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Author's Chapter Notes:
I'll continue to story of John and Amanda within the next couple of chapters, here's a slightly different story though..enjoy

Marco looked around the warehouse in downtown Mexico City, a nondescript looking building from the outside which was easily the most technologically advanced place in the city. He owned several other identical buildings in a few other countries all over the world, evenly split between first world and third world nations. Marco was a businessman, he had always been a businessman and he would always be doing business. He had a knack for identifying opportunities and the ideas to satisfy the requirements of those chances. And he never took anything for granted.

Starting from scratch in a slum outside Mexico City, he had begun his career in what he told friends was an "import-export" business early in life. It all started one night in his late teens when he tried heroin. The drug was bliss itself, heaven on earth injected via a needle and it brought him there and took him to hell when it was over. Marco had heard the stories of addiction and he was certainly addicted to the drug but after that initial dose, he had never gone back to it. The reason for his withdrawal was simple, he just didnt have the money to afford a second dose. And throughout the weeklong withdrawal that followed, where his fever left him delirious and his skin was perpetually on fire due to the chemical imbalances in his brain, he figured out what he was going to do to make some serious bank.

Within months, he had set up an operation the likes of which had never been seen in the City, a multi layered organisation of suppliers, processors and even a team of men he fondly called the marketing department whose sole job was to make sure the product was being sold without a hitch. Soon, he went international, supplying for American dealers in 7 states. Those were the glory days. And they were just the beginning. Marco was about to become the Jesus of drugs and just about anything illegal that needed to cross borders.


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Event Log
TIME: 1512
DATE: 7/7
DESCRIPTION: Authorised unorganic form targeted and reduced. Reduction 99.8%.

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Marco looked down at the pod that had just been reduced and glanced at the readout on the machine's display, just one of the 60 or so industrial sized matter converters he had purchased for the business. While the authorities were sure these machines were locked and unusable without a proper license, he had just managed to expand this warehouse with 25 new, unused, unlicensed converters. How he got them to work, well, he kept that a trade secret.

Having matter converters made his life a lot easier. But they werent without their pitfalls too. Marco's import/export business ran several types of operations simultaneously out of his warehouses. His main income was still from trafficking narcotics due to the low overheads, but this was slowly being replaced by his latest venture.

Setting up for this new endevour had been difficult. Where in the past, he had often transported drugs by hiring men and women who were willing to swallow sealed capsules of powder for him, he was now expanding to get some trained to move a different sort of cargo. That was also why the pods were so important. He had worked with several unappreciated scientists from around the world to design them, men who could understand the value of his leather briefcases, especially when they were packed with $100 notes. However, the first couple of runs had proved problematic.

On the first run, conducted in his Nigerian office, they had miniaturised 5 pods to roughly the size of grapes. They were then swallowed whole by a statuesque woman of African heritage, though Marco highly doubted she was as Nigerian as she claimed. These things meant a lot in his line of work, both to him and to the parties he sold his product to. Nevertheless, everything seemed fine as they monitored the her pass the first batch of product through the threshold of her plush lips and into the depths of her body. she had been instructed to refrain from eating anything for the duration of the operation, and soon, the tall lady with the plump red lips and a touch of baby fat around her belly was walking through customs at Port Harcourt International airport.

The trick had been to design the pods so that they were resistant to the harsh stomach acids, while being undetectable on scans and x-rays. This was difficult due to the nature of these pods, they had to be structurally sound and able to withstand the pressures of the digestive track if they were to be a viable method for transporting Marco's new product. Eshe, the woman who had been contracted to perform the first run was sitting across the aisle from him in the business class section of the flight. However, he had limited vision of her, they had booked him into a seat that was slightly in front of hers. He'd have to speak to Jenna his secretary, about this lapse when he arrived in France.

Meanwhile, Eshe seemed to be comfortable in her seat from what he could tell, so far so good. He wondered how it would be like for the pods though, entombed within the darkness of this Nubian beauty. Her skin was so soft when she had come to him the night before asking for the job. And her scent was lingering in his mind. He doubted things were the same on the inside of her. Perhaps the saying was true, beauty is only skin deep. Exhausted from the long night before, he fell asleep.


She had broken the rule they gave her. When the steward had come around with lunch, Eshe's belly gave out a low growl of hunger. She hadn't eaten in 24 hours and she had turned down the full lunch, but rationalised that a small powerbar wouldn't hurt. Munching up the chewy protein bar, she swallowed the last bits and was slightly satiated. Soon she felt less hungry and fell back to sleep, the rumblings in her stomach subsiding over time. Only later did she realise why.

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It was a disaster. All but one of the pods was undamaged and intact when Eshe passed them out at the French office. Three had varying amounts of damage due to her digestive juices. One was missing, presumably digested in her stomach, along with its contents. Marco was furious as his men regrew the pods. All around, his staff were shocked at the callousness of this woman. There had been mishaps like this before, when drugs were being transported. Ruptures in the packaging led to the drugs being ingested by the one transporting them. Everyone knew how a small deviation from the plan could lead to disaster. But this tragedy would not kill Eshe, not physically. But it did make her a killer.

As the 6 surviving men and women walked out of the pods, their heads hung low with shock and grief at the carnage that they had seen on their journey, a thick silence descended in the room. In one corner, the dark haired beauty that had caused all of it sat sobbing into a tissue.

Everyone knew the risks of the new venture. Marco would just have to work harder to reduce that risk. 6 had survived out of 24 who had taken the journey voluntarily for a chance at a new life. That was still reasonable. And more would have survived if it weren't for Eshe. It could be done. The pods would be redesigned and made stronger. His venture into human trafficking would succeed.
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