much.’
‘What can I say,’ said Ruby, dryly, ‘I’m a real good jumper.’
‘Or you got very lucky,’ said Agent Gill. He coughed and reshuffled his papers. ‘Ordinarily you’d be put forward for Stage Three of the Field Agent Training Programme and you would be enrolled on free-climb training at Dry River Canyon. But you’re not going to be recommended for further field work or tuition at this stage.’
‘What?’ said Ruby.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gill.
‘But I’ve already been sitting things out. I thought this test was about putting me back in?’
‘Not possible,’ said Gill. ‘Not given your current test scores. You’re a danger to yourself and a possible danger to others if you don’t respect your own life.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Ruby, ‘Because I’m not afraid, this makes me some kind of liability?’
‘You are a liability,’ said Gill. ‘Because your apparent lack of fear is clouding your judgement, we can’t risk you out there – besides, you’re someone’s kid.’
‘Isn’t everyone. Aren’t you?’
‘That’s different,’ said Agent Gill, ‘my folks aren’t home waiting for me with milk and cookies.’
‘What? And you think mine are?’ said Ruby, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m thirteen, not three.’
Disappointment wasn’t the word for how Ruby was feeling. Furious might be. Agent Gill had shuffled her along to be assessed by the Spectrum psychiatrists and she was now sitting in Dr Selgood’s calm, book-lined office. Mercifully, she had been handed a towel and was beginning to dry off. Her shoes still hadn’t been returned.
DR SELGOOD: ‘What you have, Redfort, is a condition – it’s a syndrome that survivors of near-fatal accidents sometimes experience. There’s no name for it and there are very few studies on those who experience it but I call it the Miracle Effect. I had a patient who likened it to having an ever-present guardian angel at his side. He feared nothing and no one.’
RUBY: ‘What happened to him?’
DR SELGOOD: ‘He died.’
RUBY: ‘The angel was on a break?’
DR SELGOOD: ‘No one beats death. What you are now dealing with is a sort of euphoria – you don’t believe you can die.’
RUBY: ‘I haven’t so far.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘Doesn’t mean you won’t.’
RUBY: ‘It seems unlikely.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘Which is why you take risks?’
RUBY: ‘The more risks I take the less dead I feel.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘Yet ironically the more likely you are to wind up that way.’
RUBY: ‘I’m not so sure.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘How so?’
RUBY: ‘I read this book once about this kid who believes in the probability of death, a sort of risk assessment of life. He believes if something unlikely has happened one day, like, say a plane lands on your house or a forest fire breaks out and you fall off a cliff, then that particular risk is dealt with because in all probability that ain’t gonna happen twice.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘Here you are talking about statistics and yet you know better than most that just because a plane lands on your house once doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.’
RUBY: ‘True, but it would seem unlucky.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘And you consider yourself to be lucky?’
RUBY: ‘I’d say not many people escape a giant egg timer.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘You’re referring here to the time you were almost buried alive in sand.’
RUBY: ‘I could just as well bring up the time that I was paralysed by jellyfish and nearly eaten alive by sharks.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘And it doesn’t occur to you that perhaps the situation you had put yourself in led to your near demise? And that the reason you escaped with your life is due in part to your training and some pretty advanced gadgetry and in part down to the luck of being rescued in the nick of time?’
RUBY: ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself doc, I am very unlikely to die. I got everything going for me.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘And yet, in your test, you swam through toxic water, then climbed a crane to grab a bomb.’
RUBY: ‘Oh come on. It was a test. Those things weren’t real.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘But what if they had been?’
RUBY: ‘They weren’t.’
DR SELGOOD: ‘The thirty-foot drop was real.’
RUBY: ‘You telling me there wasn’t a giant inflatable there to catch me?’
The psychiatrist sighed and closed the file.
DR SELGOOD: ‘Maybe you should come and see me again; how about I set up some appointments.’
RUBY: ‘If you enjoy chatting so much then who am I to deny you this pleasure.’
She smiled but her teeth were gritted.
When Ruby exited the psychiatrist’s room, she found her shoes sitting waiting for her, both now quite dry. She put them on, looked around and thought for a moment. Then instead of turning left and taking the elevator to Buzz level, she turned right and fast-walked her way to the zig-zagging emergency stairs and on down to orange level. She stopped at the gadget room door, looked at her watch and tapped in the exact time – this was the code to open the door, or at least should have been but the door did not open.
Those sneaks.
Click, click went her brain.
Froghorn, she muttered, I’ll bet it was you.
Froghorn was the go-to guy when anyone at Spectrum was looking to switch a code or speedily improve short-term security. But codes worked best when set by an unknown and unfortunately for Froghorn Ruby knew him pretty well. She guessed that part of the reason for resetting the gadget room code was to prevent
