Diana Fenton
She didn’t want to do this. She really didn’t want to do this. But she had no option.
She’d already agreed.
And she could understand why Sampson needed this.
Though Diana’s psychic powers were still only just coming to the fore, and most of the information she felt was simply confusing, around Sampson it was clear. Crystal clear.
There was some great trauma in his past, and with every passing hour, it bled like a fresh new wound.
Diana could understand Forest’s point. If she allowed Sampson to go into battle with that wound, either the Force would find some way to use it against him, or Sampson would unwittingly unpick it himself.
She was sitting in his quarters, cross-legged. Forest had suggested the med bay, but Diana had overruled her. Because yeah, she could overrule an admiral these days. When it came to her psychic powers, Diana needed to be the one to safeguard them. She also had to protect Sampson. She didn’t want what would happen next to be public.
He was currently walking back and forth in front of the windows. He had pretty generous quarters. Diana could guess that had to do with his command position, whatever it was. She still couldn’t wrap her head around exactly where he fit in the chain of command. He was below an admiral, but that was all that was clear.
Not for the first time, she wondered just how many other secret groups like the psych corps protected the Coalition without anyone else knowing. How many other brave souls were out there right now, on the edge of war, preparing to do anything they could to protect everyone else?
“Sampson,” she encouraged in a quiet voice when he turned hard on his foot and continued another tour of the window.
He was pacing so fast, his boots could light a fire.
“Give me some time. I’m getting myself in the zone.” His hands were clasped behind his back, and as he turned from her and walked quickly along the side of the wall once more, she could see just how tensed his shoulders were. It looked as if someone had gone and replaced the muscles with reinforced wire.
“Sampson, I don’t want to push you, but we don’t—”
“Have time,” he said as he ground to a stop. He didn’t face her. He stared out the windows. She couldn’t see his face – but she caught just a few glimmers of his reflection, enough to see how pressed and contracted the skin around his eyes had become. It was like he was desperately trying to hold on to them. And maybe that wasn’t so crazy. As a psychic, she already understood that it was the eye – more than any other organ – that allowed another psychic entry to your mind.
“Sampson, I know I don’t seem like I know what I’m doing. But—”
“This has nothing to do with you,” he said around a swallow.
“We don’t have time,” she repeated. It was goddamn cruel, but she had to do it. Chief Engineer Andrews had already fixed the propulsion system of the Oden, and they were once more punching their way to Baxan A. It would take two more days to get there.
That was it. Just two days.
She needed to go through all of the crew members in two days to look for spies.
As that thought struck her, she brought up a slightly trembling hand and locked it along her hairline. She dragged it down the back of her skull. She didn’t care that the jagged edges of her nails snagged a few stray hairs and pulled them roughly out of her bun.
Sampson finally turned. She hadn’t made a noise, but that didn’t matter, did it, because he was a psychic? His gaze flicked over to hers. “Don’t—”
“What? Push myself? What are you about to say, Sampson? Because I guarantee it cuts both ways.”
His jaw stiffened. His hands were still clasped behind his back, and he was holding them so rigidly, it looked like he’d created a frame with his shoulders and elbows – one that could hold up a heavy cruiser. “… Diana.”
“What?” She stared up at him defiantly.
He just let out a breath. He went to turn away.
She’d been seated cross-legged in the hopes that it would encourage him to come over and join her. Now she locked a hand on the carpet and pushed up. She walked up to him. She stared at him, and she made no attempt to control her expression. Her eyebrows looked as if they’d caved in, her lips were weak as they parted gently, and her eyes – her eyes would look like two confused pools of embittered emotion.
She didn’t want to be doing this. She didn’t want him to have to do this. And she goddamn didn’t want to have to fight the Force.
But here they were, doing all those things.
At least they could do this together, though, right?
Before Diana thought through what she was doing, she reached a hand forward. She shifted around his side, despite the fact she was standing in front of him. It meant her arm brushed right down his as she collapsed her fingers around his wrist.
