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

arms, even as those arms shifted reassuringly for a better grip. Somewhere in the back of her head a red alarm rang, telling her this was the brute who had broken into her home and drugged her, but she couldn’t really give a damn anymore. He was the closest thing she had to a friend, and really, now that she was getting to know him, he wasn’t all that bad. And even more importantly, she felt safer as his strong arms closed around her.

It was impossible to tell how long they stood like that, her bottom resting against the edge of the medical couch and her face leaning into his shoulder. When the arms around her finally relaxed, she felt oddly vulnerable and empty, but Rivas only shifted one of his hands to gently cup her chin and lift her head up to look at him. She was a rather tall woman, but Lieutenant Rivas looked as if nature had given him that one final stretch, and he towered over Eloise by a good few centimetres.

‘I know it’s scary. And I know that both the colonel and Major Toscano have been rough with you, but the truth is they are doing this more for you than for themselves or to save time.’ Eloise’s eyes narrowed as she tried to follow that convoluted logic. ‘Coddling you now wouldn’t do you much good. You can’t fixate on self-pity; it will only eat you alive. There is more strength in you than you realise, and staying strong and fighting really does wonders for one’s self-esteem. If we let you give up now, your mind might give up for real. There will be time for therapy and mind healers later—for now the best thing to keep your mind safe is to keep moving and stay busy. So, get your shit together, and do as Major Toscano ordered. Hot shower and food.’

He briefly considered brushing his lips against hers, but before he could make up his mind the woman extricated herself from his half-embrace and left the room without a single word.

Down, boy, he thought, laughing at himself. This half-human, half-computer is about fifty per cent too much of a computer for you.

But then the amusement vanished as he recalled the words he had just said to Eloise and compared them with his own past.

Self-pity never did anyone any good, but oh God, how hard it is to resist wallowing in it.

CHAPTER 38

Roc de Chere

Lac d’Annecy

Afro-European Alliance

Tuesday 28 April 2725

DAY 9

Out of the medical room, Ingram considered finding Gonzalez, but quickly changed her mind. The blood splatters on the wall didn’t escape her attention and she decided her CO probably needed a moment to himself. There was nothing she could do to help him feel better and it was presumptuous to think otherwise.

How close they had come to losing Eloise was bad, but nowhere near as bad as what had happened to Megan. Eloise was alive and physically patched up to a near-new condition. Megan, if alive, was probably wishing she wasn’t.

What they had found on Wagner’s account only made it worse. The man was an utter psychopath. Among the files they had been through, they had discovered a recording of Megan’s interrogation. It still twisted Ingram’s stomach to think about it. The moment they had seen the eye patch they had known nothing good could have possibly happened to the eye, but seeing Wagner personally gouge it out with a knife, for no other reason but that he could, had been something else. Hearing his laughter echoing long after Megan had lost consciousness was enough to chill anyone’s blood.

Megan’s interrogation—torture, really—wasn’t the only thing they had found on Wagner’s account. There were countless recordings of violent abuse towards his personal servants, subordinates and every Leech who had ever wronged him. Some seemed to have been guilty of nothing more than existing. There was indeed a huge preference towards female victims, but Leech men also featured prominently in his ghastly gallery of sick conquests.

There was no worse task than watching through all those recordings. Luckily, they didn’t have to. Tilly was more than capable of sifting through the data and pulling out names, phrases or other recognised codes and codenames while sparing them the grisly images. How someone this sick had been promoted so far in the Police Forces was beyond her understanding. The corruption and brutality were one thing. A sick deviance that should have got him sanctioned, imprisoned or better yet, executed, under any civilised law was something else. It was never just about getting rid of Wagner and people like him, it was about getting to those that stood above them and allowed such rot to set in.

And that means finding every scrap of information that we can use among the terabytes of data we downloaded from Wagner’s account. Ingram sighed, heading back to the security room, where she had left her coffee in front of the holo-display and the last file she had been working through.

***

When Gonzalez joined her a few minutes later, she made no attempt to disguise her concern as she checked him out, trying to assess his state. His hands were wrapped in a bandage, but the fabric was a mere cloth with no nano-med properties that would kickstart accelerated healing, and her eyebrow rose.

‘I know.’ He nodded. ‘I’ve already checked with Rivas—he has another twenty minutes with the Medibot. I’m going in next.’

Ingram beamed at him, not even trying to hide her satisfaction. She wasn’t naive enough to think his guilt and grief were gone, but he was working through it as much as the circumstances allowed and he was making progress. A good punch or two to a wall could do wonders, as she had found out herself more than once. It probably wasn’t a viable solution before the invention of nano-medicine and fast-healing drugs, but she never had a second thought about taking advantage of it now that they were available.

As for