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.
17
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.