“What are you doing?” His chest tightened as he pushed those words out. His whole body became tight, too.
She ignored it as, using no strength at all – just her gentle, prying fingers – she pulled his hands apart. She pressed her hand further around his wrist, and she pulled it around.
“Diana.” His voice was quiet and pressured – not with anger, just with emotion. “What—”
She grabbed his hand, flattened her palm against his, and pressed her fingers through his.
Then she closed her eyes.
“Diana—” he tried again. But this time, he cut off abruptly.
She pushed into his mind. She didn’t do it like she had in the past. This wasn’t her curiosity getting the better of her. Nor was this a violent move. She just… let herself spread. It was the equivalent of opening her mental arms and waiting for him to accept her embrace.
Did she feel open? Oh God did she feel open. She felt vulnerable in a way that was almost impossible to describe.
And with every second that Sampson didn’t accept her mind, her old, socially anxious self threatened to rise – the Diana who’d languished years at the Academy without a single friend. The Diana who’d been pushed from family to family after her parents had died. The Diana who – no matter what she did – was always pushed to the back of the class.
She didn’t let that Diana rise for long.
She just kept standing there, her mind open.
Just when she thought Sampson would tug back and end this, she felt a shudder shaking through his chest, down his arm, and into his fingers. It enlivened them, and suddenly, he tightened them, grabbing her hand for the first time instead of weakly allowing her to hold him.
He opened his lips. He didn’t say anything.
What was there to say when you had a method of communication far clearer than that of the mouth and lips?
Sampson finally opened up.
It was the most exhilarating experience of her life. As Diana had said – she was only just coming into her powers. Every day – every new hour, heck – was bringing a new psychic revelation.
Fighting was one thing, however.
This… she couldn’t explain it. All she could do was stand there and experience it as, slowly, she completely lost all awareness of where she was. Her boots didn’t matter as they pressed against the carpet. Her uniform didn’t matter as it pressed against her skin. Her hand didn’t even matter as it pressed against Sampson’s.
All that counted was her mind and his.
She didn’t honestly know how you were meant to start a regression session. She hoped Sampson would tell her.
He didn’t need to.
As she opened up her psychic energy, he seemed to grab hold of it.
It was the equivalent of what he’d done for her back in the engineering bay when he’d somehow shared his energy, enabling her to use it to knock out all of the infected in one effective attack.
She did the same for him. She provided him with all the energy – and security – he needed.
And Sampson slipped back into the past.
But he was not alone. She stayed by his side, and she would not leave.
This wasn’t the first time Diana had been thrown into a memory. Whenever Bequelia had tried to do it, it had always come with terror and disgust.
Diana felt the same emotions swelling through Sampson, but another overshadowed them. Fear at what he was forgetting.
In the real world, she tightened her fingers around his. In the psychic world, she tightened her arms around him.
And together, they slipped into the past until Diana found herself literally walking into a memory.
One moment, she was standing there in his quarters. The next, she was in some kind of large laboratory.
It was split into two levels, one containing banks upon banks of consoles, and the other stepping down into an area devoted to some kind of enormous, elaborate pod-like machine. It was easily five meters by five meters, and it was hooked up with tubes and cables that littered the floor like messy tendrils of hair.
There was a glass window in the pod. As Diana’s body settled into the memory, and she started to be able to move her limbs, she strode over to it.
Something was pounding on it.
She pressed her hands against the pod and pushed onto her tiptoes as she brought her face in line with the small window.
Cold dread spiraled through her. A child was inside. He was pounding so hard against the pod, his fists were covered in blood. It splattered over the glass and the chest of his rumpled medical tunic.
Diana didn’t need anyone to tell her who that child was. “Sampson,” she shrieked.
Her voice didn’t echo around the room. It pushed from her lips, sure, and yet, it couldn’t interact with the memory.
It was the same when she took a jerked step back from the pod, located the open hatch, and tried to punch it open.
