The Regional Office Is Under Attack!: A Novel (11 page)

Something—electricity, blue magicks?—crackled out of the director’s hand, the one that looked like it was covered by another hand, crackled in a way that reached out for Rose, for her face, for her neck. Like, there was this crackling fucking energy shooting out of the glove or hand or whatever and usually when you saw that shit in a movie or on a TV show, you knew, whoa, that crackling blue thing must be hot with some real fucking power, and sure there was some power there, she could feel it, but that wasn’t the whole story with that crackling blue energy, she could tell.

That crackling blue energy was a living thing.

It had a hunger she could sense. It had its own goddamn desires. To touch her face, to wrap itself around her pretty neck. Like, the energy was whispering shit into her ear, trying to bring her closer so it could caress her cheek, tickle the sensitive, ticklish parts of her.

It knew all about her.

It was seducing her.

It was mesmerizing and pretty fucking convincing, say what you will about its being the inanimate blue energy of a severed hand.

And it almost grabbed her.

But then training and her own instincts shook through, and she ducked, rolled under the director’s swinging arm, rolled out of the reach of the glove and its crackling blue wants, and was up on her feet behind the director.

Then before any more of that weird energy and its hocus-pocus let-me-nibble-your-ear shit could happen, she’d sweep the legs out from under the director, shove him forward, stand on his neck just hard enough and at just the right angle to snap it, and then leave for the rendezvous spot, and somehow, even with the delays, even with all that bullshit in the ventilation shaft and even with having to defeat spinning, twirling robots, she would find the rendezvous (and Henry) before Windsor did and fuck, why the hell not, she would grab Henry roughly by the collar of his shirt and pull him close to her face and whisper, “You guys suck at intel,” and then give him a kiss, a real kiss, Jesus, finally a real kiss.

Except that when she swept the director’s legs out from under him, he wasn’t there to be swept.

He was in the air, flipping up and over her in a long, lazy arc, graceful, like he’d just dismounted the uneven bars.

Where the fuck was the intel on this? That’s what Rose wanted to know.

The magicks in the ventilation shaft? All that shit waiting for her outside the director’s office? And now this?

“What the fuck?” she said.

And then he kicked her in the face.

Rose knew it was a drill, just a field exercise at Assassin Training Camp, but still, she couldn’t help but feel nervous. Nervous and sweaty. Although the sweat bit of it had less to do with her nerves and more to do with the uniform—a cotton and polyester blend that didn’t breathe for shit.

She looked down at Wendy, twenty feet below her, scouting around, seeking her out. This was going to hurt both of them, what she was about to do, drop down from her perch in that tree and land squarely on Wendy’s shoulders, but it was going to hurt Wendy a hell of a lot more. And maybe a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have cared how much it was going to hurt Wendy, would have maybe relished the fact that it was going to hurt Wendy, but today, she felt a little bad about it.

But not bad enough not to do it.

She dropped. She knocked Wendy out cold even before Wendy knew she’d been dropped on.

Next up, Colleen.

It was Henry, she knew. Henry, watching her, watching all of this play out. He was making her nervous.

God, what a spaz.

She meant herself too, of course. She’d gladly admit that she
was acting a total spaz, but Jesus. Sixteen- (almost seventeen!) year-old girls were supposed to be spazzes, weren’t they? Wasn’t that, like, some kind of God-given right?

What was Henry’s excuse? That’s what she wanted to know. What was his fucking excuse?

Sure, Henry might have been a martial arts expert, a demolitions expert, a hard-ass who pushed and pushed and pushed her and the other girls in their training and was damn good at it, too, but give him a kiss, a simple little kiss, and you totally fucked up his game.

Not that there was any kind of game, not that it wasn’t absolutely fucking clear to anyone with half a brain in her head that Henry was totally, madly, absolutely in love with the Woman in Red. But still. A girl can dream, can’t she? Not to mention, Windsor was all over that shit, especially now that Emma was off on some other mission, wasn’t set to come back until it was time to attack the Regional Office. And if nothing else, it was Rose’s responsibility, wasn’t it, to make sure Windsor didn’t fuck things up for Henry and Emma, even if that meant getting in the way of Windsor by trying to get closer to Henry and, well, Christ. Whatever.

No it didn’t make sense.

