Manuel Gonzales - The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

“No one respects me,” Sarah told Mr. Niles, shortly after he’d appointed her his right-hand man, no pun intended.

“They will,” he’d said. “Give it time,” he’d said. “Show them the you I know, and they will fall in line, and they will respect you,” he’d said.

Hearing this, she’d wondered, in the far back of her mind, But will they like me?

And slightly farther back than that she’d wondered, Who is the real me?

Because she didn’t know. Before, she’d been a certain kind of person — who went to college, whose childhood had been scarred by personal tragedy — and after that, she’d become a different sort of person, the kind of person who possessed a mechanical arm and had been given the opportunity to exact formidable vengeance on those who’d caused her childhood tragedy.

But now, and outside of that, who was she?

Not that it mattered. For all the efforts she made to be the kind of boss that would make them feel respect, or awe, or fearful regard, the people who worked for her, the people she was in charge of, didn’t fall in line, respect her, or like her.

Except Henry.

Henry seemed to like her, or to not dislike her, anyway. They acted like friends, or close acquaintances.

He listened to her, that is, when it seemed that Mr. Niles had stopped.

“No one respects me,” she would tell Henry over lunch or a drink. “No one likes me.”

And he would take a bite of salad or a sip of beer and say, “You’re kind of an asshole sometimes.” Or he would say, “You’re an easy target.”

“They act like I’m an office manager,” she would tell him. “They tell me when the copier needs new toner. Or when they need new Post-it notes. Or when the water cooler bottle needs to be changed. Or when the interns fuck up. They tell me these things and then walk away and then laugh, I can hear them laugh. All those nine-to-fivers, laughing at me.”

And inevitably, he’d say: “You’re not the office manager?” Or, “Wait, who is the office manager?”

And every time, even though she knew what he was doing, she’d say: “Carol. Carol’s the fucking office manager.”

And he’d laugh and he’d tell her, “See? You’re too sensitive,” or, “They know this pisses you off,” or, “You have to ignore it,” or, “You can’t let them get to you.”

Easy enough for Henry to say, though. People liked Henry. People waited for Henry to speak before offering their own opinions, which often closely mirrored Henry’s. They went to him for advice about things he knew nothing about and listened to him even more attentively when he claimed — truthfully — that he didn’t have the answers.

Henry never had to ignore the things she couldn’t ignore. These jokes and pranks and personal slights always got to her. And why shouldn’t they have? She’d laid waste to an entire secret black-ops organization that had been terrorizing the Western world for going on thirty years. When a few office drones called her into the break room because they couldn’t open a jar of pickles and they needed her with her mechanical arm to loosen the top up for them, except that the top had already been loosened, or manipulated in such a way that by giving it a good twist, the whole jar exploded, throwing pickle juice all over her and the floor and the walls and the ceiling, even though she’d used her nonmechanical arm against this very eventuality, when a thing like that happened, she couldn’t very well let them get away with that.

She had pickle juice in her hair for fuck’s sake.

Henry had told her to laugh it off, to let it go, that to address it only fueled it.

But as far as she could see, Henry wasn’t the one with pickle juice in his hair.

The truth of the matter was, Sarah wouldn’t have cared as much about the nine-to-fivers (“They know you call them that,” Henry had told her) if she’d had a better track record with the Operatives, who were, in her own mind, more closely aligned with her and her hybrid position at the office.

Sarah met her first Operative for the Regional Office a month after she recovered from obtaining a new arm. Before then, Mr. Niles had kept Sarah mostly to himself and to the doctor, whose leg was healing nicely. For most of a month, she spent her days in the lab or recovering in her room.

“Soon enough,” Mr. Niles told her, “you’ll meet everyone else. Henry, our Recruiter. The Operatives.”

“Is that what I am?” she asked. “An Operative?”

Mr. Niles laughed and said, “No, no, Sarah. You’re a client. We work for you. All of this,” he said, gesturing at her room, her mechanical arm, the file full of information about her mother’s disappearance, “is for you.”

The training, too, or so he explained it. Because she was not the type of woman to be satisfied to know others had avenged her mother on her behalf. No. Mr. Niles could tell. She would only be satisfied if the vengeance was hers. The arm, the training, the recon and support — these were offered to her by the Regional Office. All of that, and the wisdom and experience of the Regional Office’s own Operatives.

The first Operative she met was Jasmine, and she was tall and statuesque and dark-complected and the most striking woman Sarah had ever seen except that standing behind Jasmine, waiting for Jasmine’s cue, were four or five more of the most striking women Sarah had ever seen. She didn’t know the names of the others but she knew Jasmine’s name because Jasmine was the loudest and brashest of the Operatives she’d seen on campus since she’d arrived, since she’d begun her own training session. She laughed the loudest, often at her own jokes, and in the training room, she screamed the loudest when she attacked, loud enough that Sarah could hear her scream even through the sealed door, the protected viewing windows.

“Hi,” Sarah said, holding out her hand for Jasmine to shake. “I’m Sarah.”

Jasmine stared at the hand and then threw a brief glance back at the girls standing behind her.

“You’re Jasmine, right?” Sarah said, trying to keep any emotions out of her voice. She was wondering how long she would keep her hand held out like that, how long before Jasmine either took it or acknowledged it, or before Sarah let it drop back to her side.

“I don’t shake robot hands,” Jasmine said, the beginnings of a smirk creeping into her lips.

“It’s not,” Sarah began, about to share the secret of which hand was which, but then she remembered and shifted, seamlessly, she hoped. “A problem,” she finished, and brought her hand back down to her side and then put it inside her other hand, and then let it drop to her side again, feeling self-conscious suddenly about what to do with her hands.

“I’m supposed to train with you guys this morning,” she said. Jasmine shook her head and frowned and turned and started walking, the others falling in step behind her. Sarah hated herself for doing this, but she did a half-jog to keep up with Jasmine, who must have been at least seven feet tall. Sarah smiled up at Jasmine as if any of this behavior were normal behavior and continued, “I’ve been doing a lot of one-on-one work with Robert, martial arts Robert? You know, Robert? Of course you know Robert.” She could feel all of the words, every single word ever, tumbling out of her mouth and she couldn’t stop them. “I mean, you know, a lot of hand-to-hand combat training, which has been great, but Mr. Niles? He wants me to get in some group training, too.”

Jasmine stopped and Sarah turned and saw they were standing at the door to the training room, which Sarah couldn’t help but think of as the Danger Room, even though she made sure not to say this out loud for fear of being made fun of. Ever since she’d arrived, she’d been afraid of being made fun of, or being pitied, or being ignored, and something about Jasmine, about her posture, about her eyes, made Sarah feel like all three were happening simultaneously.