Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ruby woke up to three of her phones ringing discordantly and completely out of sync with each other. Her alarm clock flashed a red neon 5:26 and she reached for the nearest ringing phone: a rhinestone-studded high heeled shoe.

“You’ve welcomed me to the land of the living, please let me go back.” she said sourly, and her mood worsened with the poor comeback. She’d fallen asleep late, around two am, thanks to a new book Penny had set aside for her. She had finished the whole thing cover-to-cover, even though Mrs Digby and Hitch had poked their heads into her business at differing times to remind her to go to sleep.

The static on the other end of the line was just about drowned out by the other phones ringing, although her squirrel in a tuxedo ceased its chittering noise after a moment or two, having obviously realised that five am was far too early to be making calls.

“Hello?” Ruby said louder, like a more coherent introduction would encourage the other person to speak to her. “Redfort residence, do you plan on carrying out the rest of the call?”

The speaker remained utterly silent, without the shuffling or breathing of most phone calls. Finally, the line disconnected with a click and Ruby scowled, her morning just about ruined.

She pushed herself up to reach for the final phone just as it stopped ringing. She groaned and collapsed back into a horizontal position, deciding to postpone all thoughts about the mysterious caller until she had had more than three hours of sleep. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into her pillow, sighing heavily. Surely her day could only get better from here.

The knock on her door made Ruby groan and throw her covers up over her face.

She heard Hitch laugh through the door and audibly cursed from beneath her comforter, wondering if she could somehow convince her parents that they could cope without a butler.

“Hey kid, heard you were up.” He called cheerfully, and Ruby heard the clink of glasses as he stacked the dirty plates in her room. Mrs Digby constantly ragged on her to tidy them up, but at least Hitch worked for his paycheque. “Busy day ahead, you better start looking lively.”

Ruby pushed her covers down to her nose purely to glare at Hitch who did not look at her. Her clock now said 5:30 and she allowed herself a moment to bitterly imagine Hitch standing outside her room as she spoke to no one on the phone until his watch-hand ticked over to exactly half-past.

“I wasn’t up, there was just some bozo who decided that they had to wake me up even earlier than you.” She told the back of his head, rolling over to fetch her glasses from the floor next to her bed. They were on top of the book she’d been reading the night before, and she was abruptly reminded of her poor night’s sleep. A nap, really.

“Who on earth would expect you awake before five-thirty on a weekday?” Hitch asked wryly and Ruby shrugged, finally sliding her feet out of bed and scowling.

“They didn’t even answer. Why do you want me up before five-thirty?” she complained, reaching for yesterday’s jeans.

“LB, the ever optimist. She does promise that it’s important before you call in sick.”

Ruby squinted at Hitch, purposely moving as slowly as possible to her wardrobe. “I’m allowed to call in sick?” She coughed once for good measure.

Hitch rolled his eyes in a way that suggested he didn’t care about workplace decorum.

“Be downstairs in ten minutes and I might get you a snack on the way. I do think you’re going to want to attend though, Ruby, it’s about the Count.”

The T-shirt Ruby was holding dropped to the floor as she followed Hitch out of the door and halfway down the stairs.

“You couldn’t have led with that?” She demanded. “Why are we hanging about if it’s the Count?”

Hitch tilted his head to look back at her before he disappeared down the hallway. “You’re the one holding us up.” He reminded her and she groaned, heading back to her room to get dressed.

They pulled up outside of Main Street just twenty minutes later (Ruby had sat down on the sofa to wait while Hitch found his keys and had dozed off) and Ruby hopped out of the car as Hitch joined her on the pavement. Information about the Count was enough to wake her up, but she was not above performatively complaining about the hour. The sky was beginning to lighten, and the Diner had only just opened its doors for tradesmen to come through for their morning coffees.

“One black coffee, one hot chocolate—”

“Mocha.” Ruby cut in quickly but was not prepared for the warning look from both Marla and Hitch.

“Coffee will stunt your growth.” Marla told her before Hitch could even open his mouth, and he settled for nodding pointedly. Ruby scowled, and Marla pointedly scribbled down ‘1 Hot Choc’ on her pad of paper.

“And one raspberry doughnut?” Ruby compromised and Marla winced.

“Raspberries aren’t done yet. Late delivery last night and they’re still cooking. We’re used to you showing up at eight, they’ll be done by then.” She explained.

Ruby’s face fell but she hid her disappointment with a nod. It wasn’t like this was a daily occurrence, she’d never been denied her raspberry doughnut before.

“You schedule your doughnut-making around Ruby?” Hitch was asking the real questions now.

 “She’s been having one every day since what… First grade?” Marla glanced away from the coffee machine to look for Ruby’s confirmation, automatically slamming a takeaway cup under the coffee machine just as it started dripping espresso.

“Ever since I could walk myself in before school.” Marla nodded like scheduling the production of certain pastries around a single customer was a good business decision.

“How come you’re in so early anyway?” She asked as she reached for a bag to put the chocolate doughnut into.

“Basketball practise before school starts.” Ruby supplied and Marla shook her head in disgust.

“The way they work you kids is barbaric.” She tutted and slid the now-full coffee cup over the counter to Hitch along with three packets of sugar, which he used, and two sachets of creamer, which he did not use. Marla thought people who drank black coffee without milk were morally wrong, but she still smiled at Hitch as he stuffed a dollar bill in the tip jar.

Marla passed Ruby her hot chocolate cup, taking a moment to swirl cream on top with a handful of marshmallows usually only used for pancake toppings.

“Have fun at dodgeball!” Marla called as the door closed behind them with a jangle. Ruby appreciated the thought.

Hitch checked his watch as he ducked into the car and passed Ruby her doughnut. “We’re cutting it fine. If you smear chocolate across your face while eating that, I’m not rescuing you from LB.”

“Maybe if you didn’t brake so hard, I wouldn’t end up with it all over me.” Ruby complained but tucked in quickly to her doughnut. Chocolate made for a rare change, and it was nice if a bit  gooey.

She finished her doughnut just as Hitch pulled into the multi-story carpark, with the ramp that only existed sometimes.

“We’re going to be so cool showing up with our drinks.” Ruby said seriously, slamming her door. She inconspicuously checked her face in the reflection of the car window and then looked at Hitch triumphantly. 

Hitch pointed at the corner of his mouth silently and Ruby groaned, rubbing the chocolate off.

“If you make a habit of it, you get people asking you to drop stuff in for them too.” Hitch pointed out and Ruby wrinkled her nose. Never mind.

Hitch threw his coffee cup away just as they entered the auditorium. Ruby hadn’t even seen him down it and was now left holding her half-finished cup alone.

It turned out that Hitch’s idea of ‘cutting it fine’ was still a few minutes early, and they secured seats about a quarter way down, Ruby on the aisle seat where she could watch all the other agents enter.

Hitch caught Ruby’s hand just as she lifted it to start waving at the head of Spectrum 8, who stepped out of a door at the very bottom of the auditorium, and shook his head at her.

The room quietened on some unseen signal Ruby missed and the lights dimmed just a few seconds afterwards. LB moved towards a podium which held a bulky light projector and cleared her throat. She took a second in the silent room to angle a microphone towards her mouth.

“Based upon new evidence, we have reason to believe that the Count has finally crawled out of whatever hole he’s been hiding in for the past few months.” LB announced, causing a ripple of whispers to spread through the room.

Hitch was giving Ruby a ‘I-Told-You-So’ look which was really unappreciated, so she ignored it.

“There have been three separate sightings of an individual matching his description across Twinford, from Downtown to College Town.” LB slid a piece of clear plastic over under the projector and straightened it. A map of Twinford with three circles in erasable marker was displayed on the wall. Ruby leaned forward, squinting like the roads would sharpen.

A circle around the corner of 23^rd East Street, a circle around the upper corner of Main Street and finally, one in the Downtown area.

Ruby breathed a near-silent sigh of relief. There was nothing close to anywhere she frequented: she hadn’t been in the Upper East of Twinford since last week. The upper Main Street spot on the map was a little closer to her school than she’d like, but she knew logically that the Count had been at least twenty minutes distance from her, even on a school day.

“Obviously this is exactly what we did not want to happen, but he has only been seen in the past two days, with the most recent being two hours ago.”

“Who saw him at 4am?” Ruby hissed to Hitch, who didn’t look away from the projected image. He had a focused look on his face, and she knew he was doing the same comparison of his movements against sightings of the Count.

“We do patrol the city at nights Ruby.” He replied dryly. “We’re here to protect people.”

“He was seen leaving an apartment block in Downtown two days ago but has not been spotted returning. The block is under observation and we have attempted to identify a pseudonym that the Count may have been using but had no luck. He was then spotted by a police officer outside of a building on 23^rd Street, but he disappeared when he realised he’d been spotted.”

“Finally, he was spotted by our operatives during the night shift.” LB poked a pen at the third circle on the sheet. “Agent Hike and Agent Flaherty report that he was on a street corner—” she cleared her throat and quirked her fingers into quotation marks. “’As if he were waiting for us to arrive.’ He saw them coming, smiled and was gone before either agent could apprehend him.” She slipped another sheet under the light and a new list appeared on the wall.

“However, one agent gave a nearly definite description of him, as well as several new features. He now appears to have a limp, although he was not seen with any aid. We can only assume that it is due to his fall from the Eye Hospital, but this may only be an act. His hair is shorter and darker, possibly dyed and he was dressed smart but not in a suit.”

She tapped the podium impatiently, and the microphone crackled with static, rattling through the hall of agents. “I can’t imagine he’s changing his branding too much, but his most obvious identifiers are expected to be underplayed now. Whether he has a plan, or is attempting to stay under the radar, it is not a good sign that he has appeared after several months away.”

LB took a deep breath and removed the sheet from the projector, leaving a block of white light reflected on the wall. “Thank you for attending and listening, and remember, keep an eye out.”

She looked up into the rows and rows of seats as the main lights flicked on, and Ruby tried not to slouch in her seat to avoid her eyes. She didn’t want to her opinions on the Count's reappearance questioned by LB.

“If you do that, she’ll think you skipped the meeting.” Hitch murmured out the corner of his mouth, watching her duck her head. Ruby shot him a dirty look and reluctantly sat up in her seat. LB was already heading for the door she had entered through, without looking back.

Hitch stood up and shook out his jacket like he may have creased it during the half-hour meeting.

“What do you think of that then?” He asked over the din of people getting to their feet and having the same conversation as them.

“Not ideal.” She declared truthfully and Hitch shook his head in dissatisfaction.

Ruby stepped out into the aisle first and tried not to get battered by the swarms of spies heading back up the stairs to the top of the room. Most of them were kind enough to keep their elbows in but a good number of them simply did not see her, and nearly tripped over her. She followed close in Hitch’s slipstream as he led the way through the crowd.

When they finally hit the white corridors, Hitch turned towards the exit to Main Street, instead of the coding room. Ruby stopped, confused and Hitch looked back for her, looking similarly confused.

“Aren’t we going to see Blacker and Froghorn?” She asked. Hitch’s smug little smirk made her wish she’d left Froghorn’s name off of the list. She only wanted to see him to make fun.

“We’re kind of on a tight schedule thanks to your state-mandated schooling.” He quipped and Ruby rolled her eyes and caught up with him reluctantly.

“Blacker’s going to be so upset.” Ruby pointed out and Hitch couldn’t quite hide his smirk.

“I’m sure Blacker can be a big boy and get over it. Anyway, think of Froghorn, he’ll be glad for a day of peace.” Hitch returned and Ruby wrinkled her nose.

They walked for a moment or two longer, past unmarked doors, when Ruby stopped again.

“What—?”

“I left my cup back in the room.” Ruby said in horror and Hitch groaned.

“Come on then. Hopefully we’ll be in and out before they begin their seminar on the use of narcotics in interrogation situations. With demonstrations.”

Ruby’s thirst for knowledge piqued and she shot Hitch an interested look. “Or we could stick around to listen.”

Hitch levelled a warning finger at her. “There is no way we’re letting you listen to that.”

They swung back around to the auditorium again, Hitch nodding seriously to each agent they met coming the other way.

Just before they reached the auditorium, they came across Blacker, looking harried and holding a cloth against his shirt front and clutching a jumper in his other hand. Ruby’s eyes lit up at the sight of her favourite coder and Blacker looked just as excited to see her.

“Ruby, Hitch!” he greeted, waving the spare jumper at them as he didn’t have a free hand.

“Hi Blacker, what happened to you?” Ruby chirped and Blacker winced as he looked down.

“Miles, um, surprised me as he came in this morning. Split my coffee all down myself.” Hitch hid his smile behind his hand.

“Seriously?” Ruby asked, unable to hide the disapproval in her voice. Blacker grinned and pushed his glasses further up on his nose.

“He can be pretty quiet coming in.” He shrugged easily, like coffee wasn’t dripping down his front and onto the floor. He smudged a drop with the toe of his shoe and gave Hitch a nervous look. Hitch mimed zipping his lips and relief flooded Blacker’s face.

“I have to get to the restroom and change before LB sees me like this again.” He waved as he passed them, shoulder clumsily brushing against Hitch’s side.

“I hope Froghorn apologised!” Ruby called behind her, heedless of the offices full of people trying to work surrounding them.

“It wasn’t really his fault! I know he’s sorry. I’ll see you guys later!” Blacker called back, just as heedless and Ruby turned to face Hitch again, shaking her head.

“You better hold me back next time I see him.” She said warningly and Hitch chuckled, opening the hall doors a crack to peek inside.

“I do that anyway. Your lucky day kid, all clear.” He told her and stepped back to let her dart inside.

Ruby found her cup easily, where she had placed it on the floor out of the way of any kicking feet and went back to Hitch, still holding the door for her.

“Do they actually drug people to interrogate them?” Ruby pestered when she had recycled the cup properly. Hitch gave her an unimpressed look.

“Quit avoiding my question.” His gaze softened a moment later. “I know we thought the Count was dead and gone. It’s not nice to hear that he’s back after four months.”

“We never found his body.” Ruby argued. She was annoyed but not at Hitch, at herself for believing that a missing body equated to a dead Count. “We’ve been expecting this the whole time.”

Hitch nodded. “But if you hadn’t been expecting it,” he said in his stupid mature understanding way. “That’s okay. Most people, Spectrum agents among them, assumed he’d died too. It’s not stupid to have hoped that that would be the last of him.”

Ruby wished she hadn’t thrown away her cup, just so she could have something to do with her hands as they headed for the car.

“I guess I hoped that he had died. But I’ve finished my field training now.”

“Stage Three of your training.” Hitch corrected automatically and weathered the swat she gave to his arm.

“Whatever plan he’s got half-baked, I think we can do it.”

Hitch gave her a sincere, wide smile. “I think we can.” He agreed. “Especially now that you can actually work alongside me without suspecting me of something.”

Ruby rolled her eyes hard at the memory of her and Hitch’s team-bonding day out, paid by Spectrum and orchestrated by LB.

It had been a series of trust-building exercises, but they got increasingly... weird. Ruby had had to rescue Hitch from a tiny island in the middle of a crocodile lake.

Ruby had always kind of thought crocodiles eating spies was a metaphor for censorship or something, but no, this had been an actual pit of crocodiles coming for Hitch’s ankles.

Ruby privately thought that her and Hitch’s relationship would have been mended by a couple more doughnuts and maybe a trip to Twinford Cinema to see the latest spaghetti Western on Spectrum’s credit card. But the day out had been fine, fun even, once Hitch had been removed from the crocodile pit.

“We can do it.” Ruby echoed, quieter as they finally exited Spectrum. The sun was out in full. The sky hadn’t had a chance to cloud over yet, and it was brilliant blue skies all the way to Twinford Junior High; a perfect day if Ruby just ignored the slowly-approaching threat of the Count.

“I’ll see you later kid.” Hitch leaned over the passenger seat to look at Ruby through the open door. She was only ten minutes early for school; Hitch thought it would be good for her. “Keep your eyes open and call me if anything happens. You have phone call privileges at the front desk because your mom said to call anytime if you were worried about your grandfather.”

Ruby bent down to peer at him. “What’s wrong with my grandfather?”

“Call me at lunchtime if you need to find out.” Hitch said flippantly, like both grandfathers were not in the ground.

“I’ll catch you later.” Ruby called back at him and headed up the stairs of the High school. She knew Del and Elliot often arrived early and would sit in one of the English classrooms until registration began.

Hitch tooted his horn as she reached the top and she waved quickly behind her without a second look as she disappeared through the doors.

School was… fine. No murderous villains except in Shakespeare plays; lunch spent with her friends (minus Clancy who was in a detention) on their usual picnic bench outside; no need at all to call Hitch. A fine, normal Monday.

Ruby was pretty lost in thought as she walked home from school. Hitch dropping her earlier meant that she didn’t have her bike with her, and now Hitch was busy in the Downtown area trying to confirm sightings and locate the Count.

She was trying to guess the location of a fourth co-ordinate on the map shown at Spectrum earlier, whether there was a pattern to the deliberate sightings but guessing a pattern from three points was only easy when it was the Fibonacci sequence.

When the van passed her, she didn’t look up at all, considering the possibility of a parallelogram or star, until the realisation hit her that the van had stopped just shy of the curb, even though the road was clear of traffic.

And she was walking straight towards it.

Ruby shook her hand out of her pocket, ready to check her watch and act like there was an important meeting she had to attend in the opposite direction when the passenger-side door swung open.

A single hatchback overtook the van, probably not even seeing her rooted to the spot, just shy of the door.

Ruby took a few timid steps towards the door, full of dread that had never steered her wrong before (except for a few times, but she was older and more mature now and knew this van was not to be hitchhiked in), hoping to squeeze past and carry on her way, but an arm reached out and grabbed her sleeve, yanking her back as the fabric stretched.

“Got anywhere to be?” The Count asked, and Ruby shook her head, hoping that the movement was enough to trigger the new motion-sensor on her barrette. A scarf was wrapped around the majority of his face, but he pulled it down just enough for her to see him smile coldly. He released her to gesture at the car’s interior, like an invitation to climb in, except… instead of gesturing at the dashboard, he was pointing at the gun he had tucked into the cupholder.

He reached for it and Ruby saw that it was already loaded with the safety off.

“How about I give you a lift? It can be pretty dangerous out there for a young girl.”

Ruby lifted her foot onto the handy step into the van and glanced down the road for any oncoming vehicles she could flag down.

However, the roads were deceptively quiet for half three on a Monday afternoon and Ruby looked back at the Count, who was covered from neck to nose in gaudy leopard print. “Promise not to kill me?”

The Count’s eyes—which were the only part of him, save forehead and receding hairline, she could see— were not impressed. “I make a point of not promising spies anything. Now, get into the car or I’ll be forced to drastic action.”

“Some welcome after you’ve been missing for months.” Ruby muttered and sat as far away from him as she possibly could on the bench-seat. She reluctantly shut the door, and it locked audibly. Ruby tried not to gulp too loudly.

Lifting her school bag onto her lap, she fiddled with her keychain out of the Count’s view. She glanced quickly between the tiles and the villain in the front seat, trying to work the ‘H’ for ‘HELP’ into the correct position but it was difficult when she was trying to not draw attention to the puzzle.

“Don’t worry Ruby, we’re going to have plenty of time to catch up.” The Count tossed the gun back into the cupholder, with carelessness Ruby wished he wouldn’t treat a loaded firearm with, and snatched up a can of something that had been languishing in the second cupholder. Ruby had kind of assumed it was a beer.

He seemed as keen as Ruby was to keep his distance, holding the can out at arms-length towards Ruby. Now it was closer, it appeared to be pressurized and his index finger was positioned firmly on the nozzle on top.

“Hey, whatcha doing—" Most of her attention was focused on the tile puzzle in her hand (right one, move the useless tile up, H should be in the right position as long as she slid it left—), which was why it took her so long to consider holding her breath or covering her mouth like the Count was doing. And by the time the thought occurred to her, it was too late.

Right as the H fell into place, the Count squeezed the trigger, and a blast of misty gas came out from the can. Ruby slumped back against the van door, engulfed in foul-smelling air before she could even cough.

The last coherent thought she had was horror at the way the Count threw the gearstick into reverse and then quickly, embarrassingly, into first before screeching off down the road like he’d stolen the van.

Ruby wasn’t even awake enough to remember that he had in fact stolen the van, and also apparently, her.

When Ruby next opened her eyes, it took them a long moment to adjust to the darkness around her.

Thick rope wound around her forearms, tying her so tightly to the arms of the chair that she was beginning to think the wood was fused to her skin. Her legs were tied ankle-to-ankle, knee-to-knee and knotted tight to the legs of the chair.

A length of silk—probably a leopard-print scarf if she knew anything about the man who kidnapped her— gagged her. She was working on the gag though; as her mother would say, no one had ever been able to shut Ruby up and the Count would not be the first.

The only thing that could possibly cheer Ruby up was the fact that the Count obviously viewed her as a threat. And while that did raise her self-esteem by a few notches, her ability to find a way out of the situation was waning.

Her watch had been taken from her wrist and, along with it, her ability to call for help or cut her way free. She couldn’t even check the time.

After some serious jaw working (all that bubblegum chewing really paid off) the gag slipped down her chin, damp with saliva and she winced, letting it hang around her neck.

“Hello?” She called into the darkness, with very little patience in her voice. “Hey buster, I’m on a tight schedule here.”

“I’m sure you are.” A smooth voice replied behind her and Ruby’s head snapped around to try and keep the Count in her field of vision. “What, are you missing a choir class? A course on how to choke a man to death? How about piano practise?”

Footsteps approached her from behind, but they lacked the usual click of his leather loafers. Instead, there was the distinct noise of one foot being dragged along behind the other. Maybe he was in his house slippers or something.

They stopped directly behind her chair and she tilted her head back to try and get a glimpse of him. A hand landed on the crown of her head and forced it forwards.

“Isn’t it lovely?” The Count asked her, obviously looking at something a lot cooler than Ruby was. She squinted and gradually her eyes focused.

There was something hulking in the darkness before them, with sharp corners and a green light that flickered every few seconds.

“What is it?” She purposely made her voice as unimpressed as she could. The Count’s hand remained firmly on her head as he walked around to stand by the object.

“It’s brand-new, cutting-edge technology.” The Count told her with a little pat to her head. Ruby wasn’t sure if that was a pun of some sort, the object actually being some kind of death guillotine when he turned to it and pressed a button. It started to whir and Ruby hesitantly labelled it as some kind of computer or machine.

“This is the only one of its kind in the whole world.” He patted the side of it fondly, causing a metallic echo to ring throughout the room. “A lovely little play-thing, I think we’ll get some good use out of it.”

“Would you be so kind as to tell me your great plan before you carry it out?” Ruby asked and she wasn’t even half-joking. “Or explain how you’re here after your swan-dive off the rooftop?”

The Count tilted his head, throwing the left side of his face into deep shadow. He appraised her with one eye, fox-like —for more than a few seconds Ruby would have guessed, but she still didn’t have a watch— and then grinned sharply.

“Just this once, I think I may break the code.” He said and Ruby gritted her teeth. “I’m confident that you will work it out within a day or so.”

His voice was smug, and he definitely knew something dangerous that Ruby did not. “An old friend has put together the most wonderful plan for me. It really will be perfect and I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it.”

He checked his own watch, because he wasn’t the one tied to a chair and sighed in disappointment.

“I suppose that’s my time up.” He said dramatically. He pulled something from his pocket and stepped over to Ruby who forced her limbs very still in fear of a knife or worse.

But instead, it was just a watch—her watch—and he fastened it around her wrist and tapped the clockface twice for her. It beeped a confirmation of an SOS signal, and he grinned down at her, clapping his hands together like a pleased child.

“I think I’ll be seeing you around Ms. Redfort.”

He exited stage left, out of her range of vision, with another little ruffle of her hair as he passed. His footsteps faded into the distance and there was the sure click of a door closing somewhere faraway. Meanwhile, the machine in the corner was blowing some serious air out of its fans. Ruby wasn’t sure what it was gearing up to do but knowing her luck, it wasn’t going to be something as fun as Bertie the Brain.

Somewhere, someone sighed.

“Jeez, I didn’t think he was ever going to leave.” Clancy Crew complained, and stepped out of the gloom with a penknife, blade already open and catching what little light there was. Ruby, who was understandably spooked from being kidnapped, jumped and swore. Clancy gave her a distracted smile and leaned over her with his pocket-knife to saw through the ropes. Ruby suddenly remembered the drool on her chin from her gag and tried to wipe her face on her shoulder, mortified.

“Why are you here?” She asked and Clancy laughed.

“You didn’t want to be here, did you?” Ruby rolled her eyes.

“Sure bozo, thanks for rescuing me, but how did you find me? Plus, Hitch is on his way, and he’ll be spitting mad if he sees you here again.”

Clancy snorted. “I’m not scared of Hitch, just because I do his job better than him. Anyway, I saw you get into someone’s van again.”

Ruby opened her mouth and Clancy slapped a hand over it. It smelled like metal and was more than a little sweaty, but he was a teenage boy in a stressful situation so Ruby tried to bear it.

“Can you hear ticking?” He whispered, the whites of his wide eyes reflecting the green light. Ruby’s heart sank when she realised that there was a steady noise, a regular little beep.

“Clancy get out.” She said through his hand, eyes locked onto his. He removed his hand, and she repeated herself, firmer this time. Clancy had only freed one of her hands, but he doubled down on the other.

“Give me the knife and get out of here. Hitch is on his way; you can meet him at the door and tell him what’s going on.” Clancy dropped to his knees to start on her feet, and she started wrenching her left hand out of the half-cut ropes, while pushing Clancy away with a hand to his forehead.

“If I get your feet free—” He was saying with his hands moving quickly, definitely giving himself blisters on the knife's grip.

“No Clancy stop, just go, just run—” She argued, and her legs were freed from the chair, but not from each other.

“We don’t know if it is a bomb.” His voice pitched upwards on the last word and his hands slipped. “It could just be a grandfather clock.”

Knees free. Ruby immediately tried to stand, and Clancy pushed her down, breath coming fast as he focused on the last few fraying tears.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He babbled as the knife came close to the skin of her leg.

“I don’t care Clance, why aren’t you running yet?”

He caught her eye quickly, a strained smile on his face as he visibly held his fear at bay. Ruby felt the rope slip from around her ankles, and the ties binding her last wrist to the chair felt tighter than ever. “I don’t care, Rubes. I’m not going without—”

When the ticking finally skipped a beat, there was a second where Ruby thought maybe everything would be okay.

Then the machine in front of Ruby exploded.

Clancy had been standing over her, hand holding her wrist incredibly gently while he worked on cutting her free. The full brunt of the explosion struck Clancy, and he fell into her, the weight of both teenagers sending the chair flying backwards. A flying piece of shrapnel cracked the lens of Ruby’s glasses, slicing tiny cuts across her cheeks. 

The force of the fall yanked her hand free of the chair and she sat up as soon as she could tell which way was up. The flash of light accompanying the bang had blinded her and she took a long moment to blink black gaps from her vision. 

Her hand felt the back of her head where it collided with the floor, and it came away bloody. She turned her pounding head, the aftermath of the explosion still ringing in her ears and saw Clancy lying face down on the floor, with blood soaking through his shirt. His penknife had gone flying out of sight, and his head looked as rough as Ruby’s own head felt.

“Clancy? Clancy you idiot I told you to run.” Ruby sobbed and she half-crawled, half-fell over to him. She shook his shoulder, and he turned his face towards her, brown irises just barely visible under his half-closed eyelids. His face was graciously free of cuts, but there was a steady trickle of blood seeping from his hairline.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing he croaked out, his breath coming hoarse and fast.

“I’m fine, are you okay? Can you get up? We gotta go.” Ruby pulled at his shoulder, but Clancy had hit his teenage growth spurt a month back and was hard enough to lift, let alone drag out of the building. Even the small movement had him gasping in pain.

Ruby didn’t want to look at his back, and her heart sank when she finally examined his wounds. His shirt was ruined but not as much as his back was. Jagged pieces of metal were embedded in his skin and a horrible thought occurred to Ruby, that maybe his lungs were affected, punctured even, and she tightened her grip on him.

“It’s going to hurt Clance, but you have to get up.” She told him and squirmed a hand under his collarbone to try and lever him up. There was no strength left in Clancy's limp muscles and something akin to a sob was torn out of him.

The machine in the corner was glowing with a brighter green light and Ruby steadfastly ignored it. She could only think about Clancy and his lack of training and his near-lethal injuries.

“Hold on, sorry, sorry, I’ve got you just hang on.” Ruby assured Clancy. “You’re not allowed to die okay, do you hear me?”

“Got it.” Clancy’s voice was weak, and his legs kicked into something approximating a standing position. With Ruby wriggling herself under his chest, she could nearly push him completely upright. He was letting out tiny hitching sobs through gritted teeth that made her heart clench.

“Just follow me, you’ll be okay.” She promised and a hundred other platitudes just to get him to the door. He leaned completely on her, her head bowed under the weight of his chin resting on top. As resolute as he always was, he shuffled his legs around as best as he could to help, but Ruby had never been a strong kid, just sneaky and played to her advantages in basketball and kung-fu and parkour.

“Ruby…” Clancy started, and his tears were trickling down to her hair. Or maybe it was just blood. Clancy’s voice was weak, and Ruby suddenly desperately wanted to him to be quiet. She didn’t know what he had to say, but she refused to let it be his last words.

“Shh, it’s fine, we’re nearly there.” She spoke as soothingly as possible. “You can tell me when we get to the hospital.” 

 They made it to the door and a further three agonising steps past the threshold when Clancy went limp with a little rushed sigh. Ruby wobbled hard, pulling Clancy’s hand around her to squeeze it tightly. She was still murmuring to him, each word forgotten as soon as it made it past her lips.

She had an awful feeling that Clancy wasn’t listening either.

The door at the very end of the narrow hallway burst open, with a noise far too reminiscent of the explosion they had just escaped, and Ruby looked up through the drape of Clancy’s hair, up towards the light.

“Hitch—” She gasped before the man sprinted forward to gather Clancy up with strength she didn’t have.

As her best friend’s weight was lifted off of her, Ruby’s world went black between one blink and the next.

She didn’t even remember hitting the floor.

Chapter Text

Ruby opened her eyes in alarm, her breath caught in her throat. The memory of Clancy’s pale bloody face was pressed right against her eyelids, and she tried to cling to it, to turn it over in her mind to try and remember her dream but it was shaken from her memory by the grating jangle of a phone ringing.

She reached out to grab the nearest phone, but the ringing didn’t stop. Her grip on the receiver tightened as she sat up to see her squirrel in a tuxedo phone vibrating from beneath a tossed comic.

She slid out of bed to try and shut it up, holding the receiver close to her ear.

“Hello?” The door swung open.

“Hello?” Hitch repeated back at her, irritatingly chirpy in his suit. Ruby waved him off, pointing furiously at the phone to show she was busy, but when she focused again, the line was dead.

She tossed the receiver on her bed and glared at Hitch, who tried to look innocent as he tidied her desk up.

“Wrong number?” Hitch asked politely and added a lemonade bottle to the crook of his arm to carry downstairs.

Ruby crawled back under her covers, tugging the squirrel closer by the lead. She glanced between the clock and the phone, contemplating calling Clancy before deciding finally it was too early.

She pressed her face further in the pillow before realising Hitch was still stood in the doorway, like he was expecting something.

“What?” She asked tiredly.

“You’ve got a busy day ahead; boss wants you in by six.”

Something shook loose in Ruby’s brain, the neural equivalent of turning out all your pockets to find your keys or throwing everything out of your drawers to find the one T-Shirt you like.

“What for? Is there more information on the Count?” Hitch looked surprised for once, eyebrows raising.

“You saw him? You know you’re supposed to tell me if you see him.” There was a strong note of displeasure in his voice and Ruby peered at him from under her duvet, hazy with confusion and sleep-deprivation.

“I saw him yesterday and got in the van with him, so he didn’t get away again.” Ruby slowly sat up, realising that she hadn’t checked in with Hitch at all yesterday. Her mind was so blurry she was struggling to separate sticky dreams with what had actually happened. Maybe Mrs Digby was right all those times she lectured Ruby about getting enough sleep.

… Spectrum, school, English, walking home from school, the Count. Clancy. Clancy.

It hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been a dream.

“Is Clancy okay?” She demanded suddenly, realising what had been missing. “You took him and then… and then I woke up, what happened to Clancy?”

Ruby couldn’t remember how she’d gotten home, but Hitch had been there. He would know.

Alarm flashed over Hitch’s face and he dropped the plates again to check his watch for SOS messages that didn’t exist.

“I didn’t see Clancy at all yesterday. Why didn’t you alert me?” he asked sharply, and Ruby looked down at her own wrist, where the fly ticked silently around the clock face.

“I sent an SOS with the tile-slider, and then the Count sent one on the watch himself. You arrived maybe ten minutes later...” Ruby fell silent as she turned the memories over in her mind.

“I never got an alert from you yesterday. When I picked you up from the park, you were fine.”

“But you—The park? What park?”

“The skatepark you went out to with your gang yesterday.” Hitch explained and Ruby felt like the whole world had been shunted a few degrees left.

“No, not then. What happened yesterday?”

Hitch pushed a jacket and a hoodie off of Ruby’s desk chair and sat down in it himself, still swiping through features on his watch.

“You tell me. Nothing happened yesterday. You went out with your lot to the skate park, then came back for dinner. You disappeared to do your Calculus homework or whatever it was, and I barely saw you.”

“That was Sunday, what happened yesterday, Monday?”

Hitch’s face finally broke into a smile, concern melting away to be replaced with slightly bemused relief. “It’s Monday today, kid. Is this a new excuse to get a day off of school?” He shook his head and stood up again, collecting his stack of crockery as he went. Ruby stared at him, mute with shock as he walked to the door.

“You’re not skiving today. We’ve got a meeting at Spectrum in half an hour. Be downstairs in ten minutes and I might get you a snack on the way.”

“Wait!” Ruby called suddenly, and Hitch turned in the doorway, a smirk playing at his lips. “The explosion, I fell and got—”

Ruby lifted her hands to her face, where the skin was bloody and lacerated by the shrapnel of the machine, only to meet smooth unbroken skin. When she felt the back of her head, where her head had met the floor, there was only knotted bedhead.

“Ten minutes.” Hitch repeated, and let the door click shut behind him.

Ruby was so confused she hadn’t even thought about the chocolate doughnut yesterday until they were standing in the diner again.

“One black coffee, one hot chocolate.” Hitch rattled off. Ruby didn’t ask for a mocha this time. She would much rather be asleep than trying to detangle all the questions she had.

“Can I have a raspberry doughnut?”

“Raspberries aren’t done yet. Late delivery last night and they’re still cooking. We’re used to you showing up at eight, they’ll be done by then.”

“Again? I’ll take a leftover one from yesterday if you have any.” She offered, trying to hide her disappointment.

“None left.” Marla told her with a helpless smile. “I can get you a chocolate one?”

“You schedule your doughnut-making around Ruby?”

“You already know this.” Ruby reminded Hitch, just a little sharper than usual. Hitch was confused enough he doesn’t reprimand her for her tone.

“She’s been having one every day since what… first grade?”

Ruby rubbed her eyes hard under her glasses. “Sure, I think so.” Marla nodded, focused on the machine spitting out Hitch’s coffee.

“How come you’re in so early anyway?” Marla asked, placing the chocolate doughnut into a bag, and secured the top of the bag with a sticker.

“Basketball practise.” Ruby stuck to the cover story she and Hitch worked out.

“The way they work you kids is barbaric.” She tutted and slid Hitch’s coffee cup over the counter to him with his selection of sugar and milk. Hitch put a dollar in the tip jar.

Marla passed Ruby her hot chocolate cup, taking a moment to swirl cream on top with a handful of marshmallows usually only used for pancake toppings.

“Have fun at dodgeball!” Marla called after them and Ruby gave herself a moment to pull a face at Hitch’s back. Some effort put into remembering her extracurriculars would have been appreciated. Wasn't like she'd been a loyal customer since first grade.

Hitch checked his watch as he ducked into the car and passed Ruby her doughnut. “We’re cutting it fine. If you smear chocolate across your face while eating that, I’m not rescuing you from LB.”

Ruby looked at the bag and put it on her lap as she took a tentative sip of her hot chocolate. She burned her tongue anyway. “I’m not feeling it right now. Might save it for when I get to school.”

Hitch nodded as he pushed the car into first and pulled smoothly away from the curb. “Sure, make sure you eat before you actually start school. Young minds need energy and all that.”

Ruby forced a laugh, despite her annoyance at Hitch for somehow forgetting everything had happened yesterday. It turned into a sigh and she stared numbly out of the window, hoping that Spectrum would have something more interesting to distract her with.

Hitch headed for the seats they took yesterday, but Ruby ducked under his arm quickly to sit in the seat he had taken before, instead of the aisle seat.

The agent next to her wasn’t anyone she recognised, and she blanked their solemn nod in favour of craning her neck to see the people still filing in at the top of the stairs. Blacker wasn’t among them.

She doesn’t see LB step up to her podium until Hitch elbowed her to get her to face forward.

“Based upon new evidence, we have reason to believe that the Count has finally crawled out of whatever hole he’s been hiding in for the past few months.” LB announced, causing a ripple of whispers to spread through the room.

The person next to Ruby shook their head. “Typical.”

“New information? Like, he’s been spotted again?”

Hitch gave her a sharp look. “How do you know about that? That’s classified.”

“Wasn’t classified yesterday.” Someone behind them shushed them and Hitch gave her a pointed look. Ruby obediently hushed up.

“There have been three sightings of an individual matching his description across Twinford, from Downtown to College Town.” LB was saying from the bottom of the room and Ruby impatiently jogged her leg, waiting for LB to tell her the new information. The same three dots came up on the wall, followed by an identical list of new features. Ruby had to admit the information was correct, from what she’d seen of the Count the day before, but somehow the same agents had spotted the Count at 4am again, in the same place.

Ruby pressed her fingers against her forehead as she tried to sort through her memories over the drone of LB’s speech.

“Are you okay?” Hitch hissed, and Ruby reluctantly nodded her head, not deigning to look at him or LB, focusing instead on picking at the seam of the cardboard cup.

“Obviously this is exactly what we did not want to happen, but he has only been seen in the past two days, with the most recent being two hours ago.” LB was continuing from her soapbox but Ruby couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

“Agent Hike and Agent Flaherty report that he was on a street corner—” What were the chances of the same exact agents seeing the Count two nights in a row? If Ruby were either Hike or Flaherty, she’d be cashing in her holiday leave and hunker down somewhere safe and quiet.

“Whether he has a plan, or is attempting to stay under the radar, it is not a good sign that he has appeared after several months away.”

Ruby had half-zoned out, trying to put her finger on what exactly was causing her sixth sense to tingle so much. Now she didn’t have much of a sixth sense, so she knew something was super bad when it finally kicked into gear.

LB said her pleasantries and goodbyes and Ruby sat bolt-upright in her seat, causing the agent on her left to jump.

“Where was he last seen?” She asked Hitch who stood and shook his jacket.

“I didn’t bring you to a proper Spectrum meeting for you to doze through it.” He chided but relented a moment later. “Last spotted in Downtown, on a street corner. Did you actually see him yesterday, or was that just your best excuse to get out of the meeting?”

Ruby faltered for a moment. She knew that if she told Hitch that she had actually seen the Count—and she felt so sure she had seen him—he would believe her, and call LB immediately.

But it was becoming clear that she had not been kidnapped the Count on a quiet street. Which meant that Clancy hadn’t been injured. Ruby refused to admit that maybe he had been one step removed from ‘lethal injury’, falling just on the wrong side of the boundary of life and… not life.

A tiny irrational part of her howled that acknowledging she had seen the Count, and had actually been in that explosion, and had actually carried Clancy’s limp body from the room would make the fragile façade of the world collapse around her, and she would have to face the truth of Clancy being injured or worse.

“No.” Ruby said finally, stepping out of the aisle to follow Hitch to school. “No, I didn’t see him.”

And maybe if she thought it enough, she would turn out to be right.

Ruby’s first lesson was English. She had tapped Mouse as soon as she had sat down, drowned out by the rest of the class before the teacher asked for quiet, and asked the question that had been bugging her for the past three hours.

“Have you seen Clancy today?”

Mouse narrowed her eyes as she did when she was thinking. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “Yeah, I saw him walking to registration. He was kind of hard to miss, if you know what I mean.”

Ruby let out a sigh of relief that had her slumping over the desktop, face pressed against her unopened exercise book. “Today, you’re sure?” She double-checked, and Mouse nodded with more conviction this time.

“Definitely sure.”

Ruby was just about to ask her what she remembered about yesterday when the teacher rapped on her desk with the blackboard eraser and the lesson began.

Even though Ruby had eyewitness statements from Mouse that Clancy was, in fact, well and alive, she still couldn’t concentrate on the lesson. She knew that Shakespeare plays followed a certain structure, but the lesson was dull and Ruby could’ve sworn they had covered everything during it before: she knew the content by heart already.

But then again, that was the norm for Ruby Redfort.

She was so distracted by the problem of the Count and Clancy that when her English teacher asked her something about Shakespeare, she couldn’t even pretend to make up an answer. Mouse was next to her and pushed her workbook a little closer, pointed at a sentence that held the answer and Ruby could only shake her head.

“I don’t know.” She said finally, without the heart to adlib something funny, and Miss Bridgwater looked more than a little taken-aback. But she nodded and moved on someone else in the room. Ruby didn’t listen for the correct answer.

“Are you okay?” Mouse whispered and even the boy who sat on their table and doodled in his book margins looked surprised. The whole room was sneaking glances at her, and Vapona had a wide sneering look on her face. She started to mouth something at Ruby, but she just looked away. Not out of any kind of dramatic response or spite, she couldn’t shape the words into anything meaningful.

“I don’t know.” She told Mouse and looked down at her empty page.

“I’ll give you my notes at lunch.” Mouse whispered and began taking notes down at great speed and in far greater detail than she would normally bother. She didn’t press and let Ruby wallow like she wanted to. It wasn’t like Ruby could do anything else at this point.

“I had a bad dream.” Ruby said a couple of minutes later while the class waited for the teacher to erase the chalkboard and begin writing new information again.

“A nightmare?” Mouse tapped her pen against the desk, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “It must have been bad.”