Her fingers reached it, sure, and she could feel its unique, smooth texture. But she couldn’t interact with it.
“Sampson!” she bellowed again.
Nothing.
She brought a hand up and locked it over her chest as she breathed through her despair.
She jerked her head around, staring at the lab.
She had to find some way—
“You can’t break me out,” a cold voice said from beside her.
Sampson appeared there. He hadn’t been standing there a second before, but now, it was as if he’d always been there – like he was a fixture of this memory, the fulcrum around which it turned.
“Sampson. What—”
“That’s me. My childhood self,” he said in a detached tone. “Always beating against walls. I guess that’s where I got my current personality from,” he said, somehow chuckling.
Despair wrenched at her features, feeling as if it would rip her lips from her mouth and close her eyes until she squeezed them out of the back of her skull. “This is awful.”
“It is what it is,” he said using that same detached tone. He turned over his shoulder, his expression somehow locked – frozen in place as if someone had injected ice into every muscle. His gaze swiveled around the laboratory. “I guess I’m back home, ha?”
“I’m so sorry, Sampson.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Diana. This is—”
“Don’t say that this is what it is,” she spat, anger riding through her tone. “This is horrible.”
He faced her. For several seconds he said nothing. Finally, a few cracks appeared in his veneer of frozen detachment. The skin around his eyes crumpled, and his lips slowly widened. “And yet, it is what it is.”
“I….” She had no idea what to say.
“Just stay with me – that’s all I need.” He took a breath. “We just need to find out what my father buried in my head.”
She wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to rest her head on his chest. And she wanted to whisper in his ear, over and over again, that she was sorry this had happened to him.
… But he didn’t need that. He needed this. He needed to understand what happened to him all those years ago.
So despite how hard it was, Diana just stood there by his side.
The door to the lab opened, and in walked a man. He was human, though the look in his eyes wasn’t familiar.
It was cold and dead as if someone had taken his soul, thrown it into the depths of space, waited for it to die, then crammed it back into his skull.
Diana would never have thought of descriptions like that before – but as a psychic, she couldn’t push that particular conclusion away.
She instantly had a visceral reaction to the man, and her hackles rose as her shoulders shoved hard toward her ears.
“Yeah, that’s my dad,” Sampson said in an ironic tone underneath which was a pool of everlasting anger.
Professor Ventura walked in. He had one hand in his pocket and a data pad hooked under his other arm. He casually checked several consoles on the first mezzanine level, then whistled as he jumped down to the level where the pod was.
He actually whistled. It was cheery, too, as if he wasn’t just checking on a victim he was experimenting on, but taking a kid to the park.
Diana curled her hands into fists. She wanted to tear the image of Professor Ventura from this memory. She wanted to scrunch it up, crumpling him like paper. Then she wanted to goddamn burn the recollection of him.
Maybe some of her anger spread out, because Sampson took a step up to her. He grasped one of her hands up and held it tightly.
She stared at him. He was comforting her when it should be the other way around.
“Don’t do anything. Just watch.” Sampson tilted his head around and stared at Ventura.
The professor walked casually up to the pod. Diana was aware of the fact that the childhood Sampson inside was still banging against it. Even from here, she could see little slicks of blood sliding down the top of the window. They were tumbling down like rain.
… Yet Professor Ventura didn’t look at them once.
He clearly wasn’t deaf, because he responded to a beep on the console beside him, shoved a hand out, typed something without looking, then went back to his data pad.
Finally, he hooked it back under his arm, and he shot the pod a calculating look. “Time for another experiment, son.”
The older Sampson bristled. She could feel as his back hunched forward and nerves cascaded over his skin like electricity from a live wire. “I guess that’s why I hate the word son,” he muttered.
“How can he call you that?” She could barely push the words out.
“Professor Ventura always had a broken mind,” Sampson said in a somehow neutral tone as Ventura continued to work.
At one point, Ventura walked right up to Diana, and before she could do anything, he strode through her.
