Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ruby Redfort rolled out of bed to the sound of one of her many novelty telephones ringing loudly. She had a large collection of them, ranging from one shaped like a donut to another shaped like a squirrel. The one ringing was shaped like a guitar.

She reluctantly picked up the phone. “Pious Priests, you pay, we pray.”

“Rube, you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago,” Clancy’s voice crackled through the phone.

Clancy had been her best friend as long as Ruby could remember, and it was probably because of that that he wasn’t sounding as annoyed as he probably should have been. The issue was, Ruby had no clue what she was late for.

“I’m real sorry Clance, but I have no clue what you mean,” she replied, her voice still groggy with sleep. Ruby was not an early bird, as Mrs Digby, their housekeeper, had often commented with a shake of her head.

“The Double Donut,” Clancy informed her, and that shook her memories loose a little. She’d been supposed to meet with her friends at the diner at twelve for what was practically lunch but would probably consist of breakfast foods. She snuck a glance at the rescue watch on her wrist. Ten past twelve.

“I’ll be there in ten,” she said, and she hung up. Ruby was usually more aware of things she was supposed to be doing, even if she chose not to do them, but she’d been knocked out since she’d gotten home the night before from Spectrum agent training.

She’d been away for a week, on what her parents thought was a voluntary school trip to little bear mountain, but was actually field agent training that had involved a lot of gruelling survival and fitness drills and a not so much code breaking, which was what she’d actually been hired for.

Ruby had worked at spectrum for four years now, since she was thirteen. Most of the actual danger had occurred when she was actually thirteen, what with almost dying multiple times, but she’d still had cases ever since, some more interesting than others, and more recently, she’d had quite a lot of training drills, courtesy of LB, her boss. LB had never been all that convinced by Ruby’s field agent skills, in that she was sure Ruby took too many risks, wasn’t careful enough, and a whole host of other issues. However, Ruby had also been doing her best over the years to appear less reckless and it seemed to be working, so she couldn’t exactly not let Ruby be a field agent.

Hopefully.

The gist of it was that Ruby had been doing a whole lotta training, which involved a lot of Hitch lying to her parents.

Hitch, their ‘butler’’s (he would have preferred the term household manager) job had pretty much entailed babysitting Ruby and rescuing her from a variety of life-threatening situations, and was highly proficient in making up stories to explain her absence from home or school, which meant no one was any the wiser about Ruby’s secret agent/code-cracking career, except for Clancy. Ruby just sorta wondered why on earth he’d stayed on for so long, when she was quite clearly past the need for babysitting, but she wasn’t complaining. Hitch might be a pain sometimes, but if she could trust someone with her life, he’d be second to Clancy.

The past week’s training had left Ruby exhausted, and the meeting with her friends had entirely slipped her mind. She pulled on a t-shirt bearing the words ‘beat it buster’, and some jeans.

Her wardrobe had admittedly not changed all that much since she was thirteen (she’d only grown a few inches, so there wasn’t much need) but she’d altered some of her clothes to her liking. She’d cut the neckline of this t-shirt so that it now hung off of one shoulder, and her other shirts featured similar modifications (her mother was not a fan).

Ruby quickly dragged a brush through her dark curtain of hair and fastened it with her fly barrette. It wasn’t the original one, they kept getting crushed during missions, but Hitch had gotten her an identical one every time, complete with the same tracking capabilities. She sprayed herself with her wild rose perfume, her signature scent, then did her usual makeup. Ruby had never been one to spend an inordinate amount of time on her appearance, but she was careful enough with making it to her taste, even if her parents didn’t approve.

She did her usual smudgy brown eyeliner, a little mascara, and her favourite rose flavoured lip gloss. She made her way downstairs, avoiding her parents in the living room and Mrs Digby in the kitchen, and left the house, hurrying onto Amster.

Ruby was at the Double Donut Diner in five minutes flat, making it a total of nine minutes since Clancy had called. As she walked through the door, she heard her friends before she saw them, sitting in their usual booth.

Del, Mouse, and Red were on one side, Del bickering loudly with Elliot, who sat on the other side, with Clancy next to him. When Ruby slid into the booth, next to Clancy, he was the only one with a drink, sipping one of the green veggie shakes that he’d been fixed on lately, bearing the bright red logo of the Cherry Cup, the juice bar a few streets away. It looked gross, like something Ruby’s mother had tried to make their family drink when she was on one of her health kicks, but Clancy had seen some show that had convinced him he was killing his body and this had been the unfortunate result.

“Nice of you to show up, bozo,” Del shook her head, and Ruby shrugged.

“I’m sorry, late night,” she said, more to the group than to Del in particular.

“It’s fine, Rube, no biggie,” was Red’s reply. “Elliot hasn’t even figured out what he wants to order.”

“What, no waffles?” Ruby didn’t have to think to know what she was getting.

“Nah, I figured I should change it up, this time, y’know?”

“French toast,” Mouse suggested. “Don’t even act like you can refuse Marla’s French toast.”

Del rolled her eyes. “Pick something, Finch, we’re all starving.”

It took a couple of minutes, but eventually they ordered (waffles for Mouse and Del, French toast for Elliot, Clancy, and Red, and a jelly donut for Ruby). That meant Del could launch into her ramble about Bazooka, the new band that Del, and now the rest of her friends, were newly obsessed with.

Ruby had heard their music on just about every radio, all the time, and couldn’t see the appeal. There was an annoying noise in the back of their tracks, a guitar playing staccato notes that pierced her brain in all the wrong ways. According to Elliot and Del, it was progressive and artsy, but to Ruby, it was just a big ol’ pain.

Once Del was halfway through her sum up on how cool Rory Fitz, the lead guitarist of the band, was (Ruby was 99% sure Del’s obsession with the band was more to do with the guitarist and not the music), the food arrived, sparing them them any more Bazooka talk, and providing Ruby with her favourite form of sustenance and her one true love, a jelly donut. Clancy had finally finished his vomit-coloured veggie drink and was now eating his toast with a noticeable amount more gusto.

“I’m gonna puke if I have to see you have that drink one more time,” Elliot said, shaking his head, and Ruby felt inclined to agree.

“Honestly, Clance, I don’t get why you drink it if you hate it so much.”

“I’ve gotta take care of my body, god knows what junk I’ve been putting in it till today,” he protested. “Living Life has it on good authority that a green juice a day keeps the doctor away.”

“Isn’t that an apple?”, Mouse pointed out.

“And you’re eating French toast,” Red added.

“I can’t give up French toast,” he protested. “So I figured green juice and French toast will even each other out.”

Ruby thought that reminded her spectacularly of her thirteen year old self.

 ☆☆☆

Ruby and Clancy headed back to her house, where Bug, her now greying husky, greeted them at the door. Ruby scratched him fondly behind the ears then headed upstairs with Clancy to the roof.

“So,” Clancy started. “Training wiped you out, huh?” Ruby nodded.

“Yeah, I really do feel bad about it,” she said, knowing he might be annoyed about it. He probably wouldn’t have if it was a one off, but Ruby had to admit she’d been pretty flaky recently, what with all the weeks away and random call-ins to spectrum for briefings on protocol. He looked appeased, at least.

“Have you heard anything else from spectrum?”

She shook her head. “Nothing other than training stuff. It’s starting to get boring beyond belief.” Hitch would have heard that and tried to take her to Dr Selgood, the spectrum psychiatrist again, for her apparent love of danger, but Clancy just nodded.

“Man,” he said. “This has gotta be the longest you’ve gone without a case. D’you reckon there’s really that little crime?”

Clancy seemed to share her love of danger, but mostly in theory. He loved drama, but not once it got too close to home. Ruby shrugged. She’d been thinking about it too. It was entirely possible that LB was withholding cases from her in the effort of getting her through training, or maybe to turning eighteen, but the truth was that Hitch hadn’t been disappearing off to Spectrum as much, and when she went it, Blacker wasn’t there as often as he used to be.

“It’s possible, I mean I haven’t gotten a jelly donut from Blacker in weeks,” she told him, shaking her head in mourning for all their missed donut-sharing sessions. She also missed seeing Blacker, but the jelly donut was a real pull factor. Clancy shook his head and glanced down at his watch.

“Oh, Rube, I gotta go, my dad’s meeting this Spanish ambassador and he’s gonna kill me if I’m late,” he said, arms already starting to flap at his side. Ruby pointed at her shirt slogan.

Clancy smiled, and turned. “See ya!” He yelled over his shoulder.

“Sure, and I’ll give you that French essay tomorrow,” she told him as he disappeared down the hatch. She remained on the roof a few more minutes, and then she climbed down back into her room, shutting the hatch behind her. She had a plan, and it involved sitting on the sofa with Mrs Digby and watching Peculiar Police, the Crazy Cops spin off that was terrible but thoroughly entertaining.

☆☆☆

She walked into school the next day with a yawn, meeting Clancy by the lockers. She still felt pretty wiped out, but Ruby had nothing better to do than go to school.

As per usual, Clancy got into school earlier than Ruby, whose attendance policy was a lot more lax than Mrs Bexenheath would have preferred. Ruby figured she was fine so long as she kept her attendance above Del’s.

The first thing she noticed (other than his bright yellow and orange tee) was that he was flapping his hands already, and that meant he was nervous about something.

“I’ve got your French essay, bozo,” she told him, handing it to him. It was a little crumpled, which she thought made it more believable.

Clancy’s worst subject had been French for as long as she could remember, and since Ruby was fluent, she didn’t mind helping him out.

“Thanks Rube, but that’s not the issue.”

That got Ruby’s attention. Any issue that could surpass Clancy’s dread of French was well worth hearing.

“Del-“ he started, but that didn’t last long.

She never got to hear what the issue was, because a teacher yelled at them to get to class.

She reluctantly made her way into her English class, where Mrs Pouter (she had a face to match her name) was currently talking about Macbeth. Ruby slid into her seat next to Mouse, and took a glance at her.

She was actually focusing on the lesson, unlike Ruby (she figured if she already knew everything, there was no point) but Ruby could see stress in the crease of her forehead.

She tried to figure out what was the issue. It was Del, so the most likely option was that Del had gotten into a fight, but those were so common it hardly seemed worth mentioning, plus Del had plenty of practice socking people back.

“Mouse,” she whispered, and Mouse looked over at her, dark eyes wide. “Where’s Del?”

Mouse snuck a furtive glance at Mrs Pouter to check she wasn’t looking, then tore off a small strip of paper and scribbled something on it. She passed it to Ruby under their desks. Ruby glanced down at it.

It was smudged and Mouse’s handwriting was bad at the best of times, but she could just about make it out. It read:

got into an accident on the way to school, that’s what her mom said

dunno exactly though, it’s driving me crazy

Ruby chewed nervously on her lip.
An accident, meaning what? If her mom knew, then not a fight. A car accident was most likely, and Del was a reckless enough driver.

She looked back at Mouse, but Mouse was anxiously scribbling down what Mrs Pouter was saying, leaving Ruby to stew in her worry.

She’d grown more protective of her friends the more Spectrum work she’d done. It was easy to feel protective, she mused, when you knew all the possible outcomes. Ruby tried not to remember a particularly grisly car accident she’d seen pictures of last year, and finding that close to impossible, she popped a cube of Hubble Yum. That turned out to be even less helpful as memories of Lorelai von Leyden and her favourite nickname for Ruby resurfaced.

Resigned, Ruby let out a sigh and let her mind give her a tour of all the gruesome memories she’d accumulated.

At least this way, she could be sure whatever trouble Del had gotten into, it wouldn’t be half as bad.

Chapter Text

Del Lasco had not expected to wind up in hospital first thing Monday morning, but she was currently sitting on a bed waiting for her mother to finish filling out the paperwork.  She was no stranger to getting a bit beaten up, but this was different. Del coulda sworn it wasn’t her fault, the red car behind her and the crazy woman driving had literally smashed into her rear, with so much force that Del had wondered for a moment, right after, as she was pressed back against the seat and shaking all over, if she’d done it on purpose.

Del knew from experience that was more to do with her need to blame someone rather that the actual truth. She just had a gut feeling, like that thing Clancy always said, that Ruby trusted like her own mother. A hunch.

She was pretty much fine anyway. She had splotchy bruises all down her front from the seatbelt, and her ribs ached from it, plus there was the concussion and a few stitches, but that was about it.  By Del standards, not the worst.

Her scale went from an average day to that one time a year ago when she’d been skateboarding with the whole group, her and Elliot daring each other to do harder tricks every time, until this kid had veered towards Del. She remembered very little of the actual fall, only the lying flat on the concrete with no air in her lungs and a blaze of pain that she couldn’t place, and then the aftermath, Elliot’s frantic apologies and Ruby yelling at the kid and mostly just Ruby’s worried face and her hand on the flat of her back when Del finally managed to sit up.

Del groaned. Her thoughts always had a way of circling back to Ruby.

☆☆☆

Del walked towards their usual table in the cafeteria with a grin when she saw their stunned faces.

“What happened?” Clancy blurted out, doing his usual flappy hands thing. “I mean, your mom said sorta vaguely, but…”

“I swear, this crazy lady crashed her car right into the back of my car, no reason or anything,” Del complained loudly, her eyes darting to Ruby just in time to see her attention snap to Del.

“Are you good?” Mouse asked, scanning her worriedly.

“Don’t sweat it,” Del grinned, sliding into a seat next to Elliot. “I mean, I’ve got a concussion, and they stitched up my eyebrow, but I’ve had worse from one of Bugwart’s punches.”

Vapona Begwell looked up from across the cafeteria like she’d heard the old nickname. Del ignored that.

“Geez,” Ruby shook her head. “I woulda had my money on you being the one to cause an accident.”

Del rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Redfort? At least I can drive,” she challenged her, but she just rolled her eyes back.

“Sorry Del, but I’ve gotta agree with Rube. I mean, we’ve been in a car with you,” Mouse joined in.

“Me three,” Elliot grinned at her, but he slung his arm around her shoulders.

One of the first things she’d learned about Elliot Finch was that his affection was in his touch. The first thing had of course been that his laughter was as hazardous as an atomic bomb. Once he started, she, and almost everyone Elliot had ever met, couldn’t help it either.

Del pulled out her lunch, her usual PB&J (even a car crash could not derail her mom’s meticulous sandwich making) and took a large bite. God, she was starving.

“Sucks for all of you,” she said through a mouthful. “Now where’s my money, Redfort?”

☆☆☆

She had to hitch a ride to the bay with Red in her beat up Mini (it had its own scars from Red’s questionable driving, and her mom’s before that) since her own Cortina had been totalled in the crash. If she ever saw that lady, Del wasn’t going to hesitate to give her a good sock in the mouth.

Having to rely on her friends for favours was gonna get old quick. Especially because being in Red’s car was a lot like being dangled over a pit of crocodiles on a fraying rope. It was probably only a matter of time before something went wrong, but Del figured two crashes in one day would take a spectacular amount of bad luck, and she didn’t think she’d hit that level yet.

“Are you okay?” Red’s voice cut across the quiet radio as it played a tinny rendition of one of Del’s favourite Bazooka songs.

It took Del by surprise at first. All of her friends weren’t exactly good at being open like that, though she guessed Red and Clancy were the best. Sarcasm they all excelled at. Lying on each others’ behalf, no issues. Actually saying what they meant, no humour to hide it? Not so good. That didn’t mean Del didn’t appreciate it.

“I dunno,” she relented. “That lady was a maniac. I’m glad it wasn’t my fault.”

She thought again of that moment right after, when her heartbeat had been thunderous in her ears and she’d been in disbelief, her fingers shaking as she’d struggled to undo her seatbelt. She could feel Red look at her, her eyes scanning her face.

“That’s scary,” she said. “A random stranger just crashing right into you for no reason.” She shuddered, and took a nervous look at her mirror just to make sure, which made Del smile. “And just, it coulda been so much worse. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Del was smiling now, she couldn’t help it. “Thanks, Red,” she made herself say, instead of something sarcastic with her last name thrown in there to make it easier.

The sun chose that moment to peek out from behind the blanket of clouds that Twinford had been suspended under for most of the spring, and Del took that as a sign. For what, she wasn’t entirely sure of yet, but she’d figure it out. The day could only get better.

☆☆☆

Red pulled into the parking lot by the bay with a screech of tires, only narrowly missing the car next to them. Del just thanked whatever god existed that she’d actually made it out of that alive, and hopped out.

The sun had started beating down on them by the time Del watched Elliot’s and Clancy’s cars pull up, parking with a little more grace than Red had.

“Suck it, slowcoaches,” Del grinned at the four of them as they emerged from the cars.

“You didn’t even do anything,” Elliot complained.

“I survived a trip in Red’s car.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Lasco, we’re all in awe.”

Del shook her head as she led the way to the beach, holding only her own towel. “I reckon I could survive torture after that.”

“Nah, you’d crumble after ten minutes.”

“And you wouldn’t, Redfort?”

Del turned, walking backwards. Ruby shrugged. “I don’t blab.”

“And I do? I-“

“If you two could stop your bickering for a minute,” Mouse cut in, “We could actually set up.”

It was then that Del realised she was actually walking through sand and not on concrete anymore.

For once, Del actually shut her mouth and they all laid out blankets on the sand. It took only five minutes before the six of them were sprawled on the blankets sipping on the sodas (for five of them, and a banana milk for Ruby).

Usually Del managed to source a bottle of alcohol from her mom’s stash but she was already in trouble from her last fight, so she’d figured she’d be smarter to skip it. Her mom was the only one who could ever make her try to avoid trouble. Most of the time  it still didn’t work. As the principal had once told her after an incident involving Bugwart, Melamare, a snake, and a broken nose, “Lasco, you seem to attract trouble.”

Del figured that was a fair conclusion.

She draped her legs across Elliot, prompting him to push her away, and that only made her launch herself at him, as they devolved into their usual chaotic wrestling, sand in Del’s sneakers and her hair as she tried and failed to keep Elliot pinned under her.

This was Del’s type of fun, chaos and breathless laughter and adrenaline in her veins as the Twinford summer sun beat down on them. Her ribs smarted with the fight but it only made her feel a lot better, more like herself. Despite Del’s height, and she was pretty tall for a girl, and Elliot’s rather skinny frame, he was still a 6’0 teenage boy and soon Del found herself thrashing against the sand as Elliot pressed her down.

“Elliot, have ya thought that maybe you shouldn’t be wrestling the girl who got a concussion this morning?” Mouse fixed the two of them with one of her looks, and Elliot reluctantly climbed off of Del. He listened to Mouse a surprising amount of the time.

As Del dusted herself off and reclaimed her spot on the now very sandy blanket, she felt two older ladies looking at them, scandalised. Del took pleasure in giving the two of them the middle finger, grinning when they looked even more shocked than they had to begin with.

“Old hags,” she said contentedly, unlacing her sneakers and pouring out the dunes of sand that had collected in them. She always did forget her sandals, as her mom liked to point out whenever Del traipsed back into the house, sandy and sunburnt.

Elliot grinned at her, his hair beginning to stick to his forehead with the perspiration.

“I’m boiling alive,” he proclaimed, and he pulled off his shirt.

Del’s head automatically swivelled towards Clancy, who was predictably transfixed. Del had to hold in her laugh.

Clancy was the least subtle person she’d ever met when it came to crushes. Hell, she’d thought Davey Morrison last year had been bad, but this was a new level. Or maybe she just got the chance to see it more. Either way, it made for an entertaining watch.

Del met Ruby’s eyes, and Ruby was looking at her with an amused smirk. Del raised her eyebrows and Ruby broke eye contact before she could laugh. Del still had a warm feeling in her stomach when she turned back to watch the spectacle that was Clancy turning beet red while Elliot and Red chucked a ball back and forth (with varying levels of success, especially in Red’s case).

Del still wasn’t entirely sure what he was so fascinated about - Elliot wasn’t exactly muscular - but she figured she wasn’t much better, considering her… thing  about Ruby.

Ruby was flaky at best when it came to turning up to basketball matches, and Ruby would never like her nearly as much as Clancy, no matter what, and Ruby was annoyingly smart but Ruby was pretty and kind and protective and sarcastic and funny and ridiculously cool in a way that Del couldn’t ignore.

Plus, Del liked Elliot. He was probably the person she was closest with out of the group, and he was indescribably funny and he had the same fight in him as her. Okay, so not as much, probably no one did, but more than most of them. Del could see why Clancy liked him, just maybe not why him taking his shirt off was such a spectacle.

Del blinked against the bright sun and took a glance at the rest of her friends. Mouse had summoned up a hat from nowhere, a big wide-brimmed thing that she somehow managed to make look fashionable, and she was talking excitedly to Ruby, who was sipping her banana milk quite happily as she listened to Mouse’s chatter. Clancy was  busy trying to look like he wasn’t looking at Elliot, and Elliot and Red were (sorta) playing volleyball.

Content for once, Del lay back on the blanket and started brainstorming insults for her third period class with Bugwart the next day.

Chapter Text

Ruby woke up to the sound of Hitch knocking on her door. She took a glance at the clock beside her, and to her chagrin, the bright pink clock displayed 6:30. She half rolled, half fell out of bed, and dragged herself to her feet.

“Hitch,” she muttered, opening the door to find him standing there as if it. Ruby was a firm believer in there being no reason to wake up before 8am.

Unlike Ruby’s bridge-troll appearance, he was wearing his usual well-ironed shirt and black trousers, an amused set to his mouth as he took in Ruby.

“Morning, kid.”

Ruby didn’t appreciate still being called kid, or kiddo, at the ripe age of seventeen, and she would probably have not hesitated making any other adult stop, immediately, but Hitch had called her that since she’d first met him, and there was the slight issue of the fact that he seemed to enjoy winding her up. Mentioning it would only make him more persistent.

She glowered at him.

“LB wants to see you,” he told her, and Ruby’s heart immediately sunk. Ruby and LB tended to disagree on most things, usually Ruby’s handling of whatever life-threatening situation she’d gotten into. Ruby still liked her. It was just that LB wanting to talk to her was almost certainly a bad thing.

Hitch’s expression betrayed something like sympathy as well as amusement with a hint of glad-it’s-you-not-me. Hitch might have a better track record than Ruby, but he’d been in hot water with LB enough times to know it was something to avoid.

Ruby shrugged. “That’s encouraging.”

“Sure, kid. Keep up the positive attitude. And get dressed, we need to be outta here in ten.” He disappeared down the stairs, leaving Ruby to try and make herself presentable.

She pulled on another one of her modified t-shirts. This one read bozo, one of her favourites, and it had a frayed hem that she’d done with a pair of scissors.

Once she was dressed, she got her makeup done in record time, 1 minute and 31 seconds, sprayed herself with perfume, and did her hair, complete with the fly barrette. Ruby strapped on the escape watch, and then made her way downstairs, scratching Bug behind his left ear where he liked it before continuing on into the kitchen.

Mrs Digby was working at the counter, making up her own breakfast, which invariably consisted of porridge with an ever rotating selection of additions. Today Ruby could see blueberries and blueberry syrup that Sabina bought from the whole foods store. Typically, Mrs Digby refused to eat anything from there, but evidently she’d made an exception.

When she saw Ruby, the spoon stilled in her hand. “What the devil are you doing up?” She put her hands on her hips, eyes scouring Ruby suspiciously. She knew Ruby too well to assume she was up now of her own volition.

Hitch swept into the kitchen, smiling at Mrs Digby. “Ruby’s got basketball practice before school,” he hold her smoothly.

Mrs Digby shook her head. “Schools these days. They work you kids too hard, god knows no child needs..”

Ruby never did hear what no child needed, because she was ushered out of the kitchen and the house by Hitch.

They got into Hitch’s sleek black car, and as Hitch pulled away from the curb, Ruby’s stomach started to complain. It knew the routine.

Hitch pulled up at the Double Donut, and got a black coffee for himself, and a jelly donut for Ruby. Then Hitch drove them to a new entrance, as they chatted/bickered about her newest addiction, coffee (“I knew I shoulda never introduced you to Lucello’s,” Hitch had told her). He parked the car on the outskirts of Trashford, and pointed to the space behind a convenience store.

“Lead the way, kid.”

Ruby, still chewing the last of her donut, made her way to the back of the store. It was an abandoned sort of parking space, trash bags discarded against walls, but at least it was deserted. She looked around, and it took her only a few seconds to spot the fly on the wall by the stairs.

She heard Hitch’s footsteps behind her and turned. He pulled keys out of his pocket, dangling from his fingertips, and stepped forward, doing something Ruby couldn’t see, obscured by his frame.

When he stepped back, there was a tunnel. Ruby’s heart sank for the second time that day, and it wasn’t even seven.

Ruby was not a fan of tight spaces, or the dark, never had been. She was just as uncomfortable in them as she had been at thirteen, a fact she didn’t enjoy being reminded of, and Spectrum never failed to create some humiliating, hard, or dangerous way to enter.

“Really? Can Spectrum choose a normal entrance for once?” She complained, but she climbed in before Hitch could say anything about her fear.

Once she was in the dingy tunnel, it rapidly widened, opening up into a hallway. The light was extinguished once Hitch followed, shutting the entrance behind her, igniting a small blaze of panic in her chest once she realised she could no longer see.

There’d been a case a two years ago where Ruby had been trapped in a dark cupboard for an hour, and now being in the dark always reminded her of those sixty minutes. She took slow breaths, forcing her heart rate down. Ruby knew how to stay calm, from years of practice, which had intensified after that incident. She kept putting one foot in front of the other, focusing on the rhythm of Hitch’s behind her.

Within minutes, light crept in, and Ruby could see she was now walking on tiled floors, the walls a dusty beige that paled as she walked.  Finally, they emerged into the reception.

“I should put you in the dark more. I’ve never heard so little blabbing from you. Makes for a good change,” Hitch said, something that might have been amusement in his tone, but he put his hand on her shoulder, steering her to the desk. Ruby had been too focused on being calm to talk, for once. She shot him a look.

“Don’t count on it continuing,” she said, as they approached Goldie’s desk.

Buzz, or Casey Morgan, used to sit in the desk in the middle, but for the past few years, it had been a thin faced woman named Goldie Davis. She had a slicked back bun, greasy skin, and thin lips that took pleasure in making things as efficient and joyless as was humanly possible.

Naturally, Ruby and Goldie had taken an immediate dislike to each other. Today Goldie’s makeup had a bronze tinge, like she’d used the wrong shade of everything, and from the scowl on Goldie’s face, she knew it.

“You’re looking well,” Ruby told her. “Really, taking after your name.” She smiled innocently, but it was getting harder now that she was more of an adult than a kid. At thirteen, one of her smiles had allowed her to get away with murder. Ruby still looked young for her age, but her success rate had gone down a little, and it bugged Ruby to no end.

Goldie’s mouth became less of a mouth and more than a line as her beady eyes stared at Ruby.

“Agent Hitch,” she said coolly. “Take the girl to LB in her office.” She said girl the way someone might have said cockroach.

Hitch gave Goldie his most dazzling smile, and promptly led Ruby away, but not before she’d bid Goldie farewell. “Great to see you!” Ruby had called sweetly after her. She hadn’t gotten to see Goldie’s smile, but she could imagine it well enough.

They walked down the corridors until they reached the door of LB’s office.

“Good luck, kiddo,” he told her, looking like he was going to enjoy her suffering.

Ruby tucked her hair behind her ear. “She loves me,” she said, and Hitch raised an eyebrow. “Get in there.”

Ruby did as instructed, closing the door behind her.

The room hadn’t changed at all since she’d started at Spectrum, and neither had LB. She looked ageless, and though Ruby knew her age she forgot it every time she looked at her. The only colour in the room was her painted nails, as perfectly manicured as ever.

For once, LB didn’t look angry to see her. Ruby considered that a good sign.

“Take a seat, Redfort.” There was a sigh in her voice, but Ruby didn’t take that as an indication of the situation. LB and many other adults she’d encountered tended to have the same tone in their voice when they talked to Ruby.

Ruby took a seat.

“I’ve heard you’ve been doing well on your field training,” LB said. “But I called you in for desk work today.” She looked happier about that. Ruby considered that maybe she was still hung up on the whole ‘Ruby is a minor’ issue.

Ruby understood that was a bit of a legal risk, but really, Ruby had proved herself a million times over. She didn’t mean to sound braggy, but she’d done bigger cases than most of the adult Spectrum agents and she’d done half of them as a tiny shrimp of a kid. The point being that LB’s hesitation was, in Ruby’s opinion, entirely undue.

“Blacker,” LB continued, and Ruby automatically felt less like a zombie, “is working on a case. You are going to help him out. The only thing I need you to do is help him break the code. No getting involved in anything else,” she instructed.

Ruby was mostly glad to be able to do some actual work, and more so that it was going to be with Blacker.

“Gotcha,” she said. “No getting involved is my specialty.” She smiled.

LB fixed her with a stern look. “Redfort,” she said slowly. “Go.”

Ruby took her leave, and Hitch greeted her outside with an impressed expression. “That’s the shortest meeting I think you’ve ever had. And you didn’t even irritate her that much.”

“Man,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “I guess didn’t do my job.”

Ruby opened the door to the familiar office that Blacker and Froghorn shared. The Silent G was thankfully not present, but Blacker was sitting in a desk chair, crouched on the floor next to a cassette player, something that sounded a lot like whale sounds playing on it.

Ruby walked in, letting the door shut behind her. Blacker looked up at the sound of the door shutting, and upon seeing Ruby, his face brightened. “Ruby!” He greeted her enthusiastically. He was her favourite agent at Spectrum by far, excluding Hitch, not only because he was brilliant but he was also a good guy and he had a sense of humour.

And, Ruby mused, as he held out a brown paper bag, there was also the donuts.

She took one gratefully. “This is my second one of the morning,” she told him.

“An agent can never have too many donuts,” he told her, as he bit into his own. Ruby agreed.

She took a seat on the floor next to Blacker. The whale sounds were still going, odd distorted sounds punctuated with sharp trills and beeps and whistles.

“What’s with the whale noises?” She asked, licking sugar from her fingers.

“That’s the code, actually.” Blacker fumbled through the piles of papers on the floor next to him. One of Blacker’s few shortcomings was his messiness, which Ruby shared, and his clumsiness. Ruby could remember many a coffee meeting the unfortunate fate of being splashed down one of his crumpled shirts, so that it ended up looking like a piece of modern art Ruby’s parents might have bought.

“Audio code,” she nodded.

“Yeah.” He brushed a hand though his disheveled hair. “This guy, Pepe Silvano, was arrested recently for a string of robberies of government weapons. They found a load of these cassettes.”

“Maybe the guy just likes whales. Or used whale sounds to fall asleep.”

Blacker shook his head. “The tapes were carefully dated and organised, while the rest of his place was a mess. These were important.”

“Huh.” Ruby crossed her legs. “So what’ve you tried?”

“That’s the issue. I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be listening to. There’s so many different parts, listen.” He played the tape again, and she understood his problem better. It was a cacophony of noise, layers of different things.

“The beeps stand out the most, but I’m guessing nothing in morse,” Ruby suggested.

“If it’s in morse code, it’s goddamn gibberish,” Blacker told her. He rummaged through his papers again and passed her a slightly crumpled sheet, this one with a string of many random letters.

“It’s not a Caesar cipher for sure. And there’s no gaps for words or anything, I’m not sure if that’s the code. Plus there’s so many other sounds, I don’t know. It seems like morse would be too simple.”

Ruby and Blacker trawled through the tapes for hours with no success, trying increasingly complicated and obscure codes with little success. At one point, Froghorn came into the room, but Blacker had amiably gotten Froghorn to leave, probably to avoid his and Ruby’s usual bickering. The whole morning probably should have frustrated her more than it did, but Ruby had sorta missed doing actual spectrum work, not just training, and as much as she liked field work, she’d have to be dumb to deny that code breaking was what she was best at.

Hitch picked her up at noon, and dropped her off at school. Ruby dumped her stuff in Clancy’s locker, and faked a phone call from her mother to the school to say that she was feeling sick (a skill Ruby had honed through a lot of practice).

Ruby walked out the school gates, and headed towards the beach. She didn’t see the use in half a day of school anyway.

Chapter Text

Ruby didn’t ditch school as much as Del, but it wasn’t an unusual occurrence for her to not come in, especially after she’d had a Spectrum call in. Her record was fine, anyway. Every absence was easily explained by a note (she’d been collecting some blank ones from doctors and other figures of authority since she’d first had to go to school) or a well timed phone call from her mother.

Most of the time, she’d see if Del was up for skiving too, but halfway through the day she’d have no luck in finding her, plus Ruby wanted to think more about the code Blacker had shown her. Del probably would be under her mother’s lock and key after the accident anyway.

With a pretty narrow set of options, Ruby decided on the beach. She walked, she didn’t need any old folks on the bus to tell her to stay in school, but the day was hot and she was sweating through the twenty minute walk.

She didn’t mind the time, since she had little else to do, but she considered it would probably be a good idea to learn to drive, finally. She’d put it off last year because she’d figured she’d gotten along fine without it so far, plus Ruby had never really thought of herself as someone who’d drive a car, but she was beginning to see the advantages. She’d have to ask Hitch to teach her.

Ruby arrived at Little Bay just as the sun ducked behind a cloud, which made her scowl more than a little. Little Bay was the closest of Twinford’s bays to the school, and as an added bonus, it was close to Del’s. At one on a weekday, it wasn’t busy, almost deserted, with none of the usual umbrellas and blankets that cropped up on the weekends. Ruby slipped off her sneakers, and stepped onto the sun-warmed sand with her bare feet, carrying her shoes in one hand.

She settled on one of the stone walls that separated the beach from the pavement, and realised that in leaving all her stuff at school, she had no way of working on the code. Cursing herself, she glanced around for something to do, and found nothing.

Ruby was not good at being idle, but she occupied herself with an exercise she’d started doing a few years back after she’d reread Sherlock Holmes. She focused in on a person, a teen girl about her age in a group of three.

She was a streaky blonde with grown out roots, heavily tanned skin, dark eyes, and a tall, shapely sort of figure. She was wearing a lot of makeup, and she had the type of fashionable clothes and layered jewellery Ruby would have seen in magazines, but not usually in Twinford, where the kids tended to have more of an eccentric style, or lagged half a year behind trends. That meant the girl was probably from out of town, or she’d recently moved.

She liked looking older than she was, Ruby guessed, so she drank and smoked to feel older too, but who didn’t? Maybe she was a partier. Ruby realised her mascara was smudged, like she’d left it on overnight, then applied a coat on top. Definitely a partier.

Her clothes were fashionable, but Ruby could spot the wear in them, and none of them were brands she could recognise, so they were probably secondhand. Her shoes were worn and falling to pieces, indicating that she wasn’t well off. Her jewellery didn’t look real either, since she could see her rings had rusted in places.

Ruby was growing frustrated. Usually her deductions fell into place faster, more accurately. This girl wasn’t any more difficult than anyone else she’d done before, which meant it was Ruby who was different. She’d not done it for a few weeks, admittedly, too busy with field training to focus on her other skills. She was out of practice, and that was her fault.

Ruby focused in on the girl with redoubled effort, but before she could draw any more conclusions, she realised the girl and the other two teens she was with, a reedy redhead boy and a shorter brunette girl, were heading straight for Ruby.

She averted her eyes, and tried to look like she hadn’t been staring, then when they got closer, looked up like she’d just noticed them.

“Hey,” the blonde girl said. “You ditching too?”

She definitely had a slightly different way of speaking, something east-coast and New York about it. The two others stood beside her. The blonde smiled.

Ruby nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t really know where else to go,” she told her. She didn’t know what this girl wanted, but she knew the best tactic was to let her do the talking, at least until Ruby figured her out.

“I’m Lori Garcia,” she said, sticking out her hand to Ruby. That wasn’t very Twinford of her at all, Ruby thought, as she shook her hand, returning the smile.

“Ruby Redfort.” She stood, feeling short.  She was sitting, but the others weren’t, and Ruby was already lacking in height. “Do I hear New York?”

Lori’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, like Ruby had surprised her, but then she was smiling again, wide, maybe too wide, all her perfect teeth showing.

“No, but I’ll take the compliment,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

Interesting. Ruby was ninety nine percent sure that was a lie. She certainly wasn’t born and raised in Twinford. At the very least, her parents couldn’t be from the area.

Ruby feigned belief, smiling back at her with that curated openness she reserved for kids her age.

“And this is Cicely and Rob,” Lori said, gesturing to her friends. It was clear that Lori was the ringleader of the trio - she hadn’t introduced them with their last names like she’d done for herself, and the two stood a little back from Lori, though Ruby guessed they didn’t  even know they were doing it.

“Nice to meet you,” Ruby greeted then genially, putting some of that Redfort charm her parents always had into her words. Normally she wouldn’t have bothered putting on such a show for some random kids, but Ruby was intrigued by Lori and her lie, and she was, more than anything, bored. She’d take whatever entertainment she could get.

The brunette girl, Cicely, gave Ruby a reserved smile, and the boy, Rob, grinned awkwardly.

“D’you you to Twinford High too?” Ruby asked. She’d certainly never seen them before, so she could safely assume they didn’t, but they didn’t need to know she was thinking that.

“Nah,” Lori shrugged. “East High. The kids are pretty shitty, and so are the teachers, so we don’t bother going, once in a while.” Once in a while probably meant a lot of the time, judging from Lori and Cicely’s tan lines. No one got that tanned from sitting inside all day.

Ruby nodded. “That’s pretty far from here.”

“Better to not be spotted,” Rob cut in awkwardly, glancing at Cicely, then Ruby, like he was expecting a laugh. It made Ruby thankful that she knew people like Elliot, but she smiled politely while Cicely offered up an exaggerated laugh. Lori didn’t even try to look amused, her mouth twisting downwards with displeasure, but the expression was gone as quickly as it had come.

“What brings you here?” Lori asked, so Ruby made a lie that made Lori laugh.

The conversation continued for most of the afternoon, awkward and stilted when the other two, especially Rob, tried to join, but it flowed much more smoothly when it was just Ruby and Lori. By the end, Ruby was starting to feel pretty glad that Lori had approached her. It had taken up time that would have been wasted since she’d been too much of a bozo to actually bring stuff to work on the code.

Lori actually seemed pretty cool, once Ruby looked past her weird lie. Which, if she was being honest, Ruby couldn’t. Not easily at least. Years of Spectrum had admittedly made her paranoid, but Ruby’s gut was telling her that she was probably harmless. Her gut feelings weren’t quite as reliable as Clancy’s hunches, but her instincts had served her well enough in the past.

“Look, I gotta go,” Ruby said finally, once her escape watch had informed her that it was already six. The sun had lost its intensity, and a breeze had started up.

“Oh shit, I gotta get going too,” Lori swore. “You seem cool. Thanks for hanging with us.” She smiled, and paused for a moment, thinking, then her smile deepened. “Cicely’s throwing a party on Saturday, you should totally come.”

