Jacobo Grinberg's Hidden Laboratory, Coyoacán, Mexico City
Ruth Cerezo led Seraphina and Rafael through the dusty shelves and tables laden with strange artifacts, towards a section of the laboratory that seemed to have been the core of Jacobo Grinberg's most secret and dangerous research. Here, books on theoretical physics mingled with treatises on shamanism, and diagrams of neural fields shared space with astral maps and reproductions of pre-Columbian codices.
"Jacobo was obsessed with certain... recurring patterns in history," Ruth explained, her voice lowering to a confidential tone as she opened a worn leather folder. "Anomalies, synchronicities, inexplicable influences on key figures of power. Here..."
She showed them a series of meticulously handwritten notes, old photographs, and comparative analyses. The main focus was, as she had mentioned, Porfirio Díaz, but another name from Mexico's turbulent history also appeared with surprising frequency: Antonio López de Santa Anna.
"Grinberg found strange connections between them both," Ruth said. "Beyond their obvious impact on Mexican history. He discovered that both, in different eras, had sponsored secret expeditions to the Tampico region, in Tamaulipas. And that, curiously, commemorative statues were erected to both of them in Tampico, financed by 'anonymous benefactors' and with a subtly... anomalous iconography, full of symbols that Jacobo traced back to forgotten stellar cults."
As Seraphina and Rafael read these investigations, a growing fear and terror began to seep into their souls. Grinberg's journals were a mixture of rigorous scientific analysis, bold speculation, and an increasing paranoia. He spoke of lineages of power, of "stellar blood" infiltrated into the ruling elites, of secret societies that worshipped "those who wait beyond the threshold."
The notes mentioned names of different alien races, some of which Seraphina and Rafael vaguely recognized from the most forbidden annals of the White Brotherhood – the Anunnaki, the "Greys" as silent observers, the "Reptilians" as ancestral manipulators. But then, they came to two names that chilled them to the bone, two races or entities that Grinberg described with an almost palpable fear, as if writing about them was to invoke their attention.
"Here," Rafael pointed with a tense voice to a particularly dense section of notes and diagrams. "The 'Netlim'," he read aloud, the word strange and guttural. "Grinberg posits them not only as an ancestral race of almost divine power, but he links them directly, unequivocally, with the most ancient legends of the Nephilim from your Judeo-Christian traditions, the giants of old, the children of 'gods' and the daughters of men. He claims that the Netlim were their direct creators, their cosmic progenitors!"
Seraphina felt a shiver. The Nephilim... echoes of forbidden power and cursed lineages.
"And then... this," Ruth's voice was barely a whisper, pointing to a spiral diagram, almost a mandala of impossible geometries and insinuated tentacles, with a terrible name written at its center: CTHULHU. "Jacobo doesn't describe it as a simple 'race,' like the others. He speaks of it as a... primordial consciousness. An entity, or a symbiotic collective of entities, of a power that transcends even the Netlim. A force from the Outer Void, a mad god whose dreams shape nightmarish realities."
But the most horrifying revelation was yet to come. Interwoven with his research on Díaz and the anomalous protection of Tampico, Grinberg had uncovered a plan, a "prepared path," with an inhuman patience and malice.
"According to Jacobo's final conclusions," Ruth said, her face pale as wax, "Porfirio Díaz, whether a conscious agent, a high-ranking hybrid, or a pawn imbued with an alien purpose he himself didn't fully comprehend, not only ensured the protection of Tampico as an enclave for these stellar 'guardians.' He set in motion, over a century ago, a series of... cultural, political, social, and even energetic 'seeds' – through the manipulation of ley lines and the construction of certain key infrastructures throughout Mexico – destined to culminate in a 'sympathetic resonance event.' An event that would facilitate, that would invite, the awakening or full manifestation of Cthulhu in the period between the years 2020 and 2030."
"It was a preparation that would take entire generations," Seraphina read from one of Grinberg's final notes, her voice trembling with the enormity of the conspiracy. "A plan of a patience and cunning that only a non-human mind could conceive. And..." She looked at Rafael and Ruth, her eyes filled with a newly understood terror. "...and it seems that, one way or another, it had been fulfilled. The global instability that preceded these 'days of darkness,' the weakening of humanity's psychic barriers, the very activity of the Thirteen Families... all of it could have been the orchestrated prelude to this awakening."
Fear now weighed heavily on everyone's shoulders in that dusty room filled with forbidden secrets. The madness engulfing the planet was no recent cosmic accident. It had deep roots, planted in its own history by figures they thought they knew, orchestrated by alien intelligences, and prepared for over a century.
"So..." Rafael said, his voice barely an exhale. "Cthulhu's awakening... wasn't just the arrogance of the Thirteen Families. It was... the fulfillment of a plan. A plan for which Díaz was only the first earthly architect."
"Eleonora... she must have known something of this, or at least felt its echoes," Seraphina thought in anguish. "Her knowledge of ancient magic, of Earth's cycles... made her a prime target for those who wanted this plan to succeed, or for those who wanted to stop it. And Jacobo Grinberg... he stumbled upon the very heart of the conspiracy, upon the roadmap of the apocalypse."
Jacobo Grinberg's lost laboratory had become a tomb of terrifying truths. The struggle for humanity's survival was not just against present monsters, but against the ghosts of a manipulated past and the machinations of a secret history now emerging with all its dreadful clarity.