Olivia started digging around under the seat, we kept a well-stocked first aid kit in our vehicles when we traveled with wolves since we couldn’t use human hospitals for them. She pulled out three packages of hypodermic needles and a bottle. “I don’t have a choice, Ella. I can’t risk you all, and these kids deserve to live.”
“What are you doing?” She was drawing up liquid into the first syringe, then a smaller amount into two more.
“Wolfsbane. I have to kill my wolf.” She handed the first hypodermic to Mark. “You have to do it, Mark, there’s no other way we survive this.”
“Olivia, that’s permanent. I know. Your wolf is gone FOREVER.”
She nodded. “I know. At least I found my mate first.” She kissed Mark, then held out her arm. “Hurry up, it needs to be over before we get to the front.”
“Wait.” I took a T-shirt out of the Wal-Mart bag in the back; twisting it, I tied it around her head, gagging her and giving her something to bite down on. “The pain is horrible, we can’t attract attention.”
She nodded at Mark, and he injected it into her shoulder. She started to scream into the gag as the poison worked through her veins. She collapsed onto the backseat floor with the pain, kicking the seat as she went.
Mark turned around and pulled the twins, one at a time, out of the back seat and up with us. They woke up and rubbed their eyes and then I got their attention. “Tony, Tina, your Mom sent you to us to keep you safe, you know that, right?” They nodded. “There are men up there, men who will find out what you are and kill you for it. We can’t let you be found out, but the only way to keep them from hurting you requires us to hurt you instead. We have to take your wolves away.”
“NO! I WANT HIM!” Tony yelled, while Tina just held on to her brother and cried.
“I’m sorry. I’ve done this before, and Olivia is doing it right now. Your wolf will be gone, but you will continue to live. It’s the only way.” I kept their attention while Mark injected Tony; when he started to scream, I grabbed him and held him tight to my chest. Mark injected Tina right away and did the same.
For the next five minutes, my heart and ears were breaking. Their pitiful screams as their wolves were destroyed within them brought back too many memories, bad memories. I cried with them as we moved forward with the traffic. Olivia finally sat up, untying the gag and slumping back into her seat. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“Are you all right, baby?” Mark looked at her with concern; Tina had finally fallen asleep on his chest.
“I suppose. I feel… empty.” She closed her eyes. “Just in time, huh?”
“Yeah.” We were waved into the line at the rest stop; ten minutes later our car was at the front.
“I need all of you to step out of the vehicle for a search, please.” The badge and uniform were Transportation Security Agency, and he had a VIPR ballcap on. I guess with the airports shut down, they had plenty of screeners available for the roads.
We got out of the car and were lined up along the curb. Mark and I were each carrying one of the kids, who were shaking in fear. An agent with the TSA came up, holding what looked like a penlight. “I need each of you to look into the light, please. This won’t hurt a bit.”
I was first; I was nervous because I’d never checked to see if my eyes still had any of their wolf nature left. He shined it in each eye, then motioned to Tony. He checked both his eyes, then moved on. Mark and Tina each were checked, finally Olivia. Meanwhile, other agents had checked our car and trunk, but closed it up.
“Thank you for your cooperation, have a nice day.”
We got back in, driving off as my hands shook on the wheel and the kids started crying. We had escaped, but at what cost?
The drive back was heartbreaking for me. The twins would cry, and when they finally stopped crying Olivia would start up. The three of them stayed in the backseat, the young ones in their new booster seats I bought back at Walmart, and Olivia in the middle.
Mark and I were exhausted, but we couldn’t afford the risk of stopping so we pushed onward. We finally got home, and were greeted by a very worried Pack. Olivia took the kids with Mark back to his parent’s house, since they had bonded during the drive. I took a quick shower, then went downstairs to talk to my Pack and eat some dinner before bed.
“It’s bad out there,” I said, “and it’s getting worse.” I talked them through how we entered the Pack house and killed the Alphas, then everything that happened with the police and military attack on their house and the loss of all but the twins. “I just don’t understand it, why would they attack his house and kill him like that? He was going to hand the rest of us over on a silver platter!”
Jacob leaned forward, Melanie pressed into his side. “When they do this, it means they don’t need to make the deal. Either they already have the information, are confident they can still get the information after the attack, or they don’t trust him to do his part. My money would be that they figure they can still find the information they need without him.”
“How?” Craig looked at me, then at him. “Olivia told her brother to destroy his computer, his office. The whole place burned to the ground, we saw it on the news.”
It was Josh’s turn to cut in. “Nothing is truly destroyed in the age of the Internet.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“They follow the trails. We talked about Echelon earlier. The National Security Agency has all the electronic communications, phone calls, and email traffic going back YEARS stored in a data center in Utah. They know who Alpha Johnson was an Alpha, as was Principal Johnson and Michael Anderson. You go out from there to family and known acquaintances. By using facebook, phone records, emails and financial transactions, you can build a list of probable werewolves. You track those people down, then go to their friends, and so on, and so on…”
I sat back and closed my eyes, my head hurt. “So if they don’t know who I am yet, they will soon.”
He nodded. “Unless my buddies can do something about it.”
Everyone, including his parents, looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m part of a, well, community of hackers. Some of us are werewolves, some are just anti-capitalist or concerned with government intrusion into our private lives. Anyway, when this whole thing started, we had some discussions on the Dark Web and reached a general agreement. This is the opportunity to wreak havoc on the financial system, the government and powerful corporations, and blame it all on werewolves.”
I smiled at him. “You’re a fucking genius, Josh.” He smiled. “So what have you done?”
“Well, we all agreed to set up our hacks to hit at midnight tonight. The idea is that the cyberattacks are so numerous and widespread that they can’t respond to them all at once. Power grids, banking systems, government databases, it’s all on the table. We’ve spread around some really nasty viruses that haven’t been seen yet; they worm their way into a system and cause the files to repeatedly overwrite the data.” He smiled as he thought about it. “They won’t know what hit them.”
“But what about the data centers? Surely, they have backup drives, tapes, remote data centers. Two is one and one is none, as the Rangers say.” Jacob was sitting back, mulling it over.
“True… except we know where the major ones are we need to take out. The werewolves among us have divided up the targets, and the local Packs will be attacking them tonight. All four Utah packs are working together to go after the NSA supercomputers and data farm.”
My jaw was almost to the table, a whole war was being planned and my fifteen year old rent-a-hacker was up to his neck in it. “Why wasn’t I informed?”
“Need to know only. No data centers in this hick town.” I chuckled, he was right. There were no high-value targets around for us. “I have to get back, I’m doing some things in the FBI databases right now.” He got up and left for his house, and we all looked at him with a ‘what the hell just happened’ look.
My phone dinged, it was a text from an unknown number. The message was short:
“Acuvue Oasys with Hydraclear Plus -BK”
I closed the message program and opened my web surfer. Entering the text, I pulled up a website. I wasn’t sure what it meant until I read the product description. “99. 4% UVA and UVB protection.” Could it be? If it filtered the light… I copied and forwarded the text to Marge with a note to order as many as she could get without arousing suspicion.
It must work, I thought, it was Black Ker approved. Cat eyes glow even worse than wolf ones, and she had been hiding her true nature for a long time. I went upstairs, taking my boys with me, and after feeding them I fell into a deep sleep until the next morning.