Sampson Ventura
Though all he wanted to do was reconnect with Diana, he didn’t have the time. She’d been whisked off by Admiral Forest for a debrief, anyway. Sampson was now seated on the edge of a bed, his muscles shaking with fatigue as doctors reset his holographic armor for the second time that day.
He wanted to jump to his feet. He wanted to find Diana. He wanted to plan with her.
Because there was too much to plan.
Every time he tried to tell himself this couldn’t be happening, he had to clench his hands against the edge of the medical bed and force himself to understand that it was.
He was going to head back to the dig site.
They were going to open the time gate.
And then what? What would possibly happen then? He didn’t understand what a time gate was, but presumably, considering the name, it would be a means to travel back and forth through history.
His mind boggled just thinking about it.
Sampson was used to fighting wars – or at least secret skirmishes – in Coalition space. He’d gone deep into enemy territory, too. But heading into alien lands was one thing. Alien times?
He found himself shaking his head again.
“I told you to stay still,” a stiff-lipped doctor all but snarled.
He ignored the woman’s anger. She, like everyone else, was stretched to their limits.
And the war hadn’t even begun.
Sampson brought up a hand, locked it on the side of his face, and stared through his fingers as if they were a cage for his gaze.
Despite everything he should be concentrating on, one fact kept dragging him back.
The dig site.
He was going to go back there.
There was nothing Forest would be able to do to stop him, either, because even though they still didn’t understand how, Sampson had somehow psychically picked up Diana’s skills.
He was better at second sight than she was. So they would need him on this mission.
Hell, even if that weren’t the case, Sampson would have only been separated from Diana over his dead body.
All that meant he was returning. Returning to the place where his brother had died.
Just thinking about it sent tight, cold shivers racing down his back. They seemed to snag hold of each vertebra and try to crush them in turn until it felt as if Sampson would flop back against the medical bed.
“We are registering a precipitous increase in heart rate,” that stiff-lipped doctor said. “I suggest whatever you’re thinking about, you stop. While we are recalibrating the link between your holographic armor and your neural implant, it is recommended that you do not undergo dramatic shifts in your emotional and physiological state.”
He managed a chuckle. “That’s easy enough to say, doctor.”
“And for a psychic soldier like you, it should be easy enough to do,” she replied curtly.
… The doctor was right. It should be easy enough for Sampson – with just a flick of a switch in his head, he should be able to go from being emotional to being nothing more than a tool waiting to be used.
Or at least, before he’d met Diana that might’ve worked.
Now whenever he used his psychic skills in a coldhearted manner, it felt like he was betraying her somehow.
Just when Sampson thought his world would spiral down and his emotions would get the better of him, the door opened.
He expected to see Diana. No. He wanted to see Diana. He knew it wasn’t her.
It was her father.
He walked in, and the admiral wasted no time in striding right up to Sampson’s bed.
“Be aware that we are currently resetting his holographic armor,” the doctor warned, and though her tone had been nothing but icy and hard around Sampson, it became smooth and polite around Fenton.
“I will not interrupt the process. However, I need to speak to Ventura.”
The doctor nodded and walked off, but she kept a scanner clutched protectively in her hand, and would no doubt keep a lock on Sampson’s emotions.
If they became too impassioned, she’d likely crack him over the head and knock him out.
Sampson knew he was distracting himself. He couldn’t do that for long, however, as Fenton took another rigid step toward him.
The admiral’s stare drilled into Sampson’s head until Sampson finally lifted his gaze. “Yes, Admiral?”
“There’s a lot I need to say to you, Ventura.”
“I suggest you say it, then.”
“Why did you have my daughter’s diary?”
Here we go. Sampson looked to the side. You didn’t look a man like Fenton in the eye. Because Sampson was about to lie, and a man like Fenton would be able to tell.
“As I told you before – her flatmate all but gave it to me.”
“All but?”
Sampson ground his teeth together. “Forest warned me off your daughter. She didn’t tell me why. Just kept repeating that I couldn’t have anything to do with her. But circumstances,” his eyes flashed as he ticked his gaze up to the admiral, “kept throwing us together. Diana’s flatmate wanted to speak to me, then, with one thing and another, showed me Diana’s diary.”
“That’s a lie, son.”
Sampson just laughed. It was bitter as all hell. “Fine, it’s a lie. I saw the diary, picked it up, and there, on the first page, was a picture of her dad.”
