赤裸裸的滑稽故事

“Did you find something?” Ashleigh asked with anticipation in her voice.

“Yea,” Nessa nodded. “A perfectly healthy, clean system with updated defenses.”

Ashleigh took a deep breath.

“Nessa, you don’t know Alice or what she’s capable of.” Ashleigh sighed.

“I actually think I might know her a little better than you,” Nessa replied matter-of-factly.

“I thought you said you had never met her?” Ashleigh asked.

“Oh, I haven’t,” Nessa replied. “But I’ve seen her coding. It’s amazing. Intricate and detailed. Frankly, it would have been easy if she had wanted to do serious damage to Summer. But instead, she had a running system backup. She left an exact copy of everything that was sent out, that she stole or copied or ‘destroyed’.”

The last was said with air quotes for emphasis.

“What about the system attack? All the bugs that took out the lights and the gate system. That wasn’t harmless, Nessa.” Ashleigh countered.

Nessa scoffed.

“Ok, yes, that caused some issues. But nothing truly permanent. It gave the appearance of a system-wide break, but the lights? The doors? The gates? What did that do?”

Ashleigh didn’t answer.

Nessa sighed and continued.

“Think of it this way. If Alice was trying to destroy Summer, there are so many other systems she could have gone for. Things that would have truly messed this place up. HVAC, water filtration, hell, she could have just deleted all the files on armor and weapons, and that alone could have caused a real problem for war prep.”

Ashleigh still didn’t respond.

“Okay, how about this. Let’s say someone knew that Alice planted a bug, and let’s say that they knew when it was removing files and that the system would be compromised,” Nessa said. “Now, what would you do if you knew that and wanted to attack Summer?”_.

Ashleigh swallowed.

“Send forces to attack during the confusion.”

“Exactly,” Nessa smiled. “But, when your forces arrived, the gates were locked, yet the automated defenses are still running. And if you make it past those, the lights of most of Summer are gone. If you don’t know your way around, you will be lost, and the chances of being discovered increase.

“Now, let’s say you make it into the residential zones. You go for the first buildings hoping to take some hostages… but oops! Those doors were all triggered to lock, as were the hospital, the school, and almost any other building that housed civilian members of Summer.

“The only unlocked doors were those that led to and from the command center, the armory, and the training center. Those are the likely locations of the soldiers not on patrol. Pathways between those locations were lit up and had access to each other.”

“Not true!” Ashleigh interrupted. “When Caleb and I made our way through several of the corridors near the armory were completely dark.”

“True, but that wasn’t the bugs. That was Dave,” Clara interjected. “He was trying to prove he was better than Nessa, he’s not, and he ended up losing the lights in several combat-focused districts.”

Ashleigh sighed with irritation.

“What is your point?” she asked Nessa.

Nessa laughed.

“Do I really need to spell it out?” Nessa asked.

Ashleigh let out a low growl.

Nessa clenched her jaw and took a breath before continuing.

“The bugs that Alice sent were meant to make Summer look like it was under attack. It looked like it was weakened. At the same time, it was being protected by countermeasures that the bug also triggered.”

“You think she was trying to trick someone into believing that Summer was in trouble?” Clara asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ashleigh scoffed. “There wasn’t even a physical attack.”

“No, but that tells me she didn’t know what the person watching was planning. So, she set the system to be prepared in case a physical attack was the goal.”

“You are making a lot of assumptions.”

“So are you,” Nessa shrugged.

Ashleigh growled again.

Clara cleared her throat.

“I’m sure Nessa has some kind of evidence or something that helped her come to this conclusion, right?” Clara said, turning to Nessa with a desperate look.

Nessa sighed.

“As she said,” Nessa said, nodding towards Ashleigh. “I’m just looking at the technical side of it. And from the technical side of it, I can see that someone was trying to sniff around the firewalls around the time of the attack, and again after.”

“Alice,” Ashleigh growled.

“Alice wouldn’t have needed to sniff around. She already had access anytime she wanted. This was someone else.”

“You don’t know that,” Ashleigh said.

“Neither do you.”

Ashleigh took a step toward Nessa.

“I know that Alice isn’t trustworthy,” Ashleigh growled, her eyes beginning to glow at the edges. “I know that she helped a monster kidnap and torture me.”

“But you don’t know the reason why,” Nessa countered, not backing down.

Clara looked between the two women nervously.

“I don’t need to know the reason to know she did it,” Ashleigh replied, taking another step.

Nessa swallowed and then stood up straighter. She took a breath before speaking again.

Clara couldn’t help but notice that it seemed like she was preparing to take a blow.

“Do you think the children of Whiteridge and Shadowcrest will care to know the reason you killed their parents?”

Clara gasped.

Ashleigh’s eyes flared with a bright glow.

“How dare you!” she snarled before lunging toward her.

Nessa closed her eyes, preparing for the impact and the pain that would follow, but when nothing happened, she opened her eyes.

On the ground, Ashleigh was struggling beneath another person.

Fiona looked up at Clara with eyes aglow.

“Take her now! Go!”

Clara quickly moved.

“I’m sorry!” she cried out as she grabbed Nessa’s arm and pulled her to the lab door, pushing her inside and closing the door behind them.

Nessa pulled away and walked further into the room, taking a deep breath.

“Are you insane!” Clara shouted, following after her. “She could have killed you!”

“I know,” Nessa replied, still taking deep, shaky breaths.

“Then why the heck would you say something like that?” Clara asked.

Nessa took another breath and then looked at Clara.

“Weakness makes you vulnerable. Especially when you show it so openly.”

“What?”

“In my pack, it is our duty to teach each other how to move past or find strength in our weakness. The first step is always to make the weakness known to each other.”

“So?”

“Your Luna is terrified,” Nessa said.

“Ashleigh is one of the bravest wolves I have ever met,” Clara scoffed.

“That may be true, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Nessa said. “She won’t let go of this fear that there is a hidden enemy no matter how many times it is proven to her that it’s not true.”

“But you said yourself someone is watching our systems.”

“Yes,” Nessa replied. “But she doesn’t believe that. She only believes her fear.”

“So, you think she is afraid of Alice? That doesn’t make sense. She seems to want to kill her more than being afraid of her.”

Nessa shook her head.

“She’s not afraid of Alice. That’s just a convenient focus for her anger.”

“Then what is she afraid of?”

“Herself,” Nessa said. “The guilt she carries for the wolves she has hurt or killed.”

Clara took a deep breath and then slowly let it go.

“So, you were trying to help her?”

Nessa nodded.

“I thought you didn’t even like her?” Clara questioned.

“I don’t,” Nessa said, moving back toward the computer.

“So, you just tried to get yourself killed to help someone you don’t even like?” Clara asked.

Nessa shrugged.

“It’s how I was raised,” she said. “It’s basically compulsive.”

Clara’s eyes widened.

“You compulsively help people by offending them?”

Nessa nodded.

Clara swallowed.

“I think you were right,” she said. “I will go to Ashleigh’s party myself. You stay here with Shae.”

Nessa couldn’t help but laugh.