Ruby wasn’t exactly a party kid, but she wasn’t averse to trying it out. She nodded.

“Sounds cool. Where’s it at?”

“Ah, fuck. Do I…?” She patted down her pockets.

One thing Ruby didn’t like about this girl was her tendency to throw swears into every sentence. Ruby had nothing against swearing, she actually rather appreciated a well placed one (to the chagrin of many of the adults in her life), but this seemed a little excessive.

Ruby really needed to stop fixating on random, tiny behaviours, she realised with some irritation, snapping her attention back to the conversation. It was just a habit, another one of those things she’d picked up from all the Spectrum work. Ruby figured if Red or Mouse knew about Spectrum and the whole Ruby-is-a-secret-agent situation, they’d tell her it was probably the type of thing that could mess up a kid. Red would say she should see a shrink, only she’d say it nicely.

It was the type of thing Ruby didn’t like to trouble herself thinking about. Sure, Ruby might be a little more paranoid and jumpy and obsessive than the average kid, but it wasn’t a problem. Ruby had never exactly been an average kid anyway, or she’d never have ended up at Spectrum.

Ruby realised frustratedly that she’d zoned out again, but Lori was still scrabbling for a pen. Lori finally pulled out a pen from one of the pockets of her jeans and scribbled the address, some place in the Village, on Ruby’s forearm. Cicely must be a rich kid, Ruby thought appreciatively. Not a bad address for Ruby’s first party.

“Thanks,” Ruby told her. “See you then,” she added as an afterthought. She bid farewell to the other two, then started making her way back home. She passed through Amster on the way back, afternoon sun painting everything golden and warm and haloed, light peeking through the leafy trees.

Spring was Ruby’s favourite season, something her and Clancy had debated extensively in the past (his favourite was winter) but she liked summer too, especially this time as school was about to end, when it wasn’t too hot and everyone was more relaxed. Even LB, Ruby mused, remembering her rather uneventful meeting with her in the morning.

Ruby had reached the tree she and Clancy exchanged their notes in, so she clambered up the tree, deftly finding familiar footholds and handholds from so many years of practice, and perched on the branch next to a perfectly folded lion made from lined paper. She unfolded it, and read the code inside.

Yir'y osfua reqi eucv zlan, Vpfk. Ewy epsciy xnk oeel aqedr. Cga ml Zpogovas axmmf?

S'q jr suzi vpnxim etj iqthsceysx jcxq, ty gljpk ligw ps csmi lxwq ktivmik. Igv'x lhlu xjhge.

(In plaintext, codeword veggieshake , that was:

Del's gonna have your head, Rube. You missed the game again. Was it Spectrum stuff?

I'm on more dinner and ambassador duty, my whole face is sore from smiling. Can't talk today.)

Ruby cursed. She’d entirely forgotten about the stupid game. It was the same thing every time, the same way it had been since Ruby and Del had started playing basketball and Del had made captain. Ruby somehow managed to forget about half the games she was supposed to play in, and it drove Del nuts. It was just as well she hadn’t bumped into Del. Ruby was gonna have to make it up to her. Maybe with a really good present for her birthday, that was soon-ish, Ruby was pretty sure. She’d promise Del to turn up to the next few, too.

Ruby left her own note in the shape of a leopard ( It was Spectrum in the morning, but then I ditched, and entirely forgot. I’ll have to figure something out. And good luck, Clance, you’ll need it.) then walked back home.

When she pushed the door open, she was greeted first by an enthusiastic Bug, who she scratched behind the ears, the same ritual as ever, then walked into the kitchen, Bug trailing at her heels. She could hear her parents’ voices from the dining room, but Mrs Digby was still in the kitchen, putting the salads and schnitzel on plates.
Ruby’s parents had recently gone to Austria, and Sabina had insisted on Mrs Digby trying to recreate one they’d had there. As a result, they’d been eating schnitzel for a week straight, and there were still leftovers piled in the fridge from the previous attempts.

“Schnitzel,” Ruby said dryly, and Mrs Digby shook the tongs at her. “Your mother is driving me up the wall,” she told her. “If she asks for schnitzel tomorrow, I’m going to stay with my cousin in San Francisco.”

Ruby offered as sympathetic of a face as she could, but headed on into the dining room. As she’d thought, Brant and Sabina Redfort were sitting at the dining table, the table still empty of food, though the places had been set. Sabina was talking loudly about something, but she was talking so fast that Ruby could only just about make out the word “ Marjorie.”

This was not surprising. Marjorie Humbert and her mother were capable of calling for hours on end, and usually all that could be determined from either end was some anecdote, then copious amounts of either laughter or complaints.

“Ruby, honey, you know how I feel about that shirt,” her father told her, but he mussed her hair fondly as she took her seat next to him. Ruby shrugged, and was saved from having to hear what would likely be something about dressing a little neater by Mrs Digby’s entrance. She was balancing three steaming plates and a big bowl, but they somehow made it safely to the table.

Ruby started to wolf down her schnitzel. Mrs Digby might be fed up of making it, but as far as Ruby was concerned, this was one of her parents’ better obsessions.

There’d been her mother’s health kick and Consuela Cruz, and then the time her mother had tried to get them all on a veggie shake diet (inspired by magazine article about the same show that had inspired Clancy’s veggie shake fixation), and then her father’s short but memorable love affairs with grapefruit and then cabbage. Eating fried veal everyday was no hardship at all, in Ruby’s opinion. Hitch didn’t seem to be minding it either, despite his complaints about needing to stay in shape.

Ruby’s parents tucked into the meal with more finesse, but their reactions were anything but composed.

Sabina threw her arms out, and somehow managed to avoid looking entirely ridiculous. Sabina’s skill at avoiding humiliation was yet another reason that her and Brant were two of Twinford’s most well-known socialites. “Oh, Mrs Digby,” she exclaimed ecstatically. “You’ve outdone yourself!”

Mrs Digby didn’t say it out loud, but Ruby read her lips as she muttered ‘thank the lord’.

“No more schnitzel tomorrow,” Mrs Digby told Sabina.

“You could out-schnitzel the Austrians,” Brant said appreciatively.

“It’s good schnitzel, Mrs Digby,” Ruby agreed.

“Of course,” Sabina gushed. “But you’ll have to make it again next week! I’ll have to invite Marjorie over- or maybe all the Humberts, what do you say, Brant? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Brant nodded enthusiastically. “And Ruby can have Quent over! Won’t that be great!”

Ruby did not, in fact, think that would be great, but her parents were big on politeness, even to people they disliked, so she nodded and smiled as convincingly as she could.

“Anything to have more schnitzel,” she said brightly.

Chapter Text

Clancy Crew was tired. Not just tired, exhausted. Fatigued. Enervated.

He took a few moments to try and think of any other better synonyms, a trick he often used to wake himself, but today was not his finest. Clancy rolled out of bed and stumbled to his feet.

Sun streaked in through the gaps in his blinds, so he pulled them open fully, blinking aggressively as he was blinded by the sun’s glare. Clancy gave up on trying to acclimate and took shelter in the dimly lit bathroom, showering and brushing his teeth. He didn’t bother brushing his hair.

By this point he decided to brave the light, so he made for his wardrobe, and pulled out the first t-shirt and the first pair of jeans he got his hands on. It was luck of the draw, and he never tried to pick again. Clancy only had clothes he liked, anyway.

Today, luck had given him a baggy navy t-shirt with the slogan ‘Momma Earth loves you!’ printed on the front in huge white letters. The back of the shirt had delicate white swirls that all bled into each other in a way that made Clancy think of water. He’d bought the shirt for those swirls. He didn’t think the front being bad discredited the shirt, an opinion he already knew most people did not share.

He got dressed, then walked downstairs, trying to ignore the tightness in his chest. The beginning of a day was always the hardest. It took him a while to get back into functioning, after sleeping, so he breathed out slowly and turned into the kitchen.

The kitchen was, of course, pure chaos. It was the result of a house with so many kids. It wasn’t quite as bad as it had been before Minny had gone off to college, but no matter how hard Ambassador Crew, his wife, the butler, or the housekeeper tried, mornings were chaos, and the kitchen would inevitably explode with the mess. Clancy didn’t mind it, though he wasn’t usually the biggest advocate for chaos. It was just that the Crew house was almost always pristine and tidy and there was always a schedule and rules and a guest to smile and be a model family for, so these school mornings were the only exception. A small rebellion against it all.

That didn’t mean Clancy’s sisters didn’t get on his nerves. He took a seat at the table, where his four of his five sisters were sitting (if Olive’s strange position could even be called sitting), and helped himself to a stack of toasts, a mountainous pile of scrambled eggs, and a generous bowl of cereal that would probably be the first of two. Clancy had a usual appetite for a teenage boy; he normally ate quantities that could be expected of a large grizzly bear.

“Pig,” Olive told him.

Clancy shovelled eggs onto his toast and took a bite. Olive was a pain. He liked to think he was immune to it, except she drove him up the wall regularly.

“I’m not as bad as Minny ever was, he doesn’t need to be all over dramatic,” Nancy complained over her cheerios to no one in particular, though Clancy could guess this rant had probably been going on for a while. Nancy might not be quite at Minny’s level, but she was getting close, Clancy thought. She kept trying to sneak out, or cause a scene at dinner, or argue with their father, but she was as good as Minny ever was at getting in trouble for it.

“Shut up, I’m trying to study,” Lulu snapped. That made Clancy look up from his plate. Lulu was poring over a chemistry textbook, but the strange part was that she’d snapped. Lulu was usually one of the calmest of the six siblings, but today, she looked one annoyance away from ripping out her long hair.

“Lulu,” he said, and she sighed and looked back at her textbook, placated for the time being. Amy was shooting him a curious look, evidently also confused by Lulu’s behaviour, but Clancy ignored it. He didn’t have an answer for her.

His mom was still nowhere to be seen by the time he’d finished his breakfast and rinsed his plate. That wasn’t unusual, but it still sucked. She’d used to have breakfast with them until a few weeks ago, when she’d started having it by herself, out in the garden.

Clancy tried not to think about it, pulling on his schoolbag. Lulu was somehow waiting for him by the door, on time as always. They had to wait a few more moments for Nancy to arrive too, but finally she came, and they did their usual bike ride to school, three of them in a row. Nancy talked the whole way, of course.

Clancy was glad when he finally got to school and peeled away from the two of them, locking up his bike at the bike racks along the front path up to the school. He twisted the lock irritably. The old thing had a penchant for jamming, but usually it just took some force to make it work. He wiggled it hopefully, until he felt someone’s hand on his shoulder.

“Clance!” Elliot’s warm voice greeted him, and Clancy spun to see him, warmth sparking under his touch.

“Elliot,” Clancy smiled, but his stomach had started flaring with nerves. It was a strange thing, to suddenly feel nervous around someone he’d known for most of his life. It was just his luck. Of course he’d like one of his closest friends, and of course it had to be a boy.

“Did you manage that Chem homework? I swear on my life, Mr Poulter made up some shit,” Elliot shook his head, but despite his complaint, he still had his usual good humour in his eyes.

Clancy shrugged. “It would probably help if you didn’t make eyes at Amelia Ross the entire class,” he told Elliot, trying to hide his own bitterness on the topic. Clancy appreciated Elliot was straight, but he didn’t enjoy having it rubbed in his face like that. It made some part of him ache.

Elliot shrugged, grinning. “What’s a man gonna do, Clance? I can’t just ignore the prettiest girl in our entire grade.”

Clancy thought that was being quite generous to Amelia Ross. In his opinion, Ruby was the prettiest girl in their grade, but then again, Clancy didn’t like girls. His own opinions were more than a little biased towards his friends. He was about to try and find some words to not appear less than thrilled about Amelia Ross, when another familiar voice cut though his thoughts.

“A man? Finch, you’re kidding yourself,” Del said in greeting, pounding Elliot on the shoulder. She was in her usual combo of a beaten up jacket and beaten up jeans and beaten up converse, which all gave her a very delinquent look that she took a lot of pride in.

Red and Mouse joined the group, trailing a little behind Del.

“Hey Mouse, hey Red,” Clancy greeted them.

“Clance, my friend, what is that shirt?” Mouse replied.

“The back is cool,” he said, turning to show the group. He craned his head round to see their reactions. Red was nodding and smiling politely, because she was Red, but Elliot was nodding appreciatively, which made Clancy smile.

“It’s like the ocean,” Elliot said.

Del raised her eyebrows as Clancy turned back round. “He hates the ocean.”

That was true, but Clancy liked the ocean as a concept. He knew a load about it, he just didn’t like actually being in the ocean, so he shook his head.

“Not in theory.”

“Hey, where’s Rube?” Del asked.

She almost never called Ruby ‘Rube’ to her face, usually she called her Redfort, but when Ruby wasn’t around, it always seemed to slip out. Del was the only person Clancy knew who wasn’t straight, and she was open enough about it (though not about liking Ruby). Clancy felt a strange need to confess his own sexuality to her. He thought maybe she’d understand, but then he remembered that it was Del. Del was far more likely to laugh at him than have a heart to heart.

Her question made Clancy’s heart sink. He hoped she was actually in school today, but then, Ruby had never been punctual.

“Not sure,” he told Del with a shrug. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.” That was a lie, but he hoped she’d come anyway.

Ruby didn’t turn up by the time the bell rang for the start of first period, but she was often a little late. Clancy pushed his way through the heaving corridors and made it to his Biology class just in time, dropping into his usual seat just as Mrs Chandler instructed the class to open their books.

He fished his textbook from his bag and flipped to the required page, then glanced over at the empty desk next to him. That was where Ruby usually sat, but evidently, she wasn’t coming in. Probably Spectrum business again. Which was fine. Clancy didn’t mind it, but Ruby had been away a lot in the past month, first with the weeks away for field training, and now with this code she and Blacker were working on, so Clancy hadn’t gotten to see a lot of her.

He missed her.

☆

Biology passed as quickly as Clancy could hope for. His next two classes, English and History, were his favourite subjects, but he had none of his friends in them, which meant they weren’t exactly exciting. He was glad when fourth period came, since he had Geography with Red and Mouse.

He met with them outside his History classroom, and they appeared just as drained by their classes as he was. The three of them were the quieter sect of the group, though Mouse was deeply sarcastic almost all the time, which meant Geography was generally pretty peaceful (a stark contrast to any of his classes with Elliot or Del. Especially Del).

Mouse and Red chatted enough between them for Clancy to not have to do too much of the conversational work. His mind was preoccupied with Lulu’s weird behaviour, his mother’s  changed habits, the event his father was hosting tomorrow that Clancy would be forced into, and Ruby’s continued absences. He trailed along behind Mouse and Red as they navigated their way through the crowded corridors and down the four flights of stairs it took to get to the Geography classrooms on the bottom floor.

They were at the top of the second flight when Red yelped and tumbled down the stairs.

“Red!” The exclamation slipped out of him before he’d even really registered what was happening. She was crumpled at the bottom of the flight, eyes squeezed shut. Mouse was ahead of him, scrambling down to get to her, and Clancy followed close behind, arms flapping at his sides. Red was slowly sitting up, green eyes wide with shock. She wasn’t looking at them, though. She was staring up at the spot on the stairs where she’d been when she’d fallen.

“Are you okay?” Mouse and Clancy asked in unison. Mouse was crouched by her, and Clancy was on her other side, creating a bit of space for her on the crowded landing. There were some people standing back, watching, but Red was shielded by Mouse and Clancy’s bodies.

Red nodded shakily. She was trembling all over, the way anyone did after a fall like that, but she was also clutching her wrist, cradling it to her chest.

“Red, did you hurt your wrist?” Clancy scanned her worriedly, but that seemed to be the only real damage from the fall, though he was sure there’d be plenty of bruises the next morning.

Red nodded again. “Think so,” she mumbled.

“Let’s go to the nurse,” Mouse cut in, glancing over at Clancy.

They missed all of fourth period, sitting in the nurse’s room. Red had sprained her wrist, the nurse said. Her wrist now was wrapped up, and she was pressing it gingerly to an ice pack.

“Sorry, guys,” Red apologised quietly as they walked back towards the cafeteria.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Mouse shook her head, and Clancy nodded fervently. Red was the one who’d gotten hurt, and she must know they were glad to miss a class anyway, especially to make sure she was okay.

“I know,” Red said with a sigh, shaking her head. “But I swear it wasn’t me being clumsy this time.”

Clancy tilted his head curiously. Red was clumsy, it was a well known fact. She’d broken many instruments, both her own and others, as well as bones from tripping all over the place. “Red,” he started, but she shook her head.

“I swear someone pushed me.”

Mouse fixed Red with a stare. “Why would anyone push you? They probably accidentally jostled you when they were pushing past. Which is rude and inconsiderate, but…”

Red flushed, her cheeks going bright pink with the embarrassment of not being believed, but Clancy had a peculiar feeling about the situation.

“I felt their hands on my back,” she added quietly.”

Red was clumsy, she had a certain naïveté to her, and she had a pretty wild imagination, but somehow, Clancy believed her. She’d cried out before she’d fallen - in surprise, maybe, if she’d been pushed? Then there been that moment right after she’d fallen, when she’d stared back at where she’d fallen from, or maybe where she’d been pushed from.

Maybe it was Clancy’s own overactive imagination, but he believed Red. Someone had pushed her down the stairs.

☆

The rest of school passed with surprising speed, but Clancy was as preoccupied as before, only now he had more to think about. He kept replaying the event in his mind, trying to convince himself that his evidence didn’t really mean anything. It didn’t prove that she’d been pushed, that was for certain, but no amount of rationalising was changing his gut feeling.

He left school without his sisters, since Lulu had lacrosse practice after school, and Olive had detention, and cycled via Amster instead of going straight home. It took a few minutes longer, but he was accustomed to checking the tree to see if Ruby had left a note, and she almost certainly would have today, since she’d gone to Spectrum.

He dumped his bike on the pavement, then clambered up the tree, and found a neatly folded beetle waiting for him. He unfolded it, and scanned the message.

Dhd es yc nb Vhajtcye hiqdq, xbt hi ufupnwz pt. Nses iihj, em yzyj ruq owpz yzy.

(In plaintext, codeword whalesounds, that read:

Had to go to Spectrum today, but we cracked it. Come over, if your dad will let you.)

Clancy didn’t bother leaving a reply, since he’d see her in a few minutes. Instead, he refolded the beetle and slipped into his pocket, made it down the tree, and cycled back down Amster onto Cedarwood Drive. He never turned down an opportunity to go over to Ruby’s; Mrs Digby’s food was something else, and he preferred spending time with Ruby to trying to manage his sisters or avoid his dad.

He rang the doorbell, and Hitch answered, impeccably dressed as usual in his well-tailored suit and tie.

“Ruby’s upstairs,” he told Clancy. “Nice shirt.”

Clancy found Ruby sprawled on her bed, a plate of cookies by her side.

“Boy, am I glad to see you, Clance,” she proclaimed, rolling over to make space for him. He got that warm feeling he always did around Ruby, a sense that he was home. It was familiar and a little crushing, to know that he felt it more with her than at the Crew house.

Clancy got comfy on the bed, kicking off his shoes, and helped himself to a cookie.

“Cracked the case?” He mumbled, though a mouth full of cookie.

“Yeah, that was pretty easy once I realised it was a bacon cipher. Some plans for a robbery, it was pretty boring in the end, and then Froghorn was being a pain.” she recounted, and narrowed her eyes, looking straight at Clancy. “What happened?”

Clancy worried at his lip, trying to think of what to say, while also marvelling at how easily Ruby could read him.

“Red fell down the stairs,” he said finally. “She sprained her wrist. She’s fine, but…” he trailed off, shaking his head. Ruby was watching him intently, brows furrowed like she could figure out what had happened just from looking at him.

“She said someone pushed her,” he said. He’d started flapping without even noticing it.

Ruby frowned. “It’s Red,” she said. “She’s clumsy, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Clancy sighed, standing up and pacing to get his nervous energy out. “I know, but you didn’t see her. She was, like, shaken up. And after she fell, she was sorta just staring at the place she’d fallen from.”

Ruby tilted her head like she was thinking. “It doesn’t prove anything. She was probably just shocked.”

“I dunno, Rube, but I’ve got a hunch. Someone pushed her.”

Ruby nodded slowly. “Okay. I believe you, but why? Maybe it was an accident. I mean, it’s Red. No one would want to hurt her.”

Clancy kept pacing anxiously, trying to make the conclusion he’d kept coming back to sound less ridiculous than it did in his head. “I’m just saying. The Del thing was weird too, right? Someone crashes into her for no reason?”

“And here I thought I was the paranoid one.”

He shook his head at her. “I’m serious, Rube.”

She eyed him. “I’m not saying it wasn’t weird, but why would someone do it on purpose?” Despite her apparent skepticism, Clancy knew he had her hooked. Ruby couldn’t stay away from a possible mystery.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But if something happens to another one of us, there’s no way it’s a coincidence.”

Ruby was silent for a minute, and he was too. He didn’t like the idea. It made him feel panicky and weird, so he was grateful when Ruby finally spoke again, pulling him out of his head.

“Is Del still ticked off at me?”

Clancy sat back on the bed. “I don’t think so. Not as much, anyway. She asked where you were, and she called you Rube.”

“Huh. I guess she’s over it then.”

Clancy figured this was about time to bring up the next thing he was worried about. Lately, there was a lot.

“You’ve been missing a load of school, Rube. They’re gonna get suspicious soon.”

Ruby made a face. “I’ll figure it out, or Hitch’ll get creative. And now we cracked the code, I’ll probably not go into Spectrum for a while. LB doesn’t seem too keen on having me there.”

“Good,” Clancy said eagerly. “I cannot keep making up dead relatives of yours.”

☆

He spent the next hour listening to Ruby complain about Froghorn, and another hour watching one of Mrs Digby’s game shows, before he finally managed to drag himself off the sofa. He was supposed to be home before dinner, but that was already looking unlikely.

“I’ve gotta go, my dad’ll have my head,” he told Ruby. Mrs Digby had retreated into the kitchen to find herself a tv snack, leaving the two of them alone in the living room.

Ruby gave him sympathetic look. “Clance.” There was that strange tone in her voice. He only ever heard it from her when his dad came up, but she’d never elaborated, and he’d never said anything out loud. He didn’t think now was the time to ask what she meant by it, so he shrugged. “Rube,” he said back, with a grin that he didn’t feel.

“See you tomorrow, bozo,” she said finally, her voice back to normal.

☆

He cycled back home as quickly as his feet would take him, and threw down his bike by the front entrance. He was only a minute late, but Ambassador Crew was a stickler for punctuality.

He rang the bell, and the door was opened by the Crews’ disapproving butler, Charles. He raised his eyebrows at Clancy, his form of chastisement, and Clancy hurried inside to the dining room, taking his place beside Lulu, but all his sisters (bar Minny, of course) and his parents were already sitting there.

‘Great,’ Clancy muttered irritably, but under his breath.

“Clancy,” his dad said slowly, the way he did before a lecture. Clancy loved his dad, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t the person who frustrated him the most. He looked down at his food (brisket, one of Clancy’s favourites) and submitted himself to the lecture. He could feel Olive’s glare at him even without looking.

“What do I always tell you about punctuality?” His dad put down his cutlery neatly to the side of his plate.

“I know the Redfort girl-“

“Ruby,” Clancy cut in.

“Ruby,” his father amended. “I know you like spending time at the Redforts’ house, but at the very least, you could put in the effort to be on time, Clancy. I’ve also been meaning to say that maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time over there. You’re a Crew, Clancy, not a Redfort. Would it kill you to come home and spend some time with your mother and your sisters?”

Clancy found it just a little bit funny that his dad didn’t even bother to include himself in that sentence. Even he knew that saying he’d be spending time with Clancy was a lie.

“No, it wouldn’t kill me,” Clancy repeated obediently, though he thought it would probably take a few years off of his life. He knew the drill; the only way to make it stop was to agree until his dad moved on to a different sibling or a different topic.

“Exactly, my boy. It’s not torture.” He chuckled to himself at that, for reasons unknown to the rest of the family, who, like Clancy, sort of just looked at him blankly.

“Remember not to be late tomorrow, Clancy. All of you need to be here at eight thirty sharp, understand? The British Ambassador is here for dinner, and I need you all to make a good impression. Remember your smiles, children…”

It was around this point that Clancy zoned out. His father had a tendency to drone on and on, making mealtimes a drag despite the gourmet food.

By the time they were dismissed (Ambassador Crew ran his household with military precision) it was almost seven thirty, and his lecturing had drained all emotions out of Clancy except for an all encompassing sort of boredom. He gladly retired to his room just as his dad discovered Nancy’s recent D in Math, prompting another lecture, this one far more explosive than the previous one. Clancy could hear his booming voice from his room on the top floor.

He put Ziggy Stardust on the record player to drown out the sound from downstairs, and settled at his desk to do his homework, pulling his Physics exercise book out of his bag.

It was heavily graffitied by Elliot, who he sat next to in Physics. Clancy hoped Elliot would never know that he often examined those words and doodles at home, tracing the pen indents with his finger, all curled up in his chair like he was now. It was a task to decipher Elliot’s god-awful handwriting, but Clancy always persevered anyway, his heart fluttering in his chest whenever he found anything particularly good scrawled on there. It was a strangely addictive feeling, pleasurable and torturous at the same time.

‘Momma Earth Loves You,’ Clancy read, Elliot’s first of many additions for the day. There was also a selection of Elliot’s famously awful puns, including ‘Clancy dress’, and ‘Clancel Class’, as well as a mass of scribbles that seemed to be Clancy falling asleep in Physics. He pushed the smile from his face, steeling himself, and flipped open the book.

If he didn’t get this homework done, Mr Reece was going to kill him.

Chapter Text

Ruby was being followed.

She had no evidence to prove it, but she could feel it. Her skin prickled with the sensation of being watched. There were multiple points when she thought one of the cars behind was following her, but they all peeled off eventually.

Get a grip, Rube, she told herself. You’re getting paranoid in your old age.

It didn’t help. She couldn’t shake the feeling. Ruby had mirrors on her bike handles, something she’d implemented a few years back. They meant she could see behind her without turning, so she knew she probably wasn’t being followed. It was all just in her mind.

After her talk with Clancy yesterday, Ruby hadn’t been able to get the idea out of her head. It was sort of far fetched and ridiculous, but it came from Clancy, and he had a good gut feeling for these types of things. Almost every time Ruby had ever been wrong, Clancy had been telling her the right thing.

Plus, the Del thing had been weird. There’d been no new information about the person who’d crashed into her, and if Clancy was right with his hunch about Red’s fall, then that was quite a coincidence (which meant it was probably not one at all: Rule #30, A coincidence is hardly ever just a coincidence ). What  Ruby didn’t know was why any of it would be happening, though. Why would anyone want to- 

In an instant, a new, sinister idea unfolded in her mind.

No , Ruby thought frustratedly. Hitch would tell her she was imagining cases since she didn’t have any of her own. Maybe he was right.

She cycled faster, not enjoying the uncomfortable sensation. She wanted to tell someone, but then Hitch wouldn’t believe her in the first place, or he’d overreact and she’d be stuck at home. Clancy would probably come around to the idea eventually, but it would just make him panic. Ruby wondered if he’d considered that he could be the next one. That was something she definitely wasn’t going to mention to him.

Ruby was glad when she pulled up at school (on time for once thanks to her speedy cycling) and had the distraction of her friends, though Red’s bandaged arm was disconcerting.

Despite the distractions, the idea stuck right in her brain. Try as she might, she couldn’t dismiss it.

☆

After school, the six of them headed to the Cherry Cup. Ruby and Clancy were the only ones who hadn’t yet gotten their licenses (Ruby by choice, Clancy not by choice), so they hitched a ride with Elliot. Del came along too, since her mom still wasn’t letting her drive again, and she’d taken shotgun before Ruby could call it. Bickering with Del about it provided a decent distraction from Ruby’s spiralling theories, but what really took her mind off of it was when Del turned on the radio.

It was the same Bazooka song Ruby had heard a million times before, tinny from the car’s crappy stereo system, but there was still that weird background noise. Ruby had been annoyed that she couldn’t escape her increasingly paranoid thoughts, and now it seemed she’d been granted a strange type of blessing. Ruby couldn’t not focus on the irritating sound at the back of the bazooka track, which meant there was zero space for her other thoughts.

“Does it not bother you?” Ruby asked, to no one in particular.

Clancy nodded. “It’s kinda irritating, which is annoying, ‘cause the song’s not too bad.”

Ruby didn’t exactly hold the song in high regard, but she took his agreement.

“Dunno, Redfort, I never noticed it till you kept pointing it out,” Del said, with her feet propped up on the dashboard, hands folded behind her head. She was certainly making use of her time in shotgun. She cranked the volume up.

“I never thought about it until you did, and now I can’t stop,” Elliot cut in, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

Ruby rolled her eyes. “It’s literally beeping, how’s it possible to not notice it?”

“Maybe it’s like, stylistic,”

“Exactly, I doubt it’s an accident,” Del agreed.

“They want to make their music unbearable to listen to?” She figured that would be the dumbest move anyone could make, but Del was sort of right. There was no way anyone could have approved the track without noticing, so it was either intentional, or some type of tech malfunction. Either way, Ruby still hated it.

Elliot pulled into the mostly deserted parking lot outside the Cherry Cup, not bothering to park properly. The others were already there; Mouse’s car was right next to Red’s, and they were both standing out front waiting for them.

Ruby got out the car, and walked over to them, since Elliot hadn’t bothered pulling up next to them like a normal person.

“Hey, busters,” Mouse grinned. “You’re late.”

Clancy appeared next to Ruby. He was good at doing that. “It’s Elliot’s fault,” he said. Ruby nodded.

“Have you guys gotten drinks yet?”

“Nah, we wanted to wait for you,” Red told her.

“Red wanted to wait for you,” Mouse corrected, but Ruby knew she would have waited anyway. Mouse was a lot softer than she made herself out to be, and her name proved it.

“You’re going soft, Mouse,” Clancy said, echoing Ruby’s thoughts as he fell into step beside her. They walked into the doors of the Cherry Cup together. They’d all paired up, sort of subconsciously, Mouse and Red behind Ruby and Clancy, and Del and Elliot behind them. It always seemed to work out like that.

Ruby was a fan of the Cherry Cup, with its plastic cherry patterned tabletops and bar stools, but she was mostly liked the fact that she could get any fruit combo she liked, which included all the usual stuff, but also things like lychee and kiwi and dragonfruit, and on one memorable occasion, durian (Clancy had of course, been the one to try it out).

“Redfort and Crew,” Cherry greeted them with a smile from behind the counter, then as the others traipsed in behind them, he raised his eyebrows. “The whole crew is here! Lasco, I want no trouble this time,” he warned a smirking Del.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she lied.

Ruby tried out a new flavour combo every time she came, so while the others all ordered their regulars (and Clancy got his veggie shake) she studied the board with the fruit options, thinking of one she hadn’t done yet.

“Rube, you’re sorta taking forever,” Clancy said, and she realised she was in fact taking forever. Everyone else was holding a cup emblazoned with a cherry logo and sipping quite happily from it, and Cherry was looking expectantly at her.

“Mango, fig and blueberry,” she said finally. Cherry looked relieved that she’d finally come to a conclusion.

The final colour of Ruby’s drink was pretty lackluster - it was a boring shade of brown with a purple tinge, which she’d expected because of complementary colours and all, but she took a sip and it tasted just fine.

They did what they usually did when they came to Cherry’s, a tradition that had started when Elliot had first gotten his license. They never sat inside anymore unless they were coming as a smaller group. Instead they sat out on the cars with their drinks, which was pretty pleasant in the warm Twinford summers. The sky was still bright and afternoon sun painted everything golden and hazy. Ruby picked Red’s car to settle on the hood of, Clancy and Red perched on either side of her, while the other three took Mouse’s car.

“Rube,” Red said, in between sips of her magenta smoothie. “I was thinking we could have Del’s party at mine, ‘cause, y’know, Mrs Lasco. But my mom will never let me get alcohol, and she doesn’t drink, so…” Red trailed off, looking hopefully at Ruby.

“I’ll find some,” Ruby assured her. “My folks don’t have a clue what stuff they have, so they’ll never notice.” It was not exactly a lie. Brant and Sabina would never notice. Hitch, on the other hand… he would make things more difficult, but Ruby was confident she’d figure something out.

Red’s comment made her suddenly remember Del’s birthday, and the fact that she was supposed to make up for her flaky basketball match attendance with a good present. Sure, Del hadn’t seemed too upset at Ruby except for the initial outburst, but Ruby knew herself well enough to be sure that there’d be a next time she missed a match. She needed to smooth it over before this became a whole thing. That thought, though, was for later. For now, Ruby wanted to enjoy her afternoon. She sipped on her juice, listening to Del tell what Ruby was sure was a wildly exaggerated account of what had happened the last time she’d been at the Cherry Cup, with Elliot chiming in once in a while with more accurate details. Ruby sucked up the dregs of her drink, then stood it carefully on the car.

She lay back on the hood of the car, the metal sun-warmed against her skin, and closed her eyes. Ruby was always tired, recently. She listened dimly to Del’s story, but her thoughts drifted elsewhere.

She hadn’t gotten a good night of sleep in months, maybe a year. Ruby was a night owl in any case, but the advent of coffee into Ruby’s world as well as keeping up with homework and Spectrum work meant she never went to bed at a reasonable time, not that she ever had. Then there were the nightmares, but Ruby preferred not to consider them that. It made her sound like she was about five years old.

The point was, Ruby was tired, and lying down in the warmth of the afternoon sun next to her friends, with their chatter in the background, meant she drifted off into sleep in mere seconds.

☆

Ruby woke up to someone shaking her enthusiastically.

“Rube,” Elliot said, “Truth or Dare. Get up!”

She didn’t think truth or dare warranted her being woken from what had been a peaceful sleep, but she’d known Elliot for far too long to think that he would give up on making her join. She dragged one eye open, and he grinned at her, his dizzying smile bright against the sky. “Come on, Redfort. You can’t tell me you’re not tempted.”

She opened both eyes. The sun had sunk in the sky. It now hung above the horizon, streaking the sky and the clouds tawny orange and pale pink.

“There’s alcohol, bozo,” he added, seeing her hesitation.

“You’re a bozo, bozo. You could have told me that earlier,” she muttered, but she sat up. She wasn’t interested by the idea of getting drunk, more by seeing everyone else drunk, and seeing what they’d be willing to do thanks to a little intoxication.

“Ah, there you go,” Elliot grinned, and he hopped off of Red’s car, leading Ruby over to the grassy patch by the carpark. The rest of them seemed to have abandoned the cars and were now sitting in a vaguely circle shaped formation on the grass, under the sad looking oak tree.

“You took your sweet time, Redfort,” Del told her, as Ruby took her spot next to Clancy, with Red on her other side. There were three water bottles in the middle, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Elliot must have refilled them with vodka. Mouse, always a lightweight, was fawning over Red’s hair clumsily. She must have gotten a head start.

“You all know the rules,” Elliot said, but he launched into an explanation anyway. “We go round the circle, and someone in the group volunteers to ask that person truth or dare. No lying by omission, folks, and no follow up questions either. If the person doesn’t want to answer or do the dare, they drink. Feel free to drink more than a sip, though.”

“Straight vodka?” Red wrinkled her nose. “It’s kinda gross. And Mouse is gone already.” She glanced at the evidently drunk Mouse beside her, then back at Elliot. They’d all finished their drinks, so there was no question of spiking those instead.

“I’m gonna puke if I have to take vodka every time I don’t want to answer,” Clancy protested.

“That’s sorta the point,” Ruby protested. “Y’know, to discourage you from not answering, and to provide the entertainment of you puking your guts up.”

“Yeah, you’re all being downers,” Del cut in.

“Maybe we go get more juices and spike those,” Red suggested, before Ruby and Del could start on their bickering.

Elliot looked at Red, as if considering it, then smiled.

“Nah.”

☆

“Who wants to go first?”

“Since you suggested it, you’d better start it, buster,” Ruby told him.

“Okay, someone ask,” he nodded, and looked around the circle expectantly.

“Truth or Dare,” Del said, grinning. Ruby knew she had an idea for dare, and Elliot must have been able to tell, too, since he made a smart move.

“Truth.”

“You’re no fun, man,” Del complained. Elliot shrugged, the whole motion exaggerated. There was something desperately casual about Elliot, like a suit and tie would choke him to death. It was what drew people to him, Ruby figured, that and his laughter.

“Come on, Del!” Mouse egged her on, too loud to be anywhere near sober.

“Grossest thing you’ve ever done?”

Elliot groaned. “I expected better from you, Lasco.”

“Come on!”

“Fine. Fuck, maybe when someone threw up on me at Chip Winter’s party and it got all in my hair-“ he shuddered, “and I didn’t shower for a full 24 hours after and it like congealed in my hair, man, that was bad.”

Clancy was staring at Elliot like he was reconsidering his feelings for him. “Why?” He asked. “Why would you not shower after someone threw up in your hair?”

“Hey, no follow ups, remember,” Elliot said smugly.

“You’re so gross, Finch,” Del told him. “My go. Someone ask me.”

“There’s not even a point,” Ruby pointed out. “You’ve never not picked dare. You’re predictable.”

“It’s the name of the game, Rube. You can’t not ask me-“

“Truth or Dare!” Mouse cut in. She was clutching her baseball cap clumsily to shield her from the setting sun, but judging by her squint, it wasn’t working.

“Ha. Truth.”

“Aw, fuck!” Mouse shook her head. “Del!”

“It’s Redfort’s fault for saying I’m predictable.”

Ruby shrugged. “I commend you for trying to prove me wrong.”

“Trying? I succeeded-“

“How many people in this group have you wanted to kiss at any point?” Mouse’s words were losing their clarity, but they got a roar of approval from the entire circle.

Del gave Mouse her middle finger, then took a long sip from the bottle closest to her, prompting Mouse to loudly complain. Ruby didn’t miss the way her eyes flicked to Ruby for a split second, but she knew what she was supposed to say, so she did. “Too chicken, Lasco?” She taunted.

“I’m too goddamn polite.”

Elliot burst into laughter, which meant the next five minutes were just laughter, and it was only when Elliot finally stopped that they all managed to, still breathless and grinning.

“Clance’s turn.”

Clancy looked a bit like a deer caught in the headlights, but he smiled anyway.

“Truth or Dare?” Red asked.

“Truth.”

“Aw, come on,” Del grumbled. “Not even a single dare?”

Elliot shrugged. “We could just make it truth instead. Maybe we’d get more drunk cause people don’t wanna answer.”

