“Got a delivery for this room,” Y.T. says.
“You’re Y.T.?” says the head Fed, who’s sitting behind the desk.
“You’re not supposed to know my name,” Y.T. says. “How did you know my name?”
“I recognized you,” the head Fed says. “I know your mother.”
Y.T. does not believe him. But these Feds have all kinds of ways of finding out stuff.
“Do you have any relatives in Afghanistan?” she says.
The guys all look back and forth at each other, like, did you understand the chick? But it’s not a sentence that is intended to be understood. Actually, Y.T. has all kinds of voice recognition ware in her coverall and in her plank. When she says, “Do you have any relatives in Afghanistan?” that’s like a code phrase, it tells all of her spook gear to get ready, shake itself down, check itself out, prick up its electronic ears.
“You want this envelope or not?” she says.
“I’ll take it,” the head Fed says, standing up and holding out one hand.
Y.T. walks into the middle of the room and hands him the envelope. But instead of taking it, he lunges out at the last minute and grabs her forearm.
She sees an open handcuff in his other hand. He brings it out and snaps it down on her wrist so it tightens and locks shut over the cuff of her coverall.
“I’m sorry to do this, Y.T., but I have to place you under arrest,” he’s saying.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Y.T. is saying. She’s holding her free arm back away from the desk so he can’t cuff her wrists together, but one of the other Feds grabs her by the free wrist, so now she’s stretched out like a tightrope between the two big Feds.
“You guys are dead,” she says.
All the guys smile, like they enjoy a chick with some spunk.
“You guys are dead,” she says a second time.
This is the key phrase that all of her ware is waiting to hear. When she says it the second time, all the self-defense stuff comes on, which means that among other things, a few thousand volts of radio-frequency electrical power suddenly flood through the outsides of her cuffs.
The head Fed behind the desk blurts out a grunt from way down in his stomach. He flies back away from her, his entire right side jerking spastically, trips over his own chair, and sprawls back into the wall, smacking his head on the marble windowsill. The jerk who’s yanking on her other arm stretches out like he’s on an invisible rack, accidentally slapping one of the other guys in the face, giving that guy a nice dose of juice to the head. Both of them hit the floor like a sack of rabid cats. There’s only one of these guys left, and he’s reaching under his jacket for something. She takes one step toward him, swings her arm around, and the end of the loose manacle strokes him in the neck. Just a caress, but it might as well be a two-handed blow from Satan’s electric ax handle. That funky juice runs all up and down his spine, and suddenly, he’s sprawled across a couple of shitty old wooden chairs and his pistol is rotating on the floor like the spinner in a children’s game.
She flexes her wrist in a particular way, and the bundy stunner drops down her sleeve and into her hand. The manacle swinging from the other hand will have a similar efffect on that side. She also pulls out the can of Liquid Knuckles, pops the lid, sets the spray nozzle on wide angle.
One of the Fed creeps is nice enough to open the office door for her. He comes into the room with his gun already drawn, backed up by half a dozen other guys who’ve flocked here from the office pool, and she just lets them have it with the Liquid Knuckles. Whoosh, it’s like bug spray. The sound of bodies hitting the floor is like a bass drum roll. She finds that her skateboard has no problem rolling across their prone bodies, and then she’s out into the office pool. These guys are converging from all sides, there’s an incredible number of them, she just keeps holding that button down, pointed straight ahead, digging at the floor with her foot, building up speed. The Liquid Knuckles act like a chemical flying wedge, she’s skating out of there on a carpet of bodies. Some of the Feds are agile enough to dart in from behind and try to get her that way, but she’s ready with the bundy stunner, which turns their nervous systems into coils of hot barbed wire for a few minutes but isn’t supposed to have any other effects.
She’s made it about three-quarters of he way across the office when the Liquid Knuckles runs out. But it still works for a second or two because people are afraid of it, keep diving out of the way even though there’s nothing coming out. Then a couple of them figure it out, make the mistake of trying to grab her by the wrists. She gets one of them with the bundy stunner and the other with the electric manacle. Then boom through the door and she’s out into the stairwell, leaving four dozen casualties in her wake. Serves them right, they didn’t even try to arrest her in a gentlemanly way.
To a man on foot, stairs are a hindrance. But to the smartwheels, they just look like a forty-five-degree angle ramp. It’s a little choppy, especially when she’s down to about the second floor and is going way too fast, but it’s definitely doable.