Sampson Ventura
Empty didn’t do him justice. The way Sampson felt, it was like someone had deliberately pulled out every single bone, muscle fiber, and milliliter of blood and replaced it all with nothing but vacuous air.
By the time he made it to the accommodation block, he was on autopilot. There was nothing left in his head but this sense of impending doom.
As a psychic soldier, he’d been taught numerous methods of clearing one’s mind when despair grew too great.
He couldn’t clear this. He couldn’t even shift it. It was like trying to push a mountain with your pinky finger.
He didn’t even notice as he walked into a packed elevator and everyone made room for him. He stared at the wall, his thoughts elsewhere. Everywhere else but here. Admiral Fenton, the outer colonies, the Coalition, and yeah, Diana – wherever she was.
He wanted to tell himself that Diana could bounce back from anything, but the double whammy of having her adoptive father almost assassinated and finding out she had psychic skills…. He wasn’t sure he could bounce back from that, let alone her.
Sampson sighed, brought a hand up, pressed his palm into his head, and went to get off the lift. That would be when someone snaked out a hand and grabbed his arm.
He almost overreacted and shoved them back, his usually fine mental control on the fritz.
“Hold up, please,” someone said.
He recognized Susan, though her voice had a fraction of the usual confidence he was used to.
Staring at her from over his thumb, he let his hand drop as the elevator stopped and the cadets living on this floor got out.
Without a word, Sampson went to follow them, but Susan wouldn’t let go of his arm. “Please. I just have some questions for you.”
“You’re a smart enough girl to know that I’m not going to answer them.”
“Please, I just want to know what happened to Diana.”
“Why do you assume that I know anything about what happened to Diana?” It was a pointed question.
You see, even though the Academy’s best had told him that no one had witnessed what happened on the roof, not everyone was as good at interrogating as Sampson was.
Sure enough, a slightly awed but still terrified twitch crossed Susan’s cheeks and brow. It was quick, and you had to be looking as carefully as he was to pick it up. “I think you can tell me what happened to her… that’s all,” she said noncommittally, keeping her voice low.
There were other cadets in the elevator, and considering circumstances, they were all staring at Sampson, their gazes unabashedly direct. He hoped like hell news hadn’t spread of the incident on the roof, but he had to check, didn’t he?
So even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he nodded at Susan. “What do you want to know?”
“Come to my quarters,” she said, muttering quickly under her breath as she cast her gaze around the clearly interested cadets.
Sampson wanted to get to his own quarters, collapse face-first on his bed, and not get up until he had to.
In order to keep up appearances, he’d been ordered to spend the rest of the day in his apartment like every other cadet as the Academy grounds were cleared and checked. He would take time to rest, then he would hit the Academy, and he would hit it hard. He would do what he should have done the day he’d got here, and he would scan every set of emotions he came across.
Until then, he’d try to sleep and take this all in.
Well, at least that was the plan. He let Susan lead him forward. When they reached her doors, he barely noted the fact that several cadets were standing out in front of them, muttering.
Sure, Susan was the head of the E Club, but what did that have to do with anything?
“Come in,” she said quickly as she ushered him inside.
It wasn’t until the doors were safely shut behind her that she let out a distressed sigh, clamped a hand on her brow, stared at the floor, then slowly ticked her gaze up to him.
It was vulnerable. It was all-the-way-open vulnerable. Don’t understand what he meant? Imagine someone literally taking a knife to their chest and cutting out their heart and handing it to you. That was the look in her eyes. “Is Diana okay?” she whispered.
“Why would you assume I know anything? And why would you care?” He couldn’t stop himself from spitting that.
For whatever reason, Susan had been with Diana this morning, and for whatever reason, Susan had stood up for Fenton. But that didn’t wash away every other thing Susan had ever said and done to Diana.
“You don’t have a right to be an asshole to me. You were a prick to her this morning, too.”