Del seemed to consider this, tilting her head, and the mention of getting more drunk seemed to finally win out. “Fine,” she said, sitting back on her heels. Everyone else in the circle was nodding in agreement. Ruby would have preferred being able to choose dares, even if it would have been Del choosing them. Truth felt too invasive, but Ruby knew to pick her battles, and this was one she couldn’t win.

“Del, you gotta give Clance a question,” Ruby poked at her, when Del had taken well over a minute to think.

“Fuck off, Redfort, I’m thinking,” Del said good naturedly. “Who’s the prettiest in the group?”

Ruby saw Clancy start flapping for a second before he suppressed it, which he didn’t usually do around them. She knew why he didn’t want to seem nervous, of course, but it made her want to go to the dojo and kick something, hard.

“Like, a girl?” He asked hopefully.

“Yeah, unless you got something to tell us, Crew?”

Clancy was slowly going bright red. “Yeah, no. Course not.” Ruby would have laughed, but she wasn’t a blabber. She knew Clancy hadn’t told any of the others, so even though she was sure most of them had already guessed, she made no expression.

Clancy looked nervously around the group, his eyes flicking from Ruby to Del to Mouse to Red over and over.

“Rube,” he said finally, looking a little desperately at Ruby, to a chorus of ‘aw!’ that made Ruby almost choke on her laughter.

“Aw, thanks Clance. Y’know, it takes a lotta effort to look this good,” she said, gesturing to her hair, mussed from sleeping. Clancy grinned awkwardly.

“Right, Rube, it’s your turn,” he said quickly, happy to get the attention off of him.

“Truth or Dare,” Elliot said, grinning wickedly at her. “But you have to say truth.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Truth.”

“Okay, most scared you’ve ever been,” he asked, evidently hoping for it to be funny and a little pathetic.

Ruby’s mind handily summoned up a montage, images flickering through her mind. There was the first time Clancy had almost died, then the second, memories she’d never looked back at. There was that hour locked in a dark closet when she’d been sure she was going to die, listening to the footsteps and raving of a lunatic while she lost her ability to breathe to a panic attack. Then there were those minutes on the ledge of a mountain, fire blazing around her as well as a murderous Australian, and the countless times she’d thought she was a goner during a million other Spectrum related situations. All in all, nothing suitable for truth or dare.

There was no way Ruby was answering that question. She reached for the water bottle closest to her, and took a sip, flashing a smile as Del and Elliot booed her.

“I thought you wanted us getting drunk?” She asked the two of them with a grin, feeling the warmth in her throat from the alcohol.

“You’re boring, Redfort.”

“It’s Red’s turn,” she said. “Gimme a sec.” She could ask her about crushes or stuff, but that was the kind of thing that had never particularly interested Ruby, and she knew almost all the other questions would be another something romantic, so she figured she’d spare them all.

“Worst thing you’ve ever done,” she said. In a slightly twisted way, she wanted to know what a normal person’s was, what hers could be if it wasn’t being responsible for people’s deaths. Evil people, but as she’d gotten older, she’d found it harder to think in black and white as much as she once had. Then there were all the times she’d recklessly put people into danger. Worst of all was being the reason for Clancy almost dying, more than once. Normal stuff, basically.

Red grimaced. “Like morally?”

Ruby shrugged. “Yeah.”

“I told someone that Rosie Wells was mean and ugly,” Red said softly. “But I don’t know her and I think she’s pretty. I was just upset that she was dating-“ she cut herself off, clamping her hands over her mouth.

“Who?” Mouse exclaimed, and Elliot leaned forward.

Ruby felt a dull ache inside of her. When she looked up, she found Clancy’s eyes on her.

She breathed through the envy. Ruby’s parents thought jealousy was the devil, which was admittedly easy for them since they had everything and were well liked by everyone, but Ruby agreed with the sentiment.

Apparently Red hadn’t given up the name of who she was upset Rosie was dating, since Clancy had asked Mouse a question already.

“Who’s your favourite out of everyone here?”

Ruby rolled her eyes, which she’d managed to do about fifty times over the course of the day. Clancy was going easy on Mouse, since she was drunk. It wasn’t a surprise or an offence to anyone when she slurred out, “Red.”

“First round done,” Elliot grinned. “I reckon that means everyone has to have a sip at least.”

Ruby complied, but she didn’t take more than a sip, and neither did Clancy, who wasn’t really a drinker. He swore it made him feel funny, which Ruby had reasoned was sort of the point, but he hadn’t been swayed. Del, Mouse, and Elliot all had some much more eagerly, and Red went for some more moderation than they had.

“Round two!” Elliot pointed at himself. “Bring it on, bozos.”

“Biggest secret,” Del said immediately, prompting groans all around.

“Why would anyone give up their biggest secret? He’ll just drink, Lasco,” Ruby told her, and sure enough, he reached for the water bottle.

“You think you’re so smart, Redfort, and Finch, you’re a buzzkill.” Del’s retort didn’t faze either of them. Ruby did think she was smart, and her expression showed exactly that, and Elliot just shrugged.

Del groaned. “Fine. My go.”

“Would you ever fuck a guy?” Mouse asked the question with the cadence of someone deep in thought, her filter gone along with her sobriety. They all knew that Del was a lesbian, it just somehow never got said out loud. It felt like a dangerous thing to admit, and maybe it was, outside of the six of them. Ruby had no way of knowing. There was terse silence for a long moment, and then Del’s eyebrows shot up high on her head, and then she burst into laughter.

If ignited everyone else’s laughter, including Ruby, who was finding the notion of Del being anything other than deeply hostile to any guy interested in her utterly hysterical. Elliot was flat on his back on the ground, taken out by his laughter as he always was, legs flailing in the air. The warm dusk and the ringing laughter gave Ruby the surreal feeling of being in one of those coming-of-age movies they’d shown once at the Scarlet Pagoda. It was a change to feeling like the paranoid spy in an old thriller, but not an unwelcome change.

It took more than a minute for all six of them to be quiet enough for Del to look at a bewildered Mouse and choke out, “No fucking way, can you imagine?” Then they dissolved into laughter again, Ruby’s stomach aching from it all.

“Clance’s go,” Mouse said loudly, trying to bring order to the group again. It took another few seconds, but the laughter died down, and Ruby looked over at Clancy. He looked a little concerned, and Ruby couldn’t blame him. Spilling her secrets wasn’t her idea of a good time, not when she had so much to hide, but her friends seemed to enjoy it.

“Okay, do you really have ambassador stuff all the time or do you just not wanna come?”

Ruby’s head snapped towards Del in disbelief. Del ran her mouth, and Ruby mostly didn’t give a fuck, but this was stupid on another level. Clancy looked stunned, mouth opening and closing, more from surprise than offence. Still, it was Clancy. He didn’t do lying, and his dad was an actual ambassador, and he always apologised profusely when he had to skip their plans. He always talked about his dad with a grimace on his face and he complained daily about smiling for millions of photos and most importantly, he wasn’t a liar.

“Ambassador stuff,” Clancy said finally. Del nodded.

“Just making sure, dude. You’re like, always off doing that shit.”

“Speaking of Ambassador Stuff,” Ruby said. “Didn’t you say you had to be back by eight thirty?”

The realisation hit Clancy like a stone. His arms were moving at his sides before he’d even checked his watch. “Eight thirty two,” he said frantically, scrambling to gather his stuff. “He’s gonna kill me. He’s gonna put my head on a spike and display it right on the gates.” Clancy’s morbid side had a tendency to come out when he started to panic, a side effect of all the crime shows and books he consumed, both modern and medieval.

“I’ll come with you,” Ruby said. “You look like you’re gonna puke.”

Clancy flapped harder. “Gee, thanks, Rube.”

“I’m the one saving your ass.”

“Late!”

“Better late than never, Clance. Ambassador Crew would agree.”

“Nah,” Clancy said darkly. “If it was never, he’d get the sympathy of having a missing kid.”

They tore down the streets, pushing past women with strollers and old guys out for an evening walk. Ruby was finding that her field training had actually improved her fitness, a claim she hadn’t believed until now (despite hours of torturous drills), because Clancy was panting as he ran, ten meters behind.

“Clance, my friend,” she yelled. “Move your ass!” They were almost there, turning onto Ambassador Row. Clancy was now ten minutes late, but he seemed to have given up, arriving puffing and panting at the Crew house’s front gate while somehow also managing to look despondent.

“Good luck,” she told him.

He shook his head. “If I’m not in school tomorrow, check the morgue.”

☆

Ruby trekked back to the Cherry Cup parking lot to collect her bike, which had been shoved into the back of Elliot’s car. The others seemed to have abandoned the game, now just sprawled on the grass in less of a circle and more of a pile.

“See ya, Rube,” Red called, sounding like she was now a bit drunk.

“Yeah, see ya later, alligator,” Elliot added, waving at her as she tugged the bike out of his trunk.

“In a while, croc.”

She wheeled her bike out of the parking lot, and climbed on, biking down empty roads. The others would probably have to abandon the cars in the lot overnight, since none of them seemed sober enough to drive. Twinford was considered to be a pretty safe city, though Ruby would have disagreed.

Her skin starting to crawl as she turned onto Amster. She had the unmistakable sense that she was being followed, but when she looked into her mirrors, she couldn’t see anyone.

That feeling twice in one day could only mean two things. Either she was starting to lose her marbles, or she was being tailed by professionals who knew how not to get caught. Ruby didn’t like either of those options. It was more likely that it was the former, that since Clancy had put the idea into her head about something being weird, she was now getting paranoid and seeing things that weren’t there. Rule #8 , Ruby thought. Don't let your imagination run away with you or you might well lose the plot. Still, the feeling persisted all the way home.

You need to loosen up , she reasoned with herself as she discarded her bike by the side entrance. Maybe that party tomorrow that Lori had invited her to would help. She hadn’t made new friends in longer than was probably healthy, as Hitch liked to remind her. Ruby’s normal stance on the issue was that she was doing just fine with the friends she had, and no one could say she wasn’t friendly, but she was now reconsidering. A bit of small talk couldn’t hurt, and maybe it would make her less paranoid if she reminded herself just how harmless most people were.

She walked around to the front door, and let herself in. She hadn’t had dinner, which only occurred to her as she entered the kitchen and saw Hitch making himself a toast, and Mrs Digby sitting at the table, reading one of her thrillers. They all had the same wear and tear, the spine white with use, creases from past dog-ears on every page. Somehow, Mrs Digby always seemed as engrossed as if it was the first time she’d picked the book up. Ruby’s entrance disrupted her, though, and she looked up at the same time as Hitch did.

“Hey, kid,” he said, fishing the toast from his toaster. He looked down at the toast like he was reading it, which, of course, he was. Ruby didn’t ask in front of Mrs Digby though.

“Child,” Mrs Digby chided. “I know for a fact that you haven’t fed yourself.”

“I had a juice,” Ruby told her.

“A juice,” she said disparagingly. Mrs Digby was of the opinion that juice hardly counted as food, an opinion that Ruby admittedly shared. “A juice isn’t dinner in my book,” she added, standing up and setting down her book. “Now, what do you want?”

That was how Ruby ended up digging into a freshly made Digby Club, one of Mrs Digby’s specialties, and one of Ruby’s favourites. Mrs Digby had retired to watch one of her shows, leaving Ruby and Hitch alone in the kitchen. He was on his second piece of toast, this one from the normal toaster, and smothered in raspberry jam.

“What’s Spectrum saying?” She asked through a mouthful of sandwich, but Hitch understood anyway.

“Nothing you need to know.” He’d polished off his first toast before Ruby had been able to sneak a look at it, a fact that was annoying her still. Ruby did not do well with secrets being kept from her, even ones which were as mundane as these. For all Ruby knew, the message could have been ‘no news, stand by’, one of the toast messages Ruby had managed to see a few years back.

“How come don’t I get one of those toasters,” she complained. He shot her a look.

“You’ve gotta be senior, kid. You’re not even a certified field agent yet, in case you forgot.”

“I’ve done plenty of field work,” she defended herself, but he wasn’t wrong. LB didn’t seem eager to give Ruby the stamp of approval, despite Ruby’s effort. It was frustrating but not unexpected, which somehow got on Ruby’s nerves more .

“Sure. Maybe you can tell LB that.”

Ruby gritted her teeth. It wasn’t so much the words that threw her off, but the tone. Hitch wasn’t in a good mood, she could feel it as surely as she had been able to tell Mouse was drunk. So either the message had been worrying, or he was annoyed at having nothing to do. Or something not Spectrum related had happened, but as far as Ruby knew, Hitch had no friends. He said he did, but she’d never seen the evidence, so the jury was still out.

She finished her sandwich in silence, and he made no move to talk.

“I’m going to bed,” Ruby said, once she’d put her plate in the sink.

He didn’t even look surprised at how early she’d said it, which was how Ruby knew his day must have been bad. “Goodnight, kiddo.”

“Night,” she said, frowning as she walked out the kitchen. She turned once when she reached the stairs. He still sat there in the dark room, a figure hunched over the table, head buried in his hands.

Something was happening at Spectrum, and Ruby was going to find out what.

Chapter Text

Despite going to bed early, Ruby hadn’t slept early. She’d written up what she’d needed to in yellow notebook #962, then knocked out a French essay for Clancy, an English essay, and a maths homework. Ruby might not give much thought to school, but she didn’t see a point in letting her grades suffer for it.

By the time those were done, it had been eleven. She’d gotten into bed and tried to get an early night, but had twisted and turned until three, when she’d finally managed to get some sleep. It meant waking up at eight was a painful affair, but Ruby added some extra concealer under her eyes to hide the evidence.

She headed downstairs to the smell of pancakes, and sure enough, Mrs Digby was standing at the stove watching over a pan, a plate piled with a large stack of pancakes in front of it. Her parents came in just as Ruby sat down with a stack in front of her.

“Ruby, sweetheart,” Brant said, a hint of disapproval in his voice as he ruffled her hair. “You know how I feel about those t-shirts of yours.”

Today, Ruby was wearing one that simply said ‘ bozo’. She’d previously cut off the sleeves to make it more of a tank top, which had been her main reason for choosing it. Twinford’s first heatwave of the summer seemed to have arrived overnight.

“It’s hot out there,” she said through a mouthful of pancake. “I wouldn’t wanna get heatstroke, I heard it’s a real bummer.” It was a weak excuse, but Ruby was mostly focused on demolishing her pancakes, hot and fluffy with crispy edges and drizzled with syrup. Her mother sighed audibly.

“Still, Ruby, I do wish you’d freshen up your wardrobe a bit,” she countered.

“I’m thinking of going over to Mouse’s today, after school,” she told them, paying no heed to her mother’s suggestion. Ruby had no real opposition to buying new clothes, it was just that she liked her old ones just fine.

The bit about going to Mouse’s was a flat out lie, but it was unlikely to be found out. Mouse’s parents weren’t the talking type, and as a result, they weren’t known too well by Brant and Sabina, which meant they wouldn’t mention it in passing conversation. It also helped that Ruby’s parents were well meaning, but relatively oblivious. Getting older had made things like this easier. Her parents didn’t believe in punishments like grounding for a ‘young woman like Ruby’, and her many years of getting into little trouble (that they knew of) meant she often got the benefit of the doubt.

Hitch eyed her suspiciously. While her parents may have gotten more lenient and trusting as she’d gotten older, the opposite could be said for Hitch. Ruby appreciated that was mostly as a direct result of many reckless actions over many long years, but that didn’t mean it didn’t bug her. Hitch couldn’t usually tell when she was lying, she was pretty sure, but that just meant he suspected she was lying every time, to avoid trouble.

Ruby ignored him, smiling at her parents. She got their approval, as she’d expected, demolished her pancakes, and left before Hitch could question her.

School passed slowly, as per usual. Clancy looked on edge the whole day, so he was evidently in hot water with his father. She told him at lunch about Lori’s party (it was technically Cicely’s, but Lori was so obviously the leader of the trio in Ruby’s mind that she ended up calling it her party instead), which got his mind off of his father for a few minutes, and got him invested in the whole party, which Ruby could have predicted.

Despite Clancy’s distaste for parties and drinking, he had a strange fascination with them. It seemed to be a theme with him, avoiding something, and being all the more intrigued by it, like with the ocean, or any drama at all. She told Mouse of her excuse as she was leaving school, to avoid any future confusion, then headed back home.

The party wasn’t for a few hours. Normally Ruby would have rung up Clancy and asked if he wanted to come over, since the answer was almost always yes, but he was grounded thanks to his lateness the day before. Unlike Ruby’s parents, Clancy’s were big fans of grounding. Clancy himself wasn’t punished all that often, but the same couldn’t be said for Nancy, who was grounded more often than not. The more Clancy talked about his dad and his stickler tendencies, the more Ruby was glad for her parents’ obliviousness.

With little to do, she considered calling Del, or Elliot, but they were likely together, and Ruby was still not entirely back in Del’s good books. She’d been fine yesterday, but Ruby didn’t want to provoke Del’s infamous temper. She really needed to get that present for Del’s birthday and make it up to her, only she still hadn’t figured out what.

In the end, Ruby fished her yellow notebook out from under her floorboard, then crawled up onto the roof. It was still pretty warm, so there were plenty of people on the street for Ruby to watch. She wrote up stuff from the morning, then settled in to find some more.

Mrs Beesman’s cat escaped; the scrawny banker who’d recently moved onto the street helped her look for it, despite her hostility. The banker then moved to go back to his home, where his wife and two kids were presumably waiting, paused, spun on his heel, and walked towards #7, where Miss Souza, the heiress to a small fortune, lived. Miss Souza was young, only about twenty five, and pretty, so it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. The banker knocked on the front door, which opened mere seconds later. Miss Souza ushered him in, looking round before she closed the door. As Ruby had learnt a long while ago, people rarely thought about looking up, which meant Miss Souza didn’t spot her, perched on the roof across the street. Ruby wrote that whole encounter down quickly. She hadn’t been expecting to find a whole affair, but that was the reward in always looking at the mundane goings on of the street. (Rule #16: even the mundane can tell a story.)

There was nothing exciting over the next few hours, but she wrote it all down anyways. It helped pass the time, and it had helped her solve cases in the past. It was more of a habit thank anything else, now, and Ruby was too far in to stop with 961 notebooks already filled.

The sun had started to set over Cedar Drive, so Ruby checked her watch. It was 8, and time for her to get ready.

She dropped back down though the hatch, shutting it behind her, and stowed her notebook away under the loose floorboard. She wasn’t yet sure what to wear, but Ruby had an abundance of thrifted dresses, usually with some modifications or repairs. Her parents certainly disliked them, but Ruby was a fan, hence the closet full of them.

She picked out a blood red dress, patterned with swirls and circles in many shades of orange. It had flared sleeves, stopped far above her knees, and was hemmed with lace around the bottom and the end of the sleeves. The lace was ripped in some places, but Ruby had carefully used a bit of sticky tape to put it back together. Her mother wouldn’t have approved, but the sticky tape was barely visible if you weren’t looking for it, which was good enough for Ruby.

She pulled it on, zipping it up after a bit of twisting and turning, then rummaged in the bottom half of her closet for shoes. In the end, she found a pair of red heeled mary janes. The once shiny shoes now had scuffs on the toe, and one of the straps was held together by thick black thread from 15 year old Ruby’s clumsy attempt at sewing, but from far away, they didn’t look too bad. She put those on, then moved to the bathroom. She didn’t go to parties often, despite getting invites. Her friends as a rule rarely threw ones that involved too many other people, so Ruby never put in too much effort for those, and she declined most other invitations, because her friends weren’t invited or Clancy wouldn’t come.

That meant she had little idea of what exactly to wear or how to do her makeup, bar what she’d seen on tv shows, but luckily Ruby’s sense of style was highly personal. She didn’t bother too much about what she should be wearing, so long as she liked her own appearance.

Ruby did her usual eyeliner, mascara, blush and lipgloss, but added some more eyeliner extending out just a little from her lower lash line, so it looked sort of like what she’d seen on magazines; Ruby had no issues with taking inspiration from others when she liked what they were doing. It meant her style was a mishmash of many different things, like dresses from decades past and huge t-shirts and delicate shoes.

Makeup done, Ruby adjusted her barrette, and turned her attention to figuring out how to sneak out without attracting Hitch’s attention. The barrette unfortunately meant Hitch could track her anyway, but since the part few months had been uneventful, and Ruby had no ongoing cases, she hoped he wouldn’t check where she was. He certainly hadn’t checked the last few times she’d snuck out.

In the end, she decided on going down the laundry chute. It was a tight fit at seventeen, but Ruby just about made it down. She landed at the bottom with mussed hair and her dress bunched around her, but she smoothed both down quickly, and walked down the street and round the corner before anyone could spot her from the windows.

She took the subway, since the Village wasn’t exactly close by, and she didn’t want to be biking back in the dark after she’d ingested alcohol. She especially didn’t want that when she’d been sure she was being followed yesterday.

It was five stops on the subway, which was packed full of people since it was Friday night, so Ruby was relieved when she finally emerged into the cool night air of the Village. The Village, other than being home to Hitch’s favourite coffee place, Lucello’s, was one of the more wealthy parts of town. It was full of gleaming apartment blocks and fashionable high streets and whole food stores and huge modern houses. Ruby navigated towards the address Lori had given her (she’d memorised a map of Twinford many years ago), and found herself standing in front of one of those modern mansions, which looked exactly like the rows of houses that stood on either side of it. The oak door was wide open, which Ruby thought was sort of brave but mostly dumb, considering how many burglars would probably leap at the chance to ransack a Village house.

She walked up the steps and through the oak door, into an entrance hall full of white marble, a huge staircase rising from the centre and curling towards either side of the hall. It was thronged with people, all teenagers around Ruby’s age, blue light streaming from sets of bulbs haphazardly affixed to the ceiling. Tables lined the sides, heaped with bowls of chips and dips and pizza, and others with drinks and bottles in a million different colours.

It took Ruby a second to orientate herself, but she picked her way through the crowd towards the drinks table. She thought the easiest way to deal with it was to not be entirely sober.

As she was dodging a pair of kissing teenagers, she felt someone tap her shoulder, and she started, adrenaline spiking in her veins. When she turned, she found it was only Lori, grinning, hair wild from the party or the dancing or a lack of brushing, Ruby wasn’t entirely sure. She was wearing a tight dress, but its shape was like Ruby’s own, despite being a few inches shorter. Her heels looked like torture to walk in, spiky and tall and strappy, but Ruby couldn’t deny that she looked beautiful, in a dangerous sort of way.

“Ruby!” Lori exclaimed. “You made it, let me grab you a drink!” She spoke with an excitement that only came from being a few drinks in, but Ruby didn’t protest.

“Cool party,” she said, as Lori pressed a cup into her hand, filled with something orangey-yellow in colour. Ruby took a sip, and then another. It was a pineapple flavoured drink of some sort, but Ruby could feel the alcohol hidden by the flavour warming her throat as it went down.

“Yeah, thank fuck for Cicely,” Lori said, as she dragged Ruby back through the crowds of people, her hand wrapped around Ruby’s wrist. “Her parents let her do anything and spend anything.”

Ruby could hear the barely disguised jealously in her voice even through the clamour of noise around them. Ruby must be right about Lori not having a lot of money. Lori towed her towards a small group of people, and tapped one guy on the shoulder. He turned around slowly, reflexes dull from his drink.

“Ruby, this is Mike,” Lori yelled, gesturing wildly to the tall, lanky looking boy in front of her. “I’ve been telling him all about you!”

Ruby raised her eyebrows at Lori, but she greeted Mike with a nod. “Nice to meet you,” she said, though she didn’t actually think it was.

By the time Ruby managed to slip away from Mike, who seemed to be under the impression that he was doing Ruby a favour by talking to him, Lori had disappeared. Ruby didn’t mind too much. She figured things out better when left to her own devices. She made her way to the edge of the room, leaning against one of the tables there, and sipped on her drink as she observed the party. She managed to spot Lori, her bleach blonde hair bright even in the dim room, dancing with a heavily tanned boy. Ruby wouldn’t mind dancing, but she certainly wouldn’t do it with Mike. She scanned the room, and her eyes landed on Rob and Cicely. They were by the edge of the party, and Rob was drinking, then he set down his glass, and pulled Cicely in, and-

Ruby blinked in surprise. She prided herself on figuring out people’s relationships with each other, and normally she was pretty good, but she hadn’t expected Rob and Cicely to kiss.

She watched them at it with a kind of disgusted fascination. Ruby couldn’t imagine ever wanting to mash her lips against someone else’s. She finished her drink, setting it down beside her, but she didn’t look away. Why was it that she felt so weird about Rob and Cicely kissing? Was it because they were supposed to be friends?

Ruby couldn’t imagine kissing any of her friends. She knew Clancy wouldn’t feel the same, because of his crush on Elliot, but she couldn’t imagine liking any of her friends, let alone a stranger. For years when Ruby was younger, any adult who had heard about her and Clancy had given her a patronising sort of smile when she’d protested that she didn’t like him and that he was her best friend. Their smile said they thought she’d grow out of it, that she’d understand when she was older.

Ruby was older now, and she still didn’t understand.

She stood up. She didn’t appreciate the sudden melancholy that had wormed its way into her heart, and she was going to get rid of it.

She weaved her way through the crowd back to a table piled with drinks, and took another cup of the pineapple stuff, getting through this cup much quicker than her last. She felt like maybe everything could be a bit more bearable if she dulled her senses enough to not have to think about Red and Del and being followed and people kissing and Clancy’s dad and Spectrum, so she took another cup, and waded her way through the dance floor.

As Ruby was beginning to settle into the loudness of the party and the thrum of the bodies around her, the song ended and that godforsaken Bazooka song started to assault her ears instead. Ruby sat next to a table and groaned, nursing her drink. That staccato guitar wouldn’t stop, there in every second of the song, again and again.

‘Del,’ Ruby’s brain helpfully supplied. She still needed a birthday present for her, and her birthday was less than a week away. It had to be something Bazooka related, Del was too obsessed for it to be anything else. A poster of that guitarist she loved? Not really enough for Ruby to make it up to her, though maybe she should suggest that to Clancy. Concert tickets, though. That would appease Del enough for her to not be upset if Ruby missed another game in the future, which she undoubtedly would. She’d have to run to a few record shops tomorrow and see if there were any tickets available.

Satisfied now that she had her course of action planned out, Ruby polished off her cup. She was starting to feel all warm, like she was finally part of the party. It was probably the drinks. Ruby had no idea what had been in those, but they seemed to have done their job. Ruby had no inhibitions about joining the group dancing (if their drunken jumping and singing could be called dancing) in the centre of the room, as the Bazooka song finally ended and an old hit came on.

She stumbled into Lori out of nowhere. Lori was now drunk but also merry, and she grabbed Ruby by the arms, pulling her into the middle of the crowd, and into the dance. Ruby found herself grinning back at Lori as she whirled Ruby round, the two of them bumping into the people around them, but Ruby couldn’t care, she was happy, and she was laughing. It spilled out of her like sunlight into a darkened room, and it surprised her. She hadn’t been so at ease with people who weren’t her same friends or Blacker or Hitch in more years than she wanted to admit, and it was a good feeling. It was an addictive feeling. Ruby found herself hoping Lori would invite her to another party even as she enjoyed this one.

When the song ended, Lori dragged her over to the drinks table, and they each took another before they joined into the dancing for the next song. Ruby lost sight of Lori at some point, but by then she didn’t care that much. She felt so little like herself, drunk at a party with no one she really knew, that found she could enjoy it. It was a strange type of freedom to be someone she didn’t even know.

Ruby laughed with girls she didn’t recognise and spun with a boy she didn’t care for, lost in a haze of warmth and joy and freedom and a thrumming bass that she could feel vibrating through her whole body. Ruby had never been drunk like this before. She drank, but she didn’t get drunk, not till today. She wasn’t someone who liked that loss of control that alcohol gave, or she’d thought she wasn’t. Ruby had not considered that being a short, slight girl meant she’d been drunk by her third drink, but she was finding that she didn’t mind.

She minded more once she stumbled out into the cool night air, alone, once the party had died down. Her blood hummed in her veins as the joy faded from it. She wanted it back already.

Ruby took the subway back the way she’d come. If she’d been sober, she would have been more cautious, and more scared, but in her state, the thought of being followed didn’t cross her mind. It was only after that she considered it, that she was lucky Twinford was a safe city and that a drunk teenage girl on a deserted train managed to make it home safe at all.

As she walked out of the subway station, she checked her escape watch. It was 3am. She wasn’t sure how she had spent that much time there, or how she’d lost track of so much, but she blinked again and the time on her watch didn’t change, blinking out a furious 3:02 until she turned off of Amster onto Cedar Drive and almost crashed into a tree. At that point, she figured that looking where she was going would be a much smarter idea than staring at a time that wasn’t going to magically change, so she made her clumsy way home.

She came in through the back door, fumbling with her keys in the dark. Bug didn’t bark, because it was her. Her parents were probably fast asleep, and they wouldn’t have been worried. They would have assumed she was staying over at Mouse’s when she didn’t come back home. The main problem, Ruby thought, as she rounded the corner of the hallway, would be-

Hitch stood at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed over his chest.

“What’re you doing?” She said, and maybe she slurred her words a little, because Hitch gave an exaggerated sigh, before steering her up the stairs.

“You stink of alcohol, kiddo. Someone had to make sure you actually came home.” He looked tired, still. He had bags under his eyes that Ruby was sure hadn’t always been there, or maybe it was just the dim light.

“Obviously I could come home just fine,” Ruby grumbled, but the effect of her words was sort of lost when she stumbled walking down the hall to her bedroom.

“You can’t walk straight,” he pointed out, sitting her down on her bed.

“Look, kid. You party all you want, okay? We were all teenagers once, unfortunately. But you’ve gotta be smarter than this.” He sat in her desk chair, looking at her. Ruby frowned.

“I saw you took the subway. At three am, Ruby?” He sounded exasperated. He sounded like a weary parent, not a butler, or even a secret agent babysitter. When she didn’t respond, he sighed again, a frustrated sound.

“Get a taxi, or get one of your friends to pick you up, is it that hard? You’re smart, so act like it.” He was upset, more upset than Ruby would have expected, and she realised she didn’t like it.

Hitch stood up suddenly, running his hands through his hair.

“Drink some water,” he said, before he closed the door behind him and left Ruby still sitting there.

She flopped backwards onto the mattress, feeling sort of nauseous now.

Hitch didn’t seem himself, and he hadn’t the day before, either, but Ruby hadn’t even had a chance to figure out the reason. She’d been so distracted.

Ruby rummaged around the piles of clothes heaped on her floor and on every available surface, and finally unearthed a bottle of water, the label peeling with age, but she downed it. She wasn’t fussy, and she knew she needed it. Too much ethanol could make a person dehydrated, she remembered somewhere in the back of her mind. She discarded the bottle somewhere she’d inevitably forget about, then peeled off her clothes and her shoes, which also got dumped on one of the piles of clothes already on her floor. Her makeup was too much effort to remove when her body was barely cooperating, and she was exhausted, a fact she’d only just realised, she she didn’t bother with it. Ruby curled up in a huge t-shirt Clancy had left over once, and crawled into bed, collapsing once she pulled the covers over her. Ruby passed out before the minute was up, and she slept a dreamless sleep.

☆☆☆

Ruby regretted the night before when she considered her pounding head and her nausea and general awful state of being. Then she remembered how the night had passed, in laughter and an ignorant bliss, and she found that maybe a hangover was a suitable payment for that. She had a feeling that she could find a use for those sort of nights.

She practically fell out of bed to avoid the sun creeping onto the pillow, and staggered to the bathroom. Her body felt like it had been wrung out over and over again, and she looked like it too. Her eyeliner was smeared all around her eyes, and her mascara was drooping. She scrubbed her face clean and towelled off. Ruby was not planning on facing her parents or Mrs Digby when she was so plainly hungover, but she was starving. She’d have to creep down at some point.

For now, she found another bottle of water from some random nook of her room and drank it desperately. Her attempt at hydration before bed must not have been particularly successful, because she was so thirsty she polished off the bottle in one go. That done, she sat back on her bed and drew the curtains tightly shut. Her eyes and aching head did not appreciate the bright morning sunlight.

As she worked the barrette from her tangled hair, she remembered Hitch yesterday, leading her up to her room and telling her to be more careful.

As much as Ruby hated to admit when adults were right, Hitch had been right. Now she could think a bit more clearly, going on the subway at 3am, drunk and alone as a teenage girl, was probably the dumbest move she could have made. Especially now, with Clancy’s hunch, and Ruby’s paranoia and feelings of being followed, it had been a reckless decision, though she didn’t even remember making the decision. She should have figured out a way home before the party, but she hadn’t been expecting to drink so much or to stay so long. It had still been stupid.

‘Bozo,’ Ruby thought frustratedly.

She couldn’t help thinking that it was exactly what a thirteen year old Ruby would have done, believing she was invincible. It frustrated her more because she knew that was how LB and Hitch still saw her, still as impulsive and as reckless and as stubborn as she’d been back then, and she knew that was why they didn’t trust her to take care of herself or to be a field agent or to not put herself in danger on cases.

The worst part was that at her core, Ruby still was just as bad. When she let her guard down, she was her thirteen year old self again.

She’d ask Elliot to pick her up next time, Ruby told herself. Truth be told, she didn’t want to have to ask him. If she did, she’d have to invite him somehow, and she firstly didn’t know Lori or Cicely well enough, but also the Ruby she had been yesterday was not one she wanted the rest of her friends to see.

If Clancy could pass his driving test, that would be better. Clancy wouldn’t want to come to the party, and he wouldn’t judge her, and she wouldn’t have to worry about being drunk and prone to spilling secrets around him, but she was getting ahead of herself. Ruby had been invited to one party. There was no guarantee she’d be invited to another.

She sort of wished she would be, though.

Chapter Text

It was practically a tradition for the six of them to go for Sunday brunch at the Double Donut. Ruby reckoned Marla would alert the cops if they didn’t show up at noon like they always did, though Mouse always came a little earlier and Ruby always came a bit later.

This Sunday was no different to all the rest. Ruby had dragged herself out of bed and hauled herself down the road and around the corner to the diner, where the other five were already waiting, crammed into their usual booth. She squeezed herself into her spot next to Clancy.

“Nice of you to join us, Redfort,” Del greeted her, sarcastic as usual.

“Del, have a little originality.” Ruby grimaced as the smell of Clancy’s veggie shake wafted over to her.

“You did say the same thing last time,” Mouse agreed when Del started to protest. She huffed and crossed her arms, but she seemed to be in good spirits despite the bickering she always started up.

“No distractions,” Clancy protested. “Del’s birthday, we still need to figure out decorations and drinks and time.”

“What’d I miss?” Ruby asked. They must have been discussing the plans for Del’s party.

“We’re having her party at my place, next Sunday of course, and Elliot’s providing the pizza,” Red informed her.

“I’ll figure out drinks,” Ruby volunteered, since she’d already told Red she would, that day they’d gone to the Cherry Cup.

Del raised her eyebrows at Ruby. “How are you planning on sneaking it past that butler of yours?” She shot her a teasing sort of grin that made Ruby regret ever telling Del about Hitch catching her after Lori’s party.

“Careful, Lasco, or you’re not getting anything,” she countered.

“It’s my birthday-“

“And I provide the drinks, buster-“

“Rube,” Clancy pleaded, at the same time that Elliot said “Del,” in a matching tone.

Ruby and Del looked at their respective best friends and sighed, shutting their mouths for once. Ruby sat back against the seat, watching as the plans continued to be formed.

“I can figure out decorations,” Mouse chimed in. “My mom must have some banners hidden away somewhere.”

“So the plan is meet here at noon like usual, stuff our faces, then go to Red’s for the actual party,” Elliot said, like he was uncertain. As if he hadn’t been sitting there while the plans were made.

“Surely Del should be organising her own party,” Ruby pointed out, after a few more minutes of mind-numbing logistics.

“It’s my birthday, I get to chill,” Del defended herself.

“Normal people, if they’re not kids, throw their own birthday parties.

“Yes, but we all know Mrs Lasco would never allow it, and anyway, Del is incapable of grasping logistics,” Mouse explained, smirking at little. Del feigned anger, but Mouse was never phased by Del.

Ruby shrugged. Mouse made a good point. Del was not good at planning, and the rest of them would probably enjoy the party much more if they had a hand in the organising of it. Knowing Del, she’d have ended up inviting them to the beach, where they’d have encountered someone Del hated and it would have turned into a fistfight.

They ordered their usuals, but before Ruby could get a bite into her jelly donut, Marla came up to their table.

“Ruby,” she called, gesturing her over to the counter. “I’ve just gotten a call for you.”

Ruby frowned. She couldn’t think of a single good reason why anyone would need to contact her through Marla, especially not anyone who knew exactly where she’d be at 12:15 on a Sunday, so she followed Marla without protest over to the counter, where she handed Ruby the phone (which had a handle painted with mini donuts, something Ruby would have liked in her collection).

“Hello?” Ruby asked cautiously.

“Ruby, honey," Sabina’s voice crackled over the phone, “We seem to have been robbed.”

☆☆☆

Ruby ran home with Clancy puffing behind her. He’d insisted on joining her, and Ruby hadn’t protested. He had a slightly panicked sort of look in his eyes and had started flapping at some point on the run home, so she figured he might actually benefit from coming along. Ruby wanted him there, too. If her pounding heart was any indication, her brain was on the precipice of leaping into what was probably a tangled mess of paranoid thoughts. Talking things through with Clancy was the surest way for him to point out when she’d crossed the line from reasonably suspicious to entirely unreasonable, even if she didn’t always end up listening to him.

When Ruby stopped in front of the house, there was a police car parked in the drive, and officers milling around.

Clancy met her eyes, sympathy in them, before they walked inside and found her parents in the kitchen.

They were talking to Sheriff Bridges over the kitchen island, Brant’s arm around Sabina’s shoulders. Mrs Digby stood beside them, arms crossed in indignation. The prospect of a robbery in her home (the second robbery, really, though the first time around, Mrs Digby hadn’t exactly been home to experience it) was ridiculous to her. She was the one who spotted Ruby and Clancy first, and she ushered them out into the hallway so they didn’t interrupt the conversation.

“What happened?” The words spilled from Ruby’s lips before the door had even closed behind them.

“We were all out, thank the lord. Your parents weren’t supposed to be, but they got sidetracked with the Humberts, you know how they are. When we came back, we found the place ransacked,” Mrs Digby said, shaking her head in disapproval.

Clancy must also have looked around in confusion at the same time Ruby did, because Mrs Digby tutted, shaking her head.

“Not here, you two. The safe in the study, and some of your mother’s jewels, and the tv, they were taken, and those rooms are a mess. Some rooms look untouched.” She pursed her lips. “And your room is a tip, child, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because of those criminals or your criminal habits. They left some ugly graffiti, though, those vandals.”

