Chapter 2

An hour later, she was running along the edges of the compound’s many experimental fields, Hermes and Tony following a respectful distance behind. Somewhere far behind her, a small bag was packed with hastily assembled clothes, notes, and electronic drives.

Persephone held out a delicate hand as she ran, letting it slide along her various experimental crops. Each was designed and mutated to counter a specific set of blights. She held eight patents for the crops she had produced over the last nine years, an unparalleled number among the International Bio-Chemical Corps staff.

And yet, she winced slightly as her hand tapped each stalk, knowing she was probably altering the outcomes of her current experiments. A higher yield under static, laboratory conditions was expected among the farmers buying her genetically modified seeds, but she feared they would one day discover that her yields topped any other single scientist, no matter how the conditions were varied.

It wasn’t her intellect or meticulous care, but her touch that increased yields across the IBCC fields.