This is why accountants are bad for business (Episode 9)

Sent:	Tues 2014-09-02 @ 9:45 PM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	pretty sure this is how I die

I’ve got to stop hanging around with people like you.

I found a folder that’s password protected on our intranet. I couldn’t figure out the password at all. And then I had a stroke of evil genius. And now I’m feeling sick to my stomach.

My boss is a bit of a dunce when it comes to computers. A few weeks ago, he was having problems with his accounting program, so he called me over to his desk. Idiot wrote down his password on a piece of paper in his desk, and left it out for everyone to see. I remember trying over and over to pronounce the word, until I finally realized it was the title of a Prozzak song (Omobolasire, if you didn’t already guess it). Pretty much forgot about it for months, because my boss is boring, and I thought he had nothing hack-worthy to spy on.

Anyhow, I logged out of my system and signed in under his username and password. Okay, it doesn’t count as actual hacking, but it does make me feel a bit like a bad ass. Anyhow, his systems permissions are higher than mine, and I was able to access that folder.

But seriously, this is how I die.

I found a budget report for this thing called Wyndham Farms. I thought at first that this was where we were getting that Grade A beef Wyrd is always ordering to keep Varco Lake so well stocked.

Clearly not.

I found the Farm. The quarantine.

This is the budget summary I found for them. Just the budget. Not the actuals.

How do you go from over $1.5M in food down to $28k in four years??? And how did they know two years in advance how much less they'd need????

2012 W.F. Budget Summary Final With Forecast

Year	Food ($)	Medical ($)	Research ($)	Other ($)	Total ($)
2011	1,098,000	241,500	20,000	100,000	1,459,500
2012	343,500	28,625	20,000	50,000	442,125
2013	166,500	0	15,000	0	181,500
2014	28,500	0	0	0	28,500
Grand Total					2,111,625

--Su--

Sent:	Tues 2014-09-02 @ 9:58 PM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Re: pretty sure this is how I die

They must have been using that research money to try and find a cure for whatever it is that's killing these people off, and then they just gave up. It takes millions and millions of dollars - to say nothing of the number of researchers involved - just to make a breakthrough in MS, for example. How much research did they think they could get, with only $20k in the pot per year?

Yeah, and at a glance, you'd think that was a hell of a lot of food, but when you break it down per person, per day, that's not a lot of money. And there were hundreds of people abducted and transported.

But I'm not surprised about the drop in numbers. People were dying off the moment the stepped out of the truck. It looks like a hell of a disease, whatever it is.

Sent:	Tues 2014-09-02 @ 10:01 PM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: pretty sure this is how I die

You don't get it. We spent over $1M in food alone for these Wyndham people. We spend less than half of that at Varco Lake every year. And they've got unlimited beef.

--Su--

Sent:	Tues 2014-09-02 @ 10:03 PM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Re: pretty sure this is how I die

Dude.

They're werewolves.

If no one has reported a strange conclave of hairy-ass people running around baying at the moon, then chances are, the quarantine is far away from civilization.

If they are out in the middle of our vast Canadian hinterland, then chances are pretty damned good that they're fending for themselves as werewolves often do. You know, with their teeth. After a while, they get the hang of hunting, so Wyrd doesn't have to buy so much food.

Just a damned shame that throw-away folks have no say in the matter.

Hell, maybe they were getting square meals for the first time in their lives...for as long as it lasted.

Sent:	Wed 2014-09-03 @ 12:03 AM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: pretty sure this is how I die

You still don't get it.

That budget I sent you was the 2012 version of the document. In other words, they knew two years in advance taht they were going to slash teh budget by 2013, and decimate it this year.

And if that's not enough to get me killed, I've looked at teh month over month budget. We stopped buying food for htese people four months ago!!! And at first I thought, dayum, that means they're all dead already.

And then I saw this:

2012 W.F. Budget Summary Final With Forecast

Month	2011	2012 ($)	2013 ($)	2014 ($)
January	215	90	100	78
February	250	95	98	75
March	255	95	96	74
April	260	95	95	70
May	265	95	95	63
June	270	90	94	62
July	255	90	94	60
August	230	95	90	55
September	110	102	85	45
October	100	101	86	0
November	105	101	85	0
December	100	100	82	0

So at our worst, they were at 270 - like you said, hundreds of people abducted and quarantined. But look at the drop between August 2011 and September 2011. Like, wtf. Were half of them suddenly released into the wild, while the other half were doomed to stay put???

But look at our numbers right now. We stopped feeding them in June.