“Can I go see it?”

“Well I am sure as hell not going to stop you,” she replied, so Ruby dashed up the stairs two at a time, Clancy following behind her.

When Ruby burst into her room, she found it had been left mostly untouched, except the drawers on her desk still hung open, and her wardrobe too, but the most obvious thing was her bedsheets were crumpled and speared with red paint. The fumes were bad enough that Clancy started choking on it and had to open a window, but Ruby was too focused to think of anything but smoothing out the duvet on the floor. When she stepped back and looked at it, her heart dropped to her toes.

There, on her duvet, in bright red paint, was a crude image of a fly. Right across the fly, in two bold strokes, were straight lines crossing the image at diagonals.

Crossing out the fly.

Crossing out Spectrum .

Ruby turned to Clancy.

“Clance,” she said. Her stomach was in knots. He turned, and when his eyes fell upon the image, his mouth fell open too. Then he started flapping.

“Jeepers, Clance. You shouldn’t be freaking,” Ruby said. “You were right.”

“I was sorta hoping I wasn’t, though,” he told her. “You should call Hitch, right? And Spectrum, he’s gotta tell Spectrum.”

Ruby nodded. “I’m gonna find Hitch. He’s been acting real strange, though. This is not gonna help.”

“Like how?”

“Like… I can’t give you an example, Clance.”

“Well then how’s he acting weird?”

“He’s all stressed and mopey about something, and I figure it must be Spectrum related, but he’s not gonna just tell me.”

“You could try just asking him straight.”

Ruby was not going to do that, and they both knew it, despite the hopeful tilt to Clancy’s voice.

“Sure,” she replied dryly, but she was really thinking about the robbery again. From what Mrs Digby had said, her parents were supposed to be in the house when it had happened - it was mere luck that they’d been delayed at the Humberts. The robbers had stolen only the valuables in predictable places, without searching properly for more expensive things. That made it appear like they were in a rush, but then they’d also found the time to paint a huge fly in red paint on Ruby’s bedsheets.

The most obvious conclusion turned Ruby’s stomach, but she voiced it to herself anyway, as if she was working on any old case.

They hadn’t really been here for a robbery, Ruby guessed. More likely they’d wanted to come and scare or hurt her parents, therefore scaring Ruby, and leave her the warning of the crossed out fly. When they’d found her parents gone, they’d had to change plans and stage a robbery, which explained the rush, but they had still left the warning, the most important part of their mission.

Ruby typed a message into the Escape Watch. She figured her parents must have already contacted Hitch, so this was more to expedite his return than to inform him of the morning’s events.

It’s Spectrum related.

She pressed send, and turned to Clancy. “Now we wait.”

☆☆☆

Hitch saw the house, heard the same information, and saw the same graffiti. He came to the same conclusion as Ruby within a matter of seconds.

“This wasn’t supposed to be a robbery, and your parents being gone…” he shook his head. “They wanted to scare you.”

“I figured that much. So are you gonna take me to LB?”

Hitch looked at Clancy nervously. He’d never quite gotten comfy with the fact that Clancy knew everything Spectrum related, past and present, but Ruby suspected this look was more because Clancy had gone pale and looked worryingly like he was about to pass out.

“Yes. Get in the car, and I’ll meet you out there,” he said, tossing her the keys.

“Hitch,” she called, before he could leave. He stopped and turned to her, weariness in every line of his body.

“Clancy has a hunch,” she started. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Clancy shrink into himself, the way he did when he had to give a presentation at school.

Hitch raised his eyebrows.

“Del’s car was rammed into for no reason, and Red thought she was pushed down the stairs.”

Hitch looked at her sceptically. “Your friends have wild imaginations. You know that.”

“What about this? The robbery,” she insisted.

Hitch shook his head. “You’re leaping to connect things. This robbery…” he trailed off. “I think it’s a warning to Spectrum, but you need to keep safe anyway. No 3am subway rides, do you hear me?”

Ruby sighed. She hadn’t really expected him to believe her, and it sounded ridiculous to her own ears, but still. He’d brushed it off without even hearing her out, and she knew part of that was probably due to his weird mood, but it still sucked.

“I’m going to figure something out with your folks,” Hitch said.

Ruby didn’t have the chance to reply, because Hitch was out of the room before she could blink.

“Boy, that butler is on edge,” she thought, but figured she’d better do what he said or he’d get pissy.

“See ya, Clance, real sorry to abandon you,” she told him. Clancy gave her a tense smile.

“You go do your Spectrum stuff, don’t worry about me.”

Ruby and Clancy walked out the house together, and he peeled off down the street, whether to go rejoin their friends or to head back home, Ruby didn’t know.

She got into Hitch’s car and waited, not touching anything.

For about a minute, at least.

Eventually Ruby decided it couldn’t hurt to have a peek around. It wasn’t like Hitch would keep confidential information in his unattended car, he was too experienced an agent for that, so technically Ruby wouldn’t be doing anything all that forbidden.

She went for the glove compartment first; there was nothing inside except a crumpled piece of paper.

Ruby smoothed it out, glancing in the mirrors to make sure Hitch wasn’t coming back yet, but the coast was clear.

The paper was small, ripped from a larger sheet, and on it, scrawled in smudgy black ink, was:

LBLLL LBBLL BLBBL LLLLL BLLBB LLLBL LLBBB LBLLL LBBLB LLBBL BBLLL LBBBL BLBLL

I’m watching you, Ruby decoded immediately.

She blinked at it in surprise. It was a bacon cipher, the same cipher that had been used in the code she and Blacker had looked at. A bacon cipher was old and easy to crack, which was why it wasn’t used often. At least in Blacker’s code, that had been in a strange form, an audio form. This wasn’t, this was clear cut and obvious.

This code, Ruby knew, was a warning, and the letters it was written in were even clearer. L and B. It was a warning to LB, and it was in Hitch’s car.

Once, Ruby would have become immediately suspicious. She would have jumped to the conclusion that Hitch was threatening LB, without thinking of the obvious other answer, which was that Hitch was investigating threats to her.

That, Ruby realised, would explain Hitch’s mood. He’d known LB since they were kids, and he might act like he was just her employee, but Ruby knew better. He’d also been close friends with Bradley Baker, LB’s fiancé before his apparent death. Ruby could see clearly enough why this was making Hitch spin out.

Was this connected to the case she’d done with Blacker? She wasn’t sure. It was unusual to have used the same code, but one was in audio form, and intentionally hidden. This one was written in almost its original form, only changing the letters, and the writer wanted it to be cracked.

It could be a coincidence, Ruby thought, at the same time her rule echoed in her head ( Rule #30, A coincidence is hardly ever just a coincidence ).

Ruby glanced in the mirror and saw Hitch approaching, walking out of the house. She hurriedly crumpled the paper back up, and shoved it in the glove compartment, slamming it shut just in time for Hitch to get into the car.

She did her best to look deeply bored, an expression she had a lot of practice at.

“I told your parents that you begged me to go back and see your friends.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows. “Why would I go back and see my friends?”

“Beats me, kid, you’re the one who wanted to,” Hitch said smugly, turning on the engine. Ruby huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I guess I’m not getting a jelly donut on the way?”

Hitch scoffed, but there was humour in it. “What do you think LB would say if you turned up, after your house was robbed and you found a message threatening the whole of Spectrum, with a brown paper bag in one hand and a jelly donut in the other?”

“Maybe she’d see my commitment to a donut a day.“

“To a second donut today, maybe. I know you eat donuts for breakfast like some sort of toddler-“

“But I didn’t get to eat it!” Ruby protested. “The burglars took my breakfast from me.”

They continued in a pretty similar fashion for the rest of the drive. It was more autopilot than anything else. Ruby was busy thinking about the note she’d found, and Hitch’s answers were half-hearted too.

If someone was threatening LB, and that was what Hitch had been stressed about, then did that mean the whole robbery was part of it? LB was Spectrum, Spectrum 8 anyway. If there was a fly scribbled out, was that another warning to LB? It seemed possible. What Ruby was bothered by was that she hadn’t been told about the situation with LB (and it must be a situation , for Hitch to have a piece of crucial evidence sitting in his car, for Hitch to have been so unlike himself for days). It was major, so surely there had to be all hands on deck at Spectrum. Did LB not think she was capable?

That bugged Ruby more, because she knew the answer to that was probably a yes. There was a reason she wasn’t a field agent yet, and it was down to LB.

When they arrived at Spectrum, through a strange entrance down a wine cellar of some deserted restaurant, Hitch whisked her off before she even had a chance to taunt Goldie. She was brought straight to LB’s office.

“Don’t piss her off,” Hitch advised. “Tell her what you saw, then keep your mouth shut.”

“Ah, you know me,” Ruby said, flashing him her best angelic smile, before walking in and closing the door behind her.

Ruby didn’t really expect LB to look any different, and her expectations were met. She looked just as put together as ever, tidy, the only pop of colour in the room her perfect red manicure and pedicure.

“Sit down, Redfort,” LB said wearily.

Ruby complied, thinking of Hitch’s words. She’d see how long she lasted. “So your house was robbed, and Hitch said there was a warning left to you. Tell me what happened.”

Ruby fiddled with her keychain, a habit that always seemed to intensify when she was sitting in front of LB.

“Well, Mrs Digby said the place had been ransacked, which sorta-“

“Mrs Digby,” LB repeated.

“She’s our housekeeper,” Ruby clarified quickly. “Anyway, the house looked fine except for a few rooms, so I think they did it in a hurry, or they wanted it to look like a hurry, and they looked in the most obvious places. They stole some money and jewellery, mostly, which is so predictable and unimaginative-“

“Redfort,” LB said, her voice low with warning.

“Okay, I’m back on track. So my room was trashed, but on my bed my sheets were crumpled up and covered in paint. So me and Cl- I unfolded them,” she corrected herself. LB knew about Clancy, but Ruby also knew better than to rub it in her face.

“And they’d painted a fly on them, and crossed it out, like a big x over it. So, I figure they aren’t big fans of what we do here.”

“What an astute observation, Redfort. Please, for the love of god, do not say anything else, I have had it up to here and you might be the one to push me over the edge.”

There was a rough edge to her voice. Ruby had never heard her so uncontrolled, so she figured she shouldn’t push her luck, and kept her lips sealed.

“What you saw is concerning. Thank you. Please don’t try to investigate further, though I’m sure you will ignore every word I say. We will contact you if we need your skill set, which we do not right now.” LB pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, as if she was warding off a migraine.

“That’s all, Redfort.” LB looked back down at the papers on her desk.

Ruby exited quietly, and found Hitch still where she’d left him.

“Is that it?” She asked, a little disappointed. She wasn’t a fan of the whole situation, obviously, but she’d hoped it would mean more Spectrum work, after how slow it had been for the last few months.

If you want to tell Froghorn about it, go ahead,” Hitch told her.

“Nah, he might start celebrating at the prospect of someone taking me out.”

Hitch shuddered. “Don’t tempt fate, kid.”

Ruby looked at him in disbelief. "Don’t tell me you’re superstitious.”

“Blame my parents. Wait a few years, and you’ll start becoming them.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows at him. “You’ve got the wrong kid if you think that.”

“Maybe not exactly like them,” Hitch conceded.

☆☆☆

Hitch drove Ruby back home and immediately went back to Spectrum, which Ruby felt was slightly unfair, but she hadn’t really expected them to use her (though she’d held out a little hope). She biked over to the Crew house, and rung the doorbell. Clancy wasn’t grounded anymore, but she knew his dad wasn’t the biggest fan of Clancy going over to Greenwood house. Since he’s already done that earlier, she thought it was her turn to visit him.

Charles, who was an actual butler, unlike Hitch, opened the door for her.

“Miss Redfort is here,” he called.

Ruby didn’t see the point in that when they all knew she’d just go to Clancy’s room anyway.

Lulu appeared to greet her after a few seconds.

“Hey, Ruby,” she greeted her. “Clancy’s

in his room, he probably can’t hear over his music.”

Lulu’s words were perfectly normal, but she didn’t seem like herself. Her normally perfectly brushed hair was looking sort of frazzled, plus her outfit looked less than put together and was missing anything pink or sparkly. She’d have to ask Clancy what was up with her.

“Thanks,” Ruby called, as she headed up the stairs to Clancy’s room.

He was, as Lulu had suggested, listening to music, Ziggy Stardust to be exact (it was a safe bet to assume that if Clancy was listening to music, it would be Ziggy Stardust), but he looked up when she entered, eyes widening as he saw her.

“Rube!” He lifted the needle on the record player, a very serious thing that meant Clancy was truly invested in what she had to say. “What did LB say?”

Ruby wrinkled her nose. “Practically nothing. I just told her stuff, and then she told me to shut my mouth, and that they didn’t need someone of my skill set to help right now.”

Clancy looked outraged. “But it’s targeting you! How can they not involve you in an investigation involving you?”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Ruby sat on Clancy’s bed, shutting the door behind her first. “I don’t think it was targeting me. Well, it was, but to get to LB.”

Clancy looked lost.

“I had a little look around Hitch’s car,” Ruby explained.

“You snooped,” he corrected her. She ignored that.

“He had a code in there that was written in the letters L and B, and it said ‘ I’m watching you’ . Not very subtle of them, but it gets the threat across. It would explain why Hitch has been acting so weird. He’s stressed,” she said, as if it was a foreign emotion on him. It wasn’t, really. He’d been stressed before, but so rarely, only in life or death situations, that every time the emotion took hold of him it felt completely new to Ruby.

Clancy’s mouth formed an ‘o’ shape.

“So that explains the robbery. But what about Del, and Red?”

Ruby sighed. Hitch hadn’t believed her, and she was now confused about that too. With LB being threatened, everything was supposed to link to that, but Red and Del definitely didn’t. “I don’t know how that would fit in,” she admitted.

Clancy hummed to the tune of Moonage Daydream, though Ruby doubted he even realised he was doing it. “It must,” he said finally. “If there’s something happening at Spectrum, there’s no way it’s a coincidence.”

Ruby nodded. “I know. But I don’t get why or how yet. If Hitch would tell me what was going on, this would be so much easier,” she shook her head in frustration. “LB doesn’t trust me as an agent, still. Which is stupid, considering I’ve saved Spectrum’s ass a million times by now.”

Clancy gave her a sympathetic sort of grimace.

“Oh,” Ruby said, finally remembering. “I sorta felt like someone was following me a few days ago.”

Clancy’s eyes went wide. “What? Did you tell Hitch?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone, so he woulda thought I was imagining things, especially after I told him about Del and Red. I’m not even sure if I was imagining things. I coulda sworn I felt someone following me, y’know that sort of prickly sensation, but when I looked, nothing.”

He looked troubled, pacing his room before settling on the bed next to her.

“Maybe they were watching you to prep for the burglary. So like, when you’d be out, when your parents would in be, that sorta thing.”

Ruby nodded. “That’s sorta what I thought.” She was silent for a moment. “If no one tells me anything, I have no way of knowing.”

Clancy leaned his head on her shoulder, a very awkward angle for him, given their height difference, but Ruby appreciated the gesture. She leant her head against his. Ruby and Clancy weren’t usually huggers, but this was common enough. Ruby remembered doing the same to him after Minny had gone to college.

The thought of Minny reminded Ruby of Lulu.

“What’s going on with Lulu?”

Clancy shrugged, her head moving with his shoulders. “Beats me. She’s been weirdly snappy for a week or something.”

“Snappy?” Ruby repeated the word in surprise. Lulu didn’t really snap at people, except for Minny. She was the most level-headed and sensible of all the Crew siblings.

“It’s weird, Rube. I dunno.” He sounded defeated, which prompted Ruby to look up at him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

He looked at her in surprise. “I- nothing. I mean your house was robbed and your parents coulda been hurt and Spectrum is being threatened and you thought you were followed, all of which is kinda stressful, but like, nothing.”

Ruby chewed on her lip distractedly. There was something, but she had a feeling it was probably the usual something, that his dad had gone off at one of his sisters, or his mom still hadn’t started eating breakfast with them again, and that meant there was nothing she could do. Clancy had a very Crew way of thinking about family. His family was his business, and he didn’t see the point in talking too much about it. She let it slide, because there was nothing else to do. If Clancy didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t. It was one of those things that had always been his strengths. No blabbing, no matter what. As he’d gotten older he had turned it against Ruby when it came to a select few topics (subconsciously or consciously, she wasn’t sure). It sort of hurt, sometimes, but Ruby knew she’d kept secrets from Clancy before, and she’d almost gotten Clancy killed before, and he’d saved her life before, so she was forever in his debt. She couldn’t complain about it.

They started watching a few episodes of Peculiar Police, both of them too unsettled for much else, but then Clancy was called for dinner and Ruby had to leave, escorted out by Charles.

She hadn’t really gotten anywhere, but there was nothing she could do, which made her more antsy. She got on her bike, and started cycling home.

It was still light, but only a few minutes into her bike ride, Ruby got that prickly feeling again, the one that injected her with adrenaline and paranoia. Heart thumping in her chest, she checked the mirror on her bike handle. There was one car behind her.

She couldn’t panic, or else she wouldn’t be able to think, so she took steady, long breaths until her heart rate was slow enough to think sensibly. She kept cycling, and kept checking her mirror. The car stayed behind her.

Ruby ducked into a narrow alleyway where the car couldn’t follow, and emerged on the other side with no one behind her. Relieved, she cycled home faster than usual. It could have been nothing, she knew that. The car had only followed for a few streets. It was far from concrete evidence, but her senses had told her it was something sketchy.

It was over, and that was what mattered.

She greeted Bug, and gave him tummy rubs until Mrs Digby called her to dinner. Hitch was still gone. Apparently his brother had contracted a bad case of pneumonia, and he had to go nurse him. Ruby thought that was unfortunate, considering he didn’t have a brother.

Her parents were understandably shaken up from the day’s events, and Ruby had to admit she was glad to see them, knowing what she did. If they were trying to get to Ruby, and therefore LB, through her parents, they were committed. Ruby hoped Hitch would put some agents on alert around the area.

“It’s just awful,” Brant said fervently, his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Thank god we were all out the house, and Mrs Digby too.”

Sabina shook her head. “Minutes, we missed them by a matter of minutes. Ruby, honey, we need to be careful about locking all the doors and hiding out valuables.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna stop them from smashing the windows like today,” Ruby said. “Burglar alarms and more security cameras, that’s what we need.” Brant patted her on the shoulder. “That’s my girl, thinking so practically. She’d be a great police officer, wouldn’t she, Sabina?”

Sabina nodded took a bite of her salmon, her favourite Mrs Digby meal, but even that couldn’t cheer her. “I lost my grandmother’s heirloom broach and that darling pearl necklace you got me for our second anniversary,” she said mournfully.

“Honey, the police will catch them, I’m sure of it. And Sheriff Bridges is on the job, you know how good he is. Remember how he found Niles Lemon’s missing watch?”

Ruby refrained from mentioning that Niles Lemon had dropped his watch and had felt the need to alert the entirety of law enforcement despite not actually being robbed, since it seemed to be comforting her mother.

“I know you’re right Brant, I do, it’s just awful. Why rob decent people?”

The conversation carried on a lot like that for the rest of dinner. For once, Ruby didn’t think her parents were overreacting, but she was busy thinking about the same situation, which she knew to be far more complicated.

After dinner, Ruby waited up for Hitch for another few hours, hoping she could catch him out and get some information from him, but by midnight, he still hadn’t showed, and she gave up.

Her mind was overactive, thinking over the situation and LB and Hitch and Del and Red far past when she crawled into bed, which was already late enough. The sun had started to peek above the horizon, streaking the dark with orange, when Ruby finally drifted off to sleep.

Her sleep wasn’t peaceful either. She woke a short time later with a pounding heart from a nightmare she couldn’t remember, and spent another hour trying to get back to sleep. By the time her alarm for school went off, she’d gotten around three hours of sleep.

Ruby dragged her eyes open.

When she got up to check, Hitch’s room was still empty, his bed still made. He hadn’t been back all night.

Chapter Text

Hitch scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to brush away his exhaustion with the gesture. He hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, a fact that his body was constantly reminding him of, but he had more important things to worry about. 

Things like LB’s life being threatened.

Hitch had made his fair share of mistakes in his time as an agent, but this would be different. If he couldn’t protect LB, he would not be able to live with himself, Ruby or no Ruby. Bradley’s ghost would haunt him. It would be letting down two of his oldest friends in one go. 

He’d spent the past eight hours with Blacker and Froghorn, watching them pore over the seven threats they’d received over the past week.

There was little use in them doing so; all the codes were the same, ink scribbled on scraps of paper, all the same except for the messages. The messages were clear cut and obvious threats to LB, short and simple. They’d been trying to see if there was some hidden meaning behind them, but it didn’t seem like it. It all felt too simple, and somehow its simplicity made it worse. Hitch wasn’t usually one for paranoia, he left that to Ruby, but for the past few days, he’d been finding plots that didn’t exist, suspecting agents just doing their job…

Hitch had asked SJ to analyse the paper and the ink, just in case. Blacker and Froghorn would work on the codes, Hitch had teams of agents who were guarding LB, and he’d spoken to people about increasing security. There was nothing he could do but wait, and that was the worst part.

He knew, logically, that what he needed was a distraction, but the fear kept creeping up on him that if he was distracted, something might happen, and it would all be his fault. As LB had said, in that wry tone of hers, it was also possible that if he kept up like this, killing himself for the job, he’d end up making more mistakes anyway.

He knew she was right, but it still took every last bit of willpower in him to stand up, making his way to the door.

“I need to get back. Miles, Blacker, contact me immediately if there’s something.”
They nodded in unison. 

“Get some sleep,” Blacker said kindly. “You look like a zombie,” he added, less kindly. Froghorn rolled his eyes at him.

“I’ll try,” Hitch said.

He closed the door behind him, and made his way down the corridors of Spectrum. He stopped first at the lab, where he knew SJ would be.
He’d given her one of the scraps to analyse, in the hope that they’d get some information, either on the origin of the note, or if there was something they were missing about it. Hidden ink, or something, he’d thought, but that felt like a trick from one of those spy movies. 

He found SJ at her workstation, peering down a microscope at something that was definitely not the note, but appeared to be very sludgy and very gray. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was, so he didn’t ask. 

“Sweet jesus, Hitch,” she said, having jumped at his approach.

“Sorry. You got any leads on the note I gave you?” He didn’t bother with niceties or small talk. He was nowhere near the mood for it, with the situation he was in. 
SJ shook her head, strands of hair flying.

“It’s plain old paper and pen, I’m afraid. Both cheaply made, probably picked up from any low-end store.”
Hitch breathed out slowly, to dull the disappointment.

“Thanks anyway, SJ,” he said, and he walked out the door before she could say anything else. 

He drove himself back to Cedarwood Drive, stopping at Lucello’s on the way to get a coffee. He hoped the caffeine would keep him up until night came, and there was something comforting about the routine of it, when everything else was slowly falling apart. 

He checked his watch as he stepped out the car. It was four, but that meant Ruby would be home by the time he arrived. Normally, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but now seeing the kid just made him feel guilty. 

He’d asked LB not to involve her in the case. Maybe it was a stupid move on his part. Privately, Hitch thought she was Spectrum’s best codebreaker, something he would never tell Froghorn or Blacker, but the fact remained that she was Ruby. She always got too involved, and she was reckless and she was impulsive and she was a kid, no matter how grown up she thought herself.

The bigger reason, that Hitch didn’t want to admit (his feelings shouldn’t be getting in the way of a case, that was not how a good agent worked), was that he couldn’t have the both of them in danger. LB was bad enough. If Ruby went and got herself into a mess…

The worst part was, that despite his attempts to keep her out of danger, she’d still been in it. They’d robbed Ruby’s house. They’d targeted her parents. 

Hitch understood why. It was clever and it was cruel and it terrified him. LB had never felt okay about hiring Ruby, about putting a child through what adults struggled with. If they hadn’t lost Lopez, if they hadn’t been at a loss on the case, if Ruby hadn’t been so good…

LB wouldn’t make her an official field agent until she was eighteen, Hitch was sure. She’d been trying to keep Ruby off of cases, at least the dangerous ones, her whole Spectrum career, and she always failed. She always let the kid get herself into danger, and Hitch knew it ate at her, the way it ate at him. What better way to hurt LB than to hurt Ruby? It would hurt worse than any other agent, any other adult. LB would choke on the guilt. 

Hitch pulled up outside the Redfort house. It was worrying that the threat had become real. Who would be next? Hitch hoped against hope he wouldn’t have to find out, but he didn’t even have a lead on who was behind any of this. How could he protect people from a mystery assassin? He didn’t even know if there was one, or many.
Hitch had moved through the house on autopilot, but his progress was halted by Mrs Digby, standing in the kitchen with her hands on her hips.

“You look like the grave,” she said, shaking her head. “I get Ruby doing this sort of thing; Lord knows she’s a crazy one, that child, but you’re a full grown man,” she chided him, as Ruby appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest.

“Boy, did you catch what your brother had?”

He didn’t want to meet her eyes, guilt pooling in his stomach. He couldn’t tell what that expression of hers meant. It was one of those ones that he was convinced only teenagers could understand. 

“I sure hope not,” he said, looking back at Mrs Digby, who tutted as Ruby left, just as quickly as she’d come.

“Make that concoction of yours, the one Ruby swears by, and get yourself to bed,” she instructed him.

Hitch blinked at her for a few moments, caught off guard. Hitch had moved out of home at 18. He had not experienced the type of chiding his mother would have given him ever since, so this was quite the experience for him. 

“I will,” he said. “Would you mind letting the Redforts’ know that I’ll be taking a sick day tomorrow?” 

“I would not,” she nodded. “You’ll be staying in bed, I hope.”

Hitch shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to infect you all,” he lied. “I’ll go to my brother’s.” He’d sleep the night, but then it was time to get back to work. He couldn’t leave the case unattended, not with so much at stake.

Mrs Digby protested a little longer, but Hitch won her over in the end, overcoming his tiredness to regain his old persuasion, and he managed to escape to his room (though he’d had to make a cup of his rescue concoction under Mrs Digby’s watchful eye before she’d let him leave).
He trudged down the stairs, and pushed open the door. 

The room was sparsely furnished. It had been his for years now, with the little en-suite bathroom that was just as stark and bare. He’d never gotten out of the habit, from years of Spectrum, of needing to be able to leave at a moment’s notice. Hitch knew that he wouldn’t leave this place, not so abruptly, but he was too set in his ways to change.

What would he put in his room, anyway? Hitch didn’t talk to his family, and his friends, the real ones, were either dead, like Bradley, or always away, like Zuko. He hadn’t seen Zuko in months, and Bradley in years. The rest of his friends had faded with the years, and though he had plenty of acquaintances, they were not the sort he’d fill his room with mementos of.

Hitch sighed and slumped back onto the mattress. There was nothing to be done for the night, he reminded himself. Everyone at Spectrum was working, and he’d done his shift. If he didn’t sleep, he wouldn’t be doing anything useful, except making it harder for himself. 

It turned out that there was no need to tell himself. Hitch was asleep within moments, his overtired body beating his over-wired brain, and he slept the whole night through.

Chapter Text

It turned out that doing anything on 3 and a half hours of sleep was close to impossible, including school. After she had dozed though three of her classes and been unable to answer a single question during Chemistry, Red, Mouse, and Elliot had cornered her in an empty classroom to ask if she’d ‘had a lobotomy or something’.

Ruby successfully avoided any other interventions for the rest of the day, which was easier because Clancy was off sick, but didn’t bother going home after school. As much as she wanted to get into bed and collapse, she still didn’t have a present for Del’s birthday on Sunday, and turning up empty handed would not end well.

Ruby cycled down Amster first, stopping at the tree on the Green to check if Clancy had left a note. She perched (or maybe slumped) on her usual place in the tree, and found his note there, folded into a fish of some sort.

Bjggceeufp hpieh mziv acti dklnj J wrt'e mvfn gkzpcf, mfxcy Ivvv. Nlvv zil ltglsyu uft Uff'j vcejfhk ept? Z'n nyoykzoa juxekicem majlykhllc sycgeeu.

(In plaintext, codeword burglar, that was:

Apparently being sick also means I can't meet people, sorry Rube. Have you figured out Del's present yet? I'm thinking something basketball related.)

She wrote out her message in code,  ( That sucks, Clance. Get better so I can tell you about Hitch being weird.  I’m thinking something sort of Bazooka related?) and folded it up into a lazy sort of sloth. She blinked hard, trying to force the grogginess from her eyes as she started her descent. Ruby could check out a few of the record shops and see if they had any concert tickets, it wouldn’t take that long to cover the three in the area-

"Rube!”

Ruby missed her foothold as she turned round to see Red. It felt like slo-mo as she went tumbling from the tree and landed hard on the ground, pain spiking through her knee as the joint moved out of place for a moment. She let out an involuntary gasp as Red ran over, crouching by her worriedly.

“I’m so sorry, Rube, are you good?” She offered her hand, pulling her to her feet as Ruby nodded in affirmation. “Don’t sweat it, I’m good,” she told her, massaging the aching joint. It didn’t seem to be dislocated, or at least it had been very momentary, because she could stand on it fine. “Where are you heading?”

“Home, I just stopped at the Cherry Cup for a drink with Ross.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows. Ross was a boy Red had been getting friendly with recently, though she doubted friendly was the intention.

“A date?”

“Not a date,” Red protested. “Where are you going?”

“Ray’s records, probably. I need to find something for Del.”

She grimaced. “I need to find something too, but I don’t have the money. Gonna have to do some chores or something to get the money, or I’d have joined you.”

“No worries. Good luck getting that cash,” Ruby said, and she waved as Red walked away. She would have liked the company to get her mind off things, especially with Clancy not around, but at least she’d get it done faster on her own.

She biked to Ray’s records first, like she’d told Red.

Ray was about thirty five, very knowledgeable about music, and very chatty. Ruby quite liked him.

“Hey, Ruby,” he greeted her from behind the counter as she walked in, bell ringing behind her.

“Hi Ray,” she nodded.

“Need anything?” He was sitting on the chair behind the cash register, flipping through a stack of records.

“I’m trying to find a present for Del,” she told him.

“Ah, Lasco,” he nodded knowingly. Most storeowners knew Del, and not usually for good things. “What type of music is she into?”

“Bazooka,” Ruby said, shaking her head.

“Not a fan?”

“Nah,” she said, scanning the posters lining the walls of the shop to see if there was a tour. “There’s this noise that bugs me in their stuff.”

“Do you want their album for her?”

She shook her head, then reconsidered. “Maybe. But I was thinking concert tickets?”

Ray shook his head. “Sorry, Ruby. I’ve never seen anything about them touring. They’re from the city, but I don’t know, I’ve never heard of them performing live anywhere.”

Ruby frowned. If they were from Twinford, then surely someone must have seen them perform at some point. Bands weren’t a band if they didn’t play shows .

“Thanks, Ray,” Ruby told him. “I’ll be back for Clancy’s birthday, anyway.”

As she made to walk out the shop, a familiar figure walked in. Lori looked up at her, a grin spreading over her face.

“Ruby,” she said in greeting. “Nice to see ya.”

“Nice to see you too,” Ruby said. “Thanks for the party, it was a good one.”

Lori laughed. “Oh, yeah. The morning after was not quite as fun, though.”

“You could say that,” Ruby agreed. “I was just leaving, gotta get back for dinner, or my folks will have my head,” she lied. She didn’t not want to talk to Lori, but she didn’t want to either, and she needed to find a present in the next few hours. “I woulda stayed and chatted, otherwise.”

Lori nodded. “No worries, but it’d be good to see you again. I’m going to another party this week.” she shrugged. “No pressure, if you don’t wanna.”

Ruby smiled. “Nah, I’d love to. Where’s it at?”

Lori scribbled the details down on a piece of paper that Ray provided, and Ruby said her goodbyes, feeling considerably happier. She wasn’t sure if she’d go yet, and she was sure Lori wouldn’t care if she didn’t turn up, but it was good to have the option.

She got back on her bike, cycling to the next record store. Ray was knowledgeable, but he didn’t know everything. If they were from Twinford, she was likely to find someone who knew of a show, small or big.

She went to the store Clancy hated next. He had a one-sided feud with the owner, who’d once insulted the Velvet Underground, and he’d never forgiven her. The owner, who Ruby had never bothered to learn the name of, was bitter and old, but she knew most people in Twinford, so she was a decent bet.

Ruby didn’t bother with niceties. She could tell those would only piss off the lady, so she got to the point.

“Do you have any concert tickets for Bazooka?”

The lady made a face like she’d bit into a lemon, then sucked on it for a while. Boy, was she judgy.

“No. No shows of theirs anywhere, girl. Bands these days, if you ask me. Don’t bother playing shows like they ought to, no they want radio play, won’t cater to their fans.” She tutted loudly. “Can’t get you tickets. You can get their record, not sure why you’d want it, but…” she shrugged. Ruby agreed with her on the latter point, but she also thought the lady was a bitch, so she didn’t show it.

She cycled towards the last one she had the energy to check. Her knee was sore, but more pressingly, she was exhausted.

Still, her mind wouldn’t rest. It never would. Surely it was weird, no one knowing of a Bazooka show, especially for an up-and-coming band with a million new hit songs that they kept releasing.

Ruby arrived at the shop, a very clean looking chain that had recently arrived in Twinford. She didn’t put much stock in the man who ran it, a neat, corporate looking guy with a goatee and beady little eyes, but she figured it was worth a shot. She walked right up to the counter.

“D’ya know of any Bazooka shows? I’m trying to get tickets for a friend.”

The man looked at her, boredom obvious in his eyes.

“No, I haven’t received any posters or advertisements,” he said.

Ruby had been expecting as much, so she wasn’t disappointed, more intrigued. “Thanks,” she said, as she scanned the racks of records for B.

She trailed her finger down the stack.

Barbra Streisand, Barry White…

Her finger landed on Bazooka. She fished out the album, and walked up to the counter.

"I’d like this, please.”

She paid and walked out with the last thing she’d expected; a Bazooka album, all for herself.

Cycling back home with an album that didn’t fit in her basket was a task, but she made it quickly enough.

She entered and greeted Bug, when she heard Hitch’s voice echoing from the kitchen.

She made a beeline for the kitchen.

“Hitch,” she said, looking at him in disbelief. He looked awful, worse than Ruby after survival training. His face was pale and the bags under his eyes looked more like bruises. He looked as tired as Ruby felt.

Mrs Digby stood with her hands on her hips. Ruby could imagine what kind of talk she’d been giving him.

“Boy, did you catch what your brother had?”

His eyes merely swept over her. It was not a nice thing to realise that she’d taken the years of him always giving her his attention for granted.

“I sure hope not,” he said, but he was already looking back at Mrs Digby, as she started up her lecture again. Mrs Digby was a tough cookie, but one with a soft centre. Once she accepted someone, she cared for them with the same tough love she would have given her own children, if she’d had any. Hitch had long been accepted by Mrs Digby, so Ruby knew there would be no getting Hitch alone for at least another half hour.

She made use of her time by immediately going upstairs and putting the Bazooka vinyl in her record player. She sat back on her heels, brushing aside piles of clothing to make space, and waited.

The music started up, playing the intro to one of the songs Ruby had heard on the radio. She frowned, and turned up the volume, waited, then turned it up again. Ruby moved to the next song, then the next, eyebrows furrowed.

The noise was gone.

She closed her eyes and focused on the song.

She heard none of the staccato guitar that plagued her eardrums every time Bazooka songs played.

Ruby felt just a little betrayed. She hadn’t imagined it, right? No, she could remember clearly it piercing her eardrums, and she’d pointed it out to Elliot and Del who’d both also heard it.

Was it just this record? That was unlikely.

More likely, she realised, was that the songs were slightly different on the radio. Like a radio version, or something dumb, since she couldn’t imagine wanting to kill people’s ears on the radio.

Ruby pulled her radio off of the desk and stood it beside her record player. She flicked through stations until she got to the one that usually played a lot of Bazooka, but she had no luck. It was blaring out a tinny rendition of Born to Run instead of the ear splitting stuff she wanted.

She went and wrote down the day’s observations in her yellow notebook to pass the time. She was just getting to the stuff about Hitch’s appearance when the Bazooka song, Redwood (which Ruby thought was an impressively lame name for a song) came on.

Two seconds in, and she heard the sound. It was unmistakable in the background. She turned off the radio, and switched on the record player. No annoying sound.

That was odd, Ruby was convinced. First no shows that anyone had heard of, ever, and now she found the weird noise was only on the radio? That meant the noise was intentional, and no music loving person could possibly be behind that.

It occurred to her somewhere in the back of her brain, that she might also be a little delirious from a lack of sleep. She remembered reading a book a few years back on the damage a lack of sleep could do to long term health, but that had been before her sleep schedule had gone to shit.

Ruby still didn’t have a present for Del, she realised. She would have to just get her the record and maybe a poster.

Ruby begrudgingly realised that meant she’d have to fork out another seven dollars for a new record, and a few more for the poster, but she couldn’t give Del a used record, and she owed her a decent present anyway. It wasn’t like money was an issue for Ruby, with her parents, but she always had been more careful spending it than her parents had.

She glanced at the clock. It had been over half an hour since she’d gotten back, which meant there was a possibility that Hitch had been released from Mrs Digby’s custody. She pressed a button in the intercom for the ground floor.

“Hitch?” She said. There was no reply for a minute, before Mrs Digby’s voice crackled over the line.

“Hitch is sleeping. For the love of god, child, don’t you dare disturb him. The man looked like he hadn’t slept in days."

“You could say that,” Ruby agreed. “I won’t disturb him.”

That shut down her chances of getting any information from him for the day, so Ruby turned back to her record player and radio, got out a notebook, and pressed play.

She sat there listening to the songs playing over the radio for over three hours, with a break for dinner in between. The next thing she knew, she was blinking awake, sun streaming through her curtains. Ruby was slumped on the floor, head resting on the overturned radio, pen and paper lying on the floor.

With a groan, she sat up. For someone who’d just gotten the best night of sleep that she’d had in years, she felt oddly awful. Her chest felt tight, like she’d run a marathon, she was sore all over from her odd sleeping position, and when she stood up, she found her knee was stiff and painful from her fall the day before.

She eased herself onto her bed, rubbing her protesting joint. It hadn’t felt that bad when she’d actually fallen, so she flexed her knee to test it out. It protested, but it wasn’t bad and it wouldn’t impede her walking. She reckoned it would go away in a few days.

Ruby picked her pen and pad up from the floor, trying to make sense of the night before’s endeavours.

It turned out what she’d written was mostly gibberish. What was legible, like ‘pattern of the notes is different for every song and repeat’ , quickly became something like ‘beeps tone down minute’ which then faded into illegible scribbles .

