Sampson Ventura
Hell. This was hell, plain and simple.
It was one thing gathering the gumption to fight brutally when you were dealing with something like Infection Zero. There, he had free moral justification to attack as he saw fit.
This was different. For, as he ran through the halls and corridors of the science department, desperately trying to get outside to get a call off to Forest, he didn’t know who was friend or foe.
Cadets and officers attacked him, and when he got close enough to stare into their eyes, he could see that, just like Lawson, they were being controlled. But he had to be close enough. He couldn’t do it from a distance. So he couldn’t fire indiscriminately.
He’d managed to pick up a gun, snatching it out of the hands of a man who’d looked so emotionally broken, he’d been like a doll with its head ripped off.
Now as sweat slid down Sampson’s brow, sizzling against his holographic armor, he pressed his back up against a wall, flashes of his last mission blasting through his head.
He’d done just this a few weeks ago. He’d held a gun, pressed his back up against the wall in a Coalition cruiser, and waited for a chance to attack his enemies.
But how the hell did he know these people were his enemies? What if he acted rashly? What if he fired on people who, with the proper care, could overcome their illness and return to health?
A part of Sampson knew that he had to just push these thoughts away. You went through training – not just as a psychic agent, but as a Coalition soldier – that would help you turn against your own if needed. It wasn’t a suggestion – just a caution. The Academy’s checkered history over the past 10 years could prove to anyone that, given an opportunity, weeds could grow within its own ranks. And given that possibility, those tasked with protecting the Coalition as a whole had to act to harm and kill their own when called on.
“Just do it,” he whispered under his breath as he locked his shoulders harder against the cold wall behind him. Half closing his eyes, his eyelids flickering up and down as if they were the shutters of a camera trying to find the right angle, he pulsed to the side. He pressed into a tight roll, his back rounding over a crack in the floor as he punched to his feet. He fired. The shot flashed out of his gun and lanced into the side of an officer’s leg. It was just enough to spin the guy to the side before he could fire.
The man didn’t even let out a scream. He wasn’t wearing armor, and Sampson had just shot him with a standard Coalition pulse rifle with no safety filter in place. A chunk of flesh had been ripped out of the officer’s leg and blood splattered the wall around him, soaking through his uniform with all the ease of water to a sponge. But the guy still didn’t make a sound.
As Sampson shoved forward, sprinting at his full speed, he reached the guy and stared down into his wide-open but sightless eyes.
Nothing stared back. It was like the man was an automaton.
As a surge of sickness washed through Sampson, he brought his gun up. He hesitated – for half a second – then he fired.
He didn’t kill the guy, though a part of Sampson’s mind pointed out he should. This officer, whoever he was, had suffered the exact same psychic wound Lawson had. Sampson knew, with 100 percent certainty, that even with the Coalition’s best medical tech, there would be no coming back for victims of this infection – whatever it was. It seemed to carve out holes in their minds that allowed their psyches to implode inward. It was the equivalent of shooting a hole right through someone’s torso as big as their head.
No one could live through that. And yet, he still couldn’t bring himself to kill the guy. At the last moment as his gun hovered over the guy’s blood-splattered head, Sampson’s thumb slid over his gun, changing the setting to stun.
Full stun, mind you. Even with some force controlling this guy’s body and pushing it past its physical limits, this officer wouldn’t be on his feet for hours.
As the bolt of light slammed into the man’s body, energy cascading over it and sparking onto the floor, Sampson turned away.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see the moment where the guy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. It was that further down the corridor, Sampson heard more racing footfall.
It just wouldn’t stop. It kept coming and coming like the onslaught of the world’s most violent storm. It was honestly as if the heavens had opened up and cracked, sending retribution spilling over the planet to swallow it whole.
He never usually thought like this. Soldiers don’t have time for poetic misery. They have time to find a target, shoot, and move on to the next.
Despite the situation, he still couldn’t ignore the fact that less than an hour ago, his life had been shaken to the core.
Diana’s diary was still locked under one arm, and no matter what happened to him, he didn’t drop it. Even if he was tackled, he would waste good energy in keeping it against him as if the thought of losing it was just as destructive as tearing his own heart out.
Memories of James washed through Sampson’s mind whenever he was stupid enough to blink his eyes closed for more than a few seconds. James’ smiling face, his happy voice, his positive attitude. He’d been everything Sampson could have been if James hadn’t died and their father hadn’t cracked.
“Don’t think of it. Don’t you dare think of it. Get this job done now. Save as many lives as you can,” he spat. He reached a section of wall next to a door that led into another corridor. He shoved his back against the wall. He intended to wait until the door opened and more enemies spilled through. A moment of warning flashed through his mind, sharper than any sense of intuition he’d ever felt. He rolled forward, twisting to the side just in time. Something slammed into the wall, causing a whole meter-wide section of it to pull inward as if someone had just poked their finger through a piece of paper.
As Sampson rolled and punched to his feet, he saw a ramrod. A glowing, pulsing, electricity-covered chunk of reinforced metal used, in theory, to punch a hole in the side of a ship.
Someone had just used it to punch a hole in the side of the wall, and it seemed they weren’t done yet.
