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

have him smuggled into an Elite hospital and implanted with an Elite BCC, then put up for adoption as a war orphan.’

‘That must have cost a lot,’ Eloise whispered. She still knew very little about the reality Leeches faced, but she knew fake BCCs were always expensive.

‘More than an average Leech could ever hope to scrape together. That’s why Toscano—I mean Ortega—enlisted. The military was pinched for manpower. They were luring Leeches in with one-off bonuses. Toscano used all of that money’—and her soul, though Gonzalez wasn’t about to say that out loud—‘to buy her son a better future. It worked— he was given a fake identity, adopted, and his new parents never found out.’

‘Does he know?’

‘No. And he never will. But Toscano has kept an eye on him ever since the Wars ended. Andy was only eleven when she got her own Elite BCC, and she soaked up every scrap of information she could find about him.’ Gonzalez closed his eyes. Tracking the boy down had nearly cost Ingram her life, though she had never found out about that.

‘I… can’t quite understand what it must have felt like,’ Eloise admitted. She wasn’t a mother and couldn’t even begin to understand what the maternal instinct was all about, but the sacrifice of never seeing one’s child sounded insane. For a moment her thoughts travelled to her grand-uncle, and how hard she had taken it when he died. The thought of never seeing him again had haunted her for a long time.

‘She knew going in that her chances of surviving the Wars were almost nil. Very few Leeches lasted more than a few months. But it gave her son a chance he would never have had otherwise. It was the only way she could see to break the cycle, and she had to choose fast. They had to implant the BCC and start the NanoBTher within hours. About a hundred Leech newborns were saved from the slums that year in the Lyon area alone.’

An odd silence reigned, their thoughts going off on separate tangents, until Tilly beeped, announcing the end of the simulation.

***

‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ Gonzalez asked, his n-suit slung over his shoulder.

‘Yes.’ Eloise almost didn’t sigh. Almost. ‘The blueprint for the VR system I created is up and running in an open mode. It will automatically fill in the gaps based on what we discover in Olympus, adding to it. I have a program ready to scan all the incoming data in real time, using up, by the way, about every single scrap of operational power this place has to offer. Tilly is behind a set of firewalls, the same that held last time plus some more. And Sergeant Atkins is about as friendly and in tune with Tilly as possible. Oh, and the back-up safety locks on our n-suits are on.’ She giggled.

It was a nervous giggle, a clear sign that the moment Eloise moved away from VR code and entered real life her confidence had taken as crashing a nosedive as it always did.

‘Interesting point of view.’ Gonzalez shook his head, but a smile crossed his face as well. The safety locks had been removed to give them freedom of movement, but in their place, Eloise had been able to create a makeshift patch that should lower the effects of any nervous system–frying surges coming their way. Though there was no way of knowing how long those patches would hold or to what extent they would be protective in the worst-case scenarios.

‘Fine,’ Gonzalez concluded after a moment of hesitation. He had tried to follow what Eloise had done over the last hour, but his expertise had proven woefully inadequate even when the Elite woman had been grudgingly willing to explain. He could either trust her or scrap the whole idea, leaving him with nothing. So far, she had delivered without fail, and this type of witchery had been exactly why he had wanted to find her in the first place. ‘Let’s get ready. Sarge, take five to refill your coffee mug while we change.’

The n-suits enveloped their bodies with the usual precision and efficacy, moulding to their forms and penetrating every orifice with dispassionate professionalism, while Eloise and Gonzalez kept a companionable silence. In mere minutes, the fusing process was complete and the n-suit displays flashed green.

‘It feels different, heavier somehow, like rubber pulling on skin,’ Gonzalez commented, double-checking the readouts.

‘Safety locks,’ Eloise mumbled, making a face as she felt the same. ‘Removing them and using a patch instead took away some of the smooth interface my grand-uncle discovered. It doesn’t affect their function and it will disappear once the VR input takes over.’

‘Joshua, are you ready?’ Gonzalez asked.

‘Yessir!’ Atkins replied, settling down behind a computer in the adjacent VR lab. ‘Ready whenever you are.’

‘Ms Moretti?’

‘You know, I do have a first name, last time I checked. When it’s calm, it’s Ms Moretti this and Ms Moretti that; when the shit hits the fan it’s suddenly just Moretti. While I agreed to follow your orders, I really am not one of your soldiers. How about just Eloise?’

‘Eloise,’ Gonzalez agreed with a slight bow of his head.

He was about to offer his first name in return, but Eloise was faster. ‘Thank you, Colonel.’

‘Okay, let’s do it then. In case I didn’t make it sufficiently clear before, no random, hot-headed decisions. You see something, you show me. You do not do anything until I tell you to. Understood?’

‘Dammit, I already said yes twice before. I understand!’ Eloise growled. She lifted her hand with the wrist-comp to eye level and extended one finger on her other hand in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Permission to switch VR enviro on?’ she asked, rolling her eyes.

‘Do it,’ he grumbled.

The world around them dissolved, the rough stone walls of Roc de Chere replaced by sheets of holo-displayed code. There were so many layers of code, one on top of another, that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the next began. Some