Notes: Remix of 'Through all of Time and Twinford' by blackers-donuts. who you can find on Tumblr! Not a very cohesive plot, and it rambles considerably in places, but all I wanted was for these guys to meet up and trade some clever quips (and explosions). I don't know how well I succeeded, and this ended up much longer than I anticipated. Oh well. Enjoy!
Also, please excuse all the metaphors and allusions. Turns out I'm just as fond as those things as Seven is; I swear it's like we share the same head sometimes...
Chapter One
Ruby sees the woman for the first time during lunch on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, although 'first time' is probably the wrong phrase to use. Rather, Ruby recognizes the woman there and then, and she is thrown momentarily because she hadn't ever expected to see her again – not now, not ever. It's only through the fence – through the barrier separating the school from the street outside – so she could have easily been mistaken for thinking that tall, glamorous figure is who she thinks it is.
But then the woman turns, head swivelling smoothly and almost mechanically, like a sniper sighting her prey, and then the rest of her body turns too and she lowers her large, oversized sunglasses to meet Ruby's eyes properly.
And she winks.
And she smiles.
It's a horrible little smile, one that promises all numbers of nasty things. Ruby shivers all over, and instead of waiting for something terrible or inevitable to happen, grabs the arm of the person closest to her – who happens to be Clancy Crew.
"Quick," she says, wiping the rain off her glasses, which are quickly beginning to drip with water, and she gestures wildly to the street beyond the gates. "The woman. Out there – can you see her?"
Clancy squints and stares and glances and really does try to look, but the rain's picking up again and there doesn't appear to be anybody on the street anymore. "I can't see any woman, Rube. You sure you saw someone?"
"I – " Ruby shrugs, and then nudges him with her elbow. "Let's get inside. C'mon, I'm soaked through."
He acquiesces easily enough, although he keeps shooting her questioning glances all the way back to fifth-period Double English. "Seriously, Ruby, you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Ruby shrugs again, and says something evasive and distracting, and before long, they're talking about something inane and unimportant. But she's not okay, not really, because Clancy is more on the nose than he realizes. She has seen a ghost, or perhaps a dead woman walking. But it has to be just her imagination, or another trick or disguise, because Ruby Redfort doesn't believe in ghosts.
And there is absolutely no way that Valerie Nine-Lives Capaldi, who has been dead for nearly a year, could be walking the streets of Twinford at this very moment.
The day progresses.
Ruby is called out to Spectrum later that afternoon to work a case (something minor, something comparatively important), and although Hitch gives her suspicious glances in the car and asks why she's being so quiet, she doesn't tell him what happened at lunch. Not because she doesn't trust him, really, it's more that she doesn't trust herself. Not after everything that's happened. Who's to say she hasn't finally cracked?
She and Blacker and Froghorn spend a happy hour or two cracking a code based on sequential logarithms, and it's sufficiently complicated to take her mind off things. It's good fun, really, and between the three of them, they're capable enough to bend even the most strongly-encoded message into submission. (Ruby takes particular delight in making fun of Froghorn's lack of understanding as to how flip-flop diagrams work. It's leaning towards the cruel, maybe, but come on, any first-year engineering student should be able to understand this stuff.
"We need the computing team on this," says Blacker when they're nearing the end of the code-breaking process, and glances at the pages that he's still yet to get through. He grimaces. "Can one of you take a message?"
"Don't we have people to do this for us – " Froghorn begins to complain.
"I'll do it," Ruby says. She ignores their surprised looks, and waits as Blacker scribbles out a messy Post-It note and tacks it to their near-completed work.
"No detours," he says, not entire sternly, and pokes her arm. "Seriously, if it turns out that you ended up in the gadget room again –"
She rolls her eyes; pokes him back. "I know."
"Do you really, though?" He delivers another friendly poke, this time to her nose. "Green three-three-six. West from here, shouldn't take you longer than ten minutes.
"I've got it! Seriously, you'd think you guys don't trust me or something."
Froghorn makes a little noise that's somewhere between amusement and mockery. "Funny, that," he says. "I wonder what set of extraordinary circumstances could have preceded this startling revelation – "
Ruby throws an eraser at him, and leaves.
"I'm giving you twenty minutes, then I'm coming to find you!" she hears called in her direction.
"Got it!"
Green 336 is west, but it's hard to tell directions in the underground labyrinth that is Spectrum Eight. Through entirely no fault of her own (she seriously did intend to go to Computing, although she knows nobody's going to believe her later) she ends up in Purple, wondering where she made a wrong turn. Even after all this time, Spectrum's mapping system has somewhat eluded her in terms of logic. She knows that she's now in the area that's reserved for chemistry and other such sciences, but to get from here to Computing – and then back to Coding – well. That's going to be a task in and of itself, and she doesn't want to take too long about it, or Blacker's going to come looking for her, and that'll just be plain embarrassing.
She swallows her pride, and starts opening doors, intending to ask for directions. She's hoping she'll stumble across SJ, or somebody else she knows who will point her towards the appropriate hallway.
