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

did nothing to compensate for the blood loss. Even resting, her heart rate was raised, struggling to keep her body functioning. And her breathing remained fast and shallow. Or did it?

Allowing her eyes to open, Ingram tentatively took a deeper breath, listening to her body intently. Something had definitely changed. She felt better, more energised. The sluggishness and the overwhelming weakness were gone, though she still sensed the potential for dizziness. The vents were closed, no longer blasting cold air. Her hands and feet were still numb from the earlier exposure, but there was a warmth inside her that couldn’t be extinguished. Definitely more energised.

It wasn’t natural energy though. Nano-medicine was close to being a true miracle, but that didn’t mean one couldn’t tell when nano-stims were being applied. It always left that artificial sensation around the body.

That strange surge of energy usually propelled Ingram towards a state of giddiness, almost recklessness, and this time was no different. Impatiently she strained against the restraints, not really hoping they would budge, which they didn’t, but needing to check anyway. Frustrated, she surveyed her surroundings.

The room was empty. The bare-walled space looked no different than she remembered. The trolley with various tools, syringes and nano-meds stood just outside of her reach—if her arms had been free to do any reaching, that is. The heavy metal door was locked, controlled by a pad next to it, probably calibrated to respond to BCCs, maybe even DNA if their security was a bit on the paranoid side. The empty space could be used for just about anything, but its lack of decor or furnishings made it morbidly suitable for interrogations. And who knew how many of the Leeches kept in the basements had been tortured in this room, or other similar ones, before being locked away in their cells.

Unexpectedly the door-locking mechanism pinged open, and the door moved slightly ajar. Ingram froze in her efforts to test the restraints, her heart rate increasing, responding automatically to the adrenaline spike. With Megan dead, Wagner had no leverage over her. He was no doubt looking forward to exercising his frustration on Ingram, especially now that she was conscious enough for him to be able to take his sweet time.

She held her breath, waiting, but no one pushed the door fully open to come in. And then the metal clasps holding her down pinged open as well.

‘What the hell?’ Ingram murmured, her eyes fixed on the painfully deep indentations in her skin where the metal had held tight. She was free to move and yet her body refused to budge. Only a moment ago she was desperate to do something, anything to get free, but now she froze, suspicious of her good fortune. Seconds passed as her eyes darted from the open door to her unrestrained limbs, before she shook herself out of the odd stupor.

She reached for the probes inserted into her arm and pulled them out, disconnecting herself from whatever nano-chemicals the tubes might introduce into her body. Tentatively, she stood up, letting her legs accept the weight. She still felt weak, and some of the dizziness returned, but her knees held. So far so good.

If this was some sort of twisted game, she was going to make the idiots pay for their overconfidence. Stepping towards the tray, she grabbed a familiar syringe containing stims and painkillers, but then paused. The last thing she needed was to overdose, making herself puke or worse, as the side effects of drugtox kicked in with increased force.

Instead she grabbed an empty syringe and filled it with a heavy dose of sedatives to use as a weapon and walked around the chair to interrogate the medical computer. Most of the settings and readouts were beyond her comprehension, and before she could decide which buttons to press to open a log, the display blanked out and a single world appeared.

HARPY

‘I’ll be damned,’ Ingram snorted. She no longer cared about how to interrogate the medical computer. Whatever drugs had given her energy came from someone who was trying to help. She could worry about any side effects later. The details weren’t important now.

Dozens of thoughts about how Eloise might have managed this crossed her mind, but each one was even more wild than the previous.

‘Well, I suppose you want me to leave the room since you opened the door. And I’m going to hazard a guess that since you were able to override the controls to open the chair’s restraints as well, you’ve probably made it relatively safe for me to go out,’ Ingram said to no one in particular, but her head lifted as if she expected some higher force to reply.

When no reply came, she shook her head in wry amusement. ‘I guess it won’t be that easy, will it?’ she concluded, and started to turn away. Then the display changed.

CAMS DOWN - DOORS SECURED - FIND EARPIECE

‘You bet I will,’ Ingram replied to the empty room. ‘You can’t talk, but you can see and hear me?’

YES

Yes, you can’t talk, or yes, you can see and hear me? There is such a thing as too concise, you crazy woman. Ingram shook her head with exasperation. But it didn’t really matter. She felt light, the blood loss almost a distant memory as new hope surged. She was nearly out of the room when she paused and returned to the tray to stock up on more drugs. Seconds later, she left the room armed with two syringes, one with powerful sedatives, the other containing a lethal dose of PX-47.

Death by PX-47 was nasty and far from instant. But there was someone who deserved just that.

Outside she moved quickly but carefully. Secured doors meant those in the rooms couldn’t reach her, but those already in the corridor when the trap sprang would be ready to pounce. So far it was empty. Suddenly, a door next to her opened and Ingram flattened herself against the wall, syringe with sedatives at the ready. She edged