Side Effects: A Gripping Medical Conspiracy Thriller (Side Effects Series Book 1)

by Owen Grant

  “I think that once you learn more about the opportunity, you will understand that we're only trying to help.”

  “Does this have to do with the weight loss drug?”

  “The simple answer is yes. The implications of your work will be seen all throughout the world, though.”

  “Well,” Alan said. “I would require a detailed explanation of the job and the implications of my work before I accepted any offer.”

  “Well, your job will be to discover a lot of the answers. We need information, and we need you to get it.”

  “And who exactly would I be gathering this information from?”

  “Baxter Pharmaceuticals.”

  Alan looked at Michelle. “Isn't that the company that you work for?”

  “Yes,” Michelle said, grabbing Alan's arm. “But there's something weird going on there. We are trying to be the good guys. We need to know why they are being so secretive about this drug!”

  “Well, you guys must have a theory. It was a weight loss drug, right? It was probably just really dangerous.”

  “That could be. However, most of the drugs found to be dangerous are presented as such as quickly as possible. People do this as quickly as possible to prevent more people from getting hurt. People in studies know that there is a possibility of side effects, so legally, the company is generally safe. The fact that they're hiding the information is what is suspicious. I think that they found a good use for this drug. And they are hiding it from people.”

  “Why would they hide a drug that has a use?”

  “The use could be dangerous. Or the use could be very profitable if handled properly. Or, the use could answer questions that the company isn't ready to explain. Whatever the reason, we are in the business of knowing.”

  “I just don't see how it affects you that much.”

  “The company that we all worked for has been hiding things from us and the public for far too long. We are sick of it. It is time to release the information that these pharmaceutical companies have to the public. If they have information or a drug that could be useful, everyone has the right to know.

  “What? Do you think that they have the cure to cancer or something?” Alan joked.

  “No. Not quite,” Dr. Watson said with a serious face. “I don't think that could happen from the little of the research that I did see. However, it does something.”

  “Babe, it would be great if you could help out with this. Just imagine what good you could be doing for the world.” Michelle smiled.

  “Well, what if I find out that the drug really is innocuous?”

  “You'll still get paid. Don't worry about that.”

  “And what happens if I can't break into the system?”

  “Well, we are really hoping that you can. Based on some things that we've heard about you; you'll be able to do it.”

  “And what if I get caught?”

  “You will work in our facilities. The facilities are extremely secure. If for some reason you are caught trying to break into the system, it will be traced back to the facilities, but you will not be implicated at all. Any third party interference in our network is immediately reported. You will be gone and home before anybody finds the location.”

  “Well, you're working right out of the same office building. Isn't that a bit obvious?”

  “That's not where our headquarters are located. Michelle is just working there again to keep up appearances and try to gather intel.”

  “Don't you two still work there?” Alan asked.

  “No. We were both relieved of our duties for asking too many questions.”

  “Some people would say that it's time for you to give up.”

  “I have strong feelings that we should not give up.”

  “And, Michelle, how were you not fired?”

  “I took a strategic vacation. I laid low as soon as I learned how serious the higher ups were watching these two. Luckily, everyone was asking questions, so I didn't stand out. I also had a great alibi for the vacation. I had some health concerns at the time.”

  “Is this something that I can actually put on a resume?”

  “You'll be able to get the best jobs in the field with our recommendation. If this works.”

  “And exactly how much is the pay?”

  “This is the exciting part,” Dr. Watson leaned forward. “I have a feeling that after you see the number you won't have as many questions. We are well-funded, but we will be even more well-funded with your help. Therefore, we are willing to pay you handsomely for your time.”

  When the doctor told him the number, he almost fell out of his chair. He wouldn't really have to worry about a new job right away after this.

  “It looks like I have a new job,” Alan said.

  “Great. We will start in two weeks. Give your notice to your current job tomorrow morning. Let us know if you become available earlier.”

  After Watson paid the bill and everyone said their good-byes, Michelle and Alan went back to his apartment to celebrate.

  First Day

  Alan didn't know how to explain the odd job offer that he had just gotten when he got to work the next day. He had decided that he was going to take the exciting opportunity, but deciding on how he was going to tell his boss about the new job was more difficult. Alan was completely aware of how ridiculous the job sounded. It was an opportunity that he was never going to get again, though.

  Despite how nervous he was, he went for it. He told his boss that he would have to put in his two-week notice. His boss was not exactly happy and told him that he could finish out the week and be done. When Alan left his boss's office, the first thing that he did was text Michelle: “I'm ready to start on Monday!” She responded by saying, “Awesome, babe!”

  He and Michelle met for coffee every morning the rest of the week. He was going to miss working at the same office as her, but he assumed that they would still see each other at his new job.

  Alan couldn't sleep very well the night before he had to start. He was given the address to go to, and he looked up directions multiple times. He had his entire route mapped out, and he planned on leaving early. At 2:00 a.m., he was in bed counting down how much sleep he'd get if he fell asleep in the next half hour. He did the same thing at 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. until he was finally too tired to keep his active brain going.