Sampson didn’t add anything. He couldn’t. Just talking about this brought back his goddamn trauma.
He should be over it. He wasn’t, and he would never get over it. For a psychic like him, whose skills were built over a trauma, he could never afford to sweep away his past, for it could jeopardize his powers.
Maybe Fenton understood that. Maybe he didn’t. But the admiral obviously decided to push nonetheless.
“So you’re telling me your interest in my daughter was only because Forest called you off and you got curious?”
What was Fenton doing? Though Sampson was melting under the ferocity of this interrogation, a part of Sampson felt like Fenton was just a protective dad questioning his daughter’s first date.
“Yes and no. I saw your daughter on my first day,” Sampson admitted as he stared at his hands. “She had the most interesting mind. I didn’t think she was my target. Just.…” He couldn’t finish.
Just what?
Sampson had been drawn to Diana since the moment he’d seen her. And from that moment, no matter what anyone had said, he’d kept going back to her side.
Why? Was it just that, at some level, Sampson had realized she was psychic?
Fenton didn’t say anything. He just stood there and watched.
It took Sampson way too long to recognize what was going on here.
Sampson was a master of luring people into saying what he wanted them to. Clearly Admiral Fenton was, too. But Sampson was in no mood to appreciate that.
He locked a hand on his face again, and this time he drove his fingers in as if he was securing them there with rivets. It didn’t matter that his nails dug into his skin. It didn’t matter that one of the continually scanning medical devices by his side let out a warning beep.
He just pushed his fingers in harder and harder.
“Something told me not to leave her side. Okay? Something even told me to pick up her diary, all right? And something, no matter what kept happening, told me to stick by her side. Okay?”
Fenton still didn’t say a thing.
And that just pushed Sampson to reveal more.
“I’m not sure if it was a psychic connection. No, it was psychic,” he suddenly revealed. “From the moment I saw her, something affected my psyche and locked me onto her, okay?”
Fenton’s gaze just drove into Sampson, willing him to reveal more.
“She just felt familiar, all right? She just felt familiar. On some psychic level, it was like I already knew her. Okay?” he blurted.
He had no idea what he’d just said.
But clearly Fenton had been waiting for it. He stood a little straighter. “That’s enough, son,” he said in a completely even voice that was devoid of the anger that had filled his tone moments before.
Sampson sat there, startled. He made no attempt to close his wide-open mouth. “What was that?”
“Forest wanted me to question you. She rightly thought that, considering your emotional reaction to me earlier, it was better that this came from me than her.”
Sampson shook his head but stopped. “You just manipulated me,” he pointed out.
Fenton shrugged. “Yes. I am an expert at that.”
Sampson wouldn’t move. “Why—” He stopped as he reminded himself of what he’d just revealed.
He’d just passionately claimed that Diana felt familiar to him. From the second she’d appeared in front of him, a part of him – the psychic part – had appeared to know her already.
“Forest wants to know how you managed to pick up this second sight, as you call it. She has a theory. She wanted me to come confirm that. Sorry to push you, son.”
“… Theory?”
“How much do you know about your father?”
It was a hell of a question, and it came right out of the blue like a right hook to Sampson’s jaw.
“Why the hell would you ask that?” Sampson spluttered. He wanted to keep his voice even. You try keeping your voice even when someone abruptly mentions the greatest trauma in your goddamn life.
Fenton didn’t shift and made absolutely no indication that he cared that Sampson had been hurt by that. “How much do you know about your father?” he repeated in an even tone.
Now Fenton’s anger was gone, he looked like an impassable brick wall. Fenton had a reputation for being the kind of admiral that, when he put his foot down, it stayed down. You could have a heavy cruiser and attach a grappling hook to him, and somehow the admiral would still find a way to stay exactly where he was.
Sampson brought up a shaking hand, locked it on his mouth, and pressed his fingers in until it felt like he was trying to remove his jaw with nothing more than a tug. “Where is this going?”
“How much—” Fenton began again, about to repeat the question. He sounded as if he was just going to repeat that over and over again until it drilled into Sampson’s head like a goddamn laser.
Sampson brought up a hand. The way he did it – the way his wrist jerked, his fingers splayed wide, and his shoulder shuddered, was not the way you treated an admiral. “I heard you the first time.”
