Agent in the Dark

A tall black man stepped forward with a speculative look in his eye, "Someone wants you bad little girl and I'm ah thinking that they'll be ah willing to pay for the pleasure of whatever they plan on doing to yah."

The man's other hand came out of the dark clutching at a bat that he clearly intended to bludgeon her unconscious with. Asia, using her captured arm as a fulcrum lever, pivoted so that she swung around and drove her free fist into the man's throat crushing his Adam's apple before the swing of the bat could even get started.

The man dropped the bat and let loose of her to clutch at his throat making every effort to gasp for air. Asia picked up the bat and swung hard shattering the man's skull. She had no mercy for those who sold others for their own gain. It was an all too common occurrence in the city anymore. Yet one more latent sin of mankind brought further out into the open and laid bare because of the Code.

Asia hated the Code, which is why she had lived her life in constant peril these last two years. She'd break the Code or die trying, as so many already had. She disappeared down the dark alleyway, becoming nothing but a shadow, as missiles rained down from the sky leveling the entire block behind her. The missiles were too late though.

Asia made her way silently through the darkened streets. Curiosity got the best of her and she made her way towards Times Square, where the Code Center had been set up. It was one of the only areas of the city that was lit up at night.

Stepping close enough to see, she watched the big screens continually flash an alert. The screens had a picture of her from college, with her real name emblazoned beneath it. Wanted dead or alive. The reward was what everyone left in the city dreamed of, a ticket out of here to one of the new resort cities being constructed on the African plains.

Even now, people still gathered on the streets anxious to glean what new directive the Code demanded of them, were searching each other's faces in hopes of being the first one to spot the enemy of the new world order. Asia Smith, as she now called herself, faded back into the shadows and was gone from the scene of her own sudden notoriety.