The Regional Office Is Under Attack!: A Novel (7 page)

“My mother disappeared,” Sarah had told Mr. Niles at that first meeting, even though clearly he would have known this, since they had found her, they had invited her to their offices promising information on her mother’s disappearance.

Still. Sarah believed in coming right to the point. People could be so awkward the way they danced around the topic of her mother.

“She disappeared when I was eight.”

Mr. Niles had offered Sarah his hand and had led her off the elevator into an open office thrumming with activity. He’d introduced himself and hadn’t bothered with the unnecessary
You must be Sarah
that she had expected. He’d offered her something to drink, something to eat, and when she had refused both, had taken her to his office, and that was where they were talking now.

Mr. Niles, who had short black hair that would have been curly if he’d let it grow out, and a soft, round face, and very little chin to speak of, smiled at her and told her, almost gently, “I know.”

Sarah didn’t know what to say to that so she didn’t say anything. Mr. Niles tented his hands together and pressed the tips of his index fingers to the tip of his nose. He tilted back in his office
chair and regarded Sarah with what Sarah took to be some skepticism.

“I know that she was abducted,” he said, finally, “and I know a lot more than that.” He dropped his hands into his lap and leaned forward in his chair and said, “What I don’t know is if you’re ready.”

“Ready?” she asked.

“For the truth. About your mother. And about you.”

She didn’t know what truth there would be for her to find out about herself, but she didn’t know why the Regional Office would have contacted her in the first place if Mr. Niles hadn’t thought she was ready to learn what they knew about her mother. That was the whole reason she had come.

It was strange, though, being here, telling Mr. Niles the small piece of her story, waiting to hear what he had to say. Strange because she had long ago stopped killing herself trying to puzzle out what had happened to her mother. After her mother had disappeared and she had gone to live with her aunt, Sarah hadn’t known what had happened to her mother, not even in the abstract. She only knew that her mother was gone, and that she missed her, and that she was sad because of this, but the other aspects of her life hadn’t changed very much. She still had to go to school, still had to wake up in the mornings and go to bed at night at the same specified times. She still liked the same foods—not many of them—and still had the same friends—again, not many of them. What it meant that her mother was gone wouldn’t occur to her until she was older, which was when she started to think seriously
about the things that might’ve happened to her mother. And as a teenager, Sarah tortured herself—that’s how Sarah liked to think of it—with all the possibilities. From: Her mother took an honest look at what the next ten to twelve years held in store for her alone in the city with a daughter she didn’t fully understand and simply walked out, wiping her hands clean of that potential disaster, to: She was nabbed on the way home, forced to live in a basement in a building two doors down or the next block over, a sex slave, or worse. Sarah couldn’t imagine what worse would look like, could only imagine that there could be worse.

There could always be worse.

She didn’t know what Mr. Niles would tell her, or what would happen after that, but what she knew was that she was ready.

Ready for something, ready for anything, ready to move on, ready for the truth.

“I’m ready,” she said. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, and this made Mr. Niles smile, maybe because he admired her confidence or maybe because he knew she was wrong.

Sarah brewed a pot of coffee.

It was nice being in the office before anyone else. It was quiet, true, but that wasn’t what was so nice about it. Late at night, after everyone else had gone home, it was quiet then, too. No. This was different. Desks were still cluttered and the mail room was still a mess and someone had left a dirty coffee mug and plate in the kitchen sink, but still, there seemed to be something fresh and untouched about the office. This early and as empty as it was, the office contained a well, or a bubble, a fragile bubble of potential for great work to be done, grand and fantastic deeds to be accomplished. That was it. That was the difference. By the end of any day, of every day, it seemed, all the day’s potential had been undone by phone calls and meetings, e-mails and paperwork.

Plus, this early, with no one around, she could get to work without everyone scrambling to her with their problems, most of which weren’t even her responsibility. She wasn’t the office manager or the intern coordinator or the director of outreach or assistant to the regional manager. She worked directly for Mr. Niles, was his go-to, had been so almost from her first day working here, but without fail, every single day someone would come to her with some stupid question about toner cartridges or to complain about
that idiot intern Jacob, or to hand her a list of supplies the office had run out of. But whatever. Let those nitwits send her e-mails about resetting their voice mail passwords; she didn’t care. Not today. Today and in the coming weeks, she would be too busy saving their goddamn asses, so thank God no one else was around.

