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

century, the Elite had the means to clean the contamination. The nanobot research during the third nano-tech revolution had advanced safely to a level where whole armies of nanobots could have been sent into the soil to mop up the damage with no adverse risk whatsoever. Given the scale of the disaster, the project would have taken a few months, but it would have been possible. But by then, the Elite had no interest in what lay east of Lyon. It reminded them too much of the failures they wanted to forget. The wasteland was off limits, and as long as the dams held to protect the city it was easy to forget the problem existed. Not even the poor wanted to have anything to do with the Contaminated Zone.

Occasionally someone tried to stir up enough interest in a clean-up operation, but since the terrain had so little value to anyone there was no rush. There were always more important things to do with the advanced versions of the nanobots. Like making the rich even richer and their lives even more luxurious.

When the new nano-factories and farms in North-West Lyon opened in 2611 and there was an influx of unskilled workers into the city, the project to clean up the Prealps was back on the drawing board for the first time in two hundred years. By that point only the three Lyon dams still held, requiring frequent maintenance. The arriving workers claimed the east of Lyon as their new home. The clean water and soil were nothing but basic commodities for the workers, without whom the farms and factories could not have operated.

Small-scale experiments had begun, removing the worst of the contamination, but then came the intense automation and job redundancies. The Elite no longer needed the half million workers and their families, and just like that, clean water and soil weren’t a priority. The poor were abandoned to fend for themselves.

It was only a matter of time until the third dam gave up under the onslaught. The Leeches living west of it understood the dangerous situation they were in. They had laboured hard to remove any debris that had threatened the construction, but without new nano-filters the water still carried dangerous amount of toxins.

The first dam, right in central Lyon, was being rebuilt to accept modern technology that would increase its effectiveness and output. The second and the third dams were to be next. Until then, the Leeches were on their own.

No one would ever be able to prove it, but the second and third dams had not failed by accident.

No Elite history book would ever recognise that it had been the Elites’ doing in an attempt to solve the Leech problem. They didn’t want Leeches breeding out of control so close to Lyon. With no clean water to drink and use for farming, the Leeches would have no choice but to go back to where they had come from, past the contamination and into the Alps.

Or maybe someone had been more calculating than that. Maybe they had hoped that the Leeches would poison themselves and die en masse, in some twisted natural selection process that would see only the strongest, the Elite, survive.

But if that was what they hoped for, they were mistaken. For it was the Leeches that were strong. For one thing, for generations they had used water that contained much higher levels of toxins than that which the Elite consumed, and their bodies had learnt how to flush the chemicals more efficiently. But also, it had been nearly five hundred years since the original contamination, and the level of pollutants was significantly lower than in the early days. Between that and the effects of the experimental phases of the clean-up, the makeshift filtration systems and the crude purifying techniques the Leeches had used as well as their hardened immune systems, the water was almost safe to drink. It tended to smell and taste of mud and rot, but one could consume it and remain healthy. For the most part.

Nature in the Prealps had adapted as well as the humans. Maybe even better. While the lands in the Contaminated Zone still looked somewhat barren and desolate, the underbrush and trees had begun to grow and the animals had returned. Mother Nature had yet again delivered a surprise, proving that if left alone and away from harmful human intervention, she could heal given enough time.

Even so, inhabitants in the Prealps were scarce. Those who had managed to escape Lyon with some resources mostly made it all the way up to Lake Geneva, which was thriving with wildlife, the valley almost idyllic. In fact, anywhere higher up in the mountains than where the ecological disaster had occurred was safe. Life was still hard, reliant on local production and primitive tools, but at least the water wouldn’t poison you and shorten your life.

What remained of the wasteland was occupied by opportunists. Given that the terrain had been abandoned in a hurry nearly five hundred years ago and had remained uninhabited ever since, there were those who expected to find forgotten riches left behind. They usually found nothing but deteriorating health, but it didn’t stop others from trying.

It wasn’t the safest place to be driving through, but Ingram had no doubt that even on the crumbled road she could outdrive a malnourished opportunist who might decide to appropriate her vehicle. And so far, she hadn’t seen anyone. The Contaminated Zone seemed as empty and desolate as it must have been right after the ecological catastrophe.

The emptiness, while ultimately safe, was beginning to get to Ingram. It was hard to control irrational thoughts. Some said the Contaminated Zone was haunted by all those who had died there due to poisoning. It was hard to disbelieve the stories while driving through the desolate terrain late at night. The panic and sleep-deprivation-induced paranoia were eating at the last remaining shreds of Ingram’s resolve and self-control. One bite at a time.

Roc de Chere was