Page 45 of Legend of Scorpio
Rebecca jumped in. “In the stuff you have access to, did you find anything about my trip to Antarctica?”
“Nope, and I’ve been looking.” Aquarius tapped at his keyboard. “Guess them keeping it a secret isn’t too surprising, given their true mission involved the orb. Oddly enough, while there is nothing about your work down there, you do exist on their payroll as a contracted employee.”
“What about their second facility?” Scorpio asked.
“Wait, what second facility?” Rebecca exclaimed. “I thought they had only the one office.”
Scorpio glanced at her. “Turns out they’ve got some kind of hush-hush location in Area 51, on loan to them from the government.”
“Area 51? You’re kidding, right? I thought that place was a hyped-up myth.”
“It exists, although they no longer have any alien organic samples or equipment to test. We cleared them out in the seventies,” Scorpio replied.
So matter of fact, Rebecca blurted out, “Why would the Zodiacs do that?””
“Sage saw bad shit happening if humanity copied the tech.” Aquarius waved his hands. “Something about us not being ready for advanced alien technology.”
“The Area 51 aliens actually existed,” Rebecca mused aloud. “Were they super tall and gray like the rumors claims?”
“Not quite. The aliens started out as larvae. Once they attached and gained control of their host, their feeding and growth process shifted the appearance of the person they leeched onto.”
“You’re saying the gray men I’ve seen portrayed were human?”
“Yup.” Aquarius nodded. “That’s what they end up looking like after a while.”
“If there’s nothing alien there, why would Cetus want to use the Area 51 facility?” she wondered aloud.
“Privacy? Labs?” Aquarius rolled his shoulders. “Who knows? I’m going to assume info on it, as well as your mission, are behind the mega firewall. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Fucking computers,” Scorpio complained once more.
“Give me a day or two. I’ve yet to meet a…” Aquarius trailed off as his gaze returned to his screen. His fingers began tapping rapidly but not as quickly as the screen rolling gibberish in front of them.
“What’s happening?” Rebecca asked, recognizing the numbers and letters as lines of code.
“Someone’s trying to hack the tower mainframe,” Aquarius exclaimed, sounding incredulous. “That should be impossible. I’ve got safeguards in place to ensure no one can back-trace.” Aquarius’ fingers flew on his keyboard.
“You must have triggered something,” Rebecca murmured, the lines of text moving too fast, not that it would have mattered. She couldn’t read computer code.
“It must have been subtle as fuck,” Aquarius exclaimed. “I’m going to sever their access.”
A tense silence descended, broken only by Aquarius’ furious typing.
Then the screen went dark.
“Did you stop them?” Scorpio asked.
“No.” Aquarius looked pissed. The Cetus logo suddenly popping into view on all the monitors didn’t help.
“Fuck me, they’re in.” Aquarius swore a second time before all the screens went dark. The humming machines all died at once.
“What just happened?” Scorpio asked.
Aquarius leaned back in his chair with downturned lips. “I was out-hacked.”
“Are you saying they stole our information?”
“Nothing important. As a precaution, we don’t keep any Zodiac stuff on any computers with outside access. Not that it would have mattered. They didn’t even try to copy or download the files I did have. Whoever hacked us wiped my hard drives clean. Sorry, bro. I won’t be much help until I get my shit formatted and loaded.”