Claiming Treasure

Brian Steele’s POV

Werewolf Council Server Room, Banff Pack

My meeting with Alpha John Coffey and his father, Council Chairman Jack Coffey, nearly resulted in my death. To say they were upset was orders of magnitude off. No, news like this wasn’t suited for something like a hurricane scale. The Richter scale was more like it, and this was an eight-plus magnitude seismic shift.

Alpha John had shifted his hand and was moving towards me to slash my throat open, then Councilman Nathan Kirk grabbed his arm and held it. “Not now,” he growled.

Alpha John was shaking in rage. “He FAILED US!”

“He got hacked. We don’t know who did it. We don’t know what information they accessed. We don’t know a lot of things, and right now, he is our best chance of finding them out. Calm yourself and think, Alpha, before you make things worse.”

“He’s right,” Chairman Coffey said. “Sit down, boy.”

The look he gave me before he returned to his seat at the conference table promised pain at a later time. I let a breath out, but my heart was still racing.

“What do you know,” Councilman Millner said.

I gathered my thoughts. “The Council server got hacked, the Pack server as well,” I said. “It appears that the program inserted worked with the automatic backup software to the backup server. In addition to transferring files to the backup server, it was transmitting them over the Internet.”

“How did you find it,” Chairman Coffey said.

“There was a performance decline at midnight I was troubleshooting, and I saw the data transfers through the Internet pathway. I found the program, recognized it as malware, and tried to delete it. That activated a worm.”

“Worm?”

“A program designed to sit there until triggered. It started to delete files on the server and activated on the Pack and Backup servers too. I had to power down the computers to stop it from corrupting even more data.”

“Current status of the systems, then?”

“All have been shut down, and I’ve removed the hard drives. There is no further damage, but the systems cannot be restarted with those programs still active.” I leaned forward a little. “Whoever did this wasn’t some teenager in a basement. They bypassed state-of-the-art firewalls and implanted programs I’ve never seen before. I posted the symptoms anonymously on a discussion board for network administrators. None had heard of such a hack before.”

“What needs to happen next,” Alpha John asked.

“The servers will need a full reboot and update first, to make sure the operating system is clean,” I said. “Once they are up and running, I’ll use a stand-alone system to copy files from the server drives that are not affected by the hacker, leaving the corrupted programs behind. Once I’m satisfied I’ve recovered what I can, I will transfer those files back to the servers. Nothing will connect to the Internet until I’m certain we are clean again.”

“Timing?”

“It will take several days to recover everything, Alpha. Since the backup server is corrupted, I can’t just do a system restore.”

“We need the systems back up as soon as possible,” Chairman Coffey said. “We also need to find out who did it and what they got. I don’t have to tell you how harmful the information on this server would be if humans have it. Pack rosters, finances, everything!”

“Please tell me it was encrypted,” Councilman Millner said.

“The data in the open portions of the server is not encrypted, sir,” I said. “That would include the videos, Pack genealogy data, discussion boards, anything else. Individual folders are password protected. Financial data, Alpha files, and Council files are encrypted.”

“Can you figure out who did this while you restore the files?”

I thought about it; I was an administrator, and this required a different skill set. “I don’t think so, sir. I’m not an expert in network security. There are people out there that are, but almost all of them are human.”

“We can’t bring humans in on this,” the Chairman said.

“I agree,” Millner said. “Who in the Packs do we need to bring in?”

I listed a few names, fellow network administrators who could help with the restoration of our systems and beefing up our security. “There’s only one person I know of who knows enough about hacking to find the hacker who did this,” I said. “Beta Teri Carlson in the Arrowhead Pack.”

“FUCK,” Alpha John said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Councilman Kirk stood up so fast he knocked his chair to the ground and over to the wall. “ANYONE BUT ARROWHEAD! Dammit!”

“Sit down, Councilman.” Chairman Coffey waited until everyone was calm and sitting down again. “I will make the call. Beta Steele, when she arrives, you are to monitor her activities. She is to evaluate what data was compromised, HOW it was compromised, and who did it. When we find out, Council enforcers and the local Pack will eliminate the threat.” I had no doubt what he meant by that. “I will make the call. Everyone get back to work.”

I wouldn’t sleep again for thirty-four more hours.

Alpha Rori King’s POV

Arrowhead Pack House

“Has she talked to him yet,” Chase said as he arrived late to breakfast.

I looked over to the long table where Mykayla sat with the other Omegas she roomed with. They were at the table in the far corner, Mykayla at the end against the wall, and close to the door to the kitchen. Timur sat across the table and three people down, the closest he could get to his mate in human form without her starting to panic. “No, but she looks at him once in a while before looking away quickly.”

“It will get better. Mykayla’s wolf wants to be around her mate, even if her human side is afraid of him still. I’ve kept command on her to remain in human form because she needs to get over this.”

“She tolerates his wolf,” I said.

“She was never abused by a wolf, only by the men of the Pack,” Chase said. “Abuse that extensive, going back as far as she can remember? It doesn’t just go away. She grew up fearing males and what they would do to her.”

