ring lights outside the bulletproof glass

h, cold glow of three massive monitors r

System warned her that neural load was at sixty percent, but her fingers

ough. She wanted to rip Colten's empi

moved like digital ghosts, slipping through the

nto the Chief Financial Officer's encrypted cloud drive. The system be

ater, the barr

he found the massive tax evasion on government contracts. She tracked millions of dollars be

tory. Hundreds of pages of explicit, graphic texts proving they h

hing. Her heart rate stayed at a flat 60 BPM. The original

ority intake portal, exploiting a backdoor to flag it as a Tier-One National Security threat. She calculated the explosive nature of the evidence would guarantee f

Trojan horse. She injected it directly into t

red warning flashed

empting physica

ered the direct connection and d

ng a highly aggressive, incredibly sophisticated al

through her veins. She engaged the unknown hacker i

tiny gap in her firewall

ntum processing power to reverse-engineer the tracker'

e tower in the heart of Wall Street. The h

sharp laugh. The snake

her opponent, because an angry man makes mistakes. Instead of a childish image, she attached a single, chilling line of text, and fired it st

cer-stared in horror as his screens locked up, displaying nothing but that glowing, mo

nections. She wiped h

took a sip. She checked the wall clock. 4:00

er on freezing cold. She stood under the icy spray, let

ored, pitch-black women's suit. No jewelry. No makeu

lide, chambering a round with a sharp metallic clack, and s

s. Erica hung a micro-USB drive around her neck

r sunglasses and slid them on, hi

elevator down to th

f Range Rover she had ordered the night befor

er was cold. She hit the ignition. The heavy en

e and merged into the chaot

up Headquarters. The exe