“Then answer the question, son.”
“I’m not your son,” Sampson spat back.
There was a pause. “But you weren’t Professor Ventura’s son, either, were you?”
Sampson stopped. It felt like someone pushed a hand into his chest, grabbed his heart, and ripped it out. It felt like they shredded every single nerve, too, until he was nothing more than a sack of blood and bones that could never move again.
“Sorry to point that out, but it has to be said. You were adopted, weren’t you?”
Sampson just stared at his knees.
Did Fenton have any idea what he was doing? Did Forest? Or had Fenton lied, and had he come in here to question Sampson without Forest’s permission? Because Sampson simply couldn’t understand how Forest could allow one of her psych soldiers to be treated like this.
Yeah, Sampson had shown a heck of a lot of strength in fighting off the enemy. He’d shown even more in not being too affected by Diana’s diary and the wound it had reopened in his past.
But this was actively digging at his trauma like some surgeon taking a knife, finding a recently healed scab, and shredding it.
He shook his head.
“There’s no point in denying the truth. You were adopted. It’s on your file.”
“Why do you care?” Sampson hissed.
“I care, because I want to know exactly what your father did to you. Forest has her suspicions – I have mine. I might not have the privilege of working with the psychic corps, but in my position as the admiral in charge of the outer colonies, I’ve seen psychics. And perhaps I have a perspective that Forest doesn’t.”
“What’s that?” Sampson couldn’t move his teeth. It felt as if someone had wired each one of them shut.
“I think you were an experiment from the start. Ventura didn’t attack you after he lost James; he’d been experimenting on you from the day he got you, son.”
Sampson opened his mouth – opened it like it was a goddamn mortar shot from a gun, and he went to scream once more that he wasn’t Fenton’s son.
He stopped.
Slowly, he dragged his gaze off the floor and locked it on Fenton. Sampson knew he would look vulnerable – as open as a patient you’d just taken a knife to as you displayed every single one of their organs as if they were some kind of museum piece.
He brought up a hand, grabbed the front of his tunic, and twisted his nails in. The move was so hard, his holographic armor warned him. When he didn’t release his grip, he felt a light charge picking up over his chest, preventing his jagged nails from slicing his own skin.
“I don’t know what you’re doing to my patient, but you’re interrupting the recalibration—” the doctor from earlier interrupted.
All Fenton did was bring up a hand and splay his fingers wide.
She stopped speaking, and with a few hurried footsteps, retreated.
Clearly Fenton wanted answers, and he didn’t care if it set back the calibration of Sampson’s armor. “I think you were an experiment from the start, son. I think you’ve already suspected that.”
Sampson could barely swallow. It felt like someone had thrown an entire desert down his throat and with every gulping, shaking breath, it spread further into his body until he would die as nothing more than a hollowed-out, dried-up husk.
Flashes started to blast through his memory, faster and faster with every second. He could see his old life. His brother. Where they lived. The colony outpost. His father’s laboratories. The gardens beyond. All of it just sliced into his mind as if someone was dissecting chunks of his brain and using them to engrave pictures of Sampson’s childhood.
With shaking, sweat-covered fingers, he locked his hand on the side of his head. As he gripped his face, it was with no normal strength. He wasn’t just holding onto his head for dear life – he was holding onto his mind. He turned his psychic powers in on himself, holding on, holding on so he didn’t break—
“I think from the very start your father always had something in mind for you. And from the day he adopted you, he started experimenting on you. Is that correct?”
Sampson went to shake his head.
“I know who your father is. The Academy might be going to hell,” Fenton said, the first sign of emotion cracking his tone. It didn’t last, though – the man pushed it away as he strengthened his stance and lengthened his back. He might have extensive injuries, but he looked as if someone could rip off his limbs and he would still stand just as tall. “But I can still access the Coalition’s secret databases. Even if I couldn’t, one look at your case brought back memories. I’ve never heard of Professor Ventura before, but I’ve seen his practices – and they belong to the Kore.”
Sampson shook his head. He couldn’t stop. He knew he would look like some kind of toddler desperately trying not to face the truth. He wasn’t a kid. He was a man. He shouldn’t fall down at the mere suggestion that his father came from the Kore.
… Because Fenton was right – Sampson had thought this before. Every time he had, he’d shut the door on that memory, slamming it so closed, it would take a team of psychics to open it.