“Just answer the question. Why do you care about Diana all of a sudden—”
“She’s my flatmate,” Susan said tersely.
Sampson stopped. “What?”
“Diana never told you that? She’s my flatmate,” she repeated as she jabbed a stiff thumb at the door on the left.
Slowly, like someone was moving him with strings, Sampson turned to look at it.
That was Diana Fenton’s room.
Susan shook her head again as she walked away quickly, her moves jerky, every muscle overflowing with stress as she strode into the kitchen. “They want me to pack up her things and send them away. All of it. She’s not coming back, is she?”
Sampson finally tore his gaze off Diana’s room. “Why would you assume I know anything?” he defaulted to saying.
“Because somebody saw you on the roof with her. Somebody saw the both of you falling off.”
Sampson ground to a halt. He was like a heavy cruiser that had just slammed on its brakes as it approached a rip in space. Maybe he could blast past it. Maybe he couldn’t.
The only thing he could do now was gather information.
Trying not to look too interested, he cast his gaze back over the room before he settled it on Susan. “You’re not making any sense—”
She laughed out loud, the move bitter. “I’m the one not making any sense? Ha? People said they saw you running through Academy grounds, screaming Diana’s name.”
He hadn’t screamed Diana’s name until he’d reached the accommodation block. That was the thing about rumors. They grew. They might have started off as fact once upon a time, but as witness reports came in and everyone stamped their various interpretations on events, they morphed like smoke in a billowing wind.
Sampson could only hope for one thing – no one had seen his holographic armor. Because if they had already figured out he was wearing prototype technology no one else in the Coalition had, the gig was up.
“My own friends saw you running through the accommodation block trying to get to her. Everyone knows you were up on the roof.” Susan wouldn’t drop this. Hell, he could have tried to add the weight of the whole frigging galaxy on Susan’s shoulders, and he knew she still wouldn’t drop this. For a woman who supposedly hated Diana, when push came to shove, she seemed more loyal than he did.
That thought got to Sampson, though he tried to hide it.
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to know what he knew – he needed to know what she knew. The best way to do that was to force her to ask yet more questions.
“Someone saw you falling with Diana. They saw you being transported before you hit the ground,” Susan finally revealed, but to her it wasn’t a revelation. “So just cut the crap. Tell me what happened to her. Is she okay? I’m assuming she’s alive,” Susan said, her voice breaking, “otherwise they wouldn’t be making me pack up her stuff… right?” Tears actually shimmered in her eyes.
Sampson noted that fact, but most of his mind centered on the hope that his cover hadn’t been blown.
When Susan had boldly stated that someone had seen both Diana and Sampson being transported before they’d struck the ground, the cadet hadn’t been lying. Nothing about her emotional profile had suggested she’d been creating a fiction. There was no manipulation in her tone, and her face was so open, it was clear that it was the last thing on her mind.
No cadet would have seen Sampson being transported away before he hit the ground. He’d struck the ground, and he’d stayed on it for several seconds before being transported away. But that’s the funny thing about witness reports, isn’t it? When you don’t have the experience to understand what you’re seeing, sometimes your mind can convince you you saw something else. Something more believable. Something within the realm of possibility. And Sampson falling from the fortieth floor of the accommodation block with Diana in his arms and neither of them suffering any damage as they struck the ground was not possible to these cadets.
He brought up a hand and scratched his head. He made the move seem as if it was laden with stress. And, okay, it was – Sampson would not free himself from his stress until the situation was well and truly buried. But the micro movements he perfected right now were built to ensure she thought he was holding something back.
Her eyes opened wide. “It happened, didn’t it? You two fell off the roof. How? Is she alive? Is she goddamn alive?”
Sampson brought up a hand and spread it. “She’s alive. That’s all I’m going to say.”
To be honest, that was probably too much. Though it wouldn’t be too hard to confirm.
Forest might have told him not to speak about Diana, but her lieutenants had also promised him that no one had seen the incident on the roof. Sampson was just doing his job here by thoroughly investigating the possibility that his cover had been blown.
