The resistance was just what she’d expected. She’d battered through the IC, the frame smoking her from one crucial attack, and then she’d downloaded the virus into the CPU. She was thinking that was the safest bet when the thing suddenly appeared in the glowing world of cyberspace as a reptilian worm with the head of a moray eel, a really evil-looking beast. It snarled at her, spat hatred, and began gorging itself on subsystems. The IC began to weaken around her, its force diminishing as it faded and dislocated, fragmenting in a burst of nothingness.