But Fenton didn’t have a team of psychics. He was just one man. And as he stood there, never backing down, a cold sweat drenched Sampson’s back as his psychic wound started to open.
The medical devices continually scanning him beeped louder.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the doctor attending to him, and she took several steps out of her office and warily stared their way. She looked at the scanner in her hand, then over at Sampson.
Finally, her gaze settled on Fenton, and rather than march over here and tell the admiral to desist, she simply swiped her thumb over her scanner.
The medical devices beside Sampson shut off. It appeared they didn’t care about his physiological condition anymore – as no one else did.
Sampson still had a hand clenched around the front of his uniform top. He wouldn’t remove it even if someone chopped his goddamn fingers off. “Why are you doing this to me?” Sampson stuttered.
“We need to know exactly what you are. For better or worse, you seem to have picked up my daughter’s skills,” Fenton said. Somehow he kept his voice even on the word daughter. Despite what was happening to Sampson, he still had enough left-over psychic skills to understand that while Fenton’s voice was technically strong at that moment, the rest of his body was forced to compensate, becoming so weak, it felt as if he’d taken a hit with a bat.
But Fenton pushed on. “I suspect Professor Ventura escaped the Kore Empire. Or perhaps not escaped – maybe he was sent here. I don’t know. But I do know the MO. Ventura was from the Kore, wasn’t he?” Fenton asked again, his voice slow.
“He was my father,” Sampson tried. His voice was so weak, he wouldn’t even be able to convince a child.
“No, he wasn’t. He adopted you. He plucked you off one of the outer colony worlds, didn’t he?”
Sampson kept pressing his hand harder and harder into his face. His holographic armor kept attempting to push him back, and where his fingers collided with it, Sparks started to discharge up and down the side of his face.
He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore.
He—
Fenton took a step forward. Then the admiral did something strange. He brought up his hand and rested it on Sampson’s shoulder. He stared right into his eyes. “No one is blaming you, Sampson. But it’s clear no one has pushed you to remember your past. I understand Forest’s opinion. She doesn’t want you compromised. I have my own opinion. I saw what you did out there. I saw you bouncing back every time you took a hit from the Vendets. So you can take this hit. Tell me everything you remember. Was Professor Ventura—”
“Kore. Yeah, he was from the Kore,” Sampson found himself saying. As he gripped his face harder, that just slipped into place.
He’d never known it before. It just bubbled up from the depths of his consciousness as if someone had always kept it locked there.
Fenton kept his hand on Sampson’s shoulder. “And he—”
“Yeah.” Sampson dropped his hand and stared at it in his lap. It was covered in sweat. He allowed his gaze to trace along every shiny line and every mottled section of white-pink skin. Finally, he gripped it, curling the fingers in and pushing them hard as if he were reminding himself that no matter what was happening to his mind, his body still worked. It allowed him to open his mouth. “Professor Ventura experimented on me since the day he acquired me.”
“Do you know what those experiments were?”
Sampson half shook his head but half nodded. “I can’t really remember. I was young.”
“But you’re an adult now. And like I said, I know enough about psychics to understand how your minds work. You can access childhood memories in a way normal people can’t. You can walk into them, and you can tell me,” he said, emphasizing the word can, “what your father did to you.”
Can….
Sampson could walk back into the memories of his childhood and relay everything he found.
He could tell Fenton everything the admiral wanted to know. And maybe that information would go on to save the Coalition.
There was one problem. What Fenton thought Sampson could do, he couldn’t do.
The very thought of surrendering himself to his childhood mind was like chopping off his body bit by bit, starting at his toes, ascending to his knees, and marching onward until he reached his mind.
He went to shake his head, and this time the move was far more desperate than it ever had been.
Fenton just weighed his hand harder into Sampson’s shoulder. “You can do this, son. And you have to. In order… in order to find out what’s happening to my daughter,” his voice broke, “I need to know what happened to you first.”
That did it. At the mere mention of Diana, something reached into Sampson’s mind and brought the calm and self-resolve he needed so much right now. It was like a hand reaching through a storm, clutching hold of his shoulder, and providing him with a single anchor so he wouldn’t sink.
He pressed his lips together. He pursed them. He pushed a breath out of them. And he closed his eyes.
