The Echo in the Deep

A Sci-Fi Monster Romance

By: Pippa Farthingale

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

She deals in hard data. He is a variable that breaks every law of physics.

Dr. Haelia Vaney knows better than to trust her gut. Ten years ago, a theory based on intuition destroyed her academic career. Now, she trusts only what she can measure. And Subject 8—a specimen in a black-site containment tank—measures as impossible. He doesn’t swim. He doesn’t eat. He watches her with eyes that burn with a violet, radioactive intelligence.

When a catastrophic power surge shatters the containment glass, Haelia doesn’t find a dying animal on the wet floor. She finds a man.

Rynor is a Pilot of the Third Iteration, a celestial entity trapped in a biological cage. He is six-foot-five of dense, burning muscle, possessing the power to level a city but unable to comprehend a zipper. He is arrogant, terrified of the silence, and desperate to return to the Hive Mind.

He intends to activate his distress beacon. There is just one problem: his rescue fleet "sanitizes" landing zones. If Rynor calls home, Earth burns.

On the run from a ruthless government director, Haelia must hide a weapon of mass destruction in her coastal cabin. She has to teach him how to walk, how to eat, and how to pass as human. But as the winter storm traps them together, the lessons shift. Rynor is fascinated by the "friction" of human emotion, and he is dangerously focused on his teacher.

When the sky finally opens and the fleet descends, Rynor must make an impossible choice: return to the eternal perfection of the void, or stay on a broken, watery rock with the woman who taught him that it is better to burn alone than to freeze together.

The Echo in the Deep is a high-heat, standalone Sci-Fi Monster Romance featuring a grumpy scientist heroine, a fish-out-of-water entity, and a love story that defies gravity.

Hit the spot!

This was such a great story! It was interesting, funny, surprising, and oddly endearing. The epitome of short and sweet (but not saccharine). Recommend