Ruby sighed and stood up. She was late to wake up, but not too late for school. It didn’t matter, anyway. She’d skip if Clancy was still off school.

She got dressed (her t-shirt said let them eat cake, and had been cut to a crop), did her makeup, and brushed her hair until she looked presentable enough. She went downstairs to find that Hitch was still asleep, so she ate a breakfast of toast and banana milk, spent her last ten minutes giving Bug attention, then cycled off to school. It proved difficult with her crappy knee, but Ruby was no stranger to a little bit of pain, and she got to school on time. The bonus to the ache was that she’d been so focused on cycling, that she hadn’t stopped to think about being followed.

Ruby met her friends outside the gate, and to her relief, Clancy was stood there too, though he was looking a little peaky.

“Rube!” He called in greeting.

“Hey, Clance. How’s the ol’ influenza going?”

“We’re getting along like a house on fire, in that my temperature is high enough to cook an egg on me,” he said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be in school then,” Mouse told him. “Y’know, try not to infect the rest of the population.”

“Believe me, I’d rather be at home watching Crazy Cops reruns, but my dad is convinced missing more school will be the reason I finally fail French.”

“As opposed to your crappy French and your opposition to learning it?”

“Exactly,” Clancy said.

“Tell Ambassador Crew that you’re not gonna fail French so long as you got me doing your essays,” Ruby told him.

“I’m sure that’ll go down well,” Elliot agreed.

“Thanks, Rube,” he said glumly.

☆☆☆

School passed with all the speed of a racing snail. Elliot suggested they go to his house after school, for little reason other than his need to be with people all the time, but Ruby didn’t mind. If she’d just gone home, she’d have fixated on the Bazooka stuff again, or worse, started to think too hard about the robbery and LB and Hitch.

She’d rather not.

She got a ride with Elliot as per usual, her and Clancy in the backseat because Del had claimed shotgun. Ruby thanked her lucky stars that no Bazooka played on the radio, or she’d have been tempted to get out her notebook and start scribbling again.

Elliot’s house was a sprawling sort of place, a whitewashed building with an overgrown garden, hand-knotted rugs everywhere, and skateboards propped up by the gate. It made sense that it was where someone like him came from. It had the same looseness as he did, the same of friendliness and bite to it.

His mother, Mrs Finch, was a plump woman with the same smile as Elliot. That meant a grin from her was the equivalent of seeing the sun: it made you feel warm on the inside for hours after.

She greeted them, hugging them all, including Ruby, who wasn’t exactly a fan.

“El needs to invite you all over more,” she said warmly. “He’s a lucky boy, to have such nice friends. You’re welcome here anytime,” she added, before she loaded them up with snacks and drinks.

Ruby balanced three bowls of various flavours of chips on her arms, but managed to get them safely down on the floor of Elliot’s room, if it could be called that. Elliot had the loft, a huge space with a million cupboards and secret nooks. Mouse poured her armful of snack bags onto the floor next to Ruby’s bowls, and one by one, they created a huge pile of snacks.

“I’m gonna be double my size if I keep coming here,” Red said happily, pulling open a bag of Cheetos.

Ruby sat cross legged beside Clancy, grazing on some pretzel sticks. Elliot settled on Clancy’s other side. Ruby could sense the way he became tense without even glancing at him.

“What’s the plan, Finch?” Del said, knocking him on the head. He batted her elbow away. “Dunno. I was sorta hoping you would have an idea.”

Mouse raised her eyebrows sceptically. “You expected Del to have an idea that didn’t involve drinking, punching people, or general delinquency?”

“Delinquency’s my first name,” Del agreed. “Call me Del for short.”

Mouse and Ruby groaned in unison.

“That was god-awful,” Ruby told her.

“Don’t be boring, Redfort,” Del chastised. “I’ve got a great idea. We can gamble,” she said enthusiastically. At the group’s blank stares, she rolled her eyes.

“Cards, bozos. Poker! I, for one, need some dough, and I’m gonna thrash the lot of you.”

That was actually not a bad idea, as far as Ruby was concerned. She excelled at poker and at all card cakes that required a modicum of skill. It was a combination of her knack for making the right decision, plus her ability to read the people around her. It also helped that her opponents were her closest friends since childhood. She’d have no issue reading them.

“That’s a good idea,” Red said approvingly. “Elliot, where’d you keep the cards?”

He looked predictably clueless. He wasn’t quite as bad as Red with losing things, but he came close.

“Probably in one of the cupboards?” He didn’t sound convinced, but Ruby dutifully got up, ignoring the spike of protest in her knee, and made for one of the cupboards, this one a repurposed broom closet, shelves overflowing with games and random memorabilia.

They all split up, each of them picking an area to search. Ruby sifted through Elliot’s piles of stuff without much hope. Even if the cards were somewhere among the mess, she doubted she’d ever be able to find them.

“Found them?” She heard Elliot call, to a chorus of ‘No’s. Ruby intensified her her search, and was beginning to cover the third shelf when she heard Red yell, “Del! C’mon!”

Ruby spun to see what the commotion was, but all she saw was Del’s mischievous grin as she slammed the door of Ruby’s cupboard shut, the click of the lock following it a moment later.

Ruby had not bothered turning on the lights before she’d come in, the way she usually did at home. The door had been wide open, and it had been bright enough, sun streaming in.

That meant she was now in pitch darkness.

“Del!” She snapped, her voice a few octaves above where it usually was.

“Suck it,” she heard Del call back, laughing, and then Red’s muffled “Del!” Del must have locked her in her cupboard too.

Ruby let out a shaky breath. She couldn’t see her hands in front of her face, couldn’t see anything. Around her was just a mass of black. She put out her arms, and couldn’t extend either fully, each meeting wood. In the dark, it seemed so much smaller than it had before, a coffin sized prison just for her. Ruby tried to suck in a breath and her lungs refused. This was nothing like that Spectrum entrance. She'd had Hitch beside her, then, and she'd had a destination and an exit and a fully functioning brain.

She had none of those now.

She put out her hands again, an instinctual sort of thing, but when her hands met the walls, she could have sworn they were closer together than they had been moments ago. She clumsily felt for the walls again, as if she could push them apart.

Ruby tried to resort to logic, to things she knew. Clancy, she thought, her mind foggy with the panic. He’d get her out. He’d-

She could hear footsteps outside.

“Let me out!” She yelled it from somewhere deep in her stomach, and if they hadn’t been able to hear her panic before, maybe they would now.

“Let her out,” she heard Clancy echoing her, yelling, maybe. He sounded worried. She wished he wasn’t right to be worried.

Ruby sank down against the wall, her breathing far too fast. It was the only thing she could hear in her ears, her breathing and her heart, pounding against her chest like it wanted out as bad as Ruby did. She shut her eyes, and it made no difference. Everything looked exactly the same. There were footsteps, so many footsteps, and Ruby’s mind conjured up that terror of waiting, waiting to be murdered while she sat there in the dark, useless and utterly impotent. It didn’t matter that she was at Elliot’s house and Del had locked her and Red in their cupboards as a joke, because her brain and her lungs and her heart rate were convinced that she wasn’t.

She tried to slow her breathing, the way she’d taught herself, but she couldn’t breathe, and it didn’t matter that she was gasping, sucking in oxygen as fast as she could, because it wasn’t enough, she needed more, or she was going to die, locked in the pitch black. She was going to be asphyxiated and they would find only her corpse, she needed to get out, she needed out-

She stumbled to what she hoped was the door, slamming her shoulder against it as hard as she could. “Del,” she choked out, wasting what little breath she had, but she doubted Del could hear her. She did it again, only her knee buckled and she fell blindly to the floor, gasping for breath that her lungs wouldn’t take.

Ruby didn’t feel human. She felt like an animal caged.

The door burst open, and light flooded the cupboard. Ruby struggled to her feet, the light too bright for her eyes, but it was there, and she was out, and she was alive.

Del’s triumphant grin faded the second Ruby looked up at her. Clancy looked furious, an expression Ruby rarely ever saw on him, pulling Ruby to his side before anyone could speak, his arm around her shoulders. It seemed Red had been let out too, but she was fine. It felt so stupidly unfair, that Red was fine and Ruby was…this.

“Woah, Rube,” Mouse said gently. “You okay?”

Elliot peered at her, confusion evident on his face as Ruby tried and failed to slow her breathing, but even now that she should be fine, she couldn’t, her chest too tight and her . Clancy glared at Del.

“Give her a sec,” he said. He wasn’t flapping. He must be trying to hide it, for her sake. So her friends wouldn’t know anything was wrong. Ruby thought it was far too late for that, though.

“I’m real sorry, Ruby,” Del said, the expression on her face something akin to bewildered. “You scared of the dark or something?”

Ruby couldn’t be acting like this in front of her friends, she couldn’t - how was she going to explain it? She was scared of the dark? It sounded so ridiculous, let alone to this extent, at her ripe age of seventeen, but it was true. Or, Ruby considered, maybe she was scared of the dark and confined spaces and that one experience that haunted her nightmares.

But she couldn’t tell them that.

Clancy peered down at her, eyes wide. “You’re okay, Rube. Breathe, please. Slowly,” he said, keeping his voice calm and steady. Something about having him right by her was helping, or maybe it had just been enough time in the light, but her heart rate was slowing, and her breathing with it too. It was only thirty seconds, though it felt like forever, until she wasn’t gasping and she could breathe normally again. She didn’t feel like she was choking anymore, but the memory was burned into her brain, and this humiliation along with it. Ruby arranged her face into something she hoped looked perfectly normal, a little embarrassed, maybe, but less had-a-panic-attack-because-of-the-dark and more normal-fear-of-the-dark which they could all make fun of just fine.

“You good now?” Elliot looked at her doubtfully. Ruby nodded. Clancy wrapped his hand around her trembling fingers, hiding the way they shook.

“All good,” she said, more confident than she felt.

She stayed for a couple rounds, then left early, citing her parents and a baloney excuse about family dinner, which she knew none of them believed. Ruby felt shaken up, something she almost never felt, and she couldn’t deal with it in her friends’ company.

She didn’t know why she’d reacted like that. She’d had panic attacks before, of course. She knew how to cope with those most of the time, but they were never because of anything, not like this. She’d never lost control of herself in a stressful situation before, except for that one time, but it had been years, and she’d thought she’d had a handle on it by now. What would happen if she did this when it actually mattered?

She’d been in the dark before, in confined spaces before, after that time, and still been fine. She hadn’t been trapped alone in a dark confined space, though. Not since then.

Ruby couldn’t go home, couldn’t face Hitch. She had the irrational feeling that he’d take one look at her and know, somehow, and she couldn’t stand anyone else knowing.

Ruby wanted to be alone.

“Rube!” 

Clancy’s voice echoed behind her. Ruby had been walking towards the beach, her legs leading her there without her even thinking about it. Clancy shouldn’t have been going in the direction of the beach, his house was the other way. He’d followed her, then.

“Clance,” she said, relief in her voice, and she found that maybe alone really just meant her and Clancy.

He wrapped his arms around her, didn’t say anything else, just hugged her. Ruby hadn’t realised she was shaking still until she felt his steady shoulder under her head.

“Thanks,” she quietly.

“I’m sorry, I tried to get Del to let you out, but y’know how she is, she was blocking the door and everything.” He was flapping as they pulled apart, without the others around. Ruby didn’t want to cry, but she felt like maybe she might.

“It’s all good,” she said.

He shook his head. "You’re not good, though. That was awful.”

Ruby shrugged. “I shouldn’t have freaked.”

“Del shouldn’t have locked you in there.”

“She didn’t know,” Ruby reasoned, because Clancy looked angry again, and she didn’t like it. It looked wrong on him.

“I know,” he said finally. “She wouldn’t do that to you on purpose. But she coulda stopped. I could hear you were panicking, so why couldn’t she? Or the others?”

Ruby knew why, and it was because they weren’t Clancy. Ruby didn’t think any of the others knew what a panicked Ruby was like or that she even did exist. They hadn’t seen her scared, and rarely even stressed.

“They don’t know me like that.”

"They’ve known you for over a decade, Rube!”

Ruby started walking again, Clancy falling into step beside her.

“I guess I don’t tell them anything,” she admitted. “And I tell myself it’s because of Spectrum, but I’m still good with Mrs Digby and my folks.”

“That’s kinda fucked,” he said, in the way that Ruby knew meant he was thinking hard.

“I dunno what I’m supposed to do about it now, though."

“Tell them you got locked in a cupboard by accident as a kid or something, that it messed with you. It happens, I read about it. There was this kid who was punished by his abusive dad with like being locked in dark places, and when he grew up he’d freak if he got trapped in rooms and stuff.”

Ruby frowned. “It’s a kinda dramatic explanation, though.”

“Hate to tell you this, but the way you looked after getting out that cupboard was kinda dramatic,” he said.

Ruby guessed he was right about that, but still. Their friends knew her as pretty laid back. Would they think it was weird?

“I guess I’ll do that,” she said finally. They’d get over it quickly enough. As a group, they had the collective attention span of a goldfish.

Ruby realised maybe thinking of them like that was part of the problem.

“Clance,” she said. “I’ve been a shitty friend.”

He shook his head fervently. “No.”

“Not to you, bozo. To them.”

He considered, and tilted his head. “It’s not entirely your fault, though. Spectrum made it harder.”

“Harder, not impossible. All I had to do was not lie about everything.”

He grimaced. “Look, on the plus side, they don’t know that you’ve been a shitty friend,” he said. Ruby rolled her eyes at him.

“Thanks a million, Clance.”

“Hey, you said it.”

She smiled and kicked a rock on the pavement, feeling a hundred times better than she had mere minutes ago. Clancy was good like that.

“All you’ve gotta do is be real with them, y’know, without telling them about Spectrum.”

“Yeah, well that’s the hard part.”

“You’ve got a life outside of Spectrum.”

“That’s the fake me with them.”

Clancy looked at her in disbelief. “You existing outside of being an agent isn’t fake . You’re not fake with them, you’re surface level. D’you get my gist?”

Ruby wished she did, so she nodded.

“Liar,” he said.

They rounded the corner, and the bay opened out before them, sea stretching out until it faded into the horizon. The open space felt good, after her temporary confinement.

“I’m gonna figure out something to tell them,” she said.

“Good.”

They walked in silence for a while, turning round when they hit the beach.

“I think there’s something fishy about Bazooka,” Ruby said finally.

Clancy raised his eyebrows. “Boy, you really have something against them.”

“I mean it, Clance. No one’s ever seen them perform live, and they’re all supposedly from Twinford. And the beeping, it’s not on their record, only on the radio, and it changes every time.”

Clancy didn’t look convinced, and Ruby got why, but she had a gut feeling that something was strange about them.

“The noises are something,” she told him. “I just don’t know what yet.”

“Rube,” he said worriedly. She knew she couldn’t blame him for being worried, not after that, but that didn’t mean she liked it.

“It’s probably some weird technical issue, and that’s why it’s only appearing on radio, and that’s why it’s different every time.”

“No, I swear,” she said frustratedly, but broke off. She sounded crazy, and she knew that.

That just meant she needed proof.

Ruby still didn’t want to go home and face Hitch, but she knew, logically, that he had no way of knowing what had happened. Plus, if she wanted to find out what was up with Bazooka, she’d have to go home anyway.

Ruby bid farewell to Clancy, and walked back to Cedarwood Drive.

She needed to focus. She needed to find out more about the LB situation, and she needed to solve the Bazooka question.

Once she did, everything would fall into place.

Chapter Text

Clancy was worried about Ruby.

It was not something he often did. Ruby was the most capable person he knew, except maybe Hitch. She was the one who got Clancy out of situations, who reassured him when his dad went mental when he failed a French assignment, and she always knew what to do even when being chased by murderous villains.

She hadn’t known what to do yesterday, though.

He’d fallen asleep with the sound of her panicking ringing in his ears, and he’d woken still thinking about it.

He’d known the incident had been bad, all those years ago, but he hadn’t realised it would affect her like this. She’d had a panic attack, he was ninety percent sure, locked in that cupboard and it was all because of Del’s dumb prank.

That was another thing he couldn’t believe. He was angry at Del, and no part of that statement made sense. Clancy didn’t get angry, not the way most people did. He got frustrated and he got upset but actual anger wasn’t really in his rotation.

And now he was angry at Del.

It was an unjustified anger, he knew that much. Del hadn’t known, and Ruby had said herself that she didn’t tell their friends things the way she should, but somehow Clancy couldn’t let it go. She should have known, his mind kept telling him. How could she not have known? Ruby had always been a little claustrophobic and scared of the dark, even as a kid. She’d rarely shown it, and it hadn’t ever been this bad, but still.

Clancy sighed. He knew he was expecting too much from her. Did he even know Del’s fears? He didn’t, he realised, after a minute of brainstorming. She didn’t seem scared of anything, except maybe her mother’s wrath, and even then not nearly as much as Clancy was of his father’s.

He got out of bed, and padded across the room to the bathroom. The sun was hidden behind the clouds for now, so he wasn’t blinded the way he had been for the past week, and he could get ready in relative peace.

He met with Ruby after school, at her house. They sat on the roof again, this time with Digby Clubs for their meal, since her parents were off for dinner. They were at some local politician’s house, along with Clancy’s dad, which meant the two of them were free to do as they pleased.

The mood was subdued despite their freedom, and he knew Ruby must still be feeling the events of yesterday far more than he was. Elliot and Mouse and Red had all asked separately if Ruby was okay and what had happened and why and all sorts of questions that Clancy had dodged with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. Del hadn’t asked Clancy, but he’d seen her talking to Ruby during lunch, and she’d probably asked all the same things.

“Did you tell Hitch?” he asked.

Clancy had been summoning the courage to ask her all evening. He didn’t usually find it difficult to say things to her, but it was just that he knew the answer was no, and he wished it wasn’t. He knew Hitch couldn’t do anything about it, but he felt like someone who wasn’t a teenager had to know how just bad the Spectrum stuff had affected her. He also knew that Ruby wouldn’t want that.

She acted like Spectrum was her whole purpose, and he knew it was, in a way. Ruby was so smart that she was bored otherwise. Now that she’d been exposed to Spectrum, and the high stakes, and the adrenaline, she couldn’t let it go, and he hated it. He hadn’t, years ago, but that was before he’d understood the consequences. Not that he’d ever tell her how he felt about her Spectrum work.

“No,” she said, like he’d expected. She didn’t look at him, either, but changed the topic entirely. “I know you think I’m imagining things with Bazooka, but I swear, Clance. There’s something sketchy about them.”

He shook his head. “I’m not saying you’re imagining it,” he protested. “But I’m saying some things are made to be left alone.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “It’s not gonna be some mafia communications or something, bozo.”

Clancy put down his sandwich, now too invested in the conversation to continue eating. “You think it’s something crime related?” he asked worriedly. He hadn’t even considered that.

“I don’t think that,” she said. “I said I didn’t. But also, it could be.”

He groaned. Trying to reason with Ruby when she’d already made up her mind was like trying to walk through a brick wall, in that it was both impossible, and painful.

“If you think it’s like, dangerous, tell Spectrum,” he told her. “You’re already in danger with the whole robbery thing!”

“That was to get at LB.”

He wasn’t sure he believed that, but he’d acquiesce anyway.

“Okay, but you’re still in danger, Rube, they still tried to scare you.”

“The Bazooka thing isn’t dangerous,” she said, swiftly diverting the conversation. She’d kept doing it since the robbery. Every time Clancy tried to bring up the fact that she was in danger, she changed the subject. She was avoiding everything, and he didn’t know how to make her stop.

“If it turns out to be, you’ll tell Spectrum, right?” He said it hopefully, though he already knew she wouldn’t.

“Yes, Clance. You’re acting like Hitch,” she told him with a grin.

☆

A week and a half later

Clancy’s stomach had been in knots for days.

There were so many causes he wasn’t sure his stomach would ever stop. There was Elliot and the way he went out of his way to talk to Clancy, even when they were all together, even though he’d never really singled him out before. It made Clancy nervous. He was too awkward for so much one to one conversation with someone who already made him awkward.

That was the best of the reasons. 

Then there was Lulu. She still hadn’t gone back to normal. She was grumpy and snappish and she’d told Clancy to ‘ fuck off’ when he had gone into her room. Lulu never swore, and she never got mad at Clancy for something as trivial as going into her room.

He didn’t know how to ask her why her mood was so weird without offending her, so he hadn’t. Clancy had been hoping it would go away, but it hadn’t improved, and it didn’t look like it would anytime soon.

His dad had noticed too, and his dad was the third reason he couldn’t relax, though that wasn’t new. Ambassador Crew was not a fan of what he referred to as Lulu’s ‘attitude’, judging by the way he grimaced every time she talked back or turned up late, but he hadn’t told her off, not the way he would have if Clancy had done anything similar.

Clancy thought maybe he should be upset at the favouritism his dad was showing Lulu, but mostly he was just confused. It wasn’t like this had ever happened before. His dad treated them all the same, even if Clancy didn’t happen to like the treatment.

The last and biggest reason Clancy was stressed was, of course, Ruby. It was like the closet incident and the robbery had catalysed some sort of spiral in her, because she didn’t turn up to school half as often as she used to, and Clancy knew it wasn’t because of Spectrum, since Ruby had told him it wasn’t. Sometimes she ditched to work on the Bazooka thing, and sometimes she ditched to hang out with that kid Lori, whose parties she kept going to.

Ruby had mentioned him picking her up from them once he passed his test - which was in a day, and was yet another source of anxiety for him - but he didn’t exactly want to do that. A drunk Ruby passed out in the back of his car could only make his life more complicated.

“Mr Crew?”

Clancy blinked in surprise. Mr Parker was looking expectantly at him.

“Could you answer my question, Mr Crew?” he added, a glint in his eye that meant he knew full well that Clancy had no idea what the question was.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“You’re not sure what the question was?”

He flushed red. “I’m not sure what the answer to the question is,” Clancy tried.

“You’re not sure what the answer to ‘are you asleep’ is?” Mr Parker tilted his head.

Clancy’s heart sank. He nodded anyway.

“You’ve got detention at lunch, Mr Crew. Please try to stay awake for the rest of my lesson,” he said, walking back to the front of the class.

Detention was not good. Thankfully it was at lunch, so his father wouldn’t find out, but it still sucked. And Clancy hadn’t even been asleep.

Mouse, who sat across from him, gave him a sympathetic grimace. “I’ll bring you a sandwich,” she told him.

“Thanks, Mouse,” he said dejectedly.

☆

Detention crept by, and the second half of the school day passed even slower. When he finally stood outside the gates, bike in hand, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to go home, and he wanted fifty million different things instead. He wanted to talk to Ruby, he wanted Elliot to kiss him, he wanted to not fail his driving test again, he wanted Lulu to go back to normal, he wanted his mom to eat breakfast with them like she used to, he wanted his dad to be quiet for one day, he wanted. He wanted, but he couldn’t get any of the things he wanted.

Well, maybe one thing could happen.

Clancy cycled down Amster, laying his bike down by the tree on the green, and clambered up its branches.

There was a neatly folded goat lying in the hollow. He could have cried with relief.

Clancy unfolded the goat, and scanned the message.

Dols cfes Ckobme, ny eczus brd cid fpr rcao djnmsf giuh svs Wazoq.

(In plaintext, codeword bazooka, that was:

Come over Clance, my folks are out for some dinner with the Mayor.)

It wasn’t perfect; Clancy might be in hot water with his dad for always being at the Redforts’ place, and Ruby sounded kind of off, the way she had since that afternoon at Elliot’s or maybe even since the robbery, but it meant he didn’t have to go face the weirdness of his mom and his sister, and more importantly, he got to talk to Ruby.

He didn’t bother leaving a message, and cycled to Cedarwood Drive in record time. Clancy discarded his bike by the drive (carefully, of course) and was let into the house by Hitch, who looked about as awful as he had for the past two or three weeks. Ruby thought it was stress, but Clancy was half convinced that he had caught some rare disease that was making him slowly waste away.

When he opened the door to Ruby’s room, she was at her desk, papers scattered everywhere. The record player and the radio were both going, blaring out a Bazooka song, the radio lagging slightly behind the record player. There were multiple pens lying discarded on the carpet by some stray Post-Its, ink spilling onto one of them. Clancy sighed.

“Rube, this is outta hand,” he said, carefully stepping over one of the pens.

She nearly jumped out of her skin. That was new. Clancy hadn’t spooked her in a long time.

“Jeepers, Clance, don’t creep up on people like that,” she told him, turning round.

Clancy grimaced as a guitar screeched out of time from the radio.

“I didn’t creep,” he defended himself. “Your music is just deafening you.”

Ruby shrugged, but she turned off the radio, then the record player, and the room was thrown into a blissful silence.

Clancy dropped onto the bed and let out a dramatic sort of sigh.

“Mr Parker gave me detention,” he told her.

Ruby wrinkled her nose. “What for? I thought you liked Mr Parker.”

“I did, until today,” Clancy said mournfully. “I guess I looked like I’d fallen asleep, so he asked me a question, only I hadn’t heard, and then I couldn’t answer said question. And I said I didn’t know the answer, but apparently he was asking if I was asleep. So, detention.”

“Well then, shouldn’t you be at detention?”

“It was at lunch. I had to write out lines.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows. “He’d have been a hit two decades ago.”

Clancy nodded in agreement. “So, what’s with the papers?” He thought he knew, but he hoped the answer was different, so he asked anyway. It was turning into a constant theme in his life.

“I’m tryna figure out this Bazooka thing still, but it’s a real pain in the ass just trying to record all the notes in the first place.”

“How?-“ He stopped himself. Ruby, of course, had perfect pitch. She was naturally gifted at most things, except maybe seeing and being sensible. It was a fact that he wasn’t jealous of (being a genius seemed like more trouble than it was worth, from what he’d seen with Ruby) but it did irk him, sometimes, that nothing came that easily to him.

“Rube, I think you need a break,” he said instead. Ruby looked ready to protest, but then she stood up with a yawn.

“Y’know what, Clance, I think you might be right. My brain is gonna melt if I keep hearing that dumb song.”

Relieved, Clancy nodded.

They sat up on the roof again. They almost always seemed to end up there when it was just the two of them, together. Clancy knew Ruby liked looking out over the road and seeing what was happening, and Clancy liked feeling entirely removed from the rest of the world, while also knowing he had the comfort of Ruby’s bedroom below and the convenience of Mrs Digby’s food just another floor down. Clancy’s stomach was a bottomless pit. It demanded feeding often, and Mrs Digby was always happy to oblige.

“How was the party?” He asked, finally. He had nothing against Ruby going to parties in general. Despite Clancy’s own dislike of them, he knew most people were pretty big fans, and it didn’t surprise him that that included Ruby. The problem was just that a party equalled getting drunk, and it didn’t seem like a coincidence that Ruby had only started going all the time now that she was… not her best.

He asked her how it was anyway. It was how they worked, and it was probably good to know what was going on with Ruby. He thought he was probably the only person who really knew, and even then, she didn’t tell him everything. She was Ruby.

She’d started talking while his mind was still spiralling, but when he pulled his focus back to her words, it didn’t seem like he’d missed much anyway.

“Cicely and Rob were being gross, kissing in front of my face, pretty much. And then Lori was drunk from the moment I walked in, you shoulda seen the way she was talking. It wasn’t much different to the last party, anyway.”

Clancy nodded. He didn’t really know what to say. Did Ruby mean that she’d enjoyed it or hated it? To Clancy, it sounded like a nightmare, but Ruby kept going back, so…

Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything, because Ruby kept talking.

“Did you see Hitch?” She asked him.

Clancy nodded vigorously. “He looks like he’s dying,” he said.

“That’s one way to put it. I know he’s stressed about LB and all, but it’s looking a bit extreme. Mrs Digby keeps fussing about sending him to the doctor.”

“Are you one hundred percent sure he’s not dying?” He was only half joking.

“Yeah, cause he’d hide it better if he was actually dying,” Ruby replied. “I want to ask him about what’s happening, but I know he’d never tell me anything. Maybe I should ask Blacker.”

“Is he gonna tell you stuff?”

“No, but he might slip it on accident. The problem is I can’t go into Spectrum randomly. I don’t even know which entrance they’d be using right now.”

Clancy frowned. “Make up a reason to go in. Like a code or something?” Normally he wouldn’t have encouraged rule-breaking, but some rules were dumb, and hiding information from Ruby, constantly, was extremely dumb, especially when she was in danger.

Ruby’s eyes lit up. “You’re a genius, Clance. I can use the Bazooka code, and then Blacker can help me figure it out too.”

“The Bazooka thing is a code ?” Clancy said worriedly.

“It’s not radio station noise. I went up to the station and asked.”

“They just let you in?”

“When I told them I was a student journalist, they did.”

“Is that why you missed school Monday?” Clancy asked, incredulous.

Ruby shrugged. “That was Tuesday.”

Clancy felt entirely helpless, and he didn’t like the sensation. “Oh.”

“Lighten up, Clance, it’s not like they’re teaching me stuff I don’t know.”

“Yeah, but they’ll get suspicious if you keep ditching!”

Ruby shrugged. “They won’t care so long as I keep my grades up. Once I’ve figured this out, I’ll stop ditching, okay?” He could hear the frustration in her voice, and he knew he was acting like her mom or something, but someone had to. Her parents were always away and Hitch was preoccupied and Ruby was falling down a rabbit hole. Clancy had developed a healthy dislike for Ruby’s rabbit holes, mostly because every other time she’d gotten obsessive about something, she ended up in danger.

“Okay,” he said. He couldn’t say any more than he already had.

“Did you see that Red’s been going to the Cherry Cup with Ross after school? I’ve seen her like four times.”

Clancy leaned forward eagerly. “What? No! Did she say it’s a date?”

“She said it wasn’t a date, two weeks ago, but I’m guessing that’s changed.”

“Do you think they’re gonna date?” he asked, eyes wide.

“Yes, doofus,” Ruby said. “They’ve been making eyes at each other for months. It’s gross.”

“It’s not gross to like someone, Rube,” he said, a little defensively. That was a mistake, because her eyes narrowed. She was observant enough as it was, but with Clancy, it was like she could read every single thought of his.

“I’m not saying it’s gross,” she said carefully. “They’re just over the top about it.” The corner of her mouthy twitched upwards, and Clancy had the distinct feeling that she was somehow laughing at him.

“Rube,” he said. She knew, he knew that now. She’d been waiting for him to tell her.

“Yes?” She feigned innocence.

“I-“ his words caught in his throat.

“Come on, Clance,” Ruby told him, not unkindly. “Spit it out.”

“I like Elliot,” he said, and she grinned.

“Took you long enough, buster.”

He groaned. “How long have you known for?”

“As long as you’ve been making moony eyes at him,” she said. “Like, six months.”

His jaw dropped. “I didn’t even know I liked him six months ago.”

Ruby gave him a self satisfied smile. “I did.”

Clancy shook his head in disbelief. “You’re something, Rube.”

“Back at ya,” she said, turning to look at the street.

☆

He biked home feeling distinctly better. Ruby had that effect on him usually, but telling her about Elliot had helped even more. Now that someone knew, and someone who wouldn’t blab, he didn’t have to carry the secret.

Clancy was even on time for dinner. He pulled up outside the Crew house with ten minutes to spare, which meant he was spared a lecture. Despite the pretty awful first half of the day, life was looking up.

He pushed open the front door (Charles was on vacation) and walked up the stairs to his room. He changed into his pyjamas, a tank and shorts, then walked down the hall to the bathroom.

“ I’ll make it right,” he heard from Lulu’s room, as he passed.

Clancy kept walking for another second before he froze. He was used to hearing her voice in Lulu’s room, but she shouldn’t be here, now.

He didn’t knock, bursting into Lulu’s room to find Lulu standing by her bed, and Minny, leaning by the window.

“Minny,” he said breathlessly.

Lulu groaned. “Close the fucking door,” she bit out.

Clancy did as she said, then squinted at Minny just to make sure she was real. She wasn’t supposed to be home, she was in college, her term hadn’t ended yet, had it? She looked different than she had last time Clancy had seen her. She’d dyed her hair, bright blonde streaks that Clancy thought looked pretty cool, and she had new jewellery, lots of rings and necklaces, as well as a flowy sort of outfit that must have been new.

“I thought your term- aren’t you supposed to be at college?” he stammered out. Would his dad be happy about Minny’s arrival?

Minny made a face. “Don’t flap, okay?”

Clancy’s heart sunk. It felt like that was all it ever did, recently. “I’m not making any promises,” he said nervously.

“I dropped out.”

Clancy started flapping. It was just as well he hadn’t promised her.

“Minny!” He hissed. “You can’t just drop out!”

She winced. “Well, I did. I’m gonna deal with dad, okay, it’s fine.”

Lulu glared at Minny. “Oh really? You’re gonna deal with him? You’ve never calmed him down in your life, Min, that was always my responsibility!” she burst out. “You make messes, and I have to clean them up, every time, and now you’ve gone and dropped out of college?”

“Lulu, come on,” Minny protested, but Lulu stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Clancy stood there, shell shocked.

Minny just looked sad.

He wasn’t sure what was more surprising, that Lulu had yelled and stormed out , or that Minny hadn’t yelled back. She hadn’t blown up the argument like the Minny he knew would have done.

“Why’d you drop out?” He asked wearily, once the silence had stretched out for too long to be entirely comfortable.

She sighed. “I hated it, Clancy. College was awful. The classes made me want to tear my hair out, and the people were so mean. One of my professors tried to hit on me, and my roommate spread these rumours about me, and-“ she choked on her words and it hit Clancy that she was about to cry. Minny, cry? It was almost unthinkable, but there she was in front of him, eyes shining.

“Couldn’t you have switched roommates? Or- or something?”

“Clancy, I know you think dropping out was stupid, but this is the best option. It was this, or do something I’d regret.”

‘You won’t regret this?’ The thought echoed in his mind, but he didn’t say it. He was glad he hadn’t when he saw Minny’s face, and he understood.

He breathed out slowly, trying to keep calm. He’d never been good at that. Lulu was the supposed to be the calm one, but it seemed that job was falling to him today.

“Are you gonna stay here?”

Minny shook her head. “Dad would kill me, no way. I’m gonna live with Yaz,” she said. Yaz was her best friend from high school, and she’d not gone to college. The last he’d heard, she’d been working at a shop in town. “I’ll get a job, and I’ll figure it out somehow.”

Clancy nodded, trying to look more confident than he felt.

Minny sighed. “Thank you, Clance. I really did try, but I’m gonna figure it out now. I’ll make it work.”

“Dinner!” His mother’s voice rang out from downstairs, as it did every day. It was the loudest he ever heard her talk.

“Good luck,” he told her, and he left the room, walking slowly down the stairs to give him the time to compose himself. He took his usual seat at the table. Olive, Nancy and Amy were already seated, and Lulu hurried in a moment after Clancy. Ambassador Crew came in, took his seat at the table, and squinted at Lulu. “You’re in a funk, eh?” He laughed, a genial laugh that was entirely at odds with the way he’d said those words. “Don’t give me that attitude, let’s have a good dinner.”

Lulu nodded stiffly, but Clancy saw the way her eyes flicked over to the staircase for just a second.

The cook brought out plates of steak and vegetables. Clancy cut into his, his heart pounding in his chest.

After a few seconds, his mother came and sat next to his dad, and then they ate, all in silence except for his dad.

He talked of his day, of the ambassador he met, the rude lunch lady, and the meeting they all had to remember for the next day. Clancy barely heard a word of it.

It was smart of Minny to wait till after dinner. His father never had liked being interrupted during his meals, but that meant Clancy had to wait through the whole torturous meal. At least Minny wasn’t staying at home. At least there wouldn’t be fights every day. At least Minny thought it was the right decision, he tried to tell himself. No amount of justifying it made him feel any less nauseous.

Clancy didn’t stick around to see the fight. He crept up the stairs the second dinner was finished, and just in time, too, because Minny was emerging from Lulu’s room looking pale and nervous.

“Good luck, Min,” he told her quietly.

She crossed her fingers. “Thanks. I’m gonna need it, pipsqueak.”

Clancy shut himself into his room, listening to the sound of Minny’s footsteps as she walked down the stairs. If Lulu was smart, she’d have done the same. She probably had, after what she’d said before dinner, about always having to calm him down.

She wasn’t wrong; Minny riled him up, Lulu calmed him down. That was the order of things in the Crew household. Now that Minny was gone, Nancy was the troublemaker, but Lulu still did the pacifying. Clancy could mollify him a little, if he’d been good over the last few weeks, but most of the time his father just took his interference as an opportunity to point out occasions Clancy had fucked up recently, an experience he didn’t exactly enjoy.

“Minny?” He heard his mom say. “What are you doing back?”

Clancy debated putting on some music. Maybe ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’, because that always made him feel a little better, or something loud to drown the noise out, but in the end he decided against it, sinking to the ground by the door. He wanted to hear what happened, even if he didn’t want to be in the room.

He didn’t hear Minny breaking the news, because she must have said it quietly, but somehow he heard the absolute silence after. Clancy dug his fingers into the carpet. He was seventeen, and he was acting like a little kid, hiding in his room, but he always seemed to do that where his dad was involved. He counted the seconds, 1-2-3-4, until the silence was broken by his dad’s voice, low and dangerous.

“You dropped out,” he repeated, slowly. Clancy stood up, too nervous to stay sitting anymore. Would he kick Minny out? His father was strict, not cruel, but maybe he thought this was fair. Maybe it would be for the best. God, he couldn’t handle their fights again.

He paced the length of his room, not sure anymore if he wanted to hear what was happening. He heard snatches of it, mostly his dad’s furious voice, and then Minny’s defensive one. At one point, he heard what he thought was a yell from Nancy, but Minny must have shut her up, because he didn’t hear her again.

Clancy sat down at his desk, and opened up his physics book. He tried to focus on the new graffiti Elliot had added to the cover, but he kept reading the same word over and over without comprehending it. He could only hear the shouting from downstairs, growing more intense by the minute.

He tapped his foot rapidly on the carpet, his hands flapping against his sides. He needed quiet. Not the quiet that came after a blow-up, dangerous and taut with tension, but something peaceful. It didn’t look like he was going to get it.

He moved towards the door, straining to hear what was happening.

“I’m trying to tell you why and you won’t listen!” Minny yelled. “Why won’t you listen?”

“You should have stuck it out, what do you think? You need to toughen up! You think you have it hard, huh? You’ve got it easy, Minny, you don’t know how easy-“

“I don’t care,” Minny said, through her sobbing. “I don’t care, and I’m moving the fuck out, okay?”

There was silence. They were in the eye of the storm, for a blissful few seconds.

Then the eyewall hit like he’d known it would.

“Right now,” his dad snapped, “I wish I’d never had kids.”

Clancy stiffened.

“More trouble than you’re worth, the lot of you-“

He switched on the record player, and listened with relief to the wailing of an electric guitar, masking his dad’s booming voice.

