‘I was. But the fact is, she’s going to find out. It’s more important for us to make quick, efficient progress than to go carefully. Myrnin would take my side, and yours; I think he’ll be able to contain her paranoia, at least for a while. And so while this will be a risk, it’s probably one we have to take. Now. Let’s go over the questions.’

Dr Anderson brought VLAD out from the secured area, and Claire answered about an hour’s worth of detailed questions on the internal workings. Some of the questions startled her, led her off on tangents that started discussions about better ways to channel and concentrate the energy being generated. It was … well, exciting. Problem solving was always thrilling for Claire, and clearly it was for Anderson, too.

Finally, her professor nodded and stowed VLAD away, and Claire got ready to do something even more exciting.

She was disappointed.

‘Sometimes, being my assistant isn’t going to be action-packed,’ Anderson said, and pointed to a huge bin full of paper. ‘Shred all that, then take the pieces to the incinerator at the end of the hall for burning. I like to be thorough.’

‘What is all this?’

‘Old projects,’ her professor said. ‘Don’t read it. Just shred and burn, or your eyes will melt.’ She said it so matter-of-factly that Claire had a moment’s hesitation, before the other woman laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I haven’t perfected that eye-melting technology quite yet. Shredder’s over there.’

That commenced a vividly exciting morning of sitting in a chair feeding paper into a machine that spit out shreds, and putting the shreds into a giant plastic bag when the bin was full. It took a full three hours to go through the stack of paper, and Claire quickly learnt that shredded paper might be more volumetric than the flat kind, but it wasn’t really that much lighter in total weight. She struggled with the bag down the hall, located the incinerator room, and dumped the paper down the chute before she pushed the big red button to fire up the oven.

She couldn’t help but think that it was awfully convenient, having a thing like this so close to the lab. Or to labs that did all sorts of mysterious, biological things. She imagined grisly scenarios in which mistakes had gone down this chute, and shivered.