He didn’t have a chance to scream. He didn’t have a chance to think. But fortunately for his addled mind, he didn’t need to. His body was primed to get him out of danger. Maybe it came from that presence rising through the diary – or maybe it was just training and dumb luck – but Sampson got out of the way just in time. He twisted to the side, brought up his fist, and punched a hole through the wall beside him. He rolled through it just as the ramrod sent out a pulse of electricity designed to disable a frigging cruiser’s shields. Though theoretically his armor could have taken such a blast – he wasn’t about to hang around to find out.
He rolled through the wall, punching to his feet and flipping to the side just as a pulse from the rod rippled through the hole and discharged through the room.
He landed, one fist down on the ground, his head jerking to the side immediately as he surveyed the room.
It was another lab. It was trashed. From the ceiling right down to the floor. All tech had been ripped apart as if someone were looking for something in a haystack.
He had a chance to scan his environment, to set his sensors to full, then he was forced to push forward once more.
Another blast of energy discharged from the rod, rippling through the hole in the wall and escaping into the room like a wave crashing through a city.
Sampson bolted to the left, doing a perfect side somersault as he jumped onto a reinforced console designed specifically to shield electricity.
It saved his life as another lethal discharge rippled over the ground.
Twisting his head to the side, he finally saw what he needed to. A window. He’d been chaotically throwing himself through the science block, trying to find a way out, but every single door and lift had been blocked.
The only way out was down.
He scrambled forward, pushing hard through his feet as he flipped onto another console. More lethal discharges of energy swamped the room like bolts of lightning scattering over the floor.
He jumped to another console, then finally he reached a long bench ledge that ran around one wall of the room.
He punched his fist forward, slamming it into the glass. As he did, he focused on his second sight. That’s what he was calling it now. He didn’t have the breathing space to stop and think of a better term. Heck, even if he did and if he were graced with the expertise of an entire team of the Coalition’s best scientists, he doubted they’d be able to come up with anything else.
What was happening to his mind wasn’t just technically improbable – it was impossible in every conceivable way. Even with the most sophisticated Coalition scanners and the most powerful computers at the Academy’s disposal, no one could see through matter like this.
But it was happening, and it was happening to him.
Perhaps it was his psychic training, but Sampson had a flexible enough mind not to freak out at that fact. Maybe others would have crumpled into a ball and clutched their heads as surprise and fear swamped them. They would’ve been shot.
Sampson managed to stay on his feet. And once more he brought his fist back, and he punched.
There was a shield in this room – the same kind of shielding he’d encountered in that room where Lawson had tried to kill him.
Somehow his enemies had created one of those shields and encased the entire building in it. He didn’t have the chance to calculate how much energy that would take. Nor did he have the time to appreciate how many enemy resources would have to be on Academy grounds to enable it in the first place.
That could wait for later.
For now, he would escape, and he would contact Forest. And he would – with all his goddamn might – stop what was happening.
Maybe there’d been a time when Sampson had been all too ready to point fingers and lay the blame. As he’d stood resolutely by Diana’s side, watching how people had treated her, he’d been ready to write everyone off.
Now he understood.
What was happening to the Academy was akin to an infection in a human body. The Academy hadn’t recognized it, and that infection had been able to grow and grow and grow. And now, in one violent wave, it was trying to take over the Academy as a whole.
Sampson would have to act as the Academy’s last line of immunity.
With that thought and responsibility bolstering him instead of weighing him down, he slammed his hand into the window one last time, using his second sight and concentrating on the spot where he saw just a crack in the energetic field.
It warped, and with a roar that ran around the room, he broke through.
The window shattered under the force of his fist, and he wasted no time. He launched forward and dive-rolled right out of the window. It didn’t matter that he was on the tenth floor of the science building. It wasn’t the first time he’d thrown himself off a roof today, anyway.
As he sailed down, the wind catching his hair and sending it flickering over his face, his holographic armor smart enough to conclude it wasn’t a threat, he glimpsed the Academy. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw explosions going off in other buildings, and down on the ground, people were fighting.
It was a war.
In that moment, his worst suspicions were confirmed. The force that had been infecting students and staff had launched its first volley, and it wouldn’t stop until it took the Academy.
As the ground flashed up beneath him, Sampson didn’t close his eyes. He locked his gaze on his first target, seeing a group of students only a few meters ahead of him who appeared to be bodily attacking an officer down on the ground.
He landed, and the force of his body impacting the grass sent great tufts of dirt and lawn cascading around him in a halo.
He pushed forward, his feet tearing up another chunk of lawn.
He angled toward the group. Just before one cadet could sink a vicious kick into the side of the downed man, Sampson reached her. He grabbed her around the side and twisted her, and in a smooth, quick movement, stared right into her eyes.
It took a snapped second to confirm that there was nothing behind those eyes but blank emotional control.
He didn’t pause. He threw the cadet to the ground, scooped low, and rammed the back of his knee against another cadet’s leg. The guy crumpled, and as he ran past, Sampson did it again – he stared into the guy’s open eyes. As he confirmed there was nothing behind that sightless gaze, he brought his gun up and shot the cadet twice in the chest. He spun to the side, shooting the female cadet he’d already thrown, then spun around, leaped into the air, pinned his knees against the back of the remaining cadet, and shot him in the head as he flipped off.
Sampson landed, and he pushed up as a barely perceptible crackle of energy discharged across his holographic armor, singeing the grass in places but never doing any damage to his own body.
