No One's Land

[ERR/OR_FILE_UNKN//OWN²]

Kepler glanced around the room at the chaos unfolding at the conference table. Associate researchers yelling to finance analysts, finance analysts yelling to senior producers, and many more conversations, all layered on top of each other.

Kepler didn't bother with a word of goodbye; they wouldn't listen anyway. He stepped out of the glass walled room (where you could already see pandemonium beginning outside) and strode down the long, modernistic hallways of Marsha Corporation's Base of Operations. The MCBO's name wasn't Kepler's idea, and he would've been embarrassed if it had been. He hooked a left, nearly jogging now, and arrived at an industrial set of blast- and bulletproof double doors. He first flashed his key card, then passed a fingerprint scan, then one of the retinal kind. The doors hissed open, retracting into the walls on either side, and he passed through, now running at full speed. Sweat dripped from his hairline into his eyes, stinging them. He relished it the feeling.

It might be the last pain he ever felt.

He practically ran into the double doors into R&D Lab 1A and when he got inside the room, he was shocked at the sheer noise. The alarm which had been blaring before was now piercing. He flagged over a female white-coated scientist and put his lips close to her ear. "I need Doctor Watson!" She nodded and pointed towards the center of the room. Kepler nodded, thanked her, and jogged over to where the lady pointed. To Project SCID. As with the first three times, Kepler was astounded with the sheer size of the device. The containment device. Watson stood with a group of other white-coat workers at a computer terminal. When Kepler reached this little get-together, he roughly grabbed the back of Watson's collar and pulled him away from the group.

Kepler spoke before Watson had the chance to. "What in the fuck is going on? Do you realize how dangerous that thing is?! Well yes, of course you do. You built it!"

Watson kicked his lips. "Mark, uh-- Sir, we didn't activate the machine. It... it activated itself."

"It did what? How?"

Licking his lips again, Watson said, "Sir, an unidentified entity activated Project SCID about four minutes ago."

Kepler stood silent. Another lab worker came over to where Kepler and Watson stood. The worker's face was pale, almost sheet-white. When the new arrival reached them, he spoke in relatively quiet tones. "Sirs, you, uh... you're gonna wanna see this." Watson and Kepler followed the man to the bank of monitors Kepler had pulled Watson away from. There was line upon line of code on each terminal, but they were disappearing quickly. When he saw this, Watson jerked as if shocked in the ass by a livewire.

"What the hell?!" Watson screamed. "Who's doing this?"

"What's going on?" Kepler asked.

Watson began scanning the massive room. "Someone is deleting all of our info and command code on Project SCID."

"But that's the most secure data in the world. How did--"

Watson and Kepler said it at the same time: "Whoever's doing this is an employee."

Kepler felt his stomach roll. It might not be an employee, and he knew it. It could've been his secret. The secret he'd kept for months upon months, because to tell would be to lose his life and those of his family. Kepler turned the name of this secret around and around in his head.

HELIOS.