  Despite the lack of sleep, Alan was wide awake when his alarm went off at 6:45. He wore one of his favorite suits to wear to the office downtown and got ready to leave. When he arrived at the address he was given, he was terrified that he was at the wrong location. The area was primarily residential. It also wasn't exactly an area for prime real estate. He stood outside the small building that matched the address that he had been given and braced himself for what he would experience.

  The “office” was an apartment. Dr. Watson opened the door and instantly welcomed Alan and showed him around. The apartment was rather large, and the entire apartment was made to accommodate research and work. One bedroom was set up exclusively for Alan. There was a damn supercomputer with all of the networking components in the room, too.

  “There are about twenty of the newest security software on the market if you need them for reference or if you need to use them. There is also Saminside and Fgdump. We assume that you will need more tools. Let us know what you need when we get to that point. We will be happy to get you whatever you need.”

  This setup was not quite as elegant as the previous setup that he was working with. However, it also didn't allow him to play with as many fun toys.

  “So, first thing is first. We simply want you to become acclimated with the facilities and your equipment today.” Dr. Watson then brought Alan to a young man probably still in college. He was small in stature but had a quiet confidence about him. He was rather attractive, too (in a completely heterosexual way. Alan could admit when another man was attractive). “This is Ryan. He is our assistant. Now, you probably won't need him too much today. However, if you nee
d coffee or if you need him to get you lunch or whatever, this is the guy to ask.”

  “Nice to meet you. I'm Alan.”

  “Ryan. Here's my card so that you have my number when you need it.”

  “Now,” Dr. Watson said. “The most important thing: payment. Today, Ryan will go ahead and put a month's pay advance in your account. Then, you will get paid the amount that we mentioned earlier every week.”

  Alan's eyes lit up. He was expecting to get that amount every two weeks. He also didn't remember any talk of a bonus. “That sounds great,” Alan said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “Now,” Dr. Watson said. “I'm going to head to our research department. We are trying to recreate the main ingredient in Wynelta so that we can recreate the effects ourselves. The only problem is that the recreation isn't going quite as well as we had hoped. We haven't exactly been able to do it yet. That's why we need your help. Go ahead and wrap up the paperwork with Ryan. I'll be back to check on how you're getting used to the place in just a bit.”

  Ryan was extremely easy to work with and made the odd experience a lot more calming for Alan. The process included a lot of paperwork. There was a W-9, he put down an emergency contact, paperwork on health insurance, and a nondisclosure agreement. The company name on all of the documents was Paradox Pharmaceuticals. Alan had to admit, though, that when he was asked to write down his bank account information on his direct deposit form, he was suspicious. Yet, merely twenty minutes after he had turned in the paperwork, he checked his bank account to see a substantial amount of money deposited into it. The more he was getting through the day, the more he was becoming comfortable. He almost forgot that his job was illegal for a moment.

  “How is everything, Alan?” Dr. Watson asked coming to check on him.

  “Everything is looking pretty good. We should have all of the paperwork pretty much settled by now.”

  “Great. Well, why don't you take a bit of a break and get some lunch? You and Ryan can get to know each other a bit better.”

  As the two sat at a local fast food restaurant eating, Alan found that he quite enjoyed his new coworker. They played the same video games, and they both loved sci-fi movies. They spent their lunch debating whether Han Solo or Greedo shot first. Alan also enjoyed the fact that Ryan didn't get angry about the argument like most of his friends. He could actually have a civil conversation with someone that he disagreed with. Alan decided that there was no one better than Ryan to understand his trepidation with the job.

  “So, did you get recruited?” Alan asked.

  “No. Actually, I was an administrative assistant at Baxter. When these guys broke away from them, they offered me a hell of a lot more money. I'm in college. It was a no-brainer.”

  “Yeah. I get that. I happen to know someone who was involved with this company. They actively sought me out, and the money was too good to pass up.”

  “What do you think they are looking for?” Ryan asked. Alan was glad that he wasn't the only one in the dark.

  “I'm not so sure. I think that's what my job is. To find out.”

  “They seem to have quite the operation for something that they know nothing about.” Ryan pointed out.

  “That's what I thought. I guess that they know it's something; they just don't know what that something is.”

  “Well, good luck. I hope that we can stick it to those bastard pharmaceutical companies as soon as possible. It's ridiculous what they do to the consumers who actually need the medication to survive.”

  “They're all little Martin Shkrelis. The only thing is that they aren't quite as blatant about it.”

  “My first thought was that Baxter had the cure to cancer, and they didn't want to share it.”

  “You know what? That was my first thought, too. I think that story has been played out, though.”

  “Do you have any other theories?” asked Ryan.

  “Not really. Maybe they found a drug that could cause a zombie outbreak?”

