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

‘I don’t really care much about taste,’ Eloise replied. ‘It was always about the nutrients.’ She took a large bite and began to chew.

‘Yeah, sorry, not sure about the nutrients either. But it will keep you alive. I’m sure you could ask Tilly to have a look at the programming of the food dispenser. Shouldn’t be that hard to change it.’

‘That’s okay,’ Eloise replied between bites. It wouldn’t be the same. The nano-dispenser wasn’t Jeff.

‘Umm… look,’ Ingram began awkwardly. She really wasn’t used to doing this. ‘I know it has been a few hard days. You didn’t ask for this. I know you feel it is our fault that this is happening to you. And I suppose you are right to some extent.’

She locked eyes with Eloise, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. ‘The slums are rough. I did what I had to to keep you alive and bring you here. I did what I was trained to do. I didn’t have the luxury to call for an airtaxi or back-up. I know what stress feels like. I know you feel like your brain can no longer function, and your body is betraying you, struggling with things as simple as breathing. And… it feels horrible. But we are stronger than we think we are. We really are.’ Ingram paused, gathering her own thoughts. Eloise’s face was giving her nothing back, and it was hard to know what to say next. ‘I’m not quite sure what it is I’m trying to say. I guess I just wanted to check if you’re okay. And if I can help, please ask. I’m not your enemy.’

Eloise continued chewing, her eyes never leaving Ingram. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, but it was impossible to guess what she was thinking. In fact, Ingram wasn’t even sure Eloise had heard her.

‘I guess I will just leave you to enjoy your VRP, then,’ Ingram conceded after an awkward silence, and left.

Fucking hell, there’s a reason I’m usually happy for the colonel to do all the people-y stuff. I might as well have been talking to a wall.

CHAPTER 26

Roc de Chere

Lac d’Annecy

Afro-European Alliance

Monday 27 April 2725

DAY 8

Early the next day, Ingram threw her clothes to the floor in a messy pile and began climbing into her n-suit. She always felt uneasy for the first couple of minutes wearing them. The thought of wearing elephant’s skin came to her mind: rigid and lumpy. The n-suits might have been one of the most impressive inventions, but until they were on and activated, they really did look remarkably like elephant’s skin.

Then, of course, when activated they sort of felt even worse.

To guarantee the full experience, the n-suit had to be in contact with every part of the person’s body. That didn’t just mean skin—it meant everything. It meant nanobots travelling down the respiratory system to line the alveoli in the lungs, down the oesophagus and into the stomach, into the eyes, ears and yes, up the other hole, which according to Ingram things should only ever come out of. Of course, no one could actually feel something as small as a nanobot travelling up one’s bottom, but for some the thought was enough.

The nanobots were nanometres long. That meant one would need a billion of them in a line for said line to be one metre. A handful of nanometres was way below the detection of human senses. Which did not make it any less creepy, and Ingram winced automatically when she let her n-suit activate.

Today, it was more of an instinctive response, however, as her attention was elsewhere. She disagreed with Gonzalez’s priorities, and couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she should have expressed her concerns more firmly.

Last night’s full integration of Tilly into their investigation meant virtually unlimited potential to cross-reference and analyse any data they had. It meant, for example, that the clever system had broken a series of codes and codenames Wagner and his cronies used in the messages Megan recovered. That led them to discover that even before Eloise Moretti was brought to the 4th, Wagner had an order to gain access to her residence, the Chandler N-Suit Research Base, at all cost. Analysis of the footage recovered from the external cams at the residence showed that multiple attempts had been made. So far they had been unsuccessful, but as with every lock that had ever needed to be picked, it was only a matter of time.

Ingram argued that destroying the Chandler N-Suit Research Base should be their priority. They couldn’t save it, and the risk of someone breaking into its network, finding out that Eloise was not only alive but had actually been inside the system herself and was now in possession of the VRP that Wagner and his cronies thought had been destroyed, was unacceptable. With enough digging, the Chandler N-Suit Research Base network could bring a lot of uninvited guests straight to Roc de Chere.

Gonzalez disagreed with that as the biggest priority for reasons Ingram could not see.

Tilly had been able to transform the code of the two VRPs Wagner had accessed into a 3D experience for them to watch in VR. They would only be able to see the snippets Wagner had viewed, but that was much more informative than browsing raw code or 2D images.

What Megan had saved were called memory files. Among them, there was more than enough data for Eloise to figure out which VRP it was. And since they were Eloise’s VRPs (and what a surprise that was), Tilly was able to superimpose the memory files onto the actual VRP and provide them with direct, sensory-active access. They wouldn’t be able to alter the events within the VRP in any way or play the VRP itself, but the n-suits would allow them full integration into the VRP recording.

According to Gonzalez, he needed Eloise to be focused while watching the recording, not agonising over the fact that they’d had