Manuel Gonzales - The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

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.

Rose packed her bag — bag, not bags, despite her loud protests — and packed it quickly. No one was home, but she didn’t care — she didn’t think she cared — about saying good-bye. The Woman in Red and Henry waited for her in the kitchen. The three guys who’d ambushed her were out back smoking. With the Woman in Red in the house, everything looked impossibly dingier and grayer than ever before and all Rose wanted to do was leave.

After leaving her house, she had half-expected there to be a helicopter waiting for them but was too enthralled with the Woman in Red, with the idea of leaving behind her former self, to be disappointed that what they had waiting for them was, in fact, a rental car, an off-white Ford Taurus. She did her best to be not too disappointed again when where they whisked her off to turned out to be an abandoned office park just outside of Durham, and again when she discovered that not only were there other girls there, girls not much different from herself, but they had been here for months already, six girls, an even bunch, paired up as roommates, as training buddies, except for Rose, odd man out, who had a room all to herself. “Lucky you,” Henry said, as if he meant it.

There were two of everything in the room — two beds stuck out of opposite walls that could double as uncomfortable-looking couches, two sinks attached to the same wall on opposite sides of the door, two dressers and two closets next to those. In one of the dressers there were clothes for her, all the same black V-neck T-shirts, the same metal-gray cargo pants.

“Those are for training,” he told her. “You’ll get a uniform soon enough, and then when you’re not training, you can wear whatever you like.”

She didn’t have much else to wear. The Woman in Red hadn’t given her much time to pack. All she had with her, other than the clothes she’d been wearing when they’d come for her, was a yellow sundress — her favorite, though here, now, it seemed wildly out of place — and a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, her flip-flops, and a pair of wedge sandals.

Christ, what a spaz.

She pretended to look around the room. Henry handed her a folder.

It was strange being alone with him. She had been alone with him for an entire day, practically, and then he’d been truly a stranger, but that hadn’t felt strange at all. That had felt natural, and she wondered if he had been putting on some kind of act or if he had felt that, too. Later he would tell her, Both, and she would believe him. But now that she’d kissed him, and that he’d kissed her back, it seemed that neither of them knew what to do but to stand awkwardly in her small dorm room and talk about anything but what had happened before. He was focused on trying to make her feel special about the fact that she didn’t have a roommate and that she’d come there late, and she was focused on trying to figure out how to say something to him about that kiss, about the spur-of-the-moment quality of it, about the first-time-ever quality of it, and she was trying to figure out how to apologize for having done it but also make it clear that she wasn’t exactly sorry that it had happened and that she wouldn’t be opposed to a second, less spontaneous go-around, and how old was he anyway, and did he make it part of his business to kiss people almost immediately after jumping them and trying to strangle them to death, or was it just her, and sorry, too, about how she’d kicked him in the ribs all those times.