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

no choice but to destroy her home. The Chandler N-Suit Research Base was safe for now, and Gonzalez, having spent enough time with Tilly’s double, was convinced that the original Tilly would give them warning in plenty of time.

Ingram thought he had another reason too. One he didn’t want to talk about.

‘Ready?’ Gonzalez’s voice was nice and clear, reaching both Eloise and Ingram through the n-suits’ earpiece, made out of nanobots that laced their ear canals.

The women responded, one in a respectful military style, the other with her usual brusqueness.

Interestingly, it had taken some convincing to get Eloise to agree to go in to have a look. Last night, she had seemed all eager and fired up to get her hands on the VR code. Today, she was even more tired and distant. She barely opened her mouth unless someone asked her a question. And even then, the answers were vague and short. Well, more vague and shorter than before.

Eloise couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so badly. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever having sleeping problems. The night before, she had spent a couple of hours tossing in bed in a futile attempt to fall asleep before rising to indulge in another VR adventure. By that point everyone else had been asleep.

The VR enviro had helped, but it just wasn’t the same. The library was small compared to her own, the VRPs all had the wrong settings, so she had to painstakingly change one after another, and the n-suit was standard issue. Each and every discrepancy reminded her this wasn’t her home. That her life, for some crazy reason, had started doing somersaults a week ago and was refusing to stop.

What had happened to her might make a great VRP one day, for those totally messed-up masochists out there, but in real life, it sucked. Nothing made sense. There was nothing she could look at, touch, taste or hear that was hers, that was familiar. The reality Gonzalez and his people had tried to convince her was true was too bitter a pill to swallow. Her brain couldn’t deal with it. This all had to be some cruel joke, some horrible and sadistic prank.

But then there were the slums. They were real.

First thing in the morning, when no one had been watching her, she had been able to access the Medibot and the medicine cabinet without any problems. A quick scan had confirmed that all physical trauma had healed. Why was she feeling so rotten then? A few keyed-in instructions later, she convinced the Medibot to give her a mild stimulant so she could at least combat the tiredness she felt after just a few short hours of sleep, but when the nano-tubes started extending to access her bloodstream she pulled her arm away.

The last thing she needed was more chemicals. She assumed Gonzalez probably already knew what she had been about to do, thanks to the link monitoring her BCC, but she couldn’t care less. She was too tired for that.

That had been a couple of hours ago, and now, after only a brief nap and a hasty breakfast, she was about to go into VR again.

‘Ms Moretti, as discussed before, please move around, observe, let your instincts guide you. If you need to stop the playback at any point, please do. We can rewind and re-watch as often as we need to.’

No verbal reply came, but Gonzalez saw a faint nod confirming that Eloise had at least heard him.

‘Connecting now,’ Gonzalez announced, and the fifty million plus nano-wires per person shot out from the walls towards the n-suits, looking for attachment points. It wasn’t the same as the seventy-eight million wires her own VR playroom back home boasted, but it was enough for a fully satisfactory VR experience.

***

For a moment Ingram could feel herself suspended in mid-air, and then the visual and kinaesthetic input of the VRP kicked in and she was back on her feet, looking around a VR enviro she knew very well. She shot a glance at Gonzalez, whose body had materialised a couple of metres to her side, and saw him smirking at her obvious surprise.

I guess if I hadn’t been so busy thinking of ways to argue going after the Chandler N-Suit Research Base first, he would have had time to tell me about this.

Their surroundings were very familiar indeed. She was looking at the most basic training assault course she had ever trained in, over twenty years ago.

Assault courses were heavily popular at the end of the 20th century, and their use in VR format soared early in the Freedom Wars. At a glance, this obstacle course not only looked similar to what Ingram remembered from her early days but was actually identical. Not only could she see the same solid and old-fashioned obstacles, but she actually recognised the scenery: the thorny trees in the distance, the ditches, the parched soil and the partially dried-out, muddy riverbeds. It even had the same warm, dusty smell.

Suddenly, why Gonzalez had wanted Ingram involved made sense. He himself would only have passing familiarity with this particular VRP; she, on the other hand, could probably draw it with her eyes closed. Her body remembered the number of strides between obstacles, which grip was slippery and which was not, and the ditch she had tripped in, tearing her leg open. The infection that had set in, which had burnt so badly. The nano-meds she never—

The trip down memory lane was a little disconcerting, and she shook it away, focusing on what they were here to accomplish. She approached the course, watching the recording play all around her at a normal speed. The course was less occupied than she was used to. It was designed for a capacity of about a hundred recruits, and she remembered it often being filled past capacity. When this particular recording was made, however, there were barely a handful of people, men and women, tackling the obstacles, and two people