And the Oracles had not once, never once, steered them wrong.
So when the Oracles began to make noise about the demise of the Regional Office, when they spoke of the death of Oyemi herself, when they spoke of betrayal from within, they paid attention.
When the Oracles singled out Emma, their brightest Operative, their fastest and smartest and strongest, they paid attention. When the woman who was once Nell singled out Henry as the one to kill her, they listened to Nell then, too.
A commonly held theory posits that the Oracle formerly Nell was misunderstood. That Mr. Niles and Oyemi believed incorrectly that Henry was being singled out as a solution to the problem, when in fact he was part of the problem. It seems reasonable to assume that Mr. Niles and Oyemi were so caught up in the larger picture of the Regional Office that they did not know about the romantic relationship that had evolved between Emma and Henry. All of the Recruits and Operatives had a relationship with Henry, brotherly, or fatherly, but platonic, always platonic, so it did not strike them as out of the ordinary that he would be close to Emma, too. He was close to all of them. That was part of his job.
Surely, if they had known, they would not have assigned him as her executioner, would have more simply killed her while on assignment, made it to look an accident. Evidence exists that Mr. Niles pushed for such a solution to the very end, in fact, but Oyemi, in her misreading, would not stray from the plan to use Henry as the Oracles had instructed.
Had Oyemi and Mr. Niles better understood the prophecy, might they have escaped it? Many believe so, since it has since been proven that Henry, over two years, and some believe Emma at his side (or rather, as she lay in hiding), planned and executed the assault on the Regional Office that resulted in the deaths of Mr. Niles and Oyemi, in the destruction of Oyemi’s compound and the consequential destruction of the Oracles, too.
There is another theory, one that extrapolates unreasonably from this reasonable hypothesis. This theory often bandied about and gaining traction even among those who should know better is that the Oracle formerly named Nell intentionally introduced Oyemi and Mr. Niles to information — not necessarily untrue information — of an event that would never have come to pass had the information remained unrevealed. Furthermore, that this Oracle acted specifically to enact vengeance on Oyemi and Mr. Niles for making her an Oracle at all. As implausible and ridiculous as this theory is, let us take a moment to disassemble it.
Set aside for the moment the plain and simple fact that Oracles do not control the future they see or report on — i.e., they do not control the future, nor do they control what they see of the future — set aside this universally acknowledged truth and the argument remains as easily undermined as ever.
Consider these questions, which remain unanswered by those who would argue in favor of the agency of an Oracle:
1. When would the Oracle have first conceived of this plan, and why would it have waited nearly fifteen years to set it in motion?
2. What do we make of the Oracle’s own sense of self-preservation, of its desire to protect its daughter? Would the Oracle not have foreseen not just Oyemi’s and Mr. Niles’s downfall but also the horrific transformation lying in wait for its daughter? Would it not have been simpler and safer and more humane to subvert the actions of the two who formed the Regional Office at its outset, when the Oracle’s daughter was still just a girl, hurt and saddened, certainly, by life’s early traumas, but comparatively unchanged, unharmed?
And, finally:
3. How could the Oracle know the exact consequences of its own actions when general theory holds that Oracles have little to no specific foreknowledge or understanding of their own personal timelines?
These questions fail to address even the most simple matters of logistics — how did the Oracle, for instance, convince her other two cohorts that this would indeed become the future? Those who argue in favor of a righteously vengeful Oracle puppet-stringing the likes of Mr. Niles and Oyemi and the whole of the Regional Office to its own demise fail to respond to these and the numerous other questions posed to them, arguing that since the Oracles were destroyed in the fire that destroyed Oyemi’s compound and, presumably, Oyemi herself, the same day the Regional Office came under attack, scholars will never know for sure the intentions underlying the actions of the Oracles, a position that will no doubt be argued until there remains no breath left for argument, but which fails to convince the authors of this paper, who consider the case closed.
SARAH
38
Sarah wasn’t actually asleep. She was only pretending to be asleep.
She had become quite good at pretending to be asleep. At pretending to be other things, too.
Unconscious, for instance.
Sobbing uncontrollably was also a thing she had become good at pretending to do.
Horrified into a state of catatonia by the constant reminder that someone had launched an assault on the Regional Office. Horrified that in the meantime, someone had also wrenched her mechanical arm from her body.
That.
She had become quite good at pretending to be that.
It helped — if helped was the right word — that they helped by repeatedly hitting her in the face or the back of the head or shocking her with electrodes and asking her if she was so tough now, now that she didn’t have her mechanical arm.
Hitting her without questioning her. Hitting her just to hit her.
That is to say: Some of the times she might not have been pretending.
But right now, she pretended to be asleep. She’d closed her eyes. She’d done her best to relax and deepen her breathing, make it regular. Her chin had fallen so that it just barely touched her chest. She was doing her best to convince the people who had her hostage that she was asleep, not because that might keep them from stomping up to her to wake her, hit her more, but because through the cracked office door she could hear their radios and she wanted to listen without their knowing she was listening because listening gave her hope, because what she could hear was not good, not good for them, not good for them at all.
There were shouts and screams and gun bursts of a violent but confused and frightened nature. Someone shouted out of the walkie-talkie something along the lines of, Blue Team! Blue Team! Report in! Report! with little success. Someone else suggested sending Emerald Team to go check in with Blue Team but before panic could take firm hold of these panicky mercenaries, Wendy — that asshole intern Wendy — told everyone to shut the fuck up and calm the fuck down because no one was going to check on Blue Team and don’t you idiots watch television, watch movies? Don’t you idiots know that sending team after team after team is like throwing good money after bad? Everyone sticks to the plan, she told them, and that’s that.
Sarah pretended she was sleeping but in her sleep, she smiled. Not a big smile, not a triumphant smile, but a sly and knowing, tiny, barely perceptible smile.
39
“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?