He jerked down, reached a hand out to the fallen officer, then paused.
The guy was slowly, shakily getting to his feet. His brow was gashed, and a slick of blood slid along the side of his face, catching his collar and staining it on its way down.
The guy’s eyes were open. So wide open, it looked as if someone had just stapled his eyelids to his skull.
“What the hell?” Sampson stuttered.
In a moment that would be impossible to forget, Sampson swore he saw an infection taking root in the guy’s mind – right in front of his eyes.
As the officer clamped a hand against the side of his head, his eyes somehow growing wider as if his skin was about to crack, Sampson could see right into the guy’s mind. There was no filter. The walls of his psyche had been forced to crumble.
A wash of nerves and total dread gushed through Sampson like blood pouring out of split arteries.
Every sense he had went into overdrive as, right before him, he watched a psychic infection take root.
The officer fell down to one knee. Before he could fall down to another, it was like he completely switched off. The fear left him as if someone simply erased it from his personality.
The man stared at the ground. Then, like a marionette being pulled on strings, he rose.
Sampson didn’t pause – he couldn’t.
Half closing his eyes, he fired.
Two stun bullets from his gun ripped into the guy’s chest, energy crackling over the man’s uniform and collecting over the already scorched pin of the Coalition that adorned his left breast.
The two blasts were strong enough to send the man flipping backward. He landed on his face.
And he remained still.
Sampson had a chance to shake his head. He tried to dislodge the terrifying moment he’d seen that infection take root. It played over and over in his mind, and every time it did, a new wash of total fear encompassed him.
He wrenched up a hand and forced it against his mouth, his lips protruding between his white fingers. “What the hell was that? What the hell was that?” He turned over his shoulder and stared down at the three cadets.
… Forcing his memory to trackback through what he’d witnessed, he remembered seeing one of the cadets down on the ground. They’d had the officer in a headlock.
… Suspicions flashed through Sampson’s mind so quickly, they were like stars blasting past at the speed of light.
What if this psychic infection – whatever it was and wherever it came from – could spread through touch?
Everything Sampson thought he knew told him that should be impossible. You couldn’t spread a psychic connection through touch – you had to spread it through one person’s mind to another. Specifically, the psychic instigator of the infection had to look into the mind of the potential target.
Which couldn’t have happened here. The students weren’t psychic. And you couldn’t become a psychic. But if that were the case, how had Lawson attacked Sampson?
All the questions Sampson should have been asking but hadn’t had the time to focus on detonated through his mind, one after another. Every single one rocked him to the core. They shook away everything he thought he knew about what it was to be a psychic and replaced that once ironclad knowledge with nothing more than a pit of despair.
As he brought the back of his hand up and wiped the saliva off his mouth, he was forced to jerk his head to the side. An explosion ripped from the base of the accommodation block.
“Shit,” he breathed. He threw himself forward. Though a lot more cadets and officers were spilling out onto the grounds, most of the cadets would still be locked up in the accommodation towers.
If somehow Sampson was right, and this infection could spread through mere touch alone, they were like farm animals behind a fence waiting for the slaughter.
He threw himself onward with all his force. He wouldn’t have moved faster even if he’d been catapulted out of the torpedo chute of a heavy cruiser.
So much stress welled inside him, it seemed to access hidden reserves of energy until he managed to sprint so fast past an infected cadet, the guy didn’t even have time to turn. Without turning his head, focusing his attention only on the accommodation block, Sampson managed to shoot the cadet as he ran past.
In a few more shuddering breaths, he reached the accommodation block. The front door was completely torn apart. It looked like someone had attacked it with a cascade grenade – a type of weapon intended for maximum destruction. Once the initial grenade exploded with the force to rip through inch-thick steel, it would deploy many grenades that would do the same and many grenades within those. It was like a Russian doll of bombs.
As Sampson ran through the open, gaping chasm of the doorway, he rolled, his back grinding against glass, steel, and chunks of smoldering concrete.
He shoved to his feet. He tried to ignore the dead bodies he could see out of the corner of his eye. Cadets were slumped, fatal wounds scattering their bodies like someone had just drawn on them with red ink.
Sampson spun, bringing up his gun and firing long before he confirmed that there was another cadet running at him down the corridor.
As Sampson fired three times, twice in the guy’s chest and once in his head, he didn’t stop running. He dashed past the cadet, and it was only then that he bothered to pry into the guy’s mind.
He, like everyone else Sampson was coming across, was infected.
… What was happening here? What kind of infection was this?
More importantly than those two questions – what if this had something to do with Infection Zero?
It wasn’t something he’d had the chance to think of before. It didn’t make any sense, anyway, right?
Infection Zero infected the mind, sure, but at the destruction of the body. Plus, you saw Infection Zero. It wrapped around its victims like black smoke.
As Sampson ran past the cadet, the man crumpling to the ground as if someone had cut his Achilles and the backs of his knees, he stared at the guy.
There was no black smoke. There was no Infection Zero. Yet Sampson couldn’t shake the thought that the two infections were somehow linked.
If they were? He was screwed. It meant he’d failed his mission. But he wouldn’t be the only person screwed – the entire Coalition could fall.
Push the fear away. Just push the fear away for now. Fight one step at a time, one enemy at a time, he begged himself, every thought more desperate than the next.
