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

thrusters. They could be remotely controlled or simply nudged in the right direction. Almost as an afterthought, Rivas also grabbed a first aid kit and thrust a laser gun behind his belt, and bolted out of the bunker, taking the tunnels and turns at a run.

Somewhere along the way, he shoved one of the pairs of night-vision goggles on his head, and then he was out in the dark woods moving towards the hunting chalet at a blinding speed. Twigs from low-hanging branches smacked his face and the undergrowth tugged on his clothes and scratched his skin, but he didn’t even try to dodge. Anything that was flexible enough to be pushed out of the way didn’t have to be dodged. The only thing that slowed him down, however minutely, was the need to lift his feet high enough to avoid further disruption to the vegetation’s root system.

Just short of the clearing, he slowed down even more and drew his gun, the stretcher now floating freely next to him.

‘Ingram?’ he called. The woman was no longer sagged over the bonnet, and he hesitated briefly.

‘Inside the car,’ Gonzalez reported, his voice crystal clear in Rivas’ earpiece.

Relaxing his instinctive caution and relying on Gonzalez’s security system, he stepped forward quickly, gun still in hand.

‘Raymond,’ a weak voice croaked, and the driver’s door opened. Ingram half spilt out of the car, catching herself on the door when her knees refused to co-operate. ‘Moretti needs help. Unconscious…’

She tried to walk around and help, but she just couldn’t. A minute ago, she’d managed to step over rocks and fallen trees, but now that help was here, her body relaxed, and that finished her. She watched with blurry, unfocused eyes as Rivas lifted Eloise out of the car and placed her on the stretcher. Her chest was moving up and down, and if Ingram didn’t know any better, she could have sworn the Elite woman was just sleeping. And then her focus faltered and her knees collapsed.

‘Fuck!’ Rivas pushed the stretcher aside and lunged towards Ingram. He tried to lift her up, but the semi-conscious woman shrieked in pain, and he froze. He couldn’t carry Ingram as long as the woman was stubborn enough to remain conscious, so he removed Eloise from the stretcher and turned to Ingram again.

‘No, Raymond. Take Moretti. Go,’ she said feebly, eyes half closed, and Lieutenant Rivas actually snorted a laugh.

‘Sergeant’—he placed just enough emphasis on her rank—‘you might be far out of it, but my memory is working just fine. First, it’s Lieutenant Rivas to you. Second, you must have hit your head hard if you think I’m going to leave you here.’

Ingram gasped a laugh, then winced, and then mercifully lost consciousness.

‘Well, that makes it easier,’ Lieutenant Rivas mused, gently laying Ingram’s body on the stretcher. Eloise was heavier than she looked, but posed no real problem swung over his shoulder. He made his way back to the entrance of the bunker at a more sedate pace. And then, just outside the outcropping of rocks, Gonzalez was there, grabbing the stretcher, freeing Rivas’ other hand to support Eloise.

CHAPTER 15

Roc de Chere

Lac d’Annecy

Afro-European Alliance

Saturday 25 April 2725

DAY 6

‘You should be in bed,’ Gonzalez said, standing in the door to the kitchenette.

‘Yes, sir,’ Ingram agreed automatically. She was sitting at the small table, a mug of steaming coffee in her hands, staring at the dark liquid.

She had slept for twelve hours straight as the nano-meds fixed her body in their usual efficient fashion. Since then she had been awake just long enough to stuff herself with as much food and water as was safe while she caught up on events. Her head still felt woolly and most of her body ached in memory of what she had been through, but she was bouncing back with astounding speed. Physically, she would be fine, recovering from wounds and scrapes in no time, but purging the various cocktails of not-so-pure nano-drugs she’d had no choice but to consume in the slums was likely to take a while longer.

Modern, 28th-century nano-drugs caused only a tiny fraction of the side effects that drugs back in the 20th and 21st centuries did, but that didn’t make them safe in all regards. It was still possible to overload the body and confuse its natural ability to take care of itself. Short-term use almost never created problems, but in the long term nano-chemicals could play havoc. Each time a body was overloaded with them, the problem worsened, creating what was referred to as chronic nano-drug sensitivity and toxicity, drugtox for short, which disturbed the body’s natural biochemical processes. Sporadic cases of nano-drug dependence had also been recorded, though an effective treatment for that existed.

The severity of drugtox varied between individuals and depended on how excessive the exposure to nano-drugs was in the first place. In most cases it led to both physical and emotional restlessness, agitation and exhaustion as the body struggled to regain balance. People would find themselves unable to act rationally as their bodies processed a variety of strange sensations. In more severe cases the nervous system could go into a state of overload, firing madly, leading to the dysregulation of all internal organs and their functions while literally trying to rip the skeletal muscles apart. In the worst-case scenarios drugtox could turn a person into a vegetable as the brain refused to cope with it, or even kill.

Embarrassingly, Ingram had discovered that for her, drugtox meant mental breakdowns and feeling vulnerable and unfocused, while the physical symptoms tended to be inconsequential. Gonzalez knew, and him treating her like some fragile ornament only made it worse.

Slowly, Gonzalez peeled himself off the doorframe and crossed the space towards Ingram. He sat down at the furthest end of the table, his hands flat on its surface.

‘I won’t break,’ she joked. She was reasonably sure he was reacting to the traumatic experience she had been through, not the kicking-in drugtox, but it didn’t really matter. She recognised