Back in the elevator shaft, when Sampson had been prying into Diana’s past, he’d told her that it wasn’t always best to close your eyes. When dealing with a potentially harmful memory, closing your eyes – if you weren’t trained – could just make it worse.
Sampson was trained.
That didn’t make it easy, though. His psychic senses were running wild, and the second he shut his eyelids was the second memory after memory assailed him. They came from every angle. It felt like he was being punched by his recollections. He saw blasts of the gardens outside his father’s four-story laboratory. Sampson had spent so much time there. Or at least, he thought he’d spent time there. In reality, he’d spent almost every single waking moment in his father’s primary lab, inside some kind of pod.
You see, Sampson hadn’t walked the gardens with his body – he’d walked them with his mind.
At that realization, it felt like the memory of his father rose up and kicked him across the jaw. In the real world, Sampson’s head suddenly jerked to the side, and he wasn’t surprised to feel a few slicks of blood sliding down his lips.
He was barely aware of the fact that the doctor rushed out of her office, the pound of her footfall reverberating around the room.
She shared some worried words with Fenton, but Sampson’s mind began to slip again.
Slip back into the past….
He could see himself back inside that pod. He could see his father – no, Professor Ventura – correcting things on some kind of console. Sampson could look right into Professor Ventura’s eyes. He saw no life staring back. He saw no affection. He saw the cold mind of a scientist.
Fenton was right.
From the moment Professor Ventura had acquired Sampson, he’d used him for his psychic experiments.
Sampson could see himself beating against his pod with his hands until they were covered with blood.
In the real world, he brought up a hand and clutched his head, and he dug his fingers in.
His armor suddenly shut down, probably due to the overload of his psychic senses. Before he could do himself any damage, Fenton’s strong hand wrapped around his and dragged it down.
“We have to stop this. He’s breaking down,” Sampson heard the doctor all but shriek.
“He’s stronger than you think. We will continue,” Fenton demanded.
Sampson was stronger than anyone thought? Bullshit. He was weaker. He might be a psychic asset – he might’ve dealt with innumerable cases of Infection Zero – but that didn’t mean anything. Inside, Sampson had always been weak – just this small child beating against the inside of his pod, begging to be let out.
He started to breathe, faster and faster, his chest punching out as he tried to get enough oxygen. But no matter how deeply he gasped, nothing worked. Sweat slid down his brow, but he was too weak to dry it.
He couldn’t move. He was trapped back in that memory.
Back in the horrors his father had put him through.
But right there, between all the horror, was a single ray of light.
James.
James hadn’t known what his father had put Sampson through every day. Professor Ventura was good at hiding things.
Hiding things. Those two words suddenly snaked through Sampson’s mind with all the power of a blast from a heavy cruiser’s turrets.
Despite the fact Fenton was trying to hold down his hand, it didn’t matter. Sampson pushed through. His holographic armor had failed, but he still had the strength to fight against Fenton and his cybernetic implants. Sampson clutched the side of his head, turning his fingers in so hard, he cut the skin, slicks of blood dripping down his cheeks and dashing over his collar.
“Enough. Enough,” the doctor blared.
Fenton paused. “Maybe—”
“No,” Sampson screamed back at them. “Don’t stop this. I can do it,” he found himself screaming.
Strength billowed through him. And it came from the last place he suspected.
It came from his childhood self. All these years, he’d assumed that going back into his past would reveal his weaknesses, overcome his current personality, and wash away everything he’d achieved.
But as he peered into his disturbing childhood, he found something he hadn’t expected.
A strength even greater than that which he possessed now.
Because no matter what Sampson had gone through as a kid, he had endured it.
And he would endure it now.
He dropped his hand from the side of his face, and he forced it into his lap.
“What’s happening to him?” the doctor muttered quickly.
“Regression,” Fenton answered. His voice wasn’t strong anymore. It shook.
It seemed Fenton was regretting pushing Sampson so hard.
There was nothing to regret. Because even if Fenton called this off, Sampson was now determined to push.
You see, there was something hidden in his mind. Memories buried all the way down as deep as they could go.
There was a reason James had never known what his dad was doing to Sampson. That reason was that Professor Ventura had the ability to hide memories.
That was one of the primary experiments he’d been using Sampson for.
It had also been a protection mechanism to ensure that even if Sampson got into the wrong hands, no one would be able to reverse engineer Ventura’s work.
