Pick Your Poison

  To release, press dragon tail.

  Warning: never aim at self.

  Warning 2: you only get one shot of vapour.

  There was a P.S.:

  Watch your back kid, it’s a dangerous world out there.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ she muttered, as she pushed the envelope back into her pocket and headed out into the rain. She walked without purpose, striking off down Amster for no other reason than that it was there, turning left, turning right, no thought of a destination. Half-considered dreads filled her mind.

  Her world suddenly seemed a great deal more hostile.

  Her fellow Junior High students eyed her suspiciously, Del Lasco wasn’t even speaking to her, and trusted colleague Blacker no longer trusted her, to say nothing of the rest of Spectrum. Who even knew what they were saying. Hitch clearly feared for her safety, though he gave no indication as to where the threat might come from.

  The Taste Twister code had led full circle, and brought her right back to the beginning. A bottle top marked with an X was all she had going for her, and it wasn’t enough.

  She was drawn out of her sorry feelings by another feeling, a creeping unease that seemed to shadow her steps.

  The thoughts of lost reputation and nowhere to turn might feel threatening, but right now not half as threatening as the feeling Ruby was getting of being watched.

  And she was being watched.

  Spectrum had taught her a few things about dealing with a tail; it was part of basic training. So she did as she had been instructed. She did not pick up the pace. Instead she slowed it right down, even stopped to tie her shoelace. She pretended she had dropped a coin so she might have an opportunity to look back, but this guy was good, a real pro; she couldn’t see him though she was sure he was seeing her. She walked on, every now and again lingering to peer in a store front window, like she was looking to see someone or something when really she was hoping for a face reflected in the glass, but her tail was not going to give himself away so easily.

  It was when she reached a stall selling cheap fun sunglasses that she finally saw his image. It was twice reflected back at her in the lenses of a pair of outsized star-shaped frames. She faked an interest in the shades, turning them this way and that. All the time she was looking at him, a guy she recognised – a guy with eyebrows that met in the middle. She had seen him twice only, and on both occasions he had been talking to Blacker. Both times he had exited the scene as soon as she had arrived. Now she knew for sure.

  He was Spectrum.

  And more than that: he was an associate of Blacker’s.

  She put the sunglasses back in the rack and walked on towards the subway. She knew exactly what she was going to do now.

  When she reached Spectrum, Ruby did not bother to announce her arrival to Buzz, nor did she stop by the canteen to pick up a donut, instead she marched right along to the coding office.

  If Blacker wanted to destroy her reputation, plant bad seeds in her colleagues’ heads, mess with her mind, then she wanted to hear his reasons to her face. No more lurking in the shadows, let’s get everything out there in the open.

  She walked right into the coding office, didn’t knock, didn’t close the door quietly behind her.

  ‘Why don’t you just say it out loud?’ said Ruby.

  Blacker looked up. ‘Huh, what?’

  RUBY: ‘That you don’t trust me.’

  BLACKER: ‘Why wouldn’t I trust you?’

  RUBY: ‘I don’t know, you tell me.’

  BLACKER: ‘You must have some idea?’

  RUBY: ‘OK, since you’re asking, I think it might be to do with the key.’

  BLACKER: ‘The 8 key?’

  RUBY: ‘Yeah, the 8 key, I think you think I took it.’

  BLACKER: ‘Why would I think that?’

  RUBY: ‘Because of those other things I took.’

  BLACKER: ‘What other things you took?’

  Oops, she could tell just by the way he asked that he really didn’t know. She was referring to the various gadgets she had sort of ‘accidentally borrowed’ from the gadget department over the past eight months. Now she found herself breaking her own RULE 22: IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT TALK YOURSELF INTO A TRAP, KEEP YOUR TRAP SHUT.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Well, now you mention it, I kinda do mind, Ruby. You’re saying I don’t trust you and that I’m falsely accusing you of taking LB’s code key, and I guess I’m wondering two things here,’ said Blacker, ‘one is, what makes you think I would carry on working with you in any capacity if I thought you were involved in this? I mean, if this is true, don’t you think I should report it?’

  Ruby said nothing because she couldn’t think of any good answer.

  ‘And the second is: it occurs to me that if you are saying I don’t trust you then it is also fair to assume you don’t trust me, am I right about that?’

  He was, and she didn’t see the point in denying it.

  ‘But I overheard you,’ she said. ‘I heard you talking about me, you were on the phone telling someone I was a loose cannon, dangerously unhinged.’ Her voice was rising and a little unsteady; she sounded like someone dangerously unhinged.

  ‘What you overheard was one half of a conversation, you’ve put two and two together and you think you’re making four but you’re way off.’ His phone was buzzing. ‘Look, I have to go, but you are going to need to make up your mind here, Ruby, about what it’s gonna be.’

  ‘Maybe I will once you explain why you’ve been having me tailed.’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ said Blacker.

  ‘So you admit it?’ said Ruby, surprised that he wasn’t dancing around it. ‘Straight up, no denials, you admit it?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I admit it?’ he replied. ‘You’re right, I had someone watch you.’

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘You don’t trust me and you never did.’