And to do that, he needed to give Susan some information on Diana, or Susan would kick him out.
Sampson was just doing his job, he promised himself one more time.
… But if that was it, why did his gaze dart over to Diana’s door yet again?
“She’s really alive? God.” Susan reacted to the news like any friend would. Even though Sampson thought there was no way Susan cared about Diana, she still clamped a hand on her mouth, turned away sharply, and wiped her tears with her thumbs.
When she turned back, she was still vulnerable, but there was an unquestionably hardened edge to that vulnerability. “Why were you an asshole to her this morning? I actually thought you were her first friend.”
He could ignore a lot. This riled him up the wrong way. “And this is coming from you, is it?”
He didn’t need to say anything more. Susan’s cheeks paled with that harsh slap of a comment.
But they didn’t pale for long. “I’m not pretending to have been the best friend to her. I’m not even pretending to have been a friend. But that’s the point. I never used Diana to get anything I wanted.”
Sampson’s cheeks twitched as he picked up on precisely what Susan was implying. “You think the only reason I befriended Diana Fenton was to get to her father?”
“There has to be some reason. If you actually cared about her, you wouldn’t have ditched her.”
This conversation had gotten on his nerves the second it had started, but now it wrapped around said nerves like chains and tried to yank them out of his chest.
Too much had gone wrong in the past 24 hours for Sampson to be able to focus.
And when you don’t focus, your emotions lead where your reason no longer can.
He clamped a sweaty hand on his mouth and breathed through his tense fingers. If he was trying to act indifferent, this was not how you did it.
Susan latched onto it as if it was a lifeline, and she took a stiff step forward, her boots squeaking against the polished floor of her apartment. “What happened to her? The cadets are saying they saw Commander Sparx being led away. What’s happening? They’re saying someone tried to assassinate one of the admirals. What’s that got to do with Diana?”
Sampson dropped his hand. He took a step back. He couldn’t be here. Because apparently he couldn’t control his emotions, and if he couldn’t control his emotions, he’d give too much away.
He also had a job to do, goddammit. It was time to shake himself the hell up, focus, and find the terrorists before it was too late.
He went to walk away. Susan just snapped a hand on his shoulder and held him in place. “Look, I know you care about her. It’s written all over your face. I’m assuming by the fact that you’re breaking down during this conversation that your reluctance to talk about her isn’t coming from you. Just give me something.”
Those weren’t assumptions. They were all true. And every single one of them was yet another reason for Sampson to get out of here. A good psychic soldier read other people but never let those same people read him.
He broke Susan’s grip and approached the door.
“Please, just give me something. I feel so guilty,” Susan admitted.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see as she brought up a shaking hand, clamped it against her brow, and pressed her fingers hard into her hairline. A tear or two shimmered out of her eyes, traced down her cheeks, and soaked through her sleeve.
He stopped. It wasn’t because of Susan, though. As he walked toward the door, it brought him in line with Diana’s door, and he couldn’t stop his body from turning, turning as if Diana had suddenly reached her ghostly hands out from wherever she was, locked them on his head, and gained momentary control of his body.
“I don’t want to pack up her stuff. I want to know what the hell is happening to her,” Susan said bitterly once more.
Sampson had to walk away. He had to walk away, because if he didn’t, he would go against a direct order from Admiral Forest.
Forest didn’t want him to have anything to do with Diana. Heck, from the way the admiral had behaved, it was clear she’d prefer that Sampson never thought of Diana again, let alone mentioned her name. For some reason, Forest was worried something would happen if Sampson dug into Diana’s past.
So walking through Diana’s door and investigating her room would break all the rules. He would be kicked off this mission faster than a meteorite impacting the Earth.
But he couldn’t move. Dammit, he couldn’t move. His better reason kept slipping through his hand like water tracing through his fingers.
