Sampson Ventura
Sampson knew he was distracted. He didn’t care.
Someone had shot the equivalent of a psychic hole through Diana’s head, and there was only one candidate.
Bequelia.
He had no clue what was going on here, but the more he discovered, the more his stomach churned. It was one thing for the Academy to have changed its culture – one thing for the pursuit of power to have replaced the far more noble goal of understanding. It was another for an unregistered powerful psychic to play with cadets’ minds.
Maybe Bequelia had some therapeutic goal in mind. Perhaps she’d even been ordered to push with Diana. And maybe Sampson didn’t believe any of that for a second.
The psychic had an ulterior motive, and he would find out what that was.
Diana seemed calmer as they strode through the packed halls to class. She was calmer for two reasons, though she wouldn’t be able to appreciate what those were.
He was standing in as a psychic and physical shield, bodily and mentally throwing off the negative intents of her classmates, and importantly, he’d closed up the wound Bequelia had left in her mind.
Sampson had felt it the second he’d laid his hand on Diana’s shoulder – this gaping psychic wound as if someone had stabbed the equivalent of a mental knife into Diana just to see how much would bleed from it.
There were two possibilities – Forest was right, and Bequelia had incidentally increased in power without realizing it, and she was inadvertently damaging the students in her care. Or Bequelia had known precisely what she was doing.
Sampson knew which one he believed.
Though all he wanted to do was push and figure out exactly what Bequelia was trying to do with Diana, he knew the costs of pushing. In Diana’s current condition, she was too vulnerable.
Dammit.
Dammit on every level. Dammit to hell that he’d gotten so distracted, and dammit to hell that he couldn’t extricate himself from this situation and get back to his mission.
Terrorists were planning to bring Infection Zero to Earth, to the Academy main grounds, and rather than do anything about it, he was knee-deep in some drama that would only distract him.
As soon as that harsh thought snapped through his mind like a loaded spring, he clasped it back.
This wasn’t just some drama. Diana was actively having her life ruined. And though he’d only caught clues of what had happened to her, it was clear she had a wealth of trauma rotting away in her past.
There you go, rationalizing again, he berated himself. Sticking by her side won’t solve this case.
… But it couldn’t hurt, right?
Just as soon as he thought that he shook his head. Oh, it had hurt. He’d stuffed up his chances at infiltrating the E Club, he’d actively put two staff-members off-side, and by the end of the day, he’d likely have dug those holes even deeper.
Sticking by Diana’s side was hazardous to—
He stopped that thought dead in its tracks. He’d been about to fill in the last word with career. He couldn’t do that. While the rest of these idiots thought she was an Angel of Death, he knew precisely what that was, and she wasn’t it.
Diana simply had no one to stand up for her. By standing with her, he’d have to do that.
Though they were walking through the halls to get to engineering class, she suddenly stopped. It was so abrupt, he ran into her side.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she whispered.
“Sorry, what?”
“I know what you’re thinking – you’re re-evaluating everything. And you have every right to do that. You’ve stuck your neck out for me enough today.”
Sampson ground to a stop at one little phrase – I know what you’re thinking. While ordinary minds might bandy that term around, it meant something different to a psychic. It meant your defenses were down.
… It took him too long to remind himself that Diana clearly wasn’t a psychic and that had just been an educated guess.
In that time, the damage was done. She pressed her lips together and nodded quietly. “It’s okay,” she said genuinely. “I understand completely.”
It was all too clear that she did, just as it was all too clear the only reason she did was that this wasn’t the first time she’d been ditched.
“I’m not—” Sampson didn’t get the chance to finish.
She walked away, and with her small form, quickly wended through the group of cadets until she disappeared down the front of the class. Though all he wanted to do was march up to her, sit beside her, and tell her he didn’t think like that – to do that, he’d have to sit on the lap of the massive half-Yara, half-human cadet she’d sat beside.
… So Sampson had to drop this. For now.
He found a seat and sat. When he realized the kid beside him had been one of the E Club instructors he’d met at the meet yesterday, he tried his darndest to ignore him, even when the guy gushed at Sampson’s skills.
Sampson didn’t pay attention during engineering class. It wasn’t that he knew the material – though he could have easily taken the class and done a better job at explaining just what it was like to be in a cruiser during an engine meltdown – it was that his mind fixated on one thing.
Diana. What was happening to her. Why the students hated her. Why no one bothered to stand up for her. How the heck Sparx could put her through hell in combat class when it was clear it wasn’t a lack of enthusiasm that hampered her, but fear grounded in past trauma.
Right now was the perfect time to scan the final year cadets around him. And he did. For a few seconds. Though he picked up some interesting emotions, none were as interesting as Diana.
She clearly wasn’t a terrorist, though, was she?
The more Sampson forced his mind off her, the more it snapped back as if he’d attached himself to her with magnets.
