Benford woke up to the sound of his phone going off.
Blinking several times he grabbed it off the nightstand and frowned at the display. Unregistered number? at 2:30 am? What the hell?
Slowly he pressed the button to answer the call and moved the device to his ear:”Benford.”
“Mister Benford” a seemingly young female voice repeated. Sounding way to awake for this time of the night, or morning, what was it again?:”This is staff sergeant Dawn, sorry to call you at this time of the night, I’m the medic on captain Will Creightons team”
The name definatly got Stephen’s attention and he righted himself into a sitting position. When Will Creighton was considered for employment at Division P, Everbody from the recruiting organisation had been a little hesistant to clear the young army captain for the ten week training program at their compound.  Describing him as a little standoffish, cold, and extremely tense. That, compaired with the fact they knew he was a mental dominant and a sniper, the latter being the biggest cause for concern as the mindset of a sniper often seemed to border on sociopath, they decided to fly Stephen over to the west coast division for a personal evaluation.
It didn't take Stephen long to figure out that what everyone was feeling was that the man was struggling with feelings of extreme guilt about his job and "victems". Will turned those feelings inward, resulting in suicidal thoughts. Something he had been trying to hide for a long time.
“Is he okay?” stupid question ofcourse, as she wouldn’t be calling him if he was, so he quickly changed his words and added:”what happened?”
His question was followed with a hesistant silence before the woman answered:”Well, the truth is that we don’t know. He collapsed during a survival training excersise” another silence:”He’s not fysically wounded”
“And yet he’s unstable and his stats are erratic”  Stephen finished the sentence in a matter of fact. He knew exactly what was going on and he needed to get Peter, NOW.

“We have a major problem”
Peter Vithaulkas looked up from his desk in surprise. It was unlikely for anyone to burst into the infirmary on a normal day without him expecting it, let alone in the middle of the night, and on top of that, the always put-together psychologist. This was already weird so he doubted he wanted to know what was going on:” What’s going on?”
He couldn’t sense any discomfort from the man, although he guessed Stephen would easily be able to block him from sensing it. He usually did.
Part of being a mental dominant was the ability to block everyone out, even others with psychic abilities. They could also make you do whatever they wanted and hide their presence. Which was frustration as hell.
Thankfully Stephen was one of the kindest, most gentle persons he knew, with a high morale and clear boundaries.
“you remember Will Creighton?”  Stephen took a seat in the desk chair opposite his. All the beds in the ward were thankfully empty so he assumed Peter had been updating patient files or reading up on some kind of medical study. After the bombing, the quit was a welcome change of pace for everyone but especially for the healer who had gotten badly wounded himself. The wounds had been so severe that Stephen had to block Peter’s talent as it was causing the man paralyzing pain whenever he used it. It was good to see him back in his domain:”I got off the phone with the medic on his team. Apparently, he collapsed during survival training and hasn’t regained consciousness ever since” he sighed:” It’s bad, his heart has even stopped a couple of times.”
Peter nodded pensively:”So, moving him is out of the question, we need to get a team to him.” Because of deadly fatalities in the past, Peter and Stephen had been working hard on a safety plan for cases like this. In the past year, they managed to get their hands on a fully equipped ambulance, but  even that would not be fast enough:” We could try Mason but”
“We need to do it fast, I know, and we need Andrew to pull some major strings”
“That too” Peter stood up from his chair:” in the meantime, this medic needs to isolate him and touch has to stay at a bare minimum” he started thinking out loud, shaking his head in frustration. Even though they made a lot of progress with the purchase of the ambulance, Alaska was so far away, that the chance of them getting there in time…
“Do you know anybody he’s close with? Someone we could contact? Preferably closer by then we are” damn, they needed to do so something to buy them some more time. It wouldn’t be the first time they lost a life to psi shock simply because help couldn’t get there in time:” This should not be happening anymore.”
Stephen looked up at him and finally simply nodded after letting him ramble on:”I know Peter, but the only thing we can do at the moment is deal with the situation at hand and try our best.” He sighed softly:”I told her to do everything you just told me” he tried to reassure the ma. This wasn’t his first rodeo either:” And seeing the fact they, or she called me I don’t think there is a significant other. His family is out of the picture, parents are no longer alive so that leaves him in the hands of this medic.

