*Reminder: I don't own anything. Thanks for the reviews.

-Ghent, Belgium-

"Aaron?" Marta turned around, but he wasn't there. "Aaron?" There were plenty of people milling around waiting for the Candelarian shareholder meeting to start, but he wasn't one of them. She pulled the scarf from the handle of her bag and wrapped it around her neck, prepared to pull it over her head once outside. She had to move. The phone in her pocket vibrated, and she read the text. Found a colleague—fill me in on 1st 15 min. She exhaled and moved with the mass of people toward the amphitheater, keeping her head down. The badge on her neck read "Joanna Swales, Hedgehog Investments". It was Aaron's idea—they had just come from Wales where a hedgehog in the B&B garden had given her the fright of her life. It was easy to remember. The green contact lenses were irritating her eyes, but given the number of alcoholic drinks that were being consumed in the large lobby she didn't think the redness was noticeable.

The security guard swiped her badge without looking twice at her, just another face in the hundreds queuing for entrance. She made her way to a seat at the edge in the last rows and busied herself with Facebook and her phone, a tactic that she noticed was an effective deterrent against conversation. They had plenty of ambiance with the colored lighting and free-flowing liquor that was a blatant attempt to put the shareholders in a good mood. Aaron and Marta had discovered Serasyn was not the only "accident". A sister company's laboratory had exploded due to "improperly handled pyrophorics", and there had been four other scientists lost through a combination of car accident, suicide, and two heart attacks. The shareholders were deeply unhappy and the corporation was at pains to make them all enthused again before the stock price dropped further.

"Greetings, Candelarian shareholders!" An effusively suave VP was at the mike, sounding more like a chewing gum commercial than a corporate executive. Marta checked her watch. Fourteen minutes, forty-five seconds to go. She hoped it was that simple, and that she wasn't going to see Aaron getting shot at from between PR displays.

Aaron had seen an opportunity to infiltrate behind the scenes, and ditched the shareholder badge for a security guard's. The man had been imbibing the free alcohol and hitting on a female shareholder, and Aaron smoothly interceded for the grateful woman and pulled the guy off into the shadows, where he was quickly incapacitated and ditched behind a column, deprived of his logo jacket. Tucking the security earpiece in his ear, he walked purposefully toward the staging area. He heard the first speaker start talking, the speakers echoing through the hallways of the ICC.

"While recent events have left us saddened, we are sure that some of the new innovations we will present for the first time tonight will show that this next year will be the best yet!" There was moderate applause for this statement. Tough crowd, Marta thought to herself.

"This way, please," he herded some stockholders that had had too much alcohol, noting the different security guards behind the cordons. His earpiece buzzed with the timing of events. The company PR people were obviously unhappy about the crowd's reaction to the first speaker—they were moving Dr. Hillcott up in the program. He'd have to get to him after. The speaker was winding up and getting ready to hand over to Hillcott. Aaron slipped into the toilet and sent another text to Marta telling her to stay put for Hillcott's speech. Marta fidgeted in her chair and stole a look around, but most of the crowd were ignoring the PR drabble and chatting amongst themselves.

They had cordoned off a meeting room as a prep area for the speakers. He slipped a rung off the hook and turned to meet the security guard approaching him as he fastened it back in place. "La Gantoise zijn niet goed vanavond. Adriaan zegt dat we misschien nog wat problemen."

The other guard relaxed and nodded. "Ik heb geluisterd naar de wedstrijd op de radio. De menigte klinkt boos."

"Hier komt de grote man, misschien kunnen we vroeg naar huis te krijgen," Aaron nodded to Hillcott who was being ushered through the staging area, folding his arms like the other guy. "Wat is de score?"

From that point Aaron was comfortably ensconced in the staging zone, and it only took ten minutes of murmuring the right responses to Geert's updates on the match for him to meet a few other security guards. Clearly they were more interested in the game than their jobs, and Aaron (now known as Frederik to the other guards) had no problem walking away on the pretext of a text from his girlfriend. He walked the perimeter at the rear and found two exits that led to one of the service corridors he had already noted from a map. He sent a quick text to Marta instructing her to leave as soon as Hillcott finished, and head back to the service corridor via the opposite hallway on the other side of the vast lobby. He strolled back to the other guards and asked for clarification on how they were going to get the speaker out after he was done.

Marta was more than interested in Hillcott's speech. One of the reasons Aaron had agreed to let her be here instead of hiding in a hotel room is that she would be able to spot significant breakthroughs that he referenced in his speech, ones that might be worth following up in order to untangle the mess they were in. Someone was giving the orders, and until they found a way to stop them it would be a game of hit and run for life. She was determined to reclaim her life and here was an opportunity to use her experience to help.