It was a disgusting sensation. She didn’t exactly know how she was interacting with this memory, but she clearly had some kind of physical presence in it, because as Ventura walked through her, she sensed his mind.
It was just as dark as you’d expect.
Sampson grabbed her hand harder, locking his fingers around hers and holding her in place.
“That felt like having a demon pass through me,” she spat.
“Just watch,” Sampson said. There was a pleading edge to his voice now. His veneer of control was cracking. His cheeks had turned pale, sickly white, and his eyes had become so hooded, it looked as if he was struggling with every second to keep them open.
He looked nauseous.
Ventura smiled. “Do you remember what you were doing this morning, son?”
From inside the pod, she swore Sampson’s childhood self started to scream.
Ventura made a move as if he was trying to listen. He clicked his fingers. “Sorry, audio’s turned off.” He typed something on his wrist device.
The childhood Sampson’s screams echoed through the room. It was one of the most gut-wrenching things she’d ever heard.
Diana crumpled.
So did Sampson. His shoulders hooked in until it felt as if he was going to fall to his knees and crumple into a ball.
Instinctively, she shifted closer to him. She pressed her arm up against his. And as she did, she opened her mind wider.
“Now, do you remember what you were doing this morning, son?” Ventura continued.
“Let me out, let me out, let me out,” the childhood Sampson screamed.
“Do you remember what you were doing this morning, son?”
“Please—”
“We talked about this. You will only feel pain during these sessions. You will forget them afterward. Now I just need to know what you were doing this morning. You were throwing your mind again, weren’t you? Such a peculiar skill of yours. Where exactly did you reach this time? Was it the gardens? Was it further? Did you manage to penetrate the city yet?”
“Just let me out,” the young Sampson whimpered.
The older Sampson stood as stiffly as if someone had replaced his spine with a steel pole. His cheeks slackened, and his eyes opened wide.
“What is it?” Diana hissed.
Sampson brought his free hand up and pressed the tips of his fingers next to his eyes. “I… I’m remembering something.”
“Just—” the younger Sampson tried.
“Answer the question. If you’d like to get out of this laboratory and have this session wiped from your memory, then answer.”
“… I was throwing my mind,” the young Sampson answered. “I managed to get past the gardens but not into the city.”
Ventura clenched his teeth together and hissed through them. “Why not? We’ve been developing your powers, son. Why haven’t you been able to push further?”
“Just let me out.”
“You will be let out. Later. For now, we must make full use of those incredible skills of yours. There’s no one quite like you, Sampson. And as a scientist, I must help you to become all that you can be.”
The older Sampson gave a shudder that passed from his back all the way down to his feet, and it felt like it had the power of an earthquake.
“Sampson,” Diana hissed. “We can end this—”
“No way. I just remember that saying, that’s all. Ventura used to say that to me all the time. That he had to help me to become all that I could be.” Sampson curled a hand into such a tight fist, he could have broken his fingers, his palm, and his wrist.
“There’s no one like you, my son. And the Coalition will need you to fight the Force.” Ventura suddenly twitched as he said the words the Force. The convulsion passed through his whole body, quaking his shoulders, shaking his knees, and sending such a violent contraction through his cheeks, it looked as if someone had just stabbed him with nails.
“What?” Diana’s voice trembled.
Sampson didn’t move. For a second, she thought that somehow his mind had been removed from this recollection, because his body became so cold and stiff, it couldn’t be real.
“Sampson, what are you talking about?” she tried.
He couldn’t answer.
If she thought he’d shown nothing but blank emotional detachment when they’d entered this memory, now she couldn’t be more wrong.
Sampson looked as if he’d been crushed, remade, then crushed again.
“We can’t let the Force win, can we?” Ventura said, his voice becoming quicker. “I will need soldiers like you, son. We’ll need you to save the Coalition. You understand that, don’t you?” His voice kept getting faster and faster until he spat his words out like a machine gun spraying bullets.
“I couldn’t reach the city. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” the younger Sampson spat. His voice trembled.
