Fractions Read Free Page A

uncontrollable spasm. She jumped, then turned slowly as reason caught up with reflex. A man stood leaning forward, trying to look alert but obviously tired. Tall. Thin features. Dark eyes. Skin that might have acquired its colour from genes or a sunlamp. He wore a dark grey urban-camo jumpsuit open at the throat, Docs, a helmet jammed on longish curly black hair; some kind of night-vision glasses pushed up over the front, straps dangling, phones and mike angling from its sides. He looked about thirty, quite a bit older than her, but that might just have been the light. A long, complicated firearm hung in his right hand.
    â€˜Who are you?’ he asked. ‘And what are you doing here?’
    â€˜That’s just what I was about to ask you. I’m Janis Taine and this is my lab. Which it seems was broken into last night. Now—’
    He raised a finger to his lips, motioned to her to back off. She was ten paces down the corridor before he stepped forward and scanned the door with the gun. His lips moved. He put his back to the wall beside the door and poked it open with the gun muzzle. A thin articulated rod shot out of the weapon and extended into the lab. After a moment it came back, and the man stepped forward, turning. He swept the tape away from the door and shook it off his hand after several attempts. He glanced at her and disappeared into the room.
    â€˜It’s OK,’ she heard him call; then another bout of coughing.
    The lab was as she’d left it. A high-rise block of cages, a terminal connected to the analyser, a bench, fume cupboard, glassware, tall fridge-freezer – which stood open. The man was standing in front of it, looking down at the stock of his gun, puzzled. He coughed, flapping his free hand in front of his mouth.
    â€˜Air’s lousy with psychoactive volatiles,’ he said.
    Janis almost pushed him aside. The test-tubes racked in the fridges were neatly lined up, labels turned to the front as if posed for a photograph. Which they might very well have been. No way had she left them like that. Each – she was certain – was a few millilitres short.
    â€˜Oh, shit !’
    Everything gets everywhere…
    â€˜What’s the problem? The concentrations aren’t dangerous, are they?’
    â€˜Let’s have a look. Where did you get this? No, they shouldn’t be, it’s just – well, it may have completely fucked up my experiments. The controls won’t be worth a damn now.’
    She suddenly realized she was cheek-to-cheek with him, peering at a tiny screen as if they were colleagues. She moved away and opened a window, turned on the fume cupboard. Displacement activity. Useless.
    â€˜Who are you, anyway?’
    â€˜Oh. Sorry.’ He flipped the gun into his left hand and pulled himself straight, held out his right.
    â€˜Name’s Moh Kohn. I’m a security mercenary.’
    â€˜You’re a bit late on the scene.’
    He frowned as they shook hands.
    â€˜Slight misunderstanding there. I was on a different patch last night. I’m just dropping by. Who’s responsible for guarding this block?’
    Janis shrugged into her lab coat and sat on a bench.
    â€˜Office Security Systems, last time I noticed.’
    â€˜Kelly girls,’ Kohn sneered. He pulled up a chair and slumped in it, looked up at her disarmingly.
    â€˜Mind if I smoke?’
    â€˜I don’t.’ She didn’t. She didn’t give a damn any more. ‘And thanks, I don’t.’
    He fingered out a packet of Benson & Hedges Moscow Gold and lit up.
    â€˜That stuff’s almost as bad for you as tobacco,’ Janis couldn’t forbear to point out.
    â€˜Sure. Life expectancy in my line’s fifty-five and falling, so who gives a shit?’
    â€˜Your line? Oh, defence. So why do that?’
    â€˜It’s a living.’ Kohn shrugged.
    He laid a card on the lab bench beside her. ‘That’s us. Research