“You want to go in there? Go in there. I don’t care. I don’t want to pack up her stuff. No one will answer my questions. I don’t want to look through her things. I’ve been her flatmate for years, and I still barely know her. I have no right. You clearly know more about Diana. So you go do it.” Susan choked back both tears and anger as she babbled.
If Sampson had been paying attention, he would’ve recognized that Susan was leading him, giving him a reason to stay. Just as he’d led her earlier into admitting what people had seen when he’d fallen off the roof, she was doing the same to him.
… But a part of Sampson wanted to be led. A part of him was drawn toward Diana’s room until he reached it.
It wasn’t locked, and the doors opened with a smooth hiss. And there, all around him, was Diana Fenton.
Ordinarily people didn’t leave emotional imprints on rooms unless catastrophic events had occurred there. That was ordinarily. As he walked into the room, the one thing he appreciated was it wasn’t ordinary.
He could feel Diana as if she was here. If Sampson had walked into this room before today, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. Any psy soldier who strode through these doors would sense a psychic had been sleeping here.
He was aware of the fact that Susan had become quiet as she walked up to lean on the doorway and watch him.
He should be careful. Heck, he should turn around, close Diana Fenton’s door, and pretend he hadn’t just gone against Forest’s direct order.
Yeah, well, that could just join the list of things Sampson should do but was going to ignore.
Again, he found himself being drawn further in. He glanced briefly at her clothes in her closet and saw how neatly folded they were. His gaze ticked over the photos of her smiling with Admiral Fenton. They were all with him as if Diana had no one else and had never had anyone else.
But she’d had another family, hadn’t she? Looking at these walls, you wouldn’t be able to tell that. Looking at these walls, it felt as if that other family had been buried for good.
Why?
Susan didn’t have to actively try to keep him in her apartment anymore – he couldn’t move. Every mystery about Diana assailed him as he turned slowly on the spot. His gaze was drawn toward her bedside table. Sitting next to her computer unit was a journal. A real paper one.
There was a pen on top.
Slowly, he walked up. And slowly, he extended a hand over to it. A second before he rested it on the journal, brushing the pen away until it tumbled onto the floor, he told himself to stop.
This was a violation of Diana’s privacy. He had no right to look in her room – let alone her journal.
But he had to investigate this. He couldn’t walk away. The more Forest told him to drop Diana Fenton, the more he kept picking her up. Forest might’ve been sure that Diana had nothing to do with his overall mission – but if one thing had been made clear by the violence today, it was that nothing was clear anymore.
Sampson didn’t hesitate any longer. He plucked up the journal. He opened it. And there, staring back at him, was a drawing of Professor William Ray.
Sampson didn’t need long to recognize it. The image of that man was seared into his brain, and the drawing was good enough that the likeness was unmistakable.
“What have you found?” Susan shifted into the room, sensing his shock. “Should you really be reading her diary?” she added way too late.
He couldn’t move. Either to put the book down or to snap at her to get out.
He could barely think. This drawing was intimate. He didn’t need the details to tell him that – he could feel the attention Diana had used to create it.
It was the attention of someone desperately trying to reconnect to a long-lost part of themselves.
This man – Professor William Ray – had to be Diana’s biological father.
And that?
That changed everything.
Still holding onto the book, his wrist and fingers so stiff it felt as if they’d been cast into a time lock, his knees gave out from underneath him, and he sat harshly on the bed.
He could see Susan’s blinking, surprised-filled face out of the corner of his eye. “What’s the matter? What did you find?” Her voice was high-pitched with stress.
He couldn’t speak. And he couldn’t goddamn close the book.
There was only one reason Sampson knew the name of William Ray – why the mere likeness of the man was a door right into Sampson’s past.
Diana’s biological father had been killed in the same attack that had taken Sampson’s brother.