The first person she stumbles across, however, is a young woman of around 17 years of age standing in a clean, abandoned-looking lab, facing away from the door. There's several sets of beakers and test tubes in front of her, and there's a Bunsen Burner that's heating up some unidentifiable substance, but she's barely focused on her science experiment, which isn't very safe lab etiquette – and come to think of it, she's not wearing safety goggles or any sort of lab coat either. Instead, she appears to be talking to somebody who isn't actually there.
"I'm telling you; I haven't seen her!" she's saying, and she's turned just enough that Ruby can see her frowning at nothing. "And I think I'd notice – "
She looks like she's talking into some kind of wireless phone, and she hasn't noticed the door opening. Ruby steps through into the room, and folds her arms, waiting for the girl to finish her conversation so she can ask for those directions.
"I'm keeping an eye out, definitely," she says, a note of exasperation clear in her voice. "I am. Seriously. Don't worry. I'll call you at the first sign of trouble, come on, stop fussing…"
There's a beat as she listens, and then she rolls her eyes. "Sure you don't, Professor." She's smiling now. Ruby takes the opportunity to observe this girl. She doesn't look very old – definitely on the younger end, maybe even still a teenager, and judging by the accent, she's from somewhere in Britain – weird. And then there's the jacket – not professional in the least, a big black bomber jacket that's covered in all number of patches and badges that jingle when she moves.
"Don't worry about me, I'm ace," the girl says. Ruby eyes the legend on the back of her jacket, which says much the same – ACE, in big curling letters. "The chemistry lab is well-wicked, Professor, there's so much stuff – the damage I could make with this-!"
And then she winces, holding her device away slightly from her ear. Apparently, whoever's on the other end is upset. "I – alright, but come on. If we're dealing with zombies or whatever it is that they told us about; I think some good old-fashioned Nitro-Nine would be just the thing!" Another pause, this time accompanied with a guilty glance at her in-progress experiment. "...all right," she concludes. It sounds like she's sulking, but just a bit. "Whatever you say. I'll check up on the other departments, stay low-key, all that. I'll take care of it. Don't worry!" And then, with a touch more enthusiasm. "See you later, Professor!"
She clicks off whatever it is she's holding, grinning absently at nothing – and then spins around suddenly, noticing Ruby's presence. "Oi! What're you doing in here?"
Ruby takes a hasty step back, raising her free hand, unoccupied by the paperwork, in a gesture of peace. "Sorry," she says, not expecting this much hostility right off the bat, "I was just looking for directions – "
"How much of that did you hear?" the girl demands, eyes narrowed. "Were you spying on me?"
"I don't know," says Ruby, mirroring the narrowed eyes. "Was anything you said worth spying on?"
The girl stares at her for a moment, and then something explodes behind her, and she lets out a short, angry curse, whirling around to face her experiment, which is now very much on fire. "Oh hell, I should've been paying attention. Uh –"
Ruby slams her paperwork down onto a nearby table and dashes across the room, leaping several desks and a chair to get to the fire extinguisher and pile of safety goggles. She rips the extinguisher off the wall, and tosses one pair of goggles over to the girl (who catches them easily), slipping the other on over her own regular glasses. And then she stares at the extinguisher in momentary confusion. "How do you use this thing?"
"Give it here!" says the British girl, scrambling over to her. With practiced ease, she sprays the fire with chemical foam, dousing it and putting it out, and then she slumps against a counter with a moan. "The Professor's gonna kill me if he finds out about this," she proclaims. "He's always on about 'acceptable lab safety' and 'not setting things on fire without proper supervision' – "
"Well, if this sorta thing happens often," says Ruby, looking at the mess, "I really don't blame him, if you know what I mean."
"You distracted me!" says the girl acidly.
"You were on the phone during a science experiment!" Ruby shoots back. "Big no-no!"
They stare at each other for a moment.
"It was a pretty ace explosion, though," says the girl thoughtfully, tapping her fingers against the tabletop.
Ruby can't argue with that. She nods, grinning. "It was great," she says. Explosions are great, usually, and this one's definitely not an exception to that.
"Nice shirt," says the girl, beaming, and sticks out a hand quite suddenly. Ruby takes it uncertainly, and shakes. She has a strong, firm grip. "You like donuts, huh?"
"Who doesn't?" says Ruby, her own grin increasing. Her shirt today simply reads 'DONUT WORRY – BE SASSY'. It's on the kinder end of her wide selection of sarcastic, witty t-shirts, but it's definitely one of her favorite too. "Nice jacket!"
"Thanks!" says the girl, and adjusts it proudly. "I'm Ace." Ruby's not sure if that's a statement of intent, or an introduction. Judging by her personality so far, it could easily be either. "Nice to meet you, Carrots," she adds, which throws Ruby for a loop – the nickname comes out of seemingly nowhere.
"I'm Ruby, not Carrots," she says, to which Ace just shrugs and grins. "Are you new here? I haven't seen you around Spectrum before."
A brief, unreadable expression passes over Ace's face. It quickly clears. "Transferred from another department in England. I'm here as a – consultant, I guess? Anyway," she says, frowning, "what are you doing here? Aren't you a bit young to be working at… well, you know?"
