Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1), Mariana Morgan [epub e ink reader .TXT] 📗

and naive girl he had intimidated all those years ago. These days she was itching to turn the tables. Never before had she felt so disgusted with her cover identity and the need to behave like a scared Leech. The necessity of acting meek and submissive made the urge to lash out barely suppressible.

But she did suppress it. Finding out what game Wagner was playing and keeping Ms Moretti alive and in good health were the ultimate priorities. In that order. If they took Ms Moretti now, they could kiss anything they might learn from Wagner goodbye. Ingram’s personal wishes weren’t even on the priority list. Neither was her life, when it came down to it. Though she did promise herself that if it came to that, she was going to stand between Wagner and Megan and give the younger woman time to escape.

Getting a glimpse of Megan that morning had brought up too many memories. The long years of utter powerlessness still haunted her. Time didn’t really heal any wounds, but she was lucky to have learnt how to harness the fury and use it well. And she was going to it use extremely well when the time came.

‘The evidence has been secured for transport. Is the XST ready?’ Bellefeuille’s voice crackled in her wireless earpiece.

‘Ready and waiting, ma’am,’ Ingram replied. She relieved some of the frustration by pulling a face the other woman couldn’t see.

Her own instruments confirmed that the case containing the VRP chip had been placed in a secure hold at the back of the XST and Eloise Moretti was strapped into the passenger seat.

‘You are cleared for take-off,’ Bellefeuille announced.

Ingram whipped the small aircar around just a little bit too fast and corrected the manoeuvre just a little bit too much. She allowed the wind to toss the airvehicle around for a moment and then levelled off with apparent difficulty. It wouldn’t do to suddenly show too much competence, after all.

She consulted her display for traffic warnings and picked the least busy inner lane, heading north-northwest.

‘Negative, XST—turn east,’ Bellefeuille instructed.

Ingram frowned. She instinctively acknowledged and prepared the aircar to veer off to the right at the next opportunity, but her mind boggled.

To the east lay the slums. No Elite in their right mind chose to fly over the slums. No Elite even wanted to see the disgusting terrain. They claimed they could smell the stench all the way up in the air. The Elite always flew through the city centre and banked to the west, overflying the recreational domes, nano-factories and farms.

‘Inspector Bellefeuille, please confirm. The indicated route is longer.’

‘There has been a hold-up north-west of your position. Detouring around it to the west would take too long. We will guide you through the East Side. You have permission to increase height into the outer lanes.’

Ingram’s frown deepened. Her display showed a steady stream of traffic typical for mid-morning late rush hours and no warnings of any hold-ups. And if she could increase height into the outer lanes, hold-ups mattered even less—she could overfly them.

Lyon’s demographics and architectural structure closely resembled those of other big cities in the Afro-European Alliance, but the slums’ problem was more pronounced due to recent history.

In the past, Lyon had been a fairly typical example of a city that had evolved naturally, comfortably ensconced between two rivers that merged just south of its centre. Logically, all early settlements had favoured fresh, flowing water. The confluence of the Saône and Rhône had seemed the perfect place to the Romans in 43BC. Since then, the city had continued to grow and expand throughout the centuries, facing the usual years of prosperity, stagnation, disease and wars just like other European cities.

Then the collapse of countries, nations and their governments, known as the Great Collapse, came crashing in between the years 2165 and 2177, ending a century of tumultuous events.

When the ice caps melted in the early 22nd century and Paris was gradually abandoned, the French government moved to Lyon, but not for long. As the environmental and economical destruction of the world brought on devastating riots and wars prior to the Great Collapse, the French government, one of the two in the world still in existence, escaped into a defensive and heavily fortified position in the Alps in 2175. After that, for all intents and purposes, Lyon ceased to exist, barren and desolate.

The wonderful buildings, a striking testimony to human ingenuity and persistence, were left as nothing but ruins, victims of massive bombardments, sabotage and fires. Those who could had fled Lyon, and the other big cities, in the years before. The lucky ones emigrated south in search of milder winters and better soil for farming, and certainly away from cities that had been targeted en masse for destruction.

The Great Collapse had been foretold by numerous scientists, economists and freedom movements. In fact, anyone with an above-average IQ could see it coming. But like many warnings issued about what was to come, the population at large ignored it, focusing instead on their own day-to-day lives. The proverbial one per cent had ruled the world for too long, destroying everything that stood in their way. And those who had desperately needed the change had been too busy eking out a living to think about the future.

The world was a pitiful sight, overpopulated to the point of suffocation as the population continued to grow, exceeding sixteen billion people by the mid-22nd century (an almost impossible to imagine hundred and fifty per cent increase from the early 21st century). It took the average person from the 28th century a moment to process the numbers; it just didn’t seem real, how heftily overpopulated the world had been before the Great Collapse.

In a desperate search for a place to live, humans ended up inhabiting highly inhospitable environments, extinguishing wildlife with absurd ease. The riches of the once beautiful planet had been exploited beyond the natural point of recovery. The once glorious green-and-blue globe had been turned into a