“It was… it was pretty fucked up.” Even that didn’t cover it. She could still feel the weight of Clancy across her back, weighing her down, and she turned her head to the board suddenly, hoping the misspelling of “peripeteia” on the board would distract her. It didn’t.

“Do you… Want to talk about it?” Mouse murmured, kindly averting her eyes from Ruby’s. She was rather hoping she wasn’t visibly tearing up, but her cheeks felt flushed with fear.

“It just felt really real.” Ruby told her. She didn’t want to overshare the details and worry Mouse to the point of medical intervention. “Like, I was actually living through it. And then I woke up, but I don’t think I ever went to sleep. The dream didn’t happen in real life, but I’m worried it’s…” She cut herself off, knowing she had overshared.

Mouse bit her pencil, chewing at the metal casing of the eraser. “You don’t think you’re a prophet?”

Ruby plonked her head on the desk in defeat. “I hope not.” Clancy, blood, explosion. “I really hope not.”

Mouse placed a small hand on her shoulder. Her free hand was still jotting notes down.

“I reckon you’ve just eaten too late or gone too long without sleep in a while.” She told her, and sure there might be an element of truth in that, but Ruby could not pinpoint the moment where she fell asleep yesterday, and when she woke up. “Hey, I take AP Psych now, want me to psychoanalyse you?”

Ruby did not want that at all. Freud was a bitch.

“Only if it’s funny.” Ruby allowed, and her voice is a little choked.

Mouse hummed as she thought. Ruby kept her eyes closed and her forehead resting on her exercise book. If Miss Bridgwater wanted to survive another year at Twinford Junior High, she should learn to leave students alone when they were obviously not up to discuss foreshadowing.

“I reckon you’re just projecting some childhood trauma. This kid was scared of horses, right, because he was scared his dad would, um.” Mouse made a slicing motion with her hand. Unfortunately, Ruby knew the case study.

“So you think I’m scared of that?” Mouse bit her lip, trying to tamp her grin down.

“Dunno. Are you scared of horses?” That finally drew the first laugh all day from Ruby and she propped herself up into a sitting position.

She didn’t do any work for the next forty minutes and Mouse very loyally divided her time between scratching down key quotes and giving Ruby encouraging smiles.

They split ways at the door and Ruby hefted her bag onto her shoulder.

“If you see Clancy, tell him I need to see him A.S.A.P.” Mouse nodded, a girl on a mission.

“’Course. I’ll see you at lunch. I hope you feel better.” Mouse gave one last sweet smile and snagged another girl from their English to walk to their next lesson together. She waved as she went down the hall and Ruby smiled in a way that was hopefully reassuring before turning to trudge to her next lesson.

Mouse excused herself from Tracy, and flagged Elliot down as he made his way to the Science block. He was trying to find his homework in the depths of his bag as he walked, knowing with a sinking feeling he hadn’t brought it with him, and it took him a minute to spot Mouse’s space-buns.

“Mouse, hey! Do you have your science homework?” Mouse rolled her eyes and fished her own copy out to hand it off. It had already been marked so Elliot just had to call out the right answers.

“Ruby’s having a bad day.” She told him without further preamble. Elliot’s face fell.

“A ‘I-got-an-answer-wrong’ day or a ‘about-to-be-taken-away-by-a-butler’ day?” He questioned.

“Third category.” Mouse winced. “She just sat in English and couldn’t answer Miss.”

Elliot matched her wince. “Oh man. A ‘weird-things-are-going-on-but-I-can’t-tell-anyone’ kind of day.”

Mouse nodded. “She said she needed to catch Clancy, but he got detention for not going to detention. I know you have lessons with the others before lunch, can you let them know?”

Elliot saluted. This was not the first time their little group had had to pass messages along like a game of Telephone and it definitely would not be the last, knowing Ruby’s odd habits and Red’s pattern of needing to borrow things from someone or another. “Got it Commander. Also, thanks for the homework.”

Mouse marched off to her lesson, and Elliot headed in the other direction, hunting down the classroom Red was in. Luckily, she was in the maths block, where the classrooms had windows facing out onto a courtyard of green space.

Red was already staring out of the window in boredom, and it was easy for Elliot to catch her eye.

“Ruby…” He mouthed and made an interpretative gesture, holding his hand level with his chest— as if he were marking off someone’s height— then held them to his head, miming thinking hard.  

“Ruby?” Red mouthed back and Elliot gave her a thumbs up.

“Bad.” Elliot added, with a thumbs down.

“Not good?” Red mouthed back. Elliot took what he could get.

“Day.” Elliot opened his fist a couple of times, pointedly, then tried yawning and stretching, Red subconsciously mimicking him. Then he tried a different tack and tapped where his watch would be if he hadn’t worn it swimming and broken it.

“Ruby had a bad day?” Red mouthed but Elliot couldn’t lipread and shook his head in annoyance.

“Ruby, bad, day. Tell.” He waved a hand by his mouth, covering his own attempt at mouthing the words. Red was looking more and more confused. A few of Red’s classmates had spotted Elliot as well by this point and were attempting to join in on the guessing game with little success.

“Clancy.” He made a C shape with his hand and waved around above his head where Clancy’s forehead reached. Then he did a rather good charade of swimming. Realization dawned across Red’s face and she nodded animatedly.

“I got it.” She mouthed.

“No, tell Clancy… Ruby… Bad… Day.”

Red began trying to wave him off with a thumbs-up and Elliot hoped she understood it. He really tried.

Red’s head whipped forwards, back to the front of the classroom, where the teacher was waiting for an answer to the question he’d just asked of her.

Elliot headed off to his own lesson, now a few minutes late. He only had to find Del now.

Ruby finally found Clancy just as he exited his French class, his first lesson after lunch. She hadn’t been able to track him down beforehand, thanks to a lunchtime detention that even Ruby couldn’t lie her way into. He looked pleased with himself, and Ruby hoped that the revision session they had covered together had helped.

She wished she didn’t have to ruin his happiness.

“Clance!” She called in the hubbub of the corridor and he stopped immediately, looking across the sea of kids to find her. She grabbed his elbow as she finally pulled level with him and unabashedly used him as a breaker against the busy crowd.

“Hey, Ruby!” He chirped, enthusiastic as ever, and if she didn’t have a reputation to upkeep in the school and if Mr Walford wasn’t so determined to prevent any kind of heterosexual PDA in the corridors, she might have hugged him. Even then she didn’t let go of his arm. “I was just about to go looking for you, Del told me something happened?”

“Are you okay?” Ruby steamrolled straight over Clancy’s greeting with only minimal regret. Clancy’s face fell to something much more serious.

“Of course I am.” He replied, eyes searching her face for any hints as to what was going on. Ruby was doing something similar, noting the lock of hair falling over an unharmed temple.

“I need you to meet me outside school at the end of the day, it’s serious.” She told him, and his eyes widened.

“Sure of course, normal place?” He said immediately. He didn’t question why she needed him, or complain that his father had people coming over and Clancy was expected to be home for them, and his unwavering trust had Ruby’s grip tightening on his brightly patterned shirt.

He looked down to see why his lower arm had been cut off from blood circulation and then back at her. “Ruby, is everything okay?”

Ruby swallowed hard but nodded. “Normal place. Don’t stop and talk to anyone on the way, just be there as soon as you can. I’ll explain later, I promise.”  

Clancy nodded back, visibly unhappy with the situation. “I have AP Biology next and then Maths. You know where I am if you need me,” He reminded her and he really was making it difficult for her to let him out of her sight.

“Sure, and if anything looks weird you know where I am.” Clancy’s frown deepened.

“Weird?” He asked, but the last-warning bell goes off and Ruby jumped at the loud noise.

“Anything weird. Don’t talk to anyone,” She added. The corridor was quiet, and there was only some harassed ninth-grader trying to not to run to their next lesson.

“Of course.” Clancy gave her finger-guns as he headed off towards the science labs. She watched him go for a second, horrified at how choked up her throat was.

“I like the outfit.” She called on an impulse, a sad way of telling him how good of a friend he was, how she needed him and how he was always there, and how she had missed him so awfully.

Clancy looked over his shoulder and his hair was still faintly tinged red at the ends from where they put Kool-Aid in it, and his shirt was so horribly 70s it hurt her eyes. Finally, Ruby understood Mouse’s remark about him being hard to miss. He gave her a wide grin and spun on the spot to show her his whole outfit, definitely late for AP Bio.

“Thank you!” He yelled back, his shirt untucked at the back and his sneaker trailing laces. “Don’t be late!”

Ruby finally turned around to head to her lessons, with an awful creeping feeling making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Clancy was fine. Clancy was always going to be fine. If his middle name wasn’t Crewson, it would be ‘fine’.

Ruby had only been stood at the bike-sheds for a few minutes, forcibly preventing herself from scanning the area for Clancy by kicking crumbling brick away from the wall, when she heard his voice and looked up eagerly.

“Ruby, hey, I was getting worried,” Clancy called, loping over to her with his long legs. “Didn’t speak to a soul on my way here.” He crossed his heart to show how serious he was, and Ruby wished he hadn’t.

“Good, cool, okay.” She tried to gather her thoughts. Her mind was still scattered even after a day of planning what to say, and she paused for Clancy to collect his bike. As she looked around, she realised his blue bike wasn’t even there.

“Where’s your bike?”  

“Got dropped off by Matt. He was supposed to pick me up, but he’s been sent off to pick up Dad’s guests, so I’ve got to hightail it home.” Ruby grimaced at the reminder that their time was short and hiked her backpack higher on her shoulders.  

“I’ll tell you as we walk.” Clancy looked relieved at that and they headed down the sidewalk, away from the yelling of students outside the school.

“Do you remember anything from yesterday?” Ruby started straight away with the interrogation. Clancy pushed his fringe back, thinking hard.

“Is this a test? Was I supposed to notice something at the skate park?” Clancy asked, a note of concern in his voice.

Ruby’s heart sank as she realised Clancy’s idea of yesterday was Sunday, when their group had been down at the park, Del trying to nail a flip on her board and Ruby learning to grind on a handrailing.

“No, not Sunday. Monday, but not today.”

Clancy seemed to be thinking even harder. “Is this a code?” he asked in a very quiet voice.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“Is this a code? A Spectrum mission or something?” Clancy asked, just a hair louder.

“No, no, it’s not a code or anything, just… do you remember anything happening up at Upper East Side at all?”

“The hairdressers’ on Seven Street cancelled my mom’s hair appointment. She’s furious, saying her perm is looking limp.”

Ruby blinked. “Okay, not that kind of event. My mom uses the hairdressers on Acer Street, if she needs a new place though.”

Clancy waved his hand aimlessly. “Nah, she got someone else to do it.”

Ruby tried not to hurry Clancy along, but they had gone wildly off-topic and they were already coming to the end of Bleaker Street.

“Okay, so you don’t remember anything weird at all. No vans, no weird machines, no… explosions?”

Clancy stopped on the sidewalk, and fixed Ruby with an extremely concerned look. Kind of like he was thinking of calling Hitch and getting her a one-way ticket to wherever they put people who had completely lost their grip. They slowed to a stop on the side of the junction to Ambassador’s Row, Clancy’s house just out of sight. “Um, no. Sorry.”

“I feel stupid now, maybe I’m making a big deal about nothing,” Ruby’s shoulders slumped, now slightly unwilling to mention the whole thing again.

Clancy cocked his head and grinned. “I doubt it. Sure, maybe you’ve overthought it a bit, but I doubt it’s stupid.”

At the sight of his smile Ruby was gripped by the urge to grab him by the sleeve of his dumb shirt and take him home with her, where Hitch could keep them safe and nothing bad could happen to him. But Ambassador Crew didn’t allow week-night sleepovers and Ruby was nuts. She probably did just have a bit too much cheese the night before and it gave her nightmares.

She opened her mouth anyway to explain herself to Clancy. “I had a super bad dream,” Her hands twisted in the straps of her backpack as Clancy’s smile melted into a frown.

“About?” He asked carefully, sensing how strung out she was.

Ruby tried to scrounge up her courage. Climbing out of a window and scaling the outside of the tallest building in Twinford? Easy. Being emotionally vunerable when she was genuinely, chokingly terrified of what had happened? Not so easy.

“You died. Pretty nastily.” She said finally and Clancy slung his arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

“What happened? I’ll try and avoid it next time,” He said lightly.

“It was the Count again. You tried to save me and—” Ruby barely got the words out without her voice breaking, and even then she had to cut herself off. Clancy tightened his hold on her shoulder, and she leaned into him, resting her forehead against his chest for a moment, feeling more and more stupid because Clancy was taking everything so seriously and patiently and what fourteen-year-old still had nightmares?

“Hitch would never let that happen Rubes,” Clancy pointed out, defusing the situation easily. He didn’t even sound condescending, just achingly honest. Ruby sighed and pulled away reluctantly.

“Is that it?” He added after a second, letting his arm fall back to his side. “I mean, it sounds awful, but it takes more than a nightmare to upset Ruby Redfort.”

Ruby managed a laugh for him, because he always looked so pleased with himself when he made her laugh. “Don’t call me crazy,” She made him pinkie-promise this time, to stop him from crossing his heart again.

“You’re not crazy,” Clancy said firmly and waited for her to speak again.

“I’m not sure it was a dream,” Clancy looked down at himself and pointedly took his pulse, fingers pressed against his jugular.

“I’m pretty alive.” He argued. It wasn’t exactly an accusation of insanity, but she still winced.

“I didn’t go home yesterday, I’m certain of it. We were way over by Upper East Side, and I think I passed out right as we got out of the building. But Hitch won’t admit we were there, or that he even took me home from school yesterday, so it can’t have been real.”

Clancy fiddled with the cuff of the shirt around his elbow as he processed her words. “As far as I know, I was nowhere near Upper East yesterday. Or at all since… Friday?” Clancy offered and Ruby kicked at a sprig of a plant growing out of the gutter.

“So I’m making it up,” She said bitterly and Clancy shuffled from foot to foot to get rid of the anxious fidgeting in his bones.

“I’m sure there’s just something you’re missing,” Clancy said kindly. “Or something I’m missing, if you can remember stuff I don’t. I’m not saying you’re nuts, but if you think there’s something going on, there must be something going on. You just don’t have the full picture yet.”

Ruby pulled a face and shrugged. She was tired of the whole thing now, and her few hours of sleep were not helping. She just wanted to go home and watch some mind-numbing comfort TV. She had a sense of unease at the thought of falling asleep again, afraid of what the world would be like when she woke, but she pushed it away forcefully.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, blowing her cheeks out. “Yeah maybe,” she said eventually, and Clancy gave her a hopeful smile.

“I know you can do it,” Clancy promised her, full of encouragement and trust despite the fact that Ruby had lured him to his death the day before. “I get telephone privileges after five, but Dad’ll make me sit at the table longer if the Duchess isn’t done with her trifle.”

Clancy started walking backwards down the path, heading home before dinner, but as Ruby glanced down the long avenue that would lead her to Cedarwood Drive, she realised selfishly she didn’t quite want to let him go.

“Hey, how did your French test go?” Ruby called and Clancy’s face split into a grin.

“75%,” He said happily. “It’s a C but it’s a pass.”

Ruby grinned back, more than pleased for him. “We’ll get that up to a B in no time,” She promised him and Clancy’s smile widened, if that were even possible.

“Now go on, you can’t be late for whatever Duchess your dad has over.”

Clancy rolled his eyes and waved one last time.

He wasn’t looking as he hopped off the curb to cross the street.

The car was black and long and sleek and clipped Clancy in the hip as it screeched across the junction. Clancy’s shout was nearly lost in the noise of squealing tyres and it echoed in her ears. The force of the car sent Clancy into a little pirouette, his arms outstretched as if for balance, shirt flapping in the wind and he went down, heading for the same course as the tyres.

Ruby was running before Clancy even hit the ground. She didn’t see his face as he fell, and a sick small part of her was glad, because that would be an image she would never cleanse herself of.

The car slowed, swerved, and raced off again, lost to the streets of Twinford. Ruby only had eyes for Clancy, and she skidded to her knees beside him. His head was bleeding in heavy rivulets over his eyes and soddening his hair. Ruby didn’t even know if the car went over him.

His leg looked broken and everything about him looked so wrong Ruby could only fist her hands in his shirt and gasp for breath.

“Clancy open your eyes,” She demanded, because he always did what she said, and the blood was making him look far too pale. “Clancy, look at me.”

His eyes were fluttering and rolling in his head. She looked up and there was no one near them, streets now empty after rush hour, and the car had accelerated away. The houses were spaced out on Ambassador’s Row, and there was no way Ruby would leave Clancy’s side to go and knock for help.

“Clancy, please open your eyes, look at me,” She leaned over him and braced a hand over his head wound. Spectrum always said to keep pressure on bleeding wounds and keep head trauma patients calm and conscious and Clancy looked dead. She slammed a hand on her Escape Watch as firmly as she could without jostling Clancy, hoping against hope that Hitch would be close by. She reached for her fly barrette and tapped that as many times as she could, even after it had beeped affirmatively at her. Hitch had to be around, had to come and help.  

“Ruby,” Clancy slurred, and his eyes finally opened, sliding right past her. He was making pained little breaths and Ruby had her free hand fisted in his stupid eye-sore shirt that he picked out at the last vintage shop they went too.

“You need to stay awake. Help is coming, you’re going to be okay,” She begged him.

“’T’s okay,” Clancy murmured and lifted a hand up to her. His hands were covered in blood and she leaned into his palm without a single thought spared to the imprint left on her face.

“Ruby? I’m busy, is this necessary?” Hitch’s tinny voice came over the speaker built into the fly and Ruby sobbed, suddenly and without noticing how it had been building up, trapped behind her tongue.

“Hitch!” She called out helplessly like a child. “It’s Clancy, Hitch come quickly.”

There was no response from Hitch and Clancy’s eyes slipped closed.

“Clancy stay awake for me,” She pleaded, gently tapping his cheek. “Come on Clancy, you can’t fall asleep, it’s like a movie marathon yeah?”

Clancy’s eyes fell on her again, and his lips twitched into a smile. “It’s okay Rubes,” He hissed the ‘s’ obviously trying to stop the words slurring together. Ruby choked out one last “Clancy?” before his hand fell away from her cheek.

Ruby woke up to at least three of her phones ringing discordantly and completely out of sync with each other.

Chapter Text

Ruby was a smart kid and when she saw 5:26 shining in bright neon numbers on her alarm clock, she knew immediately that something was wrong.

She was reaching out for the phone on the floor before she had properly woken up.  

“Clancy?” She asked the receiver weakly, but the ensuing silence answered her question. She tossed the receiver aside, losing it amongst her bedding and swung her legs out of bed.

She was clad in her pyjamas: fluffy trousers and a t-shirt that her mother had forcibly removed from her day-to-day wardrobe, that urged the reader to ‘Vote Larry for (Tennis Club) President’.

Ruby didn’t remember putting the pyjamas on the night before, but she did remember, distinctly, throwing this pair down the laundry chute yesterday morning.

Unearthing the phone from her blankets, she started dialling Clancy’s number, uncaring of the early hour.

There was a knock from behind the closed door and Ruby hit the last digit, gnawing at her lip as she waited for someone to answer.

“Come in,” she called belatedly, and Hitch swung the door open, already dressed in the same tie as yesterday and a tiepin with a small enamel fly on it.

“Hi kid, heard you were up,” He smiled briefly at her before heading to her desk to clean it up, despite the fact she hadn’t been home to eat anything.

“Is Clancy okay?” Ruby asked, the dial tone of the phone still jangling in her ear.

Hitch gave her a perplexed look. “Yes, to my knowledge,” He answered, hands frozen over the pile of dirty plates from Sunday before he turned to look at her properly. “Has something happened?”

“We were walking home from school yesterday and Clancy got hurt. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“You didn’t walk home yesterday. I picked you up from the park, Clancy was fine then.”

“You said that yesterday too and he still got hurt,” Ruby said through gritted teeth. The phone rang dead and she determinedly re-dialled. Didn’t the Crew’s hire people to answer the phone?

Hitch left the dishes alone to check his watch with the same dogged resolve Ruby had in ringing Clancy.

“Nothing in the Crew household triggered our sensors yesterday. Clancy is fine,” Hitch told her, holding his watch up so she could see the display. It was too complicated for her to parse in a single glance, but Hitch seemed to be confident in it. Ruby thought very hard about the fact that the Crew household was under surveillance before she scrubbed a hand over her face.

They were talking in circles, and it was far too early.

“What are you doing in here then?” Ruby asked. She re-dialled the number again and waited two rings before exhaling hard and giving up.

“You’ve got a busy day ahead; boss wants you in by six.”

“Not another Count warning? The last one wasn’t even helpful,” Ruby tried to slot the receiver back on the phone and left it off the hook when it didn’t click into place the first time.

“Kid, this is the first mention of the Count in several weeks. How do you know he’s back?”

“We went into Spectrum yesterday and the day before that, so LB could tell us that he’d been spotted.”

“We haven’t been to Spectrum in nearly a week,” Hitch said, and there was definite suspicion in his voice. “LB only put the call out for the meeting at 5, she can’t have gotten the information long before then.”

“Well, she called a top-secret six am meeting three days ago to warn us about the Count. Maybe he has a twin,”

Hitch’s brow was furrowed in worry and Ruby closed her eyes once more.

“I saw him three days ago,” Ruby said slowly like Hitch was particularly thick. It wasn’t a tone she often took with him, and she hoped he took it seriously. “We had a whole meeting about watching out, and then I went to school and did all my Monday lessons, then he caught me on my way home, and showed me the big machine and it exploded and—” her breath caught. “Clancy got hurt.”

Hitch came to perch on the edge of Ruby’s bed, and she drew her legs up, gathering the duvet around her to keep warm. The room itself was cosy, but there was a chilling feeling settled deep in her chest.

Hitch was looking like he thought Ruby was particularly off her nut.

“Clancy is fine,” He repeated. “He arrived home yesterday afternoon and hadn’t left since. Judging by your call, he isn’t even awake yet.”

“The machine hurt him. Then the next day was Monday again. Yesterday was Monday and Clancy got hurt again.”

“Machine?” Hitch asked, bewildered.

“The machine I told you about yesterday. You said you would look into it and not to worry about it.”

Hitch took a deep, deep sigh. “Ruby…” he started, and Ruby clenched her fists under the blanket where he couldn’t see.

“This is the third time you’ve come in and said we need to have a meeting,” She kept her voice stubborn. “Twice was maybe coincidence, but three times? I saw the Count and he told me he had a plan and now we’ve done this three times over.”

Hitch clapped his hands on his knees and stood.

“Get dressed and come into Spectrum with me,” he said finally.

Ruby groaned. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear at all. She wanted to ring Clancy and make sure he was okay before trying Spectrum again.

“At least to report your Count sighting to LB. Why didn’t you send me an SOS?”

“I did,” Ruby argued, feeling frustrated enough to raise her voice. “You just don’t remember,”

Hitch held his arms up in surrender. “Be downstairs in ten minutes and maybe I’ll get you a snack on the way.”

Ruby pulled a face but directed it at her lap, unwilling to snap at him.

“I don’t want a snack,” She muttered, and Hitch didn’t reply for a long moment, gathering his pile of dishes at the desk before walking to the door. Ruby only saw his shoes, reluctant to look up at him and see the confusion on his face.

“Ten minutes. We’ll get this sorted out.”

Ruby heard the door close and sighed heavily, reaching for the phone one last time before she started getting dressed. Maybe Clancy would be awake from the sound of the telephone already.

Clancy didn’t pick up.

LB shuffled the papers in front of her into a tidy pile and flicked the projector off. Immediately the lights click on at the top of the auditorium.

“Thank you for attending and remember, keep an eye out.” LB called into the room and turned to exit. Ruby was already up and out of her seat.

“I’ll find you in coding! If Blacker got me another chocolate doughnut you can have it!” She called over her shoulder at Hitch, who was still frozen in his seat in confusion, and turned to leap down the staggered steps to the bottom of the hall.

When she was about halfway down, Blacker stepped out into the aisle, forcing Ruby to jump to one side to avoid knocking him over.

“Oh Ruby! Doughnuts in the coding room!” He called over the din of agents getting up and moving towards the doors at the top of the room. He didn’t attempt to stop her from going in what was clearly the wrong direction, and she appreciated it.

“Catch you!” She waved him off and kept moving. She had never been through the doors at the bottom and hoped it wasn’t anything too complicated for LB to get swallowed up by before Ruby caught her.

The door opened easily, with no locks or bodyguards to stop her and she dashed unhindered through the corridors.

The walls were white, as per usual, but without a splash of colour bisecting them and fairly straight with no doors until it opened out to wider storage spaces, like any you would find under a stage.

The corridor forked after an indeterminable amount of time because Ruby clearly had no luck, and she chose the right-hand side, roughly judging it to lead back to the main heart of Spectrum.

Within another few meters she found LB’s hastily retreating back. LB turned at the noise of her footsteps but didn’t look surprised to see Ruby there at all.

“Redfort. These are private corridors, off-limits to any agent.”

“I’m a spy,” Ruby told her like perhaps she didn’t know, falling into step beside her, despite the older woman’s obvious distaste. “If I only went where I was supposed to, I wouldn’t be very good at my job.”

“And if I allowed every child to access government secrets then I wouldn’t be very good at mine,” She replied coldly, and Ruby waved her hand noncommittedly.

“When did the agents spot the Count?” She began her interrogation immediately and LB sighed at the prospect of a long winding walk back to her office accompanied by Ruby.

“This morning at a quarter to five.” LB recited, not even checking the papers tucked under one arm. “They rang it in as soon as they got a visual on his face, but despite their best efforts, they weren’t quick enough to catch him. He’d disappeared through a fire door into a building and was long gone by the time they followed.”

Ruby nodded attentively. “So, the time before that, why wasn’t that an immediate emergency meeting? Why wait so long?”

“Agents combed the building that the Count was in, after I was informed and before the meeting was officially called. Had we found him then, there would not be a warning meeting but rather a celebration and closing of several cases. Because he wasn’t found we had to warn agents before they began their official working day.”

“Okay, so then why—?”

“Is there a point to this, Redfort?” LB spoke in the familiar tone that suggested she had come to the end of her tether completely. “First you bring takeaway coffee to the meeting without even offering me one, and now you’re acting like you weren’t even listening to the meeting.”

Ruby looked down at the takeaway cup in her hand from where Hitch had dragged her to Diner against her wishes and pretended she didn’t have it by tucking it behind her back innocently. “Don’t you have lackeys to fetch coffee for you in the mornings?”

LB frowned like that was a stupid question. “Of course I do. You.”

Ruby took a steadying breath, knowing that Hitch would be tracking her down through her barrette if she took too long and then she wouldn’t get a chance to discuss anything with LB until after school.

“If you and the whole of Spectrum were playing a prank on me, you would tell me, right?”

LB pinched her nose hard enough that Ruby could see the marks when she moved her hand. “If I were playing a prank, like a middle-schooler, then no Redfort, I probably would not tell you. That would ruin the prank.”

“Is this all a prank though?” Ruby persisted. “I know we had this meeting yesterday, I know, okay? So, you can drop it now where Hitch can’t see, just so I know I’m not going mad.”

LB’s power-walk stopped mid-stride as she gave Ruby a startled look. “We did not have this meeting yesterday.”

“Yes, we did,” Ruby insisted. “That’s the issue. You called me and Hitch in here on Monday and did the whole ‘watch out for the Count because he’s been spotted’ schtick.”

LB’s confusion seemed to be winning over her annoyance at having Ruby in close proximity. “What did I say in the other meeting?”

“The exact same thing you said today. Word for word, nothing’s changed, except it’s been three days since Bike and whoever else saw him.”

“Have you spoken to Hitch about this?”

“I asked him about it yesterday when we came in for the second meeting, and then again today but he’d completely forgotten the meeting and me telling him about it.”

“Has anything else happened since the first meeting?”

Ruby paused, realising that maybe she should have started with the other events of the day. “Well, actually I saw the Count the first day you called us in. He was in a van and took me somewhere, I’m not sure where. He showed me some kind of machine and was gone before it exploded. I woke up in my room exactly like the day before.”

“A machine?” LB criticised in displeasure.

“About yea big.” Ruby stretched her arms out as wide as she could. “A screen on the front and a couple of lights that were flashing. I think it was metal silver, but it was dark so it could be gray.”

LB seemed to be picking her words very carefully. “What you are describing,” she started slowly, and Ruby nodded encouragingly to get her to reach her point quicker. “Is not impossible.”

Ruby’s mouth fell open. “It’s not?”

LB picked up the pace suddenly and Ruby was forced to trot alongside her in a rather undignified way.

“Do I need to remind you that what I am about to tell you is classified to nearly every single agent in Spectrum 8, and only a very select few know in the other Spectrums.”

“Why are you still keeping information from Hitch?” Ruby demanded immediately and LB’s face did something complicated, like she was trying not to roll her eyes. “You didn’t tell him about the SME stuff, and it turned out he was in the centre of that anyway.”

“I can assure you Hitch is not involved in this technology at all.” LB said, avoiding the issue of the last time Hitch was involved. “Very few people are aware of it, even Pinkerton didn’t know.”

They finally reached LB’s office and Ruby was waved towards the seat in front of the desk as the head of Spectrum 8 headed to a filing cabinet set against the wall. She unlocked the second drawer with a key seemingly pulled from nowhere, and then opened the top of the cabinet like a lid. Ruby couldn’t see the inside of the secret compartment due to… vertical challenges, but LB pulled a thin manilla folder out and took her chair at the desk.

“This machine was part of the technological push by the government in the 50s and 60s.” LB began, flicking through the folder in search of a specific piece of paper. She was guarding the folder close to her chest and Ruby had to wonder just what kinds of spud guns and walkie-talkies were within it.

“It was developed alongside space travel and… more ambitious weapons. It was secret enough that it’s codename was coded. I will not show you the code, because I will not have you breaking into the Prism Vault again.”

“Could we just give it a name then, because just saying ‘The Machine’ is giving me a headache.”

“I can just as easily not tell you anything and spare us both the headache.” LB replied archly and Ruby winced. Privately, she settled on Kronos, thanks to Clancy’s last fixation of 1950s sci-fi movies which had many sleepless nights for them both: Clancy because he was convinced aliens would attack, and Ruby because she had to convince Clancy that aliens would not attack.

Anyway, Kronos. Big box, check. Electricity, check. Emotional assault, check.

“Gotcha. What did the machine do?”

“The machine in question was supposed to be a failsafe in case of disaster. The idea was, if America lost the war or even if a fatal accident happened, the machine could be activated and would theoretically take the world back twenty-four hours until the accident could be prevented.”

“So, what’s the accident?” Ruby pressed. LB looked a little shellshocked.

“Redfort, this is theoretical,” she replied through gritted teeth. “Spectrum never even made the machine, never got further than the blueprints. Even if someone copied the blueprint exactly, there is no way to be sure that the machine would work correctly or would be able to break the loop once it was started.”

“If it is theoretical, why did you have the papers in your office? Shouldn’t it be in the Prism Vault?” Ruby asked, peering at the sheets upside down. LB pulled the papers closer to her, out of Ruby’s view and she didn’t bother concealing the annoyed look on her face.

“There are copies in the Prism Vault, not that you should know anything about that. They’ve been copied and brought to Spectrum 8 as part of the reorganisation scheme,” This was not the first Ruby had heard about the Reorganisation Scheme, or Re-Org for short, in the wake of the unearthing of the mole, but it was the first she’d heard about a machine that could rewrite reality as she knew it. “All previous technology has been revaluated as a result of the… SME disgrace,”

Ruby must have looked too suspicious because LB’s face hardened into a frown. “This machine has never been completed or tested. Frankly, it’s extremely unlikely that you have actually come across it or anything like it.”

“Then what else is happening? I saw a machine that looked suspiciously like that one, and now the world is looping. What other explanation can there be?”

LB gathered the papers up into a tidy sheaf and then dropped them back on the desk. “I don’t know Redfort. You said it was only the third day? Maybe you’re just getting confused. De je vu is a powerful thing, and I daresay a lot of Spectrum meetings sound the same to you.”

“But there hasn’t been a Spectrum meeting about the Count returning for nearly a year. What can I be getting confused with?”

The door behind them opened with no announcement, and Ruby jumped, twisting in her chair so quickly her neck twinged.

“Loveday, I can’t find the kid—” Hitch was stood in the doorway, a hand resting on the doorknob and the other hovering over his suit jacket where his gun holster was kept. His gaze fell upon Ruby and changed from worry to relief right through to annoyance in a matter of seconds.  

“We were just discussing…” Ruby started with a lie upon her lips before she realised she didn’t need to. “The Count. And this morning.”

She looked behind her at LB for backup. LB didn’t appear surprised to have Hitch at her door despite his lack of a knock.

“You didn’t tell Hitch where you were going?” LB questioned and Ruby winced. LB knew full well why Ruby didn’t tell Hitch where she was going: he wasn’t going to tell her anything worthwhile.

“I thought it was clear where I was going when I left the auditorium,” Ruby defended herself. Making Hitch look bad at his job in front of his boss was not what she wanted, but if Hitch wouldn’t take her seriously, she had no other choice.

“Well, at least you’re with LB and not the Count or worse.” Hitch sighed and took a step backwards. “You have school soon, I’ll be outside when you’re done.”

Ruby nodded, glad he wasn’t trying to get involved with the machine. “I’ll be out in time,”

“Hitch, you are to report back here once dropping Redfort off. I need you patrolling Downtown in case the Count is seen again.”

Hitch nodded once. “Of course,” He clicked the door closed behind him, with far less urgency than he had entered with.

“If you can get the location of this box, or of the Count, then I’ll give the order to investigate,” LB stated, in a tone that wasn’t hostile. Ruby liked to think that over a year working at Spectrum had really warmed the older women up to her. At least she was more willing to listen to Ruby even if she wasn’t making any sense.

“There’s nothing I can do with the information you’ve provided. If another agent provides a similar story, then we can act, but none of our technology sectors are working on anything like the Machine and I doubt there are many people out there who have the resources to create it either,”

“There’s one more thing,” Ruby blurted before LB could outright dismiss her. LB raised a single eyebrow, leaning back in her chair to listen. “Clancy, he’s involved too.”

LB put a hand to her forehead and breathed deeply. She didn’t even make it to a count of ten before she snapped. “Of course he is. Why is Clancy Crew involved again?”

“He came to rescue me when the Count kidnapped me. He got caught in the explosion and… and I think he died.”

LB, for all of her tough girlboss exterior, looked genuinely shocked. “What on earth do—”

“But the next day he was alive again! And then he was hit by a car, and the day restarted again. And now it’s day three and,” Her voice got very close to cracking, and she had to pause and swallow hard. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to him today, which is why I came to you to ask about the Machine.”

LB pressed her lips together in a thin line and reached for the telephone on her desk. “And you have reason to believe he will be injured again today?”

Ruby nodded, thanking everything that LB believed her. “I don’t think he’s safe. Something will hurt him,” she said with all the conviction that she could muster. LB nodded gravely.

“I’ll put our best agents on it. They’ll protect him at home. If needed, we can make it a weekly schedule until the Count is detained.”

A weight lifted off of Ruby’s chest and she felt like she could breathe all of a sudden. “Thank you.” She said, staring LB square in the eyes. “I promise you won’t regret it and I’ll find the machine. I don’t want Clancy to get hurt anymore.”

“Our agents won’t let him get hurt. This is the safest he can possibly be,” LB gathered the papers together one last time and turned the whole stack facedown so Ruby couldn’t get so much as a peek. “Go to school, Agent. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Ruby knew a dismissal when she heard one and got to her feet. “Thanks again LB,” She only hoped she would see LB again the next day. She just wasn’t convinced it would be a Tuesday.  

“Keep your eyes peeled,” LB murmured, attention focused on the telephone on her desk as she typed some series of number in. Ruby left the office and turned her head to see Hitch leaning against the wall.

“You did not meet me in coding,” Hitch pointed out, like she hadn’t noticed she was in green.

Ruby winced. “I had to talk to LB about something important. I wasn’t bothering her, it was serious.”

Hitch pushed off the wall and began walking back towards Reception and the entrance they came in by. “Is this about what you were talking about this morning?” He sounded tired, like he still didn’t quite believe her.

“Kind of. I know the rules are don’t blab, but I can blab to you right?” Hitch had a higher security clearance than her, it wasn’t like she was telling anyone outside of Spectrum about the machine.

“I’d rather know whatever you know, than be left in the dark about this one.” Hitch allowed finally and Ruby breathed a sigh of relief and immediately blabbed about everything LB just told her.

Hitch listened in patient silence as they returned to the car. “Well, you shouldn’t have told me about roughly 80% of that,” Was the first thing he said when she finished and sat back in her seat expectantly. “That was definitely Level 50 clearance, at least.”

Ruby shrugged. “LB knew I would’ve gotten the information from somewhere anyway. She just cut out all that stress for me and the hypertension for her when she had to eventually tell me off.”

Hitch started the ignition, still mulling over her words. “If LB thought to show you those blueprints there’s a good chance she thinks that you may be correct,” He explained. It was just an LB move; she wouldn’t hand out classified information without good reason.

“It’s just you who doesn’t think I’m right,” Ruby commented, a little sour about Hitch’s reaction. The man purposely did not look at her as he turned onto Main Street.

“You have to admit it’s not the most realistic thing you’ve ever come up,” Hitch commented, well-aware of the storm he was about to unleash in the car.

“Spectrum has an invisibility cloak and a space programme to reach the moon, and you think a machine that reverses time is a massive step away from that? We fought a massive creature that forced people to tell the truth, that’s sci-fi and unbelievable,” Ruby argued, and Hitch shook his head, a defeated look on his face.

“I’m choosing to believe you and LB’s judgement on this one,” He acknowledged ultimately. It was better than nothing and Ruby felt better having him on her side. “Although if this is an excuse to get out of school, it’s failed massively.” Hitch jabbed a thumb at the Twinford Junior High buildings out of the car window.

“You said that yesterday too,” Ruby reminded him, as she got out of the car and slammed the door after her.

“It wasn’t funny then either.”

Ruby was late for school, thanks to a long conversation with LB and then Hitch in the car. Hitch walked her to the reception desk, mostly because Mrs Bexenheath got upset when Ruby walked in late without him. A late slip was handed over with no questions asked although Ruby had to listen to Hitch sweet-talk Mrs Bexenheath for a full five minutes.  

She took the opportunity of Hitch complimenting the secretary’s coat on a nearby coat rack to sneak a couple ‘Excused from Lesson’ slips from the desk. She accidentally caught Hitch’s eye as she shoved them in her back and gave a smile that was not exactly apologetic.

“I really must be off, work calls of course.” Hitch cut Mrs Bexenheath off, just as she suggested she pop the staffroom kettle on for him. Hitch was beginning to sweat—he had enough cups of tea pressed upon him by Mrs Digby at home that he was not sticking around for a poorly-brewed one by the receptionist.

“Get to class, kid, and I’ll collect you at 3:30.” Hitch addressed Ruby who was already backing out of the room silently.

“Gotchu Jeeves.” She called and scarpered before she got in trouble that even Hitch couldn’t get her out of.

The only time Ruby could track Clancy down was after school, which meant she had to sit through a full day of the same lessons as the previous two days. They didn’t get any more interesting, and Ruby was close to clawing out her eyes by the time the clock hit half past three. She was up and out of her seat before her history teacher could even gather breath to say, “The bell doesn’t dismiss you, I do”.

She was quick enough that she could catch Clancy as he left his math classroom, grabbing his elbow and walking with intent through the corridors. She and Hitch had a prearranged spot where she could meet him and the car. If she physically took Clancy home safe, surely the Spectrum agents could handle it from there.

“Do you remember anything I said to you yesterday?” She demanded in lieu of a hello.

“Hi, um, no?” Clancy replied, still shoving his math textbook into his satchel. “At the skate-park?”

Ruby closed her eyes in agony for a moment. “No, not at the skatepark. And this isn’t a code either, do you remember anything from yesterday? Us walking home?”

Clancy shook his head in a bewildered silence. “No sorry Rubes. What happened?”

“This is the third time I’ve lived through this day,” Ruby jumped into the deep end, feet first. Clancy blinked in surprise. “This Monday has been looping since the Count reappeared and kidnapped me.”

“Like… a time loop?” Clancy was trying his best to keep up with Ruby, but the frantic glint in her eye was unfamiliar to him.

“Exactly a time loop!” Ruby exclaimed, like Clancy was a child who deserved a Gold Star sticker. “And you get hurt in every single loop, so I’m going to need you to get into Hitch’s car and just trust me.”

Clancy was silent for a long second, and Ruby was sure he was just counting the seconds until she was distracted, and he could sprint to freedom away from a crazy best friend.

“I… guess I was just going to walk home anyway. A lift would be helpful. And if you’re being serious about the time loop, I’ve actually got a code for you to prove it.” Clancy announced, like that was a normal thing to prepare for.

“If you’re actually in a time loop, you just have to say it to me, and I’ll believe you straight away.”

Both Ruby and Clancy looked at each other expectantly in silence for a few seconds.

“Are you going to say it?” Clancy asked a moment later, confused.

“You haven’t told me yet. It’s only day three.”

“Well, if I tell you now, it won’t work.”

Ruby pressed a hand against her temple, understanding LB’s constant headaches. “But I don’t know the phrase at all, unless you tell me it,”

Clancy sighed, like Ruby is being the one being unhelpful. “It’s multifaceted, okay? So, you can’t just guess.”

Ruby wondered if she should be making notes or something. Clancy could never do anything in an easy way.

“Okay, I hadn’t actually thought this bit through when I came up with it,” Clancy said sheepishly. His fingers were fluttering like moths around the strap of his satchel, and he looked reluctant to start telling her.

“What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously, fighting down the instinct to make a witty joke.

Clancy’s cheeks flushed pink. “Well, look, I hadn’t thought about telling you the code! I’d always imagined that you would just know.”

“That’s not how a time loop actually works Clancy. If it helps, you won’t remember telling me this part,” Clancy screwed his face up and flapped his hand hard to shake out his nervous energy.

“Promise you won’t get mad?” Ruby was not in a position to begin making promises like that, but she nodded anyway.

“You have to say, ‘Johnson knows what happened to G.I Joe’.” Clancy confessed in a low voice.

Ruby had an awful feeling she knew what that meant. “What… Happened to G.I. Joe?”

Clancy was refusing to meet her eyes, staring resolutely at the floor. A memory she had forgotten about years ago was niggling at the back of her mind. G.I. Joe, the dumb action man toy that everyone had had in their first-grade class.

