The passage of time was meaningless to Ranell as he faded in and out of consciousness. The terrible damage wrought on his body was intensified by the cramped closet space, which wasn’t big enough to lie down or even sit comfortably. The terrible damage to his soul was magnified by the screams he heard emanating from the hallway as they tortured the other members of the Strange Lake team.
After what seemed like an eternity, two armed guards opened his cell door and ordered him to “Get up!” in broken English. Ranell struggled, but could not stand, so they grabbed him by his hair and forced him, stumbling, down the hallway.
When a cold realization dawned on him, Ranell heard the distinctive popping and sucking sounds of the control tower airlock. “Wait! Where are we going? I need to get my coat, my hat, gloves…”
His words were cut short by a rifle butt to his kidney, and he was knocked outside into the subzero darkness.
The cold was shocking in its intensity. His eyelashes and the hairs of his nose cracked with frost. And his sweat began to freeze on his skin. “What are you doing? You’re killing me!”
Ranell was flung through a hastily erected barbed-wire barrier where he was caught in the strong arms of a man he scarcely recognized. His face was swollen and bruised almost beyond description.
“Stop panicking if you want to live!” The voice emanating from the battered mass of flesh was that of John Laferrière, the rugged Strange Lake geologist. “Come with me now.”
“Oh my God!” Ranell burst out, crying with relief. The tears froze in the corner of his eyes. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”
“Watch out!” Laferrière roughly jerked Ranell to the side to prevent him from stepping on something large on the ground.
Ranell stepped around it and realized that it was a corpse. Then he saw her face. “Emily?” Horror cracked his voice. “They killed Emily!”
“Keep moving,” Laferrière growled. “Too late for her.”
They finally entered a thin-walled tent that barely kept the wind off them, much less did anything to warm the brutal cold. Gunter Ackerman sat, propped up on a chair. His facial features were mostly intact, but something was seriously wrong with one of his legs.
“Come over here, Josef.” Ackerman waved from his seat. “We huddle together now to preserve our heat.”
“What’s going on here?” Ranell asked for what must have been the hundredth time, so he wasn’t really expecting an answer as he complied with Ackerman’s request and slid up next to him. Laferrière moved in on the other side.
“China collapsed the American economy, and it’s taken all of Western society down with it.” Ackerman spat bitterly. “Now every tentacle of the CCP has been activated and authorized to enforce Chinese law, regardless of the sovereignty of the host nation.”
Ranell reacted as if he’d been struck again. “That’s not possible,” he gasped.
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