He reached a set of lifts, but as he settled a hand on the button that would call them, he jerked back. He felt heat spreading from the diary, pulsing through his chest. It was the only warmth he’d enjoyed since throwing himself through the window of the science block.
It somehow promised him he wasn’t alone. Not just physically – but emotionally. Thoughts of negligence and guilt might be spiraling through him, but Diana’s presence somehow assured him that he wouldn’t shoulder this burden alone.
Those same thoughts assured him not to go into the elevator.
As he tracked back, bringing up his gun, he experimentally fired at the panel.
It exploded, not just as if it had been shot by a Coalition pulse gun – but as if it had a charge rigged up to it.
It was booby-trapped. If he’d pressed that, he would’ve been thrown back right through a wall. His holographic armor could put up with a lot, but if it kept receiving damage, it would eventually fail.
Sampson raced around the side of the lifts, heading for the stairwell. He could hear the pound of footfall headed his way.
He got ready to jerk his gun up and fire indiscriminately.
Back in the science block, he might’ve hesitated. The more he faced and the more he understood how pernicious this infection was, the more he realized he couldn’t afford hesitation.
He had to be brutal. As hard as it sounded – as horrifying as it was to admit – Sampson had to start treating this like Infection Zero. Leaving an infected patient alive might momentarily assuage his guilt – but in the long run, it would only increase it. Because in the long run if he allowed more infected patients to infect others, he’d be digging his own grave and theirs.
But something held him back just as a group of worried cadets exploded into view, the door to the stairs slamming open so hard, it took a chunk out of the wall beside it.
Sampson looked up into Cadet Sinclair’s open, terrified face.
He saw nothing but fear – justified, raw, gut-punching fear.
Terror pulsed through her gaze at the sight of his gun, but when he didn’t fire and he lowered it, she threw herself at him. “You’ve got to get out of here. Gotta get out of here. Everyone has to leave.” She grabbed his arm and turned him around.
She was taking charge as a leader, but he could lead himself.
He pulled out of her grip, tracking back as he held his gun with both hands and swiveled his gaze down the mutilated corridor. Chunks of concrete were scattered everywhere, and steel reinforcement beams had somehow been ripped from the ceiling.
Scorch marks covered everything, and circuits crackled, giving the air the feeling of imminent thunderstorms.
“Move,” Susan screamed at him.
“Get these cadets out of the Academy. Now. Find an Academy station out in the city. If you see infected people, leave them the hell alone and run,” Sampson snapped.
Susan didn’t stop running, but she jerked her head toward him. “What?”
“That’s an order, Cadet. And I have the ability to give you orders. Now go.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“A soldier. That’s all you need to know. Now get running. Do not stop for anyone.”
“We have to help—”
“There is a psychic infection decimating the Academy, Susan. There is no way you can help. Leave it to the professionals. Take your group and go.”
Susan hesitated, her boots skidding to a stop on chunks of concrete as she turned her head further over her shoulder to stare at him. “I’m not going to leave people behind.”
“Sometimes you have to leave people behind to give the larger group a chance. It’s not a decision you need to make. It’s a decision I’m making for you. Now go.” Sampson put all his force into his voice. He might not have a history of handing out orders. Though his position as a psychic soldier probably put him at a much higher level than even a commander, there was no one to command. He was a lone wolf.
That didn’t stop him from barking orders now.
Susan gritted her teeth. He felt her fear, her anxiety, her complete, crushing sense of defeat and guilt. But she still turned, nodded, and ran, shepherding her group.
“Hold up,” Sampson snapped as he skidded over to her. He threw her his gun.
She caught it. “Don’t you need this?”
“I’ll find another. You will shoot anyone you come across. Set it to stun if you have to, but fire.”
Horror flashed through her gaze.
“This is war. And that’s an order. You will keep this group of cadets safe, and you will shoot anyone you come across.”
Revulsion twisted through Susan’s expression, but she was a good cadet, and she showed it in that moment as she snapped a salute, turned on her foot, clutched the gun, and screamed at her group to get out of the building.
Sampson stared at them.
Something clicked. As his gaze darted over that huddling group, he appreciated these cadets would never be the same again.
This wasn’t just their first real fight. This was a fight that would define them going forward. For this was a battle that involved their home.
Most Coalition soldiers had to wait until they went out to the real galaxy to see its brutality. Even then, they could remain confident that their homes were safe.
These cadets would never be able to think that again.
Their innocence would be washed from them in blood, sweat, and tears.
Sampson wasted no more time. He twisted, his scanners actively searching through the rubble until he found a weapon. He darted down to his knees, punched a hand into a chunk of concrete, obliterated it, and pulled out the handgun beneath. As his fingers slipped easily around the butt and pressed against the trigger, he shuddered.
It wasn’t his gun; it was a sudden communication.
He hadn’t had a chance to contact Forest yet. Plus, when he’d thrown himself off the science block to see total chaos, he’d realized she’d already know what was happening out here. There was no point in warning her – all Forest had to do was look out the window to conclude how fast and far the Academy was crumbling.
Now she reached out to him.
“Forest—” he spat, getting ready to reel off every single thing he’d learned.
“Save it. We know. The Academy is being attacked by some kind of psychic virus. You’re fine?” She snapped.
