Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1) by Mariana Morgan (essential reading txt) 📕

uniformed police officer outside the clinic, but I can point you in roughly the right direction. But not until you tell me who the hell you work for. You’re just a police commissioner; you couldn’t have pulled this off yourself.’

Something snapped in her and she became aware of her mounting anger breaking through the mental fog and fear. Somehow Gonzalez had managed to program her to do his bidding despite how frayed her brain was. The words weren’t hers. They couldn’t have been. She didn’t want to do his bidding anymore.

She was being used. Again.

What she wanted to know was who had had the sheer guts to tamper with her VRPs. She wanted her lawyers to destroy them. But those were not the words that came out of her.

‘And how do you know what a commissioner can and can’t do?’ Wagner laughed. He could see her confused distress and it amused him.

‘I know that your family was Leech,’ Eloise spat out. And where did that one come from? ‘I know you were no one before you learnt to murder.’

It was suddenly very quiet. Wagner almost didn’t wince. Almost.

‘Who told you that?’ His voice was merely curious, but dangerous, icy steel flashed through his eyes.

‘Who are you working for?’ Again, not her words. Dammit, what is happening to me?

Unexpectedly, Wagner laughed in a crudely exaggerated fashion, as if something had just become plainly obvious to him.

‘Ms Moretti, you are even more stupid than I thought you were.’ Slowly, he took another sip of his wine, replaced the glass on the table and casually reached into his pocket.

A small but still lethal gun appeared in his hand, and Eloise’s heart froze.

CHAPTER 33

Wagner’s Residence

Givors

Afro-European Alliance

Monday 27 April 2725

DAY 8

Gonzalez, you sonofabitch!Now what? Eloise thought, staring down the barrel of the gun.

Wagner smiled hungrily, basking in the pleasure of seeing terror spill out of her big, wide eyes. ‘I think we are going to have some fun before I end this.’

He stood and walked around until he had Eloise between himself and the big nano-crystal window occupying the better part of the wall.

‘Gonzalez, I hope you can hear this,’ he said, raising his voice theatrically. ‘You must be more desperate than I thought to use this useless excuse for an Elite to do your bidding. Just as useless as Megan O’Haress was. Did you think that whore was a match for me? You should have heard her pathetic wailing right before I killed her. She was calling for you. Just a little girl who tried to play with adults but then needed her mama’s skirts to hide behind. That’s what happens when you trust Leeches with something important.’ Sick laughter echoed in the palatial dining hall. ‘Although she did keep me amused in bed for a while. Did you train her yourself, or were those her natural talents?

‘Are you going to be so entertaining when you pleasure me?’ He turned his focus back to Eloise, his eyes eating her alive. He savoured her fear for a moment, but then his expression hardened and he addressed Gonzalez again. ‘How many more women from your life do I have to kill before you learn to get off your ass and do your own work? I take it Gendarme fucking Ingram was also one of yours? And that she is still alive? Well, I’m going to get her too. And you know what? I’m going to take my time with that one. She has a big fucking mouth and I will relish the opportunity to teach her some manners before I finish her.

‘And I’m going to get you too. Maybe I will make you watch as I take my time with the bitch. But for now, I have a different show in mind.’

Without lowering his gun, he keyed in some instructions on his wrist-comp, and a soft buzz sounded as armoured shutters, still completely transparent, covered all the windows in his residence. ‘I know you have your people outside. But you can’t shoot without hurting Moretti. The shutters that I just activated have reinforced the crystal in a way you can’t even begin to comprehend. I’m sure you could fire a missile from one of your precious Stealthies and penetrate it, but if you do, the crystal will shatter and make mincemeat out of Moretti and everything else in its path. There won’t be anything to save. I guarantee you that.

‘I don’t know how you got past my security system—otherwise the useless assholes I pay to protect me would be here by now—but that’s not important. I never trusted those idiots in the first place. I don’t need them. I can make Moretti wish she had never been born, and there is nothing you can do about it.’

***

‘Missiles locked,’ Ingram reported. She knew they weren’t there yet, but Gonzalez needed to know she could level the whole residence in an instant if needed.

‘Copy,’ Gonzalez replied, busy scanning the properties of the shutters covering Wagner’s windows, which Tilly was pulling up for him in real time.

A few seconds later a risky solution presented itself.

‘Phantom.’ He turned his attention to Rivas. ‘Tilly says a pre-programmed laser pulse can weaken the shutters’ nano-bonds enough for a chemical projectile to go through the crystal. The preliminary analysis gives an eighty-seven per cent probability that the crystal will then shatter like old-fashioned glass.’

‘And the thirteen per cent?’ Rivas asked, wincing at the thought of what even old-fashioned glass shards could do to exposed skin.

‘There is an almost eight per cent chance that the fragments of the shutters’ reinforced crystal will have enough kinetic energy to slash through the opposite wall and everything in their path. And five that your laser gun lacks the power to melt the shutters’ nano-bonds.’

When first invented, reinforced nano-crystal was supposed to make windows not only soundproof but also safer than standard glass. Just like 21st-century cars’ windscreens were a product of PVB-covered glass to prevent shards from lacerating people, the crystal was experimentally coated