"Drive, just drive!"

There was no mistaking the urgency in her tone. He pressed his foot flat to the floor, darting nervous glances occasionally at his passenger, worried that she might suffer a stroke or fit before they arrived at their destination.

Wait a minute, she hadn't specified her destination, had she?

"Where we going, Missus?"

"Oh, shit, sorry," she clapped her hands together. "I forgot to say. The Lynan Institute? Dreyfus Street?"

He nodded. He knew it, though he had never actually dropped, or picked up, anyone from the Lynan Institute. Maybe this fare was his chance to find out what went on there.

He took a surreptitious glance back at her. She had wrenched open the back door of his black cab, shouted her instruction to drive, and he'd automatically obeyed with only a cursory glance at the back seat (no sign of any weapon—okay, this is legit) before driving off.

Now he could look more closely. He guessed the woman was in her early thirties, well-dressed, with light-brown hair cut in a razor-sharp bob. She wore an expensive coat over skin-tight leather trousers.

Marvin sighed in pleasure. Too often women these days favoured the casual look: jeans or the dreadful yoga pants. To his mind, though, there was nothing as erotic as a smartly-dressed woman.

His passenger was shifting about in her seat, a toe tapping up and down, beating the sound of her impatience on the cab floor.

"Going as fast as I can, Missus," he added, watching the agitation on her face, her frown, her pursed lips and the frequent sighing.

"To be honest, I prefer Ms," she said, but she smiled so sweetly as she said it, the wrinkles on her forehead smoothing out and the lines about her mouth suddenly disappearing, and so he decided he didn't mind.

"Going as fast as I can...Ms," he amended. She winked at him in the mirror, one eyelid slowly closing over a large brown eye. She touched her top lip with her tongue, a gesture so fleeting Marvin wasn't sure he'd seen it, but another wink seemed to confirm it.

He was her slave for evermore.

Friendly relations now set up, he decided to risk satisfying his curiosity.

"The Lynan Institute, then?"

She grinned at him. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, us cabbies are awfy—nosey about it. What is it? What goes on in there?"

She winked again.

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know, Marvin?" With a further smirk, she sank back into the seat, relaxed at last.

It didn't look as if Marvin was going to get that long-standing, niggling question answered after all.

Hold on, how did she know...

"I read your security badge." The voice piped up from the backseat. Okay, so it wasn't rocket science how she had managed to work out his name, but reading his mind just there...Good job the Lynan Institute wasn't too far away now, that was for sure. Tongue tricks or not, Marvin's admiration began to drain away. He wasn't sure this woman was legit after all.

"Keep the change."

His fare had exited the taxi gracefully, gathering together her coat and swinging her legs out in an arc.

The tip was generous, but by no means outstanding. Marvin didn't linger to watch her go into the Lynan Institute.

The knowledge of what the institute did would have to wait. Marvin's taxi-driving colleagues would stay in ignorance for a little while longer.

"Welcome to the Lynan Institute: Promoting Excellence and Education in All That We Do."

The Lynan Institute's sign hung inside the building, not out. From the outside, it had the look of a typical Georgian building, the type that only big law firms in Edinburgh could afford these days. Inside, you stepped first into a spacious reception area, its walls covered with certificates. Lynan Institution level one certification, level two, level three etcetera.

The certificates named people. Eve didn't recognise most of the names, but the odd one here and there sounded familiar, famous even. She could never pinpoint who the person was exactly, and she always seemed to forget to look the names up when she left the place.

As always, the reception area was deserted. Eve removed her heels and sighed in relief as her feet touched cold, marble floors.

Freed from the uncomfortable footwear, she could now move quickly, and she ran up the stairs to the building's main room.

Mrs Stanhope was already in place, standing beside Eve's pod, a forbidding cast to her features. The pod was one of many, six to a row, eight rows in total. Curtains pulled round each, mirroring a hospital ward and affording each occupant privacy. Not that Eve ever saw any other occupants. She heard them from time to time, but the Lynan Institute staggered the occupation of the beds, so nobody arrived or left at the same time.

"You're late!" Mrs Stanhope snapped, her eyes widening and then narrowing as she took in Eve's bare feet.

"Stanny!" Eve was probably the first person who had ever called Mrs Stanhope by that overly-familiar name, and the look of pain that crossed the woman's features showed that she was yet to get used to it.

The first person, too, who had argued with her about her methods and the way she treated people and the first person who dared to suggest she might want to change her management style.

The arguments didn't mean, however, that Eve was no longer afraid of being late.

"Get in," Mrs Stanhope opened the pod, which still, unfortunately, looked too much like a coffin for Eve's liking. She placed a small step ladder next to it. Eve was only 5ft 2ins tall and getting in the pod without one was impossible.

Mrs Stanhope hadn't moved. The pod, coffin-shaped but coloured in cream and beige to try to disguise that association, may have been ready for Eve, but she was not ready for it. Anyway, the student hadn't appeared yet.

A battle of wills began.

Eve was not going to tell Mrs Stanhope to leave, but neither was she going to get into that wretched pod until the student was in place. Students checked everyone who came into the Lynan Institute, keeping an eye on them as they slept, and Eve preferred to wait until hers was in place.

Eve folded her arms. Mrs Stanhope unfolded hers. A minute's stand-off ensued.

Sighing impatiently, Eve made a move to open the curtain. Where was that student?

"No, no!"

A hand reached out to stop her, and she resisted the impulse to thrust off the woman's clammy grasp.

"She's late too, the wr...wretched student, I mean. But she'll be here soon enough. Please just get in."

"And you?" Eve's tone was deceptively gentle.

Mrs Stanhope's face wrinkled. It appeared to sink in from the forehead, down the nose and to the chin.

"I'll leave you."

She turned abruptly, opened the door and pulled it shut with a click. Her voice was still audible as she left, barking instructions into a Bluetooth headset about letting the technical crew know.

Who were they, Eve wondered briefly. But as usual, the thought came and went quickly. She didn't seem to be able to hold onto thoughts here, anticipating the seductive pull of sleep too keenly. She let out a sigh, stepping down from the step ladder, the conversation was already forgotten in the bliss of peace and quiet that had descended in the wake of Mrs Stanhope's departure.

The space was now hers. She adjusted the pod's thermostat, turning it down slightly as Mrs Stanhope kept the temperatures too high. As a finishing touch, she waved her hand a few times in front of the curtains until the colour changed. Ah, that was better, light pink with a silver sparkle through it. Just like her bedroom at home.

Never mind that she wouldn't be able to see the curtain as in minutes she would be getting into her pod and closing the front lid of it over her for the hours she was to spend inside there.

Eve pulled off her cashmere jumper and hung it up on one of the hangers that had been left on a hook to the right of the pod, noting with approval that they were padded. She didn't want to get dressed back into clothing with funny marks where it had been hung. She removed her leather jeans next, peeling them off with the sense of relief with which she'd abandoned her high-heeled shoes earlier on.

She pulled the step ladder close to the pod once more, climbed the steps and slid down into the pod.

It was always the same. At first, she felt the claustrophobia keenly, as if she was climbing into a submarine berth. Once inside, however, it was different. More of an enclosing, comforting kind of place, a womb, Eve had thought the first time and then been embarrassed by it. Or embarrassed by how relieved the thought of being in a womb was to her.

She pulled the lid over her with a sigh, adjusted the wires and plugged herself into the main power supply.

Sleep was only a few seconds away, so time to just mentally clarify in her head... Oh, no there wasn't.