She poured milk into her coffee and looked out over the empty cubicles and told herself she would make a habit of this again—once this attack was thwarted—of coming in early, maybe not every day, but often.

Often enough.

But for now: the attack.

It wasn’t explicit, the warning she had received, if that was what it had been.

The envelope had contained a letter, an offer letter of sorts. Someone trying to lure her away from the Regional Office. Not sent, though, from any kind of headhunter firm—not that there were many headhunter firms trafficking in the world inhabited by organizations like the Regional Office, but there were a few, and this hadn’t been sent from any of them. This had been sent, or delivered, rather, from the organization itself. She didn’t know which. Whoever had sent the offer hadn’t specified.

And there was information, about the Regional Office, about Mr. Niles, about her arm. Information that had made her mad, violently and destructively mad. Information clearly, blatantly false. Damning and cruel, intended, she was sure, to turn her against the people she had come to think so highly of, to work so hard for, trust with her life and, quite literally, her limb.

Not that her anger had passed but had been refocused. She
had curbed her impulses and trained her anger on making whoever left her that envelope pay and pay dearly.

The question she had to answer, then, was: who?

By the time anyone else showed up at the office, Sarah had narrowed the list of suspects down to six. Six organizations or conglomerations or evil confederations or anarchist splinter groups with a) any vested interest in the total destruction of the Regional Office, b) the logistical and mystical support and backing and training and time to carry out such an attack, and c) as her aunt would have dubbed it, the brass fucking balls to even think of such an attack.

Six of them. On a spreadsheet. Leadership outlined, strengths and weaknesses enumerated, potential readiness for such an assault, earliest timeline for such an attack. That’s as far as Sarah had gotten when she heard, “Wow, you’re here early.”

It was Wendy. Thank God it was Wendy and not that idiot Jacob.

If she was going to deal with one of the interns this morning of all mornings, better it be Wendy.

She could not handle Jacob right now.

“Check your tablet, I sent you a spreadsheet just a minute—”

“Yeah, I got it, just now,” Wendy said, scrolling through the names. “This year’s Christmas card list?”

Sarah was scanning the building schematics for the Regional Office on her computer, looking for weak points, points of entry, defense positions, and, frankly, she didn’t have time for jokes. She shook her head. “The Regional Office is under attack,” she said. “Or will be, soon, quite possibly very soon, so, if you don’t mind.”

Wendy smiled and then just as quickly stopped smiling. “Wait, what? Are you kidding?” Sarah stopped scrolling through the schematics to pause long enough to throw Wendy a look. “I mean, right, you’re not the jokiest person I know, but, really? We’re under attack? Guns a-blazing attack?”

“Minus the guns, yes, we’re under attack, or I’m pretty sure we will be.” She paused. “Actually, there might be guns.”

“Cool,” Wendy said, and then so she wouldn’t get a second look or worse, said, “I mean, not cool as in ‘awesome,’ but.” She paused. “How very interesting.” She paused again. “So, is this new intel from one of the Ops?” she asked. “Or something from the Oracles?”

“Look at the list, will you?” Sarah said, ignoring her questions, not yet ready to mention to anyone else the letter on her door, the information inside it. “Keep it between you and me for now. I would prefer not to have people in a panic all day, and maybe if we work real hard at it, we can stop it before it becomes too interesting. Hmm?”

“Oh. Stop it?”

Sarah sighed, spun in her chair to look at Wendy, to make sure it was Wendy and not, who knew, Jacob in a Wendy outfit. “I’m sorry, but are you feeling okay? Yeah, I think we can all agree that we should stop the attack. Right? Stop it?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, it’s just that, well, you said we were under attack and I thought you meant, like, right now, that we were in the middle of it, that’s all.” Wendy cleared her throat. “Stop it, definitely. Stop the attack
before
it happens. That’s definitely what we should do.”

“Great. Glad we’re all caught up. The names, please?” Sarah went back to the drawings. What was she missing, what had she missed, where were the flaws? She wanted it all narrowed down, the attack scenario and her counterattack options worked up and presentable before the end of the day, but there was something missing. She couldn’t pinpoint what, but there was something. She could sense it.

