Elizabeth drew in a deep breath as she looked up at the intimidating skyscraper in front of her. People moved around her, heels clicking, chatting and laughing. Some heading in to the building ahead of her and she struggled to remember the faces and names from the files she had been briefed on last night. She had been in desperate situations before, and to be fair there were currently no weapons pointed at her (she hope), but she couldn’t help but feel the trepidation fill her stomach with butterflies at what she was about to do. She opened her handbag to look for the keycard to enter the building, but doing so just reminded her that she was not currently herself.
Her hands looked utterly foreign to her, wrinkled and old. One thing Richard hadn’t told her before she had accepted was that the woman she was impersonating was, in fact, as old as her mother. She had to remember not to freak out next time she looked in the mirror. It made sense to be honest; this woman, Pam Alders, was a senior personal assistant to the company CEO who just happened to be Simon’s father, George. Would he recognise her? See through the layer of disguise the device provided her?
Marshalling her determination, she started towards the building as her fingers curled around the key card. A man’s voice calling her name from behind her stopped her in her tracks and she swallowed heavily before turning to greet him. “Hey Pam! Have a good weekend?”
She smiled up in reply, nodded and hoped it would suffice the man as she continued on her way to the front door. He hurried to catch up with her and held the door open for, and as he got closer, she recognised him from the briefing files. He was Brendan Davies and he was the head of the shipping department. He was someone she needed to get close to.
She nodded in thanks to him for holding the door, but came up short as she saw what was to come next. There were what looked like two lines of security, one after the other. The first was a bag check after which there was a body scanner followed by the keycard swipe and identity check. She steeled herself, trying to act naturally despite being scared of being caught out, as if she did this everyday as a formality.
“You ok, Pam?” Brendan asked as he went to the checkpoint next to her and she placed her bag on the table ready to the searched. She turned to him as the guard looked through her bag and gestured to her throat with a look of discomfort on her face. “Ah, bad throat?” She nodded and picked up her bag when the guard told her he had finished with it. “Another wild weekend with the parrot, eh?” She laughed tightly and evolved into coughing to try and show her discomfort. “Steady there,” he looked concerned and she pulled back her coughing fit, satisfied she had laid the groundwork for her ‘sore throat story’. It needed to be believable, after all, the mimic devices only altered the outside form to the observer. Underneath she still looked and spoke the same. She couldn’t afford to be found out.
She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder, card in hand as she stepped up to the body scanner, trying not to look as anxious as she felt as she ran her eyes over it apprehensively. The guard on the other side waved her through and she stepped through with a small smile.
The alarm went off and the guard asked her to step to the side while he ran his handheld metal detector over her body. The device beeped as the man waved it over her chest.
Right where the mimic device was planted on her skin. She watched the guard with wide eyes, barely breathing as she waited for him to search her.
“Oh, come on, Mike,” Brendan called across from his checkpoint. “It’s Pam, you’ve seen her everyday since you started!” He joined them, shouldering his own bag as he came to talk to them. The guard gave a little shy smile and a quick glance to the side before quickly waving them past him with a chuckle.
Giving him a little laugh and a smile as she moved past him, Elizabeth had to suppress the breath of relief she so desperately wanted to release and boarded the elevator with Brendan. He pushed the button and they rode the lift in silence until they reached their floor. Elizabeth tried to remember the floor maps in order to get to her office without arousing suspicion. Straight on, past three cubicles, then left, past two cubicles, right and straight down to the end. Swipe keycard, enter 4592, proceed in to office on left, remember why the hell you are doing this.
The elevator dinged and she bade Brendan farewell before executing the journey she had just mapped out in her mind. She closed the door to the office behind her and heaved a sigh of relief. She’d managed to infiltrate the company, now she had to find evidence for Woolsey. She sat behind the desk and started looking around the desk for clues. Everything was neatly tidied in to piles, drawers and folders. Shouldn’t be too hard to find something here, she thought to herself, thumbing through the papers.
The door opened, making her jump a mile as Brendan poked his head around the door. “Oh God, sorry, Pam,” he chuckled. “Just needed to drop this off to go in the post this morning,” he waved a file in the air before coming in, dropping it in a tray on the right of her desk as she gave him a thumbs up sign and smiled as he left again.
She waited until she saw his shadow moved off down the hallway against the blinds before taking the paper and reading it through. It was a shipping manifest and she recognised the address for ‘Medi-For-All’ company she was currently sat in. The sender’s address was for a place just outside of Colorado Springs. She frowned at the shipped items listed: Saline 4625. She glanced around to check no-one was watching and pulled out her phone to take a picture and sent it to Woolsey.