“Fine. Holographic armor is holding up. I’ve taken down numerous infected. Forest… I think this is some kind of—”
“Variant of Infection Zero,” she snapped.
Sampson felt true horror washing through him. Every doubt simply crumbled. In their place, a monster rose in his mind greater than any other.
He wanted to stop, stare at the wall, and take in what this meant. The Academy could fall, the city behind it could fall, the Earth could fall. All because he’d failed to keep Infection Zero off the planet.
He didn’t get the chance to bury himself in guilt. He heard a scattering beside him, and someone pulled themselves out from behind a chunk of rubble.
It was a female cadet. Her eyes were red with tears, and bloody singe marks scattered her blotchy cheeks. “Help me—”
“If that’s a cadet – shoot her,” Forest snapped in Sampson’s ear.
“What?”
“Fire!” Forest blared.
Sampson made the mistake of trusting in his intuition, not his commander, and he hesitated.
The cadet threw herself at him, trying to grab his middle. In her frenzy to get to him, she tripped, and right there in front of his eyes, she impaled herself on a steel beam sticking out of a chunk of concrete.
Nausea rocked Sampson to the core, and he locked a hand over his mouth.
“What happened?” Forest roared.
“She tripped and killed herself – impaled herself—” he began.
“Move on. I need you, Sampson. I need you more than ever. Get to the roof.”
“What?”
“We think someone’s setting up a rotary mine. Get to them and stop it.”
Sampson didn’t need Forest to explain what a rotary mine was. It was a devastating piece of equipment the Kore Empire used. Once launched, it would hover in the air and spinning rotors would send out blasts of energy in indiscriminate directions, destroying everything in their path. The energy could and would rip through flesh, stone, metal, earth – anything. They were like angels of death.
Sampson threw himself at the stairs. On his way up, he passed cadets. He didn’t need Forest to tell him to shoot. He did it as a matter of course. And every single dull thump of every single body striking the stairs and sliding down would stay with him for life.
He no longer had the time to stop and check to see if everyone he came across was infected. At the image of that cadet impaling herself right in front of his eyes, Sampson did what he should have done to begin with. He took them all out of the equation, stunning them for later. If the Academy could somehow do the impossible and find a cure for this virus, they’d live to see that day. If not, they would die in the chaos.
For now, he had to get to the roof.
He moved faster than he ever had. He knew he kept saying that – but he kept doing it, too. It was as if something was reaching inside him and lifting him to a level he’d never thought possible.
His muscles moved in concert, contracting with such speed and prowess, it was like his entire body had been reprogrammed for maximum efficiency.
… It didn’t take long for a dark thought to take root. Wasn’t this what had happened to Lawson? As Sampson had grappled with the cadet, he’d felt the guy’s body pushing itself to a level it could not sustain.
What if… God, what if Sampson had somehow been infected too, and the same thing was happening to his body now?
As soon as he thought that, he pushed it away. It was impossible. He was a psychic soldier, for God’s sake – he had to keep reminding himself of that fact. He was unlike the cadets and officers he passed. He could feel the infection coming, and he would goddamn know if it suddenly broke its way into his brain.
He didn’t know where his excessive strength was coming from, but it was the least of his mysteries right now. He could see through matter, for Christ’s sake. And maybe in being able to perceive a different realm, it somehow enabled him to use his body’s fullest capacity.
Sampson never left the stairwell. It meant his enemies knew precisely where he was. He became engaged in firefight after firefight. When the infected cadets couldn’t reach him, some of them simply bodily threw themselves at him. Once or twice, they lost their footing and tumbled down the stairs, their skulls cracking against the concrete.
Every sound, every smell, every goddamn gut-wrenching psychic sensation rocked Sampson to the core.
He couldn’t keep going back to the fact that this was unlike any infection he’d ever dealt with. He didn’t have free moral leave to shoot anyone he saw, and yet he had no choice but to do just that.
Forest was hardly going to let him cave in to his conscience, anyway.
Though she was clearly busy, occasionally she came back online to scream at him to keep going.
He didn’t bother wasting the breath to ask her what was happening with the rest of the Academy. He knew that she was handling it in whatever way she could. She needed him to handle this.
As a psychic, he also knew that every thought he had was a waste of mental energy.
He locked his mind forward. He tilted his head up, and though it unsteadied his balance, he relied on his second sight, peering right through the goddamn ceiling above him until he swore he could see the roof as if he was on it.
A part of him appreciated that while he did need to save his energy, he also needed to warn Forest of whatever the heck was happening to him.
He couldn’t push the words out. He couldn’t make sense of it himself. Even if he could, whenever it came to opening his lips and telling her, his mouth ground to a halt.
It was… it was like something was telling him not to share this. Not yet. Not until he was face-to-face with Forest.
Maybe it was more than an impression – maybe it was training. If the Academy had become so compromised that its cadets were turning against its staff, and the halls were packed with the mental equivalent of zombies, then there was every possibility that someone could have breached the Academy’s secure communications system.
He had to be careful of what he shared with Forest.
“Are you close to the roof?” she snapped.
“Two more floors,” he blared back, his breathing perfectly controlled. He could throw himself up stairs for hours without breaking a sweat.
He didn’t have to. As he pushed even faster, he reached the door that led onto the roof.
He shouldered it open, blasting out in time to see three lieutenants and two cadets attending to a locked box pulsing with energy.