“Well, you know that time you trod on Shelly?” Clancy was mumbling into his collar and Ruby nudged him.

“I can’t hear you, when I what?”

Clancy raised his chin, a stubborn look on his face. “You know when you literally murdered my pet turtle?”

Ruby winced. Ah. That was kind of what she thought she had heard. “Clancy, look I’m sorry about that, I was literally five years old.”

“I’ve forgiven you now it’s fine, you didn’t know she was in the pool with us,” Clancy was getting that ‘stabbed in the back by my best friend’ look that he got whenever Shelly was brought up.

The year was 1966 and Clancy and Ruby had been splashing around in the shallows of the Crew’s outside pool. Young Clancy Crew, who had been given a pet turtle for his sixth birthday by his father, had decided to bring Shelly for a swim with his best friend. Ruby—five years old and kitted out in armbands that matched Clancy’s—had waded without watching where her feet went and managed to stomp right on top of Shelly’s… shell.

Clancy still had nightmares of the turtle floating slowly upside down to the surface of the pool.

“It’s just, um,” Clancy scratched the back of his neck, looking anywhere by Ruby. “I hadn’t forgiven you right after it happened, and to kind of… get back at you, I, erm, kind of stole your G.I. Joe and buried him behind the yew hedge in the garden.”

Ruby stood with her mouth hung open. “You told me G.I Joe left me to have adventures with another kid.”

Clancy wiped his palms on his jeans, chuckling nervously. “Ha, yeah. That was a lie, it was actually kind of obviously a lie, did you never question it?”

Ruby tried to gather her thoughts. Her poor beloved G.I. Joe, a gift for her sixth birthday, was sleeping with the earthworms in Clancy’s back garden. “Well, who is Johnson then?” The only Johnson coming to mind was the speccy kid who played Little League Basketball with her, and surely, he would have told her about G.I. Joe if he had known.

“President Johnson,” Clancy explained, like that was in any way helpful. “Dad always said that President Johnson knew everything bad I did. I don’t know why he didn’t say Santa Claus was omniscient like normal parents, but I was six and convinced the President knew what I did to G.I. Joe.”

Ruby stood in silence trying to reconcile her childhood as she knew it with the information she now had.

“Look I was eight when I came up with the code, it made sense at the time. You might guess that something happened to G.I. Joe, but you wouldn’t say Johnson knew if you didn’t know!” Clancy defended himself vehemently.

“So, I’m supposed to just come up to you tomorrow and say that with a straight face,” Ruby wondered. Clancy blushed harder.

“There’s more to the code,” he said sheepishly and Ruby sighed, wishing she were sat down to fully process this conversation. As it was, they were in sight of Hitch’s automobile.

“Boys always work it out.” He added, and that made Ruby pause for a second.

“Is that a—”

“Call and response, it’s from that David Bowie song, you know…” He trailed off, obviously expecting her to know the words.

“Boys, boys?” Ruby wracked her brain for the lyrics she must have absorbed through osmosis from Clancy.

Clancy smirked, like she’d played right into his Contemporary Pop Rock trap. “You can’t use the line after it, you have to use the line before it.”

Ruby hummed the tune for a second before she got it. “Boys keep swinging?”

Clancy nodded approvingly when she got the lyrics right.

“Look Clancy, are these all David Bowie songs? If it’s all David Bowie songs, I’ll just figure the time loop out by myself.”

“You can’t stop listening now, I’ve put too much effort into this to not tell you the rest. That’s the only Bowie song, promise.” He paused to clear his throat.

“Who’s my favourite Crazy Cop character?” Finally, an easy one for Ruby.

“You say Despo to sound cool but it’s actually that villain guy, Hogtrotter from season three who had to get recast because the actor got arrested.”

“Tell me that in that order, and I’ll immediately believe you and do whatever I can to help,” Clancy grinned, but there was definitely a sheen of concern that Ruby was still mad about a dumb action toy from 1966.

Ruby was fairly sure she had all of that memorised. Maybe she wouldn’t even need it today and this really was all just de je vu.

“Thanks Clancy.” She told him, affectionately shoving her shoulder against his. “Now you just have to be careful for the rest of the day.”

Clancy laughed. “I technically don’t have to trust you at all. You haven’t given me the code.”

Ruby had been worried about this. “Well, you’ll just have to best-friend trust me,” She held her pinkie finger out for a promise and Clancy narrowed his eyes at it before taking it and bobbing their hands firmly.

“I trust you. So, I have to, what, not hurt myself?” Ruby had a feeling it may be a bit harder than that but nodded anyway.

“I promise I won’t.” Clancy assured her, waving his pinkie finger at her as a reminder and Ruby’s smile was suddenly a lot more brittle. Their last pinkie-promise had not been kept, she remembered but now she just had to trust Hitch to get Clancy home safe.

Then, Hitch honked his horn and Clancy scurried to the car to jump into the backseat. As Ruby climbed into her default shotgun seat, Hitch pointed a finger at Clancy over his shoulder, as if to say, ‘he looks pretty alive to me’. Clancy was too busy doing his seatbelt up to notice and Ruby made a cutting throat gesture at Hitch to tell him to cut it out.

“If you drive safe and Clancy gets in okay, you can laugh at me all you want tomorrow.” She hissed at him. Hitch sighed but nodded and proceeded to pull out of the parking space as slowly as humanly possible.

“You don’t have to be stupid about it,” Ruby added, and Hitch gave her a private little smile and accelerated to the speed limit.

“How’ve you been Clancy?” Hitch asked, glancing back in the rear-view mirror.

“Pretty good! Not according to Ruby though, but I’m feeling great!” Clancy replied cheerfully. Ruby grimaced a little in the front seat.

“That’s a relief,” Hitch said pointedly, and Ruby grimaced a little more. It was 3:50 according to the car clock, which meant she only had to suffer Hitch’s self-assured looks until they dropped Clancy off.  

The five-minute car journey passed with Clancy asking Ruby about her theory for the next episode of Crazy Cops, which was set to come out on the next Thursday, and a subsequent argument about whether the season finale would include a background character from episode six as the new master villain.  

“I’ll see you tomorrow Rubes! Thanks for the lift, Hitch. Also, I am sorry about G.I. Joe,” Clancy blurted as he got out of the car, stooping to give Ruby an apologetic smile through the gap in the door before he shut it, with much less force than Ruby’s normal slam.

“G.I. Joe?” Hitch asked, turning away from the house to fix Ruby with a quizzical look.

“You don’t want to know—” Ruby started, never looking away from Clancy’s retreating back unlike Hitch.

That meant that she was able to watch, as if in slow-motion, Clancy cut across the front garden to the backdoor —which his dad insisted the children use instead of the front entrance— down the side of the outdoor swimming pool. It must have been uncovered recently, to allow for cleaning before the summer season began, for Clancy slipped on the marble edging on the pool and fell in a heap of limbs and a great splash.

Ruby watched his head crack against the wall and threw the car door open, fighting to get out before an unconscious Clancy took his first breath underwater.

Hitch heard the splash and cursed beside her, jumping out of the car before Ruby. She ran with all of her strength after him, leaping water sprinklers in the lawn to get to Clancy. He was fully dressed and shoed, with his satchel a block of concrete around his neck, there was no way he would be able to float unconscious.

Hitch shrugged off his suit jacket a split second before he jumped into the deep end after Clancy, and the resulting splash of water—

Woke Ruby up with a jolt, lying curled in her blankets at home with a telephone jangling on the hook next to her.

Chapter Text

Ruby heaved herself out of bed, opened the door for Hitch and wore the same outfit as yesterday (now freshly washed and placed back in her wardrobe). Every single action she did— brush her teeth, order a hot chocolate at the Diner, listen to the same Chime Melody jingle on the car radio, sit in the auditorium listening to LB, assuring Hitch she was fine when he asked— felt like muscle memory.

She didn’t move from her seat when everyone else stood around her, tangibly feeling the seconds that ticked past hit her skin like raindrops. Hitch gave her a gentle nudge to get her to stop blocking the row of seats for other agents and Ruby clambered upright on numb feet.

She was dreading living through school again and repeating the same lessons, even if she did have Clancy’s new code on her side.

“We don’t have to rush to school straight away,” Hitch told her, obviously thinking she was in shock from the meeting.

She scanned the crowd for any distraction from school and her eyes caught on a maroon jumper moving through the black and grey-suited crowd above them.

“Can I catch you up?” Ruby asked with the first spark of energy she’d had all day, squeezing past Hitch insistently in the narrow row.

This had always been part of her eventual plan, but she didn’t exactly have time to plan her move each day. Now would be the best time as any to do it.

“I’ve told Hal that you’re no longer allowed in the gadget room, you’ll be escorted out to the nearest exit if you even look at it.” Hitch replied, trying to follow her gaze but obviously not seeing what she saw.

“Not the gadget room. I need to talk to Blacker,” Ruby explained distractedly, watching the sweater get further and further away as she tried to elbow her way into the aisle.

Hitch frowned. “Why don’t I come with—”

Ruby shook her head impatiently. “Why don’t you distract Froghorn? Treat him to an apple crumble in the canteen while I catch up with Blacker. Having him in the room will just annoy us both.”

Hitch’s lips thinned in discontent, but he raised his arm to send off a quick message to Froghorn. “He’s on his way. Do you want to split?”

Finally, Hitch was understanding her. “I’ll send a ping when I finish up. Everything is okay. Don’t worry.”

“Now, I’m worried—” Hitch started but Ruby had already darted off down the corridor to where Blacker had disappeared. She tried to remember what was in deep chartreuse and concluded the finance department. Blacker did love his accountant gossip.

She finally caught up to him just a few doors down from the breakroom, with a new stack of folders in his arms that he hadn’t had a few minutes ago, talking to a lady with a headscarf. Ruby didn’t recognise her at all, but that wasn’t uncommon in a workplace as big as Spectrum.

“I can’t believe he tried to excuse his behaviour on hypnosis,” Blacker was shaking his head, and that conversation was nearly interesting enough for Ruby to fall behind and eavesdrop on, but she was running on a limited time schedule.

Purposely making her footsteps heavy, she approached the two, knowing if she popped up at Blacker’s elbow unannounced he would drop all of his friend’s paperwork in surprise. 

The lady turned to look first and looked completely bemused at the sight of Ruby—five foot two and wearing a T-Shirt that says ‘Look, stop me if you’ve heard this one before…’—until Blacker looked back and smiled, although he looked a little confused too.  

“Oh Ruby!” He said casually, and Ruby immediately knew to keep her mouth closed around the third member in their impromptu work break. Blacker called her Ruby in the safety of the coding room, but Redfort around other agents in the interest of privacy. If he wasn’t calling her Redfort, the woman was either not to be trusted or not to be told anything incriminating.

“What are you doing here?” The woman inquired, looking extraordinarily close to cooing over Ruby’s height and age, who had a bit of a sixth sense for adults who did that.

“Laila, this is Ruby, she’s a proper little hooligan.” Blacker laughed easily and Ruby waved at her distractedly. This was Blacker’s way of asking if she was alright, bastardising old spy slang into a new code for the two of them.

“It’s getting a bit hostile over at HR.” Ruby told him with a grimace and an emphasis on ‘hostile’. No thank you Blacker she was not alright.

“Do your parents work here?” Laila pressed and when a lock of hair fell into her face, Ruby didn’t bother pushing it back. maybe it was best the other woman didn’t recognise her in the Mini Mart.  

“She’s related to one of them up at fielding,” Blacker informed Laila, and then glanced at Ruby. “Was it a sick day today?” Ruby nodded again, although she was privately wondering if she was related to a fictional co-worker or ‘related’ to Hitch. Maybe she and Blacker should co-ordinate a story for times like these.

“Stopped by on my way to school to drop off a briefcase.” Ruby answered, perhaps forcing Blacker’s suggested story a little too far. She wasn’t even sure whether this lady was a Spectrum accountant or if LB just hired accountants who kept their heads down and didn’t stray too far into the purple of Spectrum. Maybe she just thought she worked for some advertising company. 

“Oh, how sweet of you!” Laila said fondly.

“Also, I’m lost.”

Blacker very gently transferred the files in his hands back to Laila, nattering all the while.

“I can walk you back to the reception area, can’t have you wandering around up here all day. Lai, I’ll have to catch you another time,” he declared affectionately but firmly.

“You too, you still have to tell me all about your man!” Clearly Laila was not a spy, judging by Blacker’s minute wince at the information she’d just blabbed. Unless she was a spy, and this conversation was all a front because she was deep undercover.

Ruby halted that train of thought before she let anything spy-related slip and kept her forced smile up as Laila waved and headed in the opposite direction.

“She was nice,” Ruby started, a mischievous look on her face. Blacker pointed warningly at her, but he was already chuckling, leading them back the way Ruby had come, towards the auditorium and heart of Spectrum.

“She is very nice, thinks I’m a bookkeeper for Spectrum though. Convinced her that I just don’t want to talk about work when we chat, but I actually have no clue what a bookkeeper does exactly,” Ruby snorted. Blacker was one of the smartest people she knew, capable of untangling the most difficult codes, but appeared to be baffled at the idea of accountancy. “More importantly, what brings you down here?”

“I was looking for you,” Ruby admitted as the walls slowly bled through to blue.  “I need your opinion on something.”

Blacker grinned and spread his hands like telling her to bring it on. “At your service. What’s the issue?”

Guess she would just dive right in then. She checked behind them and around the next corner for any accountants listening in.

“Okay you’re going to think I’m crazy,” Ruby launched into it, like any conversation that started with that sentence would end in the speaker being labelled ‘sane’. “But this day has already happened.”

Blacker narrowed his eyes at her, clearly not believing her but apparently willing to listen anyway. “What’s so special about today?”

“Well, firstly LB calls this meeting and tells us all that the Count is back on the scene. This is the fourth time I’ve had to listen to it, and nothing new ever happens.”

“The fourth time? So, you’ve been doing this for four days?” Blacker verified.

“Four days exactly, since last Monday.” Ruby confirmed. “And I think the Count has something to do with it, he kidnapped me and showed me some big machine, and now the day just keeps repeating.”

Blacker looked like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “When did you figure this all out?”

“The second day, the first proper day of the loop. I woke up back in my room, but I couldn’t remember getting there. And Hitch told me we had to go into Spectrum because of the Count.”

“I see,” Blacker said sagely, and Ruby could see him reaching for the pen he kept in his front blazer pocket, the one that acted like her own barrette and would send out a message to any Spectrum agent. Although Ruby could guess that this particular message would be going to a certain butler.

“Do you want proof?” Ruby asked desperately. “You’ve gotten me a chocolate doughnut today because the Diner didn’t have any raspberry ones. And at some point, today, you spill your coffee down yourself because of Froghorn, but I don’t know how you actually do it.”

Blacker’s hand froze and moved slowly away from his pen. “Does Hitch know about all of this?”

“I’ve told him three times now, and he hasn’t believed me once. He never remembers the next day either. I’ve spoken to LB, and she managed to give me a lead, but I’ll bet she forgotten too.”

They finally reached the coding room and Blacker held the door open for her. Ruby threw herself into Froghorn’s seat, which she was allowed to use as long as Froghorn never saw her in it. Blacker took his own chair, and pulled his briefcase onto the table, unlatching the clasps.

“I suppose you don’t want the chocolate doughnut then?” He asked her, in a sad sort of way. “I never thought you would dislike doughnuts so much, even if they are chocolate.”

Ruby sighed quietly. Blacker was 100% focused on the wrong thing here, but she nodded anyway. “It’s the only doughnut I’ve been able to have in four days. But… I’ll have it.”

Blacker beamed at her acceptance of his peace offering. “If you say so, Redfort. It’s like I always say, a doughnut’s a doughnut.”

Ruby thought about rescinding what she said earlier about Blacker being one of the smartest people she knew but decided against it when she sat back down in the chair with her prize, careful not to spill chocolate sprinkles over Froghorn’s desk. Philosophically, Blacker was correct. A doughnut was a doughnut.

Blacker took a bite of his own doughnut and regarded Ruby from across the room. “Okay, say the day actually is repeating itself, what was the lead LB gave you?”

“She said it was possible. Apparently, Spectrum were looking into making some kind of machine that could reverse the clock twenty-four hours until some big event was fixed.”

Blacker winced. “Spectrum had a rather unpleasant past with that sort of stuff. Nasty, nasty experiments the lot of it, but it’s far more focused on good now. Of course, that was long before LB became Head,” He added, taking a moment to chew. “She would have only heard the majority of it when she accepted the role. Afterall, she was only… fourteen when SME was used.”

“She was pretty clear that it was all theoretical though,” Ruby said glumly. Her thoughts settled at the familiarity of eating doughnuts with Blacker in the coding room, and she pinched bits of doughnuts off to nibble. If anyone in Twinford could figure out the machine, it would be Blacker.

“Do you have any idea of what must be fixed though?” Blacker asked. “We’re only six-and-a-half hours into the day, so it must be something later on. What’s happened that someone would turn the machine on for?”

Ruby had the feeling Blacker was discussing this with her in a hypothetical way, but his hypothetical was more in-depth than anyone’s reality. At least this way she could bounce ideas off of him.

“You remember Clancy, right? From the Eye Ball?” Ruby checked.

“’Course. Good kid with all that Count stuff,” Blacker confirmed, absently wiping chocolate from his fingers onto his trousers, and then paused. “Jittery though.”

“That’s the one. Well, he came to rescue me when the Count kidnapped me, I couldn’t signal Hitch with my barrette and the Count took my watch so all I had was my puzzle-tag and I couldn’t know if it’d worked—” She was defensive about Clancy’s presence that afternoon but Blacker nodded along, albeit with a frown. “So, he came into the room right after the Count left, and the machine exploded. Clancy got really hurt, and Hitch came to find us right before…” Ruby cleared her throat quickly, knowing how irrational the next part sounded.

“Right before I woke up in bed. It all kind of went black, and then Hitch came in to tell me about a Spectrum meeting.”

Blacker reached out for a mug of coffee on his desk that Ruby hadn’t seen him make. He dipped his little finger in it and deemed it worthy of drinking. Ruby wondered just how long exactly it had been sat there but focused on telling her story.

“So, it all loops around like that: Hitch comes in, Clancy gets hurt like on that first day, and Hitch comes in straight afterwards. And no one but me remembers.”

Blacker went to take a sip of his coffee but was interrupted by the door swinging open and Froghorn sweeping in, with the faintest of smiles on his face. Blacker turned to look at the newcomer, but his hand seemingly didn’t receive the message and he poured a good splash of coffee down his sweater before he realised and jumped up out of his chair.

Ruby had hopped out of Froghorn’s seat the second the door opened and inconspicuously sidestepped towards the back of the room while Froghorn was distracted by Blacker’s ineptitude at basic human tasks.

“Blacker, seriously?” He complained and marched to his newly vacated desk to pull out a handful of rags from a drawer. Blacker tried to blot the coffee with the hem of his sleeve, which succeeded only in spreading the mess around.

“It was cold anyway, so I didn’t even burn myself,” Blacker said defensively, accepting a cloth from Froghorn to stop the dripping. “Ruby, I’ll be right back, promise. Don’t go anywhere.”

Ruby nodded, only barely getting a hold of her giggles at the scenario she just watched play out. So much for Froghorn coming in too quietly and scaring Blacker, Ruby had a feeling she knew what caused Blacker to spill his coffee. Blacker cradled the cloth to his front and scooped his spare jumper out of his briefcase to change into.

“You two please play nice,” He called as he left the room, and finally Froghorn turned to Ruby like he’d only just noticed her.

“I didn’t realise I was babysitting,” He complained, turning back on Blacker but he was already out of the door and earshot of Froghorn’s whining. Ruby let the silence hang for a moment as Froghorn sat at his desk, blissfully unaware of her being sat there barely a minute earlier.

“I like your hair though,” Ruby spoke purposely nonchalantly. Froghorn frowned with a no-doubt lacking comeback on his lips when he actually reached up to feel his hair. Normally the codebreaker would have his hair tied back in a slick ponytail, or even perhaps a bun if they were working into the night, but today he must have pulled it out in the comfort of his own office and simply… forgot to tie it back up.

Ruby, who was rarely jealous about things such as hair or beauty, had to admit Froghorn had nice hair. Thick, growing past his shoulders and thick, with a wavy ends from how he styled it. Obviously Blacker agreed with her. 

“Do you think Blacker noticed?” He asked, embarrassment obscuring his hate for Ruby for once. Ruby snorted.

“Noticed? That’s why he split his coffee everywhere,” Froghorn went pale, which was not a good look for a man who was already gray with stress. Another snicker was fighting its way to Ruby’s lips, and she turned away to commandeer Blacker’s chair to spin in circles.

“That was unprofessional,” Froghorn muttered to himself, and Ruby had to agree. This time she was unable to prevent her giggle and Froghorn shot her a foul look.

“Doesn’t kindergarten start soon?” He snapped in an attempt to distract her from his unfortunate fashion disaster.

“I was in the middle of asking Blacker something when you interrupted us. Now I’m stuck with you until he gets back.”

“I don’t know how Blacker gets any work done with you biting his ankles constantly.”

“I don’t know how you get any work done when you’re constantly complaining about every little thing,” Ruby shot back. Froghorn’s face flushed red in sharp contrast to his blanch earlier.

“It’s not just every little thing, just one tiny snot-faced—"

Blacker burst back through the door, with his new stain-free jumper on and the old one clutched in his hand. Froghorn’s mouth snapped shut and he resorted to glaring at Ruby. “Ruby! I’ve just had an idea about your comic idea.”

Ruby opened her mouth to ask when exactly she’d had this comic idea and realised Blacker had never actually said he thought she was telling the truth. He knew her love for sci-fi television and comics and had obviously connected the dots, despite not connecting shit.

“And hey, Miles can probably help out on this one too, right?” Blacker turned on Froghorn in excitement and Ruby got the privilege of watching the man struggle between helping Blacker or annoying Ruby.

“What’s your idea then?” Ruby asked with some trepidation.

“Okay, so obviously the day keeps repeating, okay? And you think you know what this ‘accident is,” Blacker hooked quotation marks with his fingers to drive his point home. “You just have to prevent the accident.”

“I’ve been trying to prevent the accident each day, and it always just seems to happen. It’s a different way every time, the whole universe is out against me.”

“Well, think of it this way,” Blacker started, hands spread wide for what was sure to be a thorough explanation of how Ruby could beat time and space itself, and was sharply cut off by a bleep from all three watches present.

Ruby lifted her arm to read from her wrist, but all she could discern was “AVOID N/NW TWINFORD AT ALL COSTS” before Blacker swore and turned to leave completely. Clearly him and Froghorn had received a different message as Froghorn was pushing himself out of his chair as well and following him to the door.

“Ruby stay here! Hitch will be around to help you, just don’t go out!” Blacker called, a calm steady tone in his voice, even though he didn’t look calm. Ruby followed them to the door in confusion, watching doors up and down the hallway open and agents pour out. There was a fearful wailing siren playing from hidden speakers in the corridors and it scared Ruby more than she liked to admit.

“—Never seen weapons like this—” Agents were speaking over the siren’s clatter, checking concealed weapons holsters, and sending message after message on watches, pens and other gadgets. There were following some protocol Ruby had never heard of or seen before, and all Ruby knew was that she wasn’t going to be left alone without Blacker, or heaven forbid, Froghorn.

“How didn’t satellites—”

“—Think it’s the Count—?”

Froghorn turned to block Ruby leaving the room, his face deadly serious. “Hitch will come and find you. This is not your mission, Redfort.”

“But what’s—”

The noise from the agents died away like a door had been shut between her and them and was replaced by the ringing of a phone that she automatically reached out to push off the hook. The bright fluorescent lights of Spectrum had dimmed to feeble sunrays pushing through the window at the end of her bedroom. The other two phones quietened after a moment as Ruby lay trying to make sense of the past few seconds. She took advantage of the silence to check her watch but it was empty of any alerts.

The door was pushed open, and Hitch peered through the gap at her, before judging her to be awake and entering. “Hey kid, heard you were up.”

“What happened?” She asked, mostly to herself. She doubted Hitch would really have any answers for her.

“You’ve got a busy day ahead; boss wants—”

“Us in by six, yeah I got that bit,” Ruby pushed herself out of bed, already used to Hitch’s script in the morning. They had just been at Spectrum, barely seven in the morning and the day had ended. What had happened?

A thought occurred to Ruby as she headed to her wardrobe to find a clean outfit. The day had ended, presumably along with Clancy Crew. Something had happened to him before he ever even reached school. She swallowed hard and picked up the first T-Shirt on the pile and shooed Hitch out so she could change.

“Be downstairs in—”

“Ten minutes, whatever, if you get out, I could even make it five,” Ruby interrupted him again, and Hitch frowned at her even as he headed for the door.

“You trying out mind-reading or something?”

“Something,” She repeated impatiently and was treated to another suspicious look before he clicked the door shut behind him and she was left in peace.

They skipped the Diner because Ruby was too eager to get to Spectrum. They were early enough that they caught Blacker just before he entered the auditorium.

“Oh, after you two!” He said, gesturing Ruby through the door before him. “Early enough to get a good seat too.” Ruby led the way, through the slowly-filling auditorium, and thankfully didn’t bump into anyone. Behind her, Blacker was speaking to Hitch in hushed tones. Ruby caught something along the lines of ‘had a good night’ but impatiently interrupted when they were seated in a row, Ruby in the middle.

“Do you remember what I said to you yesterday?” She asked, like maybe Blacker’s sci-fi nerdiness would buffer every Twinfordite’s amnesia of the repetition of the previous day.

Blacker looked a little sheepish. “I’m sure I will. Remind me of what it was?”

Ruby realised Blacker was assuming she’d messaged through her watch, instead of in-person. He didn’t truly remember anything of the previous day and was assuming it was because of his usual scatter-brained forgetfulness.

“I’ll tell you after this,” Ruby muttered, sinking back into her seat in defeat. “It’s going to take a lot of explaining.”

“I only just got the message about the meeting,” Blacker admitted. “I had just made myself a coffee as well. What do you think LB’s got?”

Ruby sighed, arms now crossed as she stared down at the empty podium. “Something something, the Count’s back with a limp, a van and a dumb dye job and is set to trap me in the body of a fourteen-year-old for the rest of time.”

There was a long beat of silence and when she looked up at Hitch and Blacker, they were exchanging concerned looks.

“But that’s just my guess,” She amended quickly before perking up in her seat. “Hey Hitch, want to put some money on it?”

If Ruby was about to get a quick buck, she wouldn’t know as LB walked out from the storage space door and the lights dimmed. Hitch gave her a belated ‘Shhh!’ and LB began her monologue.

Ruby fidgeted all the way through the meeting, which was only mitigated by Blacker producing a receipt from the Double Diner and (using a pen reluctantly loaned by Hitch) starting a game of squares with her. She knew Blacker assumed she was frightened with the news of the Count instead of just bored stiff but appreciated the gesture all the same, even if she did lose.

Finally, LB dismissed the agents, and Ruby followed Hitch out, bracketed safely between the two broader men.

“Froghorn’s got his own case this morning so my office should be empty,” Blacker supplied as they headed away from the bustle of agents towards butter-yellow.

“You have an office?” Ruby asked in surprise, looking at Hitch for confirmation. Hitch held his hands up in surrender, like he was being accused of wrongdoing.

“Yeah, the room in yellow. You’re in there all the time Ruby,” She had always assumed Froghorn had been promoted over Blacker, despite his age. “Miles too, honestly I should just ask for a second one just to get any work done.”

“Have you never realised that was Blacker’s office?” Hitch smirked and raised his hands higher when she scowled at him.

“Wait, if it’s your office, why does Froghorn have a desk?”

A smile spread across Blacker’s face. “It’s from he worked as a first-level alongside me, before he got his own office.”

“Why doesn’t he use his own office?”

“Why indeed,” Hitch said very quietly under his breath and then started examining the yellow paint on the wall when Ruby snapped around to stare at him.

“What does that insinuate?”

“That’s enough, thank you Hitch,” Blacker said in the sternest voice Ruby had ever heard him use, which did fall short of ‘stern’ and just about reached ‘firm’. Hitch lowered his arms and gave Blacker his widest, flashiest grin.

Blacker unlocked the door to the coding room, making a beeline for a mug on his desk, testing the coffee’s temperature by holding the back of his hand against the side and then, deeming that ineffective, with the tip of his finger.

Hitch headed for the back of the room to the coffee machine to fix himself a cup of coffee and Ruby sat in Froghorn’s chair, casting her eye over the documents on the table for anything interesting. She came up upsettingly empty, thanks to Froghorn’s meticulous organisation system that locked all the fun documents away in a drawer. She could easily pick the lock of course, but even she wasn’t stupid enough to do that in front of both Hitch and Blacker.

“What do you think of that then?” Hitch asked over the rumble of the machine. Ruby glanced between him and Blacker, wondering if she should warn the other man about his coffee.

“I think he’s got a plan,” She started and Blacker nodded enthusiastically. “But I don’t know what exactly is, or even what he’s aiming for.” She did not mention what she did know about the plan: so far, Hitch appeared to either think she had had some equivalent of a nervous breakdown whenever she described the time loop to him or that she was joking. She wasn’t keen on trying to explain the whole situation to two people simultaneously. There was no way it would end well, far more likely that she’d never enter the halls of Spectrum again.

“He’s too overt,” Blacker explained, and Ruby sat back, hoping his expertise may help unpick the plan. “He’s never been physically seeking us out before this: he wants to be found; he wants Spectrum after him, especially after no contact since New Year’s. Even the agents who saw him last night said it was like he was waiting for them to notice him.”

“My fear is he’s a decoy for something much worse. The bait, or the carrot on a stick so we’re looking the other way,” Hitch explained, coming over to lean on the edge of Blacker’s desk, stirring his coffee thoughtfully.

“The light on an anglerfish,” Ruby suggested helpfully.

“But if he’s the decoy, what is he hiding?”

“The Count was only dangerous with Casey Morgan’s funding and plan, if she’s dead what is his plan now?”

Ruby was about to open her mouth to tell the agents about what exactly had happened five days ago, regardless of what Hitch’s reaction may be, when there was a chirp from Hitch’s watch. Ruby automatically checked hers, suddenly gripped by the fear that the alarms would begin shrieking again, but whatever message had been sent, it was to Hitch and Hitch alone.

“LB wants me to check in with her about the Count,” Hitch announced, setting his coffee down on Blacker’s desk. “Ruby I’ll be back to get you to school, don’t go anywhere.”

Ruby nodded, and then Hitch was gone with one last nod to Blacker and she finally had a moment alone with the coder.

Before she could even begin to unpack the situation of the past four days, Blacker was already digging in his briefcase for something.

“Hey Ruby,” he called. “What you said before the meeting started?”

“Hmm?” Ruby rocketed up in her seat. “Do you remember?”

“Uh, no sorry. I just wanted to warn you, if you’re looking into the communications and information about the Count, maybe don’t make it so obvious?” Blacker suggested as tactfully as possible. “You were spot on with the limp and the, what… dye job? But if LB knew that you knew that before she even said it you would be in big trouble.”

Ruby dropped back in her seat. “I’ll watch it,” she replied with no conviction.

Blacker looked her over with a concerned eye. “That’s all. Don’t need you getting grounded now that you’ve done your Stage Three training. Hey, maybe if they get any more information on the Count, you could be put on the investigation team. Something different for a change?”

Ruby nodded morosely. Something different would mean a whole new day. Not likely. “There’s an actual reason for how I knew about the Count.”

“Well, I’m interested in the reason, but not if it’s going to get either of us in trouble,” Blacker teased, in a way that suggested he didn’t really mind being Ruby’s accomplice.

“Do you promise not to call Hitch when I tell you? At least don’t call him during it, listen first and then ask questions,” Ruby bargained. Blacker’s eyes were serious behind his glasses, and he nodded slowly.

“Before we get into it,” he began, and Ruby gestured for him to go on. “Fancy a doughnut?”

Ruby paused to think, as serious as Blacker was, and then shook her head. “You’re going to need it way more than me.”

“You’re in a time loop?” Blacker demanded incredulously.

“Yes.”

Blacker was then silent for so long Ruby figured she probably could’ve had the doughnut and finished it in that time. The doughnut in question had been abandoned halfway through, as Blacker had gotten engrossed in Ruby’s story.

“You’re in a time loop?”

Ruby was beginning to think that she was now actually trapped in another, smaller time loop where Blacker just echoed his question for four days straight when he straightened up in his chair, steepling his elbows on the armrests.

“Let me run through this once, just to make sure I’m not missing anything,” Ruby couldn’t begrudge him some time to wrap his head around it. Her own rule seven was ‘never forget the little things’, it was the little things that led people to notice the big things and boy, did Ruby need Blacker to notice the big thing right now.

“The machine blew up, Clancy got hurt, the day replicates itself. So, we can assume that the machine is causing everything as part of its mission objective.”

“Kronos,” She was following along so far, and Blacker was getting more animated, shifting in his seat and gesturing abstractly around the room.

“Wait, what?”

“The machine, I call it Kronos. It’s just quicker,” Blacker didn’t look convinced but changed tracks agreeably enough.

“If Clancy doesn’t die, Kronos will be able to recognise the purpose is met and then the day can finish and continue over to Tuesday,” Today Blacker seemed to have taken the time loop idea in stride, thanks to the doughnut and Froghorn situation, and Ruby couldn’t help but heave a huge sigh of relief. Having someone (not just Clancy Crew) on her side was a help, pulling a weight from her shoulders.

“So, like LB said, it was made to prevent an accident, and it can’t stop doing its own mission until the accident is prevented. It can stop looping reality when the objective is met.”

“You got this far yesterday before the loop began again,” Ruby informed him. “For the love of God, don’t stop now.”

Blacker shot her a grin, but obeyed, only pausing for breath. “It’s changing space and time to try and prevent his death, from the very first explosion. Probability-wise it will eventually find the exact sequence of events that will prevent his death, but that could take hundreds and hundreds of days. You’re the only person in the whole world who is having an effect on the time loop, you decide what events happen…”

All of a sudden, Blacker was on his feet, pacing up and down his office and Ruby couldn’t resist the magnetic pull of springing up to pace with him.

“Whether we go to Spectrum, whether I see Clancy before school or lunch or after school, who knows about the loop,” she provided helpfully.

“Exactly! You directly affect the events, so you need to poke and prod until something new happens! Get Spectrum and LB involved, don’t let him leave the house, eventually you’ll hit upon the events that lead to Tuesday. Maybe something at school happens that means he will always get hurt, maybe it’s an event even earlier that triggers it.”

Ruby nodded, mind whirling with ideas on what ways to push the world into her own shape.

Blacker stopped suddenly and turned to Ruby, an intense look in his eye. He was slouched, leaning backwards slightly so he wasn’t towering over her. Still taller, but not in an aggressive way. “If there’s anyone who can do it in the entire world, I think it’s you. I don’t know what I would possibly do if anyone I loved died in front of me, let alone multiple times. You just have to remember that you will figure it out eventually,” His smile turned just a touch sad. “And Ruby? I’ll always be here, waiting for you to come and see me. I may not remember again tomorrow, or in three loops time, but I’ll always have a doughnut and an ear to listen to you.”

Ruby was biting down on her lip hard to stop herself doing anything embarrassing like cry in front of Blacker. “I’ll come and see you again soon. And I’ll tell you all about it when I figure it out.”

Blacker grinned widely. “I know you will Ruby, and I can’t want to hear the full story. Now Hitch is on his way back, and you have school. I can try and get Hitch to understand, but I can’t make any promises.”

But Ruby was already shaking her head. “He doesn’t get it. I’ve tried three times and I can’t figure out how to convince him.”

Blacker frowned slightly, looking sincerely frustrated. “He trusts you, implicitly. You understand why someone explaining space-time issues at you might freak you out a bit. Just remind him of the trust he has in you, and he’ll follow along, belief in the time loop or not. Hitch values trust above nearly anything else.”

“I’ll keep trying with Hitch, but there’s only so far I can push him before he sics Dr Selgood on me,” Ruby said wryly.

“Hitch will help you no matter what, surely you know that by now,” Ruby nodded mutely. “I’m sure you’ve already tried pulling Spectrum agents in to protect Clancy, but LB cannot withhold resources if you tell her you have reason to believe Clancy could be in danger.”

Ruby had a feeling that this was not a Spectrum hack that Blacker should be imparting onto her but listened intently anyway.

“If you tell Hitch in the morning, at the very beginning of the loop, agents could be mobilised quickly to ensure nothing happens to him. 24 hours spent wrapped in cotton wool and babied may not be his idea of a good time, but it should be enough for Kronos to reset the world.”  

“It’s somewhere to start at least. LB tried to get agents involved before, but they couldn’t stop it.”

“Having agents ready to act will narrow the probability of the event. Then if you can stop it some other way, it’ll be avoided all together.”

Relief was spreading through Ruby like warmth. Every ounce of intelligence in her was reminding her that just because Blacker had a plan, it didn’t mean that the loop would be fixed straight away. It was trial and error, like filling in Sudoku squares, but Ruby felt capable of doing it for the first time, instead of feeling like she was scaling an insurmountable mountain with one step forward and three steps back.

“That’s… that’s actually a really good plan Blacker,” she told him, shedding all thoughts of teenager street cred in favour of injecting as much sincerity into her voice as possible.

“Sometimes I can earn my keep,” He smiled at her knowingly, like he saw and understood all of her gratitude.

Saving Ruby from any further uncoolness, Hitch entered the room, tapping away at his watch. He only looked up when he clocked the silence in the room. Ruby wondered what he thought when he saw her and Blacker stood in the middle of the room with excited scheming looks on their faces but he only quirked an eyebrow at the duo.

“Do I want to know?”

“Oh definitely,” Blacker teased but straightened up to return to his desk. He picked up a mug of coffee and took a hearty swig, only to choke on it. He spat half back into the mug and half over his burgundy jersey.

“I was just about to say,” Hitch said in the dullest tone possible, over the sound of Blacker coughing black coffee from his sinuses. “That was my coffee.”

“I can tell, thank you,” Blacker managed. “There’s no sugar in that, how do you stomach it?”

Ruby was too busy thinking of new strategies to laugh properly but managed a snort all the same.

“That’s not the first time that’s happened,” She told Blacker meaningfully.

“You could have warned me!”

“Normally it’s your own coffee you spill, I didn’t see this one coming,” Ruby defended herself.

“Maybe it shows it’s changing,” Blacker pointed out excitedly and Ruby nodded slowly, considering it. Hitch was looking baffled on the side-lines of their conversation, and he reached for his coffee before he appeared to think twice about it and took both mugs—Blacker’s stone cold drink and Hitch’s half-coffee/half-Blacker-spit—to pour down the small sink at the back of the room.

“Hopefully,” Was all she could bring herself to say, knowing she had thought the day to be over several times before and had been wrong each time.

“I don’t want to know about whatever you’re talking about,” Hitch interrupted and both coders turned to look at him with surprise, having nearly forgotten he was there. “But you have school now Ruby and Blacker, I daresay you have some work to be doing.”

Ruby rolled her eyes without hiding her face in time to conceal it from Hitch. Blacker gave her a sympathetic look, and then turned around to give Hitch the exact same look.

Hitch held the door open for Ruby and she ducked under his arm, before Blacker’s voice called her back.

“I mean what I said Ruby, I’ll be around all day today, pop in if you think of anything else,” The coder was hovering at the door, propping it open with his foot as Hitch stepped into the hallway.

“I know,” Ruby replied, giving him and his stained jumper one last smile. “Thanks for understanding.”

If possible, Blacker’s smile got wider and he waved before he stepped back into his office, hopefully to change his outfit so he didn’t wander out for lunch and get odd stares.

“What was that about?” Hitch gave her a quizzical look as the colours on the walls blurred past.

“He’s going through it,” Ruby excused the clandestine conversations blandly. “All sentimental and that.”

“That… sounds like Blacker,” Hitch agreed, although he clearly had no clue what was going on with either of them.

“What did LB want?”

“Me to join the patrol rounds searching for the Count. Don’t worry about the Count, nearly two hundred agents are out looking for him across Twinford, we’ll find him in whatever hole he’s lurking in.”

Blacker’s idea of changing the world to her own ends was spinning around in her head, and she quickly had an idea. “If you guys find him, can you tell me as soon as you possibly know? Or an idea of where he could be, at all.”

Hitch didn’t seem quite comfortable with this plan, by the way his mouth twisted down. “I don’t think you should get involved with the search in any way.”

“I won’t get involved! I just want to know where he is,” Ruby paused and made the choice to lay it on thick. “For my own peace of mind.”

“You cannot join the search team, or arrest team, or even interrogation team,” Hitch listed off on his fingers. “School will be the safest place for you until I can stay with you at home.”

“I promise I won’t leave school to join the team searching for him,” Ruby said without batting an eyelid. Hitch wouldn’t remember this in the morning, and hey, she wouldn’t leave school today.

“Not at all. You will be in school until I collect you at 3:30pm?” Hitch clearly smelled a rat, and his distrust in her hurt just a little.

But was completely understandable with Ruby’s track record so she managed to choke back her tears.

“Of course, Hitch,” She tipped her head back to look him directly in the eye over the roof of the car. “I won’t leave school at all today to go searching for the Count.”

Hitch pursed his lips but obviously couldn’t think of any further loopholes and Ruby smugly got into the car. “Fine. I’ll message you as soon as we have any sort of lead.”

Ruby smiled to herself in the front seat, and promptly tamped it down when Hitch climbed into the front seat. “That’s all I ask,” she said, unable to conceal the smugness in her voice. “Thank you.”

Hitch shook his head as he shifted the car into gear and headed for the Junior High school. “You really are the weirdest kid in town,” He muttered, but not without affection. And that was good enough for Ruby.

Chapter Text

Ruby turned down an alleyway, following her watch’s gentle buzzing echolocation. The blips pointed her in the right direction for one of the larger Spectrum entrances. The watch stopped in front of a chain-link fence, separating her from a small yard of large generators. The entrance was hidden on the far side of one of the metal boxes, and big enough to fit her bike through with her.

She tapped the code into the padlock; it was technically a week old in the time loop, but easy to remember. The lock didn’t open, but when she pushed at the braided metal of the gate, the magnets that held it together disconnected and she was able to step through the new doorway.

