‘Mango’s a qualified doctor. She pays all the expenses and you just got a five-thousand-dollar bonus,’ Charlie pointed out. ‘Most importantly, Mango shields us. She’s our only point of contact. We never see clients. Mango and her wife were the only people who knew I was doing this work, until I told her I couldn’t cope without an assistant and brought you in.

‘Mango also encrypts everything she does online. Does this random guy Seth met at the gym do that? Or did he download the gene sequence at home and bounce it to Seth’s regular Gmail? It only takes one tiny slip for the Feds to sniff out a lab.’

‘I don’t know if he uses encryption,’ Juno admitted. ‘But Seth has kept my name out of it. He told his client that stuff is made by a guy he was with at Arizona State. And the previous two batches didn’t cause any problems.’

‘Previous two?’ Charlie blurted. ‘Juno …’

‘I want a nice place to bring up my kid,’ Juno interrupted. ‘Somewhere in a gated development, with a good pre-school and full biosecurity, so Patrick can play outdoors when he starts walking.

‘I was going to do a couple more batches to see how things went, then I was going to tell you about this and offer to bring you on board. You’ve said you’re quitting this racket when you leave for college. But why not bank a couple of million, instead of a couple of hundred thousand?’

‘Mango’s been decent to me,’ Charlie said.

Juno snorted. ‘Mango just moved to a six-million-dollar house. Do you think muffins paid for that?’

‘I trusted you,’ Charlie said. ‘Now you’ve made me feel like an idiot.’

‘So, am I fired?’ Juno said, dramatically ripping off one disposable glove.

‘You’re my friend,’ Charlie answered, angry but with no idea how to deal with it. ‘Patrick’s my godson – I love him to bits. You’re a great lab partner, but you lied to me. And you’ve put my freedom at risk without consulting.’

‘You’ve got a blind spot where Mango’s concerned,’ Juno said. ‘You should be on a percentage … And …’

‘And what?’ Charlie asked.

Juno sighed. ‘I don’t know why Mango’s so tight about buying us decent equipment. Seth and I have been putting feelers out. There’s gene-editing equipment available. The good stuff’s not cheap, but after a couple more batches I’ll have enough to buy a set-up better than the junk we’re using here.’

‘You want your own lab?’ Charlie gawped. ‘You’ve only been doing this for a year.’

‘We could be partners,’ Juno said. ‘And you don’t need to be a genius to do this. The patterns for every popular mod can be downloaded. We’re lab monkeys, doing the same tasks, over and over.’