Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1) Read online

  Rising Tomorrow

  Roc de Chere Book 1

  Mariana C. Morgan

  Copyright © 2021 Mariana C. Morgan

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real people and situations is purely coincidental.

  Do not copy or reproduce it without permission, or I shall haunt you in your dreams!

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  Epilogue

  Author’s note

  About Mariana C. Morgan

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank a number of people who have helped me immensely.

  My late grandmother, Mariana, for the love of writing, creativity and self-expression. I wish she was still here, able to read this.

  My high school Polish teacher, Jadwiga Perkowska, who always encouraged me to write. She gave me the best compliment ever (loosely translated): ‘You won’t do well on your school exams as your writing style doesn’t tick the standardised school boxes, but it’s raw and real, and I like it.’ I like to think I continue NOT ticking any standardised boxes.

  My friend Alasdair Nunn for his never-ending patience with checking on my maths and physics and in general responding to my ‘Sanity check, please! I just wrote this!’

  My editor and proofreader for turning my manuscript into a smooth-flowing read.

  And finally, all my friends and family who kept me going. Writing this book has been an eye-opening, overwhelmingly positive experience, but I know I couldn’t have done it without your support.

  Thank you!

  Prologue

  Military Intelligence Service Headquarters

  Somewhere in the Alps

  Afro-European Alliance

  Tuesday 3 March 2725

  ‘When?’

  Major Aisha Toscano winced as the artificially distorted voice grated against her eardrums. Almost against her wishes, her head moved to the right to look at the black silhouette displayed on a large holo-screen against a wall. The wall had a rough stone look, typical of the Military Intelligence Service Headquarters (MIS HQ) buried deep under what used to be the Austrian Alps, back when there used to be Austria and other countries. The silhouette moved just like a real person would, breathing and talking, and gesticulating when appropriate, but there were no facial details visible to the naked eye. Or to the fanciest spook software, for that matter.

  No change there, Toscano mused. Just the same dark and mysterious shape and artificial voice gracing us with its presence.

  It was all that they knew of the person who gave his, or maybe her, orders and oversaw their progress.

  Toscano spent the odd few minutes here and there mulling it over, pondering ‘the General’s’ actual powers. Was the person behind the silhouette avatar actually in charge of their fight against the System? Or were they simply a figurehead, used for communication purposes as an additional layer of security?

  Or paranoia, her inner voice quipped, and Toscano had to suppress a sarcastic smirk at the thought and order the corners of her mouth to remain still.

  Oh, the paranoid security precautions made perfect sense; if anyone knew just how crucial that was, it was Major Aisha Toscano. It just looked so desperate and exaggerated and—

  ‘Within forty-eight hours, sir,’ Colonel Mathias Larsen replied. ‘The doc swears he has done his usual excellent job. The BCCs are in and there is no trace of rejection, and the scarring will be gone within hours.’

  The BCC, the birth chip certificate, was a bio-implant given to every individual in the Afro-European Alliance at birth. Theoretically it couldn’t be replaced. In practice, what one needed was expert skills and a lot of money. The MIS had both.

  Toscano flexed her wrist instinctively and glanced at a narrow, barely visible red line running along the outside of her forearm. The new BCC was there; for all intents and purposes she was no longer Major Aisha Toscano. In just under two days, she would report to one of Lyon’s police stations for her new assignment, and whenever her wrist passed near a BCC scanner it would identify her as Sergeant Carlotta Ingram. All the documents and files anyone would be able to find would support that fact, down to a perfectly falsified birth certificate naming her as a third child to a jobless Leech and a virtual reality prostitute. Technically, as someone with a job, she herself wouldn’t be a Leech anymore, a term coined by the Elite to describe those beneath them, but the burden of one’s birth was frustratingly persistent when it came to the treatment one received from others. Or mistreatment, as it was more often than not.

  In addition to the BCC, she no longer looked like Major Aisha Toscano. Her physical appearance, such as hair and eye colour but also facial features and skin pigmentation, had been changed using advanced nano-technology. It would be a while before she no longer saw a stranger each time she looked into a mirror.

  The nano-transformation was mercifully allowed to run its course at a near-optimal speed while they arranged other aspects of their cover stories. The nights were the worst, when there was nothing to distract them from the burning sensation of the nanobots restructuring their physical features, but the discomfort remained mild enough that they were able to dispense with heavy nano-drugs that would knock them out, numbing all sensations in the process.

