Manuel Gonzales - The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

“Whatever you do, don’t call her by her name,” she said. “Her former name.”

She closed her eyes and let her heavy head fall heavily into her shaking hands.

“She’s in. She’s agreed to come on board, to be part of our plans,” she said.

With great effort, Oyemi pulled her head back up to look at the girl or maybe to look past her. Maybe she was looking at what Nell represented, the future that was even then being laid out before her because of this girl, or maybe she was looking at the same thing the girl was looking at, which seemed to be nothing and everything, and then she let out a long, ragged breath.

“She’s the first,” Oyemi said. “The first Oracle.”

And then she collapsed.

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.