No she didn’t care.

Colleen was close. Rose could sense her. Too close for her to scramble back up the tree and get the drop on her the way she had Wendy. She stripped Wendy of her boots and heaved them high up into the trees. She was going to be pissed. Those were her favorite boots and it was cold out, but Rose couldn’t have Wendy waking
up and joining Colleen and the others. It was just a field exercise, yes, but it was a competition, too, and Rose wanted to win. For a lot of reasons, she wanted to win.

Still. Those were Wendy’s favorite boots.

“I’ll come back for them,” Rose said. “I’ll climb up there and get them for you, I promise,” she said.

Then she slipped away, back into the trees.

Four months ago, when she first arrived at the compound, she had been expecting things to be different.

She had been expecting it to be like
The Karate Kid,
maybe. Where she would be taken in by a lovable if befuddled and frail old man, who would, at a crucial point, reveal himself to be neither of those—befuddled, frail—but instead a subtle but powerful fighting machine and mentor, who would ultimately provide the love and wisdom of an otherwise absent parent. She would spend weeks performing a number of mundane, idiotic, useless tasks—sweeping the already swept floor, cleaning the pristine toilet bowl, making fried-egg sandwiches, which he would then refuse to eat (“I’m allergic”)—which would reveal themselves to be mysterious but powerful kung fu poses. Sweeping the Floor, Cleaning the Toilet, Frying the Egg.

Or if not that, then like
An Officer and a Gentleman,
but without the gentleman bit. Her pitted against the hard-ass drill sergeant. She’d be the spitfire who constantly mouthed off and who would ultimately reveal herself to be pitted against her inner demons, not the drill sergeant at all, who would prove herself foolhardy but full of bravado, and in the process develop a bond with her fellow trainees, becoming in their eyes an example of what not
to do, of how not to act, but also, in the end, by the end of boot camp or whatever this place was, becoming for them, also, an example of a hard battle fought and won with difficulty, tenacity, and through her indomitable spirit and unfathomable skill.

Hell. She would have taken
The Parent Trap,
even. Warring factions of girls at summer camp who were so similar in nature and looks, strengths and weaknesses, all of them hemmed in by a male-dominated world that strove to limit their power and strength, that their first instinct was to undermine the force they would have become if only they worked together, but finally they would be brought together by the threat of some other Big Bad outside of themselves—maybe something more threatening than a really bad thunderstorm, and more like a drug-dealing camp counselor or something, but whatever.

That.

She would have been happy to have experienced that upon her arrival at the compound.

What she hadn’t expected, though, and what she couldn’t quite handle, was the sense of overwhelming indifference that had been waiting for her when she arrived.

She had been the last girl recruited and no one had been expecting her and they didn’t seem to care that she was there.

But then somebody must’ve cared, somebody must’ve wanted her since they’d come to her, had broken into her mother’s house, had recruited her to the team.

The Woman in Red—her name was Emma but for a while Rose could only think of her as the Woman in Red—apologized for how long it had taken for her to pick Rose up, as if Rose had
been waiting for someone to come get her at the bus station or the airport, bags in hand. She had only learned about Rose very recently, she explained. The Oracles, she said. Her weak connection to them, not to mention the physical distance and all the protective charms Oyemi had put in place, she said. All of it made the system, which was already imperfect and glitchy, practically impossible to manage. It was like driving at night through heavy fog with nothing but more heavy fog as your headlights, she told Rose.

“If you know what I mean,” the Woman in Red said.

Rose had no idea what she meant or what she was talking about, but at the time, she didn’t care. She just nodded and smiled. She knew things were about to change, her life was about to change, and she didn’t want to risk fucking that up by asking questions.

“There’s not a lot of time left,” Emma said with a sad smile. Time for what, Rose didn’t ask. “But you’ll do splendid. I just know you will.” Splendid at what, Rose again didn’t ask.

Then, in Rose’s mother’s living room, Emma introduced her to Henry, formally introduced them. “This is Henry,” she said. “Henry, this is Rose,” she said. She said all of this as if Rose and Henry had never met, hadn’t just moments ago altercated the way they had altercated, then kissed the way they had kissed.