  ‘The major’s transfer orders call for her to report to Lyon’s 4th Police Station, Northern District, on Thursday morning,’ Colonel Larsen continued, and his voice wavered only the tiniest bit as he tried not to grate his teeth.

  Toscano resisted the temptation to turn her head to look at him. From the corner of her eye, she could see his face tighten and his eyes narrow ever so slightly just as the third, and last, person physically present in the room, Lieutenant Raymond Rivas, found the table in front of him of great interest. Almost despite herself, Toscano held her breath.

  But then Colonel Larsen relaxed back into his professional demeanour and continued.

  The situation was still tense. Toscano was in two minds about Larsen’s protectiveness towards her. On the one hand she felt furious that he would waste time knowing that no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t protect her, but on the other hand she felt touched.

  Either way, there was no point in her saying anything now. It wouldn’t change anything. Sometimes silence was easier, and better.

  As the hours and days passed, Colonel Larsen seemed to have accepted the inevitable. She had to go. Her presence at the 4th, as a Leech, would be crucial in helping him establish his own cover. He would not need another officer and a member of the Elite with him. He would need the lowest of the low to mix with the other Leeches and hear the things that never reached the ears of the Elite police officers.

  Deep down Larsen had known from the start it would be necessary for Toscano to become a Leech, but he did have his principles. It went against his deep-seated beliefs to put someone in his charge in a situation where the perversely sick System could harm them. And he had no choice but to do it over and over again in his line of work. His duty. Which… irritated him.

  Toscano wondered if the situation was different in her case. Not only had he shepherded her career since he had been in a position to do so, but effectively he had saved her life from things worse than death on numerous occasions. He had invested so much in her training, honing her potential. No wonder he didn’t want to see it lost.

  Starting on Thursday, not only would he not be in a position to help, but he would actively have to make her life miserable to do his job while she played her role of a Leech, meek and unable to defend herself. Logically, he had accepted the inevitable with the same resolve he had shown in the past, but making peace with it would take some doing. Toscano doubted he would ever reach that point, which was probably what made him so good at what he did. His deep-seated conscience guide
d his years-long fight to change the sick System. Unfortunately, it was also that fight that was steadily eating away at him, forcing him to do what he hated most about the fucked-up world they had inherited from their parents and grandparents.

  In the early days of their preparations for the current mission, Colonel Larsen had spent a few frantic hours planning his own cover and making careful plans to exclude Major Aisha Toscano’s part in it as a Leech. Major Toscano, on the other hand, knew it would not only be helpful but in fact crucial that she was there. Not only was she the ace up Colonel Larsen’s sleeve, but also the most suitable candidate for the job. While the colonel made his plans to work around the huge gap her absence would present, she made her plans for what would happen when she was included. Which she inevitably was.

  The walls in MIS HQ were thick, but came miserably short of providing the appropriate insulation to keep the noise confined when Colonel Larsen and Major Toscano had their not-so-private conversation. Or at least it did nothing to hide what he had to say. Major Toscano did her best to not gloat over the end results with her usual cavalier smugness. She just stood there, letting him vent his frustration, knowing that some things were better out that in. Knowing that the sooner he got it out, the sooner he could get his head around what he had always known he would have no choice but to accept.

  At least, she mused with wry amusement, he chose to get it out in words, rather than during our long training sessions.

  Of course, he is right too, she admitted to herself as an afterthought.

  No amount of time could help anyone forget the horrors of being a Leech in a uniform, any uniform. Leeches not in a uniform weren’t necessarily any better off, come to think of it. Her participation would not only put her in great danger but would open her to all sorts of abuse. Again. Regardless of how careful they might be, it would take only a second to make her disappear.

  Their preparations were as comprehensive as possible but rushed nonetheless. There was just never enough time. When the right intel fell onto one’s lap, one had to act on it as fast as possible to make the case, not as fast as was safe for everyone involved. In a way, Leeches and Elites were equally disposable. The difference was that the Elite got to make that choice… for themselves and for the Leeches.

  Major Toscano lifted her eyes to look ahead at a wall far longer than the one that held the holo-screen. The Tac Wall, which she preferred to think of as the War Wall in some morbid honour to the Freedom Wars gone by, displayed its usual disorganised mess. The bits and pieces of information and evidence were added as and when they came, often pushing aside or half covering previous snippets of information. Of course, all that evidence was also stored electronically and a superb nano-tech-powered holo-projection could be accessed anytime, but Colonel Larsen enjoyed the physical touch of the old-fashioned era long gone. Major Toscano had found it deeply irritating at first, but discovered over the following months that it focused her attention and served as a never-ending source of determination. One could switch the holo-projection off when finished with work for the day, but the War Wall was always there.