"Aren't you a bit too old to be playing with chemicals without safety equipment?" Ruby shoots back.
"Oh, touché," acknowledges Ace with a grin, and sets about rearranging the partially broken remains of her science experiment back on the counter. She's very careful about it, too, skirting neatly around the chemicals that look like they might be corrosive. Ruby watches from a safe distance. "What'cha say you were looking for?"
"Oh! Uh – " Ruby wracks her brain, trying to remember what she's actually meant to be doing. " – right. I don't know if you'll know, seeing that you're new and all, but would you know where Computing is? Specifically… uh, Green 336?"
"Huh." Ace runs a hand through her hair, twisting her messy ponytail back and forth. She flashes a bright smile at Ruby. "Y'know, Carrots, I think I just might!"
Ace gives Ruby directions – quite detailed ones, and she sounds so confident about what she's saying that Ruby feels confident that she'll get where she needs to go, and in plenty of time too.
And after ten minutes of wandering, Ruby ends up in LB's office, and subsequently resolves to complain endlessly at Ace when she sees her next. There's absolutely no way she's going to make it back in time. It's probably already been longer than twenty minutes, Blacker will have already left.
There's nobody in the office – LB must be out – but the door's been left unlocked, so she figures it's as good a resting point as anywhere else. She drops the pile of paperwork that's meant to go to Computing on top of LB's desk, and sinks down to the carpeted floor, sighing. She flicks aimlessly at the Escape Watch, fiddling around with it until she finds the radio function.
"What's the news?" says a vaguely unfamiliar, but still pretty cheerful, voice. It gives Ruby pause for a second or two, before she realizes that Buzz is no longer managing all Spectrum calls, and there hasn't been anybody officially appointed for the job since.
"It's Ruby, Agent Redfort," she says. "I – sorry, who is this? Are you the new phone manager or whatever?"
"I'm Bob," says – apparently – Bob. "I'm freelancing. This whole phone thing is super complicated, though, so I'm probably not going to stick around here for long."
"Cool, cool," Ruby says. "Look, could you patch me through to Agent Blacker? I've got a minor sort of directional problem here. It's pretty urgent."
"Agent Blacker?" There's the sound of something clattering vaguely in the distance, and a phone or two ringing. "Coming right up! Hopefully…!"
It's another ten seconds before she's actually put through, and when he does pick up, Blacker doesn't waste any time. "You're in the gadget room, aren't you?"
"I am not, and frankly I'm offended that you'd suggest such a thing."
"And yet," says Blacker, and it sounds like he's smiling, "I somehow sense that you are not anywhere Computing at this very moment, which is, y'know, where you said you'd be heading to."
"I got lost," says Ruby, wincing.
"You got lost," says Blacker neutrally. "And…"
"And I tried to ask for directions, ended up averting a small explosion-related crisis that may or may not have been partly my fault, received a nickname, took the advice of somebody who had no idea what they were talking about, and… well. Long story short, I'm in LB's office now, and I'm borderline afraid to leave."
Blacker snorts. It's almost like he can't help it. "Sounds like you've had an eventful afternoon."
"Please help me," says Ruby, hoping she doesn't sound as pathetic as she feels.
"Hang tight for a bit, Ruby," he tells her, and the smile is definitely there. "I'll be right there, hopefully before LB is. Don't touch anything."
Her watch clicks once, and he's gone.
Ruby sighs, and briefly entertains the thought of doing as Blacker says and not touching anything. The key word, of course, being 'briefly'. She's on her feet in less than a second, and curiously going through the few documents and files that have been left on the desk of her boss.
There's a couple of heavily redacted letters from some sort of British organization called UNIT that she skims over because, a) see above, heavily redacted, and b) they don't really seem interesting anyway; mostly logistics stuff about shifting equipment. Next to the UNIT letters are inter-departmental transfer documents for somebody named 'Dorothy McShane', and Ruby recognizes the girl in the picture as Ace from back in the chemistry lab. She idly reads through her background (born somewhere called Perivale, typical rebellious teenager school life), and frowns briefly at her birth date, which is stated to be the '20th of August, 1970'. Must be a typo.
Apart from some tantalizingly vague skirting-around of Ace's post-Perivale life, and a surprising lack of any actual qualifications whatsoever, there's really nothing to note there either. Ruby decides to maybe go snooping further on that front later, and moves on to the largest file on the desk, which is marked as simply 'the Doctor' and stamped with a bright red CLASSIFIED mark. Twice. That's practically an invitation.
Ruby grins, and flips it open. There's a photo of a man there, giving the camera a look as if he's been startled rather suddenly by the photographer's appearance. He's wearing a brown suit jacket and some sort of weird sweater-vest that's covered in tiny question marks, and there's a round straw hat covering his rather wild-looking dark hair.
The man known only as the Doctor, she begins to read, and that's as far as she gets, because at that very moment, Blacker walks in.
"Do I want to know what you were doing?" he asks, watching Ruby slam the file closed and scramble away from LB's desk rather guiltily.
"Ask no questions, hear no lies," she says, scooping up the Computing files. "Let's get out of here, huh?"