  ‘Do you think there could be any other reason for my having you watched – one which doesn’t involve a lack of faith in you?’ He picked up his coat. ‘Think about it Ruby, use that smart brain of yours for six seconds.’

  And he walked from the room.

  Ruby sat completely still until she could no longer hear his footsteps. She was surprised by his reaction. He had looked her dead in the eye. He had neither smiled in a reassuring way, nor had he become flustered or angry. He had exhibited none of the behaviour of a person caught in a web of lies.

  Did she really believe this colleague of hers had it in for her? This guy who had talked her through cases and backed her up no matter who might disagree? Could he really be the one who was trying to bring her down?

  Could he?

  AS JEN YU WAS FOND OF REPEATING, sometimes the answer is only found by completely emptying the mind.

  Ruby decided that this might be best achieved by giving herself a little kung fu time. At the dojo she tried to banish all thoughts and become formless, shapeless, like water, like the wind …

  It was only after several hours’ practice that her mind at last became clear and she found her answer. She knew immediately what she must do.

  Ruby, you have to talk to Blacker.

  Clancy had been right.

  And she had been wrong.

  Ruby changed, gathered her things and wasted no time, practically running from the dojo and tearing off towards the subway, and on to Spectrum.

  She found Blacker sitting at his desk. He was reading, his brow furrowed. When he saw her standing in the doorway, he closed the file and looked her square in the eye.

  ‘Look, I think I might have got the wrong end of the stick somewhere along the way …’ said Ruby. ‘The wrong end of something anyway.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Blacker. ‘Working in this field tends to bring on the paranoia.’

  ‘It’s just I seem to be on the outside of everything lately and it’s making it hard to see which way is up.’ She paused. ‘Does that make sense?’

  Blacker nodded.
‘Maybe it’s time to level with you about a few things.’ He picked up the phone, had a brief exchange with the person on the other end, before replacing the receiver and pointing to the door.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  Ruby followed him through the Spectrum corridors until they reached the boss’s office.

  Agent Delaware was already there, sitting legs crossed, file on lap. LB was behind her desk.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said.

  Ruby looked to Blacker, but it was LB who broke the silence.

  ‘Look Redfort, I understand from Blacker that you have been struggling with the whole idea that information here is imparted – ‘on a need-to-know basis’.

  We secret agencies tend to use this as a general way of rationalising information. You seem to be taking it personally, and I regret to say that there is no room for personal feelings – hurt or otherwise – in the area of secret intelligence.’ She stared hard at Ruby.

  Ruby shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  ‘There is a point in keeping information contained and in this particular case a very good one.’

  LB looked over at Delaware, who looked at Ruby, cleared his throat and began, ‘What you may have read in your file when you made an unauthorised visit to the file room was there to protect you.’

  Ruby froze: how did they know she had been in the files?

  She opened her mouth, but LB raised her hand to silence her. ‘How did we know?’ she said second-guessing Ruby’s question. ‘You should know by now, Redfort, nothing gets past me. Maybe it’s time you took that on board as fact.’

  Agent Delaware continued. ‘Let’s put that disciplinary incident to one side for a while.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Two weeks ago a prisoner escaped from a maximum security government facility where said prisoner was being held pending trial. This individual is highly dangerous and extremely smart and happens to have you in her sights.’ He held up a small black book. ‘Scrawled on the pages of this journal are thoughts and ambitions that should you read them might have you sleeping with the light on for the rest of your days.’

  Ruby’s eyes widened.

  ‘It was Spectrum’s decision to withhold this information from you; you are, after all, a minor and it was considered best not to inform you of any danger you might be in.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Ruby. ‘Isn’t it better to be forewarned? If I knew then I might be able to …’

  ‘You think you can defend yourself against someone like this?’ Agent Delaware shook his head. ‘You are a child playing at being an agent. This woman is a killer.’

  ‘It’s Lorelei?’ said Ruby.

  Delaware nodded. ‘Von Leyden was within a hair’s breadth of ending your life not one month ago – you survived by chance, not design.’

  ‘So much of life and death is chance,’ said Ruby.

  ‘I don’t argue with that, Agent Redfort,’ said LB, ‘but I do like the odds to be stacked in our agents’ favour. To continue the gambling analogy – when the chips are down, you, Agent Redfort, are playing with a weak hand.’

  Again Ruby started to speak, but LB interrupted.

  ‘I asked Blacker to have you tailed, in part for your own protection and in part to see if von Leyden might be drawn out. If she was watching you, we would find her.’

  ‘You’re using me as bait?’ said Ruby.

  ‘Now you object to your life being put in danger?’ said LB. ‘I thought you were all about the risk.’

  ‘It would just be nice to be informed,’ Ruby replied. ‘You know, by the way Redfort, do you mind if we pop you on a hook and see if we catch a shark?’

  ‘How many ways do I have to say it? There is no nice in this line of work.’ LB was glaring now. ‘Plus, by the way, if it helps to reassure you, no one is interested in seeing an agent brought down. Everyone at Spectrum is committed to seeing you survive this threat to your life, even if there are times, Redfort, when I would personally like to strangle you.’

  This wasn’t quite the last word spoken, but near enough.