Wendy hadn’t moved. Sarah stopped and took a deep breath and rubbed one of her eyes with her thumb. “What, Wendy?”

“Should we tell Mr. Niles?”

“How do you know I haven’t told him already?”

“Right, sorry. What did Mr. Niles say?”

Sarah’s shoulders slumped. She couldn’t feel the weight of her mechanical arm, that’s how it had been designed, but this morning, she could feel the weight of it pulling her down, she swore she could.

“We’ll tell him when we have something more concrete, how about that? We don’t . . . storm into his office with six possible attackers and a probable attack.” Wendy was nodding. “The list, Wendy? Can you focus on the list, please, and help me figure this out?”

“Right, boss,” Wendy said. “I’ll run probability reports for each name, create three—no, five—possible counterstrategies for each, get them to you by . . . what time is it now?”

Sarah checked the clock. It was almost eight. How had it gotten to be almost eight? Sarah stared at the clock.

“Whatever,” Wendy said. “I’ll have it all to you before ten?”

Relieved that Wendy was acting like Wendy again, Sarah smiled.
“Perfect, thanks.” Wendy smiled back, was about to leave when Sarah said, “Oh, and”—she sighed, God, why couldn’t she stop sighing—“I should probably bring Jasmine in on this. What time does she come in today?”

Wendy cocked her head not unlike a spaniel. “Oh, nine I guess?” she said.

“Never mind. I’ll look it up,” Sarah said. Wendy was usually on top of this shit, and Sarah didn’t really have time or patience for her to come down with a case of the “interns,” but whatever. She’d figure it out herself.

Wendy moved closer to Sarah, reached over her shoulder for Sarah’s tablet. “Here,” she said. “You’re super busy. I can look it up for you, put her on your schedule.”

Sarah held her tablet firm. “It’s fine, Wendy, Jesus. I can take care of it.”

She scrolled through the schedule. It took her a moment to realize something was wrong and another moment for her to recognize what that something wrong was. Wendy was still leaning over her and then she felt Wendy stand up, step one or two steps back.

Jasmine wasn’t there. On the schedule. That was what was wrong. She was on a mission. Sarah didn’t recognize the mission, but more surprising even than that—which was pretty damn surprising since Sarah approved and cleared every mission—was how no one else was on the schedule either. How every one of their girls was also on a mission. Against all protocol, every single Operative was gone, off-site, and in Jasmine’s case, off-dimension.

“What the hell is going on?” Sarah said.

A creeping, slow-moving sense of what was going on crept and slowly moved into the pit of Sarah, and she was about to say, Jesus, we’re too late, it’s today, but then the client elevator dinged and that ding was followed by voices, unfamiliar, gruff voices, and those voices were followed by screams, which were followed then by more voices and gunshots and then more screams, and so, really, Sarah was too late to say even that.

The day Sarah’s mother disappeared (was abducted), she forgot to pack Sarah a school lunch. She promised Sarah she’d bring it to school before lunch, that she’d bring it right away, and later Sarah wondered if her mother had been on her way to bring that lunch to school when she was taken, or if she’d simply forgotten about the lunch altogether, which had happened before. Sarah always hoped that her mother forgot about the lunch a second time and was tootling around in their apartment or somewhere in the city, doing something silly and unrelated to Sarah or Sarah’s school or Sarah’s well-being, when she was nabbed.

Sarah would have been happy to know, for instance, that her mother had gotten sidetracked even on her way home from dropping Sarah off at school. That she had walked by a Duane Reade and remembered that her hair dryer had broken and that she wanted a new one, and that while in Duane Reade, she remembered other things she needed to get—makeup, a humidifier, Q-tips—and that she was grabbed as she was walking out of the store.

Sarah loved her mother and loved it when her mother did things that were motherly, which she didn’t do too often, but Sarah would have preferred it if her mother had been taken away
from her while doing something frivolous or ordinary, and not in one of the rare moments she exhibited any kind of maternal instincts.

Sarah’s mother never came back, in any case, and Sarah’s teacher shared some of her lunch with Sarah when it was clear there wouldn’t be a lunch. She ate half an apple and half a ham sandwich, drank half a Tab. The rest of the day was normal. The entire day, in fact, felt normal. Her mother’s forgetting her lunch—they were running late and her mother had almost forgotten her own shoes—the two of them running the last two blocks together, Sarah spacing out during most of the school day, running around the playground by herself, crossing two bars on the monkey bars before falling off, and her mother running late to pick her up from school. These all pointed to any ordinary day.

