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

Gonzalez, it looked like he was done trying to literally beat himself up over Megan’s fate. Of course, Ingram knew he could easily revert to any of the self-destructive activities that provided one with temporary relief when things calmed down. But for now, he had his head as square as possible, and she was deeply relieved to see it.

‘I wasn’t going to say anything,’ she teased, her eyes dancing, tempting Gonzalez with a little bit of light-hearted banter.

It never stopped feeling odd to swap between seriousness and light-heartedness, but it also never stopped being necessary to take every opportunity they had to laugh and smile. Otherwise, they would have gone insane a long time ago. Among many excellent qualities Gonzalez approved of in Ingram, her ability to do a one-eighty turn and give them all something to laugh about, even if just for a couple of minutes, was something he treasured deeply.

‘If you were any more transparent, you would be invisible.’ He grinned back at her. It was a smile tinged with sadness, but it still lit up his features.

Ingram laughed. ‘Bullshit. I can be very opaque if I want. Not to be confused with thick. I refuse to be thick.’

‘Sure,’ Gonzalez agreed. ‘I wouldn’t dare call you thick. Joking aside, though, you do know your ability to resist nano-hells scores somewhere in the ninety-ninth percentile among MIS operatives?’

‘I didn’t think you knew,’ she replied, avoiding his gaze. It was strange, but even two decades after crawling out of the bottom of the pile and getting an Elite BCC, she felt uneasy that her secret was out. Those Leeches who could resist nano-hells, especially Q9, had been exterminated with extreme prejudice during the Wars.

‘It’s not in your file,’ Gonzalez reassured her, ‘but I took some time to review your records and I have supervised enough of your training to notice the potential. I went back to review Ortega’s early training records and nothing else can explain what I found. I don’t think it’s something anyone would notice unless they were looking for it.’

‘It’s not something Leeches like to talk about. I never thought how high I ranked compared to others, but I’ve known since the early days that I had a knack for it. It’s a conscious ability. I assume you can resist well yourself, sir?’ she said, deflecting with a question.

‘Moderately.’

‘You would probably be better at it if you had no choice but to practise.’ Ingram turned around and faced him for the first time since he had brought up the subject.

‘How did you manage not to use those skills during your basic training? I mean, they would have known if you did, wouldn’t they?’

‘Like I said, it is a conscious decision. Personally, I find there is a time window to resist following administration of the drugs. If I don’t keep the effects in check when the nano-hells activate, it’s virtually impossible to regain that control later on. If I’m injured or tired it’s harder to establish and maintain that control in the first place. But I can let go of it at any point. It… wasn’t easy to learn to let go at first, but seeing people executed for resisting is an excellent motivator.’

Gonzalez winced in sympathy. No, he could never truly understand what it had been like for the Leeches during the Wars.

‘I doubt that anyone training Leeches during the Wars bothered to look too closely into my or anyone else’s files,’ Ingram continued. ‘There really weren’t any proper files to begin with, not until the recruits were deemed trained and shipped out to the front line. They wouldn’t have seen those small inconsistencies. As long as the ability to resist Q9 wasn’t too glaringly obvious, it was easy to slip through the cracks.’

‘What about Special Forces?’ he asked. Ironically, the Elite were encouraged to resist the nano-hells they were given as part of their captivity and interrogation survival training. ‘Did you continue hiding your ability to resist?’

‘Yes.’ Ingram nodded. ‘Old habits die hard. I didn’t know back then how I happened to make it out alive with an Elite BCC and a new identity. I didn’t know who sponsored me or why. I resisted just enough to make it look natural, fitting somewhere in the middle.’

Their eyes met, replaying the same training days and challenges at the Special Forces School. Their paths never crossed there, Gonzalez having graduated before Ingram got in, but the essence of the training remained similar. It was so soon after the end of the Freedom Wars that few, if any, changes to the curriculum had been made.

‘That makes sense.’ Gonzalez nodded.

‘But it isn’t what you did, is it? You spent a lot of energy resisting all the nano-hells thrown at you.’ She gave him a mischievous smile.

‘Yes, I did.’ Gonzalez laughed, raising his hands in the universal sign of surrender. ‘I was young, naive and desperate to succeed. I remember a young lieutenant—he must have finished his own Special Forces training barely a couple of years earlier—trying to talk some sense into me, but I thought I knew better.’

‘What happened?’ Ingram asked, genuinely interested. She usually tried to stay away from things that were too Elite, but over the years she had learnt to recognise that for some, being born an Elite, especially a highly placed one, was a real curse.

‘I spent two weeks in a coma.’ Gonzalez laughed bitterly. ‘Nearly washed out of the training. I would have washed out if it wasn’t for my surname, I suppose. I couldn’t shake off the effects of the nano-hells, but I was too determined to let go. I thought if I just tried harder, I could will it out of my body. What I actually did was make my body shut down under the pressure and exhaustion. There were toxic by-products that accumulated in my tissue. My body stiffened up with massive swellings to the joints and I could hardly move. My heart struggled to cope under the strain. They induced a