Sampson brought a hand up again. He expected Fenton to pounce on it, but perhaps the admiral understood that Sampson wasn’t on the edge of falling off a cliff into insanity anymore.
The move wasn’t strong. It wasn’t weak, either. Sampson brought his hand up, pressed his fingers into his brow, and slowly slid them down his face. They dragged over the arch of his nose, pushed against his lips, then dropped.
As they did, it felt like he opened a door in his head.
“Ventura was working on accelerating psychic skills,” he found himself saying. “He had the capacity to lock memories. He… found me. I already had psychic skills. Latent, but there. I… I think I had something unique.”
“What is that, son?” Fenton asked, compassion flooding through his tone, all hints of the fiery admiral gone as it sounded like a father stood in to take his place.
Sampson pushed through the haze of his memory. It felt like fighting against thick fog. With every step he took, it just floated around him, threatening to block him off from what he sought.
So he just pushed. And he pushed.
“I think I have the ability to pick up psychic skills. That’s… that’s why I picked up Diana’s ability. It’s like my mind can become imprinted with others’ abilities.”
There was a long pause.
Sampson wasn’t explaining things eloquently. He couldn’t. You try fighting through the thickest fog in the world as you struggled with hidden memories trapped in your mind by a mad scientist.
But maybe Fenton didn’t need Sampson to explain anything clearly. Because the admiral took a tense breath. “Do you know anything else?”
“Professor Ventura… I think he used old Force technology. I think… the Kore have had psychic tech based on Force artifacts for a long time.”
There was a pause. “You are correct,” Fenton said. “Do you remember anything else?”
Sampson tried. He couldn’t. As the fear bled out of him, so did the sharpness of his memories. One remained. James’ smiling face.
Sampson reached out to it until, like cracking glass, his memories just broke away from him.
He opened his eyes, and he was back in the medical bay.
The doctor was nearby, and her face was pale with worry. Her scanner was in her hands, and she clutched it tightly, sliding her fingers over the screen as she quickly stared at Fenton. “He’s… fine.”
“Are you?” Fenton asked.
Sampson gazed at his hands. His nails were slicked with blood, and they were still sweaty from his ordeal. That didn’t stop him from nodding. “Yes. I’m fine. I might be able to dig further into my memories. But—”
“By the sounds of it, you won’t be able to. If you’re right – and I don’t for a second think you’re wrong – then Professor Ventura was using old Force technology to ignite your powers. It’ll be hard to fight past the effects of the memory blocks he put in place.”
Sampson went to nod. He stopped. His eyes darted up to the admiral. “You don’t think… I’m some kind of sleeper agent, do you? You don’t think—”
Fenton brought up a hand. “I’ve dealt with Kore sleeper agents in the past. I know how to detect them. You don’t have the same psychic patterns. I think you were honestly just an experiment. A means for Ventura to hone his skills.”
Sampson sat there and nodded.
He felt cold all over, but it wasn’t a bone-aching cold anymore. It wasn’t the kind of frozen shiver that told you that no matter what happened from now on, you would never be warm again.
… It was just fatigue.
The fatigue of a man who’d finally gone back to a point in his past he’d locked himself off from. The fatigue of a mind that had finally accepted what it once was.
Sampson rubbed a hand over his face, dislodging any more slicks of blood and cleaning them as he rounded his thumb and rolled it down his cheek.
When he was done, he looked at the doctor. “I think I accidentally caused a malfunction in my armor. How long will it take to fix?”
The doctor pressed her lips together hard and looked right at Fenton, making it clear she was not happy with what just happened. “That depends on whether the admiral continues to psychically undermine you.”
Fenton clicked his jaw to the side. “The interrogation is over, doctor. The patient is yours again.” He turned on his foot, presumably to find Forest and debrief.
“Wait,” Sampson shoved forward on his bed, “what happens now?”
“The plan has not changed. We are about to deploy the modified neuro gel gas. It should – at least theoretically – wipe out existing Force units on Academy grounds. Once that is done, we have backup waiting in the city and in orbit, and it will descend on the Academy. We will secure the grounds. And then—”
“We head to Baxan A,” Sampson said quietly.
Fenton turned over his shoulder and nodded once.
Sampson was going back.
This was it. He’d be able to stand on the ground that had taken his brother from him. And in standing on that ground, he’d be able to come full circle.
And then?
It would be time to fight the war.