Leviathan Read Online Free PDF

ate through the limestone of Grimwald Island to form a complex labyrinth of tunnels, over twenty miles of them.
    The cavern itself was a far-ranging complex of passages and cathedral openings deep inside the island, beneath sea level. Although some of the tunnels were merely narrow crevices, most were immensely wide, even wide enough to accommodate heavy equi pment, trucks, dozers, whatever was needed for extensive construction. And Connor knew there were at least twenty major caverns, the deepest and largest cavern being over 4,000 feet across with a 600-foot ceiling.
    One of the chambers housed the living quarters for the thirty supervisory and science personnel who managed the research project. Another was a barracks for military personnel, while still another was a command center that housed military operations. And one cavern held an elaborate supercomputer known as GEO, a powerful multiprocessing creation of artificial intelligence that oversaw all aspects of the secret research operation.
    Another cavern, deemed the power plant, was dedicated to an electrical generator system that linked the underground laboratory with a powerful Norwegian power cable laid across the Atlantic floor. That was where Connor spent most of his time, breaking down the incredible voltage of the line so the power could be used in substations located in the rest of the facility.
    The entire cavern was a maze of high-voltage wires. But the most troublesome section was the Containment Cavern, a place Connor had rarely seen since his early days on Grimwald. Although Connor didn't know exactly what the cathedral-sized chamber was designed to contain, he knew there was a sophisticated computer room adjoining it. And he knew that the cavern itself was heavily reinforced by niobium-titanium fire walls.
    It also housed a strangely designed sphere—more like one sphere balanced concentrically inside another—wired to create an electromagnetic pulse above a 500,000-volt cooling platform.
    Shrouded in secrecy, the sphere had been delivered during a secret midnight landing of a C-130, and Connor wasn't surprised that they would be having more problems with the mystery machine. When it arrived almost a year ago, he had installed it himself, quickly and efficiently completing circuit tests, wiring, and backup systems. Connor had never asked any questions about the purpose of the sphere. But in his bones, he remembered, it had always troubled him. And not because of its strange power demands or unexplainable electromagnetic design. But because its purpose had, from the very first, been cloaked in such nervous silence, and remained so even today.
    A nagging concern began to tug at Connor as they descended deeper into the cavern, sloping at a sharper and sharper angle. And he wondered why, in the last six months, they had not needed him to repair the troublesome thing. Perhaps, the thought came to him with disturbing intensity, because it had been functioning perfectly.
    Without revealing his mind, Connor wondered what they might have done with the sphere. But after a moment he knew that he'd manage only the wildest uneducated guess. He had no idea what it was truly designed to accomplish, had never possessed an idea, even when he installed it. He was an electrician, a welder. He knew metals and construction and had a general understanding of just about anything mechanical. But he wasn't a scientist. And whatever the thing was, it was definitely high science.
    With a frown Connor gazed at the passing, prodigious formations of calcite, their huge rounded columns rising toward the surface. And little by little he realized the air was falling utterly still. It was something he had never gotten used to.
    Always, it seemed to him, the cave was like some supernatural subterranean netherworld with air so motionless it felt like outer space might feel, if space had a constant temperature of 71 degrees and a humidity level of 100 percent.
    No one could endure the