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watched as the guard swiped a card, pressed his fingers against a glass pad, then allowed his eyes to be scanned. Finally, the heavy doors slid open to reveal a lobby, behind which four great escalators stretched upwards. A man walked towards Peter and the guard, a serious expression on his face. Peter felt himself stiffen; the man was Richard Pincent. The guard gave a brief salute.
    ‘Peter,’ Richard said, a brief smile appearing on his lips. ‘Excuse me just one minute, won’t you? Little disturbance outside.’ He looked at the guard, the smile gone. ‘You need to get back to your post. We’ve got a Code X.’ The guard nodded, his face grim, then turned and walked quickly back towards the gate, pulling a walkie-talkie out of his pocket and clamping it to his ear.
    Peter watched him leave, then turned back to his grandfather, who was barking orders into a small device that looked like a tiny phone; his voice was low and inaudible, but the tension could be felt. Then he put the phone in his pocket, looked back at Peter and smiled again.
    ‘Come with me,’ he said, then clapped his arm around Peter’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to Pincent Pharma, Peter. Welcome to the most advanced laboratory in the whole world. The envy of scientists everywhere. Welcome to your new world.’

Chapter Three
    The lobby was vast, larger than Peter had expected from the outside. This was a place that could devour you if you weren’t careful, render you as insignificant as a flake of snow. As he followed his grandfather up one of the escalators, he tried his best not to be impressed by the scale of the place: walls that rose up a few hundred metres, huge screens displaying scientific diagrams, everything so white, so clean, so pure.
    ‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ his grandfather said dramatically. ‘This building’s been here nearly a hundred years and I still catch my breath sometimes.’
    Peter nodded, feigning enthusiasm, as his eyes darted around, looking for cameras, for anything important that Pip would find useful. He noted, archly, that there weren’t any pictures of Surplus Halls anywhere, nothing proudly displaying the darker side of Longevity; when his grandfather caught his eye and held it for a few seconds, Peter found himself wondering if Pincent Pharma’s surveillance system was so sophisticated that it could read his mind, but he knew that was impossible.
    ‘This way.’ They’d reached the top of the escalator and in front of them was a long corridor stretching to the right and left. His grandfather turned left and, after a few paces, turned right into another long corridor. ‘Easy to get lost, if you don’t know where you’re going,’ he said, leading Peter to a large viewing gallery that overlooked the reception atrium. Along it to the rear ran huge glass windows, through which rooms and laboratories were visible.
    ‘Through here,’ his grandfather said, walking briskly and pointing to his right, ‘is the main production area. Of course, you can’t see it. It’s so well protected it doesn’t have windows. What you can see is the finishing area where each tablet is pressed with the Pincent Pharma logo.’
    Peter turned to see machine after machine whirring, white tablets pouring out of them in their thousands. Around the machines men and women stood monitoring operations, checking quality, their faces creased in concentration. One looked up and saw Richard; immediately he looked away and began to examine the machine next to him as though his life depended on it.
    ‘Very important room that,’ Richard said, walking on. ‘The logo is how you know your drugs are genuine. Now, this area is one of our research labs.’
    He led Peter to a large laboratory full of people in white coats staring into microscopes, into screens, into test tubes.
    ‘What are they doing?’ Peter asked.
    Richard laughed. ‘Working on improvements, of course. The world doesn’t stand still, Peter. There’s always something