Mated To An Enemy

With little success, Nessa had been working on unlocking Cain’s partition for a week. She had begun to show signs of frustration with low growls and what Clara could only assume were curses in a different language.

But, in the past two days, her mood had improved. When Clara asked if she had made any progress unlocking the partition, Nessa smiled but shook her head.

Clara sighed as she continued searching her paper files for anything that might be useful, but she had no real luck.

Then she heard Nessa giggle.

Clara furrowed her brows and looked past the filing cabinet.

Nessa stared at her screen, a slight grin on her face, and then another giggle.

“Nessa doesn’t giggle….” Clara whispered to herself.

She set down the file she had been looking through and made her way through the stacks to where Nessa was stationed.

Seeing Clara approaching, Nessa hit several keys and turned to face her girlfriend.

“Hey,” Nessa smiled. “What’s up?”

Clara looked at the screen, seeing the image of Shae as though she were sleeping.

“Not much…” Clara replied. “What are you up to?”

“Just working on cracking that partition,” Nessa sighed.

“Uh huh…” Clara said. “What were you working on before I walked over here?”

“What do you mean?” Nessa asked.

“I heard you giggling,” Clara said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Giggling? Me?” Nessa laughed.

“Yea… I thought it was weird too.”

Nessa smiled and nodded without a word.

Clara raised an eyebrow.

“Babe…” she began. “I may not know everything about you, but I know enough to know when you are hiding something.”

Nessa licked her lips and looked away.

Clara reached out and grabbed the small lamp on the desk. She turned the light to Nessa, who covered her eyes.

“Out with it,” Clara said dramatically. “What are you hiding?”

“Ouch… ok, stop,” Nessa complained, turning her face away from the light. “I have sensitive eyes.”

“Oh!” Clara said, moving the lamp away quickly. “Sorry, I thought it would be kind of funny while addressing the fact that I know something is going on that you’re not telling me about.”

“It’s ok,” Nessa said, rubbing her eyes.

Clara waited and waited.

“Nessa!” she groaned.

Nessa sighed.

“Ok, look… how do you feel about secrets?” Nessa asked.

“Generally fun to keep, generally not fun to have them kept from you…. Like right now….” Clara replied with a hint of irritation in her voice.

Nessa smiled.

“You know you get this cute little wrinkle on your nose when you pout? It’s like a little bunny.”

“No!” Clara said firmly, pointing her finger at Nessa like a puppy being corrected. “No flirting while I am mad at you!”

Nessa chuckled.

“Alright, listen,” Nessa said. “I have been doing something… and I don’t really want anyone to know about it.”

“Why not?” Clara asked suspiciously.

“Because I don’t think your new Luna would like it,” Nessa sighed.

“Nessa, you can’t just run your own secret operations… especially ones you know Ashleigh would have a problem with!” Clara groaned.

Between Nessa’s dislike of Ashleigh and Ashleigh’s equal dislike of Nessa, Clara had been caught in the middle of several arguments where she was the primary message delivery system.

“She is blinded by her own issues with one wolf. What I am doing will help a lot more!” Nessa growled defensively.

Clara sighed.

“Fine, just tell me what you’re doing.”

Nessa smiled and entered several keystrokes.

On her monitor, Shae stretched out and then jumped. The numbers and letters that made up her body spread out onto the screen to form several windows. Some had videos playing, others had documents pulled up, and the rest were pictures.

“What am I looking at?” Clara asked.

“A gold mine,” Nessa smiled.

“What does that mean?” Clara asked, looking closer at one of the videos.

It looked like a security feed in a lab of some kind. There were two men in white coats, each standing over their own table. They seemed to be dissecting something. Plants of some sort.

“What is this?” Clara asked.

“I’m not totally sure yet,” Nessa said. “Some are documents, some are pictures, some are videos.”

“Obviously,” Clara rolled her eyes.

Nessa smiled and then cleared her throat.

“Some are from Autumn, some are from Spring, some are from unknown locations.”

“What?!” Clara said with surprise. She looked closer at the screen.

