The Eidolon Read Online Free Page A

computers and packing them into cardboard boxes. They picked files from shelves and thumbed through their clipboard lists and none of them would meet my eye.
    “What the hell’s going on?” I strode towards Chris, lounging back on a swivel-chair, his feet perched on an empty desk as he watched the men pack. Nothing winds him up, I’ve always thought, and this confirmed my suspicions. He twirled a pen between the fingers of his right hand and observed the scene as though he was watching a TV show. His short dark hair was just visible beneath his helmet and he ran his left thumb over a carefully sculpted beard. Two men moved to either side of his table and began to pull it out from under him. He lifted his legs free, but in his own time. When he planted his feet on the floor, he looked up at me.
    “Nice of you to show up. But you shouldn’t have bothered.”
    “Why? What’s happening?”
    “They pulled the funding.”
    “What? You’re kidding me.”
    “Does he look like he’s kidding?” Chris glanced at a man standing in the shadows. He was lean, in his late thirties and dressed in a suit that would cost me several months’ wages and then some. He stood with his back straight and his hands clasped in front of him, watching with a detached air. His eyes briefly settled on me.
    “What do you mean, they pulled it? Who pulled it?”
    “It came from the top.”
    “They can’t just take all this stuff! All of our data...” I snatched a file from the top of a nearby box and glared at the man carrying it. The business man took four long strides towards me.
    “Mr Strong, that file is no longer your property.”
    “And who the hell are you?”
    From behind me, three other men in suits closed in. Not slim, like the first, but bulked out and standing several inches above the rest of us. They didn’t speak – they didn’t have to. Chris’s pen stopped twirling.
    The lean man’s eyes were still on me. “I’m Steven Ryan from Organol Security. I realise this is unexpected, but we’ve been tasked with taking possession of the contents of this laboratory.”
    “Tasked by whom?”
    “Her Majesty’s Government.”
    “What?” I glanced at Chris, who nodded.
    Ryan continued. “It’s my duty to remind you that we require any files you may have on these premises. We appreciate your cooperation.” He spoke with the reassurance of a priest but there was no doubt he was comfortable with violence. “Do you have any other files?”
    I caught Chris’s eye. “No. I have backups, but they’re all here.”
    Ryan watched me for a moment, without speaking. I wanted to punch him hard in the face.
    “Leave it, Robert,” breathed Chris.
    All those months we spent at the edge, fine tuning it, pushing through disappointment after disappointment, and just when we can see the finish line, some little shit in a suit says it’s over? My fists clenched and the muscle man nearest me inched closer.
    Chris gripped my arm. “Let it go.”
    I tossed the file back into the box. The lean man smiled thinly and nodded to the others.
    I turned back to Chris, my insides burning. “Where’s Zimmer?”
    The door at the other end of the room crashed open and Zimmer stormed in, right on cue. His face matched the scarlet of his helmet and he barked at the phone held to his ear. The veins on his neck stood out like purple ropes.
    “Well interrupt his call! This is an urgent... you tell him that it’s Geoff Zimmer... YOU!” He covered the mouthpiece with his free hand as he bellowed at one of the intruders lifting a sheaf of paper from a shelf at the other side of the room. “PUT THAT BACK! ...No, no, I’m sorry, not you... wait... no, wait... Ah, shit!” He hurled the phone to the concrete floor and it smashed into pieces.
    “Don’t worry about it, boss,” says Chris. “We won’t be needing it anymore.”
    Geoff Zimmer took off his helmet and spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb.
    “What the