Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor (top fiction books of all time txt) 📗

at sea. She stared at the screen fearfully until the view switched to the area where the earthquake had been centered. Relief flooded her. It was in the Pacific. It wouldn’t have affected the Atlantis territory. They had a continent between them and the shockwaves.

She felt vaguely nauseated when the fright finally eased, felt almost tearfully relieved. Sucking in a calming breath, she mentally berated herself, wondering what was wrong with her. She wasn’t usually an emotional wreck over such things—or in fact much of anything. She didn’t usually get so worked up even about disasters. As awful as they were, they happened with such frequency it was impossible not to become calloused after a while. She felt badly for the people affected. She was horrified at the destruction, but she didn’t feel so deeply touched that she felt it so strongly.

Because she’d never had anyone to worry about before, she realized abruptly, not since her mother had died. It was always strangers—faceless, nameless—people she didn’t know and couldn’t care deeply about because she didn’t.

She was about to turn the media center off when something the newscaster said clicked in her mind. He was talking about the monetary losses, the loss of lives, and the estimated time it would take to clean up. It was the mention of the probability that it could take generations for the rich growing areas to produce again that made something click.

Anna stared at the screen as the man continued, but her mind wasn’t on it any longer.

Turning the media center off abruptly, she surged up from the couch and headed into her greenhouse. When she’d scooped up a sample of the soil from the growing bed, she headed for her lab. She was nearly dancing with nerves when the soil analysis finally began to scroll across the screen.

Sucking in a sharp breath, she held it unconsciously as she skimmed over the readout. Her stomach abruptly went weightless. She stared at the numbers, afraid to believe it said what she thought it did.

Rushing back to the greenhouse after a moment, she took another sample from an entirely different area and then a sample from each of the other growing beds. Her hands were shaking so badly she could hardly handle the samples. Finally, she managed to mark and transfer each one to the machine. She paced the floor while she waited for the results, chewing absently on a ragged fingernail she’d broken along the way.

She felt faint when she got the results. Slowly, a bubble of euphoria began to expand inside her until she almost felt as if she could float away. “I’ve done it!”she whispered disbelievingly, trying to assimilate what she’d discovered. Abruptly, a squeal of absolute delight and triumph erupted from her. She clamped a hand over her mouth, chuckling like a lunatic.

“I’ve done it! I really have! Oh my god!”

And she didn’t have anyone to share her moment with! She was too excited and euphoric for even that to burst her bubble, though. Turning up the music she kept playing for the plants, she danced a jig through her laboratory and into the greenhouse, chanting ‘I did it!’ over and over and kissing her plants enthusiastically.

It wasn’t until she paused to catch her breath that she suddenly remembered the house was bugged from end to end. It sobered her instantly.

Fear effectively banished her excitement. Her mind went chaotic the moment she began to review her antics when she’d raced around her house in excitement. Had she been shouting ‘I did it!’, she wondered? Or only thinking it? She couldn’t remember.

Well, she told herself bracingly, it wasn’t as if it was actually hers anyway. The discovery belonged to the company. It didn’t matter, did it?

She couldn’t dismiss the horrible fear that had swept over her, though. She had genetically engineered a plant that pulled the sea salt from the soil and left it clean! It was too important to take a chance with it, she decided, too vital to the survival of too many people!

But where to hide it if something happened to her? That was her foremost fear, … that something would happen and no one would ever know.

She was in too much turmoil to decide how to behave in a way that wouldn’t be suspicious to whoever was watching her, particularly after her insane dance around the house!

Heading toward her media center, she sat down on the couch again and pulled up her notes. As casually as she could, she took her backup chip, inserted it in the drive, and began to quickly type up her findings.

The food the plants produced was a success in itself, but that paled beside the other properties of the plant. There were vast areas of land all over the globe that had been devastated by the encroaching sea and the tidal waves that dumped gallons of seawater into the soil, making it useless for growing the things that had been grown there before.

When she’d finished her notes, she backed the file up, removed the data chip and pretended to put it away. Instead, she palmed it. Her knees felt like water when she stood up, but she made a production of stretching and then headed to her bookshelf and picked up her reader. Tucking it into the crook of her arm, she considered for a moment and then went to the front door and went out.

Her hands were shaking so badly when she tried to wedge the chip into the reader’s port that she nearly dropped it. Finally, she managed to insert it, though, all the while walking as causally across the front yard as she could to the paddler still tied up at the edge of her yard.

She’d set the book on