The one thing he could be thankful for was that the engineer taking the class didn’t hate her. It was precisely the opposite – she had a justified reverence for Diana’s skills. Because out of all the cadets, Diana was a cut above the rest.
Obviously, Diana’s genius extended beyond physics.
… So why wasn’t she in E Club? If the Academy had turned into an institution that could only favor the cream of the crop, how could you leave Diana behind?
Sampson didn’t hold much truck with paranoid thoughts. Once upon a time, they’d haunted his mind. A side-effect of the drug his father had given him, it had taken years of training to force Sampson’s psyche to put paranoia in its place.
Now he couldn’t stop one crazy thought from rising to the fore. What if Diana’s social isolation wasn’t natural? What if someone had orchestrated this?
What Sampson was suggesting should have been impossible. To turn the whole Academy against Diana, you would require coordination, authority, and time. Oh yeah, and a reason.
Before he could bury that suspicion, the last thing he wanted to see walked in the door.
Commander Sparx.
Engineer Ryta looked up, confused as she stepped away from the podium and spoke quietly with Sparx.
While Ryta might have been trying to keep their discussion discreet, a man like Sparx didn’t believe in the concept of discreet. He pointed one stiff finger right at Diana, right in front of the class.
And then he took her out of the lecture theatre, marching behind her as if she were a prisoner being led away.
Sampson sat so straight, he could have snapped his spine.
A second ago, he’d been questioning how you could possibly orchestrate a calculated social assassination of a cadet – this was how. By constantly, and without shame, drawing attention to them in public.
Ryta got right back to the lecture, flustered but too busy to explain what had just happened.
That would just lead to gossip. And it did. Even if Sampson hadn’t been able to psychically feel the focus in the once-bored cadets spiking, he could hear their muttering.
“I wonder what she’s done this time?” someone mused snidely further down Sampson’s row.
“Maybe they’re finally kicking her out. Sparx didn’t look happy. God, finally,” the guy next to Sampson said. And unless Sampson was wrong, the idiot was speaking to him. But the fool couldn’t be that stupid – because right now Sampson wanted to punch the next person who insulted Diana.
These cadets weren’t thinking. They weren’t questioning like they should. They’d turned into automatons fed steady social intrigue. That social intrigue kept them amused but distracted. It was like someone painting a glitzy, colorful mural right over your drab life in the hopes you’d forget what was actually happening to you.
Though all Sampson wanted to do was jump up, follow Sparx, and see what the hell was happening, Sampson couldn’t. He’d already brought too much attention to himself. If he kept screwing up, he wouldn’t need Diana’s help to become an outcast. He’d dig his own deeper, far darker hole.
When Forest had given him a blank check to prowl the Academy halls looking for their target, she wouldn’t have envisioned Sampson turning into the class screw-up.
A few seconds passed, then a few more. With every one, Sampson’s skin crawled. With every one, his conscience begged him to do something.
Sparx would take Diana back to Bequelia, and god knows what that psychic would do to Diana’s already broken mind.
You can’t do anything. For god’s sake – just sit here, Sampson begged himself.
It took one more second.
Fuck it.
He jumped to his feet.
Ryta, for the second time that lecture, looked shocked. “Cadet, what are you doing?”
Yeah, great question. What was he doing, again? Following his instincts. Forest had told him to do that, after all.
“Sorry, Commander. I have an existing medical condition that’s just flared,” he said confidently. It might have been the most generic excuse ever, but it wasn’t what you said that convinced people, it was how you said it. At least, when you were a psychic.
“By all means.” Ryta nodded at the door.
“I’ll head to the med bay, and you’ll be provided with a full med-pass later. I apologize for interrupting class.” Sampson saluted perfectly, turned on his foot, and strode away.
Were all eyes on him? Oh, you betcha.
He barely noted the attention as he reached the doors, waited for them to open, and walked out into the corridor. Though barreled was a more accurate verb. Every step was snapped and quick as he turned his psychic senses to full and tried to sense Diana.
She wasn’t in the building anymore.
He could bet where she was.
Curling his hand in until his knuckles could’ve cracked his skin and erupted out like knives, Sampson half-jogged until he reached the nearest lifts.
He didn’t head straight to Bequelia’s office. He was too smart for that. It was time to cut this weed at its root.
As he rode the elevator, he waited for the only other passenger to leave. Then Sampson did something. Not just to the elevator, but to the internal sensors in this whole section.
He overrode them, and all it took was one simple neural command. He was still in his holo armor. He never took it off. As he accessed its powerful computer, he commanded it to pause the lifts and ensure no scanner – whether Academy or enemy-planted – could record what was about to happen.
He called Forest.
During class.
Though he was taken by the overpowering urge to stop what was happening to Diana, he hadn’t lost his senses completely. He knew perfectly well that in calling Admiral Forest during the day, she’d think he had real intel.
