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

talking about standard-issue VR equipment here. It is all custom-made and unique. Irreplaceable! Tilly here is barely a shadow of her full program—the rest is still at home!’

So are my grand-uncle’s n-suits and my special VRPs, but you have no need to butt into my personal life, Ms I Fucking Know It Best, Eloise thought, shooting the other woman an icy glare.

‘Ms Moretti!’ Gonzalez had allowed himself to lose enough patience to make his voice harsh and demanding. ‘I didn’t call you here to debate this. The decision has been made. Set the self-destruct program.’

Eloise wanted to shout at him. Demand to know who the hell he thought he was to be making decisions about blowing up the only place she had ever called home, but somehow the words didn’t come.Somehow, his tone of command was starting to get through to her, whether she liked it or not.

‘Can we wait, maybe?’ she muttered feebly, her soul bleeding. Luckily, there were no tears flowing down her face, betraying the personal drama she was going through. She didn’t need that type of humiliation again.

‘Ms Moretti, if they don’t break in, the self-destruct program will never kick in. But I need it there now, just in case. Do you want strangers snooping through your things, defiling your memories?’ It was a low blow, and he had carefully left it as his last resort. Now used, it worked like a charm. Eloise shivered involuntarily, and if she could have run to a computer terminal to issue the appropriate instructions to Tilly, she would have set a new record.

She did set a new record.

***

The rest of the training went by in a haze of confusion and loss. Gonzalez was right—her home would be just fine until Wagner’s people actually broke in, and she was fairly sure that the original Tilly, wiser for the recent experience with Rivas and with plenty of warning, could hold out for quite a while. But if they did breach her security subroutines… The thought of a stranger wandering through her sanctuary made her sick.

Oddly, the turmoil actually helped her training. With her conscious mind fully absorbed, agonising over the potential loss of her home, her subconscious mind proved to be a joy for Rivas to work with.

Perhaps if Eloise hadn’t been so preoccupied with thinking about her home, she would have noticed the effort the lieutenant was making to support her through the difficult moments. And maybe she would also have noticed that despite herself she was actually warming up to the tall redhead.

CHAPTER 32

Wagner’s Residence

Givors

Afro-European Alliance

Monday 27 April 2725

DAY 8

‘Harpy’s on the ground,’ Rivas reported, and for a second Gonzalez was glad the other man was too far away to rip his head off. There was a small chance he might forget to do just that by the time Rivas returned. He was about to deliver a short, savage comment on what he thought about the callsign Rivas had assigned to Eloise’s airtaxi, which had just delivered her to the private landing pad on Wagner’s residence, when Eloise herself spoke.

‘Asshole,’ she announced succinctly, and Gonzalez, amused despite himself, watched her cross the lavish yard towards the front door.

Despite the initial passive-aggressive struggle between Eloise and Rivas, which had then developed into full-blown arguments and a battle of wills before fizzling out into something vaguely resembling co-operation, everything was going so smoothly it was almost suspicious.

Eloise had absorbed every scrap of information Rivas had thrown at her with astounding speed and displayed impressive fluency and competence in following his instructions—even if her ability to feel had remained marginal. She had also readily agreed to a little nano-devastation, as Gonzalez called it, where they had sent specially programmed nanobots to wreak havoc on her body. Within minutes she had been covered in a carefully pre-planned pattern of cuts and bruises that showed various degrees of healing, while her body had been subjected to mild dehydration. The end result had been impressive, and far less guilt-inducing from Gonzalez’s perspective than needing to personally arrange such a state with a fist. Equally stoically, Eloise had allowed Ingram to cover her with dirt and mud, smearing it around with a damp towel for best effect. The transformation had been complete with plenty of spare time for a final rehearsal of what was about to happen.

At exactly seven in the evening, Ingram had dropped Eloise off a few blocks away from the last surviving government-funded medical clinic for Leeches in the northern outskirts of the slums. Minutes later Eloise had hobbled to the clinic and thrown herself onto the first police officer within sight. She had talked so fast, and with so much determination, that the poor Elite officer had at first frozen, confused. And then her threats of ghastly ends to his career had got through to him and he had started bending over backwards to attend to her wishes. Eloise may not have looked Elite in her pitiful state, but acting like one was in her blood.

Within another few minutes, she had had Commissioner Wagner on the line, and Gonzalez had held his breath as she lied her ass off. It had sounded awkward and clunky, making Gonzalez wince more than once, but it had also sounded very much like her, and Wagner appeared to have bought it. An airtaxi had been ordered onto an unusual flight path right into the slums to pick her up, while Wagner himself used his personal aircar for an emergency dash home.

Wagner’s residence—mansion, really—was close to the outskirts of 28th-century Lyon, near where the Givors commune used to be in 21st-century France, some eighteen kilometres south of the confluence of the Rivers Saône and Rhône. What was once a little loop the Rhône had chiselled angling to the west was now a little island as the river established its second riverbed to the east. The landscape had changed since the ice caps had melted, but general topography above the water levels remained the same.