This was Typical of Britney O’Leary; she would try something for about a week, get bored and then move on to another activity. Ruby yanked the board out and set it on the ground. It looked fine. She stepped onto it; it felt fine.
Here was her transport. It wasn’t as fast as cycling or driving, but it was quicker than taking three buses and a three-block walk. Of course it would be quicker still if she grabbed the wheel arch of a moving vehicle. If that guy with the haircut could do it then she certainly could. Yes, she would skitch a ride.
Ruby had never actually tried it before. If she was totally honest this was because she had always thought it was a dumb thing to do; unless of course it was an out and out emergency type of situation or one wanted to end up in the emergency room. But things had changed; she had escaped from the mouth of death, felt its burning tongues of fire, but she’d come out of it unscathed, permanent injury-wise. She felt, well, invincible, and so skitching suddenly seemed like a very good way of getting around fast.
Ruby set off on her newly acquired skateboard and minutes later had grabbed hold of an unsuspecting car headed in the right direction and she was on her way. She travelled at high speed, a great deal faster than pedalling a bike – she only had to shift rides twice, when the cars she had chosen peeled off in the wrong direction, and she reached the Schroeder Building car park in very good time.
As she snatched up her board she couldn’t resist a smile – quite a blast; the wind in her face, the road speeding so close beneath her feet. Travelling at thirty miles an hour without working for it, yeah, it was a blast all right. If she’d wiped out, it would most probably have been curtains for Ruby Redfort. . . but then, that only made her like it more.
She walked to the elevator, stepped inside and waited for the doors to close behind her. Now what? Now she needed to figure out the code that would take her to Spectrum.
She stood there thinking, If Hitch told me the code then it must have been when we arrived in the underground car park.
What did we talk about?
It couldn’t have been very interesting or she would have remembered. No, it was boring; Hitch was small-talking about the building. . . something to do with cars, and levels and floors.
She looked around – somewhere there would be a parking notice.
It was near the ramp where the cars came in.
Level capacity 500 vehicles.
There were 3 Levels so that meant 1500 cars. The Schroeder was seventy-seven storeys high. She knew that because everyone knew that; it had a big 77 above its entrance, the number referring to where the building was in the street and also to the number of floors it was made up of. She thought of what Hitch had said: add it up.
She added the numbers, 1500+3+77, stepped inside the elevator and tapped 1580 into the code panel. The door did not open.
‘What?’ said Ruby out loud. ‘Is this thing broken? How do I even call Spectrum maintenance?’ And that’s when she remembered that she needed to factor in the number of maintenance vehicles – Hitch had mentioned those too, but she couldn’t remember the exact number. This was somewhat of a pain since it involved counting the “maintenance reserved” bays but eventually she got there. Seventeen.
OK, add the maintenance vehicles.
She tapped in 1597 and the door opened.
‘Could he not have just reminded me?’ Ruby muttered. But she knew what his answer to that would be. Pay attention Redfort.
Despite the almost impossible feat of arriving barely twenty-seven minutes after leaving home, she was still met with an impatient look from Buzz, who told her to sit and wait until she was called.
‘Could I maybe go grab something from the canteen?’ said Ruby. ‘I skipped breakfast to be here.’
‘If you’re not here when they call you, it’s a fail,’ said Buzz.
Ruby rolled her eyes, and went and sat in the atrium for at least as long as it would have taken to eat breakfast.
‘Agent Redfort please make your way immediately to the rainbow office,’ came the robotic voice over the intercom.
Finally.
She stood up and walked back over to the circular desk where the mushroom woman sat.
‘Why the stupid announcement?’ said Ruby, ‘I’m right here – why does it have to be announced – it’s not like you couldn’t just wave your hand.’
‘It’s not my job,’ was all Buzz said by way of reply.
‘Jeepers,’ muttered Ruby. ‘You never, like, get tempted to go off script?’
‘The announcer announces, I answer calls,’ said Buzz, pushing a card towards Ruby. ‘And I issue directions.’
On the card were some words and some numbers:
Test candidate 45902314 take the elevator to grey zone where you will be issued instructions by the duty agent.
The duty agent turned out to be Froghorn, otherwise known as ‘the silent G’ – a nickname Ruby had given him because he was very particular about the pronunciation of his name, i.e. Frohorn not Froghorn, as it was actually written.
‘Hey Froghorn.’ She made the G sound very clear. ‘What are you doing on bozo duty, they still not forgiven you for lousing up the whole Melrose Dorff robbery case?’
Froghorn gave her a withering look. ‘Talking about lousing up, I heard you hurt your little arm. Did someone push you over at kindergarten?’
‘Er, no, I was walked over a cliff by a psychopath actually, what did you do during summer break? Give yourself an extreme manicure?’
Froghorn gave her a tired expression. ‘Little girl, if I had time to reply then I would, but I’m very busy here.’
‘If you could think of a reply, I’m sure you would, but don’t sweat it, I can see you’re real busy standing there behind a table.’
Froghorn smiled a tight smile. ‘So I hear you’re out of the Field Agent Training Programme if you flunk this test.’ He peered down at the slip of paper she was holding. ‘Test candidate 45902314. Will this be your lucky number? Or the digits that will keep you locked on the wrong side of “agent world” forever?’
‘Yeah well at least I have a shot; no one’s exactly falling over themselves to offer you one,’ said Ruby.
‘Why would I want one?’ snapped Froghorn. ‘HQ is where it all happens.’
Ruby made a point of looking theatrically around her. ‘Yeah, I can see it must be very thrilling sitting here behind this nice little desk in this cosy little room.’
‘Your test,’ said Froghorn flatly, and he handed Ruby a key attached to a yellow tag. On one side of the tag was the number 5, on the other a pattern of lines and circles. ‘Let’s hope it’s a nice quick one. Fail it and LB will have you kicked out of Spectrum before lunch. We don’t want to miss nap time, do we?’
Ruby yawned. ‘You might want to spend time working on your irritating remarks; that one’s getting kinda tired.’
Ruby walked back to the elevator bank and descended to yellow level, stepped out and walked the long curved corridor until the yellow keytag perfectly matched the yellow of the door. None of the doors were numbered so Ruby was unsure what the number 5 on the yellow tag represented. She turned the key in the lock and stepped into a strange inside outside room; an urban landscape of fake buildings and industrial machinery, cranes and water towers, fire escapes and alleyways.
She examined the maze-like pattern