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

It was really a shame that Megan hadn’t seen their not-so-stellar performance. She would have been rather amused that neither of them had thought how much easier it would have been to start with the heavy fire extinguisher rather than bash their shoulders into the nano-reinforced door first for a good few minutes. Typical of the Elite, really.

Wagner had been livid when he finally got out. Somehow, miraculously, the two Leech gendarmes still on the floor—Megan no longer unconscious and Marco Schulze very much still knocked out—had escaped the brunt of his wrath as he focused on Norah Bellefeuille. He had even gone so far as to smack and push the woman around, which was something Elite police officers didn’t normally do to other Elite officers, especially not in front of Leech gendarmes. Even if the two gendarmes had appeared unconscious, it was… unusual.

Norah Bellefeuille had been beside herself with panic, kowtowing and apologising profusely. She had been willing to do anything to please Wagner, but alas, there was nothing that she could have done short of turning back time and shooting Gonzalez dead.

Minutes later, Wagner had gone back into his office and made various comp calls, speaking animatedly and furiously. In panic, Bellefeuille had begun restoring the main open floor room to some semblance of order, but then she noticed the two gendarmes and their steadily rising chests suggesting their very-much-alive status. The third body hadn’t moved despite the repeated kicks she had given it.

Megan wasn’t sure how long she stayed unconscious. It always felt much longer than it really was. She had no doubt that Gonzalez had caught her and placed her on the ground in as comfortable a position as he could manage, to make sure she could stay down as long as possible. And she did. When consciousness arrived, at some point while Wagner was still bashing unsuccessfully against the door, she had forced herself to stay still, her eyes closed. It had been much safer for her to pretend to be unconscious and to appear much more hurt than she really was. Ignoring the noise around her and the splitting headache, she remained motionless until Bellefeuille kicked her to see if she was still alive.

When Megan groaned incoherently, the Elite inspector bent down and grudgingly gave her a shot of nano-meds that set to work healing any swelling or damage to the brain. Bellefeuille hated the idea of wasting Elite meds on mere Leeches, but Wagner wanted to know what had happened, and for that she needed everyone conscious and functioning as soon as possible.

About half an hour later, having sworn that she was rendered unconscious the moment she raced to Bellefeuille’s rescue, Megan was back at her desk, forced to work as her head pounded. She knew the healing meds would prevent any neurological problems, but she hadn’t been given any painkillers, and she knew better than to ask for them. She didn’t need another smack or two for her presumptuousness. More than the painkillers for her head, she could have used something to ease the swelling around her nose. Even an icepack would do, but she didn’t dare to abandon her desk and make her way to the 4th’s kitchen with Wagner still in a rage.

Breathing steadily though her mouth, a tissue at the ready to catch any stray blood, she danced her fingers across her keyboard with the well-practised ease of a concert pianist. It was only a matter of time before Wagner would calm down enough to realise there was still someone at the 4th who had been close to Gonzalez, and when he came after her, she had to be ready.

Marco Schulze had to go. There was no way around it.

From day one at the 4th, Megan had prepared her own get out of jail free card, updating it as the days went by. A perfect little file that would unambiguously show that it was Marco Schulze, not her, that had worked for Gonzalez. The recording showed how Gonzalez had broken and forced Marco to do his bidding.

It wasn’t unusual for some of the more sickly perverted Elite, like Wagner, to record the ‘discipline’ sessions they dished out and re-watch them for pleasure. If Megan planted that recording on Gonzalez’s computer, it would look entirely natural, at least from the perspective of a sonofabitch like Wagner, who delighted in sick perversion himself. The recording, of course, was entirely fake, but nothing Wagner had at his disposal would find any evidence to prove that. Megan had absolute faith in her superiority where old-fashioned computers were concerned, and it was justified. The recording was the work of a true master, or in this case a mistress, and in any other circumstances Megan would have been extremely chuffed with herself for the excellent work she had done.

As it was, the recording would serve only one purpose: to shift the blame onto Marco Schulze and get him killed so she herself could live to see another day. And to continue spying for Gonzalez.

We are no better than the Elite we despise, a little voice at the back of her mind intoned. Thinking of ourselves as more important than others, aren’t we?

Megan lifted her head and looked at the other Leech out of the corner of her eye. It wasn’t right and she knew it. She also knew that if Gonzalez was there with her, he would have planted the recording himself to spare her the horrible decision. And that he would agonise over it just as much as she was, but he would do it.

The war they fought against the System was dirty, and with each battle a piece of their own souls was lost as collateral damage. It was easy to cling to the justification that what the other side did was worse, but that never absolved anyone from responsibility. What they did often equated to war crimes, and if there were to be any post-war trials Megan fully