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with it. Now are you coming to the lab, because we’ve got some results through on the latest volunteer to go over.”
    “Good or bad?”
    “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here, would I? The tech head won’t show me without you there, so are you coming?”
    “In a minute. I’ve gotta change.” He turned his back on her and pulled off his shirt, taking it to the clothes chute and using it to wipe the sweat off his chest. She was still there. “Going to watch, are you?”
    She blinked like he’d caught her out. Her lips thinned. “Don’t flatter yourself.” She left, slamming the door behind her.

    Pip arrived at the medicentre ten minutes later, breathing hard. He’d had to sprint the whole way. A sudden rainstorm had come down as soon as he left the house, like it was waiting for him. The water was bad though, a front blown down from the southern Asiatic States full of residues. It would take a month for the filters to clean it. It tasted of bitter chemicals where it hit his lips and he spent a good few minutes spitting and washing his face and mouth with cleanser. He’d forgotten that happened this time of year and Kev’s wife, Lakisha, gave him an earful of why he should remember to wear protection.
    “The coats are in the house, Pip, right by the door,” Lakisha said. “It’s not hard to remember. Do it again and I’ll make you stand out in it for a full five minutes. Even my kids aren’t that stupid.”
    “I’m showing them what not to do,” Pip said.
    “Always with the smart mouth.” She tossed the cleanser back in the drawer.
    There was no animosity in her tone though. Lakisha was a tiny woman, barely reaching Pip’s armpit, but she was head doctor of the medicentre and few argued with her. Her dark-eyed stare could reduce most to mumbling children and she pushed Pip away from her desk and across the open floor towards the laboratories. “Hurry up then, they’ve been waiting for you.”
    The medicentre was busy this morning with people who’d been caught out in the storm the night before. Pip followed Lakisha between the hurrying staff members and wandering patients to a code-locked set of doors that led through to the labs.
    Beyond the soundproof doors it was suddenly very quiet and cool. The wide corridor took them past plasglass-walled labs where members of Lakisha’s staff worked on various projects ranging from outer planet vaccination to health contracts for the global government, the United Earth Commission. Gondwana Nation’s medical expertise was second only to Helios in its efficacy, and Lakisha’s centre was one of the larger complexes in Nation.
    “That woman Sulawayo sent has been nothing but trouble since she arrived,” Lakisha said to Pip as they walked. “If it wasn’t for the tech she brought, I would have kicked her sorry arse out weeks ago. Today, she’s been complaining about the rain. Like she knows what it is, bet she never sees much of it down south.”
    “Well, she is a kind of Helios agent,” Pip said. Lakisha scowled. He knew how she felt. The woman she was referring to was the Helios rebel, Raina Pont, a medical expert Sulawayo had sent up with the equipment that was supposed to help them make a MalX vaccine – part of the deal Rosie had made. Rosie had come up with it when Pip had been captured by Sulawayo’s rebels at the secret Helios base here in Gondwana. He still blamed himself for that, should have been more careful, but Sulawayo’s crew had surprised them. They’d turned up just when he thought they’d sorted out stopping the whole Equinox Gate project, and things had got messy. Sulawayo’s lot had got him, and Rosie had offered herself up to save him. An exchange. His freedom and the tech to cure the MalX for the gate plans on her implant and her joining the rebels. But Cassie had blown the bombs they’d set around the gate and they’d got away before the deal could go through. At least that was what he’d thought, until Rosie had gone and