Broken Worlds Super Boxset (56 page)

***

Sydney carefully placed each vial of blood into the cylinder holes of the machine. Once each vial was secure, he flicked on the machine, and it roared to life. The blood samples would be spun, dissected, isolated, and analyzed individually.

After the machine provided Sydney with the nutrition levels, he would then compare those results to each community member’s ration consumption that was kept on file in the Soil Coalition’s database.

That database contained files on every single citizen in the United States, including himself. It was one of the most secure servers in the country, with most of the files being classified beyond his clearance. It contained health records, eating habits, family medical history, known ailments and diseases, genetic stability. It had everything.

Sydney cross-referenced the results and found that most members of the community were over their limit, but within the percentage range of leeway given. But one member’s nutritional data was through the roof.

“That can’t be right,” Sydney said to himself, clicking on the file to examine the specifics. But the computer’s results were accurate. The man had no vitamin or mineral deficiency, and he had a healthy blood chemistry. Sydney was quite possibly looking at the healthiest man in the United States. This type of nutritional level was even beyond even his compensation, reserved for the highest officials in the government.

“The soil,” Sydney said, falling back into his chair. The soil that he analyzed earlier that was supposedly from Maine that was found in a field somewhere in this area.

Did these people find a solution? Have they been able to grow crops? Did they have a surplus of food?

Sydney jolted forward in his chair, immediately opening up the background files of the members of the community. He was looking for scientists, chemists, biologists, teachers, professors, any mind that could have had the potential to make such a discovery. Each name he came across had occupations such as mechanic, banker, programmer, janitor, pilot, writer, detective, but nothing close to the level of education needed to create such a miracle.

A violent pounding sounded on the door behind him. “Hey! What’s the holdup?” Jake asked.

“N-nothing. Just finishing up!”

Sydney went back to the file of the man with the immaculate nutrition levels. His background suggested nothing extraordinary. According to the file, he was a high school dropout who couldn’t hold a job longer than a few months.

But still.

If Sydney were to turn this man over, he would waste away in a farm camp. However, the manipulation of blood sampling could land
him
in a farm camp for life. The scales tipped back and forth in his mind. On one end, his life. On the other, the life of a man he didn’t even know.

Another round of vicious knocks shook the door. “Let’s go!”

Gordon was right. Sydney couldn’t survive in the world the way it was now. He needed the protective shielding of his lab. But if he turned this man in, this… janitor, then he could be condemning one of the greatest minds of this century.

***

The rat had been in his cage long enough to process the results. Todd couldn’t figure out what was taking so long. Were they figuring out what to do with him? Did his nutrition levels warrant some executive call to officials on the other side of the country?

The door to the mobile lab opened, and the rat emerged. He handed the results to the street thug, who looked them over. Todd could feel a lump in his throat clog any path that would have allowed him to swallow.

After a few minutes of flipping through the pages, the thug slammed the clipboard back into the rat’s chest and stomped off.

“Inspection’s over!” Street Thug said.

After three hours of being handcuffed to the chair in the darkness, Alex’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. Not that there was anything to look at in the first place. When the door opened and the fluorescent lights flickered on, the skin crinkled around his eyes and forehead as he shut his eyelids to protect his pupils from the intrusive light.

“Alex Grives, so nice of you to come and see us this afternoon.”

Alex blinked furiously. Flashes of white continued to blind him every few milliseconds. He twisted in his chair a bit and winced from the pressure of the cuffs around his wrists.

“I hope you’ve been comfortable, Alex.”

“And when did you start caring about that, Gordon?”

When Gordon’s face finally came into view, he looked slightly thinner than the last time Alex had seen him, but other than that he still looked like the same bullshit-shoveling piece of scum.

“When they told me they had a hunter in custody with a bag of non-GMO seeds, I had a feeling it would be you, but never in my wildest fantasies did I think you’d ever have the balls to come and see me again. How’s the shoulder?” Gordon asked.

“I want to make a trade.”

