Sampson Ventura
He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Hours, he could guess. As he roused, so much pain split through his side, it felt like he’d swallowed bombs and they’d ripped through his chest.
As soon as he moved, a chorus of beeping machines erupted through the room. Several people raced over to him, but it was the slow, steady steps on the opposite side of the room that drew his attention. Slowly, blinking back pain with every movement, he forced his eyes open, and he settled them on Forest. “What happened?” he croaked.
“Do you remember the attack on the roof?” Forest asked.
Reluctantly, he nodded. “How’s Fenton?”
“Admiral Fenton survived. Barely. His aide did not.”
“I meant Diana,” Sampson admitted. If his mind had been functioning like it ought to have been, he wouldn’t have dismissed an admiral’s safety like that. He should be crying for joy at the fact Admiral Fenton hadn’t been assassinated, but as Sampson’s mind sharpened and memories of the incident flooded through him, he remembered how fractured Diana had become. The memory was strong enough that he pushed up onto his elbows.
Forest snapped up to his side. “Stay lying down. You’ve done yourself considerable damage. You also all but ruined your armor,” she added.
There were doctors in the room. She didn’t flinch at revealing his armor, which meant Sampson’s secret was well and truly out of the bag.
“How’s Diana?” he repeated.
“I heard your question the first time,” she said, her voice firm but not harsh. Yet.
Despite all the chaos, Sampson hadn’t forgotten that the last time he’d spoken to Forest, she’d ordered him to leave Diana Fenton the hell alone. Yeah, well now things had changed. Specifically, everything had changed. There’d been an attack on Academy grounds, and one of their own had almost murdered one of their best. This wasn’t about to end. It was only getting started.
“Diana is safe.” Forest appeared to choose her words after careful consideration.
Sampson might not have his full psychic abilities at his discretion as his body recuperated, but he didn’t need them to read between the lines of that opaque statement. “What happened to her? I don’t know how, but she seemed to know that attack was occurring. I… as crazy as it sounds—”
“Diana Fenton is a psychic,” Forest finished his sentence unflinchingly.
Shock pressed his lips slowly open as if Forest had grabbed his mouth and drawn them apart with a practiced grip. “You knew?” Sampson stuttered.
She shook her head. “No, we did not. But now we do.”
“How did Fenton keep this secret? If the admiral knew his daughter—”
“The admiral would’ve had no clue that his daughter was a psychic. She had no clue herself. No one had any clue.”
He brought his hand up and pressed it against his brow. These revelations felt like someone pounding on his brain. But Forest wasn’t done yet. She slowly split her lips open like someone running a scalpel down plump flesh. “One person figured it out, though.”
He looked up at her so sharply, he could’ve given his eyes whiplash. “Who?” he began. He stopped. “Bequelia,” he snarled her name.
Forest nodded.
“How the hell did she keep this hidden?” he snapped. “Why didn’t anyone else figure it out?”
“Because nobody else had the kind of access to Diana’s mind that the counselor did,” Forest admitted, a long-suffering, soul-shaking sigh pushing through her lips. One look at the admiral, and it would be clear to anyone that she was as embattled as an army under siege.
“Is Diana awake?” he asked, though he fancied he knew the answer.
She shook her head. “We are keeping her sedated. Heavily sedated,” she added with a shoulder-shaking sigh.
“What does that mean?” he asked warily.
“It means her consciousness seems to have the capacity to be extremely elastic, as one of the neuroscientists put it.”
He didn’t need Forest to expand. Elastic consciousness was also a term used by psychics. It indicated somebody whose mind could snap back from anything and bend around anything, including sedatives. He’d felt Diana’s mind, though, and it sure as hell wasn’t elastic. It was as fragile as the thinnest glass.
“You said Fenton barely survived. What are his survival prospects?” Sampson asked, even though it wasn’t his concern.
Forest finally let out the kind of sigh that said she had good news. “He’ll live. He’s a little worse for wear, but he’s currently in an operation. He will be awake in a few hours.”
He looked right at Forest, and though he didn’t say anything and he appreciated the admiral couldn’t read his mind, he knew right now that didn’t matter.
“If you’re about to ask me what we’ll say to Admiral Fenton about his daughter when he wakes up, I’m thinking that through.”