“Henry’s in charge of training and orientation,” the Woman in Red said. “He’ll take good care of you, I know.” Then she smiled and said to Henry, “Won’t you, Henry?” She said this in the way that Rose’s mother would tell her, Best behavior, Rose, whenever they went to church, which was hardly ever, which was why she never knew how to behave at church, which was why she
always failed the best-behavior test, and she wondered if Henry would do the same.

She hoped he might.

“She’s in good hands,” Henry said, and then shook his head and said, “You know what I mean.”

“Quite,” Emma said. Then she took Rose’s hand again and they whisked her off.

Rose saw the director’s kick coming, or Spidey-sensed it. She didn’t like to spend too much time trying to figure out what was training, what was mystical properties of herself, and anyway, did it even matter? She was moving, that was the point, moving backward even as his foot connected (with her chin instead of her nose, and another half second later, she would have back-bended clean out of the way, but whatever). She was thrown back into her own flip but not as hard as she could have been thrown, and jarred by this kick—way more than she would have expected to be by this overweight, soft-chinned desk jockey—but not so jarred she couldn’t keep her wits about her enough to turn in the air and land on her feet.

“Do you like it?” he asked, holding the hand within a hand in front of his face, looking at it as if he were a little surprised, too, at how badass the glove was turning out to be. Then he flipped his wrist at her, like he was throwing an imaginary Frisbee to her, and blue bolts shot out of the fingertips.

She jumped out of the way. Just.

“It was a gift, you know. From the woman who sent you,” he said.

So he knew, she thought. Knew who’d sent her, probably knew
they were coming for him, had known for how long? Days? Weeks? The whole fucking time?

Henry and Emma were going to get a fucking earful.

“Funny she didn’t warn you about it,” he said. “Maybe she forgot I had it.” A flick of his wrist, a bolt of lightning. “Maybe she forgot about me altogether. What was it? Did one of the Oracles tell her? Remind her I was here? Is that why they’ve been so quiet? They’ve known all along and she’s been waiting? Biding her time?”

She rolled herself to his desk, not sure what she would find there to help her defeat a crazed lunatic who had been waiting for her and who had a magical, all-powerful glove made out of someone else’s hand and that gave him superpowers, but it beat sitting around dodging bolts of lightning.

“The Hand of Raines,” he said as he arced more lightning bolts at her, scorching the desk and the air around her. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. Maybe not. Top secret, you know. When Gemini finally destroyed the warlock Harold Raines, all that was left was his right hand.” He stopped and looked at the glove and then craned his neck to see if he could see Rose hiding behind his desk. “Oyemi magicked it—who knows how—turned it into a glove.” He clenched the fist and then closed his eyes and then, for a moment, for two moments, floated inches off the floor. Then he dropped and opened his eyes and nodded his head. “I was supposed to test it out with her, you know. The two of us, together. Oyemi and me. Like always.”

Rose crouched and tested the weight of the desk and then sprung up, lifting the desk up (use your legs, not your back) and
flipping it log-roll style right at the director’s head. He karate-chopped it, the way you karate-chop something in a cartoon, the way that would never really work in real life, but that gloved hand just sizzled through wood, solid oak or cherry, she didn’t know, but a heavy fucker of a desk, she knew that much. The desk sliced into two pieces, fell harmlessly to the floor on either side of the director, and now she didn’t have any good cover.

Fuck.

“But, you know how it goes,” he said. “Or maybe you don’t.” He took a step toward her and then another. Unhurried. Unconcerned.

“She got so busy and then she had her Oracles and then they all moved out of the city, her and her Oracles and a few others she brought with her to her compound in the Catskills.” He stopped and shook his head and sighed. Then he looked right at Rose, looked at her as if they were at a Starbucks, catching up over a latte, looked in her eye and gave her half a smile and said, “I didn’t even know where it was for the first six months she was out there.”

None of this made any sense to Rose but she didn’t care all that much, either. All she could figure was that maybe he thought someone else had sent her, which, fine, what did she care. All that mattered was getting herself out of this, and if he wanted to go on and on about the woman who gave him this glove instead of using the glove and then writing a long, emotional blog post about it, fine with her.

For every step he took forward, she took one back, thinking that this would buy her a little time, that he wouldn’t really notice
anyway. He was standing between her and the door, but if worse came to worst, she could make her own door, get out of the immediate vicinity of this loon, and open the fight up, give herself breathing room, space to work, to improvise. This office was just too cramped.

