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

into her head, she stopped to think it over. That was what her research meant. Beyond the money that could be made from it, it would’ve at least put an enormous dent in the number of people starving. Why would he not want to prevent starving?

Because he wanted to decrease the surplus population? She wouldn’t put it past him. She wouldn’t put anything past him at this juncture, but there really wasn’t a tremendous surplus—not anymore—too many people to feed and not enough jobs, but one disaster after another in the last hundred years had already cut the world population tremendously.

Hungry people. Unhappy people. Rioting people. It struck her abruptly that that was the perfect atmosphere for hate. People that were suffering wanted somebody to blame and they mostly blamed their government, but they were all too eager to lash out and take out their fear, anger, and frustrations on anything or anyone that became a target.

And Miles Cavendish had given them one—the mutants.

It was almost too diabolical to be believed, but was it possible? The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that that had to be the motive. It wasn’t as farfetched, upon reflection, as she’d initially thought. People were suffering and they were angry about it. Throughout the course of history anyone who became the target of the angry masses, usually the government, would toss out the first likely victim they could find just to get the mob off of themselves. The Romans had thrown the Christians to the lions. The church had thrown the angry mobs ‘witches’ to torture and burn alive.

The Nazis had thrown out the Jews. The industrialists poisoning their environment had thrown out the smokers. That one was easy. Nobody wanted to lose their jobs just because the company they were working for was killing everybody and destroying the planet.

It hadn’t resulted in violence, but then that hadn’t been the objective. The objective had been to divert attention and animosity from themselves and prevent people from demanding they clean up their act.

The list went on and on. All they had to do was pick a victim that people wanted to hate, tell them they were right to hate them, and turn them loose. As long as it was someone they could get to easily, they were too preoccupied with venting their anger on them to notice what else was going on.

The food riots was a prime example of what could happen when the ‘atmosphere’ was already volatile, how easily people could be manipulated and turned into a weapon of mass destruction. And the government had been directly responsible for it. They could deny it all they wanted, but they’d made it happen. After siphoning people out of their money for years and years, they hadn’t been prepared when disaster struck—due to greed, corruption, and plain out incompetence.

Everyone had been so enraged when they discovered the food and necessities that the government had been supposedly stockpiling wasn’t there when they needed it that they’d been ready to turn on them and tear them to pieces. The government spokesman that had ‘appealed to the people to stop hording food and essentials and share with their neighbors’ had known exactly what he was doing—turning the mob. The media had picked it up, broadcast it everywhere and before anyone could turn around, the mobs had been dragging people out of their cars, homes, and offices and beating them to death—because they weren’t showing the signs of hunger.

It had not only worked to turn the rage on the hapless obese, who were suffering with everybody else, but it had given them an excuse to impose martial law and protect themselves.

Miles Cavendish hadn’t built a global terrorist organization without knowing how to manipulate people. What were they going to do when it was announced that her research would’ve gone a long way toward curing world hunger? Saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions from starving to death?

That was what Paul had meant! They already had their story prepared!

Cavendish would have to make them believe it was the mutants that did it and she’d made it easy for them! Simon and Ian had been right there on the scene.

He might also have to get rid of her.

Would he think it worthwhile to try to convert her to his way of thinking before he went to those lengths? Or would he think it just not worth the risk?

He didn’t need to kill her, though, or even convert her. If her research actually was gone, it could take her years to do it again. She couldn’t remember every single thing.

Climbing out of the shower finally, she dried off and headed back into the bedroom, climbing into the bed and pulling the covers up. She didn’t turn off the lights.

For once she didn’t care how much energy was wasted. The cavernous room gave her the creeps. She didn’t want to lay in it in the dark.

So, assuming she was right, her father had allowed her to spend four years of her life trying to create something he never intended to market even if she was successful.

Maybe he hadn’t expected her to succeed? It was good PR just having her work on it. It was a great motivator for the hungry if she did succeed and then mutant terrorists destroyed it. He couldn’t lose. He would have droves of people joining his organization and those who couldn’t afford the price would still be backing him, cheering him on.

The realization made her cold, chilled her too deeply to shake it off.

Someone had to stop Miles Cavendish, somehow.

* * * *

Simon paused in the shadow of a large rock, resisting the urge to adjust the gear