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

prolonged in severe cases and usually involved professional intervention way beyond a machine like the Medibot if it was to be done safely.

The best anyone could hope for was that in optimal conditions the brain would heal itself. And luckily for humanity it usually did. Usually. The first day or two of recovery proved crucial. It was important to keep the mind going, providing it with suitable stimulation.

Lost in thought, Eloise missed Ingram entering the room until the other woman was barely a couple of metres away. But then the mental cogs turned, and her eyes narrowed.

‘You!’

Eloise jumped out of her comfortable chair. If her body had felt even a little bit more like her own, she would have been on top of Ingram, one of her panicked furies in full blast. As it was, she swayed on her feet, willing the vertigo to go away. Distantly, she felt someone supporting her by her elbow, but she was too confused to feel the usual distaste and awkwardness about human touch.

‘You!’ she repeated, still standing but making no attempt to move. ‘She’s a fucking lunatic! You said I’m safe here!’ She turned to face Gonzalez, yanking her arm away from him, her eyes blazing fire. ‘You lied! You’re with her. She tried to—’

Her voice wavered as more memories hit. More disorganised flashbacks. Images.

She saw Ingram manipulating her nano-patches, turning her into some sort of zombified, helpless wreck. Her hand shot up to her face as she literally felt the memory of the punch cracking her cheekbone, and then she doubled over as the memory of the knee to the stomach hit. Her body swayed. But then even more memories flooded her mind, and she snapped her head around to look at Ingram, her eyes round in shock.

The woman in front of her was dressed in clean clothes, her dark wavy hair falling loose onto her shoulders. She looked so different, yet the same, especially the eyes. Those big green eyes were just as mesmerising as Eloise had found them when drugged up on nano-meds, though the mad desperation was currently absent.

‘You saved me,’ Eloise whispered, weakened even more by the memories. The shame and embarrassment were too strong for her to process it all, and she felt her insides shake, nerves firing without co-ordination. ‘I did nothing. And you saved me,’ she admitted.

Ingram flushed involuntarily. Suddenly, she wished Eloise had actually attacked her. It seemed preferable. She thought desperately, searching for the right reply, but none came.

Eloise sat down heavily, her mind whirling as even more images came back to her.

Ingram stepping between her and the Leech thugs underground. Covering her body. Taking the beating herself. Selling her own soul for a safe place to hide. Standing straight, pressing a gun to her own head, bluffing.

She must have been bluffing. She must have. She couldn’t have—

The details were still beyond her grasp, but the meaning was clear.

‘Why did you do it?’ Eloise whispered.

She could also remember her own panic. The patches stinging madly as they dived into the slums, missiles on their ass. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. Her chest had tightened so badly she thought her ribs would burst. Her vision blurring in terror as the tears poured down. Words making no sense. Helpless desperation.

Now, she felt… humiliated. Her head hurt and she pressed her hands hard to her temples. This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t that useless. She trained hard in her VRPs, loving a challenge, the new and the unexpected. She thrived there. So why…

Dammit, VR enviros gave me a varied, professional experience most people couldn’t dream off!

For a few minutes no one said a word, and Eloise continued working through her scattered memories, hearing nothing but her own ragged breath and soft whimpers.

The atrocities disgusted her. She remembered watching helplessly as they ripped Ingram’s clothes off and pinned her down. The look in her eyes, her body twisting in agony. She hadn’t complained, hadn’t even tried to resist. It hadn’t even been the first time, but it had been the worst Eloise could remember. There had been other men and women watching and it had looked like some sick ritual that had happened many times before.

Ingram had run out of things to trade, getting them what they needed to make the journey through the mountains—an old, barely functioning car. But they still had to leave the underground tunnels. The Leech thugs there, the Syndicate, had been territorial. They wouldn’t have let them pass. When Ingram refused to waste time running any more errands to earn the privilege, they challenged her to let them each have a turn with her, and the tunnels would become free to traverse. They had cheered her on to agree, dropping their own torn and filthy pants down. They had whistled and mocked.

Why? Why did you let them do it? Eloise couldn’t bring herself to ask out loud. She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer. She didn’t want to hear that the other woman did it for her. That it was her duty.

No matter how hard she tried, Eloise couldn’t get the image of a half-conscious Ingram stumbling back up, her thighs covered in blood, out of her mind. The damn flashbacks kept playing in her head, and there was no pause button. She saw Ingram reaching calmly, her hand shaking with exertion, to wipe the blood away. A sick smile of triumph on her face as she worked hard to control herself. There had been something dangerous in her eyes too, and it had grown with each Leech violating her body.

Some of the thugs had seemed surprised at the end. Maybe they hadn’t expected Ingram to survive the brutal assault, or maybe they had expected her to beg them to stop. Or something. But most had seemed amused. What had been the worst was how it all seemed perfectly normal to them all. A few actually slapped her on the shoulder, inviting her back anytime.

And then the image changed, showing her a