All Diana wanted to do was open the pod, wrap her arms around him, and pull him out.
She couldn’t. So she stood there, the tears trailing down her cheeks as she held onto the real Sampson’s hand with all her might.
“You will be able to protect whole cities, Sampson. You’ll be able to fight the Force’s soldiers remotely. But only,” Ventura’s words became as hard as a slap, “if you learn to throw your mind properly. So throw it.”
“I’m sorry, sorry,” the childhood Sampson wept.
“I’ve had enough,” the elder Sampson replied.
“Sampson—”
“We’re getting out of this memory. I remember everything now.” He turned hard.
Before she could stop him, he walked up to the pod, stared at his past self, closed his eyes, then walked right through the pod.
Diana jerked, the strangest sensation crossing through her. Her shoulders twisted to the side, she fell down to one knee, and her head lolled against her shoulder.
The next thing she knew, the recollection simply crumbled.
She felt as if she was turned inside out, then outside in, broken, then remade.
A second later, she reappeared in Sampson’s room.
She rocked back, but before she could fall over, Sampson crunched close and locked an arm around her back.
Her eyes threatened to roll into the back of her head, but finally, they settled. And so did her mind. It no longer felt like a rubber band that had been stretched to its extreme and then snapped back.
With a few blinks, she stared up at Sampson.
He was still holding her at an angle, his hand locked behind her back, his reassuring, large, warm grip like an anchor.
“Sampson,” she stuttered.
“We did it,” he said. His voice was quiet, yet it wasn’t cold.
“… You remember everything?”
Sampson tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“… What was Ventura talking about? He… he said you were some kind of weapon to protect the Coalition.”
Sampson settled her on her feet. He took a step back. His head was still tilted up as if he was trying to stare through the top of the ship out to space beyond. He brought a hand up, locked it over his eyes, and settled it there for several seconds. When he dropped it, it was like a cloak fell from his shoulders. A dark cloak of tortured memories.
He smiled.
Despite everything she’d just seen, her lips curled up in return. “… Sampson?”
“My father was a misguided bastard. I remember it all now. He was tortured by the Kore. He was a scientist, and he escaped their clutches. They’d been making him work on Force tech. Specifically, they’d been making him work on experiments that used Force tech to increase latent psychic skills.”
“So when he got back to Coalition space, he continued his experiments on you?” Her voice trembled.
“He was a broken man.”
“That doesn’t mean we should forgive him—”
He brought a hand up and spread his fingers wide. “I’m not excusing his behavior. I’m just telling you the facts. And in Ventura’s twisted psyche, the only way he could make up for what the Kore did to him was to use all the research they’d made him do to create a weapon that could fight them and the Force.”
“And that was you,” she acknowledged quietly.
It took Sampson a few seconds to nod. “That was me.”
“So you’re not a sleeper agent?”
He shook his head. “Though, technically, I guess I am. Just not against the Coalition. I need to talk to Forest.”
“You need to rest. I don’t know much about the psychic world – but that took it out of you, didn’t it?”
He chuckled. “The last four days have taken everything out of me. This can’t wait, though.”
“Let me come with you,” Diana asked. Heck, she begged. She didn’t want to leave his side.
She wouldn’t leave his side ever again.
Maybe her mind was open, because Sampson’s expression changed. Confusion played in his eyes until a smile spread his lips. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back. It’s time for you to get some rest.”
“Sampson.”
He stopped halfway to the door, and he turned. “What?”
“I’m….”
“You’re about to say sorry for what happened to me, ha?”
She shrugged. She didn’t know how to make this better anymore.
“From this point on, there are no sorries about our pasts. From this point on, all we have to do is ensure that there’s a future.” With that, he walked out.
She felt cold and alone.
No, not alone. She fell down to her knees and locked her hands around her arms, goose pimples playing along her skin as she realized she’d finally found someone exactly like her.
And Sampson was right, together, they would ensure a future for all.