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

And before all this is over, I’m likely to expect even more from her,Gonzalez admitted to himself.

He looked at Ingram for a long moment, studying the top of her head and weighing his options. Finally, he reached into his pocket and placed a syringe on the table between them, the pale green label facing up. The green-labelled nano-drugs were the gentlest slow-release compounds available. Definitely not something to use in an emergency.

Almost despite herself, Ingram lifted her head, and inhaled sharply when she recognised his intentions.

‘I don’t need it,’ she said, and this time she held his gaze.

When she wanted to, her face showed absolutely nothing. Not even a muscle would twitch without permission. Gonzalez knew how much suffering and pain went into learning those skills, more even than what she had been through in the slums. Infinitely more.

‘Fine,’ he conceded. She wouldn’t take it easy on herself, so he had no choice but to make her. In any way possible. ‘In which case, how about you tell me why the damage to your knuckles matched Ms Moretti’s broken cheekbone?’

Ingram continued staring at him with the same contained look, and then the mask fell.

‘Bastard,’ she whispered with a wry smile, loud enough that Gonzalez could hear her but quietly enough that they could both officially pretend she’d never said it.

She reached for the syringe. She really didn’t want anything messing with her head. Her own way of dealing with trauma had served her well in the past and this was not the time to experiment, but Gonzalez had just proved that her self-control was too frayed for her to continue unassisted. Knocking out the Elite woman wasn’t even the hardest thing she’d had to do, and yet the memory of it was nearly knocking her own composure to pieces right now. She needed rest. And she needed to sleep while her body healed.

She read the label and instinctively found the injection site. Her arm tingled slightly, but nothing overt happened.

‘How long do I have?’ she asked, pretending to ignore his smirk of satisfaction. She was a handful to manage, all right, but he’d learnt how to deal with that a long time ago. They worked well together.

‘Plenty of time to finish your coffee, but the drug works best when you rest, so I recommend you do go back to bed soon.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, automatically downing most of the remaining dark sludge. ‘Anything on Megan?’

Gonzalez flinched. The chip she had given him before he fled the 4th continued to guard its content relentlessly, and he still hadn’t managed to break the encryption. His professional self needed Megan to tell him what the hell she had encrypted it with. His personal self was desperate to find out whether she was still alive and safe. Both his personal and professional selves were deeply unsatisfied.

‘Nothing. But she wasn’t identified as the spook who infiltrated the 4th along with me, so I’m assuming no news is good news.’

Lie all you have to, Gonzalez. Maybe if you repeat it often enough you will actually believe it, asmall voice in the back of his head quipped.

‘She is tough,’ Ingram said, as if she could read his thoughts. ‘She had a good story to sell. And we know she sold it. She can do it. She knows how to play the game.’

‘Game?’ Gonzalez’s eyes were ice. He hated when she used that word. And normally, she did her best not to say it out loud, even if it was what she thought in the privacy of her mind.

It just helped to think about it as a game. If one didn’t, it tended to call itself by its true name—rape, abuse, horror—take your pick. And then it was harder to cope with it. Of course, it was hard to cope with it anyway, but the fucked-up world they lived in didn’t seem to care about such small details.

Regardless of how it might annoy others, she wasn’t about to let anyone pressure her, or order her, to stop thinking about it as a game. Playing a game meant one could win. Maybe not today. Maybe not in their lifetime. But the chance was there, and the hope.

‘You know what I meant, sir,’ Ingram said respectfully, but with no hint of apology. She would not apologise for having her own way of fighting. ‘She is tough,’ Ingram repeated, and continued with blunt honesty. ‘He will fuck her. He will threaten her. And he will beat her. Not the first and not the last time a Leech has to accept such treatment because he or she has no choice. At least she’s going through this for a reason.’

A reason.

Gonzalez looked at Ingram and their eyes met. This was as much as she was ever going to willingly admit about her own ordeal. He nodded with understanding, and she nodded back.

‘With your permission, sir, my bed is calling,’ she said, emptying her mug of the last dregs.

Despite the long hours she’d slept, she still felt tired, and the restlessness now seemed to be fading away. She knew her body had used a lot of energy when the nanobots patched her up under the instructions of the Medibot. She also knew it was going to take more than a single long sleep to get her energy back to something approximating normal levels, but she was surprised that barely a couple of hours of wakefulness made her want to sleep again.

‘You’re getting old, girl,’ she laughed to herself.

She briefly considered interrogating the Medibot about her state last night, but dismissed the idea. She wasn’t ready for it yet. The curiosity to find out exactly how much Gonzalez knew, and by extension the things she would never have to tell him because he already knew, was strong, but that could wait.

First, I will heal physically. Then, I will tuck the scary monsters tightly away at the back of my head where they belong. And then, I will face