“You should wake her up and at least tell her that her father is alive.” No, he suddenly thought that through. “Let me do it.”
Forest hadn’t reacted negatively to Diana’s name. Until now. Until now he’d been under the impression that whatever reason Forest had warned him off her had been forgotten.
But clearly Forest hadn’t forgotten a thing. She shook her head. “You will continue to have nothing to do with Diana Fenton.”
“What? Why?” There would’ve been a time when Sampson would have dropped this. That time had well and truly passed. The Academy seemed to be crumbling to bits around him, and everything – everything went back to Diana.
“I don’t need that look from you right now,” Forest admitted as she pushed a tensed breath through her teeth that saw her chest shove hard against her uniform, the insignia of the Coalition catching the light. “All I need you to do is say yes, sir.”
“We both know I’m not going to say that. I need a reason, Forest. Why am I being pulled off this case? What the hell has Diana Fenton—”
“Got to do with you? Nothing. And that’s the way it is going to stay.”
“Why? Because she’s a psychic?” He knew that line of reasoning didn’t make sense. Forest had already admitted that no one had known Diana was a psychic except for Bequelia. It didn’t stop him from pushing those impassioned words out. He was too tired, too injured, and too goddamn overcome to think logically. All he wanted was to get to Diana and tell her her father was alive. All Sampson needed was to rest a hand on her shoulder and promise her that whatever had happened, she’d be fine in the end.
You see, he had a history like hers. He knew exactly what it was like to find out you were a psychic. He understood the trauma. If he could get to her in time and let her know that everything would be okay one day, he could save her from the torture he’d gone through. But if Forest could see that need flickering in his gaze, the admiral didn’t care.
Her stare only hardened. “You can’t have anything to do with Diana Fenton. And though I know all you want to do is push, and I appreciate right now you’re in no mood to follow arbitrary orders, you have to trust me.” Forest’s words overflowed with emotion. She held nothing back. She stared at him with the kind of look that told him she couldn’t budge on this. Even if she wanted to, Forest had to keep him away from something.
What?
“Your mission here is over, anyway. Or at least I believe it’s over,” Forest added.
He looked up at her sharply. “The students know who I am?”
“We are yet to ascertain that. The two of you did drop off the roof and somehow survive. I will either have to cook up a believable story for that, or acknowledge that your cover has been blown and pull you out of the field.”
“You can’t do that, sir. We still have no idea who’s going to deploy Infection Zero.”
“I know that, Sampson. I would never forget it. But if your cover has been blown, it has been blown.”
“And if it hasn’t, I will return to this mission,” he said. It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even a promise. It was an acknowledgment of what Sampson had to do. He’d never not taken this mission seriously. He would never ignore or downplay anything that had to do with Infection Zero. But now his need to complete this mission took on another dimension – this raw, palpable, unforgettable acknowledgment that he had to get this done.
Sampson was a psychic. He couldn’t read the future. And yet he knew that he and the rest of the Coalition were on a blade’s edge.
Forest let out another sigh that seemed to shake up from the depths of her soul. “There’s nothing more you can do at the moment, Sampson. You have to get some rest. By the time you’re discharged, we’ll know if your cover has been blown. And—” she began, but she stopped herself.
Sampson didn’t need to be able to read minds to figure out why. Forest had been about to inform him what the next steps with Diana would be – then she’d reminded herself that wasn’t his problem.
As he pressed his lips together and stared at her with grim detachment, he didn’t flinch back. “I won’t have anything to do with Diana. You warned me off successfully. But at least you can tell me what you’re going to do with her.”
There was a pleading edge to his tone. He didn’t bother to hide it.
Either it or something else got to Forest, and as she half closed her eyes, she nodded. “Diana will be moved.”
“Where?”
“That isn’t your concern.”
Those little words drove into his mind like parasites. It was his concern. He wanted to scream that at Forest, but he knew he couldn’t. He was trapped, stuck by the seemingly random dictates of Admiral Forest. Though he could kid himself and say there wasn’t a valid reason behind what she was doing – he knew the admiral. For her to be this strict and severe, there had to be one hell of a good reason to be keeping him from Diana.
As he stared up at Forest, he understood something. For understanding reached from beyond him like a hand out of the darkness.
Even if there was a good reason to keep him away from Diana – there was a better reason to keep them together. Forest might not recognize that, but something else did.