Sure enough, as she answered, he could hear the stress in her voice and yet the clear hope. “What happened? Have you found them?”
“No. But I need you to do something for me. Sorry, two things.”
It was a testament to their relationship – and importantly, Forest’s trust for him – that she didn’t question his reasoning. “What?”
“I need a medical pass. I left a class abruptly and lied about a pre-existing condition flaring up.”
“I’ll manufacture the required pass, create credible witnesses, and contact your lecturer. Now, what do you really want?”
Okay. Here came the hard part.
Sampson was damn pleased this wasn’t a video call. He could make all the pained faces at the closed lift doors he wanted without Forest losing complete faith in him.
“I need you to contact the head counselor, Bequelia.” He didn’t pretend not to know her name this time. He let it roll off his tongue with all the disdain his tight lips could allow.
“And say what?”
“I want you to get me a session with her. Now.”
“Why?”
Yeah, here we go. Forest’s trust in him could only go so far, and the weirder his requests became, the more she’d question.
He took a breath and plunged on anyway. “She’s hiding something. I’ve confirmed she’s more powerful than her registration suggests.”
“You raised this suspicion with me last night, Sampson. What more do you have?”
Alright, here goes nothing. Without wincing again, Sampson said, “She’s psychically targeting a student.”
There was a tight, pressured pause. That was a hell of an allegation. One he technically didn’t have the evidence to back up yet.
“How did you find this out? And are you sure?”
“I felt repeated open wounds in a cadet, and I know they’re caused by Bequelia.”
“It could be unintentional.”
Sampson laughed angrily. “Then that makes Bequelia grossly incompetent.”
“I see. But do you suspect her in our main investigation?” Forest, despite the fact they were using the most secure comms in all the Milky Way, still wouldn’t mention those two little words. Infection Zero.
Fair enough. It was like mentioning the bogeyman. Forest might not have dealt directly with as many infections as Sampson, but she would have dealt with the aftermath enough to have internalized the emotional burden of this secret.
“Sampson?” she prompted.
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Bequelia has a position where she has to scan every incoming cadet. With undisclosed psychic power—”
“She’s either unintentionally damaging people or spying,” Forest finished his thought, and her voice hardened. “You may be on to something. Now, what do you want me to do?”
God, that hadn’t been hard. Of course it hadn’t been hard; Sampson wasn’t just acting on instinct here. Something didn’t add up.
And he was going to find out what that was.
“The first thing I want you to do is to call her right now and interrupt her session,” he said, spitting session with as much derision as his lips could manage. “Then I want you to get an appointment for me. Preferably right now.”
“Why now? That’s going to take some work; you’re meant to be in class. For me to force an appointment during the day, I’ll have to manufacture a suitable excuse.”
“And an excuse like that is going to make it sound as if I’m the kind of guy who needs immediate counseling – I get it. I don’t care. I want you to get me in with Bequelia now. Because if I’m right, as soon as you pull her out of her current session,” he spat that word derisively again, “she’ll be pissed. And I want her as emotionally unstable as I can get.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Get me Commander Sparx’s file.”
“Done. Is he a suspect?” Forest asked quickly.
“He’s a something. I’ll figure it out when I get his file. There’s one more thing, Admiral.”
“What?” Forest didn’t hesitate. He could have asked for half the city, and she would have handed it over.
“I want you to cancel all Bequelia’s existing recurring appointments.”
It was a big ask. A fact Forest made clear as she hesitated. “That would take a very good excuse.”
“And I think I’ve got one. Promote her.”
“You just told me she could be a spy. And she’s already head of the counseling department. There’s nowhere else for her to go.”
“Cook up some excuse, Admiral – I know you can. All I really want is to see how she reacts. I think she’s got her hooks into the cadets, and I’d wager that the second you cancel all her appointments and promote her, she’ll act.”
He didn’t specify how Bequelia would act.
The point was, he wanted to find out.
“Fine,” Forest muttered. She didn’t sound happy, but it was clear she could see his point. “Now, is there anything else?” To Forest’s credit, her tone remained even. Though he’d already asked for a heck of a lot, she didn’t care.
“Not right now. I’ll be in contact when I have something.”
“Good luck.”
“I’ll need it.” He snapped yet another needless salute, ended the communication, subtly restated sensor control in this area, and rode the lift to another random level. He got off, and by the time it took him to walk to a set of stairs, his wristwatch vibrated.
He wasn’t surprised when he glanced down to see a med pass flashing on the screen. Forest was a quick, disciplined woman. She would also have reliable assets in place throughout the Academy who could provide her with fake reports whenever she needed.
Now all Sampson had to do was wait until he got a call to schedule his appointment with Bequelia.
He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. It was time for the counselor to meet a real mind.
He could guarantee she wouldn’t like what he would let her find.