Manuel Gonzales - The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

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.