Pushing her bike through with her, she hurried to the back of the generators before someone noticed her on the wrong side of a fence that had ‘DANGER: DEATH’ signs all over it. The fence zipped itself back up behind her, and not even Hitch would be able to spot her now.

There was a raised panel of metal on the exterior of the generator, reinforcing the structure, and she drew a fly in the dust coating it. The outline gleamed white for a split second before a sheet of metal slid sideways to reveal a utilitarian elevator.

She clutched the handlebars of her bike tightly as they sank into the ground. The doors opened at the end of a very long corridor and Ruby was hit with the realisation that nothing was real.

No one would ever remember this except for her, and she was in a rush.

She swung her leg over the bike and pedalled down the hallway, calling out before she turned a corner in case she accidentally knocked anyone over. A handlebar clipped the corner as she turned, and she laughed a little more maniacally than she intended.

She was in deep purple sooner than ever before and left the bike by the door. Who in a spy agency would nick a bike?

She hammered on the door with both fists and didn’t wait for a reply before opening it.

Agent Miles Froghorn was sat behind his desk holding a mug, looking like he expected to be shot.

“I need your help,” Ruby says freely, without shame. If this goes pear-shaped, Froghorn will never remember.

Froghorn splutters, eyes searching the doorframe behind her like Hitch was going to appear and save him from torment. Unfortunately for Froghorn, Ruby had slipped out of her window before Hitch even knocked on her door and pedalled away from Greenwood House before he told her she had a meeting to attend.

Even more unfortunately for Froghorn, Ruby was hoping to distract him enough that he missed the message for the meeting so she could talk to him properly. LB wouldn’t fire him, and he would probably never even know what he’d missed out on.

“The world is looping. This day has happened again and again for a week,” She announced.

Froghorn stood up. “I don’t have time for your school-girl games,” He hissed and looked set to shoo her out with a broom.

Ruby darted around the desk and stole his desk chair. His fault for not having guest seating. How did Blacker come and hang out with him without two chairs? Oh wait, he just hung out in Blacker’s room anyway.

Froghorn was steadily going red.

“I need your help,” Ruby repeated, like if she chipped away at her dignity a little more, it would chip away at Froghorn’s stubbornness.

Froghorn’s fists clenched and then his shoulders slumped. It was almost sad how quickly he’d been bullied by a fourteen-year-old girl.

“What?” He asked, sounding exhausted. “You’ve lost track of what day it is?”

“This day has repeated no less than six times. Including the first time I woke up. Every day I wake up and it’s the same phone call, same Hitch coming into my room and then the same school day,” Ruby took a deep breath. “And then my best friend dies. And I wake up again.”

Froghorn looks more interested at that than anything else. Of course, he did.

“Why have you come to me?” He leaned against the side of his desk and Ruby kicked her shoes up in solidarity. Froghorn’s jaw twitched.

“I asked Hitch on days one and two,” She listed the names off on her fingers. “And LB on day three. Then Blacker on day four-five because he’s a sci-fi nerd. And now…” She spread her hands for a bit of show-biz pizzazz and nearly knocked a pencil pot over. “I’m pleading for your help.”

Froghorn pinched his nose hard. Ruby kind of felt the same way.

“Go over everything again, slowly,” He said finally. “But if this is a joke, know that I will make your life even worse than it is now.”

Ruby hadn’t expected him to agree so quickly. She knew he was a Doctor Who nerd too.

“Can’t get worse than watching my best friend fall to his death for the third time,” She quipped, and it tasted sour. Froghorn screwed his face up like he couldn’t quite believe she’d just joked about it.

Ruby waved a hand dismissively before Froghorn could call security in, or worse, Hitch. Reaching out, she grabbed Froghorn’s stress ball from its assigned spot on the desk. It was a squishy brain-shaped thing that had been a gift from Blacker after he saw how Froghorn picked at his nails and scabs when he was anxious. Froghorn watched it go with resignation but settled enough against the edge of the desk to listen to her.

Ruby’s explanation was pretty short. She’d managed to whip it up into a pretty succinct description after having to explain what was going on to Hitch every morning.

Froghorn listened, without any of his smarmy comments, as Ruby crushed the brain in her hands with malicious intent.

She finished and stared at him expectantly.

“You’re in a time loop,” Froghorn said finally. “They are theoretically possible, where time and space are frayed. But no one has a machine or anything even capable of creating one.”

“Blacker said the same thing.”

“I gave Blacker the books on it,” Froghorn retorted, only confirming his status as a nerd. Ruby very purposely did not mock him for the book list he seemed to be collecting, but only because she also wanted the book list. Froghorn shuffled through some papers on his desk before heading to the shelves at the back of the room.

Ruby glanced between the stress ball in her hands and the back of Froghorn’s head, but ultimately sighed. The loop had taken all her Froghorn-hating energy out of her, plus the potato-head was kind of being helpful now.

“This is a collection of essays on theoretical physics,” Froghorn called over his shoulder, waving a dark-brown bound book at her. “I have one on actual space-time, but it should be in the coding room.”

Ruby frowned but didn’t clear her face in time before Froghorn turned back to give her the book.

“You don’t want to go to the coding room?” He hazarded a guess, and Ruby shrugged, squeezing the stress ball.

“I’m going to see Blacker again after the other day and have to explain everything again. It gets boring,” Ruby told him, plucking the book out of his hands, and flicking through to the contents. In fairness, it did sound interesting, and she kept a hold of it, putting her feet back on the floor and pretending she didn’t see the dusty mark she’d left on a manilla folder.

Froghorn was looking a little green at the thought of being Ruby’s current favourite coder.

“I don’t like keeping things from Blacker, but you don’t have to say why you need the book,” His words were probably the kindest he’s spat out in years.

Ruby groaned and stood up. “Are you going to tell him everything the second I leave?” She pressed him and Froghorn headed for the door quickly so she couldn’t see his face.

“Of course not,” He said too quickly, and Ruby rolled her eyes as she followed him out.

“Whatever. I can prove to you that I’m in a time-loop though.”

Froghorn opened his mouth to say something but was distracted by the bicycle leaning against the wall outside his office.

“Is this yours?” He asked faintly. Ruby plopped the book in her basket for safe-keeping and nodded.

“Hitch isn’t here, how else would I get here?” She asked, putting one foot on the pedal, and pushing off with the other.

“Please don’t ride it,” Froghorn said through gritted teeth, looking like he’d rather die than be seen with Ruby on her bike in the halls of his prestigious workplace.

“I’m not properly riding it,” Ruby argued and Froghorn looked at the tops of the walls like he was expecting cameras, worrying at the ends of his hair where it hung in his face. Ruby almost felt bad for him, the only thing that kept him going was his anxiety over disappointing himself in front of Spectrum. Did the poor man even know what a good night’s sleep was? “What is LB going to do? She promised me she’d sort this out and the next day warned me to watch out for the Count—exactly three days too late.”

“Prove you’re in a time loop,” Froghorn spoke determinedly over her slander of their boss and Ruby acquiesced.

“Blacker got me a chocolate doughnut today because the raspberry ones were still in the oven, and he was running late for the meeting.”

Froghorn didn’t look convinced. “You could’ve seen him before you saw me,” He argued.

“Bold of you to assume that I wouldn’t immediately eat a doughnut when I saw it.”

“Not enough. If this is the eighth day, he must have done something obvious.”

“Oh, we’re hypothesising now?”

“He spills his coffee when you walk in and has to use his emergency back-up jumper.”

Froghorn’s nose wrinkled. “Again, that happens nearly daily to Blacker,” He argued. Ruby side-eyed him wondering if the fondness in his voice was her own projection or Froghorn actually showing emotion for once.

“He spills it really dramatically, just wait I’ll show you,” Ruby promised, feeling pleased with herself. Froghorn couldn’t argue with that evidence.

“Wait,” Froghorn exclaimed, a note of horror creeping into his voice. “Did you say meeting?”

He pulled a black suede Filofax from his jacket pocket and began flipping through the binder’s pages.  

“Oh yeah,” Ruby said flippantly, although she was wincing at the fallout that was about to occur. “LB called a meeting this morning at five, for six am, to warn everyone about the Count sightings. I needed to talk to you about this, so I skipped it as well. It’s pointless anyway because he’s already enacting his plan and the information is all old.”

“There was a meeting and you purposely stopped me from going?” Froghorn asked in horror. He was looking pale, and Ruby grimaced again. She hadn’t thought about what would happen to Froghorn if his anxiety in failing Spectrum was actually proved right. It seemed to have been the only thing holding him together.

“Well, not purposely, but you’ve gone to the meeting on time for the past six days,” Ruby offered, pushing her bike quicker to reach the coding room faster. She wanted at least one witness to her murder if this was the moment Froghorn snapped.

“LB is going to kill me.”

“She won’t even know you weren’t there. I can tell you everything that was said in it anyway: The Count is back, and has been spotted three times, not including the time he abducted me outside my school. He’s got some new weird machine that is probably directly causing the time loop, but LB is still hung up on his limp.”

Froghorn pulled up short and Ruby had to squeeze the brakes on her bike to stop. His walking pace was fast, like the fact he was well over six foot was a reason to make Ruby jog down the corridors behind him on days she didn’t have her bike, and she’d been rolling alongside him quite happily.

“Froghorn?” She said, turning her head to see him and then hopping off the pedal to face him properly when she took in the sight of him. He was picking at the back of his knuckles again and Ruby realised she probably could’ve held onto the stress ball a little longer.

“I’m not helping you with whatever science project you’re doing,” He said firmly but his shoulders were drooping from their perfect posture, avoiding eye-contact to check that no one was approaching down the corridor. “You’re taking the mick.”

Ruby privately thought she could handle the word ‘piss’ being said around her but didn’t broach the subject.

“You’re just trying to make fun of me in front of my co-worker.”

Ruby hid her wince fairly well and tipped her head back, like pleading for mercy from the time loop gods. She hated feeling sympathy for him.

“Froghorn,” She over-pronounced the ‘Fro’, omitting the ‘g’ for once in case that would end this little therapy session sooner. “Not everyone is out to get you. If I was doing this to make fun of you, I would be having fun. This is literal purgatory, and I’m only here because I think you’re smart enough to know what’s going on.”

“I left before I could see Hitch this morning, so he’s probably trying to track me down right now. The meeting wasn’t important, and I really didn’t have time to find you without Blacker or Hitch around. I’m sorry you missed the meeting, but I can tell LB that you were valiantly stopping me from stealing Spectrum property.”

Froghorn wasn’t looking convinced, so Ruby scrounged for another way to convince him.

“I don’t know what you and Blacker have going on, and I kind of don’t want to know. Blacker would never get involved in a scheme to make fun of you. That’s why April Fools was so boring this year, Blacker was undoing everything I set up before you could come along and see it. I had a whole Jell-O block with all your pens in it and Blacker just pulled out a new packet of your favourite fountain pens to replace it with,” Ruby ended up letting Froghorn think that she’d been building up to something big all day and she still got to see the man become a nervous wreck by the time five o’clock came around. Just because nothing had happened to him didn’t mean she had tried.

“Blacker and I have nothing—”

“Shut it Froghorn, you’re always in his office, that’s not co-worker territory.” Froghorn shut his big mouth really quick after that. Mentally, Ruby tallied one mark onto her imaginary ‘Emotionally/Intellectually/Physically Beat Froghorn’ chart that she had been tallying since she’d met the man.

“I’ll explain the time loop to Blacker as well, if you think I’m picking on you. I can’t think of anyone else to ask about fixing this, and I’m officially out of ideas.”

Froghorn took one step forward, listening to sense for the first time in his life, and Ruby let out a “Phew”

“Now come on and stop looking so sad. You’re old enough to communicate with Blacker like a big boy now, and I don’t want to play therapist for a forty-year-old man.”

That startled a laugh out of Froghorn, though he turned it into a cough. Ruby was not convinced. “I’m only in my late twenties,” He points out quietly and Ruby froze.

“You mean I could end up like you in fifteen years?” She asked with feigned dread in her voice.

“You wish you could get this kind of job security in today’s economy,” He sneered at her and Ruby grinned, knowing it was just as much of a joke as her comment.

They began walking again, and Ruby congratulated herself on averting the Froghorn crisis.

Just as they reached the door to the coding room, Ruby darted out in front of Froghorn to stop him.

“Let me go first, okay? It’s better this way,” She told him in a whisper and leaned her bike against the opposite wall. Froghorn opened his mouth to protest but Ruby walked through the open door before he could gather his thoughts.

Blacker always had the door propped open with a little hedgehog doorstop when he was alone in the room, mostly so people from other departments could dip in and out to chat about the latest rumour. He and Ruby had privately named the doorstop ‘Miles’ which was about as far as Blacker’s mean-spiritedness went.

Blacker looked up from the newspaper in front of him with a smile as she entered. “Hi Ruby. Bad news I’m afraid—”

“Chocolate not raspberry?” She interrupted, heading for the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on the back wall to find the book that had been promised to her.

“Have you already been to the Diner?” he asked her with a laugh, which trailed off slightly when he registered her head shake.

Froghorn chose that moment to enter, a scowl already on his face at the mention of doughnuts. Ruby knew it was because she’d been right and smirked at him.

Blacker sat upright suddenly when he saw Froghorn, quickly taking his feet down from the desk like he was a schoolboy being caught by a teacher and not actually older than Froghorn himself.

“Oh Miles!” Blacker greeted. His voice was far more pleased to see Froghorn than he had been to see Ruby and she tried not to take it personally.

Blacker tried to take a sip of his coffee to act casual when his eyes fully registered Froghorn’s appearance, and his mouth fell open even as his hand continued moving to pour the coffee down his front, not into his mouth.

This was at least the third time Ruby had witnessed this exact event and it still made tears come to her eyes when she watched it again.

Blacker jumped as coffee split down his front and he swore like he’d forgotten Ruby was still skulking in the background. Froghorn had a mix of horror and fondness on his face as he watched Blacker pour coffee on himself.

“Blacker, seriously?” Froghorn groaned, striding to his desk drawers to pull out his own supply of rags to help Blacker clean up.

“No, no it’s fine! It’s just—” Blacker put the cup down quickly and tried to stop himself dripping on the floor. “Have you done something new to your hair?” He asked, as Froghorn went to dab at Blacker’s chest with a tea-towel before thinking better of it and dropped the cloth onto his lap.

Froghorn’s hand flew to his head where he had unpinned it from a bun sometime in the last hour while he was pouring over files. Loose locks of hair were brushing his shoulders, and he realised with horror there was a pen stuck up there somewhere.

Ruby knew full-well that Froghorn considered it a grave insult to look anything but professional in the workplace, meaning a tightly tied ponytail and slicked back baby hair, and had happily not told him the state of his hair for this exact reason.

Although it wasn’t even her fault, Froghorn had made this mistake six times in a row. Who was the smart one now Miles?

Froghorn gave Ruby a furious look as he pulled his hair together at the base of his neck, snapping the elastic band audibly around his wrist and holding the pen between his teeth as he tried to hold onto a modicum of professionalism.

Blacker looked stricken, forgetting about cleaning up his coffee and just letting it soak into his shirt. “Don’t change it up on my account! I think it looked… nice.”

“Yeah Frogman, leave the bangs out,” Ruby pressed from her spot blending into the bookcases.

“That’s a good idea!” Blacker nodded enthusiastically. Froghorn was the kind to crumple under peer pressure and he obligingly left the bangs hanging loose around his scowling face.

Ruby gave him a thumbs up when his gaze landed on her again and his frown turned into a scowl.

“You’ll never get that stain out,” Froghorn said quickly, trying to shift the attention away from his hair. It worked, because Blacker stopped staring at him and down at himself sheepishly.  

“It’s an old one, I don’t mind. Plus, I was only doing a crossword so not even an important document!” Blacker told him triumphantly and Froghorn sighed again.

Blacker held the sodden cloth to his chest and stood up, leaving the mug, newspaper, and puddle of coffee in his wake. He pulled his backup sweater from his briefcase and waved it at Froghorn and Ruby.

“I’ll be back in five. Miles, do not tidy that up, I’ll do it when I’m back,” Blacker called, pointing an accusatory finger at his co-worker. Froghorn spluttered a protest but Blacker had already walked out of the door with a final comment of “Hey, cool bike.”

Froghorn sat down heavily in his chair staring at the surface of his desk. Ruby, who had no idea what book she was looking for, realised maybe she shouldn’t press Froghorn for details right now.

“That was unprofessional,” Froghorn muttered and visibly gathered himself, heading for Blacker’s desk, finding a tissue somewhere to mop up the puddle and then, annoyingly, nabbed Blacker’s pen to add a word or two to the crossword.

“He liked your hair,” Ruby pointed out, long-sufferingly. “Do you think he spilled his coffee everywhere and had heart-eyes because you were the worst thing he’s seen since that werewolf Spectrum 2 were looking into a few months back?”

“It was untidy,” Froghorn argued. “And that was just a wild bear with mange, they closed the case ages ago.”

“It was a cover-up I’m telling you,” Ruby countered. “It wasn’t even untidy, just… artfully messy. You look nicer with bangs too, less like you’re bald.”

She paused, thinking. “Or a vampire.”

Froghorn threw the wet tissues into the bin and mechanically emptied the stone-cold mug into the tiny sink at the back of the room. “Look, Redfort, the book is by Poral, T. M. Shelves are organised by the Dewey Decimal system, then alphabetically, then by order of height.”

Ruby gave Froghorn a disappointed look for knowing that off the top of his head and then craned her head to find 115, on the top shelf and then actually locate the book.

Froghorn seemed to spot it at the same time she did and sat bolt upright in his chair. “Redfort do not—”

Ruby placed her toe of her sneaker against the second-lowest shelf and used that to push herself up to grab the small cloth-bound volume from the highest shelf.

The bookcase wobbled alarmingly but Ruby had the book safe in her grasp and jumped back down again.

“Temporal, nice.” She read off the front cover and looked up just in time to see the surprise on Froghorn’s face.

“Please tell me you realised this was a pseudonym,” She demanded but Froghorn was saved from an undoubtedly embarrassing conversation by Blacker marching back in with a bundle of wet shirt and a green cable jumper with leather patches over the elbows.

“Miles,” He complained, barely two steps in the door and Froghorn immediately looked guilty.

“I wanted to save you a job,” He said defensively.

“Thank you,” Blacker said sincerely and Froghorn sniffed like he could care less.

The three of them stood in a beat of awkward silence, where neither Ruby nor Froghorn could look Blacker in the eye, and Blacker didn’t know who to address first.

“Anyway, did you want that doughnut Ruby?” He said finally and Ruby nodded, weighing up her options of sitting in the coding room to read the book now and bounce ideas off of Froghorn, or avoiding Hitch’s wrath when he finally found her and head to school.

“I’m surprised you didn’t grab it off me the second you got in the door.” Blacker joked as he pulled the bag from his briefcase and held it out. “I know it’s not your favourite, but you know what I always say—”

“A doughnut’s a doughnut,” Ruby chimed in over the top of Blacker.

Blacker looked surprised before he grinned. “I guess I say that a lot,” He smiled and Ruby tried her best to return it, crossing the room to take the wax paper bag from him.

“Cripes, physics looks harder than when I did it in school,” He commented when he saw the book in her hands, even though she had it on good authority that he’d read the same book too.

“Bit of light reading, you know,” She said blandly. Blacker had been awfully nice about the whole situation when she’d explained it to him on day fourfive, but she didn’t want to try to convince him again just for him to give the same platitudes.

“Blacker, did you know it was a pseudonym?” Froghorn asked, still looking a little shellshocked.

Blacker busied himself with making a fresh cup of coffee and a cup of peppermint tea for Froghorn, giving the other man a pained look. “Of course, I did Miles.”

Froghorn scoffed at his desk, crossing his arms like a child. Ruby sneered back at him.

“Where have you both been? I couldn’t see either of you at the meeting,” Blacker remarked. Ruby wondered which high-up bozo hired Froghorn for a secret spy agency, because he was already flushing pink and Blacker wasn’t even interrogating him.

“I distracted him and completely forgot about the meeting,” Ruby said, as convincingly as she could. Blacker set his cup down with a wounded look in his eyes.

“Were you two arguing again?” He asked. Ruby and Froghorn had actually been late for multiple meetings because they’d been bickering and become side-tracked by one of them producing some book to prove their own point on a niche, pointless subject.  

“We weren’t arguing,” Froghorn answered. “Just… debating something.”

Blacker gave the two of them a puzzled but tolerant look. “Well, if anyone asks, I saw you both there at the back.”

Froghorn sighed in relief, but Ruby was already sending finger-guns at Blacker. “I appreciate it, but if Hitch asks, you didn’t see me at all.”

Blacker dragged his hand down his face tiredly. “Any particular reason why?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here. I had to—” Ruby paused. Blacker would never believe that she came into Spectrum to willingly talk to Froghorn. “Get a book for a science project.”

Blacker shrugged. “I don’t know how you’ll cite top-secret government information for your book report, but I bet yours will be the best in the class.”

Ruby smiled gratefully at him but was cut off by a bleep from Blacker’s watch. They both froze, and Ruby wilted under Blacker’s ensuing look.

“Let me guess?” She asked and Blacker stood up, pushing his jumper sleeves up his forearms.

“There’s an incredibly worried spy wandering Twinford for you right now, I’m in charge of searching Spectrum. Hitch will be on his way in ten anyway, but he thinks the Count might’ve got you.”

Ruby groaned.

“The Count is back?” Froghorn interrupted.

“Oh yeah, that was what the meeting was about,” Blacker provided helpfully, about ten minutes too late. “The Count is back, he’s been spotted three times, he has a limp, he has a plan. I made you notes because I couldn’t see you in there.”

The coder fished a scrap of receipt out of his pocket with the Double Doughnut logo on the front and a messy scrawl of Gregg Shorthand on the back, slapping it down on Froghorn’s desk on his way to the door. “Everything LB said is there.”

“Ruby, I hope this science project is good enough for scaring the heejeebies out of Hitch, but as long as you aren’t here when I come back, I haven’t seen you since last week.”

Ruby saluted Blacker who returned it with a conspiratorial grin.

“I appreciate it Blacker. I’ll explain it all to him tonight,” She promised as he left the office.

She and Froghorn remained in silence for a moment, Ruby reading the table of contents and Froghorn translating Blacker’s notes, until he cleared his throat.

“What was Blacker’s theory about all this anyway?” He asked, pointedly ignoring the fact that Ruby had been right on all accounts about the meeting.

“He thinks the machine just needs the day to return to how it was on the very first day. So Clancy doesn’t die, and the machine is never started in the first place.”

Froghorn nodded thoughtfully. “That’s the best plan of action, at least based on what we know about the machine… which isn’t a lot. Neither Blacker nor I had access to old technology files during the Re-Org.”

Ruby perked up at this. “You could access the files for me, with your security clearance, right? In the name of science, at least?”

Froghorn threw her a dirty look. “Not worth losing my job over. I have no doubt you’d be able to weasel your way around the rules anyway.”

Ruby preened at the backhanded compliment. “Yeah, I reckon so too, hopefully the loser who did the Prism Vault would’ve coded the new files.”

“Shouldn’t you be escaping your babysitter right now?” Froghorn deflected her comment with another tired comeback. Ruby checked her watch and realised he was unfortunately correct. She had what she came for, and Froghorn didn’t seem to be offering any further help: in the shape of a new plan or a way to access the files on Kronos.

“It’s only a machine,” Froghorn added, feeling the need to squeeze his two cents in. “An actual space-time anomaly in the fabric of reality may be a little out of your expertise, but if the machine controls it… you just have to beat the machine.”

Ruby filed that away, and, making sure she had her doughnut and her book, walked to the door.

“You were right by the way Froghorn,” She commented off-hand over her shoulder and was fairly sure she felt something in her brain shut down at that combination of words.

Froghorn looked like he felt the same. “About what? I mean, yes I am, but what about?”

“The viridian days,” she explained glumly. “They are the absolute worst.”

“Viridian for a whole week?” Froghorn said, stiltedly like he wasn’t sure if she was making fun of him yet. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

Ruby stopped at the door, a ‘thank you’ on her lips before she caught herself. Sabina and Brant liked to tout politeness, but she was confident neither of them would manage to fake politeness to Froghorn.

Instead, she said, “You weren’t useless. Don’t tell Hitch I was here.”

Froghorn stood from his desk, unfolding his gangly limbs. “I’ll remember,” He announced. “You best not come in tomorrow if this was just a practical joke.”

Ruby smiled at him, but they both knew it was fake. “You really won’t, Froghorn. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

She pulled the bike upright and stepped up onto the left pedal, trying to remember which exit would get her closest to Twinford Junior High.

She cycled down the corridor idly, hoping Blacker would distract Hitch long enough that she could reach school in time for third period without Hitch causing a scene.

Behind her, she heard a door swing shut.

On her return to school, Ruby parked her bike under the bike sheds, waved off Mouse’s notes from the English lesson she had missed, and swore just loudly enough in her French lesson about conjunctions that Madame Loup put her in a lunchtime detention that very day.

Ruby swore again when she was given her detention, just to drive the point home and returned to browsing Froghorn’s assigned reading under the desk.

She’d be able to catch Clancy in detention and talk to him properly about everything that was happening.

They just had to get to lunchtime.

She was a minute or two late for the detention when it finally rolled around to 12:30 because she’d run to the canteen to buy a mayo-and-spam sandwich for lunch. She held the sandwich behind her back as she sidled into the detention room.

She took a desk adjacent to Clancy’s, who was trying to work out how exactly she’d gotten a detention, and purposely didn’t acknowledge him.

“Thank you for joining us,” Loup said without enthusiasm. “I’ll be back at half-past one, do not leave the room. You both have exercise sheets to complete.”

Everyone knew that Madame Loup never stuck around in the detention room for the whole hour but wandered off to the staffroom for her own lunch. That suited Ruby just fine today though.

She nodded obediently at the teacher’s instructions and stayed silent until the door shut behind her. Then she moved to Clancy’s desk, plonking her school bag down and kicking her feet up onto the table.

“This detention thing is really inconvenient,” she said casually as she handed Clancy one half of her sandwich and chowing down on her own half.

Clancy took it, mystified with the whole situation. “Well, I didn’t do it on purpose, unlike you.”

Ruby rolled her eyes and continued eating. She’d wanted to save Blacker’s doughnut for Clancy, so she hadn’t eaten all day. “It was the only way I could talk to you properly. I haven’t seen you all day and your dad has that thing this evening so you can’t come over.”

Clancy had to admit she had a point. Being the Ambassador’s son really hindered his social life.

“Well, you’ve got me,” He said around a mouthful of wholegrain bread, swallowed, and then cleared his throat. “Is it to do with why you weren’t in school this morning? Elliot told me Mouse told him that you weren’t in English.”

“That’s all old news now,” Ruby said flippantly. “Anyway, more importantly, Johnson knows what happened to G.I. Joe.”

Clancy leaned backwards like she’d physically hit him. “Johnson knows what? How do you know that?”

“Say your bit now,” She prompted him impatiently.

He looked even more lost than before, and Ruby began to wonder if Clancy had made his little code up on the spot during Day 3.

“Boys… always work it out?” Clancy hesitated, stuttering over his words in a way he hadn’t in years.

“Boys keep swinging, now who’s your favourite Crazy Cops character? Oh yeah, season three Hogtrotter, great, that shouldn’t have taken that long,” Clancy looked as if he was having a religious experience. Ruby was mostly just impatient, but she had to admit the situation was probably pretty weird from where Clancy was standing.

“How did you know that?”

“Twinford is stuck in a time loop. Well, I think the whole world is in a time loop, but I haven’t actually checked yet. You told me everything yesterday and I’m counting on you not asking questions here.”

Clancy’s mouth opened and closed without any sound for a moment or two, and his elbows, which had started flapping when she had first begun the code, reached a level of franticness Ruby hadn’t encountered for a good few weeks.

“Okay, fine, two questions but then I need to get to the point,” Ruby relented, just so Clancy wouldn’t freak out.

“How long has this been happening?” Clancy burst out and Ruby made a point of checking her watch.

“Exactly six days. The day starts at 5 am and always ends before the evening.”

Clancy nodded, but so quickly Ruby had a feeling he was just unleashing more nervous energy than actually communicating anything. “Are you still mad about G.I. Joe?”

“What? Of course not, we were five. Did you seriously waste a question on that?”

Clancy’s eyes widened, having forgotten he was on limited questions. “Wait, I’ll forget that answer. What do you need my help with?” He cut himself off with a cough, having gotten overexcited.

Ruby allowed a third question, or else she would never fully explain everything before the end of lunch.

“I need your help with breaking the loop. Froghorn and Blacker have both had ideas on what to do, but you’re involved in both of them, so I wanted to check with you,” Ruby admitted. A smile spread across Clancy’s face at the idea of being involved in another Spectrum mission, even though he was shaking his hands out hard, like they were wet.

“Cool,” he agreed immediately. “Lay it on me.”

Ruby took a deep breath and began explaining the whole spiel again, for the second time that day alone. Clancy listened carefully, chewing on his lip as his part in the situation was brought up.

Ruby was just getting to Blacker’s idea when Clancy coughed, one hand stilling long enough to cover his mouth. She paused briefly, knowing he had to hear this part properly to understand what he had to do. He sat up straighter and rolled his shoulders back but nodded at her to continue.

This coughing continued twice, with Ruby stopping both times. “Did you choke on your spit or something?” Ruby asked, eyeing him with concern.

“Nah, think it’s just dusty,” He replied.

Ruby let it lie, knowing he wasn’t doing it on purpose. “So, I read both of Froghorn’s books, and what they’re saying basically, is—"

**

Clancy coughed into the crook of his elbow and couldn’t even straighten up before coughing again, louder.

“Do you want a drink or something?” Ruby teased. Clancy waved a hand, trying to get her to continue with her explanation but the next cough was wet and had an eerie death rattle deep in his chest.

“I can’t—” Clancy told her, a begging tone in his voice. His eyes were wide and frightened and Ruby was almost scared to meet them, but she still cajoled her face into the epitome of calmness and reassurance. “Ruby, I can’t, can’t—”

“It’s okay Clance, just relax, it’s just a panic attack. You’ve managed these before, deep breaths, you’ll be okay,” Ruby rested her hand on Clancy’s shoulder, but the boy was shaking his head hard.

“No, no, not that,” He wheezed and spluttered into the palm of his hand. “No air—”

Ruby patted his back, trying to get his lungs to cooperate. It was scary to watch Clancy panic and cry, but they’d weathered this before. His chest was heaving, and he was making terrible gasping noises that grew wetter and wetter.

Finally, Clancy seemed to clear something from his throat, and suddenly his hand was dripping with frothy water, palm cupping a puddle. Shamefully, it was only then that Ruby realised that maybe this was more serious than a panic attack.

“Clancy— look hang on I’ll get someone, you’ll be okay,” Ruby ran to the door even though leaving Clancy’s side was harder than defying gravity.

Throwing the detention room open with a bang, Ruby headed for the staff room, opening that door too with reckless abandon. Madame Loup was sat in a chair eating a Tupperware of pasta and scowled at the sight of Ruby.

“Clancy needs help! Call the ambulance or something, he’s not well,” Ruby could see the doubt on Loup’s face even as she put her lunch down and got to her feet. Where the teacher couldn’t see, she tapped her watch face, knowing Hitch would probably get Clancy to the hospital faster than any paramedic.

When they re-entered the detention room, Clancy was curled over his desk, water droplets soaking into his exercise book, still coughing but much weaker than before. Loup exclaimed something in French and turned tail to use reception’s phone. Ruby knelt next to Clancy, rubbing circles into his back as comfortingly as possible, and turned his head properly so he wouldn’t choke any more on whatever he was coughing out.

“You’re okay Clancy,” She murmured to him, over the commotion of the school nurse rushing up the corridor and Loup’s panicked French and Clancy’s laboured breathing. “I’m right with you, you’re going to be okay now.”

Clancy’s eyes met hers, dull and teary from his coughing fit and he didn’t even have the strength to reach out for her. The nurse burst in, and sirens were beginning to scream down the street, and Ruby tucked herself up against Clancy’s side, holding his hand and feeling the weak pulse that stuttered through his veins.

**

Clancy was unconscious before the paramedics came and Ruby was trying to wrestle her way onto the ambulance when she heard the prognosis from the nearest paramedic, speaking to Principal Levine.

“There’s water in his lungs and we’ve got him on oxygen in the back.”

“He wasn’t even in a bathroom; how can he have water in his lungs?” The principal argued and the paramedic gave a resigned look.

“Secondary drowning is possible, especially if he swims a lot?”

“He-He’s the best swimmer on the team, he practises on Saturdays with the team, could that be—”

“Most likely, but the hospital will have to run tests to rule anything else out,” The rest of their conversation was drowned out by someone calling Ruby’s name behind her. She turned to see Del, Elliot, and Mouse heading towards her. Red was still ducking around a teacher who was attempting to hold back the crowd of curious students, and as Ruby watched, the girl executed a perfect feint and managed to sprint past to the teacher’s left and towards the rest of them.

“We heard the sirens, and someone said it was Clancy,” Elliot explained, cheeks flushed with exertion. He was craning his neck to see over Ruby, through the ambulance doors, searching out any sign of his friend.

“It’s not really Clancy, is it? What happened to him?” Mouse asked and Ruby pressed her lips together hard to hold herself together.

“He, um, he started choking,” She explained after a second of controlling her breathing. “They won’t let me on, won’t let me see him.”

Upon hearing this, Del immediately turned to Principal Levine to argue for Ruby’s case. Red finally caught up and pulled Ruby immediately into a hug that had her shuddering out a breath into the lapel of her denim jacket.

“He’ll be okay Rubes,” Red whispered, which was not helping Ruby look composed.

“There’s no way anyone can accompany him to the hospital when he’s in severe condition. You can visit him when he’s stable in hospital,” Levine informed them while the ambulance began to pull out of the school carpark. It immediately screeched off into the main heart of Twinford, Clancy Crew wheezing for breath inside.

Ruby knew Hitch would take her to the hospital immediately but for that plan to work, the man had to be there. She pressed the button on her watch once again, for the third time in as many minutes, and tried not to think about what would happen if Hitch was too late.

“You can all go to my office and wait for news,” Levine allowed after a moment where Ruby stared desolately into space and Del geared herself up for a fight. “Bring your bags and I’ll send words to your afternoon teachers.”

Del backed down upon hearing this and turned to Ruby, a concerned look in her eyes.

“Hey Redfort, come on,” she said gently and took her elbow to coax her along. Ruby’s steps fell out of sync with Del’s, lagging behind a step a second too late to keep pace and she had to stop again to scrub a hand over her face.

“I’ll get your bag for you Ruby,” Elliot told her in a similarly soft voice. It was clear he had no idea how to comfort her: that was mainly Clancy’s role, and he was just trying to think of any practical way to help.

“It’s with Clancy’s in the French classroom,” Ruby’s voice sounded far away and dull even to her own ears.

This scenario, out of all six, was worst, Ruby thought to herself, because the day was still playing out its spin around the sun. She hadn’t woken up yet to find Clancy safe at home or in school. Neither he nor the loop were dead, which meant Ruby had to keep her breathing from hitching in tears, knowing she was too slow and stupid to help him when he was struggling, and Clancy had to fight for every painful breath on the hospital stretcher.

In a blur, Del and Ruby ended up outside the principal’s office, sat in the little waiting room on a line of uncomfortable chairs.

Red and Mouse were forced to leave Ruby, splitting off to inform teachers of the group’s absence and to collect their bags. Ruby was guided to sit in the seat as if she were in a dream. Del sat next to her, an armrest separating them.

Principal Levine walked past them a few minutes later, disappearing into his office to conduct a very hushed conversation on the telephone that had Ruby desperately straining her ears while also dreading to hear any word.

The other three joined them eventually in their silent vigil, Mouse on her left with a hand palm-up on the armrest for when Ruby wanted to take it, Elliot on Mouse’s left with a pale face and no further comments, and Red on Del’s right.

“Here,” Del said, the first word in a while and apropos of nothing and Ruby had just turned her head to see what she was talking about when a heavy jacket landed across her shoulders.

It was Del’s royal-purple varsity jacket, soft nylon shell on the inside, and still warm from being worn on Del.

Everyone in their group had been wrapped up in Del’s jacket at one point or another, thanks to the school’s ‘one size fits all’ policy. While it drowned Mouse and Ruby, it was still long enough that Clancy and Red didn’t look too tall and lanky when wearing it, and wide enough that Elliot’s broad back didn’t stretch out. The white sleeves fell past her hands and Ruby clenched them tightly out of sight of everyone else.

The felt collar was scratchy around Ruby’s neck when she pulled it tighter around herself, but it was nice. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them even when a shoulder nudged itself under her head. Ruby shifted her head just enough to let Del get comfortable in the new position before effectively pinning her to the spot.

“He’ll be okay,” Del told her in the softest voice Ruby had ever heard her use.

Tears streamed out from under Ruby’s eyelids and her breath hitched audibly. Del let out a quiet sigh and her pinned hand rose to curl around Ruby’s face, blocking her tears from onlookers and Ruby from the bright loud outside world.

“It’ll be okay,” Del murmured.

It wouldn’t, it would never be okay again, but Ruby sat there for a long time, silently crying into the collar of Del’s jacket, smelling her deodorant and perfume she used after sports practise.

Not once did her barrette or watch buzz with a message from Hitch.

When Ruby woke up, to the posters stuck on her bedroom ceiling, to the noise of her telephones, she no longer had the jacket or Del curled around her protectively.

She missed it.

On the seventh day, Ruby didn’t get out of bed. The phones rang themselves out, and no one couldn’t coerce her out from under the duvet.

She was sick with worry, until Hitch opened the door again, hours and hours later. She listened as he shuffled through the door, uncharacteristically quiet, and closed the door behind him.

“Hey,” He called out to her, and Ruby’s next breath caught somewhere between her heart and her head. She knew, she already knew. “Kiddo, hey. I’ve got some bad news, are you awake?”

Footsteps as he came over towards her and then a dip as Hitch perched on the edge of the mattress. He was kneeling just beside her, even as she curled closer to herself, facing away from him.

“Clancy got into an accident,” Hitch told her in a soft, soft voice. He’s so quiet Ruby almost kidded herself into thinking she misheard. “He was heading home from school and—”

An enormous sob erupted from Ruby’s throat, and she buried her face in her pillow to hide her tears. Hitch doesn’t touch her but shushed her gently. She was crying great heavy tears and Hitch stayed by the side of her bed, his hand finally landing on her upper arm to rub small circles over the pyjamas she hadn’t changed out of.

Ruby closed her eyes against the suffocating weight of her best friend’s death again, for the seventh time, and opened them again to morning light and ringing bells and an absence behind her.

Day eight.

Chapter Text

There was something set hard within Ruby’s chest that morning. It felt like resolve and hurt like something cardiac had calcified, but it drove her up and out of her bed.

She called out something vaguely affirmative to Hitch when he knocked and dressed quickly, purposely selecting a new T-Shirt in case Kronos was paying attention to that.

As soon as the meeting ended, Ruby steered Hitch straight to the exit, deciding that Blacker and Froghorn would be okay without their bantering today. Hitch put it a bit of fuss but obliging dropped her off.

Ruby was early enough for school that she might just be able to snag Clancy before he ever reached registration.

Clancy had always been Ruby’s soundboard, a way of testing and peer-reviewing all her ideas. He might not have any idea of what was going on around him, but she knew that he would try as hard as he could when she finally did explain everything to him.

Again.

Idly thinking that she’d officially been to school more than any other eighth grader in the hallways, Ruby threw herself in the seat beside Clancy and immediately leaned in towards him. Clancy leaned back, trying to keep some space in between them.

“Um, hello to you too Ruby.” 

“I need to tell you something and you need to take me seriously.”

Clancy visibly steeled himself and watched her expectantly.

“We’re in a time loop,” She listed each point off on her fingers to try and speed the interaction up as much as possible. “You’re in grave danger, I know what happened to G.I. Joe, boys do keep on swinging, and Hogtrotter has the possibility for character development, you’re skipping school with me to brainstorm our way out of this.”

Clancy stared blankly for several seconds, before reaching for his bag under his desk. “With you all the way,” He agreed, and checked over his shoulder. “Just have to be marked in and then we’re good to go.”

Ruby clung to Clancy’s sleeve the whole way home, only letting him cross the road when it was a zebra crossing and no vehicles in sight. Clancy appeared bemused by the opposite of her usual gung-ho, ‘The cars are supposed to stop for pedestrians’ attitude but swivelled his head both ways twice anyway. He even took the initiative and hopped away from drain covers, cracks in the pavement and a child in a pram.

Hitch’s car was missing from the drive and Ruby reset the alarm after herself when they entered. Mrs Digby was out in town, visiting friends and supposedly picking up groceries. Sabina and Brant were booked up all day: Sabina with brunch, lunch and dinner with people she called her ‘colleagues’ but they seemed to find excuses to go out and dine more than actually work, and Brant had golf, a business meeting and a dinner at a different restaurant.

Maybe Hitch would see that someone had entered the house and disabled the alarm when the house was supposed to be empty, but Ruby was sure her actions would have no immediate consequences. Bug greeted them at the door with his tail beating against their legs and streaked past them both to be the first inside Ruby’s room.

Clancy allowed himself to be herded towards the stairs like a particularly confused sheep and finally plopped down on Ruby’s bed among the sheets. Bug had settled on a pile of laundry on the floor, head resting on last-last week’s T-shirt.

Ruby shut her door and leaned against it, eyes searching out the windows to ensure they were closed properly.

Her bedside clock stated 9:30. Registration was only taken in the morning and afternoon. No one would notice them gone until 1pm, and maybe even then Mrs Drisco wouldn’t notice them missing at all.

“Okay,” she started, finally sure she’d checked everything.

Clancy suddenly motioned at her to wait, leaping from the bed and over to where her turntable sat on the floor. She knew what record he was going to reach for before he did: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Clancy had a matching vinyl at home and Ruby was sure it saw plenty of use.

Clancy set it up quickly, dropping the needle with practised ease and turned the music up past a conversational level. “Just in case your room is bugged,” he explained at her baffled look.

Hitch made sure, weekly, that her room was not bugged, but Ruby didn’t say that. He was trying and she needed him to try if they were going to make it through the next thirteen hours.

“Sure,” she said instead, and promptly forgot everything she was about to say afterwards.