After the strange conversation with the psychologist, listed as Will’s emergency contact, Dawn had tried to collaborate with Rhee. Who had been, understandably, reluctant to move the captain out of his sights purely because a civilian and a sergeant thought it would be better.
It also hadn’t helped that Dawn had been reluctant and insecure in relaying the message she had gotten on the phone, making her delivery weaker than her normal, take charge and do as you’re told attitude when she was working.
In the end, they argued that the course they had been taking wasn’t working either so, it was moving him a little inside the building or trying to arrange a transfer to the Basset Army Community Hospital in the middle of the night, risking Will would survive the further travel.
Going with option one, they moved Will, further down the hall fifty minutes later, to a classroom that was the farthest away from any other personnel.
Rhee did a careful final check and left with the words to call him if things changed.
Dawn appreciated the trust the man showed her by leaving. Especially as Rhee hadn’t full-heartedly agreed with the move and was probably wondering again why he was even listening to information, relayed to him by a lower-rank officer, from a phone call with an unknown person. Crazy right?
The truth was that Dawn didn’t know either, he’s suffering from a sensory overload condition, as Stephen had called it, seemed a little hocus pocus to her, but then again she figured isolating the man couldn’t really hurt him any worse than he already was.
No harm, no foul.
Walking to the other side of the room, making sure she was as far away from Will as she could, and was allowed to under orders, Dawn sat down on a chair facing the bed and sighed.
Bullet holes, IEDs, heart attacks, you name it, that she could deal with, had dealt with. These quiet moments afterward, though, those moments got on her nerves,  making her feel uneasy and useless as there was nothing more to do than...what?
What was she supposed to do now?
What could she do against a wound she couldn’t see or even identify.

In the dark, the old school building seemed to rise out of nowhere. The road leading up to it was surrounded by trees, making it feel like you were driving through a forest, the road suddenly stopped at the edge of a large, open field. The school, located right in the middle of it, had obviously been exposed to the extreme Alaska weather for a long, long time.
The outside brick walls were discolored and chiseled in multiple places, giving it an ominous and haunted vibe.
That combined with the poor lighting, and the reason they had to come here, made it officially not the place to be, anywhere else was probably better.
“I swear, if I see a bear I’m out of here” Nick Diorides joked, looking at his boss, Steve Milbourne, who just got out of the car, and their psychic healer, Claire Holden.
They had left Los Angeles after receiving a call from Division P’s director, Andrew Bottman, who told them that a new recruit was in trouble.
Even though the headquarters of Division P, located in Suffolk, Virginia had more available personnel and had gotten the original call from the medic, it would have taken them another additional 5 to 6 hours on top of the 5 it had already taken them to get here and time was of the essence.
“Oh come on Nick, where is your sense of adventure?” Claire joked back, giving him a pad on the shoulder while Steve talked to the guard standing at the entrance of the school. She gathered her bags from the back of their rented pick-up truck and followed the three men inside.
Thankfully, despite the structure looking even older and worse to wear on the inside,  a nice warmth spread over them as they got inside.
A tall, muscular man approached Steve in the middle of the hall, his whole demeanor screaming get the hell of my property:” I’m Captain MacConnel” Not extending a hand he just stared the three of them down. Yeah, he was not happy his rank was being overruled.
“Captain” Steve acknowledged, a smile tucking at his lips:” Would you please show us the way to Captain Creighton? We don’t want to waste any time” It had already been so long that every second counted. Especially in the case of psi-shock and of course, Steve also didn’t mind yanking the man's chain for a moment after the warm welcome.
Division P had seniority over almost every military department and using it was, unfortunately, a priority at times.
In silence they were led down a hallway, passing several classrooms. At the far end, the man finally stopped to open a door and held it to let them inside.
The windows in the room had been covered with blankets, leaving only the lights in the hallway as a light source. On the left side, tables were stacked against a wall to make room for the bed, the man lying on top of it was early still.  On the other side, facing the bed, a tiny athletically built woman stood up from a wooden chair and saluted.
“Sergeant” Rhee saluted back:” these men are here for Will” he gave a dismissive, almost unacknowledgeable gesture towards Steve, Nick, and Claire:” Tell them what you know and come get me if there are any problems” turning around to face Steve he continued:” This better be worth it”.
With those grumbled words he stomped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
As soon as they were alone the woman walked over:” Thank you for coming, I’m Sergeant Mills, I recon Dr. Benford send you?”
With a big smile at hearing the name of her partner, Claire nodded and reached out to shake the woman's hand:” He did” She dragged out the words a little, surprised when she felt nothing other than the light warm pressure as the sergeant eventually took her hand. Claire gave Steve a look before continuing:” he wanted to come himself but the situation asked for a quicker solution.”
“I understand” The woman redrew her hand and glanced wearily at the bed:” Not sure what you can do but, nothing we tried so far seems to be working.”
Taking that as her cue, Claire quickly walked over to the man as Steve laid a hand on the sergeants shoulder who tried to follow her:” We will take it from here”

