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Chapter 1: The Storm

The ocean had never looked so violent. Elena Vasquez stood at the bow of the research vessel, her hair whipping across her face as the first true squall of the season bore down from the north. She had sailed these waters for six years, catalogued three species of deep-water organisms that science had never named, and not once had she turned back early.

She was not about to start now. Behind her, the rest of the team scrambled to secure equipment — laptops, specimen jars, the portable sonar array they had borrowed from the university. It had taken eighteen months to get the grant, four more to get the equipment allocation, and three calls to a senator's office to unlock the restricted survey zone.

None of that mattered if the ship went down before she could reach the trench. She felt the satellite phone in her pocket — cold, silent. Marcus Reid had not called in forty-eight hours, which meant either something had changed, or something had gone very wrong at Meridian Corp's Pacific operation.