Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1)

knuckles, he collapsed behind his desk onto a sinfully comfortable chair. As had happened before, disturbingly often in fact, his fingers travelled to his wrist, to where the new BCC had been placed just over a month ago.

Raphael Gonzalez, Elite

Police Officer

Rank: Detective Chief Inspector

Age: 45

Born: 14 September 2680

If the BCC were scanned, it would show the bare facts first and then move on to describe in detail his distinguished, though oddly unremarkable, career in the Police Forces of the Afro-European Alliance. Reading on, one would find out about his diligence to working, which left him little time for hobbies or a social life. And throughout the entire dossier, DCI Raphael Gonzalez’s deep devotion to his duty and to the System was heavily alluded to.

His diligent, ass-licking attitude towards more powerful Elites stood him in good stead with his superiors, who always welcomed minions devoted to doing their bidding. On the whole, DCI Gonzalez was a loyal and hard-working police officer, but probably one not gifted with excessive intelligence or cunning. His birth placed him somewhere in the middle Elite, far from the top but nestled comfortably enough within society that he didn’t have to worry about his future. Or the future of his family, if he had any.

Of those things, only his age and the lack of a family were a genuine match to the man who had the BCC in question implanted a few weeks ago. The rest was an elaborate cover story created by specialists at MIS HQ. The person whose arm still ached from its contact with the wall was exceptionally intelligent, loyal to all people—and not to the twisted and corrupted System—and his career in the military, not the police, had been anything but uneventful.

Gonzalez placed his elbows on his desk and rubbed his face wearily. He missed thinking about himself as Colonel Mathias Larsen. It was hard for him not to despise the essence of who Raphael Gonzalez was. Both Larsen and Gonzalez were Elites, but as Larsen he had the option to make his own choices and be who he wanted to be—someone who cared. As Gonzalez, he had to be a self-serving and marginally intelligent monster. There was nothing even remotely respectable about the man he had no choice but to be. He had to not only know his life story down to every tiny detail but actually, genuinely and fully become the self-serving monster. Damn.

As the investigation began to grind to an annoying stop almost from the day he took over, he’d had too much time to second-guess his decisions. For weeks now, he had felt like he was balancing blindfolded on the edge of a razor. Which wasn’t really all that dissimilar to how the majority of his military career had felt, but this time it was also spectacularly unproductive. The disquieting feeling that he was missing something vital was like an annoying fly buzzing just outside of his reach.

Only an idiot could doubt that they were in the middle of something huge. Every day he would receive orders taking his people away from him, witnesses changed their statements, resources were rerouted and there were more cuts limiting his jurisdiction. He used to have a whole floor at Lyon’s 4^th Police Station for his team, access to the usual nano-tech and support and the proper, Elite-designed comforts.

Now they were squeezed into the 4^th’s basements, with nothing but a few dinky rooms at their disposal. Gonzalez’s initial team of investigators had consisted of more than thirty people, including six devoted and trained inspectors (of Elite birth, of course). Barely five weeks later, he was left with a laughable mockery of a micro-team of five people and only one inspector.

Inspector Norah Bellefeuille, who had been transferred in barely a week ago, was definitely not someone Gonzalez wanted on his team. He didn’t request her; he didn’t even know she was coming until she showed up one morning, orders in hand. Said orders implied a routine reassignment, but their vagueness spoke volumes to someone with a finely honed bullshit detector.

It was possible that someone had simply decided that in the absence of any evidence, and the only crime being the killing of young Leeches of hardly any importance, Alexa Valentino excluded, the investigation was being slowly put to rest to die an all too typical death. The fact that Gonzalez had never received orders to actively help the investigation to die was dangerously suspicious. He should have been the first to be instructed to let the matter rest. If someone was pulling strings from above, it meant they didn’t trust him. If they didn’t trust him, the simplest solution would have been to reassign him. Since he wasn’t being reassigned, it meant that… He had no idea what it meant. The Police Forces of the Afro-European Alliance did not do things that way. They favoured simplistic, often lazy, approaches.

It was frustrating to not have access to information reserved for people above him, either in the police structure or on the social ladder. The cover story placed DCI Raphael Gonzalez as a mid-level Elite for a reason. They couldn’t make him an Elite who was too highly born. No one of such exalted birth would soil their record investigating Leech deaths, but while he might not have been the loop, he sure as hell was respected enough to be in the loop.

As things were, he couldn’t even tell if his cover, or that of his subordinates, was compromised, and whether whoever had breached their security was simply waiting for the right moment to pounce. It was possible that someone was simply working around him for their own profit, assuming Gonzalez would keep his head down just like his file showed he would. But that wasn’t the typical, lazy simplicity the Police Forces in the 28^th century favoured either.

Gonzalez was wasting his time. He couldn’t afford to keep the investigation open for much longer. Not only had he failed to find any proof, but every day