Claiming Treasure Ch. 16-20

"And that's why we've got a pissed-off Alpha and Chairman, plus the Council," I said. "Alpha Rori is untouchable now; she has ridden this 'Luna's Blessing' thing to rally two-thirds of the Packs in support, plus she's the Blessed One. You saw the trial; they wanted to control her and put their own people in place, and instead, they've cemented her as the leader of a movement. Honestly, I think Alpha John would face a challenge before Coral or Rori would."

"Just remember to keep your heads down and not say anything," Rick said. "It's way above our paygrade."

"I wish Banff was on their side; I wouldn't mind a touch of Luna's Blessing," Teri said as she touched her belly. She and Rick were mated twelve years, and her heats hadn't taken yet. "Now Alpha Coral is pregnant AGAIN, with her daughter just over a year old. It's not fair."

Alpha John had shifted and run into the woods in a rage when THAT piece of information came out. He hadn't come back until the next morning. "Luna Roseanne is on his ass like white on rice about it, too. Sixty years and no heir."

"Not our business," I said as I picked up my plates. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I was sitting in the Council server room, with my computer set up to monitor server and broadband performance as it got close to midnight. When the hour struck, the activity levels picked up a lot more than I expected. The file backup program was communicating properly with the backup server, but the internet traffic was through the roof.

I dug deeper, finding the program that was causing the activity and pulling it up. My blood ran cold as I realized what it was doing.

The files were going out over the Internet.

"NO NO NO FUCKKKKK!" I tried to end the program to stop it, but that didn't work. I unplugged the fiber optics connecting us to town and watched as the transmission ended.

That should have been the end, but it wasn't. Another program started up, one I couldn't access, and I watched in horror as files started to disappear.

We'd been hacked!

There was a worm in the system, and it was chewing through the system and eating everything in its path. I jumped up, hitting the emergency power-down button for the room. The servers turned off as I raced up the stairs and over to the Pack building. I ignored the mental sends from Pack members angry at the loss of Internet access, knowing their games or video streaming being interrupted was nothing compared to the security breach going on. Racing down the stairs to the computer room, I could hear the hard drives operating simultaneously as the worm continued to eat its way through. I hit the emergency power-down, then ran back upstairs.

The worm had hit the backup server, and it had been several minutes since the attack began. I powered that down as well.

I took a few deep breaths, then made the mental call. "Alpha, our computer systems have been compromised and I've had to shut them down. Someone had access to our servers," I said.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING, BETA STEELE?"

"I don't know yet, Alpha. We need to notify the Council that someone hacked their server. I need help figuring out who did this to us and how."

Ch. 18

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."

Ch. 19

Beta Teri Carlson's POV
Calgary Airport

"I can't believe you made me take you along," I told Ron as I snuggled into his shoulder as we descended into Calgary.

"You're mine, you're pregnant, and you are not among friends. Three strikes against this trip. There's no way I was going to let you head THERE without ME, and Rori understood when I told her," he said with a low growl. He was whispering quietly enough that none of the humans around us in first class would be able to hear.

"It's not that simple. Charles' funeral will be soon, and Rori will need to leave for it. Vic won't be back for a week or more. We're leaving them short-handed."

"I know. I told Rori and Chase that if something had to give, it was the Council. I would have been fine staying home."

I just shook my head. "You know I can't do that. The hack is bigger than me, bigger than all of us. I need to help, no matter what I might want to do."

He kissed my forehead. "I know. We all do. Timur will have to step up, and so will others. Possum and Roadkill are back too. They will survive."

I held on to his hand as we landed, and we retrieved our luggage and walked outside. I smelled the wolf before I saw him, waving at us from a Chevy Suburban parked at the curb. "Mr. and Mrs. Carlson," he said with a wave as he ran forward. "Welcome to Canada."

"Thank you," I said as he grabbed my suitcase. He and Ron put the luggage in the back while I slid into the back. "We can't trust anyone here, so we'll use the link as much as possible," I said.

"I agree. Vague and friendly is the word." The driver and the Omega with him tried to start a conversation, but I pretended to be tired. Instead, we talked about how we were going to handle the Alphas until I did fall asleep.

"We're here," Ron said as he gently shook me. I looked out at the Pack House; it looked like a resort hotel set in the trees and mountains.

The driver stopped under the covered entrance, and a nervous-looking young man with glasses opened the door. "Welcome to Banff Pack, I am Beta Brian Steele. I thank you for coming to help me with this."

He shook my hand first, then Ron's, as we introduced ourselves. "You're in charge of computer systems here?"

"Yes. Your bags will be in your room, but I need you to meet the team tonight," Brian said.

"We should check in with your Alpha first," Ron said.

"He is with the Council at the Blue River Pack. With our systems down, the Council temporarily relocated to the closest Pack." He opened the door to the basement. "They pass along their appreciation for your assistance."

I mentally cringed; Coral must be pulling her hair out, and Keith would be on edge with her pregnant and unable to shift. It was another reason to get the job done and get the hell out of here. "How bad is it?"

"We're still piecing it together," he said. "We know the hack is less than a week old, as the backup drives we removed earlier is clean. The Pack and Council servers are being restored using these drives, and we have not restored internet connectivity yet."

"What do you mean piecing it together," I said.

"The worm was rather effective," he said. "It corrupted the hard drives, overwriting sectors as it went. Luckily, there were two servers and a backup server, and I was able to power down the systems before the worm could finish its work." He reached a door and punched in a code, then opened it and let us in.

The server room was pretty standard, rows of cabinets with the computer components, and three work stations. There were three other people inside. "Betas Ron and Teri Carlson of Arrowhead Pack, may I introduce the rest of my team. Joe Walker, IT specialist at Monongahela Pack; Lisa Funk, IT specialist for the Werewolf Council, and Patrick Burkette, system manager at the Katahdin Pack."

They had lots of coffee and snacks on a table in the corner, and it looked like none of them had left recently except to go to the bathroom. "The kitchen will deliver whatever you need down here to eat," Brian said. "We have roughly split up the duties. I am reconstituting the servers so we can get back online; it's slow because I'm trying to recover as much as possible without reinfecting the system. Joe is focusing on how the hacker got through our security and into our systems. Lisa is working on damage control, looking to see what the hacker downloaded and what he didn't. Patrick is working on recovering the files on the damaged disk drives."

"What do you need from me?"

"You are the one with experience in the hacking world. We've managed to recover parts of the programs used, including the worm. I need you to fill in the gaps and see if you can identify the people behind it."