“So, there’s a time loop,” Clancy said helpfully, returning to his seat on the bed and grabbing a pillow to hold onto, clearly buckling in for a wild ride. He looked more likely to fall asleep than try to fix this situation, but Ruby let it slide.

“Yeah, we’ve covered that much,” Ruby perched on the edge of the mattress and began unlacing her sneakers. Clancy had already kicked his shoes off at the front door, and Ruby had made him pick them up and carry them to her room in case any adults came home to see Clancy’s beat-up doodled-on sneakers.

“Just tell me everything that happens,” Clancy demanded. “Everything from that first day.”

“It starts with my phones ringing every morning, but no one ever picks up on the other end. Then Hitch comes in to tell me that there’s a meeting at Spectrum. We go to the Diner, or at least we did at the beginning, but they don’t have any raspberry doughnuts, only chocolate.”

Clancy nodded seriously. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Ruby reached out to bat at him, but he used the pillow as a shield, bringing it back down on her chest when she pulled her hand back.

“Let me finish. LB holds the meeting, and she says that the Count has been spotted in Downtown, Upper East Side and Main Street. Then Blacker spills his coffee, and I go to school. It’s a normal Monday, and then I try and head home from school.”

“Try?”

“Something happens to you every day and then the loop starts again.”

“Something like…?”

Ruby couldn't look Clancy in the eye, focused on the cuff of his jeans and the way his fingers tangled together like habit. “You die every single day. For the past week.”

Clancy’s elbows gave a traitorous twitch. “Pardon?” he asked. “I misheard you.”

“You didn’t. You’ve died at least seven times in seven different ways.”  

Clancy seemed like he was still clinging to the idea that he’d suddenly become deaf. “Every time you die, the world resets and it’s the morning again,” Ruby explained, certain she couldn’t make it any clearer to him. “I need to make sure that you stay safe and try to break the loop.” Ruby fell backwards on the bed, staring at the ceiling instead of Clancy.

“And nothing ever changes?” Clancy asked, gears slowly turning in his head.

Ruby went to shake her head, before something occurred to her, and she nodded abruptly. “I saw the Count that very first day,” She remembered. “He showed me the machine and left, and that’s where you came in and then the machine exploded.”

Clancy wriggled until he was lying down too, still hugging the pillow to his chest. “You haven’t seen the Count since?”

Now that Ruby really thought about it, that was weird. “No, not once. I’ve walked down the road I saw him on, and neither him nor his van is there. It’s the only thing that has been different since that first day.”

“Except me dying.”

Ruby winced. “A little more tact please Clance, it’s not fun to watch.”

“But it is me dying that changes,” he checked, and Ruby nodded, messing her hair up against the mattress below her.

“Okay, well, surely that means the Count is behind this,” Clancy said like it all made sense. “The Count killed me the first time and now he’s gone missing, and I keep dying. So, he’s causing it all.”

“That… checks out I guess,” Ruby said slowly.

Clancy sat bolt-upright again, with a look on his face that suggested he had a plan. “So, we go looking for the Count!” He announced.

“You never agree to go looking for the Count when I suggest it.” Ruby pointed out, not sitting up just yet. It seemed like a spectacularly bad plan for someone who had the current World Record for dying the most times in a row.

“That’s because it’s always dangerous when you do it. But if we find the Count now, he might tell us his plan and then we can try and foil it.” Clancy was standing up now, hopping over telephones and comics to reach her desk. He was well-versed in avoiding the obstacles around Ruby’s room and scooped up his shoes from the doorway.

“I don’t even know where he might be hiding out. The whole of Spectrum was out looking for him and couldn’t find him,” Ruby propped herself up on her elbows to watch Clancy pause, shoulders slumping as his common sense finally caught up with him.

“We’ll keep it on the backburner,” Clancy said finally. “If you don’t want to look for the Count, why don’t we just change everything we can?”

Ruby knew that keeping the loop as similar as possible to that first day clearly wasn’t working but she narrowed her eyes. “What’s the thought process behind that one?”

“I read a book once where the time-loop ended when the guy finally stopped acting like a jerk,”

Ruby squinted even harder at Clancy who winced as he replayed his own words. “You think the time loop is my own moral failing,”

“Well, no, but maybe there’s something that you need to change and if we just put that together then you can finally get to Tuesday.”

“And you could live past fourteen and a half,” Ruby muttered to herself as she finally stood up.

Clancy had grabbed her trashcan and started sweeping bubble-gum wrappers into it. Ruby turned and tweaked her comforter straight over the mattress, pulling a Twinford Junior Leavers hoodie out from under it and a few stray socks.

Ruby stepped over Bug to unplug the three nearest phones to her bed. Bug lifted his head and then turned to look at the closed bedroom door. Ruby didn’t hear the front door open nor close, but Bug stood up and whined at the door. Clancy let him out automatically and distantly the two teens heard Hitch greeting the dog in a baby voice Ruby had never heard him use.

“Don’t worry,” Ruby said softly. “He won’t come up and we can always hide out on the roof.” She unplugged the nearest three phones to her bed, and after a second’s thought, moved the squirrel in a tuxedo to her bookshelves.

“Wait don’t bin that,” She caught sight of Clancy as he grabbed a piece of blue card with a felt-tip message inside. The card folded up into an antelope, with long horns and pointed hooves.

Clancy gave her a confused look. “It’s just me complaining about Madame Loup. The origami isn’t even good.”

“I thought it was good,” Ruby argued. “And I don’t know how to make an antelope yet, I’m trying to reverse-engineer it.”

“It’s a stag,” Clancy said with a hint of hurt in his voice. “And I can always teach you how to make it, bozo.”

Ruby smiled, collecting an armful of dirty laundry and maybe cutting some cleaning corners by throwing some clean laundry down the chute too. “I’d like that.”

Clancy beamed back. “Look, let’s go and grab a snack and then I can show you. We can brain-storm what to do next too.”

Ruby brushed her hands clean and followed him to the door, tucking her desk chair in as she did. Hitch would either be down in his basement suite and unaware of the teenagers, or… or he would be in the kitchen and catch them immediately, but he had Spectrum work to do, searching the streets and she was sure he wouldn’t mind her staying home safe while he was out.

“Sure, I think Mrs Digby made a trifle yesterday, we could probably get a slice or two,” Ruby wrinkled her nose suddenly. “It’s like a week old now though.”

They paused at the top of the stairs, Ruby tilting her head to strain her ears for any movement from the living areas or kitchen. She deemed it safe with a nod and Clancy laughed, somewhat belatedly.

 “I’m sure it’s still fresh,” He replied over his shoulder to her, one hand planted on the wall and one on the banister to swing himself down the stairs like a child.

Ruby glanced back into her room to check for anymore dirty clothes and her eyes skipped right over the turntable. The needle had reached the end of the album, and was now spinning in endless circles, with only faint static dripping from the speakers. She’d turn the record to the B-side in a moment when she returned with Clancy to plot.

In the stairwell, Clancy swung his legs to build momentum for his next jump down, and the hand he had braced against the wall slipped.

Ruby was too slow to grab his arm when he fell and cracked his head against the wall, then the steps in quick succession.

Hitch ran into view at the end of the hallway, still too late to catch Clancy as he rolled to the bottom, silent and unmoving.

“Clancy are you—” Ruby called, in a scared voice, trying not to fall herself as she ran down the stairs to his side.

As her foot left the final step, the world shuddered around her, turning on its axis until she was horizontal on her bed.

“Alright?” She finished her question to herself, lost in the din of phones ringing, which should not have been plugged in, and Hitch knocking at her door, unaware of the ninth loop.

She had to try again. Clancy had had a good point yesterday/five minutes ago. Maybe there was a certain way she had to act to reverse the loop.

Hitch swung the door open, and Ruby mustered up a smile at him. The horror of watching Clancy die yet another time was ebbing away, as her heart rate slowed. It was like watching a fictional character die on-screen: they would be back in next week’s episode for an emotional flashback. On the other side of town, Clancy was probably still asleep.

“Good morning,” Her heart wasn’t really in it, but she couldn’t afford to mess another day up by doing the wrong thing.

“Good morning?” Hitch replied, heading for her desk, which was piled high with bubble-gum wrappers and dishes again.

“Sure is,” Ruby sat up and Hitch gave her a quizzical look out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you going to get that?” he asked, pointing at the phone and Ruby reached awkwardly for it without leaving her bed, despite how pointless picking up would be.

“Redfort residence, can I help?” This time she got a few seconds of silence before the line hung up.

 She shrugged at Hitch, who was looking increasingly concerned for her well-being. “Why are you here?” She asked, with her best acting voice. “It’s way too early for school.”

“Busy day ahead, you’d better start looking lively,” Hitch quipped, and Ruby obediently swung her legs out of bed, mentally weighing up whether a new T-Shirt would be appropriate. She turned one shirt over with her foot, ‘I Don’t Want to Be Here Either’, and then the next, ‘Can You Help Me? I’ve Lost My Reason for Caring. Last Seen: Beginning of This Conversation’. “LB wants you in, the ever-optimist. She does promise it’s important before you call in sick.”

Finally, she selected a neutral enough one, ‘03042022’ with enough interesting numbers to make it worth it.

“I’ve always wanted to work at Spectrum, why would I call in sick?” Ruby asked, trying her best to be the darling angel daughter her parents had always wanted, before remembering that it was 5:30 and the feral daughter her parents actually had hated being awake before eight on a weekday. “What does she want?”

Hitch fixed her with a long look. “Keep the optimism up kid,” He stated, and then muttered ‘weirdo’ audibly under his breath as he turned away. Ruby imagined there was some fondness in his tone. “It’s about the Count. If you’re quick, I’ll get you a snack on the way.”

“Why are we hanging about if it’s the Count?” Ruby asked grandly, with the practised tone of a Shakespearean character. Hitch smirked as he left the room, dishes balanced carefully in his hands.

“I’ll see you in five,” He told her and let the door click shut.

Ruby turned away from the door to search for a clean pair of flared pants and tried to keep excitement from building up in her chest. She had a plan, had the whole day lying ahead, and Clancy trusting her to keep him safe.

She almost believed she could make it work.

The whole day, Ruby was nearly manic with trying to keep on top of everything around her. she persuaded Hitch to buy LB a coffee at the Diner and walked down the entire Spectrum 8 auditorium to leave it on LB’s podium, still with Marla’s felt-tipped ‘Hitch’ written on the side for the order. She nodded whenever it seemed like LB was looking towards her, and graciously agreed to allow Hitch to drop her at school, but not before warning Blacker to take care with his coffee and swinging past lost property to grab a spare shirt in case he didn’t take care. She complimented Froghorn’s care with his latest case, even if she’d completed it before him, and recommended coconut oil for his hair.

Ruby was late to registration, but she pleaded for Hitch to walk her to the front desk to speak to Mrs Bexenheath about letting her tardy mark slip this one time. She had figured that the benefits of making Mrs Bexenheath’s day better outweighed the negatives of missing registration, and she even sought Mrs Drisco out in the corridors during recess to apologise for her lateness and offer to carry a pile of marking up to the staffroom to make it up to her.

She answered every question in English, and in Maths, and was told to stop putting her hand up in Science. Every pop-quiz, every practice essay and every textbook test was completed perfectly.

She asked about Mouse’s latest read, about Del’s softball game, about Elliot’s high scores at the arcade (and promised to beat them all), about Red’s latest mishap and offered to lend her own guitar again, no matter how painful it was.

Ruby was exhausted by the end of the school day, but whenever she felt like relaxing, her anxiety, the fear of Clancy’s pale lax face, would take over. She couldn’t stop at this point. It was 3:24, so close to the end of the day that she almost couldn’t cope with the nervous excitement souring the back of her throat.

She gotten Elliot, who’d gotten Red, who’d gotten Del to pass a message to Clancy to meet her afterschool, at the front gate where Mr Walford patrolled and where there would be a crowd of people to watch any danger.

She would drag Clancy to the library, where she’d explain his French homework to him, and cross her fingers until four o’clock came. And then she’d ring Hitch to give them a lift and beg for information about the Count and explain everything that had happened to them where they could understand and remember what she’d said.

The bell rang and Ruby was out of her seat quickly, thanking a bemused Mrs Schneiderman, and then walked (running was not allowed in the school halls, and neither was rollerblading thanks to Del) to the front gate, pressing herself to the wall to stay out of the way of throngs of chattering and whooping teenagers.

She was too busy checking her watch to notice Clancy come up on her left, waving his hand in her line of view without being purposely startling. Her face broke into a grin upon seeing him, stupid patterned shirt and all, and he returned it, simply just pleased to see her.

3:42

“Will you come to the library with me?” She asked, crossing her fingers on her right hand. “I know your dad has that thing, but I’ll get Hitch to give you a lift back at four, and he can talk to your dad and the Duchess too probably.”

Clancy looked like he was about to decline, but then he looked at her properly, at the way she was clenching her jaw anxiously as she waited for him to reply.

“Yeah,” He said finally, with another grin. Ruby wouldn’t have asked him if it wasn’t important to her, and with any luck, his dad would be too busy with the Duchess to realise he was missing a kid. “Yeah, sure, I could do with your help on my French.”

Ruby led him down the halls, fear making her steps quick and hurried. Really, there was nothing different about Clancy being in the halls or the library when four pm approached, but if she made it to the library it felt like her plan was working. Like everything was worth it.

Clancy wasn’t as keen on rushing to the library, loping along easily behind her. “I didn’t see you in registration this morning.”

“I was late, Hitch had to make a stop before school,” She told her, turning her head to give him a slow blink, signalling that Hitch was not just completing butler-y duties. Clancy’s face brightened at the mention of Spectrum, no matter how vague it was. “I’ll tell you over your French tenses, promise.”

She was just moving her head to look at the approaching library door, hand outstretched to open it, when Clancy tripped over his own feet behind her. Immediately she had spun around, steadying him with her hands on his upper arms and gaze fixed intently on his face. She’d been braced for this all day, and a part of her was already crumbling with relief at the fact she had caught him before his fall.

“You’re okay,” She promised. She was only repeating everything that had passed through her head the last nine days, watching Clancy fall, and fall, and fall. “You’re okay Clancy, just keep breathing for me. I’m going to fix it, I’ll fix everything, you just need to breath, okay?”

Her watch had said 3:55 the last time she looked at it, and then she had firmly pulled her sleeve down to stop tempting fate. That had been a few hallways back, surely, they had made it?

Clancy was looking at her with wide eyes and shuffled his feet underneath himself to stand properly. “It’s good,” he mumbled, and Ruby wondered how much of an over-reaction her response had seemed to be.

She let him stand by himself, let him regain a normal distance from her but her arms still reached out for him in case the worst happened. “I’m fine,” He added, like it was him who had to comfort her, and Ruby took a slow deep breath. She would take a bewildered, weirded-out Clancy over a dead one. “You know I have two left feet, the floor just tried to keep my reflexes strong.”

In that moment, with Clancy stood just a few feet from her, his shirt dwarfed him, his skinny arms swimming in the flowery pattern.

He reached a hand up and wiped a knuckle over his nose. It came back smudged with red.

Clancy looked at Ruby with confusion in his eyes and blood smeared across his cheek before he began to list slowly to the side.

Ruby tried to step forward, but her legs were slow, and the knowledge of her failure again and again lay heavy in her stomach. Clancy crumpled to the ground and Ruby squeezed her eyes closed, more than familiar with the hot tears running down her cheeks. She faltered backwards with tripping feet, her back hitting the wall first and leaning all of her body weight against it.

“Please,” She murmured, wishing she were back in bed. One more time, one more chance. She could do this and get Clancy out safe and sound on the other side. She just had to… recalibrate, change the plan when she woke up. That was all.

She wondered when she had stopped seeing Clancy’s death as an all-consuming horror and simply a… fact.

Clancy was still, head turned away from her. Ruby swallowed convulsively, trying hard to keep a hold on her stomach. The view of Clancy’s body blurred as tears finally fell down her cheeks. She slid down the wall slowly, half-expecting it to fall out from behind her. Her sneaker came close to Clancy’s hand, palm turned upwards and bloody. His nail polish was chipped, and Ruby fought a hysterical laugh at the realisation that she had noticed that of all things.

“Clancy?” Her voice cracked harshly on the second syllable.

It was dead quiet all around in the school hallways and Ruby’s arm felt so heavy she couldn’t even call Hitch. He hadn’t even arrived in time for the last… ten.

“Still?” she asked the silent room. Clancy didn’t move.

“I tried so hard,” She couldn’t raise her voice above a whisper, but no one was listening anyway. “I really tried. Why didn’t it work?”

Ruby closed her eyes, tacky and heavy with tears and rested her head against the wall.

Unseen, her watch ticked the final ten seconds away to four o’clock.

Ruby woke up. And wished she hadn’t.

Chapter Text

Ruby resolutely kept her back turned to her bedroom door when Hitch knocked. Her face was buried in the pillow, and even though she was struggling to breathe, she refused to shift, even to breathe. 

“I’m not going,” She said in her brattiest teenager voice. Her head was covered by her comforter and so she didn’t hear Hitch come up to her bed and prod her back with his hand. Or maybe it was his shoe, Ruby didn’t lift her head from her sheets to check. 

“Ruby, the Count is back,” Hitch said in an urgent voice that he clearly expected to have her leaping out of bed and into the corridors of Spectrum. 

“I’m not going into Spectrum. Or school,” She stressed to him. “I’m not going to go looking for him and you can go and drive around Downtown looking for him, but I’m not getting up.” 

There was a long silence and then Hitch leaned down to try and roll her over, to see her face properly. Ruby resisted for a moment and then rolled over, pushing the covers away from her face but making no move to get up. She knew her face was red from being trapped under the covers, and the frustration of Hitch not understanding her need to stay home was making her eyes prick with tears. 

She stared up at Hitch unblinking, so she didn’t start crying. Hitch was leaning over her bed, hands on his knees. Another beat of silence passed and whatever her face looked like convinced her. 

“You can stay,” He said softly, as if Ruby would have ever gotten up. “I know the Count coming back is scary, I’ll have someone watch the house to make sure he doesn’t come close.” 

Ruby nodded, blinked and rubbed her face with the comforter. She didn’t bother moving the sheet off her face after, and Hitch twitched it down to uncover her face again. He gave her a gentle, comforting smile and Ruby fought the urge to cover her face and slowly dripping tears again. 

“Do you want me to stay here with you?” Hitch asked, and Ruby knew that he would immediately call off from Spectrum– which she’d never seen him do, outside of a situation involving her– and tell LB to manage without him for once. But really, Hitch couldn’t do anything helpful sitting in her dark room alongside her. 

“Nah,” She said and quickly cleared her throat. “Go out and find him, I’ll be okay here.” 

Hitch responded by throwing the blanket back over her face, and she pulled it away quickly to see him heading for the door. “I’ll be on comms all day if you need me, and I’ll message you first if I see or hear anything,” Hitch promised and Ruby nodded again, mussing her hair against the pillow. 

“Watch out, out there,” She told him in a small voice. Hitch smiled again, a confident one that made her want to believe everything would be okay and she would be safe. 

“I’ll pick up Thai for dinner,” He promised her, an indirect way of saying he had every intention of returning home that evening. “Don’t leave the house. Please.” 

Ruby called out an affirmative noise, and then a proper ‘see you later’. She stayed staring at the closed door for a long time after Hitch closed it, before rolling over and trying to sleep through the day. 

About ten minutes into a long-winded thought spiral of every way she had failed in the past week-and-a-bit, she got up entirely, as if she could leave the self-loathing and fear behind her in the bed, anxiety wrapped up in the sheets. 

She pulled on a top printed with the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo Where Are You? and a pair of black corduroy trousers, refusing to put any effort into her outfit choices, but well-aware that Sabina and Brant did not allow pyjamas outside of bedrooms. It was a little quirk of theirs, in an effort to make sure Ruby changed her T-Shirt and pants every couple of days. 

The house was silent as she descended the stairs, with Sabina and Brant not yet up, and Hitch out on his own little mission. But Ruby was confident that there was someone awake in the house. 

Mrs Digby was in the kitchen, eyes glued to her small television screen and only half-paying attention to the eggs boiling in the pan on the stove top. 

“Hey,” Ruby greeted, slipping into one of the stools at the island. Mrs Digby turned her head with some surprise. She hadn’t heard Ruby come in, nor had she even expected to see her this early. “Can I stay home today?”

Mrs Digby was up every morning at 6 for the early releases of her shows. Normal people would record the showings, but not Mrs Digby. ‘Recorders are for people who can’t afford to live in the moment’ was her only response when Ruby tried to re-explain the purpose of the recorder and how to use it. 

“Hitch has already called you off sick for the day,” Mrs Digby informed her, reaching to turn the television volume down. She was watching the new episode of Murderer Among Us, which had actually aired late the night before, but Mrs Digby had been tucked up in bed at her usual bedtime of 8:00pm. 

“He didn’t tell me that,” Ruby was relieved that Hitch was still backing her up after she’d blown him off for going Count-hunting. 

Mrs Digby fixed her with a long stare, eyes narrowed. “I hadn’t expected you down here at all,” She told her. “By the way he was talking, I almost thought you were on your death-bed.”

Ruby couldn’t quite tamp down her smile at the thought of Hitch trying to lie enough that no one would go and bother her. It was pointless anyway; Ruby could have the Black Death and Mrs Digby would still be barging in to offer her chicken-noodle soup and a pint of banana milk. 

“That man does like to dramatise everything,” She agreed, and Mrs Digby huffed, turning away to scoop the eggs out of the pan, and reach to cut a loaf of bread into slices. 

“Well, you could do with a break from school. You’ve been in there at all hours, doing homework and what not. They should be paying you for the overtime you’re putting in.” 

Ruby laughed, resting her head on her hand to watch the images play on the muted television. “That’s not how school works,” She pointed out. What Mrs Digby didn’t know was that when Ruby said she was in school past 3:30, she was actually in Spectrum, gossiping with Blacker and pinching gadgets. 

“A long weekend will do you well,” Mrs Digby stated, like that was all to say on the matter. She slotted the slices of bread in the toaster, and stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing Ruby up. 

“Now, what do you want for breakfast?” 

Ruby normally rolled out of bed and straight out of the door for school, thanks to her chronic sleeping-in. Breakfast was often a slice of toast she demolished standing in the kitchen, or, on one memorable occasion, a bowl of oatmeal eaten in the passenger seat of Hitch’s car while he took bends at 20 miles an hour and begged her not to spill it on his leather seats. 

“I’m not that hungry, Mrs D. I’ll grab something a bit later.” 

“What about a glass of banana milk?” Mrs Digby very rarely took no as an answer. Ruby smiled at her again, chin leaning on her fist. 

“Of course I’ll have banana milk.”

Mrs Digby smiled, pleased with herself, and turned to start preparing it. Ruby went back to watch the TV with somewhat-glazed eyes. She was tired, bone-deep exhaustion, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she tried. 

A moment later a glass of banana milk was slid under her nose, and she moved to catch the straw in her mouth. “What are you doing today, then?” She asked, trying to fill the silence. 

“Keeping you entertained,” Mrs Digby said archly, but her eyes were soft. “I’m off to see Darla in the afternoon, but someone will be home with you by then.” 

Ruby didn’t need to glance at the meticulously kept whiteboard planner over the kitchen table to know that Brant would be home from 1:30 to 3:00, while Hitch came home at 3:45. However, that didn’t factor in Hitch’s day-long drive-by of every building in Downtown. 

It didn’t matter anyway, when the day ended at 4 now. 

Ruby listened idly to Mrs Digby explaining Darla’s entire life-story and how that led to her current problem (her cat, Mr Smittens, needed to go to the vets for a suspected pregnancy. Privately Ruby thought Mr Smittens could be whoever he wanted to be, but Darla was looking forward to grand-kittens) for however long it took for Sabina and Brant to rouse and come downstairs in search of soft-boiled eggs and toast. 

Both were surprised to see Ruby, which seemed a bit unnecessary as she also lived in the house, this was her kitchen as well, but moved on quickly in favour of directing Mrs Digby how to make their cafetiere coffee, despite the fact that Mrs Digby made it every morning. 

Ruby managed a couple of slices of toast, and within half an hour Brant was out of the door for an early-morning meeting and Sabina had drifted back upstairs to find the purse that matched her blazer. 

She helped Mrs Digby clear up breakfast, with a steady drone of true crime in the background and dried the dishes as Mrs Digby washed them. And after all that, it was only half seven and Ruby still had eight and a half hours to kill. 

She winced at her own wording, and mentally corrected herself. Eight and a half hours to waste. 

“Do you want to make sugar cookies?” Mrs Digby asked, once she’d changed the channel to the morning news. 

“I’m not five,” Ruby complained, and Mrs Digby gave her a very unimpressed look. “Yes please.”

Mrs Digby shook her head with a small smile and flicked the tea-towel at her. Ruby acted as though she’d been shot. 

“Before you do anything go and call one of those friends of yours to collect all of your homework for you,” Mrs Digby reminded her. Ruby remained face-first on the kitchen island, resolutely bleeding out. “Hitch told me to remind you before it got too late, and Clancy left for school. Now, I said that having to catch up another day is no big deal, but he didn’t want you to fall behind.”

For Ruby, rigour mortis had set in. And then Mrs Digby flapped a wet corner of the tea towel on her hand, and she yelped, sitting up properly. 

“He’ll probably do it anyway,” She said, suddenly not really wanting to speak to Clancy. If she spoke to him now, she would be reminded that he’d died only a couple of hours ago and would die again soon. Why ask Clancy to waste his last day on Earth gathering a bunch of homework she was never going to do? But she slowly slid off the chair to wander to the telephone in the hallway as slowly as humanly possible. 

Ruby typed the number in without even looking at the rotary pad. It rang for a few rounds before it picked up. 

“Crew residence, who am I speaking to?” Asked a voice on the other end. Ruby had really hoped that no one would pick up, too busy with the school rush of getting five children out of the house. 

“It’s Ruby, can I speak to Clancy?” 

“I’ll fetch him for you.” 

Behind Ruby, in the kitchen, Mrs Digby was pulling out scales and bowls and ingredients, pre-heating the oven. Ruby leaned her forehead against the hallway wall. 

“Ruby?” Clancy sounded out-of-breath. He always ran to the phone when he heard it was her on the line, no matter how many times Ruby said that she knew he had a massive house and that she very rarely had anything uber-important to tell him anyway. “What’s up?” 

“I’m not coming into school today,” Ruby said with her eyes closed. She could imagine him standing on one leg in the hallway to pull his socks on, shirt not quite buttoned all the way up, still untucked at the back. 

“Are you going to the Country Club?” 

The country club was a joke that had manifested somewhere around last June, where Clancy was spending more and more time at the Twinford Manor Country Club with his parents, first to play tennis with Lulu and then just sitting around so Lester could brag about securing membership for all seven members of his family. He’d spent so much time there that Ruby had been half-convinced that he was actually working at some super-top-secret government agency and ultimately confronted him for working at ‘Spectru’. Clancy had wept laughing and then taken Ruby to the club with him so she could sit poolside and eat the restaurant’s all-day breakfast. 

Ruby screwed her face up. “Yeah,” She said eventually and promptly ran out of things to say. 

“I’ll go ‘round and get all your sheets for you,” Clancy offered up willingly. 

“You have detention at lunchtime,” Ruby reminded him, and Clancy groaned. 

“Aw yeah, I’ll do it after school, promise. I won’t be able to drop them off until later this afternoon though, my dad’s got a work thing, but after that definitely.” 

“I’ll see you then,” Ruby said slowly, resisting the urge to bang her head against the wall until she woke up in bed again. 

“Uh huh!” Clancy chirped. “You can tell me everything later, I hope you have a proper story this time.” 

Ruby’s lips unwillingly twitched into a smile. She’d spent one day making paper aeroplanes out of case files to throw at Froghorn and apparently that wasn’t making the most of her time working as a top-secret secret agent. 

“Can’t wait,” Ruby told him, and waited for his ‘Catch you later!’ before setting the phone down. 

Heading back to the kitchen, she automatically reached to the larder’s top shelf, where the tin of cookie cutters was kept. “Clancy’s going to get everything and then drop them off this evening.” 

“Good lad,” Mrs Digby said approvingly. 

“His dad’s got some Duchess coming round this afternoon for dinner,” Ruby informed Mrs Digby, who got some sort of entertainment out of hearing about the Ambassador's schedule.

“We’ll save him a couple of cookies then,” Mrs Digby decided. “I’m sure they can’t serve anything filling at those things. You go to Pollo’s and all you get is some noodles of spaghetti on a plate, there’s no decent portions anymore.”

Ruby didn’t argue and began cracking eggs and weighing sugar at Mrs Digby’s instruction, while the older lady flicked through a copy of the Twinford Bark in a chair.

“Do you remember why we put eggs in cookies?” She asked her, eyes conveniently turned away while Ruby snuck a bit of cookie dough to her mouth. 

Back when Ruby was in pre-school, Mrs Digby would walk her home where they would make sugar cookies and Mrs Digby would teach her of the chemistry of baking: tricks and tips for making food tastier or more texturised, why certain recipes needed certain ratios and if one thing wasn’t added, the whole cake would fall apart.

“It’s a natural emulsifier and binds the flour and butter together,” Ruby listed as if by rote. 

“They add structure when mixed with the flour,” Mrs Digby added approvingly. 

“Flour adds structure too,” Ruby said quickly, to show that she had known that and didn’t feel like sharing. 

“What about butter?” 

“It coats the gluten strands in flour to slow down gluten formation. It makes cakes more tender. In cookies it adds more flavour.”

Mrs Digby nodded from where she was reading the obituaries. It was her favourite part of the paper. 

“And sugar sweetens everything up,” Ruby finished. “It stabilises egg whites when foamed, and leavens cakes when mixed with butter.” 

Ruby set down the wooden spoon and looked expectantly at the housekeeper. 

“A-plus,” Mrs Digby said warmly, standing up to come and inspect the dough. Now that the hard and messy bit had been done by Ruby, she could join in on her favourite part: actually, making the cookie shapes. 

Ruby rolled it out while Mrs Digby inspected the cookie-cutters. They hadn’t been used in some years; Digby favoured making chocolate chip cookies when in a rush. 

“How does it taste?” She asked wryly and Ruby did her best to look innocent. She had been certain Mrs Digby hadn’t seen, but she had eaten raw cookie dough every time they had ever made cookies together. She wasn’t as unpredictable as she imagined herself to be. 

“Good,” Ruby acquiesced, and the older lady rolled her eyes. 

“Better build up that immunity now,” She was clearly in a good mood with Ruby today, following whatever Hitch had warned her of this morning. Normally Ruby eating salmonella wouldn’t slide. “Get rolling child, I have six cat cookies to make for Darla.” 

Ruby began the task of rolling out the dough, letting Mrs Digby gauge the thickness by eye, rather than any real measuring tool. Finally, they were both able to get cutting, placing little moulds right by the edge of the dough to get as many shapes out as possible. Ruby made two angel cookies for both parents, and a little bowtie one for Hitch, a dog for Bug (Mrs Digby didn’t know that Bug got given a sugar cookie every batch they made. Or maybe Mrs Digby did know and didn’t feel the need to intervene.), a Tyrannosaurus Rex one for Clancy, even though he would never come to visit, and then used every single cutter left in the box to make sure they all had a turn. 

True to her word, Mrs Digby made six cat-shaped cookies to take with her to Darla and began loading cookies on the tray while Ruby finished her cookies. 

“There’s an episode of Kiss Marry Avoid; Kill Murder Arson on now, I think it’s a rerun, but there’s not much else on,” Mrs Digby told Ruby as she loaded the cookies into the oven. 

The whole time they were making cookies, Ruby had barely thought about the time loop or Clancy dying or Mrs Digby never remembering this interaction. A glance at the clock showed that it was eleven o’clock, and hours had slipped away between both of them going silent to watch a particularly bloody scene on the television or chatting about Mrs Digby’s various jaunts around town. 

“Kiss Marry Avoid; Kill Murder Arson sounds good,” Ruby said, and meant it. The process of making something, beating her aggression out on creaming the butter and eggs and rolling the mixture out had soothed nerves that had been raw since the first Monday she had woken up to blaring alarms. 

And they remained in the living room watching re-runs of terrible 1950s shows with minimal special effects budgets until the egg timer– shaped like a palm-sized rotary phone– rang, and then until the cookies had cooled, and there they remained as Ruby demolished nearly the whole plate of car- house- rhino- shaped cookies. 

Mrs Digby looked like she wanted to tell Ruby to stop eating the cookies but was holding her tongue. 

On their second episode of KMA; KMA, the phone rang. Ruby didn’t bother getting up from her armchair to get it. She was having a fine time criticising the quality of the fake blood and dead bodies that were clearly mannequins with Mrs Digby. 

“Ruby,” Mrs Digby stated, not wanting to leave the armchair either. “It’s probably your mother.” 

“It’s probably Darla,” Ruby argued back, reaching for a teddy-bear shaped biscuit. “Cancelling your coffee date to go christening-dress-shopping with Mr Smittens.” 

Mrs Digby laughed, but waved her hand at Ruby, reaching to confiscate the cookies and Ruby knew any protest was over. She dragged her feet to the telephone, eyes still on the television, hoping that whoever it was could sense that this was a bad time and would give up. 

She raised the receiver to her ear, ready to make some cutting remarks about tree surgeons and being ‘leaf’ed alone, when Clancy’s voice nearly blew her eardrum out. 

“Ruby!” He cried, and every muscle in her body seized up in fear. “Ruby, you’re not going to believe me, listen.” 

Clancy took a moment to heave a breath. “Ruby, it’s the Count. I’ve just seen the Count, he’s at the school I swear, I was heading to my detention, and he was at the reception desk, and I swear he saw me, I ran so fast–”

“Where are you?” Ruby asked urgently, pressing the receiver between her ear and shoulder to tap her watch frantically in Morse code. The school had no agents staking it out because Ruby was at home, and Hitch was all the way in Downtown, nearly twenty minutes away especially in a lunchtime rush. 

“In Mrs Greenford’s office,” Clancy was half-whispering now. “She was called out onto the football pitch, and she was the closest office I could think of with a phone, Ruby what do I do?”

“I’m getting Hitch,” Ruby promised him, holding the Rescue near her other ear. 

Even as she listened intently for the tiny speakers to start playing Hitch’s voice, trying to ignore Clancy’s fast breathing, she wondered what the point was. 

Clancy was going to die, and Ruby was going to have to listen. It was day ten, and Clancy was going to die in some horrible and unpreventable way like he did every day. 

But this was different. The Count had showed up to the Junior High. Was he looking for her? Was he looking for Clancy right now? 

She knew that no matter how futile it was, she had to help Clancy. The thought of leaving him to die on the wrong end of a telephone line, after he had called her with every belief that she would and could save him, made her sick to her stomach. 

“I can hear footsteps,” Clancy whispered, and there was shuffling on the other end of the line. “I’m behind the desk, he can’t see me if he looks in.” 

Ruby closed her eyes and lied. “Hitch is on his way,” She said with every ounce of confidence she could muster up in her voice. “He’s in the car, on his way to you, and as soon as he’s with you, I’ll come and find you as well. I won’t hang up on you, you just need to wait until Hitch comes.” 

“Okay,” Clancy’s voice wavered, but she could hear the relief in it. “Okay, that’s good, okay.”

In her other ear, the rescue watch beeped a ‘no answer’ or maybe a ‘no connection’ sound. 

“He’s only a couple of minutes away,” Ruby promised. “He’s got Spectrum too; they’ll come and get the Count.” 

In the living-room, police sirens played on the television. On the other end of the line, a door creaked open. Clancy didn’t say anything. 

“Nurse?” Called a distinctly adult voice. “I’m looking for Ruby Redfort.” 

The Rescue Watch presented two buttons to her. ‘Try Again?’ and ‘Maybe Later’. Ruby closed her eyes to listen to the line better, trying to pick noises out from the static. 

Clancy was silent. Clancy must be frozen in place, in fear. Clancy knew Hitch was going to come and save him. 

“Clancy Crew,” The Count exclaimed, and Ruby imagined him following the stretched cord of the telephone, over the desk and down into the footwell below it, to where all five-foot flat of Clancy Crew crouched. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Clancy said airily, and Ruby mentally begged him to run. Her feet were braced on the floor in anticipation of the flip-flop of the world righting itself, shoulders tensed to try and combat being suddenly back in bed. “We were just talking about you.” 

He was full of bravado that came only from knowing a six-foot-four super spy was currently racing towards your location with a loaded gun and a couple of witty one-liners. 

“Funny,” The Count said, and there was a rush of static and thumps against the receiver before it went quiet again. When the Count spoke again it was directly into the microphone. “Ruby Redfort. I appreciate your attempts to hide from me, but I will destroy anything you put between me and you. First your pet spy, and now Master Crew and any other of your little spy friends you think can act as a shield. We need to catch up.” 

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, and it sounded like Clancy was trying to argue back as well, before the phone clicked and the dial tone played in her ear. The Count had hung up. 

She placed the receiver down and turned away. Mrs Digby leaned forward in her chair to peer down the hallway at her. “Who was it?” 

Ruby opened her mouth, unsure of what her excuse was, starting back towards the living room. She only made it a few steps before the flip-flop feeling she’d been braced for hit her like falling out of a plane. 

She’d never even finished her cookie.

Chapter Text

Ruby woke up with a start, and immediately launched into action, wiggling out of her pyjama top to throw on her nearest T-shirt. The neglected phones continued ringing out of time with each other, and Ruby ignored them resolutely, trying to find clean pants and socks within arms-reach.

Hitch knocked on the door and Ruby bit her tongue to keep from replying. She found her denim flares and pulled them on so quickly she nearly ripped the belt-loops off.

This situation would be so much easier if she’d had time to prepare the night before, or maybe if Hitch was not right outside the door, but there was nothing to be done now.

“Hey kid,” Hitch called, clearly trying to be heard over the din of her phones, and Ruby hissed in annoyance, grabbing her Yellow-Stripes and running barefoot to the window. She flung it open, thanking Hitch’s diligent housework when it didn’t creak, and in one quick movement, rolled herself out to the porch roof below her and slammed the window shut.

Now she couldn’t hear Hitch inside, but he wouldn’t be suspicious of a closed window. No one, not even Hitch, would expect Ruby to be hanging out on top of Greenwood’s wraparound porch at half-past five in the morning. She sat down on the tiles, out of immediate view of the window, and stared at her shoes. She wasn’t going to be caught dead in shoes without socks, but at least Hitch would notice them missing and assume she had already left the premises.

The hatch to the roof, accessible from her bedroom, opened audibly.

“Ruby?” Hitch called, and Ruby shrank down, although she knew she was out of sight. From time to time, she sat on the roof to stargaze when she had nightmares, and Hitch could sometimes find her up there if not anywhere else in the house.

“Ruby, this isn’t funny,” Hitch declared, and Ruby felt guilty at the veiled fear in his voice. For all Hitch knew, she had been kidnapped by the Count right under Hitch’s watching eye. “C’mon kid, I’ve got news.”

There were footsteps over the rooftop as Hitch clearly got anxious enough to check every inch of the space in case Ruby was hidden under a beanbag.

“Shit,” Hitch muttered, and Ruby closed her eyes. She’d never heard him swear, even when he’d been injured in front of her. There was a muted beep from his watch. “LB, the kid’s missing. Not in her room, not anywhere in the house.”

Ruby mouthed a silent ‘sorry’ to Hitch but knew that he wouldn’t remember anything by tomorrow. She couldn’t go to Spectrum with him, not again.

“The alarm wasn’t set off,” Hitch stated. “No, she wouldn’t go willingly,” He paused. “Forced by gunpoint isn’t going willingly. She would’ve left a clue or something if she could, it was forced.”

Hitch descended the stairs, still speaking to LB. Ruby heard the hatch to the door shut, and then counted backwards from 2585 in 7s. When she was certain Hitch had left her room, she pushed the window open and crawled back in, her fall broken by a pile of laundry. The only problem with this plan was that Hitch had definitely checked for her bicycle now. She couldn’t take it without him knowing. Now that Hitch had left her room alone, she finished getting ready, finding mismatched socks and tying her shoes up. Reluctantly, she left her fly barrette on her bedside table, and her tile keychain on her bag. The escape watch was more difficult, because Hitch knew she never took it off, but it still tracked her.

Finally ready, Ruby wriggled out of the window again, and jumped from the porch to the grassy space alongside the side of the house. Hoping that Hitch wasn’t looking out of the French doors, she skulked through the back garden and over the wall at the end, where it spat her out in the alley.

Ruby got to school earlier than she had ever had before in her life. The gates were open, and she sat on a hallway floor along a stretch of lockers, as she waited for any of her friends to arrive. She couldn’t stop at the Diner or any of her usual haunts in case Hitch had Spectrum agents out looking for her, and she chanced her luck ducking into a tiny convenience store for a can of Tab and a chocolate bar for breakfast.

She ate those now, with her legs outstretched in front of her, keeping an eye on her watch in case it started buzzing with a call from Hitch. It felt hot and heavy upon her wrist, and she tried not to feel guilty about the fearful tone of Hitch’s voice this morning. Elliot was often early, while Mouse and Red could vary. And when they did arrive there was no way to tell which classroom they would head for first.

Del was a different story though. Her softball regionals were coming up, and the softball coach enjoyed getting the team into school early and releasing them late for practice.

On day… whatever, when Clancy had been taken to hospital, Del had sat with Ruby, telling her every detail of her day to try and take her mind off of the ambulance sirens. She complained about the early start for a tactics session before school started, closely followed by an emergency practice after school. Del had never made it to that practice and would probably never make it to today’s session either.

Her watch ticked over to eight o’clock, and Ruby made her way down to the sports hall where the softball team were accumulating to discuss the optimal spot on the field and how to hit the ball. Ruby had very little interest in softball.

She slipped in through the doors and went mostly unnoticed by the small group of girls stood around yawning.

After a few seconds of scanning the hall, she spotted Del by the back wall, crouched over two little food boxes that had been brought in by the coach to entice players into attending. She was wearing her varsity jacket, but it was her close-cropped hair, shorn close to her neck in the summer, that really distinguished her from the other girls.

Ruby nodded to the few girls she knew in the little group, but headed straight for Del’s side, peering over her head to see what the tins contained.

“Are those spinach muffins?” Ruby asked, squatting down next to Del, who jumped violently.

She dropped the muffin she was holding in shock and Ruby caught it. She did not give it back, instead examining it closely. “Gross, it is spinach.”

