Ouroboros 3: Repeat by Odette C. Bell

medical facility of the Academy. The walk across the grounds should have been pleasant; there was a gentle breeze rustling through the oaks, and Carson had his hand over hers.
    Again, she was almost drawn in by the warmth of his grip.
    But again, she stopped herself.
    Instead, she followed. She let the simulation lead her forward.
    Eventually she found herself in the medical bay, and it was a seriously strange experience. After all, the last time she’d been there, she’d trashed the place.
    All those weeks ago, the entity had forced her to escape the Academy. It had controlled her body, breaking her out of her room and forcing her to steal a ship.
    Yet now the corridors were clean, normal, and full of friendly, smiling Academy officers and cadets.
    ‘ Everything will be fine,’ Carson cooed again, his head close to hers as he leaned down to point towards a room. ‘It’ll just be a few more tests. We’ll find out what’s going on soon.’
    She forced herself to smile at his promise.
    And she held onto it.
    Because she would find out what was happening soon.
    She was going to go through with this simulation until it revealed exactly what the Vex were after. She was going to collect every scrap of information she could on them.
    And she would get the chance to fight back.
    As she thought that, she unconsciously pumped her left hand back and forth.
    She remembered the entity.
    She remembered opening the time gate. She deliberately walked her memory through exactly how it had felt, through every move she had made to gain access to the entity’s power.
    But she didn’t breathe a word of it, for in that moment she unconsciously understood that was what the Vex were after. And if not just that fact, then one of them.
    They wanted to know how to use the entity; they wanted to manipulate it for their own ends.
    Immediately she was reminded of her final vision before she had opened the time gate.
    She had been standing in a pristine and sophisticated city as the inhabitants had run from some invisible threat. Then she’d seen it rush towards her. A wall of destruction. A wall of force flattening everything in its path.
    Dust rampaging over the landscape and raking away everything beneath it.
    Yet within that wall of dust had danced the entity. Its blue glow unmistakable. It had burnt and powered through the buildings, the people, the rubble. It had sunk deep into the ground.
    She blinked hard, the raw emotion of that vision rising in her throat.
    Instinctively her hand closed tighter around Carson’s.
    ‘ It’s okay,’ he said immediately, bringing up a hand to push her hair back.
    That was something the real Carson did a lot. A move her stomach always clenched at, her heart always shuddering with a moment of genuine expectation.
    But this wasn’t real.
    So she just let Carson squeeze her hand and push back her fringe. And whilst he did, she thought.
    She blinked, she breathed, and she tried her hardest to figure this out.
    ‘ Here we go,’ Carson said as he opened the door before her.
    He led her forward into a large room that housed several powerful consoles. In the middle was a bed.
    ‘Just head over there and sit down; the doctors will be right with you,’ he smiled reassuringly.
    She nodded.
    A few seconds later the door opened again, and several doctors walked through, all wearing the unmistakable red and white garb of the Galactic Coalition Academy Medical Wing.
    Several told her everything would be find, and all smiled at her.
    She should have felt safe, relieved, fine, comfortable even.
    She didn’t.
    She simply walked over to that bed and she sat down, locking her hands onto her knees as she breathed heavily and purposefully.
    ‘ It won’t hurt at all,’ one of the doctors said in a compassionate tone. ‘In fact, first we just want to ask some questions.’
    Of course they did.
    ‘What does it feel like when the entity takes control?’ someone asked.
    She swallowed, briefly looked at her hands, then