Special Agent Moses Muggs leaned forward on his desk, resting a prominent chin on his immense folded hands. He sighed as he surveyed the volume of inter-office memos that congested his e-mail inbox. Something big was brewing at VirCorp and the FBI had tasked him with running the sting, now entering its second year. As a FBI man, his loyalties were first and foremost to the law, but his superiors demanded results—and his well of intelligence had just run dry. It had been three days since the last communication from his partner on the inside.

“Where are you, man?” Muggs asked the silence as he sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Suddenly his face drained, pulse quickening as the world shifted sharply out of focus. He felt like he was falling. Low blood sugar. He opened a desk drawer and grabbed a chocolate bar. After taking a careful look through the glass of his office partition, he leaned down and broke off a large chunk, savoring the sweet taste.

Muggs, already well over 300 pounds, was on a strict prescribed diet that was taking a toll on his hypoglycemia. Despite pleading his half-Samoan heritage as a pre-existing gastronomic condition, the agencies’ personnel managers qualified his benefits with a modified Puritan work ethic: “Work, don’t eat.” With the sugar rush, his blood pressure stabilized and the world coalesced around him once again into a perceivable mass. He closed the desk drawer and carefully dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief before looking up to find the Assistant Director’s piercing gaze nailing him to the back of his seat.

“Shriver, what a pleasant surprise!” Painfully he struggled out of the chair to his feet, wiping the corner of his mouth before offering his hand. “I didn’t hear you knock, I apologize.” Director Shriver took the proffered man’s gigantic hand and pumped languidly like a fish in its death throes.

“I wasn’t interrupting anything important was I, Mose?” The suspicious gaze mellowed into contemptuously sneering eyes. I caught you in the act, Big Man, they seemed to say.

“Not at all, Director. Not at all. My, you look sharp today! Meeting with the President again are we?” Muggs had been in the State Department long enough to know that you were either a dedicated worker bee or a bureaucratic queen. Shriver, like most of Muggs’ superiors, was clearly a diva. He hoped his compliment helped to ease the man’s tension.

“Alas, I am not. The Commission, actually.” Shriver cleared his throat.

“What can I do for you today?”

“I need the most up to date information that you have on VirCorp.”

“Nothing to report, sir. I’m afraid it’s been three days since our last communiqué from the cell.”

Shriver visibly sank into his suit with a disappointed tsk. “This will not stand. Now I realize as well as you the sensitivity of the work we’re doing here. But betting all the chips on your psychotic partner, well, this will not do. What am I going to tell them?”

Muggs sat back down in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desk pensively. After a moment of this, he stared into the finish of his desk and sighed.

“Well?”

“I can advise you tell the Congress that we expect contact within the next 12 hours and fresh intel to follow shortly thereafter. From what I understand, there was a security breach in the compound. My last contact from A.J. relayed news of the capture of two men. Bosak has returned too. That much is confirmed.”

“Yes, yes. That was all in your last memo! We need something juicy if we’re going to keep going. I hope for all our sakes that your partner has something of import to give us when he finally decides to check in again. Am I clear?”

“As an ass, sir.”

“What?” Shriver snapped to attention and glowered.

“Clear as glass, Director.” Muggs snorted dramatically. “Forgive me, allergies.”

Shriver nodded slowly, turned on his heel and walked out the door, pausing at the jam. “Keep me informed.” With a graceful jerk of his arm, the door slammed shut.

Muggs sank to his elbows on the desk and growled in frustration. “Just where the hell are you, man?” Time was running out.