When James had gotten the go-ahead to join William Ray’s dig, he’d been so excited, he’d called Sampson in a flood of laughter. If Sampson tried, he could recall the memory with such clarity, it was like James was still in the room with him. James had thought attending that dig would be the moment that would launch his career and life; instead, it had ended both brutally.
Sampson brought up a shaking hand and clasped it over his mouth, but he couldn’t drop his grip from the book. It felt like even if a Barbarian came barreling through the door, he wouldn’t be able to move.
“You okay? What the hell did you find?” Susan tried to pull the book from his hands.
Finally, he moved. Finally, his awareness of the greater situation caught up with him, and he snapped the book closed. He pressed his thumb and fingers into it until his clasp could have held back magnetic clamps, let alone Susan’s attempt to wrest the book from his grip.
She receded back, her eyes still wide with surprise. “What’s going on? What did you find? You look like you’re falling apart.”
Ha? Falling apart? That was a mild way to describe this. From within, something shook through Sampson. His past. A trauma he’d buried and desperately attempted to build a new life over, but one that now undermined the foundations of his current personality like rot to wood.
This was why Forest had called him off Diana. Forest couldn’t afford for Sampson’s old wound to be opened up.
It was also why Admiral Fenton hadn’t wanted anyone digging into his daughter’s past. Admiral Fenton wouldn’t have known who Sampson was; Forest would never have shared Sampson’s real identity, only that he was a valuable asset. So Fenton wasn’t concerned that Sampson, as a psychic soldier, could lose his grip on reality by learning the truth – that was only Forest’s concern as his superior. Admiral Fenton wouldn’t have wanted Diana’s true history getting out.
The dig site at Baxan A and anything relating to it were top-secret. For one good reason. It was ground zero for Infection Zero. The disease hadn’t been discovered before the fateful attack on that dig site. Something had happened on the day that outpost had been overrun by Barbarians, and it had unleashed the greatest threat the Coalition had ever known.
“Look, I’ve changed my mind. Put that book down. It’s private,” Susan tried.
It was way too late for that.
Though all Sampson wanted to do was sit there and reel, he knew he couldn’t. As hard as it was, he had to pull himself up and get out of here.
Drawing on the strength of every muscle as if he was fighting some impossible weight, he pulled himself to his feet. His movements were jerky like he was being controlled by a puppet master with shaky wrists.
“I’m serious. Give me back that book—” Susan began.
“Diana isn’t coming back. She’s been moved. The admiral who was attacked was her father. I was on that roof, and so was Diana, and both of us fell. We were both transported before we could hit the ground,” he said, reeling off one fact after another, even if he had slipped a lie in there.
Sampson hadn’t just broken down. He wasn’t about to reveal the whole truth to a simple cadet. No. He’d lost his calm, but he hadn’t lost his common sense. The only way he was going to get out of here after showing a reaction like that was to give Susan what she wanted. And what she wanted more than anything was information.
Her already pale complexion whitened at those revelations. “Someone tried to kill Admiral Fenton? Why?”
“He’s one of the most important admirals in the fleet.”
“What was Diana doing up on that roof?”
When he became silent, Susan just pushed, stepping closer to him, her eyes widening.
“I don’t know,” he lied. He didn’t let that lie show. He channeled his uncertainty, and that wasn’t goddamn hard considering how much he still didn’t know.
He might’ve just learned something that had rocked him to his core, but his questions still outnumbered his answers a million to one.
Susan seemed satisfied, either with his answer, or the crushed look dragging his features down. She crossed her arms, collapsed against them as if they were the only things propping her back up, and went to open her lips, no doubt to ask yet another question.
That would be when her wristwatch buzzed. Startled, she answered. “Yes?”
“I am Lieutenant Hordova. I’m here to retrieve Cadet Fenton’s goods. I’m just coming up on your level now. Please let me into your apartment.”
If Sampson hadn’t already been on his feet, he would’ve shot there as if fired from a catapult. His world might be crumbling, but enough of his good reason remained to assure him that if a lieutenant was coming to pick up Diana’s goods, said lieutenant would be coming from Forest. And every one of Forest’s people would know that Sampson shouldn’t be anywhere near here.