After the sergeant had left Steve turned around towards Claire who had sat down at Will’s head, her hands cupping the sides of the man's face:” How is he doing?”
“Well, physically he’s okay, or he will be, but..” she frowned and opened her eyes for a moment:” I don’t know, something’s off” Her gaze got a little more focused, probably because she dialed back her healing talent a little as she talked to him:” Stephen once told me that mental dominants tent to process trauma differently, even compared to other psi’s. perhaps that's it.”
Stephen had been, intentionally, hit by a car.  Despite he had been able to jump out of the way, the car had graced his legs and he had hit his head pretty hard. When the EMT had arrived and wanted to examine and admit him to the hospital, Claire noticed they always seemed to forget what they were doing, apparently because Stephen was using his talent to put suggestions in their mind, they ended up releasing him into her care and just left. After that she had taken Stephen, who barely made it, to her apartment where he suddenly collapsed to the ground, only inches away from death:” Maybe something like it is happening to him.” she repeated, closing her eyes she ramped up her talent as and sighed softly:” I can, hopefully, get him stable enough to get him to Suffolk. I think he really needs Peter and Stephen both and..” this time she looked up and gave Steve a little smile:” maybe we should get Sergeant cuty back”
Steve had listened closely until Claire's last words, groaning he shook his head:” you better be talking for Will” he warned:” I’m done with your matchmaking skills” Despite his warning tone he reciprocated the woman's smile. For some unknown reason, the healer had made it her mission to hook him up with a woman ever since his younger brother, Brayden, got into a stable relationship:” So for Will sure, I will get her." he repeated clarifying again, even though he was pretty sure Claire wasn't really going to match him with a twenty-six-year-old "I will have to talk to her first, and I reckon her superiors are going to blow a casket” He held up his hands, seeing Claire’s look:” I know, I know, you don’t care but it's better to remain friendly until we're ready to depart so let's just focus on getting Will good enough to transfer. when we're home you can matchmake again”
“Oh Steve, you are bruising my ego. I can multitask” Another smile was sent his way before she returned her attention to the captain, closing her eyes.
Time to get to work.
Nick walked outside to take a protective position at the door, nobody in or out, while Steve left in search of the sergeant

Dawn could take a hint.
The words of the slender man had sounded nice and sincere enough but there was no mistaking the  I want you gone undertone.  Too exhausted to argue, and to be honest, a little too freaked out about the whole ordeal she had indeed left.
For now.
Will collapsing, the scream in her head, the weird phone call with Benford, and now these civilians just showing up, taking charge, and acting like it was business as usual. It was weird and too much.
Grabbing a cup of coffee she made her way outside. The freezing cold was a welcome distraction for once.
Taking a sip from the lead-tasting black gooey drink, she shook her head:” Just let will be okay” she mumbled quietly to herself.  He needed to be okay.
Will had always been this solid, calm presence in the team. Like a big brother always watching out for everyone. Which was a little ironic as he was a skilled sniper, with an insane high accuracy rate, always looking over them.
Of course, she had also noticed something was bothering him for the past year, something simmering beneath the surface, eating away at him. She just hadn't been able to figure out exactly what it was and she didn't want to press as he was performing as usual. Questioning him would potentially only draw unneeded eyes to him.  Then, a couple of months ago he walked up to her before a mission, admitting he was seeing a psychologist, just like that, and it had looked like it was working. He was being more talkative, the dark suppressive feeling less prudent. 
Dawn hadn’t thought she could have more respect and admiration for the man than she already had, but the trust he had placed in her by admitting he wasn’t doing well and had sought out help, had brought it to a whole new level.
And now this.
With a frustrated sigh, she threw her coffee in a nearby bin with a little more force than was necessary but the whole situation just sucked.
“Should I throw mine away too?”
Dawn looked up, seeing the man from the room approach:” depends” she shrugged:” how many anti-acids do you have with you?”
It got her a laugh from the man, who gave his coffee a dubious look before extending a hand:” I’m Steve Milbourne, Are you up for a walk?”