“Where were those reflexes at last week’s basketball match?” Del demanded, instead of anything normal like a greeting.

“Can’t do it on command. Or during a basketball match. Great power and great responsibility and all that.” Ruby forced them through the small talk portion of the conversation and right through to the part where she was actually interested. “Del, I need your help with something.”

Del plucked the muffin from Ruby’s hand and began unwrapping it. “With what?” She asked suspiciously.

Ruby waved a hand vaguely. “Eh, skipping class, going to the skatepark, trying to land that trick you can do.”

“Skip class?” Del asked sarcastically and took a bite of the small cake. She tried to hide her grimace out of spite for Ruby’s unhealthy eating habits but really spinach was just grim.

“I know it all already,” Ruby said blithely, and Del laughed.

“I don’t,” She pointed out and looked over her shoulder. The hall was slowly filling up with players. Del was not captain of the softball team, but she still took her sports very seriously.

“We can skip after your meeting,” Ruby said quickly. Del pulled a face at her and reached back for another muffin. The other tin appeared to have savoury cheese cupcakes, and Ruby grabbed one.

“What’s the point of skipping if you don’t skip?” Del asked and stood up, swinging her bag over her shoulder. “I know all this already.”

Ruby grinned. Maybe she was a bad influence, but she didn’t even have to explain to Del that she could just go to the theory session tomorrow and no one would ever miss her.

She followed behind Del as she approached the rest of her team. “Tell Coach that I’ve had to go and speak to Reception about the basketball courts,” She instructed one. “I’ll try and make it back for the rest of the session, but she knows what Reception is like.”

“Basketball courts?” A girl from Ruby’s Chemistry asked, with a smile directed at Ruby.

“What if you miss something?” Another player asked, clad in the same purple jacket as Del. The cursive lettering over her chest branded her as ‘Joan’.  

“You can tell me later,” Del reminded her, already back-pedalling to the fire exit. Ruby trailed after her, giving one last wave to the group.

“Thanks for the muffins,” She called, and followed Del out of the fire door and into the morning sun.

They headed to the tennis courts. From eight, teachers would patrol the school gates, so getting back out of school that way would prove to be much harder. The tennis courts would be empty of students and teachers, and not overlooked by any buildings.

Del slung her bag up and over the wire fence wrapped around the courts. It landed with a thump and spilled open to sprawl a math textbook and a water bottle across the ground.

Ruby had left her bag at home and set about forcing her sneaker into a gap in the wire. Del hovered behind her on the concrete, like she was expecting Ruby to just fall straight off again. With a few more carefully placed feet and stretches Ruby could grab the top of the fence.

She perched on the top of the fence for a moment, feeling like a large, unstable spider as she wobbled. Del jumped and latched onto the wire about halfway up the fence like the show-off she was.

“Have I just ruined your chances of winning regionals?” Ruby asked, looking down at Del as she climbed up to join her at the top of the fence.

“‘Course not, the team will make it to nationals even if they didn’t force us to come to morning sessions,” Del said confidently. “Coach won’t bench me for missing one session, we only have two subs, so she can’t afford to lose any of us.”

Ruby smiled. At least she wasn’t ruining everyone’s day. She jumped from the very top of the fence, limbs already arranged to land on her feet without wrecking her knees. She nearly dislodged Del from her perch as a result, but it only took a second for Del to follow her down. She landed near-perfect, arms rising like a gymnast to balance.

“Where’s your bag?” Del asked, as Ruby helped her scoop up her books. Ruby handed her back her math book and knew she’d been caught.

“Forgot it at home,” she lied, and Del fixed her with a knowing look.

“You came all the way into school just to convince me to skip with you?” Del asked and Ruby wished her friends weren’t quite as insightful as they were.

“That makes it sound like I’ve got some sort of plan,” Ruby argued, and Del snickered, already leading the way through the hedge screening off the school and down the road towards Twinford Bay.

“You’ve always got a plan,” Del reminded her in a long-suffering way. Ruby kicked at a weed growing up through the pavement, and smiled sweetly at Del.

“Maybe I do have a plan,” She admitted, and Del rolled her eyes. Maybe the plan was just to try and change the events of the day as much as possible. Maybe it was just to have a day off.

“Is there any chance your plan involves us going and getting food as well?” Del asked, clearly having not loved the muffins.

“Obviously,” Ruby grinned, and Del gave a pleased nod.

“Let’s go then.”

They reached Del’s house within thirty minutes, and Ruby doesn’t let herself think about Clancy being left behind at school, or whether the Count is hunting him down through the hallways of Twinford Junior High. If Del noticed that Ruby was quiet, or acting completely crazy this morning, she didn’t point it out, and spent the walk telling Ruby about all of the drama on the softball team. It was well-known that Ruby liked the minutiae of Twinford Junior High daily life, even if she didn’t even know the people involved, and Del happily explained that Sarah’s PR beat Joan’s PR last week, and Joan had taken that personally, and that Melissa was trying with great zeal to get Danny Jupiter to notice her, which nearly defeated the whole point of being on the softball team. Ruby tried to submerge herself entirely in gossip, because she knew Del didn’t care for any of it and would probably rather being discussing tactics with little circles and crosses on a blackboard than entertaining Ruby’s latest whim.

Del entered her house with the confidence of a latch-key kid and made sure to put her school bag away in her room, not dumped in the hallway.

“You can borrow my board,” Del called over her shoulder, as Ruby removed her shoes and padded in socked feet after her. “I take it your big plan didn’t involve us trekking back to your place next?”

“My parents are home today,” Ruby said, neatly eschewing the fact that Hitch was patrolling the whole of Twinford for her. The Western most point of Twinford was probably the best place for Ruby right now. At least that’s what she was telling herself. “I was in a bit of a rush getting out this morning.” 

Del’s room was smaller than Ruby’s, with a single bed pushed against the wall, bracketed by a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Clothes were overflowing out of the drawers, but Del didn’t even blink. Ruby had seen far worse that morning anyway. At least Del separated her clothing categories into different drawers.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Del asked Ruby as she pulled her skateboard out from where it had rolled under her bed. “No banana milk though.”

“I’m good. We might make the lunch rush at the Diner if we’re quick, I’ll treat you to a doughnut,” Ruby flicked the skateboard up into her hand, as Del changed her varsity jacket for a white cable-knit cardigan. Ruby hadn’t even thought about how obviously truant Del would look in her jacket outside of school, and was glad Del was one step ahead of her.

“Make it a waffle and you have a deal,” Del replied and slung her roller skates across her shoulder in their home-made bag. She gave herself one last pat-down to make sure she was ready and gave Ruby a thumbs-up.

They ate their food outside the back of the Double-Doughnut, sat on the floor with their backs against the wall. Marla had given Ruby an unimpressed look when she saw them at the front of the long line of people getting lunch. “I told your butler that I hadn’t seen you this morning,” she told Ruby even as she reached for a take-away cup for her milkshake.

“I wouldn’t ask you to lie for me,” Ruby said, sliding two dollars across the counter for her to take.

“And I didn’t,” Marla said deliberately. “But if he comes by again, I will tell him I saw you.”

Del looked rather uncomfortable during the conversation. “Thanks Marla,” She added when Ruby was too slow.

“We won’t do it again,” Ruby promised, knowing that Marla would never remember it if they did. “Thanks Marla,” She dropped her change in the jar, and they waited for their food in the furthest corner of the diner before slinking out of the kitchen door.

Ruby knew there were plenty of people in the diner at that time, but probably not anyone who would tell her mother immediately that they’d spotted Ruby. Thankfully the overlap between the clientele of the Double Doughnut and the restaurants that Sabina frequented was very limited.

“This was a good idea,” Del said, running a finger through the strawberry syrup on her plate.

“Even if you missed softball?” Ruby asked, and Del rolled her eyes.

“I’m not sure why you think that I care more about softball than getting a free lunch off you,” Del snarked. “And I know you’re going to help me with whatever classwork I missed today, so really this is just a win-win situation for me.”

Ruby smiled, feeling a little better about the situation, even if she knew it would have no consequences. They left their plates inside to be cleaned, and headed for the skatepark which was blissfully quiet at 11am on a Monday morning.

They spent several hours there, with Del demonstrating her hospital flip, and Ruby trying to walk Del through a nuclear grip with some success. After catching the nose of her board in the kneecap, Ruby sat down at the top of the highest ramp with Del’s roller skates beside her to watch Del try to flamingo the board between her legs. She whooped and cheered when Del did something that halfway resembled the grip, and called out pointers that she hoped helped the other girl.

She had her head back, basking in the sunlight through the pine trees, when her watch buzzed. It wasn’t a vibration, but an electrical shock, as though someone on a carpet in socked feet had touched her. She looked at the watch face carefully, but the eyes ticked around happily, and nothing seemed amiss. She couldn’t run through all of the features in front of Del, but she hoped she would have a moment later in the day to check it properly.

Then she noticed the clockface itself. The time was 3pm. On the concrete floor, Del landed her trick perfectly and cheered in triumph.

Ruby clapped quickly, as though she had been paying attention, and Del gave her a wide, blazing grin.

Del shot the board up the ramp for Ruby to catch and jumped up to sit next to her. She was red-faced with exertion, and stretched her legs out to cool down properly, like the athlete she was.

“I promised I’d meet Clancy after school,” Ruby told Del in a voice that suggested she didn’t really want to go at all. The quietness of the skatepark, and its privacy behind the screen of pine trees had worked to take Ruby’s mind off the rest of the world.

“No worries, I’ll come with. It’ll only take us five minutes,” Del said easily, and Ruby was glad that she wasn’t going to have to leave without Del. She craned her neck to see the time on the Bradley Baker watch, and slid easily down the ramp, uncaring of the dust on the seat of her pants.

Ruby handed her roller skates down to her and stood up to drop into the ramp with her borrowed board.

 When Del was laced up and ready, Ruby wheeled back around to her, and smiled. “Race you?” she asked, positioning her right foot on the front of the board. Del snorted.

“No way, I’m not five,” She complained and then pushed off hard in the next second, giving herself a split-second head start before Ruby got with the programme and realised the race had already begun.

Del weaved between pedestrians on the street, not even bothering to call apologies out behind her. Ruby, with a slightly clunkier skateboard, jumped the curb a few times to avoid the worst of the rush hour foot traffic.

Del skated up to the school gates just a few seconds before Ruby did and whooped loudly in victory.

“You cheated,” Ruby complained with a grin on her face, breath coming short and fast. Del rolled her eyes.

“That’s what losers say,” She teased, and Ruby gave her a playful shove, causing Del to roll back against the iron gates with a laugh. “Sorry you’re just a sore loser Redfort.”

“I’ll show you a sore loser,” Ruby huffed, kicking the board up to her hand. “Next time we can do it properly, and I’ll leave you in the dust.”

Del flicked Ruby’s nose, nearly dislodging her glasses and laughed.

Incensed, Ruby kept digging her own grave. “A skateboard has limitations; you know if I were on my skates I’d’ve thrashed you.”

“Thrash me all you want next time,” Del said sweetly, “I beat you today.” 

“I’ll drop your board off at your house later,” Ruby said instead of challenging Del again on the spot. “Saves you having to take them both home,” She paused and squinted up at Del. “You’re going to go and play softball now, aren’t you?”

Del smiled, having been caught out. “Yeah, all my stuff is in my locker, and it seems a waste. Unless you want me to stay?”

Ruby was caught out at the bluntness of the sentence, not even a veiled attempt to get her to teach her another trick or race her again. Del was genuinely concerned.

“No, it’s fine, Clancy will be here in a minute. You go and play softball,” Ruby told her, and Del pivoted on her skates, doing some fancy footwork and still staying in one spot.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Del said with the awkwardness of someone who didn’t really want to say goodbye, “At school or whatever. Thanks for lunch.”

Ruby smiled and waved her off. “Go soft those balls!” She called as soon as Del turned her back. Del nearly fell off her skates and pulled a face at her.

“Never say that again!”

Ruby set the board down again, and looked around her, just in case Hitch had decided to stake out the school at home-time to find her. They had been a bit too quick in getting to the school, thanks to some breakneck speed and teenage stamina, and the gates were still quiet, with only a few lucky students sidling out before the bell had actually rung.

“Got anywhere to be?” A voice hissed over her shoulder, where she was sure there had been empty space just seconds earlier. Déjà vu rushed over her like an explosion in a dark warehouse, and Ruby held the skateboard up like a shield.

The Count was leaning against the iron gates, like Del had been doing minutes earlier. He looked exactly the same as he had on the first day, a whole week ago.

“What are you doing?” Ruby snapped, thinking of the teenager about to come streaming outside of the gates behind them. It was too public for the Count not to have a plan. “How are you doing this?”

The Count sneered and stood up properly. He was favouring one leg over the other, Ruby could see, but that barely seemed relevant now.

Ruby clutched Del’s skateboard close to her chest, forced to take step after step backwards as the Count advanced.

She readied herself to swing the skateboard as soon as the Count wasn’t expecting it. “I’m going to figure it out and stop it, and then you’ll be dragged up in front of LB before you can even think about jumping off another building.”

The Count didn’t seem to take that too seriously, and just snickered a few beats too long to be normal. “I’ve worn out that escape plan now,” He said, and Ruby’s mind went to his leg, the limp he’d had ever since he reappeared. “I was thinking of flying off into the sunset next time, somewhere sunny and warm. I’d already be gone if I weren’t here having so much fun watching you run about.”

“Well, you won’t have time to do that either,” Ruby lied. They had all of the time in the world, and the Count knew it.

“We don’t have much time as it is,” The Count checked his watch with a flourish and Ruby’s grip faltered at the reminder of 4 o’clock in this new reality and she missed her opportunity to hit him. “I daresay the day will be over within the next few minutes.”

Ruby didn’t dare look away from the Count to look at her own watch.

“If you’d like to continue this conversation, find me at the Double Doughnut. Don’t bring your butler friend, I don’t think the doughnuts will agree with him.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Ruby told him with acid in her tone. The Count shrugged.

“Either way I get to watch some decent entertainment. A fun doughnut-themed diner or Clancy Crew getting hit with a—”

The world did its strange axis tilt again and Ruby found herself on her bed. She was only glad that the Count had not had his chance to finish his sentence. She sat up and threw a pillow at the nearest phone.

Today, this time, she had this routine down pat, and remembered exactly where each item of clothing was– ‘Look, stop me if you’ve heard this one before…’ and the wrong socks and sneakers in her hand as she tumbled out onto the roof again.

She went to the Double Doughnut.

Hitch would be disappointed in her, but Ruby had bigger things to worry about than another authority figure shaking their head at her.

Ruby had nothing better to do, and no better plans except wasting fake hours with Del again. She picked up a book from the DIY neighbour library box that repurposed an old mailbox and sat in one of the back booths. She ordered from Marla early enough that it maybe seemed as though she was sneaking a doughnut before school, and then sat in one of the back booths, with the book in her lap and slouched down so no one could see her head over the top of the book.

Not long after she arrived, Ruby’s ears pricked up at a familiar voice at the counter.

“Morning Marla, have you seen Ruby this morning?” Ruby didn’t dare try to take a peek at Hitch, and stayed very still, except for lifting her feet up onto the bench next to her.

“She came in this morning about six for her doughnut,” Marla said openly. Marla would not lie to her, but thankfully she appeared to not have realised that she never saw Ruby leave.

“What is she playing at?” Hitch groaned softly. “Was she with anyone?”

“No, just herself. She looked dressed for school, has she not shown up?”

“She had an appointment this morning, but she’s forgotten and gone into school by herself,” Hitch explained in such a matter-of-fact way that Ruby wondered if she had missed a doctor’s appointment.

“Are you sure I can’t get you a coffee? You need it with that one,” Ruby made a private face at Marla for the lack of loyalty between a doughnut vendor and her customer.

“No, I really must go, I’m afraid. Thanks for your help, Marla,” The door swung shut with a jingle, and Ruby couldn’t even turn around to be sure that the car left the parking lot. She let out a slow breath and turned the next page in her borrowed book.

The book, a thriller about two lovers who worked on the same police department until one of them joined the mafia and disappeared to protect her lover, was finished by 10am, but Ruby was happy to people-watch.

It was on the dot of 12 o’clock that the Count sauntered in, a newspaper tucked under one arm, up to the counter.

Ruby instinctively ducked down, although she was sure she was hidden well enough. No one had spoken to her or looked at her in hours, she must have been doing something right.

“I’ll have my usual.”

“I’m not too sure of what your usual is, sir. Would you like a doughnut?” Marla explained, hackles already up at the rude customer.

“I come in here enough you should remember what I order. It’s a cappuccino, black, with one and a half spoons of sugar.”

From her seat, Ruby pulled a face. How could a cappuccino be made black? Marla seemed to be grappling with the same dilemma but chose to wave the Count on to a seat. Ruby was debating whether to reveal herself or just wait and see if the Count incriminated him somehow without her having to speak to him, but he appeared at her booth just minutes later, with a cappuccino cup in his hands.

He sat down opposite her and took in her scrunched-up form. Ruby put her feet back on the floor and tried to look like she was a real spy.

“Fancy seeing you here,” the Count said.

“The time-loop doesn’t affect you either,” Ruby said, who was a little embarrassed about asking the Count how he was controlling the whole reality, and decided to start off strong by seeming like she knew what she was doing. “It’s because you were in the warehouse that day.”

“I am the machine’s god,” the Count drawled, scooping some foam away from the top of his drink to add sugar. “It doesn’t affect me, because I do not want it to. The Crew boy was a… confounding variable,” Here, he grinned widely as he lifted his cup up. “He is being dealt with, however, and dealt with, and dealt with–”

“I’ve had enough of broken records,” Ruby stopped him before he spoke any further of Clancy’s death. “What are you getting out of this? What have you gained from any of this?”

The Count took his time taking a long sip, and wincing. “They always put too much milk in this,” he murmured to himself, and Ruby stopped herself from pointing out the nuances in coffee drinking.

“I have gained exactly what I want from all of this,” He said finally, and Ruby held his eye-contact like she was being held at gunpoint. “I can observe Spectrum’s emergency protocol every single day, without them being aware of it. I can see how disorganised they are, even after the six months head start I gave you all,” Ruby hadn’t wasted her head start, she promised herself in her head. She was trained, she was fit, she was ready to shove his cappuccino cup up into his brain cavity. “I can work exactly how I like without any fear that Spectrum will catch up with me. But most importantly, I can watch you live the worst day of your life again, and again, and know that you cannot co-ordinate anything to stop me.”

Ruby leaned back in her seat, silent. She could do the ‘stay quiet and let someone else fill the silence’ except the Count was also doing that, but better. “So when you know exactly how to take us down, you’ll start the days again?”

The Count tilted his head. “Oh, I suppose that’s always an option. But Ruby, think bigger,” He waved one hand not holding the cup of coffee. She watched it move, noted his clean hands, his watch, the plain cufflinks in his suit. “Spectrum can never catch me. Spectrum can never put me anywhere that I will stay longer than 24 hours. I’m getting older now Ruby, the Jade Buddha was supposed to be my retirement plan, but it went a little–” he waved his hand again dismissively.

On her wrist, the Bradley Baker watch shocked her again, making her jump, and then clap a hand over the watch face to stop it. The Count didn’t appear to notice.

“Anyway, Ruby, I have no intention to re-start ‘the days’ as you call it, or time and space, or reality. I have all I could wish for, and an assured immortality. I might go travelling, I might take up a new hobby. I might sit every single morning and read the newspaper and my coffee,” He looked pointedly at the items in front of him. “What I’m saying Ruby, is that I have given you a boon. You will be fourteen forever, ah, my apologies, happy belated birthday, and you can do all of the reading, coding, and parkour and playing with dolls that you desire.”

Ruby couldn’t find the words in her to argue that a fourteen year old playing with dolls was not in keeping with the current feminist movement, and to try to put her down based upon that, or worse, be so oblivious to the changing times that he genuinely believed that she did play with toys when she wasn’t strung up over a lake of piranhas by the Count himself.

The Count waited patiently, cappuccino foam forming a small moustache on his upper lip, as though he was waiting for praise. “You can live forever,” he added, like she’d missed that. “All of your friends are here, and alive, and not trying to kill me. You will never have to fight someone to death, or spend your youth chasing down bad people, or get killed by those spies you have chained yourself to.”

“Kronos was built for so much more than that,” Ruby finally spoke in an inhale that betrayed how upset she was. “Kronos was built to avert disaster or save lives or stop every bad thing since it was made. And you’re using it so that you don’t have to face the consequences of your actions.”

“Kronos?” the Count mused. “Not Neumann’s best work, it was just so… predictable. Ruby, Kronos has been used for all of that, don’t you see? Since its creation, it has saved lives, and it has averted nuclear disaster at least twice within our United States. No one remembers, except the poor soul they send through the loop to fix the day. This is simply it’s latest mission, to save another four billion people. The plan isn’t evil Ruby. No one dies, everyone lives.”

Ruby gripped the table and leaned forward. “I don’t want to be stuck in a time loop for the rest of my life. You can sit and do your birdwatching or whatever it is that you do for fun that isn’t stalk teenage girls, but I have to watch Clancy die every single day. You don’t deserve that technology, just as you didn’t deserve to keep the Jade Buddha or the Mars Mushrooms.”

The Count didn’t look perturbed by this outburst, his eyes fixed on her hands where they lay on the table. “Ruby, I have watched everyone I love die already. This is my farm upstate, my turn out to a new pasture. I can remove you from the loop if you so wish, but I cannot think of another person who would benefit so richly from having the entire world at her fingertips.”

Ruby was so enraged that she stood up, forgetting to hide from Marla and other patrons. “You can’t do this,” she told him, finally ready to replace his skull with the ceramic cup in his hand. “Who knows what this could affect in the rest of the world? All of the people having the worst day of their life again and again, they don’t have free will! You can’t trap them like bugs in a jar forever, just so that you can do whatever you want. You have put yourself in a prison of your making, you can’t travel outside of Twinford because you will wake up at home every single morning.

The Count looked up at her standing over him. He had finished his coffee as she was talking. He wasn’t smiling, but there was a softness in his eyes. “Ruby, this is the whole world,” He said gently. “Everyone, everywhere is in this loop. For today, everyone is safe.”

Ruby was truly about to launch herself at him, when her name was called sharply from the doorway. She hadn’t seen what was going on around her in her anger, but the tables were near empty, with all customers cowering on the opposite side of the room. Marla was at the counter in horrified silence, but it wasn’t her who had shouted her name.

Hitch, LB, Blacker and a handful of agents had entered the Diner during their argument. Kip Holbrook had wide eyes, but he was clearly ready to plunge bodily into the fray. LB had a gun.

“Step away Ruby,” Hitch said sharply, and Ruby could only point at the Count as an explanation for everything, everything including the bits that Hitch didn’t know about yet.

“Oh,” the Count said, lowering his empty cup to its saucer and licking his lips of foam. He didn’t appear to be afraid that there was no chance of escape. “Think about what I said, Ruby,”

Hitch was also shouting some form of ‘cease and desist’, but for all of his volume, Ruby couldn’t help listening to the Count.

“I can remove you from the loop, if you truly wish so,” He said softly, so Hitch and the Spectrum agents couldn’t hear him. “Come and find me, if you find you cannot remain.”

Ruby looked back at Hitch with wide eyes, and LB fired a warning shot into the wall just above the Count. Froghorn had appeared and was escorting citizens, and Marla, away from the Diner. Concrete and asbestos dust fell gently in the air around both Ruby and the Count.

“Ruby step away,” Hitch shouted again, but he had noticed something Ruby hadn’t, in the seconds that she was not looking at the Count. He had produced a small remote from his blazer pocket, or perhaps from up his sleeve, with two small, colour-coded buttons on it.

“See you tomorrow,” the Count told Ruby, in their own tiny bubble, their own loop in space and time, and pressed the red button.

The Diner exploded around them in such force that the windows were shattered out into the car park. Ruby didn’t have a chance to turn away or run towards Hitch and the protective line of Spectrum agents at the door, or even shield her eyes. The jukebox stopped playing and the small discography cards curled up and burned and the quarters fell out from the tray.

Her lenses fractured in their frames, and the ceiling seemed to explode outwards and fold inwards at the same time. Ruby had a split second of consciousness that she was trapped bodily underneath cinderblocks and the sheets of tar and metal that once made up the ceiling and she could not see Hitch at all.

Except, he was standing in her door frame, having already knocked several times and was confusedly frowning at her, lying in her bed and gasping for breath as she kicked her constricting comforter off of her.

“Ruby?” He asked, and helped her sit up, and kicked at one of the phones to take it off the hook and stop its ringing. “Ruby, I need you to breathe with me okay, it was just a dream. You’re in your room, and it’s Hitch with you.”

Her intact glasses were pressed into her hand, and Ruby caught her breath.

“I need to go to Spectrum,” She said between ragged breaths. Hitch didn’t hear her the first time, and she repeated herself with more conviction in her tone.

“We need to go to Spectrum, the Count is back,” Ruby looked at Hitch closely, and at the worried pinch between his brows. “And he has a plan.”

Chapter Text

Once Hitch had grasped the gravity of the situation, they were in the car and hurtling towards Spectrum faster than any other day before. Hitch hadn’t said a lot, just become steely focused on his destination in a way that Ruby appreciated.

Ruby had to break this focus just a few moments down the halls of Spectrum, when she stopped scurrying after him, and called his name.

“Wait,” Hitch stopped a beat too late, and looked at her like maybe she was going to start crying again. “I need to go to the toilet. Can you fill LB in, maybe get her to delay the meeting for a bit? So I can talk to her.”

Hitch looked like he might escort her to the toilet, but visibly stopped himself. “Be quick,” he said finally. “You’re the only one with a plan.”

Ruby gave him a thumbs-up and started walking down the right corridor to take her to the restrooms. After turning two corners, and glancing behind her to check Hitch wasn’t actually following her, she started running, trying to shave her journey down to a length of time that Hitch wouldn’t panic over.

She was by the gadget room fairly quickly, and opened the door with her momentum. She glanced briefly to her right in case there was anyone assigned to signing in and out duties.

The room was a bright orange, and the woman sitting behind the (also bright orange desk) wore a power-suit to rival Thatcher’s. Her suit was a light powder orange and it stunned Ruby for a second to see such commitment to the bit. However, the young woman’s hand was reaching quickly to a button at her side.

“Wait, don’t press that–!” Ruby pleaded but the lady had already slammed it down.

“Under orders,” She smiled and shrugged. “Henry is on his way.”

“Who’s Henry? I just want to see Hal, I’m not even looking for gadgets,” Ruby explained, already eyeing up the gadget room to see if she could make a quick escape that way, but the door adjoining the showroom was already opening.

Hal appeared, grease and oil smeared up to his elbows and a telling streak of black paint in his hair.

“Ruby, I’ve been told you can’t come in here without Hitch and me both being present,” He told her, mucky hands held aloft.

“I came here to see you anyway. My watch is acting weird.”

Hal visibly relaxed, like he’d been expecting to physically remove Ruby from the room. “You’re not going anywhere near the showroom, okay? No funny business or tricks. The budget is not enough to cover everything you take.”

Ruby was starting to feel a bit attacked. Hal wouldn’t even know if she took anything, and now she kind of wanted to practise her sleight-of-hand just to prove him wrong.

“No funny business,” She agreed, but was ready to renege on that at a moment’s notice. “You can tell Henry that I won’t be doing any funny business either. I thought you were the only gadget man here?”

Hal rubbed under his eye with the back of his hand, which seemed like the cleanest part of him. “I’m Henry. Hal is just a nickname,” He told her and Ruby felt abruptly embarrassed. Stupid spy agencies and stupid everyone lying about their names.

“Alexa, you can just call me Hal, it’s okay,” He directed at the woman at her desk, who still looked like she might call for security. “Also, if you hear me yell, call Agent Hitch.”

Alexa nodded seriously. Hal kicked the door he’d entered through open, most likely to avoid using his filthy hands and Ruby followed behind him, giving Alexa a polite nod as she left. She had a good respect for women, and a healthy fear for people in receptionist roles.

The workshop she stood in now was nearly the same size of the showroom, with all kinds of machines and lathes crowded against the walls. There was a motorbike resting on a raised stage where Hal could wriggle under to fix.

“I’ve been asking her to call me Hal for weeks now,” Hal called over his shoulder as he headed to a massive sink and began scrubbing the dirt from his arms. Ruby took a moment while his back was turned to look around the workstations. “I guess it’s better than ‘Agent this’ and ‘Agent that’, but I don’t even know how she found out my name was Henry to begin with.”

“Ah ah, don’t get closer to anything than you already are,” Hal called warningly, having spotted her in the reflection of the nearest knurling lathe. “Some of that stuff is dangerous and Hitch would have my head if I let you chop your fingers off with a bandsaw.”

“I like my fingers,” Ruby retorted and Hal grabbed a rag to dry his hands with.

“Everyone likes their fingers, mate, until they get chewed up by something built to cut steel.” Ruby could tell he had a point and pointedly took a step away from the machine next to her. Hal nodded approvingly.

“Now what was the issue?” Hal asked and Ruby unbuckled her watch from around her wrist.

“Oh man, not that thing again,” He groaned, but took it anyway, heading back to a nearly clear bench, with a light built into the wall beside it.

“It gave me a shock yesterday. I don’t know whether it got wet again or what, but it’s happened like twice now,” Ruby filled him in, and Hal pointed the side of the watch at the wall, scrolling through the different options of torch, laser, claw and then spat a tiny pellet across the room where it embedded itself in the cinder blocks. Ruby watched with her mouth open.

“What was that last setting? How do I do that?”

Hal waved the watch around like it couldn’t shoot BB balls. “That’s under administrator permission. I was checking that you couldn’t do that, you’re not allowed.”

Ruby crossed her arms in annoyance. She deserved to shoot tiny pellets at people. Purely for the humour.

Finally, Hal flipped the watch over on the bench, revealing the cover for the inner mechanisms of the clockwork.

“I hope it’s wet with something normal like seawater, or a red wine at the very worst,” Hal told her, and she wandered over to stand by him, making sure not to block the light. “I am not a bodily fluids kind of guy, Redfort. I make lots of decisions about how far away I am from babies when they look like they’re going to leak something, and I had to clean all sorts of gunk out from it last time.”

Ruby winced in sympathy. “If I’d known the baby had it, I would’ve gotten it off him.”

“There were teeth marks in the casing, mate. What baby can do that?”

“Think about how I feel baby-sitting him,” Ruby argued, and Hal laughed, reaching blindly for a pair of goggles near him, pushing them on his nose and winching the arm to extend some sort of magnifying-glass. With a screwdriver, he prised the cover up and squinted into the clockwork gears.

“That’s weird,” He said with little emotion.

“What is?” Ruby asked, lowering her head to peer into it too. Hal sighed and shifted the light, so her head wasn’t blocking it.

“Well, the good news is, it isn’t half a crushed carrot crisp like last time,” Hal said, patting the countertop until he found a pair of tweezers. “Bad news is, you’re never going to be a technician if you think you can just wedge any sort of machinery in here.”

“Me?” Ruby asked, and nearly butted heads with Hal as she tried to get closer to the watch to look. Hal pointed with the point of the tweezers, at a tiny chip placed into the back of the watch, no bigger than Ruby’s pinky fingernail. It was wired with tiny filaments to the clockwork around it, and Ruby couldn’t guess what it was powered by. It looked far too Star Trek for clockwork.

“You really can’t modify watches with whatever you think looks cool,” Hal told her in a long-suffering tone. He nudged the tweezer tip under the chip like he was going to dig it out. “If you want a higher-powered watch, you’ll have to swap this one in for one of our newer models.”

The chip sparked and fizzed and Ruby reared back in alarm. “I didn’t put that in. I don’t think I even have anything like that to open it up with,” She pointed at the screwdriver and Hal lifted his head to look at her, one eye magnified to the size of a tennis ball under the glass.

“You don’t have a screwdriver?”

“My parents aren’t really the DIY type,” She confided. “Maybe Hitch has one. But I don’t touch the watch, especially not to put sci-fi gizmos and goobers in.”

Hal grimaced a little and turned back to easing the chip out. “However it got in here…” He said in a tone that suggested that he still strongly suspected Ruby. “It’s not doing anything to the working of the watch.”

“Can you get it out?” Ruby asked.

“It’s hard, admittedly. And we don’t have many cogs this size so if I yank it, the whole watch may break,” Hal explained, patting the filaments gently like one would with a dog.

“If it’s not doing anything, could I bring it back another day? I kind of have school soonish, and as long as it doesn’t shock me, I can deal with it.”

Hal nodded, pushing his goggles up onto his head. “I don’t know why it’s shocking you. Its other functions are working just fine, so it should still be a helpful Escape Watch. Just please come to me first if you have any modifications.”

He pointed at the underside of the wristband, where it was threaded through with silver wire. “Like, aesthetic mods are fine! I don’t have a problem with those, except for bad taste, but if it’s technology you’re after, I can fit it quicker and better.”

Ruby lifted the watch up to her face to closely examine the banding on the strap. “I didn’t do that either,” She mumbled, but something was starting to make itself clear to her.

She had a feeling that if she told Hal that the Count had stolen her watch and then given it back, he may just confiscate the whole watch. And tell Hitch. And then Ruby would be without a watch until tomorrow when it magically reappeared on her wrist. It was only the morning and she didn’t fancy a day without her watch as security. So, she strapped it back on, and tapped the face to watch it light up.

Hal leaned back on his stool and gave her a smile that was kind, if a bit confused. “No more mods, okay? I can show you some of the blueprints for other features of the watch which I could put in for you but remember it’s vintage. There’s only so much new tech we can put in before the thing starts looking like a brick.”

Ruby nodded and dropped her hand back to her side. “Thanks for having a look at it. I’ll drop it in by the end of the week.”

“Make sure you bring Hitch with you,” Hal warned, getting to his feet, presumably to walk her to the door.

“Will do. Then you can both watch me stand very still and do nothing,” Hal laughed, opening the door back to the reception area.

“Hey buster, I can walk myself to the door,” She argued. Alexa didn’t look much happier to see her but there weren’t any security agents waiting to cart her off. And no angry-looking butler spies.

“I know that you can’t, mate,” Hal said easily. He held the final door back to white corridors open and gestured her through. Ruby scowled.

“This could be putting me in danger. Every gadget you let me borrow always ends up saving my life,” Ruby debated quickly and she could see something waver in Hal’s face. Ha, take that, adults with morals! Hal wouldn’t let her die without a cool pair of shoes or glasses.

“Bring Hitch with you whenever and I’ll let you pick out whatever you think will save your life,” Hal said and Ruby groaned, tipping her head back. “Hey, don’t give me that, you could be walking away with stuff this evening if you just bring your babysitter.”

Ruby groaned again but stepped through the door. Hal grinned at her.

“See you around Redfort. Watch out for those babies.”

“Yeah yeah, I’ll see you later,” She waved him off and heard the door click behind her. She wavered in the hallway for a second, weighing up the options of just rushing Alexa to get into the showroom. What, was she scared of losing her job? Ruby was the best defender on the basketball court and could probably get past Alexa.

But the more Ruby thought about it, the stress of getting gadgets didn’t seem worth it. She always woke up in the clothes she’d been wearing on the first day of the loop, with every item of clothing she’d put on during the day disappearing and returning to its original place on the floor. Even Del’s jacket on day… something of the loop hadn’t remained on her when she woke up.

She started walking back to the heart of the tunnels to find Hitch and LB and have the same conversation about doom and time, but with less excitement now.

She found Hitch in the coding room, leaning against Blacker’s desk and talking to him quietly. He looked up and went silent before giving Ruby a smile.

“Hey kid, feeling better?” He asked. Blacker scooted back in his chair to see Ruby properly. His face didn’t betray any of whatever Hitch had been telling him: that Ruby was having a mental break, or couldn’t tell dreams from reality, so he had clearly been well prepared.

Ruby made a non-committal hum. “Is LB coming here?” She asked. Froghorn hadn’t arrived yet either, unless Blacker had sent him off to make a safer space for Ruby.

Blacker stood to start boiling the kettle at the small coffee trolley at the side of the room.

“She is. I know you may not want to discuss this twice, but maybe if you could start explaining to us and then we can present a united front to LB,” Hitch explained reasonably enough but Ruby was starting to get antsy at the side-stepping of her mental break.

“You believe me, don’t you?” Ruby exclaimed quickly. “You said you’d trust me,” ‘after last time’ goes unsaid, but by the look on Hitch’s face he heard it anyway.

“I do,” Blacker said immediately. Some of the tension sagged out of Ruby’s shoulders. “I’d like to know exactly what is going on, but I’ll take anything you have at the moment.”

It was Blacker’s conviction in her that made Ruby finally able to speak.

“The Count is back,” she announced with gravity, but both men had already known this. “He’s got some kind of advanced technology, he’s produced a time loop for the entire world, that resets every morning at half past five, when you,” She pointed at Hitch who was stirring his mug. “Come and wake me up for this meeting.”

Hitch nodded, but was clearly expecting her to get to the point. Ruby tried to think of how she had convinced him a couple of not-days ago.

“I’ve told you all of this separately about five times now,” Ruby explained fervently. “The day is looping, I was kidnapped by the Count five days ago and he showed me a machine, and LB said that Kronos was potentially Spectrum technology and you—” she pointed at Blacker who nearly jumped at the suddenness of her action. “Said that it sounded like something Spectrum would do and you said you had an idea to help me, but something happened before you could tell me.”

Hitch put his mug of coffee down and started tapping on his watch quickly. Blacker had his brows furrowed as though he was trying to remember that tip really hard.

“LB is coming,” Hitch said, as if he were saying ‘the straitjacket is on its way’. Ruby’s mind  wandered to whether lobotomies were still carried out in San Diego. She shook her head.

“You have to trust me,” She said quickly and pointed at the door. “Froghorn’s going to come in any moment now, LB is going to ask you to patrol the Downtown area today in search of the Count Hitch, and then at some point Clancy Crew is going to die and you’re going to forget this ever happened. But I’ll have to get up and go to Spectrum and explain this all over again to you both.”

“What’s going to happen to Clancy?” Hitch said suddenly. Ruby took a breath to explain all of that as well, and she hadn’t even gotten to the explosion yesterday, when the door opened sharply on its hinges and hit the wall behind it. Froghorn bustled through in the exact same way as yesterday, and Blacker jumped at the sudden intrusion, already on edge from Ruby’s minor breakdown, spilling his coffee down his front with fantastic timing.

Froghorn froze in the doorway, looking at Ruby, fists clenched as she tried to convince the two agents to listen to her; Hitch who had his hands out in supplication to Ruby, and Blacker who was dabbing at his front ineffectively.

“Is… everything okay?” Froghorn asked in a quiet voice, edging towards Ruby to get something for Blacker to clean his front with, which appeared to be his first priority.

“Not really,” Ruby snapped, and looked at Hitch just in time to see the agent making a cutting-throat action at Froghorn, obviously telling him not to wind her up. “Look you guys have to believe me. LB will confirm that Kronos is an actual thing, we just have to ask her.”

“Kronos?” Froghorn asked, having retreated to stand by Blacker with his new towels, giving Ruby a wide berth.

“The machine that’s causing the day to loop,” Ruby provided helpfully. Froghorn nodded like that had answered all of his questions. “Your hair’s still down by the way.”

The look of panic on Froghorn’s face as he reached to fix his hair wasn’t even funny enough to lift the tension in the room.

“I just need you guys to trust me,” Ruby tried again. Hitch and Froghorn were focused on her, and after a second Blacker gave up on his jumper to listen intently. “It sounds sci-fi and weird, but I don’t know what else to do. Blacker, you said trying to prevent the accident might make the machine stop looping that day but I tried that and it didn’t work.”

“The day ends every time Clancy dies. So, I need to prevent that. And I need your help to stop it, LB said she’d put agents on it, but she never remembers the next day. Hitch you said you’d protect him, but he still drowned or got hit by a car, or died.”

Hitch had a complicated look on his face, and Ruby realised that maybe telling someone he was complicit in a fourteen-year old child’s death was not exactly good for morale.

“And the Count isn’t even planning on stopping it,” Ruby added. “I saw him yesterday, and his plan is just to keep everyone trapped like this. He said this was his retirement plan, he's not going to let me out, and I can't stop Clancy from dying."

“Why are we shouting?” LB asked, as she closed the door surely behind her and locked it. Ruby spun to face her and sighed minutely. At least LB would back up the possibility of Kronos.

“The Count has created a time-loop, and Ruby is the only one who can remember it each time it resets,” Blacker explained in a more level tone than Ruby could.

“And it resets every day because Clancy Crew dies,” Ruby added, needing to hammer that point home. “This is day… 12 of the loop. And I saw the Count yesterday, and he said that he was never going to turn the loop off. He’s spying on Spectrum, and just enjoying a life without consequences.”

LB pressed her fingertips to her temple and waved her other hand at Hitch, who obediently boiled the kettle again. Froghorn raised his hand, and Hitch nodded.

Ruby pressed on quickly to stop LB interrupting her. “And the creation of a time loop is possible, because Spectrum has that technology.”

Realisation dawned on LB’s face. “We have theoretical plans for creating such a phenomenon.”

“The Count says that the machine has been created and has been used in the past. I can get why there wouldn’t be files about it, but somehow Spectrum created the machine, and lost it and now the Count has it.”

“LB,” Hitch said in a faint voice. “Spectrum has a machine that could do this?”

If LB cared that she had lied again to her closest ally in Spectrum, it didn’t show on her face. “It was always theoretical,” she told Hitch, and maybe there was a pleading tone for Hitch to believe her. “I never knew it had been created, and after all of the other unpleasant technology Spectrum had used in the fifties, I was happy to let the blueprints rot in the Vault.”

Froghorn smoothed his hair back in its ponytail like a nervous tic. “She’s telling the truth?” He asked LB, like Ruby wasn't stood in front of him. 

The Head of Spectrum 8 nodded. “There’s no way that she could know about it unless she’s come up close with it.”

Hitch still looked shell-shocked, and LB turned to him with her hands out like a surrender. “If I had known that we had such technology, don’t you think I would’ve used it a hundred times over?”

Even Blacker and Froghorn who knew very little about the context behind that statement winced. Ruby knew that LB would’ve torn a hole in space-time before giving up on Bradley, and knew that LB truly had known nothing.