They're still in quarantine, Pine. They're still there, and we've stopped paying for their food. "Werewolves fending for themselves" be damned!!! They're only hairy once a month. What are they supposed to eat for the other twenty-nine days???

For that matter, like you said: they weren't all werewolves when they first got to quarantine. Some of them were as human as me and you. And we didn't just cut off their food. We cut off everything. Medical supplies. Clothes. Fuel. Ammunition for their own hunting. God, what were they expected to do, make their own spears and bows and arrows?

And what's with next month? What happens in October? Are they releasing the final 45, or do they expect they'll all be dead by then?

Pine, I think Wyrd's killing off the last survivors.

We're starving them to death.

--Su--

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The Moldova Incident (Episode 8)

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 9:13 PM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Re: Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

You need me to find out right now about where Ishmael is coming in from? Don't know if I can find out what he was up to, but I can look.

But I was planning on taking the night off for a change. I’ve got the boyfriend over. It’s getting harder and harder to make excuses for why I work so late, especially if I’m supposably just some data auditor for a paper products company, right?

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 9:21 PM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

No, do it whenever you get a chance. No sense rushing it. If there was an outbreak in eastern Europe, Ishmael wouldn’t be coming home unless it was already taken care of and the damage already done. I just want to know how much it’s going to cost for us to handle the clean-up.

I wish that caller would give up. Think I may have to change my number or something. He called three times in the last hour before I finally pulled the cord out of the wall.

--Su--

Sent:	Tue 2014-09-09 @ 8:02 AM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Holy blood bath, Batman.

First, do not freak out. Yes, I went into the archives, and no, I didn't go onto the servers. I made a back-up of the hacked archives days ago, and I searched through those. So if there's anything new on Ishmael's mission, I don't know about it.

Secondly, shame on me. To think I used to believe werewolves were as human as we are. Ishmael's no different from the rest of them, after all.

No, he's worse than the rest of them, combined.

Between him and Jay, they killed over 350 people. In one mission.

And Ishmael brought back trophies from every single kill.

I called in sick.

~Pine~
~Never Give Up...Never Surrender.~

Sent:	Tue 2014-09-09 @ 8:22 AM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: Holy blood bath, Batman

What are you talking about? 350???! I would have seen that on the books somewhere. You don't slaughter that many people without the world knowing about it, not without one hell of a lot of resources.

That's not a mission. That's a terrorist attack. That's a fricking act of war.

Get off the drugs, go back, check again.

--Su--

Sent:	Tue 2014-09-09 @ 9:27 AM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Re: Holy blood bath, Batman.

It happened before your time, and almost before my time.

In early 2005, there was a massive outbreak in Eastern Europe, and all the victims went and hid in some Soviet-era mines. Another quarantine, maybe, or just a colony of survivors, I don't know.

First I thought the outbreak might have something to do with Dr. Grey, since most of his victims started appearing late 2008, just a couple of years after all this went down.

Then I thought maybe this was a result of some late-era Soviet experimentation, y'know, the super-soldier-type experiments during the Cold War? I mean, how else do you suddenly grow 350 new werewolves without anyone knowing about it?

Now I'm thinking it's some combination of the two. Maybe "Dr. Grey" is an alias for some scientist who defected to Canada and continued the Russian experiments.

Either way, that outbreak was so big they deployed Jay and Ishmael and three dozen human agents to clean up the mess. And once it was over, the Executive Council buried it, and all records expunged from the official field operations archives. Aside from these Exec records, there are only redacted memos referring to The Moldova Incident.

Now, I don't know if they were engaged in the world's biggest pissing contest or what, but this Exec Council report makes it sound like Jay and Ishmael were trying to see who was the bigger badass. And, according to the report, Ishmael won.

The order was: go there, contain the outbreak, destroy all new lycanthropes with extreme prejudice. Two guys to do all the killing as fast as inhumanly possible, and thirty-six of us to handle the clean up.

Lining up this timeline against my own calendar, I realized I was involved in this. I had to go pick up Jay from the airport, once he came back from Moldova. I’d had no idea where he’d been or what he was doing. All I remember was seeing this sick grin on his face, and the way his eyes kind of rolled back whenever he smiled - and he'd smile at nothing, just all of a sudden, like he's reliving his best one night stand. Seriously, he put the “lust” in “bloodlust”. Still makes my skin crawl just to think about it.

And he brought back with him this box. It was big, but it wasn't heavy, and it sounded like it was full of kids' sandals. All I had to do was pick it up from the airport and drive him and the box to his own car back in Vancouver.

