He had pulled on that thread as hard as he could. Until he had been told by his bosses that under no uncertain terms that Karte Industries was a huge supporter of the community and their CEO was above reproach and not to be touched. Well, never let it be said that agent, Craig Stands, refused to follow orders. He was more than happy to leave this whole mess behind him, kinda, like his full head of hair had left him behind many years ago.

But then, almost to the minute that he was walking downstairs to file the case in cold storage and return to his bureaucratic life of normalcy and paperwork of the more mundane variety, he had been made aware that the CEO of Karte Industries had recently changed. This wasn't unusual, but he had to go through the steps to make sure it couldn't have any connection to what he was doing. And the more he looked into it, the weirder it got. There was no obituary, no funeral, no public statement of assention from the new CEO or retirement for the old one. And when his bosses told him the CEO of Karte Industries was above reproach, surely, they had been talking about the legacy CEO who had just stepped down, right?

And so now here he was, stuck in a giant pile of shit that he hadn't asked for, and didn't want. But he just had to go looking, he couldn't have left it alone. He had to verify who this new CEO was, he just had to follow procedure to the letter. If he had, just this once, said screw this! And dumped the file downstairs, no one would have said a thing. But now, he was the only one doing the work of what should have been the work of a task force of people assigned to this case.

Karte was into everything from automotive design and production to high grade pharmaceuticals. Their R & D department in that area alone was impressive to say the least. But that wasn't what was keeping Craig glued to his desk till three and sometimes four o'clock in the morning. What kept him here, was that none of the math added up. The financials of a corporation as big as Karte was bound to have a few holes here and there, that was normal. But Karte had perfect accountability down to the penny in everything. That was never normal, and usually pointed to something shady going on.

And he couldn't help but notice that the amount of blood, plasma, and other donated and collected bodily fluids the subsidiaries of Karte kept on hand was mountains more than their nearest competitor. It was properly written off as research materials and very much accounted for. But there was no way anyone except the red cross or about one hundred blood banks should need the amounts of blood that these people kept on hand. Pair that with these other reports he had been getting about serious R & D being put into blood tests and other experimentations involving blood, pointed to bioweapons research. It just made him question everything about this company. People in California were a weird breed, that was true, but nobody was weird enough to account for all this.

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His phone rang and he nearly jumped out of his chair from being startled so badly. It was eleven forty five at night, and even if it was during normal work hours no one ever called him. He looked at the phone like it was a dangerous animal. The number on the caller id said 'private.' Private numbers were usually blocked by the call center. He almost didn't answer it… almost.

"Hello?"

"Am I speaking to an agent, Craig Stands?"

The voice on the other end was unquestioningly feminine, and she had a very rich Asian accent of some kind that he didn't want to even try to guess where it originated from. Images of a young twenty something year old woman swam into his head.

"Yes, this is him," Craig responded.

"Agent Stands, I understand that you are currently investigating Karte Industries."

And this is where Craig would get fired. His heart dropped into his gut as he anticipated and heard the person on the end of the line tell him he was fired. To cease all work he had been doing and clear out his desk by midnight. What was he going to tell his wife? She had taken to calling him a marshmallow loser in private, thankfully she just called him a marshmallow at parties and in front of people. Most people took it for a cute pet name, thankfully. But he knew that if he lost this job, people were going to be forced to see just how hateful and miserable his wife was by hearing every insult that she had in her repertoire hurled at him behind closed doors. He didn't think many people would want to come over for barbeques after that.

"If you're interested in finding out what Karte is really up to, and just how many lives they have ruined, check out Advanced Cell Technologies, particularly one Trevor Swaan, head of their R & D department with specialties in biochemistry."

"Wait, how do you know all this? Who are you?" Craig frantically asked into the phone, but the phone had already gone silent. He was left holding the receiver, staring out his office window that looked out into the hallway off the main conference room, like an idiot. He felt like he was stuck in the middle of a bad dream, or a cheap pulp intrigue novel. All he needed now was someone calling themselves Deepthroat, or Virgil, or some other such nonsense telling him to meet him downstairs in the parking garage with a large manilla envelope that had an old school cassette tape and a VHS recording showing him proof of the Karte Industries CEO murdering someone.

He shook his head and hung up the phone. This was going to be another long night, in a long string of long nights. Sometimes he really hated this job.

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