A dark caption.

Clara Donner had been brought in by the board of directors to do an assessment of the company's R&D department. Some questions had come up and when satisfactory answers were not forthcoming, they decided on using someone outside of the company to handle it.

Her skillset was simple to explain, but immensely difficult in practice. The board wanted answers and she was to provide them. That meant a deep dive into everything that department did. It's budget, it's personnel, it's projects, it's organization, everything.

It didn't take very long to find problems. They weren't good at hiding that there was something going on. Money was being spent that wasn't going to where it should, people were assigned to tasks that were not being done and there were projects that were seemingly nothing more than empty shells with nothing real to them.

She thought embezzlement or even money laundering, but no one was living above their means and it did seem to be staying within the company. Equipment purchases confirmed her new idea, that it was a secret project.

She reported her findings to the board and they asked her to find out what it was. She now had the full backing to do anything she needed.

She decided on a direct approach, going straight into where she suspected the project was being done and showing them what she had, demanding them come clean or else.

Dr. Connor smiled at her, deciding that "or else" was more open-ended than what she realized. He invited her to his lab to see what he had been working on, and they both walked in there.

Now, though, only Dr. Connor walked out, though maybe that wasn't quite true. Most of him was currently being disposed of along with the part of her that could report back to the board. He had needed a suitable donor body anyway, and she just happened to be the "volunteer". He couldn't wait to go in and talk to the board and explain in detail why keeping this project going was in their best interest!