Turns out the box was full of RIGHT EARS. I'd been carrying a box of HUMAN EARS.

All because Jay decided that he was going to prove his badassness by bringing back the right ear of every victim so the council could get an accurate count.

Men's ears. Women's ears with earrings still in them. Children's ears, Sumac. He stood there in the Exec Council, giggling like a madman, saying that he'd brought them all a souven-ear from abroad.

I can't begin to tell you what kind of a morning I've been having.

According to this report, after showing off his box of trophies, Jay started this rumour in the Council that Ishmael has gone soft, and that he's going to fake the deaths of the rest of the Moldovans and bribe the human agents into saying he's successfully killed the lycanthropes. But instead of killing the new lycanthrophes, so said Jay Ear-Hunter, Ishmael was going to start his own little commune – like a Wyrd Europe or something.

So what does Ishmael do?

Ishmael completes his mission. Then he goes and buys this huge battery operated refrigerator. He labels it “Organs for transplant, do not remove power supply” or whatever. He poses as a doctor with Médicins Sans Frontières, gets on a commercial flight, drives himself to Varco Lake, and then he walks right into the Council chambers with the fridge on a trolley.

Inside the refrigerator, it’s complete and total horror show.

First he pulls out a foot. Then a hand. Then a heart. Then another foot. Then he pulls out a testicle. And then he pulls out a half-changed head, not just to prove that he killed a small town's worth of innocent people, but to show that he made sure they were lycanthropic, first. The Council report decides to check the DNA of all these body parts, the ears and everything else. This Dr. Gil Burton guy, at Varco Lake, he confirmed that every trophy was genetically distinct from the other, so neither Jay nor Ishmael double-dipped any of the corpses. That confirmed they killed 353 people between them. Then Burton goes on to see if all the victims were lycanthropic.

Ishmael's set? 100% werewolves. So yeah, good for him - creepy bastard.

And Jay? Thirty of his victims are human, meaning that he's missed thirty lycanthropes, and they're still overseas making more lycanthropes. So yay, great, job security for us. Maniac.

And the sickest part? Every one of Jay's captured ears has his saliva on them, which either means he tore their ears off while he was in his wolf-form, or he has a fetish, and I still haven't finished vomiting.

As for Ishmael's victims? Not a trace of saliva. He says he killed them all while he was still human. Looked every one of them in the eye and killed them. Six-inch barbed blade, the report says. He even made his own weapons for the job. Stick the blade in the lycanthrope's heart, and it doesn't matter how many times he or she changes, the knife will still be there, tearing up the organs until death.

But the absolute worst part about all this?

Some of the body parts Ishmael brought back were too small to be adult.

Ishmael killed even the kids he suspected as being carriers. Just like he was told to do. He out-Jayed Jay.

To think I used to think so bloody high of Ishmael.

“Take my number in case Jay tries anything stupid with you,” he says.

“Why kill a rogue when you can turn him into a wage earner?” he says.

"Nothing is ever what it seems to be," he says. I call BS.

I mean, what did those kids ever do to deserve slaughter and mutilation like that? And who the hell orders too men to go out and kill that many people, especially when there are kids involved?

Jay is all hot rage, but Ishmael's just...cold evil.

Hell, maybe they’re going to LaGuardia to pick up Ishmael and throw him in quarantine.

I hope he never gets out alive.

I hope he meets Ferox and gets his ass handed to him.

Sent:	Tue 2014-09-09 @ 9:34 AM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: Holy blood bath, Batman

So what, you're saying that you think agents are going to pick up Ishmael to bring him to quarantine, because of something he did in 2005?

Dude, think about it. He was promoted to Field Ops Manager in 2006. He's been FOps Manager ever since. You don't promote someone you think is a sadistic murderer.

I mean, not unless a sadistic murderer is just what you need to keep other lycanthropes in check.

But he is sick as ^#@$, I'll give you that. He's not a loose cannon, but he is sick in the head.

Still looking forward to promotion to lycanthrope?

But you do bring up an interesting point. You say Jay let thirty lycanthropes escape. Maybe they're out there terrorizing Eastern Europe, and Wyrd sent Ishmael out to clean up Jay's mess. Maybe that's why Burley is covering as FOps for Ishmael until he comes back.

Hell, maybe he's bringing back Jay, and he needs backup at the airport to take him down.

...I'm still shudder-retching at the thought of Jay and those ears, though. All I can think of is ear wax.

--Su--

Sent:	Tue 2014-09-09 @ 2:42 PM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Weird thought just now

Me again.

Beginning to wonder if maybe all those people in quarantine have a disease that’s killing off lycanthropes.