Hitch was reaching the same conclusion, but wasn’t happy about it. “Jesus Christ," He shook his head. “But how does Clancy come into this?” He had a lot of vested interest in the alarms and security and safeguards surrounding the Ambassador’s house. Ruby knew that he did absolutely everything to ensure Clancy was safe, aside from moving into his house and acting like a butler.

“Clancy was with me on the first day when Kronos blew up,” Ruby tried to pull her mind back. “The Count had kidnapped me, and Clancy somehow followed us to wherever I was taken, and was trying to escape when it happened.”

“So, to remember the day, you had to be in some proximity to the machine,” Froghorn started, like the nerd he was.

“It can’t just be proximity,” Ruby said suddenly. “Hitch and whoever Spectrum’s first response team is were outside when the machine exploded, he was at the doors when we made it out of the building. So unless it’s proximity of just a few metres, and… The Count wasn’t in the room either. He had left me in the room with the machine, which is when Clancy came to untie me. That’s why Clancy was there, to get me out.”

“So Clancy was never involved in the plan,” Blacker said slowly. “Clancy was–”

“Extraneous,” Ruby interrupted. “He wasn’t supposed to be there. But I was, and the Count was, but he was at a… safe distance? Inside the proximity but not hit by the explosion.”

Ruby trailed off, remembering that day. Clancy slung over her shoulder, blood streaming down her face, his gasping breaths in her ear as she limped to the door. She wondered, for the first time because she had been trying to block this out just like she was ignoring every other day Clancy had died, if the machine hadn’t just stopped the day at four o’clock like it had since, but if the day restarted at the dot of 4 o’clock because that was when Clancy Crew had stopped breathing in their doomed three-legged race out of the warehouse.

Ruby pressed the heel of her hands against her eyes and took a deep breath. “Clancy wasn’t meant to be there. I was supposed to die in the explosion, and die again and again every day after that for the Count’s amusement.”

The adults went silent around Ruby.

Sometimes, there was just nothing to say.

It was Ruby again who broke the silence, because the day had a deadline of 4pm. She couldn’t let the grown-ups stand around and feel sorry for her when they had some brain-storming to do. “So how do you stop a time loop when the day isn’t even twelve hours long?” She looked at Blacker and Froghorn in turn. “I’ve read your little book, I’ve kept everything the same as the first day, I’ve changed everything from the first day, I’ve stopped acting like a jerk in case it was karma, I’ve spoken to the Count to get him to stop it and he blew up the Double Doughnut.”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve even died in the time loop, and that’s not changed anything. I still woke up this morning." 

“You died?” Hitch sounded horrified, but Ruby just shrugged.

“The Double Doughnut exploded,” she said matter-of-factly. She’d already done her crying but waking up this morning had taken the edge off that. “You were there, but the Count didn’t give you a chance. That’s not the point, you guys are the smartest people in Spectrum, maybe the country and I need you to think of how we’re going to stop him.”

Hitch left his safe spot by the coffee trolley to hand out the mugs. His butler training had turned into some kind of self-soothing mechanism, but the adults definitely needed some coffee to get through the conversation.

“Kill the Count,” LB said immediately. “If he started the machine, maybe his administratorship over the loop will be reset and it’ll be tomorrow.”

Ruby pulled a face. “He must have died in the explosion yesterday. He said that he had feigned immortality, but I don’t know what the conditions for that immortality are. And I can’t die either.”

LB looked as though killing the Count was still pretty high on her list of things to do.

“Stop Clancy from dying?” Blacker suggested next.

“I’ve been trying that. Even when I’m not near him, something still happens to him. And whenever I am there to stop it, it just happens in more and more horrible ways.”

“We can put agents on Clancy,” LB said as assuredly as she had a week ago. “Explain it to his father, and just put him in a nice quiet room for twelve hours,” She took two strides to the left and picked up the rotary phone on the side table adjoining Blacker’s desk, and dialled a number so fast that Ruby couldn’t try and remember it.

“This is LB. Mobilise first-response team. Prepare holding cell 2. Get Agent Intern down to the store and purchase the latest copy of the magazine teenagers like,” She glanced at Ruby. “And some snacks.”

She put the phone down again, and took a deep breath. “Is there anything else you can think of that Spectrum could assist with?”

Ruby was starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. “Aside from finding the Count?” LB twisted her mouth. “I guess some gadgets for me to keep on me wouldn’t go amiss.”

She was given twenty minutes in the gadget room. She only stuck her tongue out at Alexa twice.

In those twenty minutes, Clancy had been retrieved from school by the first-response team who was probably relieved not to be going into an explosive-rigged diner and escorted down the nearest mineshaft for safe-keeping. LB had greeted him at the entrance to Spectrum, and then led him to the holding cell.

Holding Cell 2 was not the nicest place in Spectrum, but it did have a lock on the door that only LB could open, and Ruby was happy enough with that. Ruby wasn’t allowed inside, for reasons that she understood but did not agree with, but she was shown to the narrow concrete room next door which had a two-way mirror and a small microphone that connected to speakers in the holding cell. Ruby sat down on the small chair provided and kicked her legs up onto the counter holding the microphone. Hitch patted her head and promised to be just down the hall, where LB had retreated to fill out the copious amount of paperwork that this adventure had cost her.

Clancy threw an unwrapped Tootsie-Roll up in the air to catch it in his mouth and cheered around it when he succeeded. Ruby couldn’t clap and hold down the microphone button at the same time, but she did laugh into the mic. “Nice one, Clance,”

Clancy hadn’t touched the issues of Vogue, OMG! or Beano that had been purchased for him, but Ruby and Clancy could talk for Britain when left to their own devices. Clancy had spent the better part of an hour telling Ruby about the school’s reaction to a helicopter landing in the school soccer field and how Clancy had been pressed up against the window with all the other kids watching armed personnel walk into the school, right up until his name was called across the tannoy system.

He had stopped walking with the Spectrum agents back to the helicopter, and waved at the kids lined up in every window of the school before stepping foot into the helicopter, and wearing the headset and peering out of the cockpit windows to see how Twinford was laid out beneath him and begged Kip Holbrook to let him hold his gun.

Clancy was in a remarkably good mood, even after Ruby had told him that the possibility of him dying was well over 99%. After she’d given him his time loop code, he had nodded into empty space, with a great deal of trust in her.

“I know you’ve got it all figured out,” He said, eyes fixed on the mirror, but not actually at Ruby. “If I just have to sit in this room for the next ten hours, I can do that. I can do this all day,” he pointed at the small pile of possessions he had been given. “I do this all day for fun on weekends. Now, tell me everything that’s happened to you.”

Ruby leaned back in her chair, and pressed the microphone button down with her foot so that her hand would stop cramping.

“So it all started twelve days ago,” She began, and Clancy nodded like he hadn’t been at the skatepark with her yesterday. “I woke up and Hitch said we had to go to a meeting because the Count had been spotted and–”

Clancy threw another sweet up in the air to catch it in his mouth, and caught it perfectly. So perfectly in fact that it bypassed his teeth and tongue and lodged somewhere in his windpipe. He tried to cough and Ruby paused so that he didn’t miss any of the story. He coughed again, but the speakers connecting him to Ruby’s little space weren’t working all of a sudden because she couldn’t hear him making any noise. His hand came up to hold his throat, and he tried to cough again.

“You alright there, Clance?” Ruby asked, and Clancy’s wide eyed roved over the mirror connecting their room, but didn’t see her. “Deep breath, come on.”

Clancy shook his head, and started coughing again, desperately, with great wracking movements of his chest, but he didn’t seem to be taking anything in. His eyes were wet with tears, and near blind with panic. Ruby sat up properly, trying to understand what was happening. Clancy went to his knees, pounding his chest to try and dislodge the tootsie-roll and Ruby shot to her feet, taking her hand off of the button and fleeing to the door of her door.

“LB!” She shouted at the top of her lungs. “Loveday fucking Byrd where are you?” She banged loudly on the doors down the corridor but LB didn’t appear. She slapped the face of her watch, trying to get Hitch to appear. “Hitch? Hitch where did you go?”

An unfamiliar agent opened a door she had knocked upon, and looked at her with confusion. “Why are you–?”

“Where is LB?” Ruby bellowed into his face. “Where is she? I need her! I need to get into the room, Clancy isn’t well, I need a medic.”

“I’m first-aid trained,” the agent said, rolling up his shirt sleeves, but Ruby was turning away from him, going further down the corridor to try and find the room that Hitch had been talking about. Was it lunchtime? Had they gone to get food, or to Spectrum 1 to explain the time situation? Were they alive? The door that contained Clancy wasn’t labelled but she placed kick after kick at it in the hopes that her skinny fourteen-year-old girl legs could get past the reinforced steel.

“The door’s locked,” Ruby said, and felt as dizzy as Clancy must be. She was scared to go into her adjoining room now, scared of what condition she would find Clancy in.

“Ruby!” Hitch shouted from down the corridor, already running full-pelt towards her. “What is it?”

Ruby looked past him for LB. “Clancy’s choking, I can’t get in. Where’s LB?”

Hitch met her eyes and immediately turned tail and sprinted back the way he’d come to find LB himself. Ruby went to go after him, but found she couldn’t leave the section of corridor that held her best friend. Ruby slapped her watch to call LB herself, in case it was just a password to be typed in, and saw the time. Three and  half minutes since Clancy fell to his knees.

How long could someone go without air? How long until the brain died from lack of oxygen?

A light on Ruby’s watch shone a sudden and hopeful white. “Redfort!” LB shouted down the connection. “I’m coming, what is the situation?”

Ruby could hear footsteps pounding down the carpeted corridor, could see the wringing hands of the agent she had disturbed, but she could not hear anything from inside Holding Cell 2.

LB and Hitch, matching each other step for step, LB’s hand to her mouth to speak into her communicator, appeared at the end of the corridor, and Ruby could see the determination on their faces. LB reached the door first, and Ruby stumbled away, and LB began reciting words into a hidden camera for the voice-recognition technology.

And Ruby knew that there was nothing that she could do, but it still hurt like she’d died herself when she opened her eyes to see her bedroom ceiling.

Chapter Text

Day fifteen: Asphyxiation by peanuts. Clancy wasn’t even allergic to peanuts.

Day eighteen: Stabbed.

Day thirty-one: Clancy was tackled in a PE game of soccer and something in his spine cracks.

Day forty-eight: Clancy tilted his chair too far back when talking to Ruby in homeroom and the legs slip out from under him. The blood soaks Ruby’s sneakers.

Day sixty-five: Ruby gets angry at Clancy. She had dug her shoulder into his chest, nothing harder than they’ve ever done before, but he lost his balance. Ruby nearly fell down the stairs after him to help, tears in her eyes.

Clancy was pawing through her wardrobe and Ruby was very patiently looking away because Clancy froze stock-still whenever she looked over at him. She hadn’t mentioned it yet, but she didn’t think that he was rating her collection of shirt slogans.

The turntable on her desk wobbled out David Bowie, Clancy’s new obsession.

She squinted out the corner of her eye at Clancy, who was very unsubtly holding a skirt out, with a strained look of distaste plastered over his face, like he hated the ruffles. Like… really hated the ruffles.

“Your hair needs a cut,” She called idly, flicking another page of her comic.

Clancy jumped comically high, and the skirt fell to the floor in a heap. “I was thinking of growing it out actually,” He said, reaching around to touch the back of it.

Ruby’s eyes slid from her comic to the David Bowie album cover propped up next to her turntable, and then Clancy.

“You should grow it into a mullet,” She told him, and he laughed, still looking in the mirror with a hand on his hair.

“Can you imagine what my dad would say?” Clancy asked, knowing full well what would be said.

Ruby rolled her eyes, scoffing so Clancy knew exactly how stupid he was being. “Who cares? If you had a mullet, he could claim like… points for coolness. He would be down with the kids.”

Clancy laughed and left her wardrobe alone, coming to flop down beside her on the bed. Ruby automatically angled her comic so he could see the text.

She wasn’t looking at him this time, but he put a hand to his head. “My head hurts,” he murmured, and Ruby flicked a page again.

“Did’ya hit it earlier?” She asked. “Have you drunk any water today?”

Clancy didn’t reply and she turned her head and saw only her rhinestone-studded high heel telephone vibrating with how hard it was ringing on its cradle. The magazine she had been holding was suddenly on the other side of the room, and Ruby pulled her comforter up around her head and closed her eyes.

“Right, Ruby exclaimed, and stormed over to the wardrobe to stand beside Clancy, who tensed like she was meeting him in a boxing ring. She picked up the skirt, the one she’d gotten for some party or whatever, and had never touched. She thrust it into his hands, and his hands closed over the soft fabric in surprise.

“I’m going to turn around and lock the door. You’re going to try that on finally, or you’re going to realise you don’t want to. Either is okay. If you don’t want me to turn around, I won’t. I’m sick of you yearning for it,” She instructed him matter-of-factly and turned towards the door, locking it audibly. Then she sat down, facing it, and dragged a comic a little closer to her to pretend to read that instead.

There was no movement behind her, and Ruby thought that maybe she was too sharp.

“I don’t mind either way Clancy,” She told him without turning her head. “If you want a different one, pick it out. You’ve gone through them all about four different times now.”

She pointedly turned a page while she waited for an answer.

Finally, there was a shuffling behind her, but she kept her eyes forward. There are some things not to be spied on.

Ruby was stood up before she had really noticed herself moving. Hitch reached out to grab her hand but was too slow to grasp her wrist. Spies around her were silent as LB spoke, but she knew that everyone was staring at her. LB only spotted her when she was about three rows of seats away from the bottom level.

“Agent?” She asked, squinting against the lights to see Ruby. “Back to your seat.”

Ruby reached out and wrenched the little adjustable microphone so that she could speak into it. There were footsteps coming down the rows, but LB hadn’t been being dramatic, it really was very hard to see past the lights.

“The Count is back,” Ruby told the auditorium in her spookiest voice. “And he has spoken to me. And he has given me this message.” She glanced at LB who looked beyond confused, not even bothering to hide her surprise.

In a monotone voice Ruby started speaking into the microphone, looking up into the stands of still-silent agents. “You can dance. You can jive. Having the time of your life.”

It was very hard not to begin saying the words in a sing-song way, and then Ruby stopped trying. “See that girl? Watch that scene? Digging… the dancing queen.”

“Redfort, this is out of order,” LB hissed, and grabbed Ruby’s elbow. Ruby used that leverage to squeeze into the space where LB had been standing, properly in front of the podium now, with the microphone still gripped tightly in her hand and pressed against her lips.

“You’re in the mood for a dance,” Ruby called up into the auditorium, where agents were beginning to whisper, and take out weapons, and stand up. Hitch had appeared inside the small bubble of visibility that Ruby had, an appalled look on his face. Ruby realised she was running out of time and grabbed LB’s shoulder to use her to balance as she put one leg up onto the podium.

Instinctively, LB grabbed her back to steady her, before realising that she was actually helping Ruby climb on top of the podium.

“See that girl,” Ruby sang, properly this time. She had no backing track. She had no lyrics written in front of her. Just pure ABBA karaoke. “Watch that scene, digging the dancing queen, young and sweet, feel the meat on the tangerine,”

LB had one hand holding Ruby’s knee on the podium to support her, looking like she was considering all of this to be a dream.

Ruby no longer had the microphone with her, but the hall was quiet enough that everyone could hear her. “You’re the dancing queen,” She sang, pointing down at LB. “Only seventeen.”

And then Hitch tackled her bodily off the podium.

Ruby lay on her front on top of the beanbag in the coding room, with her legs swinging behind her. She had fixed herself a cup of coffee, and one for Froghorn too, as a peace offering.

“So, when did you realise that you like-liked him?” She asked like a teenage girl at a sleepover. Froghorn twirled a lock of hair into curls around his finger again and again.

“I don’t know,” He complained. “He’s just so nice, it’s hard not to like him.”

Ruby nodded seriously. “He is very nice.”

“You see, his love language is quality time,” Froghorn said with the air of someone who had spent a long amount of time thinking about this. “Even if we’re in the same office, all day every day, he still invites me to come to the cafeteria with him or insists on walking me to my exit.”

Ruby sighed dreamily.

“It was going fine,” Froghorn insisted. “We were getting closer, but then Hitch showed up.”

Ruby gasped and pushed herself up on her elbows. “What about Hitch?”

“Well Hitch and Blacker were field agents together. Blacker was an assisting hand on at least two of Hitch’s big cases, even if they never worked directly together. I mean everyone in Spectrum loves Hitch,” Froghorn waved his hand dismissively. Ruby nodded sagely. Everyone outside of Spectrum loved Hitch, and they didn’t know how cool he was.

“So Blacker always had a little crush on Hitch, but when he stopped working in the field, and came to work full-time in the coding sector, it died down. We just never saw Hitch. And then, suddenly, Hitch was in this very office every other day.”

Ruby had her mouth open. Oh, the gossip.

“Obviously because you’re always here, Hitch is here. Whether he was dropping you off at the external coding room during the Fools Gold, or coming here to collect material for you, or collecting you from the office, or just sitting in here while you’re working, he is always here.”

Ruby exhaled slowly. “So Blacker could see him everyday and remember how good-looking and charming he is.”

Froghorn nodded primly. “Exactly.”

“And you hate me because I made Hitch get in the middle of your meet-cute!” Ruby exclaimed in shock, rolling over onto her back again as the secrets of the universe revealed themselves to her.

Froghorn pinched his mouth together. “No, I hate you because you’re really annoying.”

“Ah, oh yeah that.” Ruby muttered. “But what are you going to do about Hitch?”

Froghorn sighed, eyes going faraway. “Kiss him.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Did you say you were going to kiss him?”

“No– I–! I only meant that in terms of professionally and respectfully and maintaining boundaries and–”

“You wanna kiss him!” Ruby said in a sing-song term. “Did you actually just blab it like that?”

“I misunderstood the question!” Froghorn declared, going extremely pink in the cheeks. “I don’t– I wouldn’t!”

“You want to kiss Hitch!” Ruby shouted victoriously. “But, what about Blacker? I thought you liked him?”

Froghorn put his head down on his desk and let his loose hair fall around him like a curtain. “I do!” He protested.

“You like both of them!” Ruby’s eyes grew larger in her head. “You want to date both of them! Because Hitch is always around, and he doesn’t bully you, and he’s very good-looking.”

“He is so good looking,” Froghorn agreed, cheek pressed against his desk.

“This is just like that book I read,” Ruby said wondrously. “How are we going to get you together?”

“I’ve tried everything,” Froghorn lamented, who had definitely not tried anything. “They just don’t like me.”

“Of course, they like you!” Ruby told him sternly. “Blacker choses to work with you. Hitch comes down here when I’m not around so that he can chat to you. He talks about you outside of Spectrum.”

Foghorn looked up, hair still obscuring a lot of his face. “He does?”

“He was telling my mom the other day about this guy that he knows who has a fantastic skin care routine,” Ruby said. “He’ll probably ask you about it so that you can give my mom some tips.”

“I use retinol,” Froghorn said with a little sniff like he was trying to pull himself together.

“Maybe you should invite them out to dinner,” Ruby suggested and then gasped sharply. “No! You should organise dinner right here, and when they walk in you should have your desk covered in a tablecloth with a candle burning and borrow a chair next door, and then serve them dinner!”

Froghorn appeared to be considering this. “I could make crab linguine,” He said slowly.

Ruby nodded vigorously. “Hitch loves seafood. Says it makes him feel fancy.”

“And I have a recipe for cheese profiteroles for an appetiser,” Froghorn stood up from his desk with a wild look in his eyes. And in his hair.

“Oop, you can’t leave,” Ruby said quickly, seeing him reach for his suit jacket to begin making dinner immediately. “The Count is still out and about; you’d be going AWOL.”

Then she looked at the clock on the wall and shrugged. “Ah what’s the point, we only have five minutes.”

Froghorn peered confusedly at the clock, tucking his hair behind his ears. “Have we been sitting here for four hours?” He mumbled, mostly to himself.

Ruby rolled over again and stared at her phone ringing off the hook. “I never even got to ask him about his hair care routine,” She muttered, and sat up as Hitch walked into her room.

“So, what’s your favourite memory of LB?” Ruby asked, sitting in the front seat of Hitch’s car. She was actually on the Count Hunt with him, for only the fifth time. He had allowed himself to become convinced to let her come along with him, so that she couldn’t get into trouble without him.

Hitch gave her a sidelong look. “You’re making it sound as though she is dead.”

Ruby waved a hand and wiggled about under the seat belt to get comfy. She had the heated seats on, and her favourite radio station playing. “Just wanted to know.”

Hitch sighed and turned right to complete a perfect grid survey of the south-south-west downtown area. They had been at this for hours. “LB was so different before Bradley disappeared,” He said, actually getting straight into the story. Maybe he was just as bored as Ruby in searching for the Count. “She was just as funny as she is now but was far happier to make more jokes. She made a lot of jokes at Bradley’s expense, which he just adored. He liked that he had to keep up with her, even though they’d been in each other’s pockets since they were thirteen.”

Ruby sat in silence, listening with her head turned to one side to see how Hitch smiled as he spoke.

“You know she snuck into the hospital that Bradley had been taken into after falling into the rapids in Australia?” Ruby did not know this. “She told me the full story of how they’d met after New Year, even though I’d heard the story from the two of them hundreds of times, just the watered-down version they told everyone else. Obviously Bradley and I were taken to the nearest hospital to flush the water out of Bradley’s lungs and to sew me back up, and when Bradley woke up he had a Girl Guide standing over him, making sure that he was still breathing after all the effort she had gone to to save his life.”

Hitch laughed, but Ruby felt as though the story was a little macabre. No more macabre than her daily life at the moment, however, so she smiled as well.

“Bradley was never sure himself of how LB got involved in Spectrum after that, but all he knew was that LB took the next flight home with him after his recovery,” Here Hitch’s mouth gave a little twist. Despite Spectrum swearing off employing child spies after the disaster that nearly cost Hitch his life, they had employed LB in the next breath, despite all of the anti-feminism that went on in the 1950s.”

“And LB never told you?” Ruby asked quietly.

“I’ve never asked her,” Hitch admitted. “And ten years later, I was beside them in Spectrum getting shot at, and trying to stay on top of paperwork, and getting put in sewer tunnels to listen into Russian conversations,” He laughed again, and Ruby swallowed a little bit of puke.

“You actually stood about in sewer tunnels?” Ruby asked him in horror.

“Oh yeah, we all used to draw straws on who had to go and listen in,” Hitch explained, getting animated. “There was this one time– I’m not sure it’s my favourite memory of LB, but it’s definitely up there– where LB and I were stood up to the groin in grey water and floating chunks and bits of toilet paper that hadn’t disintegrated yet and it would wrap around your waders in the most horrid way, and we were stood there, writing frantic notes on the conversation going on above ground in someone’s living room. We had these half-waterproof notebooks to write down shorthand notes on what was being said, and that was after translating everything in English in your head.”

Ruby sat with a stunned expression. Maybe being a spy wasn’t as glamorous as she thought.

“So, we’ve been there twenty minutes as these guys crack out the good vodka, and they’re getting progressively more drunk and slurring their speech, and Russian is fast at the best of times, and LB drops her pen into whatever on earth we were wading about in,” Ruby is trying not to laugh already. “And she was just as committed then as she was now, and there was no way that we could go back to HQ without two sets of notes to compare again each other, so she leans down in the water and starts fishing around for it,” Hitch is laughing so hard he can barely continue telling the story. “And we’re in these maintenance boilersuits, with waterproof waders only on our legs, because we weren’t meant to go swimming in it.”

Ruby laughed along with him. “She never found her pen, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. She committed a very commendable portion of the Russian plan to memory and then wrote it down in the car outside when we’d been extracted. Bradley was the one to collect us then, because he was working on his extraction driving, and he still gave LB a kiss when she crawled out of that maintenance hole cover covered in someone else’s sh–” Hitch remembered he was in the car and not the Spectrum Tuesday night karaoke session and stopped himself. He cleared his throat.

“Anyway, LB and I have been on many missions together, and it is incredibly hard to pick a favourite,” Hitch said quickly, but Ruby was blinking tears away from her eyes at the thought of LB up to her neck in shit.

“And you, Bradley and LB have been on loads of missions together as well,” Ruby added.

“And the three of us have been on a lot of missions together,” Hitch agreed, wracking his brain for a child-friendly story. He was silent for some time.

“Alright, don’t strain yourself,” Ruby said, annoyed. “Keep your secrets.”

Hitch gave her a fond smile. “Look, some of the morals in these stories aren’t for your ears, kid,” His face brightened briefly. “There was this one time that I was with Bradley and Agent McCardle, on one of the most interesting cases I’ve been on. We were in Scotland, investigating cases of radiation poisoning and genetic mutation, and there…” Hitch’s face fell again, right as Ruby was wondering why she had never met Agent McCardle. “Was an accident, and we had to smuggle McCardle’s body across the Channel and then over state-lines.”

“Oh,” Ruby murmured.

“Yeah,” Hitch frowned. “The three of us were out on a mission once, the USA this time, and we spent hours and hours playing card games all together. I was eighteen, and Bradley taught me how to play poker properly. LB won basically everything I owned off of me, because we were betting big stuff, and it was so fun I nearly forgot we were actually working.”

“Then what happened?” Ruby asked suspiciously. That story had ended a little quicker and happier than she had anticipated.

“Well,” Hitch said reluctantly. “LB handed me my gun, which was technically her gun because I’d bet on it a couple of rounds back, and we shot our way out of the building. We only had time to play card games because we’d been captured, and they were working out what to do with us.”

Ruby blinked at him. Hitch cleared his throat a little at the attention. “I told you they weren’t suitable for sharing,” he protested. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Well, what’s your favourite memory of LB?” He tried to deflect the topic away from him. Ruby rolled her eyes at his poor attempt but played along anyway.

“When she showed me how to fire her revolver in the corridors by stacking up books and coffee mugs as targets.”

“I don’t remember that happening,” Hitch frowned.

“You wouldn’t.”

“How many crows would you have to find in your house before you started to think that someone was putting them there?”

LB stared at her with her pen poised above the sizeable stack of paperwork she was filling out.

“I allowed you to stay in my office on the understanding that you would not disturb me,” She reminded Ruby. This was true, but LB had to have been born yesterday to believe that Ruby would not have disturbed. Currently Ruby was giving the perimeter of her office a very, very close look, for any kind of secret room or weapon cupboard. She wasn’t having any luck yet, but she was on her tiptoes in case the secret button was short-people-phobic.

“I’d have said ‘how many crows would you have to find in your office’, but obviously just one would be weird enough because we’re underground,” Ruby explained, like it was going to provide any context.

“Actually inside my house?”

“Yeah, or like, close outside, like in your garden and on your patio.”

“Eight.”

“Do you want to give any kind of explanation?”

“Crows One through to Six could be explained by a window left open, or perhaps a nest in the chimney. Crows lay up to six eggs. Obviously if the crows in my house aren’t juveniles, then I may become more suspicious before Crow Five. However, more than eight crows…” LB thought for a second, and Ruby ineffectively slapped the wall as high as she could reach because it kind of looked as though there was an impression. There wasn’t and nothing happened.

“I have seen ‘The Birds’,” LB finished her train of thought. “Perhaps this is a ploy by the Count to unsettle agents. Or alert me to the fact that he knows where you live,” She fixed Ruby with a steely eye. “How many birds are there, Redfort?”

“The birds are hypothetical,” Ruby amended quickly. “There aren’t any crows.”

LB put her pen down, and Ruby quickly stopped looking at the wall and tried to look trite. “It was just a thought exercise.”

“Why bother me with a thought experiment?” LB asked, and looked as though she was going to finally kick Ruby out. Ruby was really running out of agents to ask this question to. Agent Stevens in HR had reported Ruby to LB for asking this question, which had led them to this moment.

“Just to get us thinking,” Ruby said defensively, and turned back to the wall. “That is a weird amount of crows.”

LB nodded but didn’t say anything. She clearly deemed the conversation over, and carefully initialled the page thrice.

“So, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

Ruby took a bite of her cheeseburger. Chewed. Took another bite.

“I didn’t take you out for dinner for you to just eat the whole time,” Victor Von Leyden complained. He had a side of curly fries in front of him, and a lemonade. Charles Burger did not have Sprite or 7-Up, so he had a cloudy lemonade. He was most displeased about this.

“That is exactly why you would invite someone to dinner,” Ruby said with her mouth full.

Victor crossed his arms, and then uncrossed one to eat a single curly fry (a curl, perhaps?) dipped in mayonnaise. “I wanted to know what you’ve been up to.”

“You’re not my dad,” Ruby complained, swallowing her mouthful of organic beef patties and fried onions. She had chosen to keep her tomato in her burger, because she believed that her food should be nutritionally balanced. “You’re not even my granddad.”

“And I thank the Lord each day,” The Count said snidely.

“I’ve not been up to much,” Ruby admitted, reaching over to try a curl. Sabina never let her order curly fries. She double dipped it in the Count’s mayo.

“Are you still trying to figure out how to stop the time-loop and go back to ageing incrementally each day?” The Count asked and laughed. Ruby laughed as well.

They laughed for quite some time.

“No, no,” Ruby admitted, wiping her eyes. “No, it’s been too long, I’ve tried everything.”

The Count hummed and shook his head. “Well, you did give it a good go.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

“The day where LB shot me was definitely your best go of it yet,” Victor said kindly. Ruby smiled to remember.

“Oh, she really had been waiting to do that,” She said fondly. “She was really clever to go for the legs first so that she could stand over you and really let out all that frustration.”

The Count nodded with heavy-lidded eyes. “Shooting out my kneecaps was strategic.”

“You still tried to crawl away though,” Ruby said with a snigger.

“Now, I don’t really recall what she was saying because I was in rather a lot of pain, and it was very distracting.”

Ruby waved the hand holding her burger and a gherkin fell out. “Ah, same old, how you ruined her happiness and how she was going to make sure you suffer in a prison cell of her choosing.”

The Count hummed again. “Yes, that sounds rather similar to what she said the other time, when she found me in the supermarket. She didn’t have a gun then unfortunately, so I was just sort of assaulted with tin cans until someone called the police.”

Ruby gasped. “Victor, I can’t believe you never told me that happened? Why didn’t she kung-fu you?”

“Oh, she did, she did! It was some poor misguided citizen lobbing them at me like a tomato at the pillory in the sixteen-hundreds.”

Ruby laughed at the image that conjured.

The waitress stopped by their table to ask them if everything was alright with their food.

“Ah, yes, not quite,” the Count pointed at one chip on his plate. “This fry is not curly.”

The waitress leaned in to look at it, and Ruby reached out to eat it quickly. “Food’s fine. Compliments to the chef.”

The waitress left hurriedly after that, and the Count sighed deeply.

“One must not settle for inadequacy,” he told her.

Ruby rolled her eyes. “She’s being paid minimum wage; you can’t expect her to go out back and twist the potatoes herself. Now tell me about that ‘dashing fox’ you met last week.”

The Count very nearly chortled. “Oh yes, my dear fox. I told you, Ruby, I’d met him before, I just managed to come up with an adequate plan to meet him for an early lunch.”

The ensuing story was so long and affectionate and gushy that Ruby finished her burger and all of the man’s chips.

“And then he took my hand and compared me to the bloom of a very specific kind of flower that only grows in the depths of the desert,” the Count said, uncaring if his audience was actually listening. “One that flowers very rarely, for our love was rare, and perhaps… belated. Overdue.”

“Are ya’ll finished here? Should I fetch you your bill?” asked the same waitress as before, interrupting the Count before he listed every similarity between him and some kind of dry cactus.

The Count looked at Ruby with his hand over the breast pocket of his jacket. “Ruby, I don’t suppose that you brought your wallet with you?”

“You invited me out,” Ruby said, searching in her pockets for some change. “I thought dinner was on you.”

“Yes, ha-ha, I did mean to pay, honestly, miss,” he looked up at the waitress standing with her hand out. There was a horrible second where Ruby thought that maybe the Count was going to murder his way out of the conversation, but then he fixed Ruby with his chilling, shark-eyed stare.

“Run!” He said and pushed himself out of the booth. The waitress tried to block Ruby’s exit with her body, but Ruby pulled herself over the back of the booth seat and slid down next to someone else eating a burger. Here, she grabbed another chip, and fled the way the Count had left.

They stopped running about a block down the street, because the Count wasn’t very fit, and the waitress hadn’t come out after them. The Count brushed his jacket down and took a wheezing breath. “Well, I suppose I will see you at the same time next week?”

Ruby chewed her cold chip and nodded. “See you later, alligator.”

The Count laughed and turned to walk away. “Goodbye, squid.”

Ruby stopped dead, where she was about to turn the corner in the opposite direction. “What? No, it’s ‘see you later alligator, in a while, crocodile’.”

The Count paused with his head cocked to one side, as he mulled it over. “How quaint. In a while, crocodile!”

“If you had one day to do anything that you wanted at all, with no consequences, what would you do?” Ruby asked Hitch, strapped into the passenger seat on her way to Spectrum. She had no plans today. She was going along with the movements of the day obediently, because then she didn’t have to think outside of the machine to come up with something new and novel and successful.

Hitch shrugged immediately. “Go and see old friends, I guess,” He said, and Ruby winced, remembering that some people would kill for a chance to stop a friend’s death before it happened. Or for that friend to wake up, groggy but alive, the next day. “Take a nap, as well, that wouldn’t have consequences.”

Ruby watched the empty streets pass out of the window and looked closely at every shadow in a front-garden or alleyway. She hadn’t seen the Count since that day at the Double Doughnut. She had a constant feeling of unease resting in her stomach, and it made her even more anxious.

“We could go to the high ropes,” Hitch was saying, and Ruby turned her head to look at him in some surprise. “Or the dojo again, it feels like it’s been ages since we went to practise a new move.”

Ruby nodded. It had been ages, but Hitch didn’t know that. After she’d finished her field training, Hitch had been focusing on other cases, or just dropping Ruby off outside of the dojo for her to do her weekly lesson. They hadn’t practised together, like they used to, for nearly a month.

“When this Count business clears up,” Hitch stated confidently, giving Ruby a side-long smile, “We’ll go and do both, get out in the open air for a little bit, without the risk of you falling off a building, and I can kick your ass in the dojo.”

Hitch thought Ruby was catastrophising because the Count was back, that she was counting down her days to being grounded by Spectrum for her own safety or having to face down the Count again. His idea of a perfect day would be to hang out with her, without the confines of Spectrum walls or either of them getting hurt. It was doing what Ruby loved, and Hitch being included.

“I’d like that,” Ruby said, smiling at him, but only seeing the Hitch who had charged into the Double Doughnut to find her and only found his own death. “When this is over.”

“If you could do anything with no consequences on yourself or the world, what would you do?” Ruby asked Blacker, who leaned back and adjusted his glasses thoughtfully, obviously thinking hard about the question. Ruby appreciated that he actually took the time to think about it. Sabina had just said something about spending time with Ruby and Brant without the real world getting in the way. Ruby loved her mother, but she was well-aware that the ‘real world’ was not a job at an art gallery with two-hour lunch breaks for mimosas with friends.

“Well, I guess the first thing I’d do would be to go to that new tapas place that opened on Thirty-First.” Blacker says. “It’s too expensive for any old dinner, but I hope this wouldn’t have any dent on my bank account.”

Ruby nods in confirmation. “You can spend whatever you already have, it won’t go down.”

“Well then, I think I’d call the day off work. I’m sure this place could do without me for once.” Ruby had tried this, both with skipping school and with skipping Spectrum.

“I’d spend more time with my cat in the morning, and then have a walk around Downtown. I don’t get enough time to properly enjoy all the places in Twinford, I’m always ducking through the back of some bus stop to get to work.”

Ruby smiled encouragingly and didn’t tell Blacker how boring his ideal day was. It was kind of sweet, but when day-to-day life was so dangerous, maybe a slow morning was needed.

Froghorn’s eyes darted to Blacker’s empty chair, and then rolled hard in his head. It was a poor habit he’d picked up from Ruby herself.

Ruby didn’t even know why she was asking. Out of things to do perhaps, or maybe one of them had another piece to the puzzle that she hadn’t considered.

“Catch up on all this damn paperwork without anyone bothering me,” Froghorn said eventually. “Especially irritating young children who sound like they’re reading from a Cosmopolitan magazine.”

“Okay but if no one remembered or would notice.”

“I can think of one idea, but it involves infanticide,” Ruby wrinkled her nose.

“I guess I did say no one would know.”

“Do you know how much paperwork I have to do, Redfort?” Froghorn said tiredly. Ruby cast her eyes over his desk and pointed at the sudoku book.

“Every form must be completed in triplicate. It has to be legible, and include every aspect of solving the code, and then sent off to the correct people, within the deadline. You wouldn’t know, because you have never had to complete paperwork.”

Ruby opened her mouth to argue but realised as much as she complained about how boring after-mission briefings were, no paperwork had ever been handed to her.

“Who does all the vital paperwork?” Froghorn asked her. Ruby shut her mouth. “Me. And Blacker, when there’s too much in my pile. And anytime you go racing off into danger, Hitch has to complete approximately six forms about why he allowed you to be placed in that danger.

“Hitch doesn’t allow me to do anything,” Ruby argues. No one made Ruby Redfort do anything. “So, you’d just do… work?” Ruby, who had never had to do hard work in her life, found most education easy and interesting without having to put any effort into it.

“Yes Redfort. I am employed to do work.”

“But if you didn’t—”

“For God’s sake Redfort, I would go surfing. I would go down to the Bay and learn to surf,” Froghorn declared in a rush, clearly at his wit’s end with her. He reached for the phone on his desk and clicked three numbers into it before Ruby could even gather a retort for his surfing dreams.

“Hitch is on his way. I suggest you leave before he gets here,” Froghorn said, cheeks flushed with annoyance. Ruby hadn’t even meant to push him so hard; she was just bored.

“Snitch,” Ruby said, standing up from her lean on the desk. “I can teach you to surf.”

Froghorn cut another glance at his phone, but seemed confident in Hitch’s imminent arrival to do something drastic like call LB. “It is a fantasy Redfort, I have no wish to actually get into a wetsuit and start splashing about like some kind of fish.”

“I was just interested,” Ruby muttered, heading for the door. “Surfing sounded cool.”

“Glad you think so. See you tomorrow Redfort.”

Ruby heard Froghorn sigh deeply just before the door swung shut behind her and pulled a face to distract herself from how guilty she felt about winding him up.

Del minded her own business which was a quality Ruby appreciated in a friend. She loved the rest of her gang with everything she had but between Mouse’s psychoanalysis and Red’s consistent probing and Clancy’s dancing around the subject and Elliot’s trampling through the subject…

Del would skip school for a mess-about on the basketball courts, or a walk down to the bay, or the ping-pong tables at lunchtime.

They were down the bay now, because Ruby was longing for the hush of the shoreline, but the last two times that she’d coaxed Del out of school, the day had ended much earlier than usual.

Del pulled her sneakers off as soon as they reached the sandy edge of the road and hopped along with two shoes held in one hand. Ruby was carrying their bags this time, and she followed along, a little closer to the waves and slower.

Once they were a distance from the road, where nosy adults wouldn’t come and ask why they weren’t in school, they sat down, Ruby testing the waves by resting her feet right at the darkest shade of sand and Del with her feet submerged to the ankles.

It was quiet, and Del shrugged her jacket off to sun her tanned shoulders. Ruby found herself looking for a long moment, while Del’s head was turned away, sharp eyes watching the ships coming and going from the marina.

“If you could do anything,” Ruby started without even thinking. Del turned to face her, and Ruby tried to school her face into something neutral. “And no one would ever know, and there would be no consequences: what would you do?”

Del hummed and glanced back out at the endless sea before looking back at Ruby, her lips quirking into a smirk.

“Anything?” she checked, and Ruby nodded, throat suddenly tight.

“Well, that’s easy.” Del leaned forward, brushing her hands free of sand, and twisting her body to face Ruby.

Ruby just opened her mouth to press Del for details, this wasn’t rhetorical Ruby wanted to know, when Del leaned in, one hand landing on Ruby’s calf, and kissed her.

“If you could have one day to do anything you had ever wanted to do, with no consequences, what would you do?”

“Do you think something weird is going on?” Clancy asked.

Ruby took this to mean, ‘Hey something weird is happening with space time,’ instead of ‘hey Rubes, you’re acting like a spiked fruitcake, do you think Spectrum is up to something?’. Normally this kind of misunderstanding didn’t happen ever, but it had been a very confusing few months where Ruby had more cognition than anyone else in her life, even more than normal.

“Yes!” Ruby nearly shouted, instead of chasing an answer to her question. “Everything is weird, Clancy! I’m fourteen and a half now! I’m going to be fifteen soon, and it’s still only the fifth of fucking May!”

Clancy was silent, and Ruby fell silent alongside him, trying to calm herself after that little outburst.

“Right,” Clancy started. “I can see you’re under a lot of stress for a Monday afternoon.”

“You think?” Ruby said, but there was no heat behind it. She had thought for a second that maybe Clancy had felt the constriction of time and space and the imminent death creeping up on him like the hunches he got, but he’d just seen her looking over her shoulder and not going further than two metres away from him.

Clancy reached out and clasped her shoulder. He was smiling like this was just a normal day and not the fifth of May again.

“What’s happened?” he asked kindly. “We can figure it out together, don’t stress about it.”

Ruby closed her eyes to pull up the explanation of the time loop which she had down rote by this stage.

“So, long story short, Johnson knows what happened to G.I. Joe–” Ruby listed boredly.

Clancy’s hand tightened in her shoulder, and his face suddenly went slack. Ruby wiggled under his grip, uncomfortable with the grip, and Clancy’s hand slipped off the material of her T-shirt. His arms were rigid, and Ruby ducked under his outstretched hand to grab him around the middle as he started to tilt backwards. Her mind was running with possibilities: a seizure, a haemorrhage, cardiac arrest.

Clancy’s eyes went dull before Ruby could even say anything to him. His dead-weight dragged her down to the floor in an attempt to hold his head carefully, but she knew already that it was too late.

Ruby sat bolt upright in bed, almost before she’d even processed that she was at home all of a sudden.

That wasn’t a natural death.

None of the deaths had been, all of them had been forced and compressed into whatever space was left over by the consequences of her actions throughout the day.

If Ruby tried to stop Clancy dying, the universe tried in any way shape or form to kill him as quickly as possible before four o’clock.

Blacker hadn’t been right after all. Nor had Clancy, or Hitch or LB.

