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

what he was doing—the slow, unthreatening movements. Hands on the table. Nice and relaxed. Damn, she wasn’t a child anymore.

Great, girl, just great. He’s being thoughtful, and you’re ready to bite his head off.

It really was reassuring in a way, but it also brought her own attention to the things she was trying hard not to think about just yet. No amount of showering and scrubbing her own body would take the painful memories away. The best she could do for now was push them aside, until she felt strong enough, both physically and mentally, to deal with them. Until the drugtox wore off, leaving her feeling like her normal self. For now, it was impossible to tell whether what she felt was real or not, and it was easier to stay busy and not think.

She had done it before; she could it again. Time permitting, at some point she would be free to indulge in nano-drug-supported talking therapy with a professional mind healer. In her case it would be more talking than drugs, of course, to avoid setting off another bout of drugtox symptoms. Either way, it would fix her head. It wasn’t foolproof, but it had a massive advantage over the pharmacopoeia from the old days that mainly masked symptoms rather than digging deep enough to deal with the cause.

For now, pushing the problem aside was the solution.

‘You won’t break, eh? Are you convincing me or yourself?’ Gonzalez asked, sharply refusing to accept the weak joke.

His words sounded callous, and Ingram snapped her head up to look at him in surprise. Surprise was good—better than having to deal with his sympathy—but it was still strange. Usually he approved of her light-heartedness, and would go along with her jokes, however weak, letting her lighten up the mood. Heck, he usually counted on her to come up with a joke whenever the tension rose too high.

This time, he was too concerned to let her sweep it all under the rug. Which meant he knew all about the slums. The medical report provided by the Medibot, a self-contained diagnostic and healing machine all in one, while Ingram was still unconscious must have been painfully detailed.

It was harder than she thought. She was unconscious when they brought her in and placed her under the Medibot. Normally a doctor would operate it, keeping the details confidential, only informing her CO of how her condition affected her duty, rather than specifying what was causing said condition. But not this time.

The bloody machine not only analysed the damage done to my flesh and bones, but probably provided comprehensive probability scenarios of how the injuries occurred.

The Medibot didn’t have to be programmed like that, but Ingram knew Gonzalez wouldn’t have it any other way. There was too much responsibility squarely on his shoulders to risk depriving himself of any vital information as to her probable state, physical and mental alike. Technically, it violated her right to privacy on one level or another, but rules and regulations within the MIS could be, and often were, bent by the COs to fit the circumstances. It sort of made sense, when you looked at it from a dispassionate point of view.

And it’s not like I didn’t know what I was signing up for, she mused. But no amount of knowledge makes it any easier when it comes to one’s privacy being violated, no matter how good the cause.

She held his eyes for a moment and then returned to staring at the black liquid in her mug. The warmth permeating her hands felt nice. In all the struggle, she had failed to notice how cold she had been the entire time in the Underground City. The body really does go soft when we allow it to, she thought darkly.

‘I’m fine,’ she said automatically as the silence stretched.

‘Carlotta, I don’t doubt that your body has either healed entirely or will do so in the next few hours, but it isn’t just your body we’re talking about.’

‘It never is, is it!’ She heard her sharp, accusatory tone and winced. Bloody drugtox making her irrational.

It was hard to decide in her head who she was. Her identity as Sergeant Ingram seemed to be slipping away. Ingram was a Leech and therefore powerless. Her mind was now taking refuge behind her persona of Major Aisha Toscano. And with that came a certain arrogant way of behaving. It was impossible to live like an Elite and not acquire some of their mannerisms.

Toscano was never great at keeping her mouth shut, almost ignorant of the fact that Colonel Larsen still outranked her. Sometimes, when she got passionate about something, she became quite a handful to manage, although she did know how to bite her tongue if there were others present. Ironically, it was that passion and willingness to speak her mind that had made him want her on his team, and why he regularly had to remind her of her place.

But he wasn’t going to speak sharply to her today.

He considered apologising for where his orders had led her, but knew it wouldn’t go down well. It would make him feel just a tad better, but at the same time it would make Ingram withdraw further into herself. He couldn’t truly begin to understand what had happened in the slums. He could barely begin to comprehend that she had pulled it off in the first place. He was an Elite—born and bred—and what Leeches could endure continued to astound him. The medical scan performed on Eloise Moretti had made him realise just how hard it must have been for Ingram to keep the Elite woman alive and safe. But he wouldn’t be surprised to find out that his imagination fell miserably short of the brutal reality.

The ‘well done’s he’d said when Ingram first woke up were poor recompense. There would be no medals, no recognition, no citations. No one would ever know the extent of her utter dedication and determination. Was she ever tempted to abandon