What Could Possibly Go Wrong? recap

Bairstow assigns Max to train a new intake of St Mary's historians. She has to convert scholars into field operatives able to research a period, use a pod, protect historical evidence, and keep one another alive. Classroom work and controlled exercises expose differences in judgement across the group, and the first jumps show that even a well-prepared trainee can become dangerous when frightened or overconfident. Max's programme becomes a sequence of recoveries as historical conditions invalidate the planned lessons. Irregularities eventually show that the recruits are facing more than their own mistakes: the continuing conflict with Ronan has reached the training operation. The final exercise becomes a real mission requiring the trainees and established staff to work together. St Mary's survives, the immediate intervention is stopped, and the recruits who remain prove themselves under pressure. Ronan is still not conclusively removed, so the institute gains new historians without gaining lasting security.

Previously: Max survived displacement into another course of events, secured a life with Leon at St Mary's, and helped the institute defeat the attempt to remove her from that timeline. Once ordinary operations resumed, a pattern of dangerous assignments revealed another organised attack. Clive Ronan's involvement made clear that his campaign was aimed not only at the institute's pods but personally at Max. St Mary's stopped the immediate operation, yet Ronan again remained free. Max and Leon therefore begin this book together at the institute, while Bairstow gives Max a new responsibility: preparing an intake of historians for fieldwork in a world where errors, historical conditions, and deliberate interference can look dangerously alike.

Max takes charge of the new trainees and introduces them to the gap between academic knowledge and historical fieldwork. The recruits must learn St Mary's secrecy, emergency procedures, pod discipline, and the rule that observation does not entitle them to improve the past. Their different temperaments quickly matter: confidence can conceal poor judgement, caution can become paralysis, and strong research does not guarantee useful action in a crisis. Max draws on her own training while trying not to reproduce every hazardous tradition she survived. Leon, Peterson, Guthrie, Foster, and the other departments contribute specialist instruction, making the programme an institutional effort rather than a set of lectures run by one historian.

The trainees move from preparation into practical exercises and supervised jumps. Historical settings immediately expose weaknesses that could be hidden at St Mary's: the group has to maintain cover, protect the pod, collect usable observations, and account for every member before departure. Max intervenes when mistakes threaten the whole team, but she cannot make every decision for people who are supposed to qualify as historians. The recruits begin to understand that a successful operation may mean abandoning an attractive research opportunity in order to bring an injured colleague home. Debriefs reveal progress as well as friction, and Bairstow expects Max to distinguish a correctable failure from evidence that someone is not safe to send through time.

Later exercises place the intake in more demanding conditions, where local events move faster than the planned observation and the team cannot rely on immediate support from St Mary's. A training objective becomes a rescue when people and equipment are separated. The recruits have to use the roles assigned during preparation instead of all following the most forceful voice. Max's own preference for direct action helps recover the group but also demonstrates why field leadership must include a workable extraction plan. Leon and Technical repair the consequences while Foster treats the injured. What happened can still be explained as inexperience combined with historical danger, but the pattern of complications begins to concern the senior staff.

Evidence accumulates that the training programme is being affected by more than trainee error. Information about destinations and procedures has created opportunities for an outside force to place the inexperienced group in danger. Max changes the programme from assessment to protection, keeping the recruits together while Bairstow, Guthrie, and Leon investigate the compromised operation. The signs point toward the continuing conflict with Ronan, whose knowledge of St Mary's makes a training jump an effective way to reach Max and weaken the institute at the same time. The recruits now face the central reality of the work before qualification: a hostile traveller can use their certainty about the past and their dependence on a pod against them.

The final stage of training becomes a live operation. Max's recruits must apply their preparation while the established staff coordinate security, technical recovery, and medical support. The group stays functional when the original plan fails, allowing Max and her colleagues to prevent the immediate hostile intervention from destroying the team or compromising St Mary's. The survivors return with a practical understanding of fieldwork that no controlled exercise could provide. Those who complete the programme have proved able to research, improvise, and protect one another under genuine pressure. Ronan's connection to the danger confirms that his campaign remains active, but the confrontation does not permanently capture him. St Mary's survives and adds trained historians to its ranks, while Max remains accountable for both their success and the cost of reaching it.

The training programme's final crisis is resolved as a real St Mary's operation rather than a classroom assessment. Max's recruits have to apply their research, pod discipline, emergency care, and loyalty while the experienced staff counter the hostile pressure surrounding the exercise. Max, Leon, and the institute survive, and the trainees who complete the programme have demonstrated that they can function as a team when a plan collapses. The interference connected to Ronan is defeated at the immediate point of attack, but he is not placed safely beyond the reach of St Mary's, leaving his wider campaign open. Max remains responsible for the consequences of a programme that exposed inexperienced people to genuine danger, while Bairstow accepts that their conduct under pressure has shown more than a controlled test could. St Mary's ends with new historians added to its ranks and its recurring enemy still unresolved.