were still hearing wouldn't stop but would become louder, closer. That by the time the sun came up tomorrow, things would get much more complicated.

But I kept my mouth shut, unwilling to risk giving away who I really was and the time I was actually from. Besides, I doubted he’d believe me. I didn’t believe it myself, and I was living it.

“So we wait?” I asked.

He nodded and sat back, his eyes fixed on me as he tried to find a comfortable position. I tried to do the same, but my hands made that an impossibility. Between that and the insanity of the last few hours, I doubted I’d get any sleep. From the way Gracen was looking at me, it was a fair bet he wouldn’t be sleeping either.

It was going to be a long night.