赤裸裸的滑稽故事

“It was Alice,” Ashleigh said once Galen and Clara had finished explaining what had happened to the computer system in the past day.

“It had to be,” she growled, crossing her arms over her chest.

“How do you know?” Galen asked.

“Because,” she said, “the entire reason Granger was able to kidnap me was because Alice tricked me and took me to him.”

“What?” Galen said, looking at Caleb.

Caleb clenched his jaw but said nothing.

After Ashleigh had been rescued, they didn’t have a lot of time to talk before she returned to Winter. She hadn’t been ready to discuss all that she had experienced while she was being held. With the wedding and the honeymoon, they hadn’t talked about it all.

“Bell said you saw someone… it was Alice?” Galen asked turning back to Ashleigh.

“Yea. When I came out of the science building, I was talking to Bell on the phone, and then I saw her sneaking around. So I chased after her, she tried to get away, but I caught up to her just past the border,” Ashleigh paused, licking her lips as she remembered what happened next. “And then I was shot by tranquilizer darts.”

Caleb put his arm around her shoulder pulling her close.

“I’m sorry,” Galen said. “I should have–”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Caleb interrupted.

“No,” Ashleigh said. “It was Alice and Granger that did that to me. And it was Alice that did this to Summer. I’m sure of it.”

“She certainly has the skills,” Clara added with a little too much enthusiasm.

Nessa looked up at her with a raised brow.

“And who exactly is this, Alice? Another of your exes?” she asked._.

“No!” Clara said quickly, waving her arms in front of her. “Definitely not… though in the interest of full disclosure and honesty… I may have had a little bit of a crush on her.”

“Mmmhmm…” Nessa replied, looking back at her computer screen.

“It’s not a big deal, I mean I’ve never even met her!”

“You had a crush on someone you’ve never met?”

“Well, yea… but only because of her codework… it was amazing…” Clara smiled, then quickly added. “Yours is way better!”

Galen cleared his throat.

“Alice was responsible for a hack in our systems a few months back,” he clarified.

“What kind of hack?” Nessa asked.

As Galen went into the particulars of what had happened during Alice’s stay in Summer, Caleb pulled Ashleigh aside.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I’m ok, Caleb,” she smiled. “I just… It was so easy for him to capture me.”

“Unfortunately it’s always easier to use underhanded methods,” Caleb said, kissing her forehead.

“Especially when you have someone like Alice to help you,” Ashleigh scoffed.

Caleb didn’t reply right away, Ashleigh felt his doubt.

“You don’t believe me?” she asked, pulling away from him.

“What? No, that’s not… I believe you, Ashleigh.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just that… Alice… she’s helped me before, helped you.”

“She’s never done anything for me,” Ashleigh stated firmly.

“Yes, she did. You just didn’t know about it,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You never asked me how I and my wolves ended up there the night of the fae attack,” he said. “I got a warning, a message saying that there was going to be an attack on Winter. It didn’t say when, only that it was soon. So, I sent scouts to monitor for two days and that was when I got a report back saying there was an aggressive force moving on Winter.”

“You’re saying that it was Alice who warned you?” Ashleigh asked.

“Yes.”

“Is that supposed to change my opinion?” Ashleigh asked.

“It just seems worth considering. Of course, she’s mischievous, and I wouldn’t entirely trust her, but I don’t think she is necessarily a bad person, Ash.”

“Caleb,” she sighed. “Even if she did warn you, why didn’t she tell you that it was fae? We lost a lot of people that night because we didn’t know how to fight them.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t know.”

“But she did know there was an attack coming. How? Did you ever think, maybe, it was because she was helping the ones responsible?”

“Then why tell me at all?”

“Well, my guess, is that she told you because she knew you would come to try to protect me. She expected you to die in that fight.”

“You don’t know that.” Caleb sighed.

“Neither do you,” she said. “But I do know that if she hadn’t been in Summer that day, I wouldn’t have been captured by Granger.”

“Sorry to interrupt…” Nessa said awkwardly. “But um… you should know that Clara’s right and this chick’s code is freakin’ gorgeous.”

“Nessa, I’m not sure it’s the right time to be appreciating someone’s code…” Galen sighed.

“It is, because the reason I know she has gorgeous code, is because it’s still here.”

“What?” Galen and Caleb both asked.

“Yea… the bugs you cleared out before were just decoys. She layered a bunch of your systems with hall monitors and drones that collect and send data back to the receiver of her choosing. Which, by the way, I have tracked to seven different bouncing locations already? She’s good.”

“I told you…” Clara murmured.

“So, Alice has had access to our systems for months?” Galen asked.

“Yep… and I say that from what I’m seeing… the worm was hers too. So, maybe one of these little hall monitors found traces of the files she was looking for and then let her know. So, she came in person to drop off our little friend from the science building.”

Ashleigh looked at Caleb and shook her head.

“Still think she’s helping you of the goodness of her heart?”

Caleb took a deep breath and turned back to Nessa.

“What do we need to do to make sure she is out of our systems for good?” he asked.

“Ctrl, alt, delete?” She suggested.

When both Galen and Caleb gave her irritated looks, she sighed.

“Complete system restore from before her initial hack.”

“What?!” Galen shouted. “We would lose months of research and work!”

“I know,” she said. “But as it is right now, these things are everywhere… like crawling through every part of your system. Trying to remove each one would take… I don’t even think its possible honestly. If we find and remove a group, a new group will spawn somewhere else.”

“I’m too tired for this,” Caleb sighed.

“Me too,” Ashleigh said.

“You guys should just go get some rest, there is nothing you can do here anyway,” Galen suggested.

“What about the rest of the pack? You said systems were down, lights were out, people were trapped, there’s a lot that needs to be done,” Caleb insisted.

“Fiona is already handling a lot of those things. What she doesn’t have time for, I will take care of,” Galen said.

“Alright,” Caleb said. “I want a full briefing in the morning… of everything that has been going on the past two weeks.”

“Of course.”

***

Caleb was surprised by the knock at his door the following day. Ashleigh had met Fiona at the training grounds an hour before, and he wasn’t scheduled to meet with Galen for at least another hour.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened, and he was even more surprised by the person that entered.

“Nessa?”

“Hey, Alpha Caleb,” she smiled awkwardly, holding her laptop in her arms.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“So… I got the distinct impression that your Luna is not a fan of this Alice person,” she began. “And when Liara doesn’t like something, my dad tends to avoid it at all costs to keep her happy.”

“Alright…” Caleb said.

“So… as you know… the computer system is a bit jacked up right now.”

“Yes, you made that pretty clear last night.”

“Yea.. well… apparently, there is an option that will unjack the system,” Nessa smiled awkwardly.

“Why does it sound like this isn’t a good thing?” Caleb asked.

“Uhm… I kept working on the bugs last night. Chasing the little suckers down and destroying them. Finally, I got a little bored, and instead of killing them off right away, I dissected their code. Long story short, I found something….”

“What?”

“A kill switch,” she replied.

“That’s a good thing, Nessa… if you found a kill switch you can remove all of them at once without destroying our systems.”

“Right, that’s true, and I was totally like ‘yay, I’m the best’ when I found it…” she said. “Until I realized I didn’t find it… it was given to me.”

“How?”

“The Big Brother worms, the ones that killed the lights and the doors. They had a background timer. Twenty-four hours. Once that time was up, it sent me, the only admin on at the time, the kill switch. With instructions and a system restore to moments before the first worm went boom.”

Nessa turned her computer so Caleb could see the screen. He sighed when he saw the signature.

“It was from Alice,” Nessa said.