The Regional Office Is Under Attack!: A Novel
then back at Henry, waiting in the truck now, tapping his hands to some song playing on his stereo. Then he looked back at Rose and said, “Better be careful the kind of folk you run around with, Rosie.” He leered at her. “Strange man like that might look at a little girl like you and try to take advantage.”
    She rolled her eyes. She backed herself into the door and pushed it open with her backside and said, “Fuck off, Honsinger,” and then did her best to flounce herself to Henry’s truck, and when she saw Ian was still staring at her, or at the truck, or at Henry, even though he couldn’t see Henry through her, she rolled her window down and flipped him off, and then they were gone.

7.
    At least she wasn’t just hanging there anymore, hanging in the middle of a ventilation shaft, pointless and bored.
    There was that.
    At least there was that.
    Rose hip-checked the side of the shaft, tumbled ass over head and into the other side of the shaft. She scrambled to grab hold of the rope but had kicked it swinging and she couldn’t find it in the near dark. Her headlamp swung the light hither and yon, but she was still too high up to see any semblance of a bottom.
    Assuming, of course, there was a bottom. Colleen had jokingly told her to be careful down that ventilation shaft, that she’d heard the woman who’d founded the Regional Office had magicks enough to have conjured a bottomless pit that enemies of the Regional Office were thrown into. What better place to hide a bottomless pit than in a ventilation shaft, right?
    Hardy-fucking-har-har, Colleen.
    Fucking fuck.
    The impact. Assuming there would be an impact, she was worried about the impact, but only because it would hurt like a motherfucker. But besides that, she’d survive the fall, and whateverparts of her didn’t immediately survive would start to stitch themselves back together soon enough.
    Getting out. She was worried about what would happen after she was dropped at the bottom of a shaft that was well over a mile belowground, but not so worried about this, either, because, well, she’d find some way out, by stealth or by force. She knew she would.
    But the mission. God, those assholes had drilled it into her good. The fucking mission, she was worried about that, about missing out. That’s what had her scrambling so hard to find the rope.
    She closed her eyes and reached out blindly and grabbed hold of air and then grabbed hold of air again, and thought maybe she should just give up this plan, and then something glanced against her wrist, and she grabbed again and caught hold of the rope and held tight, for a second, for less than, jerked to a bounding halt, before her shoulder gave out as it jarred up against gravity, and she let go again, but flung herself this time, whipped herself with some small deliberation so she could land hard against the side of the shaft, so she might slide down it, maybe catch hold of a different ledge, first with her forehead and her chin and then, when that slipped off, her elbow, which didn’t hold on much better, until finally her knee and calf and shin and ankle and then her boot caught, thank God for that fucking boot with its zippers and straps, its nooks and crannies, and then she held, for long enough, anyway, to pull herself up and in, and once she was in, she collapsed.
    Now what, newbie? Henry, fucking Henry, pestering her inside her head.
    You don’t know where you are or how to get to the director’s office, so, now what?
    She’d figure it out, okay? Jesus.
    But now what? Henry asked again, smug asshole. He knew the answer, of course, always knew the answer. Why else would he ask the fucking questions?
    Just give a girl one goddamn minute, okay, a fucking minute to pull herself together, to take a fucking break, Christ.
    She took a breath. She closed her eyes. Then she passed out, was out cold for at least fifteen minutes.

8.
    Back in Henry’s truck, she offered him a cigarette, which he took even
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