The police and paramedics took over. An officer escorted Sam and Lyn outside while Alice was carried out on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. A paramedic prepared a drip and then the ambulance was gone, blue lights flashing.

Sam sat on the pavement while his wounds were checked, cleaned and re-bandaged. Lyn hovered nearby, biting the nails of one hand then the other until another paramedic completed her work. Her deft and practised fingers replaced Sam's rough dressing with something far better.

The police had already erected a cordon to close off the street. Employees at neighbouring companies gathered at entrances and windows to for a better look at the commotion. Uniformed officers moved among the crowds, herding them away from the Zoi Tech building until they had enough distance to set up a perimeter of blue and white tape.

Someone touched Sam on the shoulder and guided him to the back of an ambulance. He climbed in, sat down and gratefully accepted a cup of tea. It was hot and sweet and strong.

It reminded him of Alice.

Lyn was arguing with a policeman

His gaze skimmed over the crowd

From here he could see faces he recognised in the crowd, Lyn's colleages gathered, all of them eager to know what had happened, but Sam had no answers for them yet. Two more officers stood with them, taking statements.

There was movement by the door and more paramedics emerged carrying a stretcher. Lyn appeared, running alongside it, concern etched into her face. They loaded Alice into an ambulance. Sam could see Lyn speaking to them and was about to climb in too when a police officer walked up behind her and explained something too her. Lyn was waving her arms. The officer remained calm and pointed to Lyn's colleages. Lyn nodded and waved Gordon over. He ducked under the blue and white tape, spoke to Lyn and got in the ambulance.

The officer squeezed Lyn's shoulder.

Another stretcher appeared, this one covered head to toe. Sam closed both his hands into fists and ignored the pain and squeezed. He had worked together with Andy for years, they had travelled the world, fought enemies of the crown in a dozen countries, and he had died here, in London, at peace.

One more paramedic emerged. He carried a a large green bag with a smaller satchel slung over his shoulder. Behind him came four armed offices, weapons at rest. Between them stood the attacker. His tape had been replaced with handcuffs. Someone opened the door to a police car for him and he was placed inside. The door slammed, and the car drove away, threading through the crowds and past the cordon. Blue lights flashed and sirens blipped once to get people to move aside.

Lyn was escorted over to Sam and she sat next to him. He offered her his tea but she shook her head and stared blankly down the street to where the ambulance had gone.

Sam placed his bandaged hand over hers and squeezed gently. She squeezed back hard. It was agony, but Sam endured it, for her sake.

A policeman approached.

"Lyn?"

"Yes?"

"We have secured the building but we are going to have to seal it until a structural assessment has been performed. Is there anything you need before we close it office.

"The cryo bag! It was in the hallway, we need to keep it cold or the contents will be destroyed."

The officer held out a hand.

"Before we do that, we need to know exactly what was in there. We saw evidence of biological samples being worked on. I need to know if there is a danger to anyone in the area."

"All the samples are genetic, mostly stem cells or blood samples."

"Any viruses, anything that could cause harm?"

"Some, but they are harmless. We use some as a delivery vector but they are not dangerous."

"Are you certain?"

"Absolutely. I built this lab. There was nothing harmful in there."

"What was in the bag you need? Is that dangerous? I need to know before I send someone into retrieve it."

"No. I don't know what is in the bag but if it came from our fridge it won't be dangerous. It's mostly stem cell colony's. I won't know until I see it."

The officer spoke to a colleague who dispatched someone into the building. They were back in a few minutes with the bag, but Lyn could see it was a waste of time. The bag had been damaged when Sam attacked the mystery attacker. The precious vials inside were cracked and warming rapidly.

"We need to know what was in here in case we need to quarantine this area," said the officer

"I already told you, there's nothing harmful in there. These are not even blood samples. They're for dna research. Look at the labels."

Instead the office passed the bag to Lyn. She opened it fully, the damage was already done, and pulled out a protective tube. It was labelled with a barcode and a name. Lyn read it and gasped.

"It's mine!"

"So you can confirm this does not represent a hazard to health?" pressed the officer.

"Yours?" asked Sam, taking a renewed interest.

"Why would he steal my DNA? Why would he blowup the lab?"

"Madam?" said the officer.

"Yes," she snapped. "It's safe."

"Then I will need to take it in for evidence. Please sign here."

He thrust a clipboard in front of her.

"But this is my dna!"

"Please, madam."

"Sign it," said Sam. "We can work it out later. Let him do his job."