  When Ruby was dismissed she and Blacker returned to the coding room, where it was Ruby’s turn to come clean.

  ‘There’s something you need to know,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Does it have to do with the Taste Twister mystery?’ asked Blacker.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘A wild guess,’ he said. ‘So spill the beans, why don’t you.’

  And she did.

  When she had divulged everything she knew, Blacker picked up a marker and wrote the four locations on four cards and stuck them on the wall.

  The Little Seven Grocers on Little Seven Street.

  The music school on the university campus,

  Algebra Street.

  The Twinford Mirror building on Gödel Avenue.

  The Movie Museum on Fibonacci Street.

  Then he made a sketch of the tesseract map.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So let’s circle the four points revealed by the bottles.’ He checked Ruby’s notes and then drew four circles.

  They stood back and looked at it.

  ‘There are lots more points of course,’ he said. ‘Maybe the idea is to collect bottles for each one?’

  ‘You’re not serious?’ said Ruby. ‘That could take weeks. Months.’

  ‘Or maybe we’re missing something,’ said Blacker. ‘Something on the bottle, or …’

  Ruby lifted a hand. ‘The lid.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“X marks the spot”.’

  ‘I’m not with you,’ said Blacker.

  She picked up the final bottle top. ‘No time, no date, just an X, see? X marks the spot. Like a treasure map.’

  ‘So where’s the X?’

  For a moment, Blacker looked at the map blankly … then he got it. He stepped forward and circled the spot where the lines between the four locations crossed.

  ‘OK,’ said Blacker, ‘let’s see where that takes us.’

  He pushed a button on the huge display board which covered one wall of the code room and punched in a few numbers until a map of Twinford’s College Town came up. He transferred the information from the tesseract to the map.

  Ruby frowned. ‘There?’ she said, pointing to where the lines intersected. ‘But that’s the elevated subway.’

  ‘So,’ said Blacker, ‘maybe the X is marking the location underneath the elevated subway line.’

  ‘But isn’t that just the intersection where Numeral Street crosses Pythagoras?’ said Ruby. ‘There’s no building or anything.’

  ‘Only one way to know for sure,’ said Blacker, pulling on his raincoat. ‘Let’s go.’

  Blacker and Ruby took the subway to Cathedral. It was one of the few stations on the short section of elevated subway taking the trains up and over that part of town. Why the planners hadn’t simply run it underground Ruby didn’t know since it wasn’t too pretty to look at.

  To reach the exact point where the lines on the tesseract crossed meant negotiating heavy traffic, as the X-marks-the-spot was indeed in the middle of the busy intersection where Pythagoras and Numeral streets met. And when they got there …

  Nothing to be seen.

  Just trucks, buses and cars crossing an empty square of concrete. The elevated subway clickety-clacking overhead. And in one corner of the intersection, an abandoned lot.

  One could be forgiven for thinking the lot was part of the city dump. It was covered in broken TVs, furniture, a shopping cart, about a hundred cardboard boxes and other bits of random junk. The two of them stood there trying to make sense of it, but nothing was adding up.

  ‘I guess X doesn’t always mark the spot,’ said Ruby, kicking an old soda can.

  They made their separate journeys back, Blacker to Spectrum, Ruby to Cedarwood Drive. As far as this case went, it seemed they had reached the end of the road.

  He heard the

  lock turn …

  … no one had a key but him, no one knew where he was hiding out, no one
was expected, so who was this?

  He sprang to his feet, grabbed the baseball bat, killed the lights and stationed himself just to the right of the door. It swung open and in walked someone … He swung at the figure, but to his surprise the bat was knocked from his grasp. He felt a kick to the back of his knees and the feeling of cold floor against his cheek. He tried to heave himself up but a voice said, ‘Stay there alive or stay there dead, makes no odds to me.’

  He didn’t move. The lights flicked on.

  ‘Baby Face Marshall … So this is where you’ve been lurking.’ She walked around surveying the room. ‘If you’re planning on staying here a whole lot longer, you might want to open a window or two, let in a little air.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  She pulled the mask from her face.

  His expression went from alarm to terror.

  ‘Lorelei?’ he gasped. ‘I heard you were out.’

  ‘You heard correct.’

  ‘So I guess you must be here to do his dirty work?’ His voice trembled.

  She looked at him blankly, before replying, ‘Oh, the Count you mean? Yes, I did pick up that your some-time employer wasn’t too happy with how things went. You really messed up there with that snake lady. How did you confuse a Twinford socialite with a Mongolian explorer? Too funny for words.’

  ‘Who was to know two dumb party people were going to wear exactly the same dumb dress to that same dumb event?’

  ‘Not you dumbo, that’s for sure.’

  ‘So you’re saying you would have known better?’

  ‘I’m saying I would have made it my business to know, because it would have been my business to know. What kind of rank amateur are you? Boy, no wonder he wants to kill you – he does want to kill you, yes?’

  ‘I didn’t stick around. You know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Sounds like the first smart move you’ve made since breaking out of jail.’

  She circled the room.

  ‘So what does he want from that Oidov woman anyway?’ said Lorelei. Is it all about the snakes?’