Ruby Redfort - Any Last Words?

Part 4: Fate is fate

Ruby sighed, and tossed both the toast and the waffle in the trash. She felt too het up to eat now. Had LB miraculously seen her talking to Mrs. Digby? Was this about the field agent test? Face it - with LB, you could never tell.

Sabina sashayed happily into the kitchen. "Hey there, Ruby! I haven't seen you in a while. What have you been up to"? she smiled.
"This and that. Mom, can you book me a cab to the theatre, please? It's kinda urgent.''
"Don't you have any homework, darling?"
"Nope, just memorising vocab and I've done that,"
"Well, in that case, sure! It'll be here in 5," Sabina told Ruby, already arranging the whole thing on the telephone.

In Spectrum, Ruby knocked on LB's door, and strolled inside. As usual, the whole room was in glistening china white, with the exception of LB's immaculate red nail polish on her toes.

Take a seat, Redfort," LB instructed coolly. Yep, no hello or how are you. Ruby thought. All is normal, so far so good. "You are here to watch a slideshow, which you will summarise to me after it ends," LB began.

Ruby's ears pricked up. Was this a new case? "Because, frankly, I don't understand." Ruby stared at her. LB not understanding anything at Spectrum?! That was like Einstein not understanding e =mc squared.

"On the first slide, tell me what you see," said LB. It was a video. A video of a boy. A boy named Clancy Crew.

Like a chicken, he was mumbling in his sleep about Nine Lives, Von Leyden, the Count and the whole of Spectrum, while his sisters Olive and Nancy were moaning at him to shut up, it was 3am. Oh, brother. "LB, I swear-"

LB held one hand up. " I said at the end of the slideshow you will summarise, Redfort. Clearly, you can't follow more than one instruction," she admonished stonily.

The next video was of her and Clancy in that cave she had swallowed the squid ink in and had mounds of truth serum inside of her, where she had found the treasure and all her limbs were paralysed, so Clancy had to haul her along.

If that wasn't humiliating enough in front of LB, she was babbling like an idiot because of the truth serum. After that, they were both in front of the Cyan wolf, with it ready to prowl. LB was already aggravated at her because she had let it loose.

Finally, it showed a video of this morning, where Ruby and Clancy had sat underneath the tree, in full view of anyone who came, talking about Spectrum. LB clicked the slideshow off and glared at Ruby. "Well? I'm waiting," LB said. Ruby took a deep breath and her mind whirled with possibilities as to why she had told Clance.

In the end she looked LB in the eye, and said "I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to put anyone at risk, or to expose Spectrum to any listening ears, but Clance would never tell anyone, he will take a secret to the grave-", for the second time, LB interrupted Ruby.

"Don't make excuses. I detest them. Now, here is what is going to happen. You broke rule number one, and how can I have an agent that doesn't listen to me? Maybe I could have let it slide if you had told me in the beginning about your pal as I value integrity, but now others are at risk of finding out,"

Yeah, you got that right, Ruby thought morosely.

"The result is, you are banned from Spectrum for two months until further notice. If you can keep your head down and STAY OUT OF TROUBLE, then we will review it from there. Now, regarding Mr Crew... No one outside of the agency can be aware of us, you know that, so either we give him the Spectrum field test in two months and recruit him as an agent, or we can wipe his memory; personally I would hope he passes." LB finished.

If that was what LB knew about Clance, Ruby thought miserably, what is gonna happen to Mrs Digby...