Maybe they were all previously undiscovered lycanthropes, and Dr. Grey tried to invent a cure, but it backfired and made them crazy.

Makes sense, doesn't it? From an epidemiology perspective?

Sane werewolves control their own population, and they stay under cover. But if werewolves go nuts, they'll go on a rampage and attack more people. The more people they attack, the more likely they are to pass on there disease.

Wyrd catches up with them, and for the sake of keeping the existence of lycanthropes a secret, they'll take out the crazy werewolves, put them far, far away from Varco Lake, so they can't infect their fellow lycanthrope.

I mean, Wyrd is good at containing panics, right? Can’t have a panic among fellow lycanthropes, especially if they think there’s a new disease that could wipe them all out.

Maybe it’s like the ebola of werewolfism or something. Lycanthropic rabies.

...Shit...what if Ishmael caught it?

Think about it. He can kill and mutilate the better part of 350 people when he's sane. He can make people disappear and die off a crowded New York City with zero witnesses.

Can you imagine what he could do if he went crazy?

Oh, and you know that unidentified caller?

Now he's calling my cell.

~Pine~
~Never Give Up...Never Surrender.~

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Wyrd is going after your Golden Boy (Episode 7)

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 8:45 PM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

So, I just got this purchase order. Wyrd is sending eight agents, werewolves every one of them, to LaGuardia on the next plane out, with orders to rent a truck, then fly out on another chartered flight on a cargo plane leaving from some obscure little community airport in Pensyllvania.

First thing that cought my eye was that they were sending such a big party of werewolves to meet someone at the airport.

Ishmael lands there around this time tomorrow night. Guess he's done his job and now he’s bringing back the Great White Shark of all werewolves or something. Good thing he’s got backup so ready to move.

-Su-

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 8:52 PM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Re: Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

Maybe you were right about him investigating another outbreak. God, can you imagine if there was an outbreak that happened in Romania or something? I mean, how Bram Stoker can we get? Oh wait. He was vampires. Ugh, whatever. Same diff.

Well, good on him, getting him this far, I guess – and single-handed, eh?

Weird though. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have him go straight to Pennsylvania? Or straight to Winnipeg or something on a connecting flight?

For that matter, it doesn’t seem likely that Ishmael’s bringing his prisoner through such a populated airport in the first place. God, could you imagine what kind of a containment situation we would have if his prey fricking busted loose in the biggest airport in like the whole world?

K, now I'm confused.

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 8:55 PM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

You’re right. The more I think about it, the weirder it gets. Why wouldn’t they just fly to some other airport?? Why not fly straight to Halifax instead??

The other thing that’s bugging me? That whole Angie Burley signature. The one where she says she’s the interim chief field ops commander.

All of a sudden I want to ask Ishmael if *he* knows she’s acting ops-co.

-Su-

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 8:59 PM
From:	Pine
To:	Sumac2
Subject:	Re: Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

I could probably get a message to him. I know one of his back up email addresses. He gave it to me in case Jay ever tried to go after me like he did with Alder.

You want me to send him a message?

Sent:	Mon 2014-09-08 @ 9:04 PM
From:	Sumac’s Other Email Addy
To:	Pine’s backup addy
Subject:	Re: Who knew accounting could be so exciting?

No, not yet. Could be that they’ve been planning to run a kill/capture ops in New York City, and they’re just going to LaGuardia to meet up with Ishmael beforehand.

Ishmael’s the best tracker they’ve got because he’s good at keeping things fast and quiet. He's got to be running point or something.

Sprucey used to tell me that he could pull a lycanthrope off a crowded street and people would just keep on walking. There wouldn’t even be a trace of the abduction on surveillance tapes, either.

Still, why would they meet him at the airport? Why not hang back and wait for him to move in? If he's surrounded by an entourage, he's going to stick out like a sore thumb.

Besides, he's feline-type. He doesn't hunt in packs. He works better alone.

But why the airport???

Your paranoia is catching.

Listen, do me a favour? See if you can find out any information about an outbreak in eastern Europe. I want to know how much this is going to affect the 2015 budget. I figure, the more I know now, the more I can make recommendations, and the easier it is to balance the books later, right?

I seem to remember something about an outbreak overseas about…what, ten years ago? Wasn’t long after I joined, but I was too new to get any of the good gossip. Ah, the joys of being a junior bean counter.

All I remember is that hundreds of people died in that one. They said it was a blood bath. And now Ishmael’s back there again? Something doesn’t add up.

Damn, I hope it’s not another outbreak.

-Su-

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