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

calm the outraged public. As you know, since the second dam up the Rhône failed…’

Bellefeuille’s words started to blur as the patch struggled to monitor and control the massive surges of stress chemicals in real time. Eloise wasn’t worried about losing any information; Tilly was recording all of it and there would be plenty of time to study the recording. She had more pressing worries right now. Like breathing.

It felt as if her ribcage were failing to expand sufficiently to accept enough oxygen. Of course, that couldn’t have been true. The patch was controlling all that. It was inducing a steady intake of air to ensure no hyperventilation or hypoxia. It was perfect; it was foolproof.

It feels anything but perfect, dammit!

‘… and some time ago,’ Bellefeuille continued, ‘we recovered a VRP, but it has been severely damaged. Large portions of it are either missing or badly corrupted. Neither the police nor the MIS—that’s our intelligence service within the military—was able to—’

‘I know what the MIS is,’ Eloise said reflexively.

‘Oh, of course, Ms Moretti,’ Bellefeuille agreed readily as a dark blush spread across her cheeks. ‘Erm, as I was saying… We couldn’t get much data out of it. Just another unsolved Leech murder.’ Bellefeuille shrugged one shoulder. ‘But then Alexa Valentino was found dead. I’m sure you have heard about the Valentinos?’ She paused with a huge smile plastered on her face, making it plainly obvious that she stayed very well informed about everything that mattered, such as the cream of the Elite.

Eloise looked at her blankly, confused as to why she should care. Were the Valentinos involved in VR development? N-suit research, maybe? No, if they were she would have known.

‘Anyway,’ Bellefeuille continued after another awkward pause, ‘the VRP remains our most important evidence. Sadly, our experts have reached a dead end. And my superior, Commissioner Wagner, is hoping you might be able to discover something in the code that our experts missed. Such as its origin and producers, perhaps? The watermark is completely gone, so we’re stumped. Some of our experts say that it might have been removed.’

Eloise blinked, acutely aware of what Bellefeuille was saying. The primitive understanding of VR coding that the other woman was displaying disgusted her.

The watermarks were little tag-like sections of code used by all VRP designers and developers, not just Eloise. In fact, most products manufactured in the 28th century had them. They identified the maker, which was their primary function. For legal purposes, all VRPs for sale required watermarks. By law they had to be embedded in code, where they remained permanently regardless of how many times the VRP was used. It was up to the maker whether they chose to display visual watermarks as well, for example in the form of a stamp on the cover of the VRP. It was that visual tag that gave modern watermarks their name, borrowing shamelessly from the marks used to protect old currencies from counterfeiting.

‘That’s impossible.’ The sigh of impatience came out harsh, and Bellefeuille flinched.

‘Excuse me?’

‘It’s impossible to completely remove watermarks that contain information about the VRP’s origin, designers or producers. Such information is placed so deep in the code it cannot be removed without making the VRP unplayable.’

‘I’m no VR expert, but surely if it was placed there in the first place it can be removed?’

‘No, it can’t.’

Bellefeuille silently willed Eloise to volunteer more information, but that was evidently not going to happen.

Talking about VR had calmed Eloise enough that the stabbing ache in her chest had eased off, but with a clearer ability to think she had also become acutely aware of the corporate espionage rules her grand-uncle had drummed into her. Never talk about VR design, especially the really nifty tricks, with anyone.

‘Well,’ Bellefeuille replied after a while, trying to hide her disappointment, ‘you might understand why your expertise is required.’

Eloise nodded absent-mindedly. Her breathing had normalised somewhat, but she now felt lightheaded and dizzy. And her mouth was dry.

Where the hell is Jeff with his refreshments?

‘So, with your permission, Ms Moretti, could I perhaps come to pick you up tomorrow—let’s say seven in the morning?’

Eloise looked at her wrist-comp. It did have a clock somewhere in there, but that was a function she never used and it took her a moment to find the right button. It was apparently just after three in the afternoon, and she frowned, her anxious mind distracted. She looked through the crystal at the barely visible aircar in what looked like rapidly approaching dusk. It made no sense for it to be that dark so early in the afternoon.

‘Tomorrow morning at seven is fine,’ she lied automatically. Nothing was fine.

‘Excellent!’ Bellefeuille stood up, satisfied. She didn’t offer her hand this time. ‘On behalf of my superior, Commissioner Wagner, I would like to thank you for your co-operation. I need to return to the 4th now, and I’m sure you have plenty of important things to do. Please, no need to worry, I can show myself out,’ she added, noticing that Eloise showed no intention of walking her to the door.

Luckily, the security system sensed Bellefeuille’s approach and released the door’s locking mechanism. She walked down the short path towards the landing pad with great relief, smiling to herself at the sterling job she had just done. Nice and easy, just what the commissioner wanted.

Eager to get back to the 4th, she crossed to the landing pad at a quick march. The image of Gonzalez in disgrace had made her rather giddy, and she wanted to see more of it. The XST-12b, a police-issue aircar usually used for ferrying the Elite from one place to another, took off abruptly as soon as she boarded, and with much higher noise levels than expected.

‘Do you mind piloting the thing with some basic level of competence?’ Bellefeuille growled at Ingram, the noise hurting her unprotected eardrums.

‘Sorry, ma’am!’ Ingram eased off on the controls, but kept the aircar in a state of old-fashioned overrev until she saw all the