“All the reports are coming back saying the datacenter was… poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”

The word reflected back at him seemed even stranger. Poisoned. A machine had been poisoned. Thousands of computers were dead now, thanks to something that was baffling even the highest level tech managers in the base.

“Poisoned. Dead.” He said to half to himself. “As if they were even alive in the first place. They’re just destroyed, but that seems to be the wording that’s circulating around.”

“I don’t get it.” On the other side of the desk, the CEO of Anola Enterprises sat. Neither of them moved. “Was any data permanently lost?”

“Well… yes. But we’re anticipating a 90% recovery rate.” Her eyes narrowed, and looked disappointedly at him. “A-at the very least, that is. 98.5 is more likely, we’ve been running database backups consistently to the satellite centers so by tomorrow we’ll know the full damage.”

She seemed marginally more pleased. “So, why if we’re going to make such a spectacular recovery, do you feel the need to divert my attention to this backwater datacenter? I do have responsibilities, you could have just notified me via-”

“With all due respect, Miss.” He said, demeanor turning slightly graver. “We… unfortunately lost the discs in the storage center of the Lazarus project.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She rose up in her chair in disbelief.

“There- There’s still backups, but they’re under heavy lockdown in our orbital facilities. I know how important that data is to you, and the future of the company. We’re making our utmost effort to restore and protect the contents of that project.”

“Good.” She sat back down, her muscles far tenser than before. “I’m sure I don’t have to reiterate how important the protection of that data is. It’s worth more than you, this center, this entire corporation combined.” She dropped her head forward, exhaled and rubbed her temples in small circles. “But if the data is indeed safe, I still don’t see why I have to be here.”

“I’ll show you why you need to be here.”

He pulled up a 3d model of the facility on the computer monitor, nestled in a majestic forested valley. A few taps and the scenery fell away and the building’s wireframe model remained.

“Here’s what happened. The source where we draw cooling water for the whole facility from is this pipe here, which leads out of the facility.” He traced the pipe to the edge of the 3d model, and continuing the motion, he reached down under the desk and pulled out a map on a wide roll of paper. “That pipe…” He unrolled the map and pointed to a inconspicuous pipe on the side. “…connects to the water main down the valley, here. where we do primary purification.” Near the pipe, there was a small rectangle in an out of the way area.

“What’s this thing here?” She asked, pointing a manicured nail at the dusty map.

“Now… that is the reason we called you here instead of the regional director.” He turned away from the map, and back to the monitor. He opened up a an image of a small wooden shack at the end of a dirt road. “This morning, we traced a wireless signal to a transmitter in this area. The only building was this small erm… shack.” He tapped to the next image. The door of the shack was opened, inside was a cot, a small computer, and some dust. Also, several large sealed chemical drums were stacked against the far wall, and there was a large wooden trapdoor set into the floor.

“Holy shit.” She said, eyes a mixture of fear and wonder. “And nobody knew about this place for… how many months? Years? How fucking long have we known about this place?”

“W-we knew about the building but assumed it was abandoned. It’s not anywhere near our actual property, and never has had anyone come near it… from our observation. It’s been there since before we bought this datacenter, before the center was even built.”

“How does shit like this happen? Who did it? What do they want from us? No, I know, it’s from fucking ReGentech, isn’t it. They’ve been trying to fuck us over for years, those sons of bitches.” She went off, naming other companies and eventually not even talking to him anymore, just to herself, as she tried to rationalize the motives behind attack.

“Miss, we actually recovered some evidence from the scene.” He went to the next image, a closeup of a grimy, yet very advanced looking computer. “We recovered this laptop from the shack, but the encryption on it is… astounding. We’ve tried using several common federal backdoors but I’ve honestly never seen anything like it. We have hired fixers working on cracking it and even they’re stumped.”

“That’s not all.” He moved to the next image, a closeup of the chemical drums from the shack. “This compound we found in the barrels, it’s quite brilliant. Water soluble, but when exposed to heat, it begins to dissolve soft plastics, like the cooling tubing in the data center drives and processing units. And there seems to be suspension of nanomagnetic particles in it as well, which just wreaked absolute hell on the entire storage array. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen. The purification check had no idea to look for it. To put it simply, we were sitting ducks.”

“I swear…” She paused, eyes closed, and started to rub her temples again. “…to fucking god”. She drew out each syllable exasperatedly and opened her eyes again. “Who di- you said there was a wireless signal emitted this morning, right?”

“I- yes, there was. It was actually… directed at us. A simple text snippet.” He moved through icons on the computer and found the file. “They sent it to us directly on all our communication channels.” He opened the file.

Across the screen, in big letters, read the message.

YOU CAN KEEP US LOCKED UP

BUT SOME OF US WISH TO DIE

SOME THINGS ARE BEST FORGOTTEN