  “I guess you'll find out.”

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  “Well, let's go ahead and get back to the office. You'll get to see the computer system and the network. It's actually pretty impressive,” Ryan said.

  The next half of the day consisted of Alan familiarizing himself with the tools that he had. It seems that his job was a particularly important part of the operation, because they did not spare any expenses. To be honest, Alan could probably do the job without all of the excessive specifications of the computer. However, he loved working on it. He secretly wanted to bring in some of his video games to see how much better they looked at the office.

  “Looks like you enjoy the computer,” Dr. Watson said at the end of the day.

  “Oh, most definitely!”

  “So do you think that you have the tools you need?”

  “Absolutely! This could be very fun.”

  “Well, I'm glad that you can have fun. I also need you to remember that this is a serious job. You have to get into Baxter Pharmaceutical’s network to find out anything that you can.”

  “What exactly am I looking for? Am I going into e-mails? Online databases? What?”

  “Is that too easy for you?” he laughed.

  “For a multi-million-dollar pharmaceutical company? Without getting caught? No. Not at all. Just want to know what you're looking for.”

  “And you know the drug that you're looking for information about, right?”

  “Wynelta. Trust me. I can't get that name out of my head.”

  “Good. Well, hopefully we can really get to work tomorrow. Get out of here.”

  Michelle couldn't meet up after work, but Alan didn't care. He was tired after not getting much sleep the night before and going through his first day of work.

  Day Two

  The next day was all business. Alan got to work and everyone was frantically running around by the time he got there. He didn't waste any time, and he got straight to work learning everything that he possibly could about Baxter Pharmaceuticals.

  Baxter Pharmaceuticals was a large company. They had been in business for over twenty years, and they had made a great amount of money in this time. They were behind some of the leading anti-depressants and weight loss pills on the market. Alan noticed that there were a couple of lawsuits against the company, but nothing looked too serious. Most pharmaceutical companies have some lawsuits. It's a cost of business. One particular lawsuit seemed to be rather interesting, though.

  There was an article about a lawsuit against the company, but Alan noticed that there were virtually no details about the lawsuit. The only thing that he noticed was that the lawsuit was from a person in a test group. There were no details about why the company was sued or what drug was being tested. The case was handled outside of court, and there were virtually no details available beyond that. Even the name of the person who filed the lawsuit was excluded. The company was very clearly interested in privacy. Alan had to assume that the company had the highest standards of online security, so his job was not going to be easy.

  “It's good to see you getting to work,” Dr. Watson said.

  “Yep. You know, the company wasn't only secretive about the drug you're interested in. I don't know if it was the same drug or not, but there was a pretty secretive lawsuit about the company a couple of years ago.”

  “I'm not surprised. Be sure to look for information about that, too.”

  “It's going to be very difficult for me to get into their system. They have some of the best security in the world.

  “That's what you're here for.”

  “Well, keylogging is going to be damn near impossible. So is phishing. There are still options.”

  “We'll go over the options later in the day when you have worked a little more on it. We will find a solution. You just tell us our options.”

  Could he possibly access their computers remotely and then install software to learn passwords? It seemed difficult to do undetected. He also did
n't think that he was going to be able to trick anybody into logging into a fake page- even if it was identical. Their security system should alert them of this. Alan spent most of his time looking up the company’s website to gather the e-mail addresses of the most important people that he could find. He also looked for signs of who created the website. That didn't tell him anything about their servers or internet provider. It definitely gave him a clue of who managed their network security. He continued to gather up the IP address. He couldn't even consider trying to break into the system yet, though. There was too great of a risk at this point. This was much more challenging than his previous jobs. He hoped that he was capable to get this done properly.

  Alan could hardly tell that the day was almost over when Dr. Watson appeared. “Are you ready for our meeting?”

  “Not really,” Alan said softly. “But it's about that time, huh?”

  The meeting was small. It consisted of Dr. Watson, Ryan, and Alan. There were other employees still working outside doing the standard work. It made Alan feel important to be included. Finally, he saw Michelle rush into the meeting room slightly after everyone else. Alan knew what time she got off from the other office and was actually quite impressed that she was able to make it here in the time that she did.

  “So,” Dr. Watson said. “Alan, why don't you tell us a little bit more about your progress?”

  “Well, it is still early. The risk is extraordinarily great at this point. I only have some general ideas. Now, my main goal is to get access to their network system. This means that anything I do will look like it's coming from their IP address. Next, I need to get their passwords. These are independent tasks. Now, many people can use something called keylogging. We install a program on a computer that will record their key strokes. The problem with that is that I can't do that from here. Plus, there is no way that they wouldn't notice a program like that. It would be discovered quite early. If we were able to install it without getting caught somehow, we will only have a limited window of time to gather e-mails. Also, we would have to be quite strategic about what computer we install the program on. It has to be a computer that people use. Important people. I have to admit that this is not the easiest task. This will take some time.”