He breathed out slowly, trying to fight the hysteria that was rising up his stomach. It wasn’t so much what he’d said, really. Clancy knew his dad didn’t mean it. He told them he loved them most days, and even if Clancy couldn’t always feel it, he knew it was true. It was just that he’d said that , and more importantly, that Amy and Nancy and Olive and Minny and Lulu had all heard it. Clancy had thick skin when it came to insults, maybe from exposure to all the kids at school, so they never really hurt anymore, not unless he knew the person meant it, and not unless he thought it might be true.

His sisters didn’t work the same way, especially not Lulu or Minny, who weren’t half as stoic as they liked to appear.

He took a few more slow breaths, trying not to think about the hellscape that his life was somehow turning into, when it had all been absolutely peachy at the start of the month. He needed to focus on what had to be done.

Clancy turned off the music reluctantly, and tried not to listen to the shouting that echoed up from the ground floor. It was the most intense he’d heard it in a while. Maybe ever.

He opened the door to Lulu’s room at the same time that Lulu barged out.

“Lulu,” he blurted out in surprise. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going to yell, for once in my fucking life,” she snarled.

Clancy stood stunned as she marched down the stairs.

This was not good. This was, very, distinctly, utterly, not good. This was not good to new, record breaking levels, actually.

Clancy dropped his face into his hands, just about resisting the urge to slump to the floor and scream. Lulu was planning on yelling at them? How was that going to help? It would only make it-

She was trying to make it worse.

I’m done, Clancy thought bitterly. He couldn’t be in the house for it. He wouldn’t watch while his family tried to blow themselves up.

He marched down the stairs and out the house, entirely unnoticed. He only stopped to pull some slippers on.

He let the front door slam shut behind him, and stood, breathing hard, on the front path.

It was silent, except for the whistle of the wind through the trees. It was a relief.

It was also cold, he realised a few moments later. It was summer, but only the start of summer, and the heatwave had come and gone. The sky was dark, and it was windy, and he was in a tank top and shorts and slippers.

Clancy sighed. Every time he tried to do something entirely impulsive and new, he remembered why he’d never done it before.

He climbed on his bike and cycled down the road. He’d planned on going to Ruby’s anyway, but he biked there faster to counteract the cold. Even so, he was shivering a little by the time he rang the doorbell of the Redfort’s place.

“Rube,” he said when the door opened, and he saw it was Ruby standing there, “Can I come in?”

“No,” she replied, opening the door wide for him.

She led him up to her room. “Wait here a sec,” she said, and she disappeared down the stairs.

Clancy sat on her bed, feeling an unexplainable urge to cry. He blinked back the tears. He didn’t want to cry here, even if it was Ruby. He wanted to feel fine, and god knew Ruby had enough on her plate already.

He rubbed his thumb over the bedsheets, grounding himself with the feeling of the fabric against his skin, repetitive and predictable. He kept feeling angry, recently, and he hated it. It wasn’t him, it felt wrong, and foreign, and brutal in a way that he wasn’t.

Ruby came back through the door, shutting it behind her, and tossed a sweater at him. He held it up questioningly. It was much too large to be Ruby’s, and it wasn’t crumpled, either.

“It’s Hitch’s,” Ruby explained. “Not that I’ve ever seen him use it. I was kinda surprised he owned a sweater, but there ya go.”

She was being strange again, the same Ruby-but-slightly-off that she’d been for the past weeks. He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. He couldn’t pinpoint if it was in the way she spoke, or acted, or looked, but it wasn’t Ruby . Not the Ruby of the past few months, anyway.

“Thanks,” he said. He felt kind of weird, wearing Hitch’s clothes, but he was also  doubtful that the man had worn it in the past year, and he was cold, so he pulled it on. It was warm, and soft, and too big for him, which only made it more comfortable. It took only a few moments for him to stop shivering.

When he looked up, he found Ruby looking at him, eyes sharp. He knew that look. It meant that she was assessing him, the same way she would have looked at a case. Whatever she found, it made the corners of her mouth turn down just a little.

“Clance,” she started, and he wasn’t sure whether to be nervous or relieved, because she was using that tone again, the strange one that meant your dad or sometimes your mom or maybe just the Crew family in total. “What happened?”

Clancy grimaced. “Minny dropped outta college.”

Ruby made a face. “Shit, so your dad freaked?”

He nodded. "Pretty much. And Lulu’s pissed at Min, and she’s still acting super weird. She went ‘to go yell at them’, in her words, at which point I hightailed it outta there. I’ve never heard it so bad before, they were all just losing their shit, and dad said something he shouldn’t have, so it’s all gonna be a mess tomorrow.”

“I’m real sorry, Clance.” She did sound sorry. “Maybe they’ll yell themselves out. When you get back, it might’ve all settled down.”

Clancy worried at his lip. “It doesn’t just settle, though. It’s always like, tense for days after, y’know what I mean?” He knew even as the words left his mouth that she wouldn’t know what he meant. Ruby had her shit, but one thing she didn’t have to deal with was family issues, and he was glad for that.

Clancy knew that by a lot of people’s standards, he was lucky, and his dad was a pretty good dad, but that didn’t make him feel any better about facing the mess he’d find when he went back home.

She nodded anyway. “What’s Minny gonna do?”

“She wants to move out and stay with Yaz, which is probably smart.”

Ruby nodded. “Makes it easier for you, I guess.”

“Yup.” He looked down at the floor, blinking hard to force the tears back. He kept thinking about how Olive was gonna feel, how she must be feeling. She annoyed him to no end, but she was his baby sister, and he wasn’t sure how he would have dealt with all of this at nine years old.

“Olive,” was all that came out his mouth.

“Huh?” Ruby said, confused. “You’ve gotta give me more than that.”

“She’s nine.”

“Well I got that, buster.” She was trying to inject humour into the situation, but for once, she was failing with him.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to tell Ruby what his dad had said. She already didn’t seem to like him, which, fair enough, Clancy found that hard most days, but more importantly, he wasn’t sure how to explain why it bugged him. He wasn’t sure she’d believe him if he said it hadn’t hurt him, that he was more worried about his sisters.

Ruby sighed after a few more moments of his silence, and pressed the intercom.

“Mrs Digby,” she said. “We’re gonna need some hot chocolate.”

Chapter Text

Ruby had consumed an ungodly volume of hot chocolate the evening before, which had ensured she had to get up about forty times during the night to go to the bathroom.

Unsurprisingly, she woke up feeling as unrested as ever when her alarm blared at six am. It wasn’t even a school day.

As she pulled herself out of bed, she mentally made a list of what had to be done.

Firstly, and most pressingly, she had to talk to Blacker about the Bazooka code. Despite Clancy’s worrying, she was more convinced than ever that the code was in fact a code, and hopefully she would be able to get some information out of Blacker, or someone at Spectrum.

Secondly, she needed to check on Clancy, who always got jittery the day after anything happened with his dad, a fact that was especially concerning given his driving test was scheduled for nine, and he’d already failed four times.

Thirdly, she needed to sneak some alcohol from under Hitch’s nose for Del’s party the next day. With Hitch looking near death and presumably distracted, it would be easier than she’d originally thought.

Ruby got dressed in minutes, smeared on her makeup in a new record time, and walked herself down the stairs and right to Hitch’s room, carefully avoiding her parents and Mrs Digby in the kitchen.

Her six am wake up had paid off, because Hitch was still in his room. Normally, by the time she woke up, Hitch was out of the house, and presumably at Spectrum. Ruby wasn’t sure how he was explaining it to her parents (sick leave would make sense, though she doubted he would have taken it) but he seemed to have no issue being out of the house for over twelve hours at a time.

“Hitch,” she called.

She heard him stop moving.

“Ruby?” His voice was muffled through the door, but she could still hear the incredulity in it. She didn’t blame him. Ruby was never, ever up at six unless he forced her to be, or for some sort of emergency.

She waited a moment for the door to open. Hitch was, of course, in a full suit, even if it was slightly crumpled. His eyes widened when he saw her, like he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

“Who’d have thought,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Ruby Redfort is outta bed before noon, of her own volition.”

“Technically, you still forced me into it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t get a hold of you unless I’m up at the crack of dawn.”

His gaze flicked down to the floor, then to the wall behind Ruby’s head. Did he actually feel bad? She mentally crossed that thought out.

“Yeah? Maybe it’s a new tactic I’m trying, to subvert your sleep schedule.” The comeback was weaker than normal, but Ruby figured that was fair, considering he still looked like he was about to drop from exhaustion.

“I need to go into Spectrum,” she told him. “I need to talk to Blacker.”

Hitch raised his eyebrows. “Uh huh. Why, exactly, do you need to go in to Spectrum?”

Ruby sighed. She was no longer naive enough to think he was going to believe her theory about the Bazooka stuff, but it was her only excuse. “There’s this thing I found that might be a code. I want to ask Blacker’s help on it.”

“Hold on,” Hitch said sharply. “You found a code? And you didn’t tell me?”

Ruby winced. She’d forgotten to account for the whole crossed-out-fly-painted-on-her-bedsheets thing, which would explain the aggravated expression Hitch was wearing at the moment.

“Well,” she said slowly. “It might not be a code.”

“You want to waste the time of valuable Spectrum agents on something that might not be a code ?”

“Jeez, Hitch. You’re starting to sound like LB.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them, he didn’t look any more calm.

“And shouldn’t Spectrum be investigating all possible leads?” She continued, hoping her luck would hold. She might tip Hitch over the edge, but maybe…

His mouth formed a thin line, but he nodded stiffly. “Fine,” he said. “But you explain the code to me in the car.”

☆

That went about as badly as Ruby had expected. By the end of the car ride, she seemed to have convinced Hitch about as much as she had convinced Clancy. She reckoned it was only his dedication to following up on all leads that persuaded him to not turn around and drop her right back home.

Ruby, for one, did not see why it was quite so ridiculous an idea. People had hidden codes in the radio before. There was a whole chapter in a book she’d read that was dedicated to it. Admittedly, it was usually only done in higher stake situations, like wars, or between rebels, or sometimes by exceedingly rich, bored, billionaires, and the code probably hadn’t been hidden in hideous sounding pop songs.

But it had happened before.

Hitch dropped her off with Blacker, after depriving her of irritating Goldie once again.

“I’ll be back in half an hour, and I’ll drop you home,” Hitch had told her, before he’d closed the door behind him.

That left Ruby in the usual room with a surprised looking Blacker. He also looked about as exhausted as Ruby felt. The LB threat must be taking its toll on all the agents.

“Ruby,” he said in surprise. “I’d have picked up a donut if I knew you were coming,” he added in apology.

“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment with a jelly donut in a few hours, anyway. I’m here for code help, actually.”

Blacker perked up. “Sure,” he said eagerly, pulling up a chair for Ruby at the desk. From his excitement, Ruby got the sense that whatever he’d been working on had been exceedingly easy or already cracked, and Hitch was probably just taking precautions by making him work on it.

Ruby sat down, and pulled out her stack of loose and now slightly crumpled papers from her bag, spreading them out before Blacker.

“Have you heard of Bazooka?” She started.

He shook his head. “I’m ‘fraid not.”

“Well, you’re not missing anything. Anyway, their songs play on the radio, all the time. My friend is obsessed with them, so I have the misfortune of hearing them all the time.” She pointed to the sheet with the titles of the songs.

“These songs have some weird noises in the back, like beeping, only guitar. Staccato notes, the entire time.” She gestured to a sheet where she’d mapped out the rhythm of the notes during one song. “Completely regular rhythm. But it sounds awful. No one with ears coulda approved that.”

She glanced at Blacker, who looked engrossed, rather than sceptical. She was glad Froghorn wasn’t in the room, or he would have been having a field day listening to her ‘code'.

“So I bought the record, and there’s no noise in them, nothing like that at all. And no one’s ever heard them play live, or even seen a poster for a show. It’s like they don’t exist. Which got me thinking, something must be up with the beeping. Why is it only in the radio version?”

She pulled up a sheet of her notes from her disguise as a journalist at the radio station, which had been handy in allowing her to actually write up the notes she needed.

“I went to the radio station. They couldn’t explain the noise, or why it was slightly different every time, but they said it definitely wasn’t an error on their part. So…”

“It’s a code,” Blacker agreed, nodding appreciatively. “It seems wild, but I don’t think it is, not if it changes every time, and it’s only on the radio version. That just means the message is changing every time, which they couldn’t do if it was on a record.”

Ruby nodded, still kind of surprised that he agreed. She hadn’t even been coming to convince him, not really. She’d wanted to get more information about the LB situation, which she’d thought might be impossible with only half an hour, but if Blacker would actually help her solve the code, she wouldn’t have wasted her time.

“Exactly,” she said. “I’ve got a few full transcripts here,” she showed him, pointing to a few sheets on the left. “In each song, they change with the chord changes. Those are simple enough, all the songs are three or four chords. There’s only two different notes beeping in every chord, but they change with every chord change, and I don’t see why, unless it’s part of the code.”

Blacker nodded, scouring the sheets. “Maybe it’s something to do with the letter notes, or the frequency of chord changes.”

Ruby shook her head. “If it’s letter notes, that’s too simple, and then the code reads ‘GGCG.”

Blacker nodded. “Something more complex, probably. Whoever is doing this must be paying a fortune, though they’re probably earning it back if their singles are doing well enough. I mean, to change the track every time, they must be paying someone pretty high up, or they own the station.”

“Or they work there,” Ruby added.

“Or they work there,” he agreed. “That might make sense, but it depends on what these messages are. Either way, whoever is behind this is dedicated. It’s probably not easily cracked, if they’re putting this much effort into it.”

They pored over Ruby’s transcriptions for the rest of her allocated half-hour. It was mostly Ruby explaining what each sheet of paper was, but she left feeling better. Blacker had that effect on her, but she reckoned he had that effect on everyone. Maybe that was why Blacker was one of the only people Froghorn didn’t seem to mind.

Hitch dropped her home, wordless the entire time. It was like he’d snapped into work mode, because all the chatter of the morning was gone.

Ruby made for her room, and immediately dialled Clancy’s number.

“Hey Rube,” his voice said through the telephone, crackly with static.

“Good luck Clance, you got this,” she told him. “They’re bozos if they don’t pass you.”

He sighed down the line. “I did almost crash last time.”

“The guy was yelling at you.”

“The test guys really do seem to hate me,” he lamented.

“You’ve got a bad rep, Clance, that’s why. Just keep your head and you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Rube. I think it’ll be okay,” he added. “I can’t even be stressed about this with everything else going on.”

“As sucky as it is, maybe that’ll help you pass.” There was silence for a moment, and Ruby could imagine him nodding on the other side.

“Maybe. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Rube.”

“Good luck, Clance. I’ll see ya.”

She hung up, and sat down at her desk. Clancy liked to not talk to anyone after he failed his tests, so he probably wouldn’t call unless he passed. That left Ruby with exactly zero plans for the rest of the day, since she could just get the alcohol tomorrow.

She reached up to her bookshelf, selected four books on various types of codes, audio and written, and turned to the first page of the top one.

No plans was just what she needed.

☆

Ruby woke the next day at ten-thirty. She’s been waking up earlier the rest of the week just to spend her extra time poring over the code and listening obsessively to the radio, so she probably would have minded her late wake up more if she hadn’t had plans.

After she babied Bug for half an hour, she headed down to the wine cellar that her parents had installed after a trip to France, where they’d visited a large number of vineyards and come back with an even larger number of wine bottles. Luckily for Ruby, her parents kept not only wine down there, but a small collection of spirits that were handy to steal.

The cellar was dark, but light drifted down the staircase and it was large enough that Ruby’s pulse stayed steady, her stomach free of the usual spike of panic.

She walked round to the spirit section, selected a bottle of vodka, one of her parents’ wines (Mouse normally stuck to wine, since anything stronger got her drunk in seconds), and a bottle of gin that was covered with a layer of dust so thick she doubted it had seen daylight in years. That would be plenty, and with Clancy not drinking it was probably too much, but her parents wouldn’t miss it. Hitch was probably too distracted with the LB threat to notice either. Hitch’s absence had recently been a pain in the ass, so she was glad it was coming in handy for something .

She put the bottles and Del’s present in a bag and cycled out to the Double Donut, leaving her bike out by the side. An assortment of multicoloured bikes (green for Elliot, red for Red, white for Mouse, blue for Clancy, and a battered once-red one for Del) indicated that her friends had already done the same.

She found them in their usual booth. Her friends were nothing if not habitual.

“Happy Birthday, Lasco,” she told Del, who was inexplicably being smothered by Elliot. Ruby squinted, tilting her head, but she couldn’t figure out if the headlock Elliot had her in was supposed to be loving or lethal. Del stuck out her hand and managed a thumbs up through the violence, so she guessed it was the former.

Ruby shrugged and sat down next to Clancy, who was sipping on his veggie shake, with an expression of pure disgust on his face.

“No one’s forcing you to drink that, Clance,” she said.

He scrunched up his nose. “It tastes sweet,” he complained. “Veggies should not have sugar in them.”

“Vegetables do have sugar in them Clance, sorry to break it to you,” Ruby told him, pushing aside the menu. “And they taste sweet. Corn, carrot, pumpkin, sweet potato…”

Clancy shrugged. “Not spinach, though.” He shuddered. “I dunno what Cherry was thinking, adding honey.”

“I dunno what you’re thinking, drinking those,” Elliot grinned at him, his dimples on full display. He’d stopped wrestling Del now, but the two of them still looked disheveled, hair sticking up in all directions (though that was admittedly not an unusual look for either of them).

“Yeah Clance, as the birthday girl, I order you to stop drinking that shit. Get a beer like a normal person.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows. “It’s not even twelve, buster.”

“It’s my birthday, Redfort, I’ll do what I like.” She was giving Ruby the kind of smile that would have looked angelic on anyone else, but on Del it looked positively devilish.

Clancy was left in peace as Del zeroed in on Ruby, their familiar bickering strangely comforting. For weeks now, she’d struggled to find solid ground. Her friends were the closest thing to it, though. Clancy especially, but now his head was probably a mess thanks to the events of the day before.

“Oh,” he said, turning to her. “I passed, Rube!”

There was uproar at once. It was far from Clancy’s first driving test, so this was a little miracle. Ruby was honestly impressed that the whole ordeal with Minny had taken up so much space in his brain that he hadn’t had the capacity to stress himself out about driving.

“Geez, Clance, why didn’t you say?” she exclaimed, wrapping him in a hug until Elliot elbowed his way in to congratulate him too, squeezing himself over Ruby to get to Clancy.

If Ruby wasn’t wrong, Elliot was being very touchy with Clancy, and that was saying something, considering she was talking about Elliot.

Ruby looked up to find Del, Red, and Mouse all standing by her seat looking ready to pounce (lovingly) on Clancy.

“Oh, brother.”

She saved herself the pain of being trampled and vacated her seat.

“I’ll order,” she offered, to no response, since everyone was busy freaking out about Clancy passing his test. She appreciated that they were happy for him, but she didn’t think they needed to be so surprised about it. Clancy might have struggled to pass because nerves always got the best of him, but he’d practiced with Ruby before, and she’d trust him to drive her anywhere. He was a stickler for the rules when it came to driving, which could get irritating, but Ruby would feel much safer in a car with him than she did with Del or Red, that was for sure.

“I’ll order,” she said again, but she didn’t even expect a response this time, walking over to Marla at the counter. Usually Marla came over to the tables for them, but with the commotion her friends were making, she wouldn’t, not till they looked ready to order. Ruby felt it was better to expedite the process. Her stomach was growling and in need of a jelly donut.

“Hey, Ruby!” Marla greeted her, when she leant against the counter. “What’s up with your pals?” she asked, eyeing the chaos.

“Clancy passed his driving test,” she explained.

Marla’s eyebrows shot up. “Who would’ve guessed?” She said it kindly, but Ruby still felt a little offended on Clancy’s behalf. She refrained from saying so, though. Ruby was trying hard not to be the smart-mouthed kid everyone thought she was. She was a smart-mouthed teenager, at the very least.

“Yeah, so I figured I’ll just order here. I’m thinkin’ it’s gonna take a while for that to calm down.”

Marla nodded. “I reckon you figure correctly. Go for it.”

Ruby listed it out for her easily. She’d had her friends’ orders memorised for years.

“Got it,” Marla nodded at the end. “I’ll bring it over when it’s done. And say happy birthday to Lasco for me. She might be a pest, but she’s a damn good customer,” she said appraisingly. “How old is she now? Seventeen, eighteen?”

“Seventeen,” Ruby answered, as

Marla shook her head disbelievingly. Ruby knew that look, the one which preceded a ‘God, I feel old’ type of comment, so she took her leave before she had to hear it. “Thanks, Marla.”

She made her way back to the table, and reclaimed her now empty seat.

“So we’re heading to Red’s after?” She asked.

Red nodded. “My mom says she’s gonna be out after three, so we can go then.”

Ruby nodded. When it was any of their birthdays, the party generally lasted at least half the day. Ruby had a newfound appreciation for that. A day of being distracted? She needed it, badly. She had tried her best to keep her mind off of, well, everything, but she wasn’t stupid.  She knew going out and getting drunk three days a week as a distraction wasn’t exactly healthy , and neither was skipping school, but it was all she could do to stay sane and also have time to figure everything out. There was so much she didn’t know. Who was threatening LB and why, if they were the same person who’d robbed her house, if Clancy was right about everything, what the Bazooka code meant and how to crack it…

“Rube!”

Ruby looked up with a start. So much for distracting herself. She’d zoned out for long enough for some of their food to arrive. Clancy poked her in the arm so she could move back to let Marla put down the plates.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. No one other than Clancy seemed to have noticed, at least, but she didn’t want to be stressing him out even more. She could tell he was concerned about her, and she didn’t need him fussing about her when she had work to do. He had his own shit to worry about, anyway.

She ate her donut in silence, a very strange feeling for Ruby. She was certainly not quiet by nature, as everyone who had ever encountered her could attest to, but she found herself unable to contribute to the conversation. Every time she tried to focus on what they were saying, her thoughts would drift away, and she’d find herself thinking about the fly on her bedsheets or someone following her until panic started to creep into her chest, tendrils curling around her lungs and her ribcage. When she managed to bring herself back to the present, the cycle just repeated.

“Rube,” Clancy nudged her again, breaking her out of a particularly stressful train of thought involving LB, red paint, and a radio.

“Mm?” She looked up and found his eyes trained on her.

“Are you good?” He was asking genuinely, she could hear the worry in his voice. She knew he’d feel bad when she lied, but she did it anyway. There was nothing he, or anyone else, could do to help.

“Yes, bozo, stop fussing,” she told him, and swiftly changed the subject. “Are we doing presents at Red’s?” she asked, addressing the whole table so she wouldn’t have to see the look on Clancy’s face.

She managed to distract herself all through the rest of the meal. The key, Ruby found, was to not stop talking. If she stopped, she’d have the time to start thinking, and then she’d zone out, and then she’d feel that dumb panic again.

It was better to keep talking. She had no shortage of things to say, not with Del starting up a million little arguments with her, and when Del turned her attention to Elliot, Ruby went for Red and started asking her about her Ross dates that were apparently not dates. Even the ache that came from hearing about Red’s crush or Mouse’s official date with a new guy was better than dealing with her brain’s flood of questions and theories.

Ruby had it all figured out by the time they reached Red’s, and then she had the crutch of alcohol to help her along. She’d handed her stash to Del, who had immediately gone for the vodka, and that gave Ruby an excuse to do the same.

“Let’s do presents,” Red suggested, once they were all sufficiently intoxicated. Ruby now had enough experience to know how much would get her drunk, and she’d made sure to have much less than that, but it still took the edge off, just enough to feel it go to her head. She’d never let herself get drunk here, not the same way she did with Lori. Her friends wouldn’t understand. They were too used to her having one drink and calling it a day. They’d know something was up.

Red gathered them in the living room, a pile of presents on the coffee table, all of them sitting in a circle on the sofas.

No, Ruby realised. Not all of them. Clancy wasn’t there.

“Where’s Clancy?” She asked, her heart rate spiking with the realisation. Logically, she knew nothing bad could have happened to him in the last half an hour, but she was paranoid, lately.

“I think he was in the bathroom?” Elliot shrugged.

Ruby nodded, trying to relax, but she couldn’t. It took him entering the room again for her chest to stop seizing up.

Then he stumbled.

“You good?” She asked quickly.

He nodded. “I think I’ve got a bug or something, I threw up,” he said slowly, like he had to focus to get his words out right.

Elliot snorted and then he laughed, loud and infectious, the rest of Ruby’s friends laughing along with him, a soundtrack to a waking nightmare. “Man, you’re drunk, you don’t have a bug,” Elliot teased between laughs.

Clancy shook his head, but he moved unsteadily towards them. He looked intoxicated, but Clancy didn’t drink.

Maybe it was all the stuff with Minny, Ruby considered. When Clancy got upset, he sometimes tried to change things, like his hair, or his room, or his clothes. This felt different, though. Clancy didn’t like alcohol, didn’t like how it made him feel. He wouldn’t seek it out to try to feel better.

Now Ruby was panicking.

“Clance-“ Her heart stuttered in her chest as he stumbled again, grabbing the table to steady himself.

“M’good,” he tried to say, but his words were slurred. “Jus’ got a headache.”

Ruby moved to him, wrapping her hand around his wrist, pressing two fingers to where his pulse was. It was fast beneath the delicate skin, far faster than it should have been.

Her mind worked fast, scanning through the morning. It took less than a second for her to settle on that moment in the double donut, the veggie shake, the one that he’d said tasted sweet.

Ruby was starting to feel nauseous herself.

“Clance,” she said, trying not to sound as scared as she was. “I think there might be a slight little chance that you’re, uh, poisoned,” she told him, and she knew it was bad when he tried to flap his hands, strangely uncoordinated.

“C’mon-“ he started to say, but Ruby looked over to a deeply confused looking Red. “Get me some alcohol,” she ordered, but Red just looked at her like she’d gone mad.

“Rube, don’t you think he’s drunk enough-“

“He hasn’t had any alcohol,” she snapped, unable to control her tone, but it was enough for Red to shoot her a strange look, disappearing off to get it. Elliot, Del, and Mouse were all looking at her strangely too, but Ruby ignored them.  What was important right now was Clancy. 

He was flapping more than before, but his eyes had a dazed look in them that had her stomach churning. She tried to calculate what would be quicker - calling an ambulance, or Hitch, or driving - but she was settled on driving by the time Red was coming back into the room, clutching the bottle of wine Ruby had brought. It wasn’t ideal - wine didn’t exactly have the highest ethanol content - but it would have to do.

“I need someone to drive,” Ruby told them, grabbing the bottle, and she turned back to Clancy without waiting for an answer, pressing it into his unsteady hands.

“I’ll do it,” Elliot said. “But what the fuck is going on, Rube? He’s drunk, he really doesn’t need more alcohol.”

Ruby tried to contain her frustration, not replying so she didn’t lose it at him. “Clance, I need you to like, down this. Ethanol’s an antidote.”

His wide eyes got wider. “Like your mom?” He managed, words clumsy, but Ruby nodded.

“Yeah, like that. Drink,” she pleaded him, and to her relief he took a gulp of it, spilling a little down his shirt, staining the white fabric dark red. She wrapped an arm around his waist to steady him, then looked at Elliot. “Come on,” she said, and then she marched them down the hallway to the elevator, then out of the apartment block and onto the street.

Clancy was still drinking the wine like she’d told him to, to her relief, but she’d been followed not just by Elliot, but by Red, Mouse, and Del too.

“Rube, are you going loopy or something?” Del asked, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, the way she always did before a fight. Ruby gritted her teeth to stop herself yelling something unforgivable.

“Elliot, drive us to the hospital, now,” she bit out instead, and that got a reaction from him. He shot her a worried look, but at least he unlocked the door of his car. Ruby piled Clancy into the back, following him in. It was only when she closed the door that she realised the rest of their friends were crammed into the car with them, Red sitting on Del with Mouse in shotgun. She had no clue how she’d explain the situation to them, but that was a problem for later.

“Jesus fucking christ,” she said, when they still hadn’t moved. “Elliot, drive!”

They spent the five minute ride in silence. No one asked her any questions, which was just as well, or Ruby might have lost her shit. She could have felt guilty about yelling at Elliot, but Ruby was just relieved he was actually showing some urgency in his driving. She glanced down at Clancy, who was wilting at her side, one hand pressed weakly to his forehead as if it would alleviate his headache. If Ruby hadn’t been sure she was right before, now she was convinced. She typed a message into her watch to Hitch.

Clancy poisoned
Twinford General

She pressed send, and felt no relief. What could Hitch do? Clancy had been poisoned under Ruby’s own nose. She hadn’t been able to protect him, and now his organs were probably failing in the back of Elliot’s shitty car.

When Elliot finally skidded to a halt in the hospital parking lot, Ruby wasted no time dragging Clancy out.

“Rube,” he slurred, as if to protest, but he didn’t follow it up with anything. Her heart ached with the worry, but she knew how to dispel the panic enough to remain functional when it mattered. She’d had practice.

She got Clancy into the emergency department, and flagged down the first doctor she saw.

“Antifreeze,” she gasped out, breathless from practically carrying Clancy. “I think he’s had- antifreeze poisoning.”

Something in her desperate eyes or Clancy’s sagging frame or what looked like a blood stained shirt must have convinced him, because he called for a nurse and then Clancy was being manoeuvred away from her, and she followed blindly, unwilling to let him out of her sight for even a second. It all happened so fast that she barely registered it - Clancy on a stretcher, masks and tubes and needles, and the doctor questioning her and people praising her and Clancy on a bed and iv drips and nurses. All Ruby could see was his panicked eyes, fixed on her. His lanky frame, strangely small in the hospital bed, was swathed in white sheets, and they were wheeling him off for tests and then he was back and he had tubes sticking out of him and suddenly Ruby couldn’t breathe, panic’s cold grip crushing her ribcage.

Warm, firm hands wrapped around her wrists, and though Ruby choked out a protest, Del forced her out the room. She was staring at her, her expression entirely open for once, distress and worry and something else Ruby couldn’t place warring on her face.

“Ruby,” she started, but Ruby twisted away and pressed her back against the wall of the hallway.  The only thing she could feel was her flailing heart in her chest and the floor giving way beneath her as she slumped down the wall. Now that she had nothing to do , no Clancy to be brave for, no way to help, a sob forced its way up her throat and then she was sobbing, loud and raw and ugly, laid entirely bare in front of her friends who probably couldn’t reconcile this with the person they knew. Ruby couldn’t even recognise herself.

Her heart was so loud in her ears that she couldn’t hear the panicked words her friends were saying, Red crouching by her with fear in her green eyes. Ruby was scaring them. She hadn’t cried in front of them for more than a decade, not even in the cupboard, and now they saw this? Ruby shielded them from her dripping eyes with trembling hands, trying to stifle her crying as if they hadn’t already seen the state she was in. She couldn’t explain this to them, wouldn’t be able to, not when her pain was not just this, but also the old wounds ripping open. In this guilt, there was also the memory of Clancy drugged on Wolf Paw Mountain, of Clancy crumpled on the floor with twin pinpricks of blood on his skin-

“Kid,” a low voice said.

“Hitch”, said the small part of Ruby’s brain that was still functioning.

What little semblance of keeping-it-together she’d previously had was washed away with his arrival. He made right for her, looking down at her with a worried crease between his eyebrows.

“You did good, kiddo,” Hitch finally said, wrapping his arms around her. Ruby dissolved into him, her tears staining his shirt.

“It’s my fault,” she choked out, surprising herself. She was unable to filter her words, even when they were this stupid, this incriminating. She would never have said it to anyone, not even to Clancy, but something about Clancy’s slurred words and that moment of realisation had stunned it out of her. She could feel his surprise in the way his grip on her tightened.

“It’s not,” he said, his voice low and husky, an unfamiliar anger in it. “I don’t need to know anything to know that it’s not.” He was still looking at her, but she could barely see his eyes through her tears. Ruby let his words try to battle her guilt, but even logic couldn’t change the feeling.

She took a ragged breath, struggling to get the oxygen in her lungs. “But if I wasn’t-“ she broke off. Her friends could hear. People could hear.

“I know,” Hitch said softly. “Believe me, kid. I know.”

Ruby could feel the weight behind those words. She wondered how many friends he’d lost.

She wondered how many friends she would lose.

Though the thought tore through chest, her tears had slowed. It felt deeply unfair, that Ruby had to feel the weight of that question and all the grief that didn’t yet exist, but no one could see the devastation. They probably thought she was feeling better .

He held her out, looking at her.

“Ruby, I’m gonna talk to the doctor, and I’ll get his parents,” he said slowly.

She nodded and pulled away from him, roughly brushing away the tears from her eyes. She might have been okay with crying in front of Hitch this time, but she didn’t need the rest of them seeing the worst of it. Even though they had.

He stopped by Ruby’s friends first, saying something Ruby couldn’t make out, but it didn’t take a genius to know that he was saying something about looking after her.

But Ruby hadn’t been able to keep Clancy safe. How could anyone help her now? She took the moment to try to collect herself anyway, breathing deep and slow until her heart rate evened out.

When Hitch disappeared into the room, Elliot scooped her into a hug. He was shaking too.

“Sorry I called you loopy, Rube, you were right,” Del said, her voice as soft as Ruby had ever heard it. She laughed tearfully into Elliot’s shoulder, and when they pulled apart, Red wrapped an arm around her.

“That was really impressive, Ruby. How you knew something was wrong, and exactly what it was.”

Ruby smiled wearily. It was her business to know, it came with the territory, and after her mother’s accidental poisoning she’d ended up memorising the entire pick your poison book as well as two others she’d picked up.

“Lucky guess,” she said instead.

“Clancy’ll be okay, Rube. The doctor said,” Mouse reassured her.

Ruby nodded, but she knew that now. It was just that she’d let him get poisoned, and the worst part was that it would never have happened if it wasn’t for her employment at Spectrum and whoever she’d apparently ticked off.

Ruby might have thought she was paranoid before, but now she knew she was right. This had to be more than just the threat to LB. Someone was coming for her, and they were starting with her friends. Del’s accident, where she’d sworn someone had crashed into her. Red being tripped down the stairs. The robbery, where it had been a miracle her parents and Mrs Digby were out. And now Clancy.

If they’d reached Clancy, Ruby knew that meant she was next.

“How did antifreeze get into his drink anyway? I mean, it’s kinda an odd thing. Cherry’s gonna be devastated.” That was Mouse, her voice quiet.

She opted to just shrug, not confident that speaking about that wouldn’t make her start crying again.

“And Rube, what was the whole alcohol thing anyway?” Del asked.

Ruby could at least talk about science without crying.

“Antifreeze contains ethylene glycol. Ethanol’s one of two antidote’s for it,” she explained.

“Geez,” Elliot said, shaking his head. “That’s insanely lucky, the fact that you knew all this.”

Ruby would not have described it as luck, but she just shrugged, as casually as she could. She hoped they could all just forget about it, about the way Ruby had acted, in the same way they seemed to have done with the cupboard incident. Ruby couldn’t explain anything actually important about the situation to them, so it would be best if they could just ignore it. If they got worried, it was gonna make it harder for her to do her job.

Ruby wasn’t going to fail again, not like this. She was going to figure out the Bazooka thing and get Hitch to send Spectrum security to look after Clancy and her parents and she was going to make things right.

Ruby was not going to let anyone hurt her friends ever again.

☆

Hitch drove her home. He wouldn’t stop glancing over at her; she could feel his eyes on her even though she was turned towards the window. He didn’t say anything though, not until they pulled up by the drive. Ruby realised too late that she should have made an effort on the way back. Talked, a little. A silent Ruby was bound to look concerning to Hitch.

“Kid,” he started, and then he stopped, letting out a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

Ruby shrugged. She wanted to find the words to get him off her back. Words had never really failed her before, but now the right ones wouldn’t come to her brain, wouldn’t leave her throat.

“I’m going to have a security detail watching over the Crew house, and I have a few agents tailing your friends.”

She rubbed her fingers against the leather carseat, feeling the cracks under her thumb.

“Whoever it is, they’re not gonna go after them again,” she said. She didn’t want to say the obvious though. She didn’t want Hitch to lock her away where she couldn’t do anything.

Hitch drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. He looked pretty worn, worse even than he did most days now. She watched as he closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. About your friends, and Crew’s hunch.” He did look sorry, but it couldn’t change anything now. Ruby wasn’t angry at him, because it wasn’t his fault Clancy had been poisoned. He hadn’t been there, not like her. She’d been there, and she hadn’t been able to stop it. What could Hitch have done?

Really, Ruby was frustrated. A memory of a painting flashed in her mind, Frederick Sandys's Cassandra, eyes wide in horror as she opened her mouth to scream. Clancy always was the Cassandra, wasn’t he?

Ruby blinked out the window in front of her. Clancy had always been the one who was obsessed with Greek mythology. Once, Ruby had gone to the exhibition at City Museum with him, and she’d listened to him ramble about myths for four hours even though she’d known every story.

“Look, kiddo, Spectrum is on this, now. It’s going to get taken care of.”

Ruby knew what came next. It was lucky she was experienced at disobeying instructions.

“Just, please, keep out of trouble. Don’t investigate, don’t meddle, and leave that code of yours to Blacker.” He frowned, wrinkling his brow. “I think a bit of a break will do you good.”

“Got it,” she said. “No meddling.”

Hitch grimaced, evidently aware that Ruby had not agreed with his other requests, but he didn’t push it. Maybe having a public breakdown had its upsides after all.

Ruby got out the car, and Hitch walked into the house first. Ruby followed, stopping to sit next to Bug and scratch him between the ears. It was like she’s been exorcised of her emotions; she only felt tired. She listened to Hitch briefing her parents in the other room, mindlessly stroking Bug until he gave a whine, very much aware that Ruby’s attention wasn’t on him.

“Sorry, Bug,” she told him, getting up and going to the living room.

Her parents looked at her with wide eyes.

“Ruby, honey,” Brant began, shaking his head in sympathy. “Hitch told us about Clancy, how are you feeling?” He pulled her into a hug. As a rule, Ruby didn’t like hugs, but her dad held her tightly enough that it was grounding rather than unbearable.

“Well, I’m not the one in hospital, so pretty good. Alive, y’know?” She couldn’t let her dad hug her and cut the sarcasm at the same time. That was asking far too much of her.

“Ruby, darling,” Sabina sighed. “Hitch said you were rather upset.”

‘Thanks a lot, Hitch,’ she thought, gritting her teeth as she put on her best smile, and pulled away from the hug.

“Did he?” She shrugged. “I think his sleep deprivation might be messing with his brain cells,” she added. “Not getting enough sleep reduces your lifespan, and all.”

