The boy, Cody Vance, jumped in his seat. He spun around and saw Erica.
She was wearing a bloody hospital gown, barefoot, with hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. Cody immediately pulled his Alienware laptop closer to his chest, his eyes wide with suspicion.
"Look, lady, this is a public area," Cody stammered, holding a hand up. "If you want spare change, the homeless shelter is down the block."
Erica didn't say a word. She reached into the pocket of her gown. She pulled out a thick stack of crisp, hundred-dollar bills she had just extracted from the hospital lobby's advanced biometric ATM, using a cardless routing protocol to siphon a micro-fraction of her newly acquired offshore funds.
She slammed the stack of cash down hard on the table, right next to his mousepad.
"I need your computer for five minutes," Erica ordered. Her voice was an absolute, commanding bark that left no room for debate. "This is enough to buy you a new one."
Cody stared at the pile of Benjamins. He swallowed hard. Greed instantly overpowered his fear. He grabbed the cash, shoved it into his backpack, and practically leaped out of the chair.
Erica sat down. She hovered her hands over the glowing keyboard. She closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath.
Initiate neural direct-link protocol.
Her fingers slammed into the keys. They moved so fast they were a blur, creating a torrential downpour of clacking sounds.
The standard Windows desktop vanished. The screen snapped to black. Rows of green code began violently scrolling down the monitor.
Cody, who hadn't left yet, stood frozen behind her. He was a computer science major, but the underlying logic flashing across his screen made zero sense to him.
Erica used the civilian laptop as a springboard. The ORACLE System instantly generated twelve layers of ghost IP addresses. She launched a brute-force assault directly at the New York Police Department's evidence database firewall.
Firewall counter-measures detected.
Erica smirked. Her fingers accelerated. She injected a backdoor code written three hundred years in the future.
The NYPD's state-of-the-art firewall shattered like cheap glass. Erica bypassed the security protocols and plunged straight into the sealed case files from three years ago.
She located the file for the original host's DUI hit-and-run. The core evidence-the dashcam video-had been physically shredded and wiped from the cloud.
Cody gasped. He slapped both hands over his mouth. He saw the NYPD badge logo flash on the screen. He realized this crazy woman in a hospital gown was hacking a federal database.
"Hey... you can't do that, that's a felony-" Cody stuttered, taking a step back.
Erica didn't turn her head. She just shifted her eyes, pinning him with a glare so lethal it felt like a physical blow to his chest. Cody stopped breathing and glued his feet to the floor.
Erica activated the system's quantum fragment reconstruction tool.
The system scoured server caches and dead data blocks across the entire eastern seaboard, hunting for the microscopic magnetic imprints of the deleted video.
The Alienware's cooling fans screamed. They spun so fast they sounded like a jet engine taking off. A faint smell of burning plastic began to waft from the bottom vents.
The progress bar crawled across the black screen. 10%... 50%... 90%...
Ding.
A crystal-clear, three-minute video popped up on the screen. It automatically hit play.
The footage showed the night of the crash. It clearly showed Ivy Thorne, blackout drunk, behind the wheel. It showed the impact. Then, it showed Colten arriving on the scene, dragging Erica's unconscious body into the driver's seat, and wiping Ivy's fingerprints off the steering wheel with his shirt.
Erica stared at the screen. The air around her seemed to drop to freezing. Her chest tightened with a violent, murderous intent.
She rapidly compressed the file. Using military-grade encryption, she blasted the video to a secure, untraceable dark web email account she had just created.
The second the transfer hit 100%, a loud POP echoed from the laptop.
The motherboard fried. The screen went dead black. A wisp of gray smoke curled up from the keyboard.
Erica stood up. She brushed her hands together, completely unfazed.
"Transaction complete," Erica said to Cody, pointing at the smoking machine. "Go buy a new one."
Cody stared at his ruined, top-tier gaming rig. He wanted to cry. But looking at Erica's terrifying, straight-backed posture, he didn't dare utter a single syllable.
Erica turned and walked toward the hospital exit. She had her money. She had her nuclear evidence. It was time to get out of this sterile hellhole.
She pushed the glass door open.
Alistair Cromwell, the Hospital Director, stood directly in her path. He was flanked by two massive hospital security agents.
Alistair's eyes lit up. He looked at Erica like she was the Holy Grail. He spread his arms wide, physically blocking her exit.
