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

garbled 2718SEX3 recovered from the Rhône, the next two were the VRP recordings that Megan had pulled for them, and the remaining five were VRPs downloaded from Wagner’s account that had so far only been given a perfunctory examination.

‘How did you do it?’ Ingram asked. She was the first to get over her shock. She wasn’t even trying to understand what sort of weird magic had happened to the watermarks; she was utterly gobsmacked by how Eloise had discovered it.

Eloise faced Ingram and shrugged with a huge grin splitting her face. It was odd to smile like that, but it also felt good.

But then she sobered, the smile vanishing, as she pondered the next question.

‘How?’ Gonzalez demanded, vocalising Eloise’s own thoughts.

Eloise grunted. ‘All those VRPs are mine. When I released them, the watermarks, my watermarks, were deeply embedded in the code as usual. Now they all have this.’ She flicked her hand at the point seven per cent of the visualised squigglecode. ‘This is how the VRPs allowed for non-consensual use. Somehow, this watermark, which is effectively identical to mine, did it.’

‘How?’ Gonzalez repeated. He had figured out by himself what had happened—what he didn’t understand was how it had been possible.

‘I… I don’t know,’ Eloise stuttered. She was beginning to hate this interrogation. ‘You can see exactly what I can see. I don’t have all the answers!’

‘That’s okay,’ Gonzalez said, backing off. He gave Eloise a nod of approval. ‘Spotting it was one hell of a thing. Well done. None of us would have noticed it or realised the possible significance. I understand you don’t know exactly what happened, but theorise, taking into account your experience with VR coding. How is this possible?’

Eloise took a deep breath and turned her attention to the holo-display, looking at the squigglecode but not really seeing it.

‘It looks like they were able to use their watermark code to… cancel mine out. It’s like where it overlapped it simply neutralised the highlighted portions and the functions it coded for. The point seven per cent left looked like garbage… There weren’t enough points of reference for it to look like anything, so it showed up in my analysis as just that—garbage.’ Eloise frowned in thought. Knowing what had happened didn’t exactly explain the how. More importantly, until a few minutes ago she had thought that what had actually happened wasn’t possible, so anything she said now was pure speculation.

‘I can only speculate,’ she said thoughtfully, carefully contemplating the not so impossible. ‘A watermark with a pre-designed squigglecode costs about half a million creds, so that’s not really a problem,’ she continued, and one of the Leech sergeants whistled at the insane cost, then grimaced as Eloise’s casual attitude towards money registered. ‘Keeping it unregistered is slightly trickier, but nothing a few more million couldn’t solve.

‘I need time to understand more. It looks like they managed to use their watermark code to cancel mine, but that just sounds insane. It should have crashed the VRPs. I suspect it might be only masking it, in which case there should be more code telling it what to do. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I should be able to compare the damaged 2718SEX3 from the Rhône with other VRPs from Wagner’s account and reference them against the original VRPs from my library. I might be able to find some answers.’

She sighed. She didn’t like the uncertainty. All these years, VR code challenges had always been a mere ‘when’ type of scenario, not an ‘if’. This was so beyond anything she had ever contemplated that she wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

‘How long would that take?’ Gonzalez asked.

‘Potentially forever,’ Eloise said, professional pride gnawing at her. It was humiliating. ‘I can’t even begin to understand what they did. But… I do know that for once the VR code might not be the answer.’

‘Huh?’ Ingram grunted. Her own thoughts had, as usual, travelled away from VR and the computers, searching for other avenues, and she was shocked that Eloise might be thinking along the same lines. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?’

‘Now how could I possibly know what you are thinking?’ Eloise asked, her humiliated expression momentarily distorted by annoyance and impatience.

Captain Palmeiro snorted again, his sarcastic amusement focused on Ingram, and Gonzalez found himself itching to sort the man out right there and then.

Just what the hell is your problem? he thought, pondering the issue in the back of his mind, while his attention remained focused on Eloise.

‘Forget I said anything.’ Ingram sighed, shaking her head at Eloise. She wasn’t exactly shaken by Palmeiro’s attitude, but it was clear to anyone who knew her well that she had heard him just fine and not only was it distracting her but also steadily wearing out her patience. ‘Perhaps you would like to enlighten us as to your own thoughts, then?’

Even a bucketful of sarcasm would have been lost on Eloise.

‘We might not know who the watermark is officially registered to, but we do know what else that person, or people, did.’ Eloise swiped her finger across the holo-display, returning to the screen showing the celebratory flyer.

‘You mean someone at Cassandra?’ Ingram asked.

‘Isn’t it just a little bit too convenient that the thing we need just happens to be on a freaking flyer to advertise two hundred years of the company’s existence?’ Palmeiro jumped in, and Ingram shot him an angry look.

To Gonzalez’s further surprise, the man only winked at her.

Dammit, I don’t have time for this bullshit. Gonzalez shook his head.

‘Not really convenient at all.’ Eloise shrugged. ‘Tilly, one of the most sophisticated computer systems in the Alliance, didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have seen it if it wasn’t for the fact that I know by heart the code for every single VRP I have ever written. The reason my VRPs are so perfect in every possible way is that the code is so heavily interlocked; there is no time lapse as the VRP moves