***
The driver woke Gordon just as they entered Topeka. He rubbed his blurry eyes, and he could still see the red tinge of blood on his hands. He dropped them in his lap, annoyed by the fact that he was still dirty. “Take me to my place. I want to shower before I go back to the office.”
“Yes, sir.”
The images of the large steel structures of the farm camps they passed reflected in the SUV’s passenger window. He smiled. The lack of control he’d felt over the past few hours from the community’s insubordination had drained him. All he wanted was to know where the seeds were, and it didn’t matter how many times he hit them, or cut them, or spilled their blood, they just wouldn’t talk.
But those steel cages reaffirmed his control. It was a reminder that he held the whip, and with it the power to do whatever he wanted. He had the resources. He had the muscle. He had the food. He had everything he needed to maintain control and order. The vibration from his cell phone disrupted his train of thought. He checked the call. It was Jake. “Tell me you found something good.”
“The soil the techs found definitely originated from this community. I watched two of its members take a walk to the original site.”
“Good. Keep an eye on them.”
“You want me to bring them in?”
“No, just pay them a visit, see what you can get out of them.”
Gordon snapped his phone shut and spun it between his fingers. A breakthrough discovery of fixing the soil contamination had the potential to unravel everything he’d built. If citizens knew they had it, they would rally toward them. His mind kept going back to what Jake had said about the community members hiding their nutrition levels. But how the fuck could they hide it?
Maybe they didn’t.
“Sydney.”