Before long, Vance had decided that the simplest thing to do with Ben was simply to bring him in again. He'd have to be careful about how to do it - Ben was very happy to be independent and doing honest work - but that was something easily enough overcome. After all, the majority of Vance's business was honest enough, and it was exciting; revolutionary, even. Who wouldn't want to be in on such a thing, especially when working with a friend, and potentially getting a piece of the pie? Once Vance had set his mind to it, convincing Ben that this was the best future he could have wasn't too hard. For Jez, Vance simply told her all about how much he missed working with his friend, and how he knew that this was going to be something special, so how could he not include the buddy who has been with him the longest? If was exactly the sort of thing that Jez ate up, and she immediately went to work on her twin, getting him past whatever doubts or concerns he might have had.

The logistics were actually reasonably straightforward, and Vance suggested to Jez that they have Ben over for dinner to go over everything together. That evening, he outlined his vision; Vance wanted Ben to be in charge of not only selling the product, but getting demand for new ready-made mixtures and growing their portfolio of offerings. To be fair, Vance explained, he would actually create a separate company for selling and distributing the product, which Ben could run. Vance, meanwhile, would continue to own and operate the company that created the product, which would be exclusively licensed to Ben's company. In this way, Ben would be entirely the beneficiary of his expanding sales, and Vance would own the method of production for any medicines that were created, including the rights to license them out to other distributors if he saw fit later.

It sounded like a perfect setup, but it was actually a protection mechanism for Vance. By structuring long-term deals with the distribution company, he ensured that Ben bore all of the risk for continued sales, while Vance got the more steady, reliable recurring revenue. At the same time, while stellar performance from Ben could make him incredible amounts of money, each new product he drummed up demand for would serve as a multiplier for Vance's wealth. It was a perfect setup, and one that Vance saw a few other ways to exploit as well. Needless to say, everyone left satisfied with the deal, and Ben virtually rushed out the door to put in his resignation with Chemist Levin.

Levin was greatly disappointed to see the young man go, but he wasn't entirely surprised. He had a feeling that Ben would be wanting to open his own shop before too long, unable to wait until he "inherited" Levin's own business after another five to ten years. However, while he was happy for his young protégé's new opportunity, he was aggrieved to hear that he was going to be starting a company to distribute pre-made medicines. Surely, he reasoned with Ben, it was easy to see that this was just the sort of thing that would drive the traditional chemist's business into the ground? And where was the trust, the patience, the care? It was all so impersonal! Impassioned arguments aside, Ben said a fond farewell to Chemist Levin and got to work.

Ben and Vance began working; Ben and his team sold nearly as quickly as Vance get stuff produced in his workshop, and they turned their focuses to new products that would help Vance avoid ingredient shortages. Jez made a suggestion to Ben that they attempt a version of the medicine she had long taken for her cyclical aches and pains. A good idea, Vance agreed, and with a larger target market, too; not to mention one that would probably just as soon avoid spending long portions of their afternoon with an invariably male chemist on a too-regular basis, just so that they could go about their lives with something that resembled normalcy. Vance had a few variations on recipes for such a concoction, collected as his business grew, and he quickly began a test batch.

After a few tries, Vance's team had produced something that he was reasonably certain would be effective, and they took it to market. It did well, and as word spread, Ben barely had to do any selling at all; women were incredibly eager to get it, and the medicine seemed to be highly effective, too. On the back of this success, two more products were created. Vance figured if he could get one more - no more than two - produced and licensed, he'd be able to sell the entire operation off for more than he could have ever hoped for. The end was so close in sight that Vance slipped, and made what would prove to be a fatal mistake, in more ways than one.

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In the workshop was a large fire, which fed into a variety of boilers which sterilized the liquids, as well as extracted and purified alcohols and oils from whichever ingredients were required. One night the fire grew out of control; no great surprise, and nothing overly unusual in their day and age. Before it could be contained, the fire spread into the main storehouse in which the most immediately-needed ingredients were kept, drastically lowering Vance's ability to ensure that production orders were met. However, Vance was unwilling to accept the setback. The next day when he inspected the damage, he told Ben not to worry - that he had additional stores of ingredients, and was confident that with a little bit of luck and careful planning, they would be able to meet their orders, even if they had to slow growth for a little bit. It would be helpful, Vance convinced Ben, if they could focus on the women's medicine, as he had the most ingredients for that one hand and could quickly get a few batches made up.

All in all, there was no lie in Vance's statements, but there was also considerable omission. It was true that he had additional ingredient storehouses, but the quantity and variety of ingredients that he implied he had was simply not there. Something would have to be done, and Vance was not about to give up. Thinking about the recipe at hand, Vance knew that much of what he needed was available. He had plenty of chamomile and pleurisy root, of anise. He could buy yarrow wholesale, and black cohosh was easily found in their area. However, he had virtually no pine resin left - it was always a difficult ingredient to get this far away from the forests, and much of what he had managed to procure was lost in the fire. This was, unfortunately, an important part of the recipe.

In Vance's reading, he had found that the alcohol -based thinning agent made from the same resin might be possible to substitute for the resin itself. It wasn't a sure thing, but Vance was willing to take the gamble, and made up his large distribution batch utilizing the turpentine that he could drum up. Two important gaps in medical understanding hindered him here; what was generally unknown, and what was simply unknown to Vance. Turpentine was known to be poisonous at high doses, but Vance wasn't certain what was considered a high dose, and his crew simply attempted to guess based on the makeup of turpentine how much equivalent pine resin would be included, and then knocked it down a small amount "for safety." At the same time, what was not common knowledge at all was that turpentine can be used in small doses topically, but can be dangerous or fatal when ingested orally - as all of Vance's ready-mix medicines were.

The medicine prepared, he delivered it to Ben without a word, and Ben was none the wiser; he continued to sell and deliver the concoction without any idea that it was not only not the standard recipe, but was in fact a dangerous variation. The effect was both rapid and wide-spread, as a number of customers became violently ill. Even worse, several of the women who took the medicine and thought that they had cramps were actually pregnant; miscarriages and even one woman's death occurred. Investigation started almost immediately. Interestingly, Chemist Levin was one of their customers leading the efforts to identify the actual problem. Levin had never really trusted medicine mixed out of sight, and strongly suspected a supply issue in what he had been buying from Ben. He wasn't alone in that either, and others quickly joined him.

Between a small cabal of chemists, some recovering patients, and a few samples of unconsumed medicine, it didn't take too long for them to determine that the medicine was tainted. It may have been intentional, it may have been the result of young amateurs playing at being accomplished professionals, it wasn't clear - but it also didn't matter. Chemist Levin and his crew went to the magistrate with their evidence, and almost so quickly that Ben didn't even get warning, they were there to take him away for selling dangerous substances and causing all varieties of personal injuries. Ben had little idea what was going on until it was too late.