A dark caption.

It wasn't supposed to go down this way, Silas thought as he stood in her office watching her hard drive get deleted and then scrubbed. It wasn't supposed to be this hard or go this badly.

Silas was a member of an organization that had "familial" ties across the city and state. They tended to specialize in white collar crime. You wouldn't find them running an old-style racket or take part in a physical robbery, no, they were savvy, careful, discreet.

However, they learned, all of the discretion in the world doesn't matter if someone gets a conscious. One of their partners at a major tech firm had done just that. Jessica Grady had been one of the executives there and with her connections inside the business and their connections to everything else that was needed they had managed to embezzle a fair bit of money and make a pile of money on insider trading.

The problem was she had gotten a bit too bold, putting down too much just before a big deal hit and pulling out too soon. When she got on the SEC's radar she quickly realized it was either cooperate and run the risk with that organization or help her partners in crime and do the time.

She didn't want to go to prison and she didn't think they had the muscle or the willingness to do anything severe to her so she cooperated with the SEC.

Of course, they found out and had to come up with a plan to handle her. The original plan was easy. They'd just kidnap her, have her delete the incriminating files that linked her and them, and they'd do the same on their end. It wasn't perfect and a couple of them would do time, but it would be few of them doing much less time than a lot of them doing a considerable amount of time.

Well, the problem with them being mostly into white collar crime was that when you do need to do the gritty work you aren't as experienced at it. They did grab her, but she managed to escape. In her haste, though, she had vastly overestimated her ability to get in under a closing heavy garage door. This thing was designed to be hard to cut so no one could boost any cars in the auto shop it was attached to, so when she tried to go through head first...

The doctor's the brought in were in shock she was still breathing. She was alive only in the literal sense, nothing of her was still around. Now they had that to deal with as well, plus her laptop, which they knew was protected by a password and her biometrics.

So, they thought they were screwed until one of them proposed a plan. They called up a doctor they knew and he decided that Silas would be the best one. Him and her were put side-by-side on operating tables and when Silas woke up his head was stitched onto her body. He'd then use her biometrics to get into her laptop and delete the files, wearing a wig and avoiding the cameras.

To his shock, it worked, and here he was, standing in her office, the files nearly all deleted. Just a few more...

He smiled when it was complete, and he left the laptop there. Without her and without that laptop, the SEC would have little to base their case off of. All he had to do was lay low for a few months and while inventing a reason why he was now a woman from the neck down and he'd be off the hook as well.

He closed the laptop and stepped away, opening her office door, a satisfied look on his face as he walked out. He did like to see her leave, he thought, and now he'd be the one giving men that feeling. He wondered as he walked why he just had that thought, but he quickly came to the conclusion that he did need some levity. He had a day where nothing had gone to plan and they were not in the clear, at least not yet. He needed something.