Sampson didn’t need to rely on his scanners to tell him what was inside. All he required was his psychic senses as they locked on those five mindless individuals. While they didn’t have any emotion, they seemed to have a collective purpose, and it was like a gun they were preparing to spray over the Academy in a wave of death.
Sampson started firing. First, he went for the biggest target, a brute of an officer who looked as if he didn’t just teach combat – he embodied it. The guy was from an alien race called the Hercar, and it took eight shots right to his sternum for his knees to even buckle. That gave time for the other cadets and officers to round on Sampson.
“What’s happening?” Forest demanded.
He didn’t answer, just grunted as loudly as he could as he took a running jump and shouldered the massive Hercar, finally getting the bastard to bend in half. Two more shots right to the back of the guy’s head did it, and he crumpled like a tree cut down at its trunk.
Forest didn’t bother to demand a report again. She would’ve heard that grunt, and she would’ve interpreted that Sampson was knee-deep in battle and could hardly pause to give her a running update.
Two cadets sliced toward him, and Sampson was forced onto his back. He rolled hard, his shoulders crunching over discarded weapon casings.
He didn’t recognize them, but as he jumped to his feet, he forced his scanners to penetrate the casings, and he realized they were the cells that held the rotor blades. They were empty. Which meant the blades had already been activated and armed.
As Sampson shot one of the cadets, the guy barely a few centimeters from the barrel of his gun, Sampson jerked his head back. He hadn’t seen the rotary grenade. Until now. It hovered directly overhead.
God, they’d already deployed it.
So what the hell was in that box?
He got his answer when one of the remaining officers shoved toward it, moving so fast, it sounded like the guy broke both his knees. He crunched down, slammed his hands either side of some kind of locking mechanism, and didn’t even bother to jump back as the lid of the box opened so quickly, it cracked the guy right on the side of his jaw.
Blood splattered down his lips, but he seemed not to give a damn as he reached in, snatched hold of something, and threw it up.
It was a second rotary grenade, and Sampson was forced to watch as it opened like the very arms of death right above his head.
“There are two grenades, two,” he spat down the line to Forest.
He didn’t bother to wait around to hear her reply. He shoved forward.
His holographic armor could do a lot – he kept repeating that. But in repeating that, he also kept reminding himself that while it could do much, it wasn’t unbeatable. Under the right circumstances, it would crumple just as easily as a flower underfoot.
And a rotary grenade would be one of those circumstances.
He expected the remaining enemy assets on the roof to run.
They didn’t. They didn’t even continue to fight him. They just stood there as if they’d been turned off. The force inhabiting their consciousnesses obviously left them, knowing that now the rotary grenades were up, they didn’t need to fight. All they needed to do was stand there and die, their missions complete.
That realization – that coldhearted, soul-shaking understanding – was like a detonation going off in Sampson’s gut. It gave him all the emotional force he needed to leap into the air.
Though it was one of the most dangerous things he’d ever done, he grabbed the base of the rotary gun, using the force of his move and a quick kick of his leg to pull it off course.
The thing was shielded and fought against his holographic armor, sending discharging crackles rippling over him and snaking into the roof like lightning strikes.
Sampson’s lips cut open as if someone had run a scalpel over his mouth, and he screamed with all his might. It echoed and blasted across the roof like gunfire.
Just as the other rotary grenade started to fire up, getting ready to rain down holy death, not just on the roof, but through the Academy, he pulled it to the left.
He slammed the rotor blades of the grenade he was holding into the other one.
He didn’t leave it at that.
The casing he’d just punched protected the circuitry that controlled the grenade’s navigation. If he destroyed it, it would give him a chance.
And he just needed one goddamn chance.
With one more punch, sensing a break in the rotor’s structural shields, he slammed his fist right through it, crumpling the metal and annihilating the unit within.
A cascade of sparks erupted around the rotor, looking like a halo sent, not from God, but from the Devil himself. It blasted out, affecting the rotor’s thrusters.
Before Sampson could be thrown to the floor, he twisted to the side and collected his foot on the shoulder of one of the cadets. The guy was just standing there, face completely blank as he stared at the roof. He made no attempt to stop Sampson as he pushed off the cadet’s shoulder, getting just the right momentum he needed to change the course of the rotor grenade. He pulled it right down until one of its rotors slammed into the other grenade just as it opened fire.
The rotor of his grenade redirected the blast, and it slammed into the roof, completely obliterating a 10-meter section of concrete. No dust erupted from it – it vaporized. And so did a cadet unlucky enough to be standing nearby. The guy didn’t have a chance to scream. Even if he’d had the opportunity, there was nothing left in the man that could shriek.
Sampson forced his grenade to stay locked against the other one, then he brought his fist up, and he slammed it into the exposed propulsion unit.
His grenade exploded and took the other one with it.
It almost took him out, too. He was blasted back, and for the third time in a day, he nearly fell from the roof. He twisted, making his feet as heavy as he could as he angled toward the side of the roof. He grabbed a lip of smart concrete that ran around the top of the building just in time, and he held on with only two stiff fingers.
As his body dangled, his head jerked to the side, and he saw the Academy.
It was complete chaos. The entire Academy grounds were being ripped apart as cadets fought cadets and uninfected officers ran around with no hope to stop them.
