“It won’t happen again.”
“Hmph. Well, make sure it doesn’t. I have a meeting to attend. I’ve already vented my frustrations on Gordon, so he will most likely swing by later. Be sure this place is cleaned up. I don’t need any more embarrassment from you.”
Once his father was gone, Sydney grabbed a rag and began mopping up the water on the counter. His father’s words were a specific poison that he’d yet to find an antidote for. It had been that way ever since he was a child. Always too small and too weak for success at anything his father deemed as manly, such as sports, fighting, and hunting. The resentful eyes of his father always seemed to find him, no matter how successful he was in the lab.
Of course, his father was right: there were other qualified candidates to run the lab, and all of them would jump at the chance. But despite his father’s nepotistic appointment, Sydney had developed himself into a competent scientist. Before the crisis, he had just received a grant to work at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a researcher in their leukemia department.
When Sydney brought that news to his father, he was too distracted by a new prototype of weapon that his company was marketing to the Marines. He remembered how excited he was to finally have something to tell him that his father would be proud of, but it didn’t matter.
Upon hearing his son’s news, he looked over to Sydney, and this was the moment he thought he would finally receive approval, finally see a look of pride on his father’s face that was the direct result of his achievements. But his father only asked him one question.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t… W-what do you mean?”
“I mean what have you made and created for them to grant you such an opportunity?”
“Oh! My research. I recently wrote a paper on the theory of blood vessels and their capac—”
“Theory?” his father interjected. “What proof do you have that it’s true?”
“Well, I haven’t had the oppor—”
“So, let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly. You wrote a paper, that no one is even sure is correct, with no tangible product to show for your efforts?”
“Dad, my paper could be the first step to—”
“Ah!” his father said, holding his finger up, silencing Sydney. “‘Could,’ Sydney. Not ‘will,’ or ‘yes,’ but ‘could.’ You can’t eat ‘could.’ ‘Could’ can’t put a roof over your head. You can’t drink ‘could.’ So why would you waste my time with ‘could?’”
It was in that moment Sydney realized that no matter what he did, no matter what he accomplished, it would never be good enough for his father to recognize him as a man, as an individual. His world consisted too much of theories and what-ifs, whereas his father’s world was of metal and steel.
Sydney reached back into his pocket and pulled out his thumb drive. He closed his fist around it and gripped it tightly. If his father wanted something tangible, then that’s exactly what he was going to give him.
Chapter 8
The farm camp was surrounded by rolling hills, with nothing but open land for miles around. They were all designed that way. In the earlier days, the Soil Coalition was afraid of the workers escaping, and if someone were to escape, they wanted to make sure there wasn’t any place for them to hide. All the sentries would have to do was bring the sprinting skeletons into their crosshairs and pull the trigger.
Escapes weren’t as common anymore, at least from what Alex heard through the grapevine. Everyone was too tired and weak to fight back now. Because of that, security had grown light, with nothing but Class 1 sentries here. The Coalition didn’t expect a fight from a moaning sack of bones.
Alex had been hiding, concealed under a layer of dirt, for most of the night. Only the whites of his eyes contrasted against the black and grey dust. But since the sentries weren’t paying attention to anything beyond the ten-foot radius around their own bodies, he wasn’t concerned.
One of the sentries came full circle on his patrol, and Alex counted him at seventy-three seconds to walk all the way around. In the last few hours of night, three different sentries had come outside to relieve him, which gave him a total of four sentries that he knew about. Judging by the size of the camp, he figured that’s all there was.
Each sentry was armed with an AR-15 with three full clips of ammo and protected with Kevlar from neck to waist. Even though the riots had stopped, they were still armed to the teeth. The rifles he carried with him had a total of twelve bullets between them. Seven in the .22 and five in the .308, but he wanted to keep the element of surprise for as long as he could, so he’d be relying on the knife to take out the first sentry.
The only problem was once he stole the rifle off the sentry’s back, his buddies would eventually come and check on him, and when they found him dead, it would trigger an alarm that would sound all over the state. And if the alarm was sounded, there would be no doubt that the sentries around Meeko’s farm camp, which was quite larger and undoubtedly had triple the number of sentries this one did, would be on high alert, making it even harder to free him and Harper. Alex would have to kill the sentries quickly.
Once the sentry turned the corner to the back of the farm, Alex would have roughly thirty seconds to catch up to him, kill him, and get inside before he passed the entrance again. When the sentry finally disappeared around the back, Alex pushed himself off the ground. His elbows and shoulders popped from the sudden movements, and the grey dirt he was covered in cascaded to the ground.
Alex sprinted to the structure. Each step that dug into the ground kicked the dirt back violently into the air as he pushed his way forward, leaving a trail of grey mist in his wake. Despite the amount of effort, his body felt slow after being immobile for the past six hours. Once he made it halfway, the muscles in his legs loosened, and he picked up speed. He skidded to a stop just before he reached the back corner where the sentry had turned.
Large, quiet breaths escaped him as he tried to control his breathing. The lack of food and water was already taking effect. His body was running on empty. He peeked around the corner and saw that the sentry had just made it to the other side. Alex had to make his move now. He pushed through the exhaustion and sprinted down the back side of the farm.
Alex took quick, light steps over the dirt, keeping his eyes on the sentry’s back and methodical stomp through the dirt. Alex was twenty yards away, then fifteen, then ten, then five. He extended both arms in preparation to wrap them around the man’s throat. He was only fingertips away when the toe of his shoe smacked against a rock that banged into the steel siding of the farm camp, echoing a very loud whack, which alerted the sentry to his presence. But before the sentry could turn all the way around, Alex lunged toward him.
The sentry had fifty pounds on Alex. Being well fed and well rested gave the physical advantage to the sentry, but years of training evened the playing field for Alex. Even though the sentry nearly knocked him to the ground, flinging Alex off his back, he managed to hang on and keep his hand covering the sentry’s mouth, muting his cries for help. The sentry swung wildly and tried bucking Alex off his back. The rifle swung erratically from the strap on the sentry’s shoulder. Alex extended his free arm, trying to grab it, but the sentry slammed him against the farm camp’s wall.
The blow sent a hollowing crack through Alex’s back. His grip on the sentry loosened a bit, but he countered the blow by gouging his finger into the sentry’s eye. Alex could feel the soft membrane of the pupil and the warm gush of organs and blood.