But then her mother was really late.

And then her mother was so late that the receptionist called the only other number on file, which was Sarah’s aunt’s number, because she’d already called Sarah’s house four times and the receptionist had kids of her own, you know, and couldn’t spend the whole night waiting there with Sarah.

“I wonder what happened to that mother of yours,” her aunt said as they walked hand in hand to the subway. Sarah didn’t mind at the time. She didn’t suspect, in other words, that anything had gone wrong, and plus her mother never let her hold hands this long because it made their hands sweaty and Sarah’s mother didn’t like sweaty hands, so Sarah shrugged and squeezed her aunt’s hand quickly and her aunt squeezed back.

They picked up pizza on the way to her aunt’s apartment. Her
aunt let her watch television while she called around looking for Sarah’s mother. She gave Sarah a bath and gave her a T-shirt to wear as pajamas, too big and wonderfully soft and thin, and then she read to Sarah from
A Wrinkle in Time
—“One of my favorites when I was a girl”—and then she tucked Sarah into her big, fluffy bed and told her, “In the morning, guess what? You’ll wake up in your own bed!” And as she fell asleep, Sarah thought to herself that she wouldn’t be upset if she didn’t wake up in her own bed, that it would be just fine, thank you very much, to wake up in her aunt’s bed, which felt clean and lovely, but then she woke up and it was the morning and she was still at her aunt’s, and she was surprised by how much this upset her.

Her aunt took a day off work and took Sarah to school and picked her up again in the afternoon, and the rest of the afternoon and that night, her aunt told Sarah things like, “She’s probably just with some friends in the city and lost track of everything,” and, “You know how your mother can be sometimes, like she’s on a different planet,” which was true, or had been true when her mother had been a younger woman. As a girl and into her teens, Sarah’s mother had the habit of disappearing from the house for a day or two, crashing on the couches of friends in the city or in Brooklyn, or not sleeping at all, sitting in diners or cafés with friends or people she had just met, and then coming home to any number of punishments, which didn’t bother her at all because she hadn’t been a rebellious girl, just forgetful and thoughtless. When she had become pregnant with Sarah—she hadn’t the slightest idea who the father was, or else convincingly pretended she hadn’t—she’d changed, or if nothing else, she had
stopped leaving the house and forgetting to come back, at least until now.

Another night passed, and then it was Saturday and there was no school, and her aunt said, “Hey, do you want to go to Coney Island today?” and Sarah said, “Sure,” even though what she really wanted was to go home and for her mother to come back. But she didn’t want to upset her aunt, who seemed more than upset enough, and she didn’t want to say what was on her own mind, either, as she would only upset herself by saying out loud the thing she wanted to do but couldn’t do. And so, fine, she would go to Coney Island with her aunt, except her aunt stayed home and Sarah went with a friend of her aunt’s who also had kids, three of them, the oldest four years younger than Sarah, and for most of the day, Sarah watched her aunt’s friend yell at her kids or caught her aunt’s friend staring at her with a strange, sad, pitying look in her eye.

On Sunday, her aunt bought cookies and pizzas and cake and popcorn and closed the blinds and turned her apartment as dark as she could and ran movie after movie after movie, Sarah’s favorites, which weren’t many and which were mostly her favorites because they were the ones she had at home—
Labyrinth
and
Top Gun
and
Time Bandits
. When they ran out of movies, Sarah’s aunt kept the apartment dark and the popcorn popped and they sat and watched whatever was on TV, and then, on Monday, the police came over. After that, a man and a woman from CPS came to her aunt’s house, and after that, Sarah’s aunt took her back to her mom’s apartment, where they packed her clothes and her toys up, and Sarah asked her aunt if they couldn’t just stay there.
Sarah’s aunt told her, “Maybe, maybe we will, maybe we’ll come back here and stay until your mother comes back,” but they never did. One day while she was at school, her aunt moved what she could from Sarah’s old apartment and sold the rest and what she didn’t sell was left on the curb. And then time passed and Sarah changed and while she didn’t know it, her mother changed, too, which was why when Sarah was older and she saw her mother week after week, year after year, she never once knew they’d been brought back together.