Sampson didn’t dangle there any longer. He ran his feet up the side of the roof, pushed, and somersaulted up just as one of the cadets turned back on and launched toward him.
Sampson ducked out of the way instinctively. The cadet, however, had no instincts left. He skidded, slipped, and tumbled right off the roof.
God.
This shouldn’t be happening. It was. Innocent people were dying in front of Sampson just as readily as plants being thrown in an oven.
“Was that you?” Forest suddenly barked.
“I disabled two rotary grenades,” he snapped as he rounded on his two remaining enemies. He dealt with them swiftly, even as the force that inhabited their minds switched them back on.
With two blows to their heads and chests, they both went down, the energy of the bolts rippling across them like massive boulders thrown in a lake.
“Yeah, that was me,” Sampson added as he didn’t even bother to lower his gun. There were no more enemy combatants on the roof. It didn’t matter. They were all around him. Spinning on the spot, staring out in total heart-destroying shock, he saw every single building in the Academy compound had been compromised. There was even a rupture at the base of the command building that suggested the basement levels had been attacked.
“Two? There were two rotary grenades up there?” Forest had a chance to say. She swore. Then she pulled herself together. “We need to contain this.”
“How?”
“We still don’t know what this virus is, but it has to be a variant of Infection Zero. It spreads—”
“By touch,” Sampson began.
He stopped. If it spread by touch, then why wasn’t he infected?
“Yes, by touch. It’s a damn miracle that you managed not to get infected. Even our assets in armor comparable to yours have been infected through touch.”
Though Sampson knew the least safe thing he could do was stand there and stare out in horror at the Academy while that thought struck him, he couldn’t stop himself.
Slowly, he ticked his head down, and he stared at his body. It didn’t take long for his gaze to slice over to Diana’s journal.
… Something – as crazy as it sounded – something told him somehow Diana’s diary was helping him. It was the only possible reason he hadn’t been infected….
“Sampson? You there? Have you been compromised—”
“No, sir. I’m fine. It’s—” he began, about to warn Forest that he had been touched on numerous occasions, but he stopped himself.
That warning that had told him not to share the secret of his second sight rose in his mind once more.
He would tell her, but to her face. Until then, he just had to keep fighting.
He pulsed toward the edge of the roof, intending to throw himself off it.
That’s when he saw two cruisers blasting toward the Academy from the atmosphere. They streaked in so fast, there was nothing he could do.
Nothing he could goddamn do as both of them slammed into the side of the command building.
The command building had compromised shields, and though theoretically it could take a blast from a heavy cruiser, as those two light, single-man vessels slammed into it, they tore a chunk right out of the side.
It was like watching someone slicing easily through a carcass.
He choked, his fear now too great to explain. It exploded through him, pulse after pulse as secondary detonations rippled up the side of the Academy building, smoke spilling out of it so quickly, it could fill the sky in a cloud of death.
“Forest!” he blared. “Forest—”
“I’m fine. I’m alive. My forces are deep in the basement. What did you see?”
Sampson brought a hand up and locked it on the back of his head as his body shook. “Two cruisers just crashed into the side of the command building. They’ve taken out,” his gaze darted up and down as his mind calculated quickly, “floors 13 to 25. They haven’t completely cut the building in half, but you’ve got losses of about 20 percent of those floors.”
“This has to stop,” Forest said. It wasn’t a command. It was a wish. It echoed and rocked through her voice as if she’d just crumpled to the ground and started trying to coo herself to sleep like a parent calming a child.
“What are my orders?” he snapped.
“Get out of Academy grounds—” she began.
“No way. I can help. Even if I have to run around stunning everyone, I can help.”
“We need to evacuate.”
“You’ll be handing the Academy over to whoever the hell has started this.”
“No, we won’t,” she admitted quietly.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“That it is time to self-destruct.”
Sampson had taken a step toward the roof again, intending to throw himself off, but he paused. All the blood drained from his face. It felt as if it drained from his organs, too, and right there in that moment he became nothing more than a lifeless husk. His lips trembled open. “What?”
“It is time to initiate the self-destruct sequence. The Academy and all its grounds will be destroyed. The city will be protected from the explosion. Reinforcements are on their way. We will contain this. But to contain this, we must destroy ground zero. You know how these infections work.”
He locked a hand on his mouth, but it slid down his chin as his fingers slicked with sweat. He let it drop to his side, and he clenched it into such a tight fist, his holo armor warned him he could breach its structural integrity. “I’m not giving up on this place. There are still too many people—”
“This isn’t your decision to make,” she said, echoing exactly the same thing he’d said to Susan earlier. “The Academy must be destroyed.”
“No,” he spoke with all the authority he could.
“Yes,” she spoke with more. For Forest, and not Sampson, was ultimately responsible for what happened here today.
That didn’t stop him from curling his hand into an even harder fist and slamming it against the concrete lip of the roof beside him. He pulverized a section of it, and rubble spewed out from the move, cascading over the side of the roof and hailing down like rocky rain.
“You will retreat. It’s over,” Forest said in a choked gasp.
“No,” Sampson stated flatly. As he spoke, he found himself standing straighter. His fist dropped open; his head tilted back. He stared at the Academy and beyond. Beyond into the city – beyond to the bay. And beyond into space.
