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Lou yanked her laptop over, fingers flying over the keys as she accessed the server network they stored their data on. “No, nonononono, how?How?” Lou was quiet in her panic. Her voice barely rose above a whisper as she shook her head.
“How what?” Grace darted over to her side to see the empty screen in front of her, which was normally full of files. Data sets she hadn’t even gotten her hands on yet, because she’d been sick or too busy on her weekend away with Anton. She frowned and wondered what he made of the empty servers. She hooked an arm around Lou and tugged her close.
“Breathe, boss lady. I’m going to get IT on the phone. I’m sure it’s fixable. CERN has backups. We are going to be okay.” Grace wasn’t sure if what she was saying was true but as usual her urge to help, to calm, to make it right, was there and she desperately hoped she wasn’t giving Lou false hope.
Lou leaned forward with her head between her knees, moaning. “This is bad, Gracie.”
“I know, I know. Fuck,” she whispered, still trying to tamp down the fear steadily tightening its hold on her. “Just give me a second. I’m going to see what’s going on.” She toed a trash bin in front of Lou, who looked worse by the second. Lou definitely had the look on her face that told Grace she was going to lose her lunch. Grace rubbed a soothing hand over Lou’s back and punched the number for the IT department. A few tense seconds passed before someone picked up the call.
“IT, how can I help you?” The voice was calm, steady, and pleasant in that fake way customer service positions demanded, and Grace grabbed onto it with both hands. Anything to feel normal.
“Hey, hi, hello,” she blurted out, words tumbling over one another in her rush to speak. “My name is Grace Muñoz. I’m the lab manager for Lou Wright, and we’ve got a defcon situation happening with our servers.”
“What’s the problem, Ms. Muñoz?”
“They’re empty. The servers, I mean.”
“Uhh…” The normal calm veneer of customer service went right out the window then and Grace squeezed her eyes shut against it.
“Like everything that was on them is now gone. Vanished. Poof.Gonegone.” Grace rubbed a hand across the bridge of her nose and blew out a deep breath. “We need to get it all back, so please,pleasetell me you can help me do that.”
There was silence for a moment before the service tech spoke again. “Sure thing. Just get me your ID number to verify your identity, and I can take a look.”
Lou moaned, hands clutching at Grace’s waist. At the slight tremor that vibrated against Grace’s leg she knew her friend was crying. Grace swallowed, hands going to smooth back Lou’s hair as she rattled off her ID number. Grace bit her lip and sucked in a deep breath. She had to stay calm.
“Okay, Grace. I’ll open your servers and see what’s going on.”
“Thank you,” she bit out, trying not to cry at the sight of Lou looking so small. She ran a hand through her friend’s hair and forced herself to keep her mouth shut. If she didn’t, she’d yell at the tech to hurry up.
“Well...this is...odd,” the tech said finally.
Grace’s eyes moved to the computer still open in front of Lou and she glared at the empty server.
“What do you meanodd? Define odd, because I’m looking at zero files, and that’s kind of insanely nightmarish, not odd.”
“Yeah, it’s that too,” the tech replied. Grace could hear them clicking around on their end for a beat before they cleared their throat. “Grace, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just-you are calling about the servers being empty, and it’s confusing me,” he said.
“Why would that be confusing? That’s all of our data from our time here, and before, even. That’s easily three years of readings and research. I just, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat and worked to keep her steadily rising voice even. “What’s confusing about that?”
She heard him clear his throat. Whatever it was, he didn't want to tell her. “Because you were the one who deleted them.”
“Excuse me?” The dread that had been gnawing at Grace bloomed until she could feel bile rising in her throat. “I need you to explain to me what you’re saying.”
“Okay, here goes.” The tech sounded nervous but continued on, “At 8:55 am you logged on to the servers and deleted everything. Now it’s 9:03 am and you’re calling me asking where everything is and—and well, you didn’t just delete it, but you exported everything before you did.”
“I what?” she whispered, her hand stilling in Lou’s hair. “I mean, I couldn’t have done that. I was here in the labs. I haven’t accessed the server since Friday.”
“Well then, someone with the access code did.”
“But I never gave-” The words died in her throat.
“You didn’t give anyone your code, did you?” the tech asked, but their voice was distant.
Everything was distant to Grace, outside of the roaring in her ears that seemed to be growing louder with every second. She made a noncommittal sound, her phone coming away from her head as she tried to make sense of what he told her. Someone with her code had done it. Exported all the data and scrubbed the servers clean.