There was no question that the audience perked up when Hillcott assumed the podium. He had 'presence', as her advisor would say. Marta had her notes program open on her Droid and as the lights darkened and the first slide clicked on, her analytical brain took over. The developments he presented in virology were no more than she expected, but it was the hints about metabolome mapping that intrigued her. It sounded like they were playing with the viral capsids in response to the changing dynamics of the immune system during infection. THAT was huge. If they could modulate the immune response, the subjects would not experience much downtime, if any. She jotted down a few notes for herself, places to look for the research, groups to look at. She was familiar with most of the names already, but a few were likely lurking and not going to be mentioned—the fresh bloods from grad school and new assistant professors eager to make a name for themselves and secure semi-permanent grant funding.

When Hillcott got to his last slide and pretended to entertain questions, Marta slipped off her chair and left the room before the lights came back on. Her mind was whirring but she needed distance and a computer in order to really unpack it all. She took a free drink to have something in her hand from one of the tables and pretended to sip it as she strolled along the far edge of the lobby. When the loud applause began she slipped through the service door just as people started to spill out from the conference room. Clearly the PR people knew when to end on a high note.

Aaron was waiting with the other guards when Hillcott and Candelaria execs came back down into the prep area. The execs were high on the thrill of selling a good vision to the shareholders, who would be further pumped the next day by the CEO himself. They were patting each other on the back and drinking their own alcohol now. He noticed that Honeycott looked tired and bored, so he suggested to Geert that he could offer to escort the speaker to his car, and Geert nodded his agreement. Aaron told him he'd make sure the corridor was clear, and after he verified that Geert was heading out behind him with Hillcott he passed quickly through the door into the corridor. Another text to Marta—hide until we pass you, then follow. Even if the poor signal didn't let the message get through, that is what she would do instinctively. He turned and fell in next to Geert. Hillcott took no notice of him, he was just another black logo jacket. His earpiece was lighting up now…there was trouble from the football match. A draw, and thousands of angry fans. His expression tightened and he noticed Geert looked tense.

"Wacht, denk ik niet dat hij kan overal mee naartoe," Geert said, grabbing Hillcott's arm. "You need to stay here," he said to Hillcott.

"Change of plan," said Aaron, and delivered a punishing blow to Geert's midsection, then twisted his arm so that he went down at just the right angle for him to knock him out with his handgun. Hillcott, after the initial shock, had not stood still. He burst through the doors and took off running into the night.

"Aaron! What do I do?" Marta shouted at him from behind.

"Get a car and get it started!" he yelled, then took off after Hillcott. He was old and out of shape, and Aaron was catching up quite quickly. Unfortunately for him, Hillcott had headed straight for the mass of angry football fans that had fanned out from the Ottenstadion. The first few were teens bent on mischief, and the general chaos and mayhem made individual people irrelevant as targets—they were intent on breaking windows and setting fire to things. The real brawling was getting started in the middle. Hillcott had finally realized the danger and was trying to reverse course and make his way back out of the morass of angry young men. Aaron delivered a few punches himself as he fought to get to Hillcott, and was within six metres of him when he heard a bullet and Hillcott went down, the sodium street lights casting an eerie split second glow on the halo of droplets that surrounded his head as he crashed. The crowd exploded and Aaron spotted two men with clubs purposefully moving through as people scattered in every direction. Hillcott had just been terminated. Weighing the odds of reaching the body before the agents, and the presence of an asset, he pivoted and broke into a run with many others. There was no intelligence to be gained, only trouble. He criss-crossed the streets toward the ICC until he heard the squeal of tires.

"Aaron! Get in!" Marta's face leaned out of a black Merc.

"Nice wheels," he said, "let me drive," and he got in the driver's seat as she scrambled across the console. He gunned the engine and they drove away from the melee enveloping the night.

"Thank your security guard friend. It's his car," she finished buckling herself in, turned to look at his profile as he drove. "What happened?"

"He was shot," Aaron glanced at her. Her face had instantly paled. "It was an asset, a company job. Based on what I saw, they will probably bludgeon his head to make it look like a-"

"-senseless act of violence," Marta finished dully. She made a fist, shoved it in her mouth. "Shooting someone in the middle of the street, someone who has worked for them for decades…Is there no limit to what these people will do?"

"No." Aaron's tone was flat, final. Marta stared out the window as they merged onto the E17.