Lyn wordlessly scribbled an approximation of her signature on the paper in front of her.

The office handed her a receipt and a card and left. Lyn watched the bag get passed to someone else, then dropped into an evidence bag and sealed. Another car left the scene.

"What do you mean it was your DNA?" asked Sam.

"I mean it was mine. It was me. The principle of our research is to make everything available as freely as possible. Most research institutions need to charge for, or license their findings. To convince people I was serious I had to put my money where my mouth was, so I've sequenced my whole genome and put it on line for research. Anyone can see it. The samples I provided for sequencing have been in storage ever since."

"For other researchers?"

"For anyone. The more resources people have to examine the easier it will be to research, and that can only help everyone. I want others to do it too but most genome information on line is anonymous."

"Why is that?"

"Privacy rights mainly, but it can affect insurance too. I'm never going to get any cover for cancer, for example. But dna only gives us clues about what might happen during a persons life. We can examine it and find out there is an increased risk for liver disease, or Alzheimer's, but we need to correlate that with other factors, lifestyle, diet, pollution, and so on. So anonymous data is helpful but not enough."

"So that means there must be something special about your dna that this guy wants."

"But there is nothing special in it. I've checked it myself. We use it as an informal reference guide because it is so unremarkable. If anything it is defective. No one would want it."

"Why is it defective? Do you have a disease?"

"Nothing like that. I just have a rare condition which means by body produces no eggs. It's not dangerous. The genes which code for that correlate with an increased risk of disease in other areas but only something like ten percent higher than the average population."

"He must think there is something special about it if he stole it."

"Well he's wrong! And he didn't need to steal it, everything is online. Our website tells people they can examine it for free! And he didn't need to destroy the lab! And he didn't have to hurt Alice."

"I'm sorry about your friend."

Lyn suddenly remembered Andy. "Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry. Here I am talking about Alice but she's only in hospital." Her hands squeezed his again. This time he withdrew it, but not because of the pain in his hand.

"There's going to want us to go to the station," said Sam.

"How do you know? Everyone else is just giving statements."

"Because you're in charge and I attacked him."

"Oh. How long will they keep us? I need to get back to the lab. Oh! We need to get our backup samples from storage." Lyn pulled out her phone and dialled Gordon's number. She craned her neck to see if he was still in the crowd but he must have been asked to move. She left a message and hung up.

Sure enough, as she was putting her phone back in her bag, a policeman invited them to go to the station to give statements and answer some questions.

"Will it take long? Where are we going?" Lyn asked.

"It could be a couple of hours," replied the policeman, "but we're only going up the road to Shoreditch. "I can give you a ride."

The car slowly extricated itself from the crowds and emergency vehicles and turned right at the end of the street. A helicopter was by now hovering overhead, and reporters had gathered as close as they could to the police tape to take pictures and begin interviews. Lyn saw a space for the media being reserved on the pavement as the car turned onto City Road.

"Will I be able to get back in the office later? I will need some things from there."

"I'm not sure. We need to make sure the building is safe and forensics need to examine the scene. When they are finished we can have someone escort you inside if you need."

The car pulled up outside Shoreditch Police Station a few minutes later. It was close enough to to Lyn's lab that they could have walked if they needed to. The driver dropped them outside the front door and they went in to report to the front desk.

They soon found themselves in a waiting area deeper in the station. The only other people there was an elderly couple. They sat close, as if cuddling to each other for warmth. The vending machine was out of order, and the coffee machine was out of milk. Sam inspected a handful of coins and bought two black coffees with sugar. He set one down beside Lyn, while her hands were busy texting her staff.

"Any joy?" said Sam.

"A bit. Everyone else seems to be ok. Just some minor injuries. No-one else got taken to hospital. And someone is going to get Gordon to text me."

Sam sipped his coffee. It was awful. "About the backups?"

"Yes. We can get new machines in over the weekend and we have a temporary cryo unit on standby. The data we can get from backups if they are up to date, but any work we have done since will be lost. We will need backup samples to recreate some of it."

"Where are they kept?"

"Not far from Cambridge."

Sam stared at the vending machine while his brain processed all this.

"You have samples there of everything? Including your own DNA?"

"Of course."

"Do you think the guy that did this knows that?"

"Miss Asmara?" interrupted a detective. "This way please."

Sam stood up to follow. "Please take a seat sir," said the detective. "Someone will be with you shortly."

Sam sat back down and frowned. He noticed the old couple staring at his hand with a 'deer caught in the headlights' look. He ignored them and sipped the coffee again.

Still awful.