Step, step. Step, step.

“So, fine, I understand, we were both busy,” he said. “We were running the Regional Office, I get that, but”—he shook his head—“there was something else, too, I don’t know, some distance between us. You know? Not that there wasn’t. Not that we didn’t.” He paused. He sighed. “We’ve both changed, haven’t we? But this, this seemed more than just normal growing apart.” He had been walking toward her but not looking at her, had been looking at his hands or his feet, had been distracted by his own story, his own memories, but then he looked at her and noticed where he was, what he was supposed to be doing, what she had been doing. “No, no, no. Stop. Stop, just. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t think I’m an idiot.”

“A distance,” she said. “I’ve had that, like, with my best friends from school,” she said.

“Don’t patronize me,” he said, and then he charged at her.

She kicked him, aiming for his nuts because, well, desperate times, etc., but he grabbed her foot, with the blue-crackling magical fire-hand, grabbed her foot and threw her up and over and God that burned, more than she could have imagined a burning sensation burning, and she flipped ass over head, and she thought, briefly, everything now flitting through her mind so damn briefly, about kids she remembered from when she was a kid. Kids with
their dads at the beach or at the one pool in her shitty hometown, whose fathers would throw them high into the air, make them do these spectacular flips and falls off knees or shoulders or chests, and how jealous she had been watching those kids fly into the air and land graceless in the water, splashing and giggling and asking for more, for again, and how she wished she had some water right below her to land gracelessly into, instead of the cold, marble floor of the director’s office, or worse yet, his waiting arms—how the hell did he move under her so damn quick? She made an adjustment, which she knew was going to hurt, was going to hurt more than just a little, but less than if she let him catch her however he wanted. She wrenched control of herself midair and aimed herself at the director’s head, her fist outstretched, one leg stretched back, the other leg knee up, her other fist cocked and at the ready at her hip, like she was Supergirl, flying off to save the day, but aimed right at the director’s head knowing full well that he would grab that fist, what else could he do, grab it with the Hand of Pains or whatever he’d called his glove, and he did and it burned—fuck it burned—but he could only grab one arm at a time, right?

No matter what else the glove could do, it couldn’t grab more than one part of her at a time.

So while he had her by her wrist, burning the shit out of it, and while the burning pain leapt up her wrist and her arm, like it was shimmying up through her veins, heading, she was sure of it, toward her head and her heart, she punched him good on the bridge of his nose with her other fist, punched him as hard as she could punch, which was pretty fucking hard, she knew, having
once punched an old VW Beetle onto its side after a particularly unfun afternoon of Assassin Training Camp. A VW Beetle she had assumed was Windsor’s—because of course Windsor would drive a fucking canary-yellow classic Bug—except it wasn’t hers, it wasn’t any of the girls’ at camp, but regardless: Her punch was a mighty fucking punch.

With that mighty fucking punch, then, she knocked this guy on the bridge of his nose, came down on him like her fist was the Hammer of Thor.

The whole of him shuddered. His legs creaked. The gloved hand let go of her arm, and she fell, and he sat down hard on his ass.

Finally. Thank God. At least a punch worked, at least something.

She sagged down to the floor herself and closed her eyes a second, just a second. That crackling blue light was no joke, man. Wisps of smoke curled up off her arms and her shoulders; she could smell them. She took deep breaths. She willed her body to stitch itself back in place as best it could. She stood herself up and opened her eyes again only just in time to see the director’s gloved fist, or fisted fist, whatever, swinging right for her own face. She moved left. He clipped her ear, singed her hair, melted the earring she was wearing to her earlobe. She spun and kicked at him and maybe that punch had shuddered him enough to throw his head off play because he wasn’t soaring through the air this time and her boot connected with his gut. He oofed and flew backward across the room and smashed into the bookshelf against the far wall, and they swayed, and books fell from the shelves, and the shelves
swayed some more and she was waiting, holding her breath, waiting for them to crash down on him, do her dirty work for her, or at least slow him down enough that she could do her own damn dirty work just a little easier, but the shelves settled and held and the director pulled himself back up.

And no more close-quarters hand-to-hand combat for him, no sir.

He flipped his wrist and lightning flashed.