Ruby couldn’t prevent Clancy’s death when the machine didn’t run on such programming. The machine wasn’t trying to alter reality to prevent Clancy’s death, it was actively changing space and time so that Clancy would only ever die.

Ruby didn’t have to admit it to anyone but herself, seeing as giving out credit for fixing the time loop would be forgotten the very next day, but maybe– just to herself– she could admit that this idea had not been suggested by herself, or Blacker, but another coder in Spectrum who would not be named at all.

The machine was the core of the issue, Ruby had known all along, but Clancy’s death had blinded her to the real solution. She had to destroy the machine before it destroyed Clancy again or even her.

Ruby didn’t want to think about what would happen if she died during the time loop. Would she wake up again, her memory of the whole loop an advantage to prevent her dying? She hadn’t died on the first day like Clancy, so maybe the machine would simply place her back in her bed like normal again. She had exploded during the Double Doughnut incident, but maybe if she died without the Count also dying, she wouldn’t wake up.

Or, worse still to think about, nothing might happen. Ruby would die, a feat she had avoided for the past fourteen years, and Twinford would keep rocketing about in its rut. Clancy would die again and again and again, and Del would never get to play her basketball game on Thursday, and her parents would jerk about like a more devoted version of Punch and Judy.

At least she had a shot to try and save Clancy.

Chapter Text

Ruby was up and out of bed, telephone bells jangling and ringing out of time with each other. She aimed a foot straight at her squirrel in a tuxedo, and it skittered across the floor, handset going one way and the squirrel body going the other. She lost sight of it in a pile of clothes, but it stopped ringing.

She picked up the high-heel, shouted, “Shut the fuck up Victor,” and threw that across the room as well. The third phone stopped ringing.

One shoe was forced on, and the laces slapped the floor as she hopped over the door to let Hitch in. Like clockwork, he was stood with one hand outstretched to knock on the door.

“I’m not coming to Spectrum,” She snapped, pulling her jacket on, and shoving the other foot uncomfortably into the other shoe.

“How did you know I was going to say that?” Hitch asked, watching her hurtle around her room. Ruby copied him, word-for-word with the same tone.

“Whatever. Listen Hitch, Clancy is in danger, I need your help.”

Hitch blinked in surprise but he stood up straighter, dead set to help. “What do you need?”

“A gun,” Ruby said without preamble and collected her softball bat from the back of her closet.

The look on Hitch’s face was not a surprise. It had not been a surprise for a week.

“I can’t give a fourteen-year-old a gun,” Hitch said, shocked, and Ruby mimicked him in a higher-pitched voice.

“I’ll come with you, but I won’t give it to you,” Ruby added on, jerking her hand around like a puppet to mock him. Hitch started to look worried.

“Hey kid, come to Spectrum with me. We can find out what’s happening to Clancy and then we can get agents on the case.”

“The agents won’t do anything. The agents won’t stop him getting shot or stabbed or choked or—” Ruby gasped for breath and straightened up. Her bat went in her emptied-out school bag, now full of items she was going to need.

“Spectrum can help—”

“Spectrum hasn’t helped once. If you won’t get me a gun, I could do with a lift to Clancy’s.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m on a tight schedule, Hitch.” Ruby half-shouted. She was used to explaining her actions and answers and thought processes to others without complaint, but she had explained this situation a hundred times. Maybe exactly a hundred. “If you won’t help, you can leave.”

Hitch stepped closer, and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Ruby, pause for five seconds, just think.”

“I’ve thought this over for weeks!” She shouted for real this time. Who cared if her parents or Mrs Digby could hear her, none of them would remember her outburst in a couple of hours.

She ducked under his arm and ran to the door. She learned to drive between day seventy-eight and eighty-one. She knew where the keys were, where the gun was in the glove compartment, where she had to go.

She snatched the car keys off of the sideboard and ran to the front door before anyone could call out to her.

She was in the front seat, turning the key in the ignition with force, when Hitch threw himself in the passenger seat.

Ruby screamed in frustration into the steering wheel.

“Kid, I don’t know what’s going on. If you want to tell me, please do. But if not, I’m still coming with you. I’ll keep you both safe.”

The car started and Ruby accelerated out of the driveway with enough vigour that Hitch was thrown back in his seat.

“Seatbelt,” She said grimly.

“Seatbelt?” Hitch protested incredulously. “Kid, just let me drive.”

“You’re too slow. And I don’t want you going through the windshield, I’ve had too many people die,” Ruby took a sharp turn, that would have been smoother if she wasn’t going over 50kph.

A very dark thought of Clancy on the pavement and her with an out-of-control car came to her mind's-eye. Wait, had that happened before?

Day eighty-one, the reason she stopped learning to drive.

“Am I being kidnapped?” Hitch asked her, strapping himself in. Ruby didn’t bother answering and hit the brakes as she reached the Crew’s driveway.

“State your name,” the intercom buzzed in a bored tone. Ruby knew this by heart even before the loop.

“Ruby Redfort. I’m here for Clancy, we promised we’d give him a lift today,” Ruby said sweetly into the microphone, and sped through the gates as soon as they opened. Gravel battered the sides of the car as she braked hard in front of the doorway.

“Can I know what’s going on?” Hitch asked one last time, desperately.

“Clancy’s in trouble. We’re going to go smash stuff to stop it. Clancy doesn’t die.” Ruby listed, slapping the steering wheel with anxious energy before tooting the horn hard three times.

“The ambassador,” Hitch reminded her in a strained tone of voice.

“Will not remember this in the morning,” Ruby replied in the same tone.

Olive’s head popped up above the windowsill of the front living room. Ruby waved at her, forgetting for a moment she was on a Mission and also in the driver’s seat of the car. Olive’s head disappeared.

After that, it only took Clancy another five minutes to stumble out of the house, buttoning his last few shirt buttons and still hopping his foot into his shoe. He had his school bag over his shoulder and Ruby allowed herself twenty seconds of staring in the rear-view mirror at him while he clambered in the back, before she refocused.

“Would it be rude to ask you to change shirts?” Ruby asked and threw the car into first to pull a very tight circle back out of the gates. Hitch winced something awful and switched gears for her. The nose of the car clipped a topiary bush.

“Everything is in the wash, this is my only clean shirt. Why are you driving?” Hitch made an exaggerated shrug.

“Hitch, fill him in. I need to concentrate.” They exited the gates as quickly as they had arrived and turned back down towards the main road.

Hitch was conspicuously silent beside her and when she glanced over, he was twirling a finger next to his temple and shrugging pointedly.

“Fine, I’ll fill him in. We’re going to go and smash shit up,” Her concentration slipped as she glanced at Clancy in the back seat.

“Do we have time for breakfast? I didn’t get anything on my way out.”

“No time,” Ruby said. “We have to take him by surprise, he’s waiting for us.”

“Ruby, sweetie, you’re on the wrong side of the road,” HItch said, trying too hard to make his voice calm.

Ruby laughed and swerved into the other lane. “My bad, too many British movies. I only had three days to learn.”

“I don’t remember teaching you,” Hitch said warily.

“You don’t remember anything, Art,” Ruby retorted, perhaps unkindly. But in fairness, he would not remember this either.

“You should use your indicators,” Hitch said helpfully. Ruby looked away from the road for a prolonged period of time to flick at the different levers. The little drawings were nearly unfathomable to her despite her coding ability. The windshield wipers came on and then she couldn’t turn them off.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hitch said and leaned over to handle the indicators.

“Ruby, are you feeling okay?”

“Clancy, nothing matters. It’s been months since I was okay. This is every day now,” Ruby looked in the rear-view at him, pale and white-knuckling the side of her seat as they swung around the corners.

“You should get a mullet,” She told him and he patted her shoulder awkwardly.

“Please keep your eyes on the road.”

They reached a nondescript building– and that had taken some major investigative work– where Ruby left the car in park, but forgot to put the handbrake up. 

“Hitch, bring the gun,” Ruby told him with no room for argument. Hitch tried to open his mouth but faltered when Ruby fixed him with her best LB glare.

“If you don’t bring the gun, I’m bringing the gun.”

“Why does Ruby have a gun?” Clancy squeaked. Ruby ground her teeth hard.

“Listen, I trust you guys more than anything in the world.” She said very clearly and very seriously. “I need you to trust that I know what I’m doing. We’re in a time-loop and I have tried everything else. We need to destroy the machine that blew up and we need the gun to kill the Count if we see him.”

Clancy was still pale, his hands curled up by his chest, buttoning and unbuttoning the first button on his shirt in distress. She wished she didn’t have to drag him into this, didn’t have to keep pulling him back into all her stupid schemes and adventures, but she’d tried this without him. She couldn’t do it without Clancy.

“Do you trust me?” She asked, louder to block out the panic in her thoughts. If either of them backed out right now, the whole plan would be wasted. She would have to watch Clancy die again and then that would be that.

Clancy nodded first. “Of course. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

“Don’t die,” She told him plainly and turned to Hitch. “Do you? If this doesn’t work you can arrest me for war crimes, I don’t care,” She didn’t mention that if this didn’t work Hitch wouldn’t remember at all. It was a win-win: even if it did work and Hitch threw her in prison for attempted murder and unlawful possession of an automobile and whatever else happened inside that building, at least Clancy would be safe.

“I trust you,” Hitch said finally and something tight and wound-up in Ruby’s chest relaxed. Her shoulders sagged for a second, before she fumbled for her bag in Hitch’s footwell. “This obviously means a lot to you and if I can help I will. If I tell you to get behind me at any point, you have to do it. Or I won’t come.”

Ruby nodded, pawed through her bag to check she had everything, and opened the door. “If I tell you to shoot, you shoot.” A deal. Hitch nodded.

Ruby got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition and Hitch followed. He made his way over to her, while Clancy put his school bag in the boot.

“We can have Spectrum agents in ten minutes. Do you want me to put the call through?” Hitch asked her quietly. Ruby thought for a moment and nodded.

“It can’t hurt,” She looked behind her at Clancy, who was just slamming the boot. “Clancy is the priority here, do you understand? If he dies, all of this resets. This is day ninety. Out of infinity. If he dies, I wake up in my bed, and you stand by my door and tell me to go to Spectrum and then we take this whole journey again.”

Hitch nodded again.

“Clancy is the priority,” She hissed, and turned around just as Clancy joined them.

Ruby pulled a helmet, plain black with a flame motif, out of the bag and thrust it at Clancy. He looked devastated but pulled it on. It just about fit when he lengthened the straps.

“I feel stupid,” Clancy moaned.

“There’s nothing stupid about helmet safety,” Hitch and Ruby chanted.

“I’ve seen you fall down the stairs and k— knock yourself out too many times.”

“Why don’t you guys have helmets?”

The words ‘because it doesn’t matter if I die’ were on Ruby’s lips before she realised that maybe she’d gone nuts from the time-loop.

“Spectrum metal plates surgically implanted,” Ruby lied and then sent Hitch a suspicious look.

“Is that real?” She asked, and Hitch managed to break out of his confusion long enough to give her a withering look.

Ruby turned back to the building and rested her softball bat on her shoulder.

“Here we go,” She murmured. Day ninety.

This would be easy.

They walked in procession, Ruby first and Hitch last. Clancy was tucked between them and standing on Ruby’s heels a little in the darkness, but Ruby tried not to mind.

Ruby led them down a narrow hallway, knowing the way easily, until they emerged in the main room, with the great hulking machine in the corner. Ruby instinctively checked the floor for bloodstains but it was clean, if a bit dusty.

“Hitch, stay here. If you see the Count, shoot,” She ordered and Hitch tightened his grip on his gun, holding it with both hands, pointed at the floor.

“Another version of you isn’t going to show up right?” He didn’t seem to recognise the machine as anything important but kept his eyes steadily on the door they had entered through.

“It’s not that kind of time loop, but imagine how cool that would be.”

Clancy looked pale enough that Ruby couldn’t begrudge him for not laughing, and she gripped his elbow to guide him through the door ahead of her, further into the dark building.

She hadn’t tried this plan yet, but that was just as well. The Count wouldn’t be expecting it.

There was only one exit into the building, in a massive breach of fire safety rules, but that was currently keeping Clancy as safe as he could be. If the Count entered after them to stop Ruby breaking the machine once again, he couldn’t hurt Clancy. Fool-proof.

The tiny room they enter – with Ruby first as par for the course–  is full of humming electrics and generators. She checked all corners with her bat at the ready and finally turned to Clancy. The whole situation must have really been pushing the limits of his agreeableness, there was only so much he could roll with something until it overwhelmed him.

“You have to stay here,” Clancy’s face fell. Something flickered green in the panel of wires and buttons to the left of them, lighting his face up in hard lines and planes.

“Here? What about that machine? Or the Count?”

“If the Count sees you, he’ll hurt you. He did that a couple of days ago, and we reset again.”

The look Clancy gave her was beyond pitying. “A couple of days ago we were arguing about the bill for the diner,” He reminded her. Ruby wished her problems consisted of who bought whom a doughnut.

“Trust me, okay? If I’m wrong, you can lock me up or whatever.”

“I’d just rather be out there with you guys—"

“Clancy, stay back. I’m serious, you can’t be the hero this time,” Ruby said, just a touch louder so he listened for once and grabbed his stupid, stupid flowery shirt. “I know it’s scary, but I know what I’m doing, and I can’t watch you die here again.”

Clancy opened his arms, and she fell into them immediately, burying her face in his neck because he was a full head taller than her nowadays.

“You have to trust me. Don’t do anything stupid, you’re the most important piece here.” Clancy smiled but it was a little watery. She pulled her sleeve over her palm and wiped his cheek.

“Stay down until we come back. If the Count appears, shout for us and I’ll be right there.”

Clancy pressed a kiss to her forehead and gave her a light push.

“I have no intention of dying,” He promised and held his finger out for a pinkie-promise. She took it and squeezed.

She finally turned back to the main room, where Hitch had been awfully quiet. He stood where she had left him, shoulders tensed and alert, but not expectant.

“Is he safe?” Hitch asked, head tilting towards her just slightly.

Ruby swallowed and hoped she wasn’t cursing the whole loop to hell and back. “As safe as he can be. Just follow my lead while I destroy it, yeah?”

Ruby hefted the softball bat and swung it with a crunch into the glass plated screen on the front of the machine.

She saw Hitch jump, just the slightest bit, out of the corner of her eye.

“What exactly is that? Does it belong to someone?” Hitch asked, a strained note in his voice.

Ruby brought the bat down again on the plastic casing, cracking it to reveal the wires and circuitry inside. This job might have been a bit easier if Hitch was doing the heavy work, but every swing Ruby landed satisfied the part of her that had been scared and trapped since it first exploded.

“Meet Kronos. No one who will miss it,” She grunted and swung the bat a third time. Here the plastic only buckled, and she swung it harder again and again, getting into the rhythm so much that she only half-noticed when Hitch stepped closer to her, covering her with his body. Ruby looked around so quickly she nearly walloped Hitch with the bat instead.

“Stay there,” Hitch said, in a perfectly level voice. Peeking around his bulk, Ruby saw that the Count had finally joined them.

“Good to see you Victor,” She called and crunched the bat into a rather complicated-looking bit of circuit board. It shattered upon impact and Ruby bared her teeth in a grin.

“Believe me Agent, I’m not coming any closer,” The Count appeases Hitch, his hands held up in the universal sign of surrender, but more around his chest like he hasn’t quite committed to it yet. “Just as long as she steps away from the machine.”

‘Bang’ went the bat and dented a whole section of metal. It seemed that that bit of metal was pretty integral to the design. Ruby reached out and tore it away, tossing it away to one side.

“I really must insist that you leave the machine alone,” Ruby glanced over to the Count who was sidling around the room to try and slip under Hitch’s defences. Hitch mirrored him, stepping carefully in a semi-circle around Ruby to keep her protected.

“Where’s your little friend, Ruby?” The Count tries another track, a squirrely tone to his voice.

“Who, LB?” Hitch asked, taking on the role of sassy spy while Ruby was taking revenge.

“We had a grand time when we were all here together. No not LB although it would be lovely to meet her again, I meant the little curly kid.”

The Count knew Clancy’s name very well and his tap-dancing around the subject was grating on Ruby’s every nerve. But the Count was nowhere near the boiler room that Clancy was hunkered down in and if Ruby was any sort of child genius, she would make sure he would never get near him.

“Why would we bring a kid along?” Hitch managed to inject a fairly genuine tone of confusion in his voice. It probably helped that Hitch truly didn’t know why Clancy had been brought along.

“Does this… ‘bozo’ even know why we are here?” The Count questioned over Hitch’s head, and Ruby groaned.

“It’s not cool when you say it, you’re ruining it for everyone,” Ruby complained, to avoid the subject of Hitch actually being completely unaware of what was going on.

“He doesn’t?” The Count said in a surprised tone, but he was grinning very widely when Ruby cast an eye in his direction. “He knew yesterday.”

Kronos’ screen was now shattered into a thousand tiny pieces and the pixels made a rather lovely rainbow fractal.

“It’s so hard to explain every single time, isn’t it? I mean, we must be on loop eighty by now! I’m crossing everything to reach a hundred!”

Hitch shifted his weight subtly, moving like a cat about to pounce. It was what he had done every time they’ve done this little routine, and both Ruby and the Count know it.

“How do we keep remembering the loop anyway, Victor?” Ruby called over her shoulder, the Count’s name turning into a grunt as she swung her bat again. The Count laughed, long and hard and it was almost enough to get Ruby to look away from her vendetta.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet Ruby?” he asked, in the same airy tone.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Hitch said suddenly and Ruby looked around in curiosity. The Count had a hand digging around under the collar of his shirt and the other held up in surrender. Hitch thumbed the safety of the gun off.

“Now now agent, there’s no need for that. I’m just pulling out a chain,” The Count did exactly that, metal with thin delicate linkage. There was a pendant hooked onto it, and as Ruby peered over Hitch’s shoulder, something attached to the front of the flat metal token. It looks like a smaller metal chip, and Ruby’s throat ran dry when she recognised it.

The metal chip embedded in her watch that she took to Hal to get fixed and then never actually fixed. The watch that the Count had taken from her when she was unconscious and handed it back with no explanation.

“You put one of those in my watch,” Ruby accused, and Hitch tilted his head ever so slightly, enough to be clear that he was speaking to Ruby, but never once compromising his view of the Count.

“You let him do what?”

“I was unconscious! Hal said it wouldn’t affect the watch function, it only shocked me once or twice.”

“You didn’t get it fixed?” Hitch exclaimed again, but the Count interrupted their conversation pretty bluntly.

“It does shock you sometimes, but that’s the issue with experimental technology from twenty-odd years ago. Overall, it worked pretty splendidly, you remembered the loop each day with no issues.”

 Ruby stared blankly at the broken, smashed screen in front of her, looking at her reflection and the fourteen-year-old girl staring back at her. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, the Count had offered to take her out of the loop. She had obviously understood his offer to kill her, take her off the mortal coil, let alone the coil of time and space that he had wound between his fingers like a child’s game of cat's-cradle. She had never taken him up on this idea, and he had never mentioned it again.

“You wanted me to remember every single death I died,” She stated, and although Hitch didn’t make a noise, she liked to imagine him sucking in a breath of surprise, grimacing a little.

“Of course, the original plan was for the machine to explode, and you be caught in its axis. I didn’t factor in the boy arriving and disrupting the plan.”

“If I had been hit by that light, I would’ve died every day, right?” Ruby asked, with dread heavy in her voice.

“Of course.” The Count said easily. “Dying every day and waking up in your bed with every single memory of your demise. It would have been delicious, and at the very least a great movie plot.”

“But Clancy got in the way,” Ruby said in horror. “And he’s died every day since because of it.”

The Count shrugged. “I was pretty bummed out too, but I guess the show must go on. And you’ve been so upset about it every single time, it’s just as funny to watch.”

“Wait, Ruby, you were… being serious in the car?” Hitch came remarkably close to calling her a liar, and she appreciated his tact.

“Of course I was. This has been happening for ninety days straight.”

“The Count kidnapped me, put me right in proximity to this- very- machine,” Between words she swung her bat into Kronos, in powerful strokes that would have made Del proud. “And then rang me every single morning to wake me up at five am. And then made me watch Clancy dying every single day.”

Ruby decided she wasn’t wreaking destruction as much as she had wanted to, playing right into the Count’s hand in pausing her destruction of the machine and let the bat fall to lean against her leg, reaching up with both hands to tug wires out of their homes, like weeds.

“Now really, that is too far,” The Count said suddenly, and Ruby froze with her fingers tangled in cords. So, she was close then.

She yanked hard just as the Count surged forward and Hitch grunted.

Ruby rose her bat as she spun, expecting to find the Count bearing down on her, but instead saw Hitch on the floor, his shoulder braced against the Count’s chest, obviously having just tackled him.

“Do whatever you need to do, I’ve got him.” Hitch called out to her, and Ruby spun again, renewing her whole rage against the machine moment with vigour.

Ruby added a note to her mental list, in the event that this day went south, she should wear some boots tomorrow. With that thought in mind, she kicked the machine again.

The stupid thing didn’t have a kill switch, or a Ctrl+Alt+Del sequence. Maybe if she had seen a computer more than five times in her life, she could work it out logically, rather than with brute force, which had never been a Ruby Redfort move.

But she had Clancy to save, and her own psychological wellbeing to protect and Hitch was rolling about on the floor beating up a man because she had told him to.

In fairness, beating people up was kind of Hitch’s job so he couldn’t be mad about it.

Hitch swore behind her and she made her mind up.

She had been stuck in this loop for months, but the thought of Hitch being hurt while she was trying to save herself, or worse, the loop breaking without Hitch or Clancy by her side was unbearable.

She spun and planted her foot squarely on the floor and swung her bat into the mess of wires one last time. It would have to be enough.

Turning again on the fighting men behind her, she waited until just the right moment to swing the bat hard into the side of the Count’s chest. He grunted and stumbled back.

“Glad you didn’t mistake me for him,” Hitch said dryly, advancing on the Count with his gun cocked and ready. He gave the Count a sharp pistol-whip to the cheek which left him staggering away again, bent double.

“Get your hands where I can see them.” Hitch said loudly, not letting the Count stop to catch his breath, and the Count looked up at him with a wicked smirk.

“If you say so, Agent,” He said and pulled a six-bullet revolver out of his jacket pocket like they were suddenly in a spaghetti Western. Hitch took three measured steps back until Ruby was hidden by his bulk. She hoped he’d put his bullet vest on this morning. That might be a plan for tomorrow before they left the house.

The Count levelled the gun at Hitch, who looked unimpressed at the whole situation.

“May have to take a raincheck on this revenge, Ruby,” He said calmly. Ruby was beginning to think she’s misjudged the whole situation, could feel her breath coming short and sharp and was dizzy with the knowledge that she hadn’t fixed the loop at all again and now she was going to watch Hitch die. Her knees were braced for the sea-sick feeling of the world spinning backwards on its axis of 23 degrees, to deposit her back in bed, in the morning, like every other day.

The Count fired a shot off before Ruby could even quip back at Hitch, but it didn’t matter because Hitch had seen something in the other man’s eyes that had him leaping to the side.

A bullet lodged itself in the plastic casing of the machine, instead of the brittle bone of Hitch’s skull, and a low-pitch whine began to buzz from the depths of the motherboard.

Hitch wasted no time in shooting the Count and got him in the leg in such a wonderful parallel of LB shattering his kneecaps a few weeks ago that Ruby nearly cried. Then he turned his back on the Count and fired four more shots at Kronos. The bullets nestled themselves alongside their familial heatsink, the clock generator, the small alien component that channelled alien energy to create an unearthly writhing ouroboros of snaking time and reality and the stuff that a black hole spat out when it got sick.

Kronos exploded outwards before the Count could take advantage of Hitch’s turned back. This meant that Hitch caught the full brunt of the explosion, but the shrapnel flying from the heart of the machine meant that no one else fared better. It knocked Ruby to the floor, even as she covered her head in fear of being buried under rubble again.

The light that flooded the three figures in the room in a sharp sudden silhouette. Ruby’s eyes were fixed on the Count in a long slow moment that seemed to last at least half the time of the loop itself. The old man’s hands still held his gun, but he was staring into the exploding heart of Kronos, everything else forgotten.

When the light faded, Ruby was curled up, flinching away from the spray of shrapnel that rained upon them. But the building appeared to stand steady, and as soon as her ears stopped ringing, Ruby rolled herself onto her side, pausing for a long moment with her hand flat against the floor before she finally pushed herself up to sit. She was surrounded in sharp pieces of plastic and metal solder bits, and she brushed splinters of plastic from her palm. Debris had sliced a long shallow cut down her forearm, but she wasn’t bothered until a tiny spark of hope suggested that maybe it wouldn’t disappear by the next day.

Hitch had already forced himself into standing, using the wall for support. Stupid adult spy with the ability to keep getting up when he was down. Ruby was seconds away from sinking back down to the foetal position but the fear of waking up in her bedroom was just enough to stop her.

Hitch shot the Count at near point-blank range and Ruby clapped her hands over her ears in fear. He moved quickly, reloading his gun even as he skirted the body on the floor, to block her view. He didn’t move closer to her though, remaining just out of arm's-reach to her, as though he was afraid of spooking her. His eyes only flicked away from the Count once, to give Ruby a quick once-over.

“Go find Clancy, and I’ll finish here,” He said in a remarkably even voice for a man who had just killed another.

Self-defence, Ruby reminded herself, self-defence that she would have done herself if she had the choice.

Ruby stood up on shaky legs and gave a wide berth around the body. She had seen enough horror movies to know he would grab her ankle if she was within reach.

Ruby tapped on the door in their usual knock and slipped through the door, only opening it as far as she needed to slip through sideways.

Clancy poked his head up from behind a table overflowing with hardware. She could see bruises blossoming just below the cuffs of his shirt where he had held onto himself in the darkness of the room.

“Ruby,” He whispered. He must have heard the gunshots and the explosion and was unsure of which way the coin had fallen on their victory. Ruby didn’t say anything until she was on his side of the table and crouched alongside him.

“He’s dead,” She told him in a voice that barely cracked a whisper. Clancy physically recoiled.

“Hitch?” He asked, voice suddenly thick and Ruby shook her head furiously, before reaching out for Clancy’s hand.

“The Count. He arrived after I went back. He was why I didn’t want you coming with us. He would’ve killed you if he knew you were here.”

“What did you mean when you said that you’d seen me die here before? That was hypothetical, right?”

“You died here yesterday. And the day before that. And died somewhere else the day before that because I didn’t bring you with me,” Ruby explained. “The Count made a time loop, where I was supposed to die every lap of the loop, but messed it up so that you died instead.”

Clancy took her hand and led her from the darkened room. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

“I’m glad you’re alive.”

At the sight of them, Hitch’s face softened and he held out the hand that wasn’t holding his gun. This was probably to direct the teenagers away from the corpse, or to hurry them along but Ruby fit herself in the space left behind and caught him under the ribs in a hug. Hitch was still holding a live weapon, but closed his arms to hug her back.

“Told you to trust me,” she mumbled into his lapel, and Hitch laughed.

“I promised to always trust you,” He told her, and placed his hand on her back to start leading her towards the exit. “And you promised to involve me in whatever schemes you’ve decided to believe in.”

“One-all,” Ruby confirmed. “You should ask Blacker out.”

Hitch had obviously not seen this coming at all, and nearly stopped dead. Clancy made a very surprised noise.

“And Froghorn. They both like you. I asked them both when I was trying to figure out how to stop the time loop.”

Ruby was so tired now that she would happily drop into Hitch’s arms. She wasn’t sure if she had slept at all during the loop, or if Kronos’ energy had sustained her.

“Froghorn thinks you have pretty eyes.” She added, eyes half-closed.

Hitch’s face did something complicated.

“That was like day thirty, when I convinced him that I actually was stuck in a time loop. He spat his coffee out the next time he saw you, but that hasn’t happened for you yet.”

The door opened, presumably Clancy darting ahead to open it and Ruby opened her eyes to see a bright blue sky and streaming sunlight.

“What time is it?” She asked, voice already drifting. Clancy made a strained noise as he opened the car door and checked her watch for her.

“Half four,” Clancy announced and Hitch’s steps faltered.

“That can’t be right,” He said. “It was barely seven when we went in.”

Clancy checked his own watch and frowned. “My watch says four o’clock too.”

Hitch settled Ruby into the front seat and then started the car. The radio crackled to life, alongside the electric dashboard. The time was 4:34. Hitch consulted his own watch, a deep furrow etched over his brow.

“How can it be the middle of the afternoon?” he muttered to himself.

“We broke the machine,” Ruby supplied. This was hardly the weirdest thing to have happened to her in the past couple of months, but possibly the very best. “The loop ended every day at four, the Count first kidnapped me after school and started the machine at four.”

“We’ve broken the time loop,” Clancy said, still with Ruby’s cycling helmet secured on his head.

“So we’re right back to four o’clock on the fifth of May.” Outside the car windows, teams of Spectrum agents appeared with riot gear, bulletproof vests and big heavy helmets on. Out of the front seat of one of the vans stepped Miles Froghorn, whose stupid face did not relax until he saw the occupants of Hitch’s car: Ruby half-heartedly pinching her wounded arm shut, Clancy with his face pressed against the window, and a very good-looking secret agent sat in the front seat with explosion-swept hair and an attractive dusting of dust over his face.

He turned away for a moment and looked to be giving orders. Then Blacker, who was in field action so often nowadays with his habit of coming to Ruby’s rescue that he may as well take on the title again, got out of the truck, tripping a little bit as his office shoe got stuck on the step, and peered over at them. Behind them, troops began to enter the building, to recover the body and the remains of Kronos. Ruby was quite sure that there was nothing to save of either of them.

Blacker caught Hitch’s eye through the windscreen, perhaps believing that Ruby wasn’t present due to the tinted glass over the passenger seat and made a clear gesture: his thumb and little finger held up to his ear.

‘Call me’

Ruby leaned back in her seat, sighing deeply. “I can live with that.”

Chapter Text

Under a bright sunset, Ruby opened her eyes. She was never quite asleep but had dozed as the sun set. She was sprawled on a tartan blanket donated by Red’s mother, half in the sunlight and half in shade from a tree. There was a boombox on the concrete a few feet away and it was blasting music loudly. It was David Bowie’s new album, and Clancy had barely been able to control himself before clicking the cassette into place and turning the music all the way up.

They were at the skatepark, the old one set in the middle of the park instead of the cooler one by the beach. It was quiet at this time of evening, and Ruby’s gang of friends were the only people in sight.

Mouse was on the blanket by Ruby’s knees, reading a book propped up on her lap. Something classic and heavily queer-coded. She noticed Ruby’s eyes on her and looked up, smiling when she saw her awake.

“Doing, okay?” She asked, and Ruby nodded, mussing her hair against the blanket.

“Might go check up on the others,” She said, and Mouse slipped a Polaroid picture in between the pages of her book and put it to one side, despite how close she was to the end.

“Come on then,” Mouse helped Ruby pull herself to her feet and they headed over to the skatepark. Elliot sat cross-legged at the top of one of the ramps and waved as they approached. Red and Clancy leaned against the railings, waiting for Del to finish her turn on the ramp with her skateboard.

Ruby watched Clancy’s face light up as he saw her walk over and gave a grin in return. It’s been three months since the enCounter, and yesterday ticked over to Ruby being out of the loop longer than she had been in it. She had a sneaking suspicion that that was why Clancy had organised this meetup today, but she couldn’t complain. Clancy downed a couple of swigs from a bottle of Coca Cola and said something quick to Red and Elliot who both enthusiastically nodded back at him.

Del finished showing off, and they all made a point of applauding. She was breathing hard and something victorious lit up in her eyes when she saw Ruby had been watching. That was a thought for another day though, because Clancy skidded down the ramp—on his back, not his skates— to slide to a stop in front of her. His socks were pulled up around his calves and were definitely getting dirty from the metal of the ramp, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Can I show you something?” He asked excitedly, and Mouse spilt from Ruby’s side to clamber up the ramp, where Red and Elliot reached out a hand to help pull her up.

“Jem showed it to me, and I’ve been trying to get it right for ages,” He babbled as he reconnected the helmet strap under his chin (something in Ruby relaxed at the sight of it. She couldn’t protect Clancy all of the time, couldn’t keep him wound up in cotton wool and by her side, but certain things helped her anxiety.)

“Just watch okay! You could probably’ve nailed it in three goes, but I think I’ve got it—”

Elliot boo’ed him loudly from the ramp. “You’ve done it right for the past ten goes, you are a decent skater C.”

Clancy waved him off and looked down at Ruby expectantly.

“I’ll watch, I promise,” She told him, like she would ever have refused, and he grinned.

His mullet peeked from out the bottom of his helmet; the ends of his hair fluffed out. He’d managed to convince his dad to let him grow it out for summer, and Mouse and Red had a running contest to put as many braids as they could through it.

He ran back up the ramp, catching the lip and hauling himself up effortlessly to tie his skates back on. They were her birthday present to him, and the two of them had spent a day painting them. The toes and sides were a little scuffed up now from all his practice, but the portrait of the two of them was still visible on the heel, as was the tiny fly on the toe.

Red and Elliot waited for Clancy to take their turn, talking quietly about Elliot’s new routine, and Del begged a bottle of Coke off them before coming over to stand by Ruby. She took the bottle-cap off with her teeth, and Ruby very purposely does not watch.

“Not skating today?” She asked, before chugging at least half the bottle.

“Not feeling it,” Ruby said simply, and she wasn’t. Del rested one foot on her skateboard, rolling it back and forth. She was wearing cut-off shorts and knee pads. She was so well tanned anyway that the funny tan lines from the protective gear wouldn’t even phase her.

“I’ll have to get you back on your skateboard at some point. You’ll get rusty.” Del smiled at her, and Ruby returned it, widely and openly.

“I’ll still beat you on any aerial you pick.” She retorted, knocking her elbow against Del’s in play. Del slung her arm around Ruby’s shoulders, as careless and open with her touches as ever, and squeezes. A memory floated to the front of Ruby’s mind, a borrowed jacket and a hug that only one of them experienced. She ignored it steadfastly, in favour of feeling the sun beat down on her face, and the boombox still pounding away.

“You’ll beat me on an aerial, but I can do grinds better than you.” She pointed out and Del knew she was right.

“Next week,” Ruby promised, something in her chest unfurling with the knowledge that she could plan for the short-term, could have this conversation and know that Del would remember it when she left again. “We’ll skate next week.”

Del smiled, something softer than her normal bared-teeth smirk. “I’m looking forward to it. Any chance of a basketball match?”

Ruby groaned. “If I don’t have to do it for school then I’m not doing it in this heat.” She reached out on instinct and wrapped her fingers around the neck of Del’s Cola and took a swig from the remaining half.

Del was watching her with a smile and opened her mouth to say something else, when Clancy’s voice called out to Ruby from the ramp.

Ruby handed the bottle back and turned her head, focused entirely on Clancy, even with Del’s arm still hooked around her neck.

Clancy stood at the top of the ramp, one foot pointed to prevent him rolling off. Elliot seemed to be giving him a last-minute pep-talk, pounding his fist into his open hand a couple of times and then gesturing widely.

“Are you ready?” Ruby called, and Clancy looked down at her with a wide grin. He was not afraid.

He pushed himself gently off the ledge and glided down, gathering speed as he turned at the top of the opposite ramp.

Ruby didn’t actually know what trick he was planning on doing, having only watched him and Elliott warm up with laps around the concrete before she lay down for her doze, but knowing Jem, it was probably convoluted. Cool but complicated.

Clancy reached the top of the ramp again, the opposite side to Elliot, Mouse and Red, probably to avoid hitting them, and managed a jump, kicking his left leg out.

Clancy’s front left wheels on both skates were black, with a rainbow painted around the rim, contrasting against the other three white wheels. Ruby had the opposite pattern on her skates at home, three black rainbow wheels and a single white one.

They had swapped their wheels out months ago, probably at the same time as they painted each other’s skates and the sight of it makes Ruby smile.

Clancy executed a perfect 360 in mid-air, coming down to land on the metal with a thud. His skirt swished around his knees, a hand-me-down from Ruby that was far more practical for skating than his normal shorts and managed to remain upright as he skated back, slowing down.

The three on the ramp were hooting and cheering with wide grins and Del clapped, not half as begrudging as Ruby expected.

Ruby stepped up onto the ramp as Clancy slowed down, looking over his shoulder to see her reaction and he all but fell into her arms as she held them open, the momentum knocking both of them over. Clancy only just barely managed not to kick her with his heavy quad skates, although their arms hopelessly tangled together, and her elbow dug him in the side on the way down.

Ruby was breathless and trapped under Clancy for a split second before he rolled to one side, and she can finally breathe.

Looking at him sideways, he was heaving with laughter, and could only shove his elbow back at her in silent apology.

Elliot jumped down the ramp, pulling his knees in like he’s cannonballing into a pool instead of metal and caught himself with a stumble before he launched himself onto Clancy.

“I told you you could do it!” He yelled at him, and Clancy’s helmeted head thunked against the concrete as Elliot joined the pile of bodies on the floor. This time Ruby actually was kicked, but she just pushed Elliot’s sneaker away.

Mouse slid down the ramp next, with Red right behind her and flopped onto Clancy too, who sounded beyond winded with laughter. He was wheezing silently but still managed to ruffle up Elliot’s hair in retaliation.

Ruby tilted her head back to see Del, watching the five of them with a wide grin. Ruby held out a hand and Del took it with her scratched-up wrist guard and allowed herself to be pulled in the huddle, tucking her head down against Ruby’s shoulder and reaching out to join in on the ‘gang-up-on-Elliot-by-tickling-him’ competition. 

They watch the sunset all together later, with Red and Del splitting off to grab a selection of snacks and slushies for the group. Ruby lay with her head on Clancy’s lap, mouth stained with blue dye, as he fidgeted with the hem of his skirt, and the others argued in mild tones about whether time travel would actually be a source for good.

Mouse patiently flicked the cassette over, back to the A-side for yet another playthrough.

“You’re going to wear it out at this rate,” Ruby told Clancy, who rolled his eyes.

“You sound like my dad,” He complained and Ruby boo’ed him raucously.

Clancy had taken his helmet off, and his fringe was somehow flattened and frizzy at the same time. He ran his hands through it to try and fluff it up, and then pulled a face at her, silently asking how it looked. She reached out to scrunch up the crown of his head and then gave a thumbs up.

“See I told you you’d suit it,” Ruby said, remembering a lazy day of Clancy making her room progressively untidier.

“You’ve literally never said that” Clancy told her, and Ruby abruptly fell silent.

She had said it, but to a different Clancy who hadn’t made it home safe to grow his hair out. Clancy’s brow was creased with confusion for a long moment, before he remembered too and then his face dropped.

“I guess you were right then,” He said, but only with a hint of their previous banter.

Later that evening, when the streetlamps began to flicker to life, Ruby walked home with Clancy and Del, pulling Clancy along on his skates. Del skated alongside them, pushing off with her left foot lazily and meandering down the sidewalk with a sway of her hips.

When they reached Ambassador’s Row, Clancy took his skates off and slung them, tied by the laces, over his shoulders to knock against his elbows.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Clancy promised Ruby, an extra layer to his words. She stepped in to hug him, and he squeezed her back tightly.

“See you soon,” She replied, and Del clapped a hand on Clancy’s shoulder, pulling him into a hug too.

“No wacky adventures without me, you two,” Clancy warned. “If I find out you’ve been having fun without me, I’ll be so upset.”

Del laughed and waved at him, as she turned in the direction of Greenwood House.  “Wouldn’t dream of it, Clancy.”

Ruby waved too, eyes tracking his grin and features she knows by heart now but can’t bear to look away from. The sea breeze picked up, and his hair and skirt billowed out around him.

Clancy turned away and walked the final few metres home, and nothing bad happened at all.

He would reach the front door and call out to his parents; be greeted home by Amy and Lulu if she was around and find out that Minny was out again now she had been ungrounded and sweep Olive up in a hug. He would poke his head into his father’s study, and have a conversation with him, stilted but familiar, and his father would say that his hair was ‘definitely on trend’. He’ll get to his room, shelves lined with origami creatures, ones that fold over themselves and bear messages that say, ‘You are important to me’ and ‘You are good enough’ and sit over his French homework for an hour or two but not any longer, and feel relieved that the tenses and the accents flow right. Clancy Crew will go to bed knowing he was loved and known and held dear, and he’ll wake up just the same, thinking of the funny story about his dad and a Lord that he’d forgotten to tell Ruby, and hop over cracks in the pavement on his way to school, and look both ways when crossing the road and compliment a classmate’s lipstick and get a swatch tucked against his wrist. But most importantly, he will live, through break-ups and parties and shopping trips to the mall and learn new skating tricks from Jem and fall in love and travel to college and the world and come back safe and sound to Ruby again and again.

Clancy Crew lives, and Ruby knew this as strongly as she knew her eight times tables and the formula for Spearman’s Rank Test and that the sky was blue, and that Clancy was the best friend she could ever have. She knew it is because of what she did. What she failed to do was okay because Clancy had come back to her.

A hand tucked itself into her own, and Ruby looked away from Clancy’s retreating image to Del next to her.

“Don’t want that butler coming out looking for you if you’re late,” Del smirked and Ruby snorted, squeezing her hand gently.

“He’ll have the police called out if I’m any later,” Ruby joked, thinking of the weight of her fly barrette and the security of her watch around her wrist. If she needed him, Hitch would come immediately, no questions asked.

“Better not have any wacky adventures,” The walk from Clancy’s house to Ruby’s home took no time at all and Ruby pulled them to a stop just before they drew level with the house.

Tucked behind the hedge separating them from Greenwood House, Ruby tangled her hands in Del’s jacket and guided her down to Ruby’s level.

When they finally pulled apart, Del pressed one last kiss to Ruby’s forehead as she straightened up and nudged her.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” Del rolled her skateboard across the pavement, one foot resting on top.

Ruby didn’t want to say goodbye just yet, even as her watch ticked down to eleven o’clock curfew.

“See you Monday,” She replied, and turned into her own drive, where the lights were on, and leftovers from dinner and an episode of Crazy Cops was waiting for her before bed.

“And hey, Rubes!” Del called, loud in the quiet street and, hoping half-heartedly that none of the neighbours were eavesdropping. Ruby turned around, squinting past the light of the porch.

“No wacky adventures!”