Coughing, because of the acrid smoke that filled the room, Asia crawled her way over to a broken window in order to get fresh air. Breathing easier she glanced back into the room. All of her equipment was gone. She glanced down at her burned palms at the five storage devices she'd pulled free just in time. At least she hoped so anyway.
All the devices held the same information in regards to the Code. Surely one of the five would still work. Better yet, if two worked she could send one to a member of her fellow Code Breaker brethren and the two of them could work at deciphering the data. It was a good plan, if she could find another one of her kind. She'd have to find new equipment somehow, even though it was illegal now to possess any technology that predated the Code.
She glanced down at the devices again. Could she really even now be holding the key to understanding and thus breaking the Code's grip on the world? A tinkle of breaking glass echoed from down the hall, which her acute hearing picked up on instantly.
They'd come for her!
She wasted no time. She stuffed the devices securely in a bag, which she swung the strap of over her head and shoulder and then she jumped out the broken window, as the smoking room behind her was blown apart by gunfire.
She fell down the face of the building the distance of one story to land on an old observation deck. She mounted the top of the railing her burned hands closing around the handles of the zip line apparatus above her head and she stifled a cry of pain, as she kicked off with both legs to go plunging downward toward the street on the old electric line that the makeshift zip line apparatus was attached to. This was her back way out of her hideout.
Bullets zinged by all around her and some intrepid or just plain desperate souls tried to follow her by looping their belts over the old electric line. As Asia's feet slammed into the sidewalk her hands were already digging through the refuse pulling out a pair of bolt cutters. She spread the jaws wide and jammed them around the heavy line and with a grunting heave of her small frame she snapped the line off.
The cut line snaked backward across the street under the weight of the following men, who now hurtled down the loose wire to smack deadingly off the street moments later. Asia didn't stay around for the finale though.
She ducked into a refuse strewn side alley just as a hand snaked out from the darkness to grip her by the upper arm.