  Just a quick look at the photos of the latest victims, those lucky enough to have been discovered and reported, covering the top-right-hand side, did wonders for her resolve. Abigail, Lukas, Fatima, Nathan, Karif, Carmen, Ashley, Mae, Luigi, Chantelle, Manuel, James… young men and women. Leeches. Their lives extinguished before they even began, and not even in a peaceful way. Their bodies told a story of weeks, sometimes months, of horrors no human should ever experience.

  For months the MIS had no conclusive leads, nowhere to go, only dead bodies washed out of the River Rhône at irregular intervals. Colonel Larsen, on the other hand, must have had a connection linking the atrocities to powerful Elites within the government, and the military itself. With no actual case to build, however, the reports were quickly compiled and filed away out of pure anal obsessive retentiveness and Colonel Larsen’s hatred of the idea that any human life could be extinguished without anyone remembering. Officially, he argued that he sensed something suspicious, which, given the sudden increase in the number of dead bodies, could not have been denied. Technically, he didn’t have to argue anything. As a leader of one of the MIS’s teams, he had the freedom to pursue the case. To an outside observer he might have looked like a desperate madman chasing ghosts. Toscano knew better.

  And then, a single, badly damaged sexual-entertainment Virtual Reality Program (VRP) landed on the colonel’s desk, confirming his sixth sense to anyone who had ever doubted it. The police had lost interest in it pretty quickly, finding it to be a dead end, and Colonel Larsen was able to acquire it for the MIS to study.

  The adult VRP wasn’t much to go on, but the fragmented content chilled their blood. The body-recognition software confirmed a young man featured in the VRP to be one of the victims fished out of the Rhône a few months earlier. The information coded in the VRP could have given them far more information, but most of it was impossible to decipher. The MIS experts differed in opinions; some claimed the impossible, that it had been surgically removed, while others stated that the VRP was just too mangled from physical damage which had allowed the water to corrupt it.

  The ensuing investigation ground to a halt. Neither Major Toscano nor Colonel Larsen had any doubts as to just how deeply the Elites within the military supporting the System were involved, which made it an internal investigation right up the MIS’s alley, but neither did they have any proof. The few names they did have, thanks to the adult VRP, were people too powerful to go after without bulletproof evidence. Even a hint that the MIS was after them could have terrible consequences. The power those corrupted individuals wielded could make anyone vanish while those guilty of the atrocities would slip so deep into hiding that the investigation would have to start from square one.

  The young Leeches, kidnapped to be used as sex slaves, didn’t have that time. The bodies recovered from the river were likely the tip of the iceberg.

  The law on the sex industry was clear within the Afro-European Alliance and hadn’t changed in over two hundred years. Sex was legal in all its glory. Selling sexual services, either in real life or in VR, was also perfectly legal as long as it remained consensual for everyone involved. In fact, somewhere in the years of equality being rammed chapter and verse down everyone’s throat, the selling of sexual services stopped being taboo. Both men and women felt comfortable and empowered to either offer or seek such services.

  Small snag: the recovered VRP was everything but consensual.

  The word corruption wasn’t sick enough to accurately describe the rot that had set in at the highest levels of the government and the military to allow such organised crime to thrive. Every day, Toscano made herself look at the victims and all the gruesome details on the War Wall; it kept her focused and motivated. There was, of course, a small chance that some of the dead were simply victims of the rough Leech life, but there were no doubts that the great majority had been disposed of because the psychopathic Elite got bored with their toys and chose to replace them with newer models. All in the name of entertainment for the rich.

  Months passed with nothing but suspicions tying various high-ranking officials and dignitaries to the crimes. The case went virtually cold, yet again, while their efforts were required elsewhere. Until Alexa Valentino.

  That one was not a Leech. Alexa wasn’t the child of a jobless and forgotten couple. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Engaged in a community project in the slums on the East Side of Lyon, she disappeared. The police investigation that followed puzzled Larsen and his team. Valentino’s family was a force to be reckoned with. Their resources were virtually limitless and their powers enough to burn anyone who failed to bring their precious Alexa back.

  When the girl didn’t turn up for days and no heads rolled, Larsen’s team followed the case more closely, first on the colonel’s hunch and then like a pack of starving vultures zeroing in on the feast. After the girl’s body was scraped off Lyon’s main sanitation dam, things started moving with astounding speed. One day the police demanded the return of the adult VRP, and the next day an excessive number of heads rolled.