Piece Simul ✔

Chapter 48-Samuel- Deja Vu

Tiptree had only been gone a minute before Samuel decided to follow her.

He hated to admit. She was right. They needed to know what was going on. Waiting, while safer, wasn't the best way to go.

Samuel prided himself on being careful, on measured control. Which is why he balked whenever losing his shit. He wasn't used to overt displays, not from himself.

That day before he'd boarded was an anomaly; he couldn't help himself. It was not his fault. It was a sentence he held onto with great tenacity.

Sometimes he added variances:

It wasn't my fault, and it was an accident.

Though, what Samuel had done had been far from accidental.

~*~

Samuel took the back way. Having planned with engineering, he knew the ship almost as well has Russ. There was a faster way to reach the control module. Plus, he needed to stop off and check something first. Quell his worried mind.

Not all of the lights were working. Fuel-saving measure. Shadows danced on the walls as he inched past. He checked in the mess hall, ducking his head in and ducking it right back out when he noticed Tiptree speaking into an interface. She was whispering, back to him, sounding distressed. Then she crept away toward the opposite direction.

Samuel could have called out to her. He chose not to. The two rogue elements on the ship could be anywhere, and her whispers indicated they might be near. It was more important than ever that he visit where he had intended to go all along.

On the day he had set up the back up protocol, he had imagined how destructive it could be if Rotsberg had planted any Green-Eyed sympathizers aboard.

It didn't matter that he had already combed through the personnel files. She had buried them in there, and she had done a good job of it. Every face, every credential seemed ordinary in their extraordinary over-achievements. There was no way to know who he could trust. Seeing as how this was the last chance at finding a cure, there was also no time to cancel and sound any alarms.

Though, he lingered on Russ's file. She had been attacked by Green-Eyed, and survived. This put her in the "possible radical camp," but Samuel reasoned against it. He rarely followed instinct, and scoffed at those who proudly claimed they did. In the case of Russ, he instinctively believed he could trust her.

That's what prompted Samuel to do something less than accidental. He went back to Rotsberg's house. He needed to.

The rooms remained untouched, looking barely lived in and chic all at once. In the bedroom, ruffled sheets and strewn clothes were the only indication anyone had lived there.

Samuel treaded warily by the balcony. He averted his eyes, momentarily squeezing them shut.

No!

Rotsberg's anguished face burned across his thoughts, despite his attempts to block it out.

On the first floor, she lay on the concrete, a crumpled heap of broken limbs and a busted skull. Her face, bloated and rotting, no longer seemed in anguish.

[Her outstretched arm]

No. This was much, much worse.

In a near daze, he picked up her still elegant wrist, held her palm steady (the one he should have reached back for), and pressed her cold finger onto a square membrane. Once her impression was fully molded, he carefully laid her arm back down, on the unforgiving concrete.

Her fingerprint had allowed him to circumvent interface protocols, and grant Russ clearance for the duration of the journey. Otherwise, he would've been stuck relying on Forster, who had a daughter with questionable radical ties. The real radicals had now revealed themselves.

Determined, Samuel continued on to the main corridor, oblong key in hand. As he suspected, the classified zone had been breached, with the particle curtain now a blank space in the wall. One of the traitors must have obtained a third key. Damn Rotsberg. This thing had been fucked from the start, even more than he'd known.

He stayed at the opening, deja vu crippling his movement. If he stepped inside, he knew he'd find an ugliness he couldn't

[her cold, limp wrist]

turn back from.

The momentary weakness passed over him. Samuel forced himself over the threshold into the restricted area.

Just as he had with Rotsberg, he would take care of the subversive loose ends, no matter the cost.