Alpha Ian's The One and Only

Chapter 23

Ian's P.O.V (continued)

I walk into my home office, followed closely by Creed, Markson and Evans. My office is sound-proof, therefore, the safest place to have a conversation without worrying about eavesdroppers. After locking the door everyone takes a seat near the desk.

"For a non-digital book, the ledger is highly encrypted. So I digitalized the ledger and wrote a code with all the possible combinations, that searched through every small bit of information available online. The key is two different books. Who would have thought these people are so religious?"

"Bible?" Creed asks.

"100 points to Gryffindor," Evans says, making Creed and Markson roll their eyes.

"And the other book?" I ask.

"DNA - The story of genetic revolution by James Watson."

"I don't understand. Why two books?" Markson asks.

Evan shrugs. "This is Scythe, man, they are all types of weird. Maybe, they wanted to add more complexity, if the ledger fell into the wrong hands. But these hands are magical, nothing can escape them," he wiggles his fingers in the air, and then blows on the nails like I have seen females do. "Anyhoo, coming back to the ledger. If you see closely it's all in numbers." Evans opens the ledger, and we all lean in closer to look. "For example, let's pick this number, 101246. Here, the first number represents the book number, the next two numbers represent the page number, followed by paragraph, line and word numbers. Now, they have numbered both books. Bible is number 1, and the DNA book is number 2. So according to this number, we have to refer to the Bible, page number 01, second paragraph, fourth line and sixth word."

Markson whistles. "That's too much trouble."

"So just to understand one alphabet in the ledger, we have to decode each number and follow this pattern?" I share Creed's bafflement. This is indeed too complicated and laborious.

"Like I said. Weird," Evan replies, stretching the word weird.

"You have decoded the entire ledger?" I ask.

"Yes. Well, almost 95%. The program is still running as we speak. To make things easier, I have divided the results into parts and emailed them to you. If you permit, Alpha, I will share this information with the Johnsons and Warrens once it is finished."

"Yes, do that."

"One more thing. The first entries mention one of their first outhouses which we haven't visited yet. It is not far from here, an hour's run tops. According to this, it should be abandoned." He points to the ledger. An hour run is equal to three or four hours by car for humans.

"Where is this outhouse?" I enquire.

"In Mountain Keys." Mount Keys is one of the oldest, and steepest mountain ranges to exist. There are many stories regarding the origin of the mountain, but the most popular one is that this mountain is a portal to another world, hence the name.

"In?"

"Yes, Alpha. According to the ledger, it was a military-controlled base during world war 1. Not many people knew about it, as it was used only for research purposes. Convenient right? They didn't specify which research."

"We have worked with less intel," Creed says.

I nod in agreement, "We will scout the area first, and then connect others. Let's go."

"Alpha, you have a conference call due with the Alphas of the North," Markson reminds me. Since the Scythe started their assaults against the werewolves, I have made a habit to stay connected with the Alphas around the world. We hold quarterly meetings to discuss developments, short-coming if the other packs require any assistance and such. Not all the Alphas are willing participants, but with the Scythe as a larger threat, it became important for all the packs to stay united and informed.