No. He wasn’t going to surrender the heartland of the Coalition. Not today, not ever. That promise – that unshakable certainty – didn’t just come from him. More heat spread from Diana’s diary, spilling through him and pushing away the total horror of the situation.
It reminded him – somehow – that there could be a way through this if only people worked together.
“Give me time,” he pleaded.
There was a pause as if Forest had heard his unshakable certainty, as if she was momentarily worried that he wasn’t himself. But with a soul-crushing sigh, she responded, “This decision has been made by the admirals. The Academy has been fatally compromised, and we must destroy it.”
“Our best tech is here. Our best people are here. If we give up the Academy, we give up the Coalition.”
“No one is talking about giving up the Coalition—” she spat.
“I don’t care if they’re not talking about it; it will happen. I don’t know what’s going on here, Forest, but this is just the beginning.” His voice became strangled with every word. “Something’s on its way. Some force—”
“It is called the Force,” she said, her voice dark in a way he’d never heard. It wasn’t with anger. It wasn’t even with a desperate need for self-preservation. It was with something far worse.
Submission.
A woman like Admiral Forest had seen much and done more. She’d protected the Academy from things unseen. She’d been forced to make decisions that would make lesser people crumble.
And yet, right now at the mere mention of the name the Force, it sounded as if she’d given up.
Sampson opened his lips to ask who the hell the Force were, but he stopped. His lips froze in place as if someone reached up and held them there.
He… that heat spreading from the diary became hotter, spreading through his chest, pulsing as if it had the speed and power of a cruiser.
He couldn’t stop himself from bringing up a hand, turning his fingers in, and grinding his palm against his heart.
He started to see things. Impressions and thoughts. Facts and theories. They all flashed through his mind, faster and faster.
The Force, something told him, were an enemy from beyond. They resided, not in this galaxy, but in the space between.
They’d fought the Milky Way long ago. They’d taken the galaxy to the point of destruction only for an alliance of powerful ancient races to push them back.
The Force had remained, though. In their land between realms, they had planned their return.
That return was now.
Sampson gasped as he fell down to his knees, his mind rocking from that epiphany.
“Sampson? What happened? Tell me you’re alive.”
He pressed his hands into his neck then ground them up his face until he clutched his jaw and temple. It was like he was forcibly trying to hold his bones in place as if that would give him some much-needed sense of stability. “… What was that?”
“What happened to you, Sampson? Dammit, man, respond.”
He opened his mouth again to tell the Admiral that somehow – somehow – he’d just received psychic information on what the Force were.
But something stopped him.
He couldn’t indiscriminately share information over this comm line. It could be compromised. No, it was compromised. That certainty could not be fought. It was like a fact that had been shared with him from a frigging god.
What the hell was happening to Sampson?
“We will destroy the Academy. You have five minutes to leave. Do it.”
He pushed to his feet, his legs shaking. He stared. He saw. As his eyes swept over the Academy, his second sight rose through him as he saw between, beyond, everywhere and anywhere.
He swore he could even glimpse into the minds of those his gaze passed through as if the walls of their psyches were nothing more important than wafts of air.
Fear. Desperation. The need for another chance. Those emotions rocked through him in wave after wave.
He couldn’t let these people down.
He couldn’t abandon the Academy.
He couldn’t let the Force win this first fight. For if he did, they would crush the Coalition with no chance for reply.
Sampson took a step back.
As a soldier, especially a psychic soldier, he knew that in times of chaotic battle, there are a few decisions one can make that can change the course of everything. No one would tell you what those critical decisions were, but that’s the thing about a chaotic environment. Small changes, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can have exponential effects on the larger system as a whole.
You just have to have the luck to figure out what those small changes are.
As his stare slashed over the Academy, slicing through walls and trees and cadets and explosive clouds of dust, his gaze settled on the ground. It pushed right through.
Suddenly the heat pushing from the diary doubled. It felt as if he’d crammed a hot coal down the front of his top.
“Diana,” he said, and he didn’t measure his voice. It echoed out, and his communication unit relayed it to the admiral.
There was a tight pause. “We can’t afford to get her out,” she began.
“No,” true stress shot through his voice. “You can’t afford to leave her behind. She’s the only one who can fix this,” he added.
He didn’t think that – he knew it. Knew it right down into his bones, into his heart, into his blood, into every inch of flesh.
He knew it right down into every thought and every belief. He knew it like he knew his own name.
“What are you talking about?” the admiral began.
She stopped.
Echoing over the line, he heard explosions.
“Dammit, Forest, get out of there, but give me a chance. That’s all I ask. Half an hour. I will deliver you the Academy. I promise that. But I promise you this – if you give up on it now, you won’t just be giving up on this campus – you’ll be abandoning the whole Coalition.” As he spoke, he used all his passion. He pushed it through every syllable. He didn’t use mesmer control, but he opened his mind and his heart.
He poured his certainty into the words, hoping she would be able to pick it up.
There was a pause, and he heard a scream as Forest no doubt took on an attacker.
She crunched up, and the creak of her bones and muscles echoed across the line. “Dammit, Sampson. Fine. You get half an hour. That’s it. You deliver me the Academy—”
He didn’t let her finish. “I’ll deliver you the Academy. You do what you can to keep yourself safe and to manage the situation. And I’ll give you hope.”
With that, he signed off, and Sampson jumped off the roof.
He had to get to Diana before it was too late.