Sampson didn’t do a good job of hiding his fear, and Susan sliced her gaze over to him. She paused, and even if Sampson hadn’t been a psychic, he would’ve been able to tell that she was rapidly coming to some kind of conclusion. She looked him up and down as if she was assessing him one last time before she opened her lips and sighed. “I’ll come get you, Lieutenant Hordova. There are a lot of cadets hanging around outside of my apartment. I think it’s important for me to accompany you to my front door.” She didn’t explain her reasoning. She ended the call. Then she looked at him sharply.
“Thank you,” he stuttered, meaning every word.
Susan let out a pressured sigh that pushed her chest hard against her uniform. She gave him the kind of look that told him underneath all of this crap, she was still the head of the E Club and still one of the most promising cadets at the Academy. “Don’t thank me. I did this for Diana. I helped you out because,” she let out another pressured breath, “for whatever reason, I really do think you were Diana’s first friend. I get you can’t say any more; and I assume by your reaction that you shouldn’t even be here and you’ll get in trouble if Hordova sees you. Just help her. If you can.”
Sampson didn’t measure his reaction. He nodded, the move so low, it was practically a bow. And he meant it. Meant it with his crouched over position, meant it with his lowered gaze, and meant it with the surge of blood and determination that washed through him. He even snapped a salute.
Susan snapped one in turn, turned on her boot, strode quickly out of Diana’s apartment, and paused at the door. She turned her head over to him and noted he was still holding onto her diary.
His fingers tightened around it. So much had just happened, but the thought of abandoning this diary… he couldn’t even comprehend it.
If he’d been able to understand it, perhaps he would’ve appreciated that the emotions attaching him to this book were too strong. So strong, they almost seemed to come from someone else’s psyche.
A thought like that could and should unsettle a psychic warrior. Sampson was already too undermined to notice.
Susan appeared to be able to read his mind – or at least, his bare, open emotions. “If that can help you, keep it. I don’t think anyone else knew she kept a diary. Now go. I’ll keep this lieutenant out of your hair while you leave.” With that, she walked out.
He didn’t even have a chance to say thank you.
He did, however, have a chance to completely reevaluate his assessment of Susan Sinclair. A complex character, sure – but all of the anger and bitterness he’d associated with her didn’t seem to be staples of her personality, just characteristics drawn out by her circumstances.
And that, right there, was a lesson he needed to apply to the greater Academy. As he opened the doors, paused, sensed Lieutenant Hordova, then jogged when he knew the lieutenant wasn’t looking in his direction, Sampson let that thought settle in.
Sometimes it’s too easy to write people off. You see a crime, you condemn the criminal for life. But thinking like that changes nothing. If you want to protect – and importantly, shepherd those around you – you have to change the circumstances in which they operate.
The Academy might have rotted out from underneath the feet of students like Cadet Sinclair, but if you changed the ground from which they grew, they could rise again.
As he half jogged down the corridor, always pausing behind a cadet when he sensed Lieutenant Hordova’s gaze ticking his way, Sampson reaffirmed that fact. Naturally, his fingers moving of their own accord, they tightened around Diana’s diary until he hugged it to his chest.
As the cold, old and scratched leather pressed against the tunic top of his uniform, the fabric scrunching around it, it felt a little too much like embracing Diana.
Wherever she was, she’d be going through hell. But as he ticked his gaze down and stared at the closed pages of that antique volume, he couldn’t shake the impression that by taking this diary, he’d somehow given her hope. As crazy as it sounded, the reason he couldn’t shake that impression was that it didn’t come from him.
For a moment, it felt as if her mind connected to his, and his to hers.
She told him to keep moving. One step at a time. The last thing anyone could do right now – from Sampson right up to the whole Coalition – was stand still. Do that, and they’d be wiped away like the sands of time.