***

The air grew cold, and Gordon fastened the top button of his coat as he stepped out of the vehicle and onto the wide-open tundra that was North Dakota. He rubbed his legs, attempting to loosen the aching stiffness that had grown over the past sixteen hours. “Christ, this place is a fucking hellhole.” Even before GMO-24, Gordon didn’t think this place would grow anything other than calluses on his feet. Jake climbed out of his vehicle and joined him in the arid cold.

Almost all of the trucks were riddled with bullet holes and cracked windows. The Class 3s who escorted Gordon and Jake pulled a few of the dead bodies from the previous battle out of the truck and dumped them on the ground. The escape from Topeka had proven slightly more difficult than anticipated.

The head of the Class 3 unit, Jay Kriken, looked over to Gordon as the last body was pulled from the caravan. Kriken was the most dangerous sentry Gordon ever brought into the Class 3 program. He had the mind of a sociopath with the face of a big-screen actor, which offered the illusion that he wouldn’t slice your throat then rip the skin from your skull. “What do you want to do with the meat sacks?”

“I just want them hidden,” Gordon answered. “The military will be out in full force looking for us, and I don’t want to leave any breadcrumbs for them to pick up. Just don’t bring any attention to yourself.”

Kriken nodded and gave the bodies a slight kick with his toe. A small rock formation was just to their left, and he rolled them in that direction, motioning for a few other sentries to assist him.

Gordon enlisted the protection of thirty of the best Class 3 sentries in the Coalition. They were the top one percent of the top one percent. Gordon was surrounded by some of the deadliest and most ruthless men on the planet.

The only downside to having a team like the one Gordon had was they could only be controlled as long as Gordon had something to offer them, and with the entire might of the United States military looking to hunt them down and kill them, Gordon’s offer of freedom and wealth was enough to keep them in line. At least for now.

“You really think Sheng will come through?” Jake asked.

“He better. Because the alternative is joining those bodies in the rocks over there,” Gordon answered, then looking back to the car he added, “See if he needs a bathroom break. I don’t need him making a mess, with all the ground we still have to cover.”

Jake opened the back door of the truck and grabbed Sydney by his collar, who was bound with rope at his wrists with a gag stuffed in his mouth, and pulled him out of the vehicle. He landed on the hard ground with a crack, followed by a muffled moan. Jake picked him up, forced him into a standing position, and yanked the gag out of his mouth.

“You don’t have to be so rough,” Sydney said, rotating the shoulder that received the blunt force of the impact.

“Well, if you had finished your job, we wouldn’t be here in the first place,” Gordon said. “So shut the fuck up!” A large puff of vapor roared from Gordon’s mouth from the cold air. “You better hope the Chinese don’t have a better scientist than you, because if they do, I’m going to let Jake treat your body like a punching bag, and then I’m going to hand you over to the Class 3s so they can use you for target practice until you bleed out.”

Gordon gripped the back of Sydney’s hair and tossed him forward, letting Jake walk him out onto the frozen ground. When Sydney dropped his pants, the sentries started to laugh.

“Don’t let your balls get too close to the ground!” Kriken roared, clutching his stomach.

Gordon kicked the ground with the toe of his boot. The impact sent a pain up through his entire leg. He took in the landscape around him, wondering if he’d ever see anything that was truly alive again.