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

Chandler N-Suit Research Base around the clock. He’s hell bent on breaking in, and seeing his frustration at the repeated failures is actually pretty damn satisfying.’ There was a small trace of vindictive pleasure flashing in Megan’s eyes, and Gonzalez fervently hoped she would get it under tight control. ‘He even ripped an Elite’s head off for failing yesterday.’ Her eyes were almost dreamy for a moment, but then she shook herself. ‘On a serious note, though, they will break in sooner or later. How much damage they will cause in the process is anyone’s guess. And this uncertainty is the only reason why he hasn’t yet tried to break in more forcefully. He’s worried there’s a failsafe mechanism that might destroy the place if they use brute force. He wants the data from the network, sir, badly.

‘I—’ She paused, eyes snapping to Gonzalez. ‘Sergeant Ingram and Ms Moretti did make it, right?’

In all this time, focused on her own duty and survival, she had totally failed to consider that Ingram might have failed to make it out of the slums, but now she realised how naive that had been. There was nothing certain in their line of work, and such assumptions could be deadly.

‘They did,’ Gonzalez reassured her quickly. ‘They were both badly banged up, but they’re fine now.’

‘Good. Good,’ Megan repeated, and shook her head to get herself back on track. It was getting harder and harder to stay focused. ‘Wagner wants the data more than he wants Ms Moretti. I don’t know whether he’s after anything specific, or whether he’s just assumed there’s a goldmine in there. He’s trying the legal route, but her lawyers are adamant that there will be no access until he can prove it’s either an emergency or that Ms Moretti is dead. It will be hard to prove the latter without a corpse. That, however, isn’t stopping him from trying to break in. He must have someone willing to cover his ass—no way he would do it otherwise.’

Gonzalez nodded again. He agreed with her logic so far.

‘It is my understanding that he assumes the Elite woman perished in the slums. He held his breath for a couple of days, but since then has come to the conclusion that Sergeant Ingram and Eloise Moretti died trying to get out. However, his regular sources in the slums are less forthcoming than usual, and he seems to have decided that it’s because he tried to retrieve the Elite alive, and since they can’t oblige him, they are choosing to keep their distance. That makes little sense to me, so presumably I’m missing a vital piece of the puzzle.’ She paused and scrunched her face in thought. ‘I don’t know all his sources in the slums, but I do know that one of them is an ex-Elite police officer, Banji Protheroe, who pissed Wagner off a few years ago. If that poor bugger is still alive, I bet his loyalties have shifted since his change of accommodation, so Wagner might be pissing up the wrong tree. His other sources are even murkier. I assumed initially that some Leeches were simply selling information for food and medicine, but I’m more and more convinced that there’s more to it. There’s someone called Timothy Sagan, a name that’s been mentioned a few times, but I don’t know how he fits into this.’ Megan paused again, frowning, clearly unsatisfied with her answer. ‘I don’t have any proof, sir, but if I had to guess, I’d say he has Elite moles in the slums, on an actual assignment. Could be Leech traitors, I suppose, but my bet is they’re Elite.’

It was Gonzalez’s turn to frown. The idea that Elites had penetrated the slums, or worse, the Underground City, was disconcerting. ‘Sergeant Ingram spent three days in the Underground City, and if my understanding is correct, she didn’t sneak through quietly. It was her intention to move faster than any rumours might spread to the Elite, but if Wagner already had moles there, she should never have made it out.’

Unless Wagner wanted her to make it out,a nasty little voice in his head whispered.

‘To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t know what happened in the Underground City. He knows that Ms Moretti didn’t die when her XST was taken down and that she disappeared into the slums. But that is the extent of his firm intel.’

‘Any justifications as to why he had the XST shot down?’ Gonzalez asked, moving on, filing the inconsistency of a possible Elite mole for later analysis. It could be nothing, but then again, stranger hypotheses had proven correct in his line of work.

‘Officially, a group of Leech ex-military mercenaries was blamed for hijacking an XLF and going after the first police aircar they came across in a misguided attempt at revenge. Something to do with payback for the Barcelona massacre.’

‘There were two rogue XLFs.’

‘Not according to the official report, sir. The second XLF was under police control. Sadly, they didn’t manage to neutralise the mercenaries before the XST went down. Wagner made a huge show of trying to go into the slums to extract Ms Moretti when analysis of the XST wreckage proved she didn’t die in crash, but he was overruled from above. He didn’t look particularly upset about it.’

No, of course he didn’t. Bellefeuille wasn’t guiding the XST into the slum’s airspace for slaughter on a whim. She was acting on Wagner’s orders.

‘But why?’ He voiced the last question out loud without even realising he had done so, and Megan blinked.

‘Why what, sir?’ She’d seen the train of thought taking him for a ride after her last comment, and knowing the colonel, his mind could have been anywhere.

‘Sorry, Megan. I’m wondering why he wants Ms Moretti dead so badly. I’ve spent some time with the woman—she had no clue what was going on until she met Bellefeuille.’

‘Maybe he believes she can trace who modified and used that VRP? Maybe the people he works for