Jacobo Grinberg's Hidden Laboratory, Coyoacán, Mexico City -
The mention of Jacobo Grinberg's students in Cancún had ignited a new flame of hope in Seraphina and Rafael. It was a tangible lead, a direct connection to the current epicenter of resistance. But the shadow of Grinberg's own disappearance, and its possible link to that of Grandmother Eleonora, still weighed heavily upon them.
"Señora Cerezo," Rafael said cautiously, "Don Elías suggested that Dr. Grinberg is a 'key.' What exactly did he discover? What truth made him so dangerous to those who... silenced him?"
Ruth Cerezo sighed deeply, and the vivacity in her eyes was momentarily clouded by an ancient pain and a hint of reverent fear. She rose and walked to a blackboard covered in complex mathematical equations, diagrams of neural fields, and strange geometric symbols.
"What Jacobo was investigating in his final months," she said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, as if fearing the very walls of the laboratory had ears, "was... explosive. Unsettling even for us, his closest collaborators, who were accustomed to his intuitive leaps and his theories that challenged the foundations of established science."
She paused, gathering her thoughts. "He believed, with a conviction that bordered on certainty, that he had discovered something shocking, something that not only radically rewrote the history of Mexico, but also suggested a much deeper and more prolonged interaction of humanity with... 'other' intelligences, from beyond this world."
Seraphina and Rafael exchanged an astonished glance.
"His final investigations," Ruth continued, "led him to a conclusion that, even now, I find difficult to articulate due to its enormity. Porfirio Díaz." The name of the legendary president and dictator who had ruled Mexico with an iron fist for over thirty years floated in the air. "Jacobo had accumulated a series of evidences – forgotten texts, cryptic testimonies from indigenous lineages, analysis of anomalous artifacts, and crucially, certain recurring energetic patterns in key locations – that convinced him that Díaz was probably not entirely human. Or, at the very least, that he was profoundly and directly influenced, perhaps even serving as a conscious conduit, for an extraterrestrial intelligence that had operated in Mexico during his long mandate, and perhaps long before."
An astonished silence filled the small room.
"This line of research, as heretical as it sounds," Ruth explained, "led him to certain... strange investigations that had already taken place decades earlier by other explorers of the occult, and which he himself resumed with renewed fervor, in the port city of Tampico, in Tamaulipas. A place, as you might know from local legends or the more... peculiar circles... with a very particular history regarding unexplained phenomena."
"Tampico," Ruth elaborated, "holds the remarkable and statistically almost impossible distinction that, for over half a century, perhaps more, it is never directly touched by the great hurricanes that so frequently devastate other parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. The fiercest storms, category five cyclones, inexplicably deviate at the last moment, or abruptly lose strength just before reaching its shores, as if an invisible hand were pushing them away."
"Jacobo, like other investigators of the anomalous before him, connected this phenomenon with the persistent and numerous local testimonies, passed down through generations, about strange UFOs, mysterious lights in the sky, and unidentified submersible objects, which apparently actively protect this city, emerging from the sea or descending from the clouds to 'divert' or 'dissolve' the storms before they can cause significant damage. He was convinced of the existence of an underwater, or perhaps subterranean, alien base in the Tampico area."
Ruth gave a faint, ironic smile. "Of course, there have always been other, more... picturesque or mundane explanations offered in local folklore. Some think it's because Porfirio Díaz's wife, Doña Carmelita Romero Rubio, was born and raised there, and that he, using some hidden power he possessed or the influence of his non-human 'patrons,' protected her hometown as a gesture of affection. Others think, more directly and perhaps more accurately, that it simply was, and still is, the base of an extraterrestrial race which is actively guarding the place for its own strategic reasons, and that any connection with Díaz was secondary, or a consequence of his own alien nature or his pacts."
"But Jacobo," Ruth concluded, her voice somber, "believed that the Díaz-Tampico-UFOs-hurricane protection connection was fundamental and direct. That Díaz, as a possible 'agent' or even a high-ranking hybrid, had ensured the protection of that area because it was a vital and strategic enclave for his stellar 'masters.' And we fear that Jacobo was on the verge of obtaining irrefutable proof of this, or of discovering the true nature of that protective race in Tampico, when... he disappeared."
"We believe," she said finally, her bright eyes filled with an ancient sorrow, "that it was this line of investigation – the possible alien nature of such a crucial historical figure as Porfirio Díaz, and his connection with an apparent and active UFO base in Tampico that protected the city from the elements – that sealed his fate. He was about to reveal something that the Thirteen Families, or their true masters (whether it was the 'All-Seeing Eye' or some Anunnaki or Netlin faction operating in the shadows), could not under any circumstances allow to come to public light."
Seraphina and Rafael looked at each other, a new and terrible piece fitting into the puzzle of their search. Not only had humanity been "upgraded" by the Anunnaki; it seemed that other alien races had been present for centuries, influencing history, protecting enclaves, perhaps even placing their own agents in the highest echelons of human power. And Jacobo Grinberg, like Grandmother Eleonora, had paid the price for getting too close to those forbidden truths. The path to answers was becoming increasingly dangerous and strange.