“Ha HA!” Gordon clapped his hands together and looked back at the sentries. “See? Balls. God, I miss dealing with men like that.” He leaned on the table, keeping his hands clasped together. “I already have what you wanted to trade, Alex. Sooo… what other business do I have with you?”

“You only have a portion of what I can trade.”

“Bullshit.”

“Are you willing to have me rot in a farm camp to find out?”

“How about I just beat it out of you.”

“We both know that isn’t going to work.”

Gordon laughed. “I guess you’re right about that.” He got up from his chair, and two muscle-necked sentries squeezed their frames through the door one at a time. “But it never hurts to try.”

Alex clenched his jaw. It was going to be a long afternoon.

***

Blood splattered across the one-way glass, and Gordon had to move to the side to make sure he could still see. It’d been a while since he’d seen a good fight, not that this was exactly pay-per-view, but at this point he’d take what he could get. The two sentries had pummeled Alex for the past twenty minutes. Gordon wasn’t even sure if the man was still conscious.

“He’s not talking,” Gordon said and turned to Dean, who was by his side. “Search the house. See if we can find it on our own. If not, then we’ll cut him the deal.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean replied.

A faint buzz sounded, and Gordon reached into his pocket. He frowned at the screen, then double-timed it to his office. Once inside, he locked the door and immediately dialed Jake.

“Nothing,” Jake said.

“You mean to tell me that there isn’t a single person there over the limit?”

“Not according to these results that lab tech you sent with me got.”

“And he showed you the results?”

“Yeah. I had him email them to you so you could see for yourself.”

Gordon tapped the spacebar on his computer, disrupting its slumber. His eyes scanned the document from left to right rapidly. He repeated the process twice before his elbows thumped on his desk, and he rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

“Then where the hell did the soil come from?” Gordon asked.

“I know the lab results say different, but I’ve got a profile on this guy here that doesn’t add up.”

“What do you mean?”

“This tall, smirky-looking fucker. According to his file, his name is Todd Penn. Before the famine, he was some nobody. A janitor that couldn’t stay in one place long enough to lay down any roots, but he stood out like a sore thumb when your tech was taking those blood samples.”

“You think he put the soil there?”

“I don’t know what it means, but I want to stay here until I figure it out.”

“Fine. But I need you back here soon. We’ve run into a situation with some non-registered seeds.”

“GMOs?”

“No. Organic. And the seeds are only half the problem.”

“I’ll call when I have an update.”

Gordon ended the call and tossed his phone onto the desk. All of it was piling up. The food camps, the debt to China, and the sanctions from Mexico and Canada along with the combination of no headway in sustainable food production after three years’ worth of efforts were beginning to sway the White House’s confidence in him. He needed leverage, and a solution to the soil crisis along with non-GMO seeds would be a good start.

Gordon had sullied his hands in the sewer of lobbying long enough to know when the tide was turning. However, he knew what would happen if Washington turned on him, and what was better, Washington knew it as well. They kept him fed and in a position of power, and he did his best to solve the mess they made while keeping his mouth shut about it. But it wouldn’t be long before he controlled who was in power and who wasn’t.

***

Sydney’s knee bounced nervously inside the mobile lab. The only light in the truck was the glow from the computer screen next to him. He swallowed hard. His throat felt dry. He reached for a bottle of water under the desk. The plastic bottle crinkled from the tremors in his hand. He took a sip then set the bottle down and wrapped his arms tight around the briefcase he carried with him, the case with the real lab results. If they were going to take him, it would happen soon. All that was left to do was wait.

The thought of wasting away in a farm camp for the rest of his life over the past few hours had dulled his senses to the point of apathy. The fear and apprehension that overwhelmed him during the forgery had run its course. But when Jake opened the door forcefully, a resurgence of angst gripped him.

“You’re heading back to Topeka,” Jake said then slammed the door shut before he had a chance to ask any questions.

Am I going back to be sent to a farm camp? Are they going to just kill me? Did Gordon want to speak with me personally before I was condemned? Did he want the pleasure of doing it himself?

