Echos in the Network

Back at the pack house, the war room buzzed with low conversation and the soft hum of computers. Rae sat cross-legged on the couch, her laptop balanced on her knees, one hand gripping a juice box, the other typing furiously. Aspen lay at her feet, tail flicking with alertness.

Remi slid onto the cushion beside her, placing a small plate of pretzels and peanut butter on the coffee table. “Your blood sugar?”

“Stable-ish,” Rae muttered, not looking up. “Thanks.”

Will, Trey, and Elijah stood around the center table where a rough map of the pack territory was spread out. Red pins marked key patrol points; blue pins outlined recent wolfvine discoveries. A fresh green pin sat in the center — the location of the old hunting cabin.

“I found something,” Rae said suddenly, her tone sharp.

Everyone looked over.

She swiveled the screen toward them. A schematic glowed — lines of code running across as she highlighted several nodes blinking in red.

“Dr. Pierce’s encrypted messages didn’t just go to Maren. They were being funneled through a bouncing relay system — part of a backdoor surveillance loop. Someone embedded this protocol years ago, maybe even before I hit campus in Chicago. Whoever did it has been watching for a long time.”

Elijah stepped closer. “You can trace it?”

Rae grinned — feral and proud. “I already did. But here’s the real trick. I just hijacked the feed.”

Trey raised a brow. “You what?”

“I spoofed it,” she explained. “I’m feeding it fake surveillance data. Remi, Will, Del — you all are ‘on patrol’ right now according to their feeds. Aspen is ‘asleep in her crate.’ And I’m supposedly passed out with low sugar. All footage is from a loop I created using old footage and live ghost images.”

Will looked impressed. “You’re using the system against them.”

“Damn right I am,” Rae replied. “And now we bait them.”

She clicked a key and a fresh window popped up — a dummy communication message addressed to the unknown contact she believed was handling Pierce and Maren.

“Target location shifting — wolfvine cache recovered. Secure phase two shipment. Meeting point: Sector 7, 0300 hours.”

Remi leaned in. “Sector 7? That’s—”

“The old medical storage bunker,” Will finished. “Hard to navigate, not on any active patrol route. It’s perfect.”

Rae nodded. “If they take the bait, we’ll know who’s listening. If they show up… we take them.”

She paused, eyes narrowing. “But I’m not done.”

She turned the screen again, this time showing a blank login portal with a pulsing red symbol. “There’s another system — deeper. A nested network beneath the hospital’s mainframe. Protected. Like… next-level protected. I’ll need a couple hours, maybe more, and someone on standby in case I pass out again.”

“You’ll have someone,” Remi said firmly. “We’ve got you.”

Will added, “And once you’re in?”

Rae smiled grimly. “We pull every dirty secret they’ve tried to bury. Research notes, medical tests, funding sources — all of it. And we blow this wide open.”