Sabina shuddered. “That’s awful, hon. Hitch, I really do think you should listen to Ruby about sleeping. We wouldn’t want to have any less of you,” she said, laughing a little with the last sentence in that way she always did with Hitch. Ruby knew Hitch was considered to be a good looking man, but really, that as a bit much.

“I’ll make sure to do that,” Hitch said genially, sounding as normal as ever. Ruby didn’t know how he managed to do that, when minutes ago he’d been sat in the car, looking like he was a million miles away from the person she had first met. Ruby needed to learn. If she’d been able to act normal back at the hospital, or when Del had locked her in that closet, then she could have saved herself a whole lot of embarrassment.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Ruby managed to extricate herself from her parents, only to be cornered by Hitch.

“Sorry about your great-aunt,” he said.

“What happened to my great-aunt?”

“Pneumonia. It’s quite dangerous at her age. Sadly, her lungs couldn’t take it.”

“It’s a shame her funeral is on Monday,” Ruby finished dryly. “What if I feel like skipping her funeral?”

Hitch sighed. “Like I said, time off would do you good.”

Ruby gritted her teeth in annoyance. “I don’t need time off,” she told him. “What I need is to stop being left out the loop.”

“That’s not my decision,” Hitch said, looking at a spot on the wall behind her head. “LB wants to keep you safe.”

Ruby huffed out a breath. “Doesn’t she have bigger fish to fry? Other fish to keep safe?” she asked pointedly.

Hitch narrowed his eyes. “Kid,” he said warily. “Please tell me you didn’t look through classified files.”

Ruby shook her head. “No,” she reassured him. “I just needed a tissue.”

He looked confused, but Ruby left before his expression could change. She knew he’d figure it out in a minute.

He did always keep a tissue box in the glove compartment of his car, just in case.

☆

She locked herself (and Bug) in her room for the evening.

She needed to focus. Clancy was going to be okay - there was no use panicking about it, and she’d already done that anyway. What she needed to do was get answers, and there was only one way to do that, if no one else was going to tell her anything. She’d been doing it all week, but she was getting closer, she could feel it.

She did she’d done countless times in the last week, settling into the familiar rhythm. Ruby reached for her radio, and turned it on. 

So much for distracting herself.

Chapter Text

Clancy got a few days off of school, thanks to the whole getting poisoned thing. He was glad for it, and not just because he got to miss the French midterm, which he would have surely failed. As much as he liked this sort of thing in movies and tv shows - dramatic rushing-to-the-hospital scenes were usually his favourites - it actually happening in real life really put a damper on things.

Curse his veggie shakes.

Clancy rolled out of bed, padding across his wooden floor to the desk, where a plate stacked with cookies was sitting, courtesy of Mrs Digby. The housekeeper had been sending food along with Ruby every time she visited, a welcome distraction from the whole situation, especially since Ruby seemed to be continuing her spiral. He’d hoped this might have shocked it out of her, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect. She’d come over no less than four times since Clancy had gotten out of the hospital (and it had only been two and days) and every time, she’d seemed distant. It was a weird juxtaposition, even by Ruby’s standards. If this whole thing had happened a year ago, Clancy would have guessed she’d have come over once a day, no exceptions, and she would have been attentive and sarcastic and in good humour, because Ruby always was good like that with Clancy.

That told Clancy two things; one, Ruby’s numerous visits were probably due to paranoia, and two, Ruby was doubling down on her investigating.

Clancy took the whole plate with him, and sat back down on his bed, biting into one.

Ruby hadn’t said much about Spectrum, any of the times she’d seen him. Clancy didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

He polished off the cookie, his body humming with restless energy. His father had been very insistent on bed rest, though Clancy was ninety nine percent sure the doctors hadn’t said anything about that. Regardless, he wasn’t big on the idea of disobeying his dad, not when everything was still so delicate.

Minny had moved out, but that couldn’t fix things, not when Lulu had screamed at their dad, not when he’d said unforgivable things. Lulu wasn’t talking to Ambassador Crew, and for some reason, he wasn’t punishing her for it.

Clancy stood up, tired of thinking about the same two things he always thought about lately; Ruby and the complicated Crew family, over and over, dissecting them in his mind to no avail. He wasn’t Ruby. He couldn’t break it down like a puzzle, sort the pieces into the right order, and magically uncover the answer. He was Clancy Crew, and most of the time he was glad for it.

The Clancy part, anyway. He wasn’t yet sold on the Crew part.

Frustrated at how he’d immediately looped back to the same stupid stuff, he made his way to his bookshelf, looking through the contents. Something entirely, utterly, unrelated, something that would have nothing to do with poisoning or hospitals or best friends or spies or secret agents or codes. (He tried not to think about how he was doing what Ruby kept doing; avoid the issue, distract and divert and pretend .)

He selected a worn paperback, titled ‘ The Lives of Sharks : Myth and Mystery’. It was an old favourite. Clancy had always been terrified by the prospect of coming face-to-face with a shark, so naturally he’d developed an obsession with them. Clancy knew everything about things he was scared of. It was a very Crew attribute.

Armed with his book, and the plate of cookies, he settled on his bed, curling under the blanket, and began to read.

☆

He blinked awake at the sound of the doorbell. He must have dozed off, the book discarded under the sheets somewhere. Since he’d gotten back from the hospital, all he ever seemed to do was sleep.

Clancy stumbled out of bed, and pulled back a curtain, squinting to see who it was. The odds were good that it was someone coming to see him - his friends had been over constantly.

He spotted Elliot’s lanky frame by the door. Despite everything, his heart beat a little faster, frantic with excitement or happiness or something giddy.

He blinked hard, forcing himself fully awake, and stuck his feet in some fluffy pink slippers. They’d once been Minny’s, but she’d tired of them after a week, so he’d stolen them.

He could hear the door opening, so he shuffled down the stairs to greet him.

Elliot was dressed in his usual baggy t-shirt and jeans, his hair windswept from the bike ride over. His face lit up when he saw Clancy, his enthusiasm always contagious. Clancy grinned back at him instinctively.

“Clancy, my dude!” Elliot went up the stairs two at a time. He always had endless amounts of energy. Elliot thumped Clancy on the shoulder as they walked up to his room. He tried not to think too much about the warmth of Elliot’s skin on his.

“Did you hear about the game?” Elliot asked, shaking his head. “Del’s furious.”

Clancy shut the door behind them as Elliot flopped onto Clancy’s bed.

“No, what’s up?”

“Ruby,” Elliot said with a meaningful look. Whatever the deeper meaning behind it, Clancy didn’t catch it.

“She didn’t turn up again?” He hoped he was wrong.

“Exactly.”

So much for hope.

“Did they lose?”

“You bet. I think Del’s mostly mad that they lost, but if Ruby misses today’s one, we’re gonna have issues.”

Clancy groaned. “She never goes to the games.”

“Ah, but she does. One in every three, she’s very precise about it. Keeps Del off of her back, mostly. But this was the fourth one.”

Clancy winced. “I’ll let her know.”

Elliot shrugged. “Once Ruby’s made up her mind, there’s no changing it.”

Clancy knew that better than anyone, but he always still tried.

“Anyway, I told Del to cut her some slack. Not that it’ll help, you know how Del is, but Rube does seem kinda… off.”

In Clancy’s opinion, that was a gross understatement, but it wasn’t a good sign that the others were starting to notice.

“Yeah,” Clancy said. He couldn’t say anything else. She was off, and he didn’t know when that was going to get better. So far, it just kept getting worse.

Elliot was looking at him strangely. Did he know? Could he tell how much Clancy wasn’t saying?

“Don’t you think?” Elliot nudged him, his shoulder against his. Clancy fought against the flush rising to his cheeks. Elliot wasn’t suspicious of him, he realised, looking at his eager face. He was trying not to say something, hoping he could get Clancy to say it first.

Clancy raised his eyebrows at Elliot. He always felt so jittery around him now. It was a strange feeling considering he’d known him since they were about five, but he could still read Elliot like the back of his hand.

“You shoulda seen Ruby,” Elliot finally burst out. “I mean, Jesus, Crew, anyone would think she was in love with you.”

For once, Clancy was the one who burst out laughing instead of Elliot, tears in his eyes at the notion. “Elliot,” he wheezed, and then he was laughing again, too breathless to get words out.

“What?!” Elliot exclaimed, cheeks reddening. “For real, Clance, once Del dragged her out the hospital room she was a mess. And then that butler dude of hers just turned up outta nowhere - I don’t even know how he knew, that dude is so sketchy.” Elliot shook his head.

Clancy’s mirth drained away from him.

“Yeah, then what?” He prompted, his heart already sinking. She’d seemed pretty okay to him when he’d seen her in the hospital, not worse than the last time Clancy had almost died, anyway. He felt wrong for not noticing. He was supposed to be her best friend.

“He hugged her, and she like sobbed into him. I hadn’t realised she was close to that dude, it was weird. And then she said-“ he paused again. “Hey, I don’t know if Rube would appreciate me telling you all this.”

Clancy was flapping his arms ever so slightly, trying not to let it show too much, or Elliot might have found more reason not to tell him. “Come on, bozo. I can go ask literally anyone else if you don’t tell me.”

Elliot worried at his lip for a few moments, eyeing Clancy, then relented. “Fine. So her and butler guy are hugging, and I think I hear her say something like ‘ it’s my fault ’. Obviously it wasn’t, I mean there’s no way she’s responsible for that, but you could tell she felt real bad about it anyway. And butler dude was like no it wasn’t, and I don’t even know what happened. So then she said ‘But if I wasn’t,” but she didn’t say if she wasn’t what. For some reason butler guy seemed to know what she meant cause he’s like ‘I know, believe me I know,’ all old school movie style.” He shook his head. “That butler is so weird.”

Clancy’s chest had started to feel all weird and tight like it did before a French test, and there was guilt pooling in his stomach even though he knew he had no reason to feel it. He just couldn’t quite imagine Ruby saying any of that. He could guess Hitch had come because Ruby had told him - if he’d been poisoned, it had something to do with Spectrum, so it made sense - and it was obvious to anyone with any sense that Hitch cared a lot about Ruby, enough to drop everything when she called.

Clancy just couldn’t stomach that Ruby had actually cried in front of all their friends because of him. She hadn’t cried even in front of Clancy in years. Ruby wasn’t a crier in general.

Clancy felt very old, and very tired. He missed being thirteen, when Spectrum had been intriguing and not yet traumatising.

“Nah, the butler’s kinda nice.” he said finally. “Poor Rube, though.”

“You see why I said that now? And you laughed at me,” Elliot defended himself. That, at least, made Clancy smile.

“No, I still think that’s funny. It’s not like that. Ruby’s not like that.”

Elliot shrugged. “I’m just saying, I’ve never seen her like that.”

“It’s cause her mom had a similar thing a few years ago,” Clancy said, keen to avoid any more suggestion that there was something between him and Ruby. He definitely didn’t want Elliot , of all people, thinking that.

“Remember the whole explorer awards thing? Her mum got the food poisoning or whatever? I think it just looked similar to that.” That was only a half lie. It certainly hadn’t been food poisoning, but he also thought that the similarity, the ethanol antidotes, was part of why she’d reacted like that. It was also a bad sign, Ruby-wise.  Whoever was behind all this knew how to hit Ruby where it hurt.

Elliot’s mouth formed an o shape, but he didn’t make a sound for a moment.

“Jeez. I’d forgotten about that.”

Clancy shrugged. There was silence for a few moments.

“I can’t believe you thought she liked me,” he teased again, just to make it clear that Elliot was wrong.

Elliot shoved him gently. “It was a reasonable thing to think. I wouldn’t be surprised if you said you liked her.”

Clancy laughed until he realised Elliot was serious, again. “You’re losing it today.”

“You said she was the prettiest, during truth or dare.”

Clancy shook his head. “She is pretty,” he defended himself. “Anyone with eyes can see that.”

Elliot raised his eyebrows at him. “Dude. You can’t just say stuff like that and expect me to believe you.”

“She’s the wrong gender, bozo.”

Clancy hadn’t actually planned on coming out to Elliot, but the thought of him thinking he liked Ruby, or a girl, or anyone , to be perfectly honest, made him squirm.

It was also funny to see Elliot freeze.

“Oh,” he said, staring at Clancy like he was seeing him in a new light.

Clancy’s heart raced, his palms sweaty. Elliot staring at him was making his insides feel like mush.

“Huh.”

Clancy blinked. “Elliot?”

Elliot shook his head, like he was trying to focus. No , Clancy cursed himself. Not focus . Just the thought of that, of Elliot losing his focus because of Clancy, made his cheeks warm.

“I mean, I sort of thought,” he said. “But the whole Ruby thing threw me for a loop.”

“Bozo,” Clancy said, shaking his head to hide his red face.

Elliot was quiet for another second, then let out a loud laugh. “That’s why-“ he giggled, literally giggled - “that’s why you asked if Del meant girls!”

“Huh?”

“Truth or Dare, when Del asked who you thought was prettiest,” Elliot wheezed, “you had to clarify if she meant girls. Clance, surely she’d have said handsome if she meant guys!”

“Boys can be pretty,” he protested.

Elliot grinned. “Like me?” He wiggled his eyebrows, his toothy smile practically radiating light.

“You wish,” Clancy lied.

Elliot made an exaggerated sad face. “I would have said you were pretty!”

Clancy was starting to wonder if Elliot was trying to give him a heart attack.

“You just said boys aren’t pretty.”

“I dunno, Clance, that seems like a contradiction. You’re a boy, aren’t you?” Elliot was giving him another one of those heart-stopping smiles, joking and genuine all at once. Why was he doubling down on it? Did he see the way Clancy’s face burned?

“You think I’m pretty?” Clancy didn’t know why he was said it, but the words tumbled out anyway, jumbled and halting.

Elliot nodded. “I mean, not like a girl or anything-“ he said quickly. “Like, you’re pretty in a guy way.”

Clancy was speechless, heart speeding beneath his skin. Was Elliot flustered?

“You’ve got nice eyes. And I mean- your hair-“ Elliot was staring at him, now, looking slightly panicked.

Clancy raised a self conscious hand to his hair. He’d never put much thought into it, but he knew he’d never look at it again without hearing Elliot’s voice.

Elliot’s eyes followed his hand to where it rested, then flicked back to his eyes.

Clancy dropped his hand to his side, burning with embarrassment. “You’ve got nice hands,” he blurted out, and immediately wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground.

Elliot looked down at his hands, his own face reddening. “Oh.” He sounded surprised, like he hadn’t been complimented in a long time. That couldn’t have been true. He was Elliot .

“And your smile is...” Clancy needed to tape his mouth shut, but he couldn’t not say it.

Elliot touched his fingers gently to his lips, blinking at Clancy in surprise.

Clancy tried not to look. It wasn’t his fault that Elliot was drawing attention to his mouth in the first place. He tore his eyes away immediately, but it was too late. He caught him.

Elliot held his stare for a moment, then his eyes flicked down, just a little.

Clancy was so painfully aware of himself, of Elliot. Of the distance between them, which was so much smaller than he’d remembered.

“Clance?” He asked, cautious. He sounded a little scared.

Clancy couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Elliot nervous. It was horrifically, shamefully endearing. His wide eyes were fixed on Clancy’s. The intensity of him should have made him uncomfortable, but he found himself wanting more.

Clancy nodded.

He didn’t remember Elliot closing the gap; what he did remember was the moment it no longer existed, when Elliot’s hand was cupped around his jaw, his lips on his. He kissed him tentatively first, but when Clancy pressed into it, wanting, he kissed him harder. He hadn’t decided to, but his hands were on Elliot, skin on skin. He was closer to him than he’d ever been before and it was so much but he still wanted more-

Elliot pulled back, wide eyed.

Clancy probably looked just as stunned. His skin ached with the loss of Elliot’s.

There was a heartbeat of silence.

Then, of course, Elliot laughed, all sunshine and joy, and there was no way Clancy could resist. Elliot clutched at Clancy’s arms, and laid his head on his shoulder, still laughing. It was joy and a little disbelief.

When they finally managed to stop, Elliot grinned at him, and Clancy grinned back, his stomach sore from laughing so hard.

“You wanted to say I was pretty, didn’t you?” Elliot asked, teasing, and Clancy flushed.

“Yes,” he said.

Elliot smiled even wider, which Clancy hadn’t thought possible. “Knew it.”

Clancy shook his head. “You did not know it. You thought I liked Ruby !”

Elliot shrugged. “Okay, but I knew you were lying when you said I wasn’t pretty.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” he pointed out. “Just that you wished I’d say it.”

Elliot laughed. “You got that right.”

Clancy blushed. Again.

“What happened to Katie?” He’d been seeing her on and off for the past six months, but with everything that had happened recently, Clancy couldn’t remember the last time she’d been mentioned. He was pretty sure he would have noticed, given the surge of jealously he felt at the sight of her.

Elliot shook his head. “That went down the drain pretty quickly when I realised, uh…” he nodded towards Clancy.

“Right.” Clancy nodded, hoping his relief wasn’t too obvious. He could feel Elliot watching him though, which made it hard to act normal.

The doorbell rang.

Both of them jumped, and Clancy scrambled to his feet.

“I’ll get it,” he said.

“I’ll come!” Elliot added, cheerful.

They were not even halfway down the stairs by the time Charles was at the door, holding it open for a grumpy looking Del.

“What’s up, Del?” Clancy said, the words feeling stilted on his tongue. Thankfully, Del was too wrapped up in her mood to notice.

“Ruby,” she glowered. “If she doesn’t come to the game today, I swear to god, Crew, I’ll track her down and-“

“C’mon, Del, don’t make Clance suffer through your basketball woes,” Elliot said, punching her in the shoulder. She glared at him, and he grinned, bounding up the stairs before Del could retaliate.

Clancy kept his eyes away from Elliot, focusing on Del. It helped that she was still complaining loudly, sprawling across most of his bed.

“She’s so flaky,” Del grumbled. “Would it kill her to keep her word?”

Clancy grimaced. He could see Del’s hurt under all the posturing, but he wasn’t quite optimistic enough to think Ruby would make it up to Del. Not soon, anyway.

“I’m sure she had a good reason,”Clancy tried. He was sure whatever it was had seemed like a good reason to Ruby, though he wasn’t convinced that Del would see her point of view. Del placed basketball very high on her list of priorities in life, and while Clancy couldn’t quite understand, what with his lack of sporting ability, he knew anything short of a family member dying probably wasn’t gonna cut it for Del.

“If she misses the next one, she’d better be in the goddamn hospital,” Del said.

Clancy winced. That was getting more realistic as the days passed. Someone had it out for her, that much was obvious.

He listened to Del complain for a while, though he tuned out towards the end. Elliot was trying to lighten the mood, but Clancy was pretty sure Del just needed to get it out of her system.

As he’d predicted, she finally ran out a steam, and let out a dramatic sigh. “Whatever. We can win without Ruby.”

Elliot nodded, clapping her on the back. “That’s the spirit, Lasco.”

She rolled her eyes. “How’s it hanging, Clance?”

He sighed. “If I’m stuck here with Olive any longer, I think I’m gonna go loopy.” Olive had been insistent on bugging him, constantly popping into his room to steal whatever food Mrs Digby had provided, or talking his ears off about her favourite tv show, Anna and the Fairies of Doom. From what Clancy could gather, Anna was either a girl or a unicorn, and he wished fervently that doom would hurry up and swallow her and her stupid decisions. The miracle of school had saved him for most of today, thankfully.

Del scrunched up her nose. “Siblings sound like hell. Couldn’t be me.”

“Thanks, Del,” Clancy said, finally fishing his book out from under the covers.

Elliot rolled his eyes.

“Sharks?” Del said in disbelief. “You willingly choose to read about sharks? I swear you nearly peed your pants when they said there were sharks spotted in the cove.”

“Del, you don’t even willingly choose to read ,” Elliot pointed out, earning a punch from Del.

“If I know about sharks, then I figure I won’t be as scared,” Clancy reasoned.

“Lotta good that seems to have done, Clance,” Del said.

That was fair. It didn’t seem to have helped much.

“Well if I ever get into a tussle with a shark, at least I know you’ve gotta punch it on the nose. And don’t bleed, cause they can sniff it out.”

Elliot tilted his head. “Surely by the time you’re that close to a shark, you’ll already be bleeding from the stump of whatever limb you lost.”

Clancy blanched. Del laughed.

☆

When they finally left, hurrying to the basketball game, Clancy sat on his bed, his mind spinning. For once, it wasn’t in a bad way.

He’d kissed Elliot .

Elliot had kissed him .

He replayed the moment over in his mind, over and over, trying to savour the warmth of the memory. Elliot’s laugh after, his nervousness before, his wide eyes. The feeling of his face in Elliot’s hands.

He lay down, closing his eyes. His stomach was full of butterflies, and he let himself enjoy it. He thought about Elliot saying he was pretty, and the way he’d blushed.

He thought about what he’d say the next time he saw him, how he’d break the news to Ruby. He wondered if Elliot would tell Del. Of course he would, but would Del say anything to Clancy?

“Clancy.”

He jumped. Lulu was walking in. She always knocked. He must not have heard her.

“Lulu,” he said quickly, hoping his cheeks weren’t red again. The sun was setting outside. Clancy must have been daydreaming for at least half an hour.

His sister looked a little more like herself today, but not quite normal. She’d snapped back into it ever since Clancy had gotten home from the hospital, but there was still something he was missing.

She sat on his bed. She looked tired. “Do you think I was too harsh on Min?” She asked, after a few moments of silence. She must have been thinking about it constantly, like Clancy had been.

He shook his head quickly. He understood why Minny had done what she’d done, but that didn’t mean he liked it, or the way she’d gone about it.

“Nah. There was no way she would have taken care of it, and obviously it all blew up. She should have sent dad a letter or something first. Or told Mom, and gotten her to break it to him.”

“Or not dropped out,” Lulu said tersely.

“She said she needed to.”

Lulu sighed. “She also needs a college degree, but whatever. Not my problem.”

Clancy privately agreed, but he also knew Minny wouldn’t have just dropped out because she felt like it. She might not be responsible, but she’d been raving about going to college since she was about fifteen. She wouldn’t have just left.

“You shouldn’t have gone to yell at her and dad,” he said. “Why make things worse?”

Lulu looked away, worrying at her lip. “That was kinda dumb, huh?”

Clancy nodded, though he felt that was an understatement.

“It’s complicated, Clance.”

“How?” He asked. “You just made things worse!” He flapped his arms, frustrated and a little overwhelmed from the rollercoaster of emotions his day had been. First he’d been all stressed, then Elliot had kissed him, and now he was back to upset.

Lulu blinked, a little too fast.

Clancy felt guilty. “I just don’t get it,” he said quietly.

“I’m angry at Dad, and he knows. That’s why he’s not punishing me.”

Clancy frowned. “Why are you angry at him?”

She shook her head. “You don’t need to know. That’s for me to sort out.”

“You can tell me,” he protested. “I don’t blab.”

“I know. Still not telling.”

“That’s sorta unfair, telling me you’ve got a secret but not saying what.”

Lulu’s lips thinned into a line. “Fine, so I shouldn’t have said that. I’m gonna go visit Minny, by the way.”

Clancy raised his eyebrows. “Does she know?”

Lulu huffed. “No.”

“You’re gonna go tell her, aren’t you?” He said. He knew he sounded petulant, but he couldn’t help feeling it was unfair.

“Fine, she knows,” Lulu admitted. “I told her because I was angry at her, and at dad, and I shouldn’t have.”

Clancy sighed. “Great.” Why could Lulu tell Minny, who couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, but not him?

He didn’t say anything else till she left. His day had been going so well, just briefly, and now…

He settled back into bed, opening his book in an attempt to take his mind off things, but before he could even get through the first sentence, the doorbell rang.

He huffed, but got up anyway. Maybe it would be Ruby. He wasn’t sure if that would make him feel better or worse, and that sucked in itself.

It wasn’t Ruby. Charles had beat him to the door again, and it was only a delivery man, dropping off a package that was probably for his dad.

The disappointment in Clancy’s chest told him that maybe he just wanted to see Ruby.

He pulled on his shoes, and stepped out the door, keen for some fresh air anyway. Cycling down the streets did help a little, the rush of air and the exertion a good distraction. It didn’t last long, given the short distance to Ruby’s house, but that was okay too, because he’d be able to talk things through with Ruby.

He left his bike on the lawn, and rang the doorbell, catching his breath from the ride. The door opened almost immediately.

“Clancy,” Mrs Digby greeted him. He smiled at her.

“Thanks again for the cookies, Mrs Digby.”

“I’ll send you back with some banana bread, if you wait around a few minutes. It’s just come out the oven. Ruby’s not here, though,” she informed him. Clancy’s heart sunk, but he should have thought it through. Ruby might be heading to the basketball game, for once. He’d sort of assumed she wouldn’t go, but he was glad to be proven wrong. Plus, the promise of fresh banana bread was a good consolation.

“I probably should have guessed she wouldn’t be here, now I think about it, she might be going to that basketball game she’s supposed to be playing. I’d take some banana bread though,” he said, spirits lifted with the smell wafting out from the kitchen. “Yours is the best.”

Mrs Digby nodded. “I’d hope so, child. I’ve won many a contest with it.” She sniffed. “It was my great-grandmother’s recipe. The Digby’s have always been great cooks. You come in,” she added, before disappearing into the kitchen just as Hitch appeared, breathless.

“Ah. Crew,” he said. “Have you seen Ruby?”

Clancy shook his head. “Not since this morning, but I think she mighta gone to the basketball match. Del’s been on her case about it.”

Hitch frowned. “Maybe. If you see her, let her know I want to talk to her…” he trailed off at a buzzing from his watch. He slid up his sleeve, and scanned whatever was on the watch face quickly.

His eyes widened, his expression worryingly easy to read. Whatever it was, it was bad. Clancy watched as Hitch closed his eyes for a moment, the opened them.

“I know where Ruby is,” he said grimly, “and it’s not that game.” He grabbed his keys from his pocket, moving with practiced urgency.

Clancy’s heart hummed nervously in his chest.

“Is it-“ he broke off. “Spectrum related?” He whispered the words, knowing it was true even as he asked, flapping his arms at his sides.

“Zip it.” Hitch shoved on some shoes. “And stay here,” he ordered. “Don’t leave this house. I’ll be back.”

He was out the door before Clancy could reply. By the time the door banged shut, his car was speeding down the street. Clancy stood there for a few seconds, his brain lagging.

Mrs Digby appeared from the kitchen, brandishing a plate with thick slabs of banana bread.

“You look like you saw the devil, child,” she said, with a shake of her head, pressing the plate into Clancy’s shaking hands.

“Thanks,” he said numbly, then realised he was going to have to explain why he was hanging around. “Is it okay if I wait for Ruby to get back?”

Mrs Digby nodded, her words escaping Clancy’s ears as she retreated to the kitchen.

He looked down at the steaming plate in his hands. Clancy felt distinctly not hungry, his stomach churning, and not in an Elliot way. He made his way to the living room, sitting down carefully on the couch.

Hitch had looked panicked, when he’d seen the alert. He’d hidden it quickly, but not fast enough.

Ruby was in danger, and there was absolutely nothing Clancy could do about it.

Chapter Text

Ruby hadn’t been to school for a week.

She wasn’t proud of it, but school, on top of everything else, had seemed like too much to bear. She’d gone to Clancy’s in the morning, and he’d seemed as freaked out as ever about her whole state.

It was frustratingly understandable. Ruby had sort of thought nothing would ever feel as bad as those few months when she’d been fifteen and incredibly depressed. Maybe this was worse, though. This time, people were noticing.

Clancy had talked her into going to school, so she had, and it had been boring beyond belief. She’d skipped any classes she’d had with Del, because there was another basketball game after school that she’d promised Del she’d go to, hand over her heart and all, and Ruby didn’t plan on being there.

After school, she’d planned on heading to the library and doing some more research on audio codes, but all her hours spent skiving had given her too much time to ruminate, and she’d started to realise that she was, possibly, being an asshole. This would be the fifth game in a row that Ruby was missing, and she’d promised. She’d meant it too, at the time.

It wasn’t like she was magically going to solve the code today anyway. After days of intense researching, Ruby had covered practically every audio code ever used. There was something she was missing, too caught up in the minuscule details to see the bigger picture.

Ruby knew the only solution to that was to step back and take a break. Rule #81: sometimes the best way to think about a problem is not to think about it.

This was why she was currently cycling home to get her kit for the game. She’d been so sure she wouldn’t go that she hadn’t even bothered bringing it to school, which made her feel like an even worse friend.

When this was all over, Ruby told herself, she’d be better. She’d actually turn up to games, and talk to her friends, and stop faking quite so hard.

Ruby knew that was probably a lie, but making the plans made her feel a little better anyway.

She pedalled faster. She might be a few minutes late, but better late than never. Del would probably be shocked that she’d turned up.

Bad friend, Ruby’s brain supplied for her.

She brushed that thought away, glancing at the little clock Hitch had bought her, that was stuck to her bike handle, next to the mirror. She could just about make it, maybe. The clock had been a birthday present three years ago, when Hitch had been frustrated by her lateness. He’d given her this in an attempt to make her more aware of the time, but it hadn’t worked. Ruby doubted he’d expected it to, anyway.

She felt a familiar pricking sensation - the feeling of being watched. Ruby was no stranger to it, especially over the last few weeks.

She tried to brush it off. She was so paranoid lately, but Ruby thought that was justified, given the whole someone-was-out-to-get-her situation. She kept pedalling, but the sensation was insistent, a gut feeling that screamed at her to look .

She looked in her mirror.

There was a black car behind her, the only car on the road.

Bozo , Ruby thought.

She’d taken a shortcut through smaller streets, to try to make it on time. Somehow, despite all her paranoia, she’d not considered that it would give whoever was behind all this a chance to get her alone.

Ruby counted to ten, a technique she’d learnt in survival training. She took a sharp turn to the left, down a narrow street.

The car swerved sharply, turning into the same street.

She was definitely being tailed, no doubt about it. Her heart thrummed nervously in her chest. She tried to assess the situation. Her bike was a million times slower than the car, but it would fit through smaller passages. Ruby ran through her mental map of the city, trying to plan out a route. A quick glance in her mirror told her that they were speeding up.

She needed to act, and soon.

Ruby turned at the last second, into an alley that certainly wouldn’t fit the car. She pedalled hard, ignoring the way her stupid knee started to ache. It had never quite recovered from whatever she’d done to it, falling out the tree, but now was not the time. Ruby willed the bike on faster, watching the car in her mirror. It was speeding off, continuing without turning into the alley.

They knew the way around.

Ruby’s only chance was beating them to it. At the end of the alley, it would only take one more street before she was back in the busier part of West Twinford, and they wouldn’t be able to try something there, with a whole bunch of people around.

She was breathless with exertion, muscles burning. Almost at the end of the alley. Ruby pedalled with all her might, painfully aware of how little that was. The junction rushed towards her. She prepared to turn right, and drove her bike firmly into the front of the huge black car.

There was a loud crunch.

The impact threw her off the bike, and she ended up sprawled on the concrete,  her whole side aching, her leg twisted painfully beneath her. Ruby scrambled to her feet, turning and running before she even got a good look at the three people who were already clambering out the car. Every second would make a difference, but Ruby was stumbling, her knee screaming beneath her, worsened by the fall. If adrenaline hadn’t been coursing through her veins, she might not have been standing, but as it was, she managed a desperate, lopsided run. She stole a look over her shoulder. The three men were gaining on her, and quickly.

It was too late to hope she’d get away. What she needed was damage control.

She was only minutes away from home by bike, so Hitch, in his car, would be here in less than a minute. If she could contact him, that was.

It was tricky to do while she ran for her life, but she tugged the barrette from her hair, and snapped it neatly between her fingers, dropping the now defunct tracker on the ground. Hitch would have another tracker on her, as she knew from experience, but more importantly, the damage to the barrette would send an alert to him with her last known location.

It would have to be enough.

They were close now. Ruby tried to speed up, even though her lungs were aching, even though her body protested, tried to reach the next bend-

Something heavy hit the back of her head, and then she saw only darkness.

☆

Ruby resented having to surface into the waking world from the pleasant depths of unconsciousness. She blinked awake, trying to ignore her throbbing head and her aching body.

She was strewn across the backseat of a car.

Ruby froze.

It took a few more seconds for her muddled mind to realise that she was  in the back of Hitch’s car, with its familiar tinted windows and dark leather seats.

The adrenaline dissipated, and Ruby closed her eyes, waiting as her heart rate settled. When she was close to calm again, she opened her eyes, and peered at the front of the car.

She could see Hitch in the drivers seat, his knuckles white as they gripped the wheel.

Ruby tried to remember how she’d gotten there, but all that existed for the moment was the pain that she was in. Her thoughts felt sluggish and slippery. She couldn’t focus in on them, only on her battered body. Her head throbbed like something hellish, and her ribs- she had to stifle a cry as she brushed her fingers against her bruised side. It hurt to breathe, a sharp pain that wouldn’t go away, a thorn in every inhale and exhale. Her knee throbbed, probably swelling up by now. Every bump in the road moved her leg just a little and it sent a sharp pain through the joint.

“Hitch,” she mumbled through clumsy lips.

He started, his eyes darting to the mirror. He caught her eyes, and she saw what she hadn’t before. He had eyes like Atlas, holding up the sky.

“Ruby,” he said, and it sounded like he’d meant to say ‘ thank god ’.

“What happened?” she croaked out, her voice insistent on not cooperating.

“I saw the alert that your tracker broke,” he said. “Must have happened during the… attack.”

Ruby didn’t bother correcting him.

She was starting to remember now, bits and flashes.

“9STN666”, she said, listing off the characters of the number plate. “Very subtle.”

“They were subtle enough to sneak up on you,” Hitch replied.

Ruby wrinkled her nose.

“I think the plan was to abduct you,” he said grimly.

“They could have done that without beating me up,” she complained.

Hitch, unamused, didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Where are we going?”

“Twinford Hospital, kid. Where the hell else?”

She made a face, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore, eyes fixed on the road.

Ruby closed her eyes with a sigh. Before she knew it, she’d drifted off again, into the welcome nothingness of sleep.

☆

Ruby woke to Hitch tapping her gently on her good shoulder. “Hey, kid,” he said, when her eyes met his.

“Hey,” she mumbled, blinking the fog from her eyes.

“Are you feeling okay?” He looked like he actually expected a serious answer to that question.

“Not now you woke me up, buster,” she mumbled. Apparently that was proof enough for him, because he sat down at the edge of her bed.

“Your parents are coming to pay you a visit,” he told her, and she belatedly realised she wasn’t in the car anymore, but in Twinford Hospital, in a small white bed in a drab, dimly lit room.

“Oh,” she said dumbly.

“Oh’s right. It’s gonna be impossible to pretend nothing happened, so your parents think you were hit by a car while biking back from school.”

Ruby blinked disbelievingly at him. “Hit by a car.”

“How else are you planning on explaining bruised ribs, a concussion, and god knows what else?”

“My parents are never gonna let me out their sight,” she complained.

“They’d be right about that. You’re under lock and key anyway, kid. Someone’s obviously got it out for you.”

Ruby groaned.

“Look, I’ve gotta go and face LB’s wrath. I’ve let Clancy know,” he said, standing up.

Ruby blinked and he was gone.

She sighed, and took stock. She was in a little private room, which she silently thanked Hitch for. She slipped her hand under the blanket and felt bandaged ribs under her hospital gown. Her knee was bandaged, a knee brace over it.

She felt at her head, and found a little bandage which presumably covered some stitches at the back. Thankfully, they’d only shaved a little, and it would be easily covered by the rest of her hair.

All things considered, Ruby didn’t think things had turned out too badly.

It was less than five minutes later that her parents rushed into the room.

“Ruby, darling!” Sabina exclaimed, planting a kiss on her head before she clasped her hands. “A car! Imagine! Your father and I were so horrified when we heard, god, our little girl all banged up-“

Her father was right on her heels, squeezing Ruby’s shoulder and ruffling her hair. They were a whirlwind of fuss.

Ruby hadn’t properly seen them in a while, she realised, sometime during the fussing and kissing and hugging. They’d had that trip to Spain, of course, but they’d been back days before Clancy’s poisoning, and Ruby had been locked in her room since, studying up on codes.

She’d told herself she was avoiding her father’s inevitable photo presentation, but still…

There was, Ruby admitted, something comforting about them and their fussing.

“Honey, what happened? Hitch told us there was some sort of collision- a car-“

Sabina nodded along frantically, patting Ruby’s hand as she did so.

“I can’t remember it too great,” Ruby shrugged. “Concussion and all.”

She could make up some stuff, a car not stopping in time, her bike skidding, her brakes not working, but then she’d have to lie more, and she didn’t need anyone catching her out on the details.

“We should contact Sheriff Bridges, see if we can find the person who did this,” Brant said. “They’re a danger to the city.”

"I think Hitch is already taking care of it,” Ruby said, before her parents actually called him and learned that there were no accidents for Ruby to have been involved in. Spectrum would probably have to fake something, but Hitch could deal with that. Ruby had more pressing issues to deal with.

Like the fact that she’d been attacked in broad daylight, and that she still hadn’t figured out the code, or who was behind everything.

Her mother put a hand to her chest. “What would we do without that man, honestly,” she said, shaking her head. “We spoke to the doctors, Ruby, and they say you’ll be good to come home tomorrow.”

Ruby groaned. She knew they probably wanted to keep an eye on her thanks to her concussion, but there was nothing Ruby wanted to do less than stay in hospital overnight. She couldn’t do anything here, sitting in bed with no access to her books or to the codes.

“Sorry, Ruby, but it’s important they make sure you’re all okay,” her dad added.

Ruby nodded. Maybe she could get Hitch to convince the doctors to let her out. If she told him it was a security risk or something, leaving her in the middle of the hospital like a sitting duck, easy for anyone to reach…

Her parents kept fussing until Clancy appeared at the door, wide eyed and pale, hands flapping at his sides. As Clancy walked towards her, they excused themselves, leaving her to talk to him alone.

“Rube,” he said, and his voice was shaking.

“Hey, Clance,” she said, making sure her voice sounded doubly confident to make up for his. “How’s it going?”

He laughed nervously. “Hitch disappeared and didn’t tell me what was wrong, and then came back to to tell me you were in the hospital. So, not great.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “That butler sure is a drama queen.”

“I dunno, Rube, you just got attacked!” His voice dropped to a whisper at the end, but she could hear his indignation.

She huffed out a sigh.

“Rube!”

She shrugged. “All things considered, it turned out pretty well.”

Clancy’s eyebrows were close to disappearing off of the top of his face.

“I’m alive, aren’t I, bozo?”

His mouth formed a straight line, lips disappearing.

