Cuffed
Cuffed

Nani adjusted her bio-regulator with a yawn. Slumped back in the chair, she kicked her boots up onto the table, trying to look casual despite the odd angle the cuffs forced her wrists into.

The detectives stomped in. In contrast to Detective Wyles’ humble elegance, Detective Baze looked like she dressed herself with a trash compactor. The two second delay Nani had programmed made her appear completely unphased.

“Nina Maria Anita Trevino?” Detective Baze glanced up from the tablet.

“If you like. Nani works too.”

“Nani, do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? You’re facing over six hundred counts of sim assault. Breaking into people’s nuero-networks and uploading a virus into their heads? Do you understand how serious this is?” Detective Wyles pinched his eyebrows together in concern, but it didn’t show at the corners of his mouth. Those were straight with disdain.

Nani just smiled. “News to me.”

“Don’t sound so cocky kid.” Detective Baze snorted.

Nani rolled her shoulders. “Holding a minor for sixteen hours without parental notification is against the law Detectives.”

Baze shrugged. “You were free to leave whenever you wanted before we arrested you and mirandized you, so you’ve really only been in custody for an hour, and we’ve left messages for your mother at her office, satellite site, the school and your home.”

Detective Wyles grunted. “Download the Consolidated Laws of New York and suddenly everyone’s a lawyer.”

“Bored.” Nani’s facial muscles twitched between a smirk and a yawn. “Good cop bad cop was so 20th century.”

Wyle’s eyes moved up and down, zooming in with mechanical accuracy on the muscles of her face. Slam! His fist hit the metal table. The complete lack of reaction from Nani percolated into a smile on his crafted features. “You’re on a delay.”

Nani grinned. “Clever boy.”

“Did you use Feng Wei’s protocol?”

Nani gave him nothing.

“Angus?”

Nothing.

“Jack Daniels.”

“That stuff rots your circuits.” Nani mused.

“Then what?”

“MacGyver.” Nani smiled a challenge, daring him to prove she didn’t modify her cortex system herself.

“Bullshit.” Wyles was shaking. “You’re what? Twelve? There’s no way in hell you modded your cortex and that of hundreds of teenage subway passengers yourself.”

Those were the magic words. It took the detectives sixteen hours, four minutes, twenty-two and eight tenths of a second to insult her intelligence directly. “Attorney.”

Wyles leaned in, mouth open, eyes narrow.

Baze rested her hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Not worth it. One word and she walks. Just be patient. We’ll get the mother to cooperate, download her audio-visual memory, catch her red handed. She’ll be on ice for a couple hundred, easy.”

Nani gave them a parting smile and waited for her com lock down to be released. The call to the attorney was two words. “Ville villecula.”

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