She pulled out one of the folders on the desk which had ‘Invoices’ written on the spine and flicked through the papers, seeing more items shipped from the address outside of Colorado made Elizabeth frown. What was being shipped from the Springs to New York? What was ‘Saline 4625’?
She stopped as she read ‘Carapaces, Dung Beetle’. That was one of the things from her briefing. It was a code that the SGC were using for shipping nanites to research companies without arousing too much suspicion. What the hell were nanites doing outside of the Stargate program? After what had happened to her with Niam the SGC had put a moratorium on releasing nanites to any companies on Earth for research. All research was to be done on Atlantis. Or, since they’d been kicked out of their home, on SGC premises. She took a photo of that invoice and the few behind it which specified 4625 again and sent them off to Woolsey.
She heard the deep throaty chuckle of a man coming closer. She hurriedly replaced the folder and threw her phone in to her bag, opening a drawer to look like she was busy as the door to the office opened.
“Pam? Could you come in my office and take some notes?” She nodded without looking up and grabbed the notepad and pen on the left hand side of the desk before following the man and his companion out, down the hall to the left and in to a large spacious office. The door opened out to a beautiful view of the city through ceiling high windows and facing away from it and into the room was an imposing looking desk with a large office chair behind it. She stood in front of the desk with the other gentleman she didn’t recognise and looked up at the owner of the desk.
Straight in to the eyes of Simon’s father, George Wallace, CEO of Medi-For-All.
Her breath caught in her throat. What if he recognised her? It had been years since she had last seen him, but she had been with his son for a long time, surely he would see something in her eyes. Listening to her instincts as John had told her to, Elizabeth could feel that there was someone else in the room, stood behind her on the other side of the wall, but feeling as if they were watching and judging her she didn’t dare turn to look at them.
The man next to her sat down and the movement jarred her enough to remind her to sit as well. She kept her eyes downcast on her note pad and began to write as the men began to talk and it quickly became apparent he, James Andrews, was the head of the research department. They started off talking about mundane things like the budget for the department’s budget and equipment they needed.
Then the conversation turned to a topic which piqued Elizabeth’s interest. George asked for a run down on the results for the current projects and James started off by discussing a few drugs which were in the final stages of testing and were simply waiting for the results in order to finalize the product.
Then George asked about the nanites and Elizabeth had to be careful to keep her composure as they talked. She was quite surprised how openly they spoke about them, no code words, no innuendo, just straight talking. Elizabeth supposed they had no reason to be suspicious of anyone who might be listening in. She was, after all, a trusted employee who had worked at the company for just under eighteen years in eyes. She could only hope that they continued to think that way. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a burly man stood behind the door, gazing at them impassively but still exuding an ominous atmosphere.
James told George that they needed more scientists versed in the nanite coding in order to make any more progress, but that the preliminary results seemed promising. Elizabeth wondered briefly if they would approach Rodney for a job now that he was, technically, back on the market. He’d probably jump at the chance to get out of Area 51.
“How about the 4625? Showing promise?” George asked, looking down at the papers in front of him and fiddling with a pen as he spoke.
“Very, I can’t begin to tell you how excited we are about this one, sir,” James practically lit up at the mention of this project, sitting forward in his chair like a puppy for a treat. “We originally only thought it would work for Alzheimer’s, but the tests we’ve run so far seem to indicate it could have far more potential. We might be able to use it to treat Dementia, Schizophrenia, epilepsy…maybe even other diseases un-related to the brain with the right combination of drugs!”
“That is exciting,” George agreed with a smile. Elizabeth knew that look, she could practically see he dollar signs rolling in his eyes. “I’ll be sure to give Kavanagh a little boost after his next delivery,” the two shared a laugh. “Next drop should be in a few days, you still have enough to work with?”
“Yes, sir, should be enough,” he confirmed.
“Great, if there’s nothing else?” George asked. James shook his head and both men stood and shook hands over the desk as they said their goodbyes before James left. “Pam? I need you to escort some police officers up in a little while, they should be here at about twelve, ok?” She nodded and hurried out the door when George sat back down and picked up the phone.
She returned to her office and glanced over the notes she’d taken, rubbing her brow to try and relieve the tension building there. She looked at the watch on her wrist: 09:40. Plenty of time to grab a coffee from the kitchenette she knew was in the main office area then head down to meet the police. She only wished she could tell them what she’d found.
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