New York City, (the parts still standing)
Asia Smith glanced from one screen to the next in the abandoned apartment complex. She was farther into the Code's network than ever before, but something wasn't right. A door had just opened, actually a series of doors. It was almost, as if she was being funneled to a picked out destination within the Code's mainframe.
Time for a game change move before she was trapped. Her fingers clicked away bringing up various sub-routine menus and backdoor pathways before her link into the mainframe was fried. The Code was on to her and that was always the challenge, beating the Code at its own game was not easy.
The Code had an unfair advantage being on its own home turf, but she was human, which meant she could do the unexpected. She saw the gap open and she was through it with her fingers moving unbelievably fast on the dual keyboards with unerrorable accuracy.
The Code had given her a false pathway to follow, but to do so it had to model itself off of a legit pathway. A pathway that was running parallel and representing a false shadow of itself, which meant there was connection between the two and she had just found it!
Her screens suddenly filled with streaming data. Oh God! She hoped her devices were according all of this! The Code was fighting her in earnest now, but there was nothing it could do but try to slow her down. She chopped away at the blocks the Code threw up, as her screens continued to fill with encrypted data.
This was a dream come true and valiantly she rose to the task ignoring the strain on her hands, eyes and brain, as she fought the Code in a desperate attempt to learn the secrets needed to destroy it.
Something radically changed in a split second's worth of time. The speed of the flowing data fields increased faster than the eye could see. The code wasn't trying to block her anymore, but instead it was mass downloading in an effort to burn her devices out from the carry overload and it was working!
Smoke curled off her screens and computer units, as the smell of burning electronics roiled into the musty air of the room. She had no more time! She yanked her storage devices free; they were so hot they burned into her hands. On an exclamation of pain she prayed that they weren't fried and now useless.
She had no time to check, as her screens abruptly exploded, as did her computers in a ball of electric charged fire. She was knocked backwards to the floor, as debris rained down on her. The fire went out in the suddenly dark room except for the glowing embers and wires of her trade.