Cira had to admit she was impressed. She had not expected K'Tah to actually stumble upon a clue into Samantha Cretney's past. Still, research on an Élodie from Île de Ré was scarce. It wasn't like she could watch Élodie's life play out since all views of Samantha's life beyond the twenty-first century were inaccessible thanks to all the damage her existence had done to time. At least K'Tah's presence in eighteenth century Gévaudan had given her access to some of that period, though she couldn't see beyond a certain radius away from him. As for the beast, that concerned Cira much more than she'd let on in her argument with K'Tah. There was nothing natural about the animal, and the fact that no record of it existed in original history confirmed that something was very wrong.
In trying to research Élodie, Cira reviewed the records on Lucie Rochelle and discovered that in original time, she was supposed to move to Paris in the 1780s and die by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for speaking out against the revolutionaries' unnecessary cruelty to the Queen and her children. Lucie apparently gained some fame for her last words before her execution where she declared, "No mother—no matter how poor a ruler—deserves a prison such as the one the Queen endured. No child—no matter what his ancestry—deserves such torment." She'd been referring to Marie Antoinette and her son, Louis-Charles, who was a child, but heir to the French throne. Because of his position, he was taken from his family, beaten and starved, all within earshot of his mother who was imprisoned on the floor above, helpless in her agony. History intended that Lucie die a martyr, defending human decency. Instead, she was ripped apart by a beast that was never supposed to exist, and her name was drowned out by the beast's infamy. She was no more than an unfortunate addition to a massive body count.
That was incredibly frustrating. Almost as frustrating as it was having to send medical aid for Samantha when it was K'Tah's fault for letting his emotions distract him from his surroundings.
Compartmentalization was one of the most difficult skills to master in Time Agent training. Cira remembered the horrendous—almost cruel—simulations she and the other agents-in-training had to endure as part of their final test. She remembered how real everything felt, how the smoke in the wildfire simulation infiltrated her lungs and she recalled the pleading eyes of the little girl tied to the tree just feet away from her, the repulsive scent of burning hair, the orange and black sky. And then she'd thought of her little sister, who was the same age as the simulation girl and how her sister's survival depended on the stability of time. She'd watched the flames trickle down the trunk of that tree as the girl's wails rattled the woods…until the cries faded and all that remained was a crackling inferno.
When the simulation ended, she'd rushed to the nearest bathroom to vomit, and spent the rest of the night screaming into her pillow. She earned her time traveler's license the next day. K'Tah could pretend all he wanted that Cira didn't understand what was at stake, but he was the one who'd lost sight of the big picture. And just because he was too much of a workaholic to make any friends in his own time period (aside from Hadley Correro whose priorities were just as exasperating), didn't mean he got to jeopardize the future for everyone else.