***

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.