“Earth to Clancy,” she said.

“I’m here,” he hissed. “I’m just not sure how you’re not freaking out more!”

“Freaking out isn’t gonna help,” she said. “I mean, I’m stuck here until tomorrow.”

Clancy shook his head, pacing in rapid circles. “What do you think they wanted?“

Ruby bit her lip. That was a question she hadn’t actually considered, and as she ran over the events, the answer dawned on her.

“They wanted to scare me,” she told him. “If they wanted to kill me, they could have, easy. If they wanted to abduct me, they could have been outta there before Hitch had a chance to get me. There must have been at least a minute between me being knocked out and Hitch arriving.”

Clancy nodded, and kept nodding, an anxious movement. “Right.” He worried at his bottom lip, which already looked pretty destroyed. “So they don’t want to kill you or abduct you. That’s positive.”

Ruby chose not to point out that it wasn’t necessarily true. They hadn’t wanted to kill or abduct her this time. There would almost certainly be a next time, though. Why stop at scaring her? There was nothing to be gained from it, no ransom, no information, unless it really was just a tactic to scare LB.

Ruby really, really doubted it. This was too specific. Why bother with Red or Del or Clancy if they were trying to mess with LB?

She would let Clancy believe what he wanted to believe, though.

“Got any news that isn’t you-know-what related?” She asked.

Clancy shrugged. “Nah. Nothing much,” he said, meeting her eyes. He held her gaze awkwardly for a moment, then let it drop.

Interesting, Ruby thought, though she didn’t let her amusement show. He was an awful liar. Clancy was hiding something, but she knew he wouldn’t tell her, not until he wanted to. Clancy didn’t blab. Dangle him over a crocodile pit and all that, he wouldn’t say a word.

“What about your French quiz, Clance?”

He blanched, an impressive feat given how pale he already was. “I swear Madame Loup was staring at me the

whole time, it gave me the shivers. And I couldn’t remember how to say shiver in French either, or cold, which wasn’t great, since the question was about why you hate winter. So I tried to say something about snow, but then I had nothing else to say, so I described the snow more…” he trailed off, looking more and more concerned as he recalled the details.

“Frisson is shiver. Froid is cold,” she said absently.

He groaned. “My dad is gonna kill me.”

“He’s not killed you yet,” Ruby said. “You’re gonna have to do worse than failing French.”

“Like failing French every year since middle school?”

“You didn’t fail it in ninth grade,” she said helpfully.

"Because I failed Spanish in ninth grade.”

Ruby shrugged. She was about the suggest getting Nancy to do something bad enough to distract Ambassador Crew, when her parents appeared again. It was just as well they had chosen to interrupt the French conversation and not their earlier one, or Ruby would have had some serious explaining to do. She should have been more careful, but her concussed brain was struggling as it was.

“Ruby, honey, we’re going to grab some stuff Mrs Digby made for you,” her dad said. “We’ll be right back. Clancy, we can give you a ride home, too.”

Clancy shook his head quickly. Ruby was well aware that her dad lightly terrified him, and it was entertaining to watch as he attempted to decline their offer.

“I can get the bus, no worries-“

“No, we insist,” Sabina chimed in, beaming at Clancy. “I know Hitch dropped you here, but he’s since disappeared, it’s only right for us to get you back home.”

Clancy’s smile looked rather strained as he shook his head again. “Really, I’m all good, I was gonna get the bus-“

“It’s no trouble at all, you’re on our way,” Brant countered firmly. He was always incredibly polite, but his confidence did tend to intimidate. “It’s only right.”

Clancy struggled for a while longer, but he eventually stumbled into a reluctant acceptance of their offer.

“See ya, Rube,” he said nervously, as he trailed out the room after her parents. “Feel better.”

The door shut quietly, and Ruby relaxed with the sudden silence. The room felt bigger, now that it was emptied of people and their fuss and worry and fear.

Ruby sank into the bed. The quiet gave her more room to think, and she wasn’t sure that was a good thing. Whatever paranoia and terror she was supposed to be feeling hadn’t hit her yet, and she’d rather deal with that when she could actually do something about it. She didn’t want to focus too hard on the dull ache of her knee or the pain when she breathed or the throbbing of her head, but without anyone to distract from it, she felt it more acutely by the minute.

Ruby closed her eyes, breathing slowly and deeply despite the protests of her ribs. It was easier with her eyes closed. She hadn’t realised how tired she was until she was already falling asleep, slipping into a twisted dreamland.

☆

Ruby was glad to be out of the hospital, even if she was now stuck with a knee brace and a bald patch. Both could be easily hidden by jeans and the rest of her hair, but she resented them anyway, a reminder of what she’d been trying to ignore for the past twelve hours.

Ruby pushed open the door to her room, and sank down onto the bed, wincing at the sudden flare of pain down her side.

Out of everything, her bruised ribs bugged her the most. They wouldn’t let her forget it, reminding her with every inhale, and every movement seemed to aggravate the ache.

She surveyed her room. It was as messy as always, clothes strewn on the floor, on the chair, cascading down the wardrobe. The desk was stacked with slumping piles of books and littered with papers, crumpled and scribbled on and torn. Ruby was never one for neatness, and even less so when she was working on something. The code, however, could wait for the moment.

She collected her current notebook from the secret panel in the doorframe, noting down every detail of the day before as well as her morning. Ruby’s memory was better than most, but she knew it wasn’t infallible, and she needed to be sure of every detail. If there was something that could help identify her attackers, or the person behind it, she was going to find it.

There were so many things she still didn’t know. Were the code and the attacks connected? Or was the code connected to the LB stuff at Spectrum, or was the LB threat more to do with the person after Ruby?

There was the possibility that they were all entirely separate, of course, but it seemed unlikely. Twinford wasn’t a big city, and two Spectrum agents being threatened at the same time couldn’t be a coincidence. Ruby wasn’t a great believer in coincidence.

She could be more sure if she had more information about the threat to LB. If they’d been targeting people close to her, it would make sense, but Ruby couldn’t think of anyone LB was close to. Hitch, maybe? Ruby couldn’t imagine LB had much of a life outside Spectrum. Her fiancé had been an agent, and she had no children or family Ruby knew of.

She was at a dead end, and without more information, she couldn’t learn anything new. Hitch would have to take her into Spectrum, at some point, to get her to recount everything to LB, but Hitch was nowhere to be found. Ruby would have to wait.

As she carefully stowed her notebook away, the blinking answerphone caught her attention.

Ruby pressed play on the message, knowing who it would be even before she heard Del’s voice, low and angry.

“Redfort, what the fuck? You swore you’d show up,” her voice crackled out of the answerphone. “This is the fifth one in a row, and we got pounded, again, and you couldn’t be asked to show up, again!” There was a click, the voicemail ending.

Ruby moved to delete the message, at the same time that the phone started to ring.

Ruby considered not answering it, but with Del it was always better to just argue it out. The longer Del had to stew, the more ticked off she’d get.

Ruby picked up the phone, and for once, didn’t bother with her usual made-up greetings. As LB would have said, there was a time and place, and Ruby was well aware that this was not the time.

“Hey, Del,” she said.

“You’re such a fucker,” Del snapped. “You don’t turn up, and then you don’t bother to pick up my calls?”

“Look, I’m real sorry, I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“You promise, do you? Like you promised to come to this game, and the one before?”

Ruby sighed. Del’s anger was warranted, and it was making Ruby feel deeply guilty, a feeling she’d become well acquainted with in the past week.

She wasn’t a fan.

“I’m sorry,” Ruby said again.

“Really? Not a single explanation? You’re not doing a very convincing apology here.”

She grimaced. Ruby had an explanation for missing this one, a pretty darn good one, but it felt like a cop out. Ruby had been so ready to ditch the game, again, and she’d only decided to go because she needed a break.

And she would have been late.

Ruby would have to tell her anyway, though. When Del saw her on Monday, if Ruby did end up going to school, she’d clock her limp immediately.

“I was in the hospital,” Ruby muttered.

“Huh? I can’t hear you, speak up.”

“I was in the hospital,” she repeated herself, louder this time.

Del was silent for a moment.

“Are you fucking with me?” She sounded unsure.

“I got into a crash or something when I was biking to the game. I can’t remember exactly.” She felt worse for having to lie about it, but she couldn’t exactly tell her the truth.

“Jeez, Rube, are you okay?” She sounded concerned, and all Ruby could feel was the pit in her stomach, and the way the guilt was pooling there.

“I’m all good. I am real sorry about the game, I really did mean to come this time.”

Ruby wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought Del was laughing, a tense sort of laugh, disbelief in her voice when she spoke.

“I’ve been plotting ways to murder you all morning,” she said. “And you were in the hospital.”

“That about sums it up.”

Ruby was glad when Del finally hung up. There was nothing fun about having her lie repeated to her over and over.

It made her think about that conversation she’d had with Clancy, after her freak-out at Elliot’s. About her being a shitty friend, and about her lying to them.

She sort of wished she could have taken Del’s anger this time, a fucked up sort of punishment. It would have felt better than lying, even if it hadn’t been her fault this time. Ruby was sick of feeling guilty for everything, but she knew it was her fault. Again.

Frustrated with the direction her thoughts had taken, she dialled Clancy’s number.

He picked up almost immediately.

“Rube! How are you feeling?”

“They’ve got me on some pills, Clance, so pretty good,” Ruby lied. A moment later, she wondered if she should be concerned at how easily she did it. She didn’t think she’d always been so bad, but maybe that was recency bias. She had, after all, had no issues stealing high tech Spectrum gadgets at every chance she got.

“Do you wanna come over? If Hitch doesn’t have you on lockdown, that is.”

“Hitch is nowhere to be seen, so I’m free for now. I’ll be right over.”

She hung up, then realised she was going to have to walk, or cycle, and neither of those options were particularly appealing given her current state.

She put his number in again.

“On second thought, I think you’d better come over here.”

☆

He was over in record time, seven minutes and thirty-two seconds. Ruby didn’t go downstairs, and Mrs Digby got the door instead, sending Clancy straight upstairs.

“Hey, Rube,” he said, sounding slightly breathless. She wasn’t sure if that was from the bike ride over, or just from walking up the stairs. Clancy wasn’t exactly the peak of fitness.

“Hey, Clance. Shut the door, would you?” She asked.

He complied, and joined her on the bed, settling against the wall, his legs crossed.

“Have you talked to Del?”

She was mildly surprised he hadn’t asked about Spectrum or the whole someone-is-out-to-get-her situation, but she wasn’t mad about it.

“Yup. She left me a voicemail, and then she called. She was not pleased.”

“You told her it wasn’t your fault, right? I mean, I know you weren’t going to the game anyway, but you couldn’t have made it, given the whole hospital thing.”

“Uh, Clance? What do you mean, I wasn’t going to the game?”

Clancy shrugged. “I mean, you were heading home. And you aren’t exactly dedicated to basketball games.”

“I was coming back to get my kit!”

Clancy fixed her with a look that reminded her uncomfortably of LB. “So you weren’t exactly planning on going to the game when you left in the morning. It was a reasonable assumption to make,” he countered.

Ruby shook her head. “I try to do something nice, and look where it gets me.”

Clancy rolled his eyes. “So did you tell Del, or not?”

“I did. She dropped it.”

He looked like he was debating saying something, but in the end, there was only silence.

“Snacks?” Ruby suggested.

Clancy jumped up. “You read my mind, Rube.”

Mrs Digby had made lemon drizzle, and she piled a plate for them with thick slabs of it, extra drizzle on top. For Ruby, she also sent up a glass of banana milk.

They were back on Ruby’s bed, since Ruby wasn’t feeling like climbing onto the roof with her dodgy knee.

She took a long sip of her banana milk while Clancy demolished his first slab of cake.

“What happened yesterday?” Ruby asked. Clancy looked up, eyes widening. Through a mouthful of food, he mumbled something that might have been “What?”.

“What happened yesterday that you didn’t say when I asked you in the hospital? You were acting all fishy, Clance.”

He finally swallowed his bite, cheeks slightly flushed.

“Oh.” He grinned crookedly, and Ruby raised her eyebrows, intrigued. She hadn’t been expecting it to be something good. Her mom would have told her she needed to look on the sunny side of life, but Ruby felt she was justified in being a little pessimistic, given there wasn’t much sunny about having a big red target on her back.

“Jeepers, Clance, spill it,” she said, when he didn’t say anything.

His cheesy smile intensified. “Elliot came over,” he said.

Ruby narrowed her eyes. If that was all that had gotten Clancy smiling like the Joker, she was going to have to stage an intervention and possibly dunk his head in ice water.

“And, uh, somehow, I ended up telling him I like guys.”

Ruby raised her eyebrows, now interested. Clancy, as far as she knew, hadn’t told a soul other than Ruby, so for him to tell Elliot…

“And then that somehow led to us kissing.”

Ruby blinked. “What?”

“He kissed me. I mean, I said he could, sorta, I mean I guess I just nodded-“

“You kissed?” She wished she sounded a little less shocked, because it wasn’t like she doubted Clancy or that Elliot would like him, it was just… Clancy had kissed someone. Ruby knew, logically, that was a thing that people her age did. The rest of their friends had. Somehow, the fact that Clancy had made it feel more real.

Ruby couldn’t imagine herself kissing anyone. It was the sort of thing she’d thought she could focus on when she was older, but she was starting to understand that whatever she was supposed to feel should have been here by now.

And it wasn’t.

And it was very possible it never would be.

Which was fine.

And also kind of unsettling.

Clancy nodded eagerly, his eyes bright with happiness.

“Jeez, Clance, that‘s great,” she exclaimed. “So what did he say? Are you dating?”

It could be said that Ruby wasn’t a big fan of romance and romance-related gossip, but this was Clancy, and something had actually happened, with someone he’d been crushing on for far too long. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t deeply invested in this.

Clancy grimaced. “Uh…”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. You didn’t ask?”

“I would have, but Del arrived literally thirty seconds later. There wasn’t exactly a whole lotta time.”

She shook her head. “Course Lasco did.”

Clancy eyed her, and she knew exactly what he was thinking about. Del’s crush on Ruby was an open secret, and as convenient as it was for Ruby to ignore it, she knew that Clancy didn’t approve of her act.

“I’m joking,” she said, because she had been. Ruby harboured no resentment towards Del, despite their constant bickering. Del was loyal to a fault, and Ruby was too. She’d gotten in too many fights for Del to pretend otherwise.

Her watch buzzed. Ruby looked down, nervy with anticipation.

LB wants to talk to you

If you’re feeling up for it

Ruby made a face.

“What‘s Spectrum saying?” Clancy asked, cautious.

“LB wants to talk to me.”

He frowned. “You don’t look happy about that.”

“They’re gonna put me under lockdown, that’s why,” she grumbled. “How am I supposed to get anything done if I’m stuck in the house?”

“Rube, I think that’s the point.”

“I can sneak out,” she continued, “but it’s a royal pain in the behind.”

“Rube-“

She turned to him. “Don’t you think stopping me from helping isn’t keeping me safe?”

He hesitated. “Look, you do have a psycho after you. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea for you to, I don’t know, keep a low profile for a bit.”

“Clance!” She stared at him, and attempt to make him feel some remorse for his betrayal.

“I’m just saying. And I’d rather you don’t get yourself killed, Rube. How else am I gonna pass French?”

“Are you saying you value French more than my sanity?”

“I’m saying that I value your life over your temporary boredom.”

She took another sip of her banana milk. It was almost done - she always managed to drink it within minutes.

“Fine,” she relented. “I’ll meet with LB, let Hitch imprison me, and try to lie low.”

Clancy nodded. “Good.” She knew he was well aware that she’d made quite a loophole for herself there, with the word ‘try’, but Clancy had many years of experience with Ruby, and he knew when to quit.

Ruby typed a response into her watch -

OK. It was moments before she got a response.

Agent Hitch will collect you.

Ruby looked up at Clancy. “Happy?”

“I guess so.” He didn’t look happy.

Ruby set down her glass.

“Well, wish me luck, Clance. I’m gonna need it.”

Chapter Text

Monday

“Redfort,” LB said, carefully moving the stack of papers she’d been working on to the side. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty darn great,” Ruby said, as sincerely as she could. She paired it with her signature Ruby smile, toothy, sweet and overtly innocent. It was much easier than telling the truth.

LB sighed. “Someone is after you,” she said. “Hitch has updated me on what he believes happened. I’d like to hear what you remember.”

Ruby leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms across her chest. “I was biking back from school. I noticed a black car following me, and tried to shake them. I failed, and they knocked me out from behind. ‘They’ being the three men. What they looked like is sorta fuzzy. I didn’t get too good a look at them, on account of running for my life.”

“Try to describe them the best you can.”

“They were pretty similar looking. Around 6’1, burly, with ski masks on. Probably all white. I’m guessing they’re hired muscle. They didn’t strike me as the brainy type, if you get my gist.”

“I get your gist, Redfort,” LB said tiredly. “Evidently you’re rattled, but please refrain from being…snarky.”

Ruby bristled at the suggestion that she was rattled, mainly because it was the truth, and one she didn’t appreciate, at that. Luckily, Ruby also had survival instincts (though Hitch would have disagreed, and probably Colt would have too) so she kept her lips sealed. It was a Herculean effort on her part.

“We have posted agents around your house, but we already did have some security, after the robbery, and it didn’t prevent this. I have agents working on identifying whoever is behind this, but you are not on the case. You need to keep a low profile. Do you understand me?”

Ruby couldn’t restrain herself this time. “I was keeping a low profile,” she pointed out. “I was cycling home from school-“

“Yes, I understood that part,” LB cut in through gritted teeth. Ruby never failed to aggravate her, but this time, Ruby thought at least half of her frustration was with herself.

LB composed herself. “No investigating, and no looking at classified files,” she added, pointedly.

“It’s not my fault that Hitch left classified information in his glovebox ,” Ruby argued.

LB pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I am well aware,” she said, her displeasure showing. Hitch must have gotten quite the lecture. “Hitch has been suitably… chastised, but you were, as you would put it, ‘snooping’.”

“I needed a tissue.“

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Ruby.”

Ruby blinked at her, surprised. LB rarely, if ever, used her first name.

She wasn’t sure what it meant. It was generally difficult to read LB’s expressions.

“Look,” LB continued, and her voice lost some of the edge from before. “You are seventeen, and you are Spectrum’s, and therefore my, responsibility. I have many other things to deal with, as you are now aware, so for the love of god, I need you sit at home and twiddle your goddamn thumbs.“

Ruby gritted her teeth. She had a million things that she wanted to say, but most of them were not repeatable and highly inappropriate to say to your boss, and more importantly, dissenting would only earn her more babysitting.

She said nothing.

“Do you understand, Redfort?”

“I understand,” Ruby said.

She understood LB’s orders perfectly well. She just didn’t happen to agree .

Tuesday

Ruby Redfort was fine.

She had to keep telling people that, and it was driving her insane. Her parents were suddenly interested in her location at all times (a novel and distinctly unpleasant experience for Ruby) and so was Hitch, though that wasn’t new. Even Clancy called her at least twice a day, which Ruby wouldn’t mind, given she rather enjoyed her conversations with him, but she knew wasn’t calling for the pleasure of her company.

And now, she had to face the rest of her friends, too.

“Rube!” That was Elliot, running towards her where she stood outside the school gates. She’d gotten a lift from Hitch, thanks to her crappy knee.

“Hey, Elliot,” she said as he reached her, giving her a once over. She’d done her best to hide any evidence of her hospital visit. She had loose jeans over her knee brace, and her hair was combed and fastened with her (new) fly barrette. Makeup hid the worst of her dark circles, and she had refused to use  the crutches the nurses had offered her. The only sign that she was any worse for wear was her limp, which remained stubbornly obvious despite her best efforts. Well, that and the scrapes and bruises on her palms and elbows. Ruby would have worn long sleeves, but it was far too warm for that. Summer had settled into Twinford for good.

Elliot was still gawking at her. “Del told me you got hit by a car on your way to the game!”

Ruby hadn’t strictly told Del that it was on the way to the game, but it was close enough to the truth.

“Lasco’s making it sound all dramatic,” she said, as the rest of her friends started to appear, crowding around her.

“How are you feeling?” Red said worriedly, as Del scoffed. “You were in the hospital!”

“Right as rain,” Ruby said, ignoring Del. “It’s really not that bad, they were just all cautious because I knocked my head, y’know?”

Clancy was watching her doubtfully from the back of the group. No matter what she said, she wasn’t going to convince him.

“I’m glad you’re all good,” Mouse said softly, but her eyes were fixed on Clancy.

Elliot nodded fervently. “Tell us if you don’t feel so good though, Rube.”

Ruby shrugged. “I think I’ll be all fine.”

Del nodded, relief visible on her face. “Good that you’re good and all,” she said, “but let’s get a move on, because I sure as hell don’t want a detention today.“

Ruby raised her eyebrows. “Are you feeling okay, Lasco?”

Elliot laughed, clapping Del on the shoulder as he lead the way inside. “She just doesn’t wanna miss this weird-ass action movie that’s showing after school today,” he taunted her.

“It’s not weird, Finch, you just don’t have taste,” Del replied, and thankfully that devolved into one of their usual arguments, drawing the attention off of Ruby. They disappeared through the doors, trailed by Red, but Mouse and Clancy still hovered beside Ruby, and they witnessed every humiliating second of her slow hobble to first period.

Ruby’s week wasn’t getting off to a great start.

Wednesday

Ruby ditched school after lunch. Her morning had dragged on for what had felt like eternity, thanks to a particularly tedious English lesson in which they’d dissected the symbolism and motifs in The Great Gatsby. This was of no interest to Ruby, who had first read it when she was seven, and found her teacher’s analysis to be rather shallow and grossly simplistic. By the time lunch rolled around, Ruby couldn’t take it anymore. She took a bus to the beach. It wasn’t particularly busy, given it was just past midday, in the middle of the week, but there were enough people around for Ruby to feel safe. No one would try anything in full view of fifteen other people. She settled on the brick wall that divided the beach from the carpark, letting her legs dangle over the edge.

She pulled out her notebook, which she had remembered this time, and flipped to the page where she’d written out the notes from the last radio play of a Bazooka song. On the other side of the page, she had a list of codes she wanted to test, progressing from obscure to practically unused. Ruby knew she was missing something - a combination of two codes, or an extra step, just something - but she didn’t have a way of getting more information. She couldn’t access any systems that would allow her to trace the owners of the black car, and she had practically no information about the LB threat. Logically, the code had to be connected to one of the two threats, or both, but without any leads, she had no way of narrowing down directions to take to crack the code.

Ruby pulled out a pen from her back pocket, and started working her way down the list. She didn’t really believe that this would lead to a breakthrough, but she couldn’t not. If she ignored these and it turned out to be the answer- well, Ruby couldn’t let that happen.

She sat scribbling in her notebook, warmed by the fierce sun overhead, for what couldn’t have been more than half an hour, but she was fully absorbed in her work.

She heard footsteps behind her.

Ruby leapt to her feet, adrenaline buzzing in her ears and in her veins, dulling the sharp protest from her knee and from her ribs. She was

gripping her pen tightly, point forward-

And it was only Hitch, looking thoroughly out of place in his full suit and tie.

“Jeez, don’t creep up on people like that,” she said, but she was breathless, her chest tight with the momentary terror.

“You’re the one skipping school, kid.”

Ruby forced her breaths to come steadily, regularly. “They weren’t teaching me anything I didn’t already know.”

“You’re supposed to be lying low.” It was easy for Ruby to see that he was more than just angry, his shoulders tight and mouth set, but his eyes betrayed nothing.

“I’m sitting at the beach with a bunch of seniors in bathing suits,” she pointed out.

“I checked your attendance,” he said. “You’ve been to school twice in the last two weeks, including yesterday.“

“My grades are fine.” She shrugged. They were, in fact, much more than just fine, but Hitch knew that as well as she did.

“It doesn’t matter. How many excuses are the school going to accept? How long before they call your parents? How long before they fail you because your attendance is too low?” He spoke like he was trying to impress the words into her, an urgency in them. “I know it’s not about the material. You’ve never skived this much before. I know you’re working on the code, and I know you’re scared, but school is safe, and wandering around Twinford isn’t, not when there’s someone trying to hurt you, do you understand ?”

“School isn’t safe,” she argued, her ego bruised by his accuracy. “They were there . They pushed Red down the stairs, and no one noticed.”

Hitch shook his head. “I know, I know, but we have people there now, and it doesn’t even matter, because that’s not why you aren’t there.” He looked at her with undisguised concern. It made Ruby bristle. When he looked her right in the eyes like that, she felt like he might be right, that he really knew exactly why she’d stopped going, that she had to solve this, had to figure out the code before someone else got hurt and she had yet more blood on her stained hands. It felt like he might know that she’d been barely sleeping for the past two weeks, or that her chest was always tight, lungs constricted, never sucking in quite enough oxygen.

But if she pulled her eyes away, she could think more clearly, less blinded by his worry. She could remember that he hadn’t believed her when she’d told him about Clancy’s hunch, or the code. She remembered that he couldn’t read her mind, that he hadn’t come here because he’d known, but because one of the Spectrum agents posted at the school had told him.

“Why am I not at school, then?” She stubbornly asked the question. She knew he wouldn’t answer, he wouldn’t embarrass her that much, and she was right. He sighed.

“Stop trying to investigate,” he said. “LB told you to stay home. You’re not on the case, now get in the car.” His voice was firm, and he turned towards the car, not waiting for her.

Ruby followed him back to the car, slipping into the passenger seat as Hitch sat down on the other side. They buckled their seatbelts in silent unison.

“Tell me what’s going on with the threat to LB,” she said, not looking at him. Hitch laughed. “In your dreams, kid.” Unsurprising, but annoying. She fixed her eyes on the window, watching in the reflection as Hitch shifted into reverse.

“What’s the likelihood that someone going after her and someone going after me is entirely unrelated?” Ruby demanded.

The car pulled out of the car park and onto the road. Hitch’s grip on the wheel tightened, knuckles going white. “I get why you’re upset, but it’s classified information.”

She watched the beach drop out of view, replaced by miles of tarmac. “I’m the one being targeted,” she said. “It would make me feel better if I had a clue what was going on.”

“Believe me, I’d feel better if I had a clue too.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel, and Ruby knew she was getting through to him.

“Don’t tell LB that I told you this.”

“I won’t blab.”

Hitch shook his head. “The threats are getting more violent. More specific. Nothing has happened yet, and we won’t let anything happen. We have people everywhere, keeping an eye out.” He sighed. “Happy?”

He’d given her practically nothing, but Ruby was impressed that he’d said anything at all.

“Perfectly,” Ruby said.

☆

Hitch dropped her to school for the rest of the week, and Ruby reluctantly stayed. By the time it reached Friday, she was sick of it. It stripped away her research and decoding time, and that had to be relegated to the nights, which meant she ended up working into the early morning.

She was operating on four hours of sleep when she climbed out of Hitch’s car on Friday, her limbs and eyelids heavy, but her brain was alert. Too alert, maybe. Her thoughts had all the delicacy of racing horses, kicking up dust and thundering across her head.

She’d made no progress. Not on the code, not on getting updates from Hitch, nothing. She was so sure she would be able to solve this if her and Blacker were allowed to work on it together. He knew what was happening at Spectrum, and Ruby knew the messages inside out. She was so sure it would click if she just had all the information.

She was a minute early, for once, sliding into her seat next to Clancy.

“Hey, Clance,” she greeted him. He was hunched over his desk, his pen trailing listlessly over the already heavily graffitied cover of his workbook.

“Hey, Rube.” He blinked up at her owlishly, as if she’d disturbed him from his thoughts. She probably had. Clancy had been subdued all of the day before. Something was bugging him, but he hadn’t offered to tell her.

Ruby hadn’t asked, though. If it was her fault, she’d rather not know. She couldn’t take it.

“How did your-“ she never got the chance to finish her question to Clancy. The bell rang, and Mrs Walker cleared her throat to announce the start of the lesson, silence settling slowly over the room. It was, regrettably, English again. Ruby slowly pulled out her copy of the Great Gatsby. She strongly doubted Mrs Walker would bestow the class with great insight into the novel.

“Open your books to chapter fifteen,” Mrs Walker said nervously. She was one of the younger teachers, timid and soft-spoken, but to make up for it, she lavished detentions upon anyone and everyone she could, and as a result, had garnered hatred from almost every member of the student body.

“Could someone please recap the major events in this chapter?” She looked pointedly around the room for her victim. Ruby zoned out as someone in the front row recounted the chapter in a monotone. Mrs Walker had a real talent for sucking the life out of the books she studied.

Ruby slipped her notebook into her copy of The Great Gatsby, staring at her transcriptions again, trying to rework them against every code she’d learnt. She reached the end of her list within fifteen minutes; she’d gone over this a million times already. She was doing it again more to pass time than anything else.

Eventually, she got bored, and glanced over at Clancy. He had his eyebrows furrowed, staring through the book. Whatever he was thinking about, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the words on the page, despite his apparent focus. She probably should figure out what exactly was on his mind, but Clancy was a vault when he wanted to be, and Ruby wasn’t sure she wanted to crack it open. Still, she ripped a scrap of paper from her notebook, scribbling down in morse code ‘ earth to clancy ’. It took her a moment to remember the letter codes - she’d learnt morse by listening, not by memorising the dots and lines. Her favourite code book at the time had advised learning it that way-

Ruby stilled.

Morse code was traditionally an audio code, but often it was written down. It could be used as a visual code. It was obvious, but - Ruby cursed herself silently. She’d been stupid in thinking so rigidly before. Maybe the sleep deprivation really was killing her brain cells, because there was no way she could have missed it.

Ruby rummaged through her bag, finding her folder of get-out-of-school notes, and she pulled one out, hurriedly filling in the rest of the message.

She stuck her hand up as she slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’m not feeling too good,” she said, not waiting to be called on. “Can I be excused?” She could feel Clancy’s eyes on her. She could explain later.

She didn’t wait for an answer to her question either, dropping the note with still drying ink on the desk, and making her way towards the door.

“Miss Redfort, where do you think you’re going? I haven’t answered-“

Ruby shoved the note at her, and disappeared through the door.

She didn’t have her bike, since Hitch had dropped her, and she wasn’t keen on walking too far with her still fussy knee, so she took the bus instead, not bothered about the old folks who eyed her disapprovingly as she boarded. It was only two stops, and then Ruby was hurrying out, running down the street. She was home before the period had even ended.

Ruby snuck into the house through the back door, and dashed up the stairs, breathless. Her parents were probably out, but Mrs Digby would kill her if she knew Ruby was skipping school.

Ruby locked the door of her bedroom, retrieved her notebook from the compartment in the door, shoved the pile of clothes off of her desk chair, then sat down and switched on the radio. It was muscle memory at this point.

She pulled out her notebook she’d been working in, and her little yellow notebook.

Morse code could be used in different ways. She’d been so focused on audio codes, she hadn’t stopped to consider that it might not be one. Sure, some were designed for that purpose, but she’d been stupid to not think outside the box. It was a rookie mistake, and Ruby wasn’t supposed to be a rookie anymore. It could be any code in the world. Which code?

Visual codes were easy to transcribe into audio, especially in music. The staccato guitar in the back of the tracks were different notes, they could stand for different letters, or…

She needed to narrow it down somehow. She had too many options otherwise, too many codes to try.

Unless… Ruby flicked through her yellow notebook, searching for the right date. What if it wasn’t any old code? She’d thought it was too much of a coincidence for this and the LB threat to be happening at the same time.

Ruby found the page, with her scrawled rendition of the note, the bacon cipher that had been used to threaten LB.

There was a note written under it, one she’d forgotten she’d even written.

Bacon cipher again, like the robbery plans me and Blacker worked on.

“Bozo,” Ruby hissed, grabbing a pen. She’d forgotten about it. It had seemed so benign in the face of everything else, but..

The bacon cipher. It had to be it, appearing again like a motif from english class. And those robbery plans she’d decoded with Blacker, those had been in audio form. How hadn’t she connected the dots earlier? This was so obvious, so in front of her nose, and Ruby had missed it.

She cranked up the volume on the radio, but there was no Bazooka song on for the moment, so she looked at her older transcriptions in her notebook.

She’d transcribed the notes into hand drawn sheet music. They all followed the same sort of pattern, two notes in a random order for a while, then another two notes, and so on. That made sense, the two notes were obviously the different forms of ‘A’ and ‘B’ in this, the same way ‘L’ and ‘B’ had been in the note from Hitch’s car. The changes from one pair of notes to another must be for the chord changes, but Ruby hadn’t written that down. She would have to re-listen to the songs.

She was in the middle of putting the bazooka vinyl onto her record player when she heard the telltale first notes of ‘Redwood’, Ruby’s least favourite Bazooka song. She dropped the vinyl, scrambling for her notebook. She missed the first two notes, but she managed the rest, noting down the chords as she went along. She’d never noticed before how many chord changes there were; there were only four chords total, but they were constantly being switched between. It was almost unnecessary, all the changes. She couldn’t believe that was a coincidence.

By the time the song faded out, Ruby was already running into a new question. Which note was A, and which note was B?

She first tried assuming A was the higher note and B was lower, which resulted in gibberish, and her second attempt using B as the higher note was just as futile. She half wondered if there was another layer to the code, but she quickly realised her mistake. The groups of five needed for each letter of the bacon cipher were often broken up by chord changes, so the higher note of two in one chord could became the lower one when the chord changed.

She had to assume it had something to do with the chords playing at the same time, then. They had to somehow clue the recipient in to the answer.

Could it be the position of the chords in the scale? Ruby scrapped that quickly, but she was sure it had something to do with scales, with their numbers.

A was the sixth degree of the C major scale, and B was the seventh. She ran through all the notes she’d written down. Bingo. They were all the sixth or seventh degree of the scale that corresponded to the chord they were played over. A would be the note that was at the sixth degree of the scale, and B the note at the seventh.

Ruby decoded it in fifteen seconds flat. She took another two to add some punctuation.

‘Got new updates,’ it read. ‘ LB will be too closely watched if we continue with our old plan. Need to talk. Thirteen Jackson Avenue, ten fifteen. Don’t make me wait.’

Ruby checked her watch. Nine fifty, declared the escape watch. Whoever was sending the message was not gifted with patience, that was for sure. Twenty five minutes wasn’t a whole lot of notice.

Ruby was moving before she’d even consciously decided to go, pulling her yellow stripes back on. She didn’t bother contacting Hitch. One of the agents stationed at the school or around the Redfort house would probably have alerted him to her ditching school by the time she arrived, anyway. Ruby didn’t plan on even being seen, but if there was any trouble, he’d already be on his way to ground her for the next decade.

She’d probably be forgiven if she managed to stop LB being killed. Ask for forgiveness, not permission, as the saying went.

Ruby took the subway to the village. She would have preferred a faster mode of transport, but that was the downside of her unauthorised ‘missions’.

By the time she exited the subway, at the Village West station, it was five past ten. Whoever was sending the messages liked cutting it fine.

Ruby’s long memorised mental map of Twinford suggested it would be about a twelve minute walk, if she took the back routes. She assumed the person the message sender was meeting with would take the main roads, since those were faster, and it would look less shady than skulking around in alleys. Ruby didn’t particularly want to run into a would be assassin, so she’d have to take the long way round.

She jogged there, glad that it was broad daylight. Ruby had had enough of the dark.

The address ended up leading Ruby to a large white house, almost identical to all the others around it. The street was pretty deserted, which was admittedly not unusual around the Village. The inhabitants of this residential neighbourhoods were often away on vacation on a sunny island somewhere, and no one else had any reason to hang around.

Ruby scoped out the house, trying to figure out her next move. She couldn’t exactly ring the doorbell, but these houses were pretty high security. She couldn’t break in without setting off a burglar alarm or two, of that she was certain.

Ruby’s eyes landed on the gate to the side, which must lead to the back garden. It was tall and pointy, not exactly conducive to climbing (which was probably the point, she reasoned). The gates would probably keep out most burglars. Unluckily for the owners, they weren’t going to keep out Ruby.

There was a tree growing beside the house, just to the left of the gate. It was slender and sloping, branches hanging perfectly over the gate. It certainly wouldn’t have supported the weight of most people attempting to sneak in, but that was because they generally weren’t short teenage girls with a blatant disregard for danger.

Ruby did hesitate for all of two seconds, not exactly thrilled about climbing a tree with her still-healing knee, but she sucked it up and got going, pulling herself up using one of the lower branches. The good thing about being late to the meeting was she could be sure she wouldn’t run into the recipient of the message.

The trunk was mostly smooth and slippy, but Ruby used what few knots and scrapes there were in the wood as her footholds, and hoisted herself up using the branches above. Her knee ached, but Ruby barely noticed, urgency strengthening her will.

She was almost at the height of the gate. Ruby started to make her way sideways, not just upwards, shuffling carefully along one of the thicker branches. It bent a little under her weight, creaking as she went, but she’d managed to position herself right over the path that lead back to the garden. Ruby dropped down, landing in a crouch right behind the gate.

She spared a glance at her watch. 10:17. Only two minutes late. Hitch wouldn’t have believed his eyes.

Ruby moved slowly down the path, listening carefully for an arrival, but she heard none. Whoever it was must have already been close by, to have made it on time with so little notice.

Ruby edged towards the garden. The path had led her along the side of the house, and now she peered around the corner, listening intently for any movement. She could only see half the garden from where she stood, the other half hidden from view behind a cluster of trees. What she could see was lush and verdant, no small feat in the dry Californian summer, a large lawn edged with neat hedges and bushes. It was empty, though that didn’t surprise Ruby. She couldn’t imagine the meeting would be happening in the garden.

Ruby stepped out around the corner, careful not to step of fallen branches or leaves. She looked for the back door, and deduced that it must be towards the other side of the garden, by the cluster of trees.

It was perfectly inconvenient, but Ruby could never even consider giving up. She stuck close to the walls of the house, checking the windows before moving past them. They all showed a house sparsely but expensively furnished, with modern furniture and high ceilings. It looked almost untouched, but that didn’t surprise her. Most of the houses in the Village stood empty for half the year, and when they were occupied, they were kept spotless by a team of butlers and housekeepers.

Every room she passed was unoccupied, so she made quick progress across the garden. Ruby still moved slowly, even as she neared, careful to make no sound as she crept closer. It was 10:19 by the time she reached the back door.

Ruby slipped her second pin from her hair, cursing under her breath as the breeze immediately threw her hair right into her face, obscuring her vision. She brushed her hair back, pin still in hand, and froze as the scent hit her.

It smelled of sugar and syrup, with a floral hint. It hit Ruby like a gut punch, the realisation rotten in her mouth.

It smelled, more precisely, of Turkish Delight. 

Ruby spun around, and found herself looking into the triumphant eyes of Lorelai von Leyden.