“She learned to be in the Pack, to serve in the dining room.” She had been doing better, helping out where she was needed.

“Over months living here, Mykayla learned her Alphas and the other women would protect her from harm. The males here were not the ones she had dealt with before, and they treated her with respect. This latest attack made her rethink everything. She hasn’t been out of the kitchen except to eat, sleep, or go to therapy. She’s hiding again.”

I could kick myself for not anticipating what might happen with Bitterroot here. The ones who had actively abused her were dead. It was the ones too young to kill that I hadn’t considered. I didn’t know what in Luna’s name Alpha Long was thinking when he brought one of those males to MY pack. “How is Timur coming along,” I asked Beta Ron.

“He’s a good warrior,” Ron said. “Beta potential, and he’s a beast in the training ring. He needs work with weapons, and his fighting style needs to be updated. I’ve set a training program for him, and he’s assigned to the Security Center rotation now.”

“He’s qualified there?”

“Not yet, but he will be in a week. He’s still learning our territory and our security procedures. It’s a lot different than what he had in Russia.” Ron laughed a little. “We don’t have miles of ground between the closest border and our Pack House. He’s had to adjust to life on a lake by humans.”

“Yeah, we are unique in that. I don’t regret it, though. I love living here on the lake,” I said. To me, it was worth the security tradeoff. Having the Pack House deep in the woods hadn’t worked for my parents twenty years ago. We had a lot of goodwill with our neighbors and our community BECAUSE we didn’t isolate ourselves. When our secret eventually came out, it would be more important than ever to have those relationships. “Has anyone heard from Vic?”

“He checked in yesterday,” Ron said. “They were north of Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast Highway; I think they are in Santa Barbara for a day or two. They are taking their time heading north, and they are having a blast riding in the nice weather. One of the Vegas chapter prospects is going to meet them in San Jose; he’s got Heather’s bike and gear in the trailer. ”

Now I was jealous. Our Pack tradition was to go to Orlando in January to get away from winter, and this year it didn’t happen with the trial and our arrest. I hadn’t ridden my Harley since before Thanksgiving. I’d never been on the Pacific Coast Highway, but I’d talked to people who had. “Damn. One more thing for my list,” I said.

“Not this year,” Chase said.

I just nodded. “Too much going on, and I don’t want to be away from my babies any more than I have been,” I agreed.

“Alpha Rori, you have a message from Chairman Coffey. He needs you to call him on the secure line with your staff as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” I told the Security Center wolf on duty. I directed the nannies to take the babies home and informed Chase and my Betas of the meeting. “Timur, join us in my office. The Chairman wants a call, and I don’t know if it has to do with Beloretsk or not.”

“Of course, Alpha,” he said. I saw him excuse himself and smile at Mykayla before he walked off. She watched him leave, and her face showed disappointment. I smiled at that; the mating bond was powerful. Fighting it was a losing battle as it was stronger than anything else in our lives. Timur needed to keep chipping away at that armor she’d grown around her heart, and he’d eventually break through to her.

We all gathered in my office as I connected the scrambler device to the phone. “No one talks unless I ask you to,” I said. “We need to be careful in these dealings; the Council is not our ally.” With that said, I dialed the number.

“Chairman Coffey,” the voice came after the scrambling devices synced up.

“Sir, this is Alpha Rori King. My mate and Betas are with me as you requested.”

“There will be a videoconference with all the Alphas in the world at one this afternoon Central time,” he said. “I need your help before the meeting.”

“What do you need, sir?”

“There’s an issue here at Council Headquarters. A hacker penetrated the servers of the Council and the Pack, and my network administrator tells me the program was automatically sending files to an unknown recipient.”

“How bad is the exposure?”

“The hacker got access to everything, but the most sensitive files are encrypted. The ones that are not are still ones humans cannot have, including the genealogies.”

Oh shit. If that got out, we were ALL out. “How can we help,” I said, but I had an idea what he wanted.

“Our staff is getting help to recover what we can with the servers, but the hacker has to be found and stopped immediately. Beta Steele informed us that the person most qualified to do that is your Beta Teri. I need her services here as soon as possible, for as long as it takes to eliminate this threat.”

I looked over at Beta Teri, who was wide-eyed over the news. “Can you do it?”

“I have to, Alpha. This is a worst-case scenario.”

“I will get Beta Teri to Banff as soon as possible, Mr. Chairman. Is there anything else you require?”

“Not at this time. Notify Banff security center with the details, and they will pick you up. The Council and Alpha John will be traveling to Blue River and will hold the conference there,” he said. “The servers here at Banff may not be up for days.”

“I understand, Mr. Chairman.”

“I will talk to you again soon,” he said before he ended the call.

“Teri, go pack. Roadkill, order up a jet and make arrangements to get her to the airport,” I said. Both left.

“And me,” Beta Ron asked.

“Pick someone to watch her back. I don’t trust Alpha John as far as I can throw him.”