The Deep - Part 1 by Amanda Creiglow

Release date; September 25, 2016

Subgenre: Post-apocalyptic science fiction serial

About The Deep - Part 1: 

 

Anna was a psychologist before the world ended. Now, she's just a member of the not-yet-dead, waiting out the days until sickness takes her. But when an indecipherable signal from the depths of the sea hints at hope, she goes along on a mission to discover its source. She's supposed to keep the rest of the crew sane, and they're supposed to keep her alive. But not everything goes as planned...

Will the secrets of the deep hold hope for the future of the human race? Anna's adventure to discover the truth begins.

Excerpt:

 

First came the throbbing – a pulsing, piercing pain in her head. It was centered just under her temples, but radiated throughout her brain, along the line of her skull. It was insistent. Threatening. And it kept perfect time.

Second came the knowledge of the noise that caused it – a blaring alarm in echo. It made her bones vibrate and her pulse race, playing over an intense hiss and static that she couldn't place.

Third came the feeling of mist on her face, calling up a memory from when she was young. Biosphere two. She could still see it in a hazy montage – the domes under the death sparkle of the sun. The arid Arizona heat separated by glass from the warm, soft mist of the Rainforest Sector. She'd told herself she wanted to live there. She told that to the tour guide, too – a lean black woman with playful hair and long legs in short khakis – and the tour guide had laughed, and her parents had laughed and her brother had laughed.

The tour guide was dead. Her parents were dead. Her brother was dead. Biosphere 2 was dead. The Arizona sun had survived.

And the alarm and the mist meant that the Arizona sun would out-survive Anna, too.

She shouldn't have been asleep. She and the crew were supposed to be alert and awake for the whole of the descent, just in case something went wrong. The safety briefing and the hopes-and-dreams speech... It was all coming back, now. She forced her eyes open, the cold mist in the enclosed space threatening to force them shut again.

There was pressure. There was too much pressure. Her skin felt wrong and hot, and her breaths hard-fought. She tried to tune out the blaring alarm, but it had her nerves more scattered than anything else.

Her eyes searched the mist, looking for movement. Looking for someone to save her. They were supposed to keep her alive. That was the deal. The crew kept everyone alive, and she kept everyone sane. But someone hadn't held up their end of the bargain.

Her hot, numb hands fiddled with the straps, searching for the clasps. They were re-purposed seat-belts from long-grounded aircraft, and her half-lucid mind saw the safety demonstrations from long-ago flights as she fought for release.

She'd gotten the first one off and hung painfully from the second when the sub jerked to one side, nearly flinging her out of her standing bay, and dragging more of the pieces into place. She remembered, now, the terror she felt when the attack from Whatever It Was began. There had been no warning -- just a sudden impact to the side of the sub. Without a word, they'd all run to their standing bays and latched themselves in. All but the pilot, who went forward into the cockpit.

Her gaze shot forward toward where she knew the cockpit was, but between the mist and her own rising panic, it was hard for her to even make out the hatch. Why weren't they moving forward? Why wasn't she feeling what the pilot was doing to get them away from Whatever it was?

The pilot is dead.

The thought hit her with a certainty it didn't deserve. She'd long ago accepted that death was the most common explanation.

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About Amanda Creiglow: 

Amanda Creiglow is an irredeemable wanderer, but she currently calls Greenville, South Carolina home. Aside from telling impossible tales to improbable people, she enjoyed spending way too much time playing video games for the amusement of strangers, and writing and performing depressing songs with cheerful melodies.

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