Kyle and Jessi walked together through the doors into the glass atrium of Madacorp. The scene was familiar with the large screen promoting Madacorp announcing "Technology, Science, Art, only one company integrates all three for the benefit of mankind, Madacorp, building foundations for tomorrow."
The last time I had come through those doors was the day of the open house when I came to bargain with Julian Ballantine to get him to put me in the CIR chair. I had wanted to sabotage their mainframe and get them to stop pursuing my family. My plan had run into difficulties when I had discovered that Jessi was still alive and suffering from trying to contain the knowledge of Zzyzx in her head. We had both been lucky to get away alive that time. But I had accomplished my mission and come away with an unexpected bonus who was walking beside me today. This was a much better day.
As they approached the reception desk, a tall woman with straight blonde hair intercepted them, "Mr. Trager, Ms. Taylor, I'm Tiffany. Ms. Hollander asked me to bring you straight to her office.
She led them through the metal detectors, up an elevator and eventually to a wooden door with inset glass windows in a rectangular pattern. They went past that to a similar inner door where she knocked and announced, "Mr. Trager and Ms. Taylor. She gestured for them to go in and Emily Hollander rose from behind the desk and came to meet them. She was dressed in more formal business attire than on the previous times they had met.
"Jessi, Kyle, it's good to see you again." She shook their hands and indicated the two chairs in front of her desk. "Have a seat. Can I have Tiffany get you anything?"
"No thank you," Kyle said. Jessi shook her head. Emily looked at Tiffany who nodded and closed the door.
She went behind her desk and sat, "I'm glad to see that the two of you are doing well." She paused and began uncomfortably, "I want to start with an apology. Kyle, I know that you associate me with unpleasant activities toward your family. Jessi, I deeply regret what I put you through. I started out thinking I was doing the right thing, and wound up simply trying to protect my daughter. I did things that I'm not proud of and I'm sorry."
Jessi said, "Paige is a nice girl. How is she?"
"She's fine, thank you," Emily smiled. "And glad to have her mother home to read bedtime stories to her – unless I'm working late." She took a breath and continued, "I was very surprised to get Mike Kasperson's call indicating that he wanted the two of you to audit Madacorp's activities. He made it clear that he expected my complete cooperation with you and that he would use your report to determine whether or not to confirm my position here." She smiled and shook her head wonderingly, "If I didn't know your history, I would think he was crazy sending a couple of teenagers to audit this corporation." She opened her hands indicating the size of Madacorp. "But I have an idea of the kinds of things you can do and I am looking forward to seeing what you can discover."
"Mike Kasperson promised us that we would have complete access," Kyle said.
"Mike Kaperson is a powerful member of my board and is the one who ended the nightmare I was living through by removing Julian Ballantine and putting me in this position." Emily said, "Whatever Mike Kasperson asks for, he will get, and that means whatever you ask for you will get." She picked up two Madacorp badges with the word 'UNRESTRICTED' on them in red letters. They contained Kyle and Jessi's names and pictures. She handed them out, "After we are done here, with your permission of course, Tiffany will take you to get your retinal scans on file. With that and these, you will be able to get into any room in this facility day or night whenever you want to. Will that be acceptable?"
Kyle smiled, "Yes that will. It will be a lot easier to move around than the first time I was investigating Madacorp. I had to work around your security system for that."
Emily chuckled, "Yes, I remember that day. You had us all running in circles." She picked up a data disk. "This is the full annual report as well as all of our SEC filings, and the internal annual reports from all departments. I thought you would like to have it." She pushed it across the desk to them.
"We've read all of that, except the internal annual reports," Kyle picked it up. "They aren't public so we didn't have access to them. This is all just summary data. They say 'the devil is in the details'. We would like the detailed accounting transactions for the last year. We want to see if there is a devil hiding there."
Emily stared for a moment, then she recovered, "But that's millions of transactions. You can't possibly …" She raised her eyebrows, "Maybe you can. That may take me a couple of days to get pulled together. Will that be acceptable?"
"It will," Kyle agreed, "That's a lot of data, even for us. We may just follow specific areas. We want to have it all, though."
"I'll have a courier deliver it to your house," Emily assured him. "Is there anything else you would like?"
Jessi said, "Your drug division has a new anti-depressant which is about to go into clinical trials. The information I saw on it gave me concerns about side effects the researchers may not have been aware of. I would like to see more internal data on that."
Emily blinked, "All right. I'll get that for you too. If you find something wrong with it before we spend several million dollars testing it that will be a real savings. Of course that will mean our investment is lost."
"Not, necessarily," Jessi said. "From what I could see, a slightly different formulation would be pharmacologically equivalent without the hepatic impact of the current one."
"All right," Emily said, slowly, "Is there anything else I can do?"
"I think that will do for now," Kyle said.
Emily nodded thoughtfully. "Then, I'll have Tiffani take you for the retinal scan and start getting the information you asked for." She stood up and handed them a couple of business cards, "My cell number is on here, you can reach me twenty four seven". She shook their hands again and opened the door, saying, "My door is open to you any time." She looked out and said, "Tiffany, will you take Mr. Trager and Ms. Taylor to get the retinal scan we arranged?" She watched them leave, then closed the door, went back to her desk, sat down and breathed a large sigh of relief. She said to herself, "I think I'd prefer the I.R.S."