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

with sexual services, since they can get it from a perfectly legal and willing encounter. And yet, there is an organised operation that is doing just that. They literally beat their victims into submission.’ He knew he was repeating the same information he had given her only a couple of hours ago, just dressed in different words, but was hoping that he could finally get through to her. That he could convince her it was a just fight, and that she would want to join willingly, not because she felt forced or scared. ‘One could say that those who died and were fished out of the Rhône were lucky. Their suffering has at least ended.’

Gonzalez paused, trying to gauge the effect he was having, but couldn’t tell a thing. Eloise just stared at him, her head slightly cocked. It was tempting to embark on another long explanation as to why some people would commit such atrocities, but he doubted the woman was ready to accept the truth. Her bubble of Elite ignorance was too strong, and she wasn’t likely to believe his words.

He needed something stronger. Like the VRP recording he needed her to look at…

In a way, he understood why it was so hard for Eloise to believe them. He hadn’t believed the truth himself in his youth. He had grown up thinking that Elites were genuinely benevolent, willing to selflessly end the plight of those who were poor and unfortunate. The heroes striving hard to make one more bit of progress in the name of science to end poverty once and for all. Yada yada yada.

What the Elite were really striving for was to make their own lives better. It was already disgustingly full of luxuries, but for some it was never enough.

In a way, the Elite had their own Elite. A small but extremely powerful group that was willing to condemn millions to misery and suffering for their own gains. When you looked at them, you realised how little the human race had actually evolved. Despite all the progress, some people could still justify depriving others of basics.

It took a special type of person to do so. A sick and disturbed type of person. The more power they had, the more they abused it. The more financial resources they had, the more greedy they became. And from there, it was a small step to seeing the poor, the Leeches, as less than human. To violate their right to live. To toy with them as if they were nothing.

The Elite of the Elite did not want a willing prostitute. They wanted to exercise their superior birthright to overpower defenceless Leeches, to beat them into submission and feel superior and better than other Elites.

On those really dark nights, Gonzalez wondered to what extent people like that were born sick and depraved, and how much of it was the access to power and prestige that changed them. How many people would be no different if they basked in the luxury of virtually limitless resources? Could power corrupt anyone?

He was reasonably sure he wouldn’t be one of them. His own family was exceptionally powerful. Many families would love to claim to be on the same level, but if push came to shove, Gonzalez was pretty sure that only a mere thirty, maybe forty, families in the whole Afro-European Alliance could genuinely hold their own against his. So in a way, he had had ample opportunity to become one of those power-hungry monsters, but even if he had declined that dubious honour very firmly, he had done things he was not proud of.

He had used his family name to advance his career. Every single promotion he had ever received, except for one, was not due to achievements. People loved the idea of being owed a favour by a Larsen. Of course, achievements would have got him to his current rank anyway, but it would have taken a lot longer. And then, within the MIS, he had used the same family name to get himself his own team, entirely of his own choosing. He had fuddled the expenses to nano-build Roc de Chere with no fear of consequences. He had appropriated a couple of Stealthies and other military craft. He could do all that because he was a Larsen and no one wanted to stand in his way.

He could have the whole of Lyon and all the Leeches in the East Side eating out of his hand if he so chose—as long as he did it in the name of the System, of course. Instead he was stuck in a modern underground bunker, cut off from his trusted MIS associates and reliant on the expertise of an Elite who had spent her entire life as a recluse.

Peachy. Just peachy.

‘Any suggestions to speed up the VRP analysis?’ he asked Eloise, giving up on his efforts to reason with her.

‘One,’ Eloise replied, her attention back on the holo-screen as it prompted her for further attention.

‘And that would be…?’ Gonzalez asked with slightly less patience, and Ingram coughed suspiciously, like she was trying to stifle a chuckle.

‘I can bring my system here.’

Ingram blinked, her chuckle instantly forgotten. That level of computer skills was so far outside of her area of expertise that she couldn’t even begin to understand the basics. Give her a Stealthy, anything that could fly, in fact, and not only could she perform aerobatics that the engineers hadn’t even envisioned but she would also know the theoretical ins and outs as well as, if not better than, the designers themselves. Computers? Not so much.

‘How?’ Gonzalez demanded warily. He really hated the idea of needing to explain, again, that it wasn’t safe for her to go back home. ‘How do you propose to remotely convince your system to allow it?’

‘That is the easy part. The hard part is that there isn’t enough storage space here.’

It was Gonzalez’s turn to blink. Roc de Chere’s storage space was huge. Humongous, in fact—their own system occupied barely