The frigid, icy grip of panic took hold of the pit of his stomach and spread to his chest. The truck rumbled along the road, hitting potholes and divots along the way. Each jolt sent a shot of adrenaline through his body.

But the closer they drove to the airport, the less Sydney believed he’d been discovered. Gordon and the bloodhound he’d sent with him didn’t have the slightest inkling of the science behind what went into analyzing the results. All they cared about was the end product, and that’s what he gave them. He was worrying about nothing.

***

Sentries were stationed in every room in the house. Warren watched them set up the cameras in the kitchen, the living room, all of the bedrooms, and the garage, and he tried not to be obvious while watching them.

When they showed up, Warren thought they were there to collect him or search the house. Whatever Alex had gotten himself into was now affecting him. He shook his head and walked back into the living room, where one of the sentries leaned back in his chair.

“Hey, get off of that!” Warren yelled.

“Or what, old man?” the sentry replied, aiming his rifle between Warren’s shoulders.

Warren waved him off and walked out the front door, where more sentries were stationed outside. He didn’t know where the hell all of them were coming from.

The muscles in Warren’s back popped as he bent over to stretch. He plopped down on the edge of the curb and rubbed his hands together. He had never wanted a smoke so badly in his life. He would have mowed down anyone in the community for the chance at another drag, but the fatigue in his muscles beckoned him to stay put.

A few of the neighbors poked their heads out of their homes to get a look at the spectacle that was his house.

“Why don’t you come over?” Warren yelled across the street. “We’re having some MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS FOR DINNER!”

The doors quickly shut, causing a few of the sentries to turn their heads, but Warren knew most of them didn’t care about the crotchety ramblings of an angry old man. He traced the liver spots that covered the tops of his hands. Every movement of his fingers highlighted the bones underneath his skin. He felt a quick tap on his shoulder and jumped. “Jesus Christ!”

“I’m sorry.”

“God dammit, Alice! Are you trying to give me a stroke?”

Alice Harper was a mouse of a woman, and not just because of her size, which was tiny. Her ears were far too large and round for her head, and she had buckteeth and an overbite. This, accompanied by a way of always keeping her hands at her chest, curled like the top of a candy cane, only exemplified the comparison. Warren couldn’t imagine the woman ate much even before the crisis. He didn’t think her world changed at all compared to the rest of them.

“What do you want?” Warren asked.

Alice took a seat right next to him and scooted close. She cupped her hand to her mouth and pressed it to his ear. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

Warren pushed her off him. “Well, don’t bring attention to yourself by acting all clandestine now!”

“Clandenwhat?”

“Never mind.”

“They questioned me for over an hour, but I just told them that I didn’t know anything.”

“I know you didn’t say anything, Alice. If you did, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Oh.”

The words came out in a defeated whisper. Alice kept her head down and fiddled with the rags she wore as a shirt. Warren gently nudged her am.

“Hey. You know Alex went to go and get Daniel, right?” Warren asked.

“He did?”

“Yeah. I told him he was an idiot, but he did it anyway. And judging by the amount of company we’ve received today, I’d say he made it.”

“Do you think he can do it? Can he bring Daniel back?”

Warren remained silent. He was focused on the ruckus coming from inside the house. The sentries were shouting at one another. The next moment, a few of them started running outside with their guns pointed at Warren.

“You! Get up! Now!” the sentry ordered.

Warren pushed himself up, using Alice’s small shoulders to help steady him. “What is it?”

The sentry’s answer was a pair of cuffs around Warren’s wrists and a shove face-first into the ground. “We got you, asshole. We found your stash.”

Warren immediately started squirming, trying to thrust the sentry off of him. “No! You idiots!” He quickly turned to Alice. “Alice! Get dow—”

The explosion that followed rocked the foundation of the house and shook the whole community from the ground up. Concrete and broken glass rained down and littered the yard. A solid ringing sounded in Warren’s ear, and when he looked over at the house, the front half had been completely blown away.