One of the documents showed orders sent to Savage Cove from Alpha Tomas, orders to force Blue Reef to join or be destroyed.

“Oh, my Goddess…” Clara whispered. “Where did you get these?”

“Well…” Nessa bit her bottom lip. “That’s the part that you won’t like.”

“That’s the part I won’t like?!” Clara asked loudly. “Nessa, you have documents and videos and pictures that are clearly secrets that belong to other packs… that’s already very, very bad….”

“Only if they find out,” Nessa shrugged.

Clara stared at Nessa as though she had grown another head.

“What?” Nessa shrugged.

“How do you have such a low awareness of danger….” Clara sighed. “This is… this is… Nessa… you could get killed just for having seen any of this but stealing it?!”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“Then how did you get it?” Clara asked.

“Technically, it was a gift… given to Summer… that I intercepted.”

“Nessa… for the love of the Goddess, could you please just tell me what you mean?” Clara sighed.

“I would also really like to know the answer to that question.”

Nessa tilted her head to look around Clara.

Clara swallowed and slowly turned to look back.

His arms were crossed over his chest, and he wore the darkest expression that Clara had ever seen on his face.

Galen stepped closer.

“I came here because I had some questions about some recent activity on our system that seemed strange. I wanted to ask Nessa about it, but now it seems there is something far more important that we need to discuss.”

Clara swallowed.

“It’s not what it looks like,” she said quickly.

“What does it look like, Clara?” Galen asked.

“Like…. We stole top secret information from other packs….”

“What did you want to ask me about?” Nessa asked Galen.

Galen turned his eyes on Nessa.

“It seems that an entirely new virtual server has been set up, one that exists outside the new security features you installed. From what I’ve seen, it receives outside information. Still, neither Caleb nor I have gotten any notification of what is being received.”

Nessa nodded.

“Yes, that is accurate.”

Galen and Clara both looked at Nessa with a combination of frustration and disbelief.

“What is the purpose of this, Nessa? Why weren’t we told about it? Why would you try to hide this?” Galen demanded.

“I didn’t exactly try to hide it. I built it where only you or Alpha Caleb could see it, but I didn’t hide it. I just didn’t ask if I could build it,” Nessa corrected.

Galen growled.

“Ok, listen,” Nessa began. “I was running security sweeps a couple of days ago, and I found something. Just a small packet of information. But it was new and wasn’t created within the Summer network.”

“What?” Clara asked.

“Please hold all questions until the end of the ride,” Nessa smiled.

Clara nodded while Galen sighed.

“I pulled it to a secure location and opened it. Inside I found documents that clearly belonged to the Ravager pack. It was just a series of communications between them and an unknown person arranging to get them a product that would ‘make the job easier’.

“Now, I saw this, and I knew this was very likely a crumb dropped to get me or whoever found it interested in where it would lead.

“So, I set up the virtual server. An almost exact copy of most of the network. Except if someone were to try digging into the files, they would find a lot of crude jokes and character sheets instead of actual Summer documents.”

Clara giggled.

“Blah, blah, blah, long story short, I watched and waited and wasn’t disappointed. All over the mirror server, I started to find random info dumps. Videos, pictures, and documentation. All about the other packs and what they have been up to the past few months. Some older. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.”

“But where is it coming from?” Galen asked.

Nessa looked at him and chewed the inside of her lip.

“So… about that…” she said nervously. “Pretty sure it’s Alice….”

“What?!” Both Galen and Clara shouted.

“I thought you said there was no way Alice could get back inside our system….” Galen said.

“I said that it was more defensible and that she wouldn’t be able to infect the system, which still holds true.”

“How is she getting the information inside if you still say she hasn’t gotten in?”

“It’s like a paratrooper. She is dropping them in and hoping they land safely,” Nessa smiled, then quickly added. “But I’ve run tons of security scans on every single file. I double and triple-checked that after the first drop-off, she hasn’t gotten any other files into the real system.”

“So, she’s only able to access your mirror image?” Galen asked.

“Yea, but as of about ten minutes ago… I think I can follow her back into her system,” Nessa smiled.