Alaska or perhaps just some other state. That was the point of the exercise: drop you somewhere, in the middle of nowhere, where you knew neither terrain nor climate, and see if you survived. What Ruby was sure of was that she was not in Twinford any more. Far too cold. Twinford had been experiencing a heatwave, the hottest summer for fifty years, and the heat just seemed to keep on building.

This brief plunge in temperature should have come as a relief – might have been just what she was looking for if only she had been better prepared for it. Spectrum had dropped her with next to no information about where she was landing, but then that was the idea; could she get out of here alive? She instinctively gripped the small survival pack issued to her and walked to a small clump of trees out of the wind.

T AKE STOCK.

The night’s icy fingers grabbed and prodded and made her bones ache. The first thing she did was to unpack her kit and put on everything that might keep her warm and dry. So far so good.

O RIENTATE.

She shone her mini-flashlight on the basic map she had been given. She had to make straight for the hill, or was it a small mountain? In the dark it was hard to tell. In any case, straight up and over was the only way to go.

P LAN.

Ruby made the decision to keep moving. It was too dark to make a shelter and in any case the trek would serve to keep her warm. She judged that there was little of the night left, since the sky already appeared to be getting lighter, and navigating was no real problem since up was really the only way to go, plus, with the help of the moon, which every now and again slipped from behind the clouds, there was little chance of getting lost.

The dawn came when she was about halfway to the top and she was glad she had made the decision to climb – an hour later and the sun was already beginning to make the ascent hard work. She covered her head to prevent the chance of sunburn and drank the water contained in the survival pack. She needed to make sure she kept herself hydrated.

SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #13:

Keeping Healthy

SURVIVAL RULE 12:

Keep glugging water. Staying hydrated helps you stay alert, control appetite, and maintain concentration and energy levels.

Once she made it to the summit, which was really a ridge, Ruby rested in the shade of a large rock and ate one of her energy bars. From this mountaintop vantage point she could see the ranch below where she was expected to rustle a horse. She could even see the snaking ribbon of the first river twinkling in the distance, the same river she would need to cross on horseback. Far beyond that was a whole terrain she had no chart for: just markers, features of the landscape that would serve to guide her.

She called up the list of tasks in her mind.

Task one:

Make your way to the ranch unseen.

Once she had regained her strength, Ruby looked for a spot to camp out in, making sure it was on the north-east side of the mountain well out of view of the ranch; she didn’t want them picking up the scent of a campfire.

The woodland was perfect, allowing for cover and plenty of materials from which to construct a shelter. There was a small creek and a clearing nearby and this was the area Ruby chose. She gathered slim fallen branches which she lashed together with creeper plants to create an A-frame, and then she clad the whole structure carefully with fir branches which she cut using her Spectrum-issue knife. She was pleased with the result. She then made a platform to sleep on, raised a little off the ground to prevent the cold getting into her bones – this she covered in dry pine needles and leaves.

SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #1:

Basic skills

1. SHELTER

SURVIVAL RULE 7:

Make your shelter as watertight and draught free as possible. If you do not create a secure and stable shelter, you could end up in an unnecessarily dangerous situation, exposed to the elements.

Once she felt happy with her shelter, Ruby began collecting fuel for a fire and got it going without any trouble. Then she spent some time searching for food and successfully gathered some edible plant life.

SURVIVAL RULE 13:

Don’t forget to eat. Without food, you are putting yourself at risk of fatigue and sickness.

Everything went according to plan and Ruby soon had water boiling and a little while later a root tea stewing. Once she had cooked and eaten her gathered ingredients (not delicious though nourishing), she picked up her binoculars and headed up to the ridge again and down the south-west side of the mountain, keeping the ranch in her sights. When she felt she was near enough, but still at a safe distance not to be observed, she hunkered down.

Ruby spent the next few hours surveying the ranch, watching the ranch hands coming and going, working out when they were on duty and when they were off, and how often they stepped outside the building to check on the livestock or to have a smoke. When she was entirely satisfied that she knew all she needed to know, she went back to her shelter and turned in.

She slept well for several hours and woke at exactly the time she had planned to. It was good and dark, but with enough light to see what she needed to see. She gathered up her stuff and scratched camp so she would leave no trace.

Task two:

Rustle a horse from the corral.

Ruby Redfort was light on her feet and had no trouble moving without sound. As she approached the corral where the horses were held, she got down low and moved into the shadows.

If she had timed everything accurately and was correct with her observations, then there would be only one man patrolling the ranch and he would be walking round clockwise until the next guy’s shift began. As far as she could judge, he must be on the far side of the ranch house by now. He would linger there and brew himself another pot of coffee in the tin pot that sat on the porch. Then he would pour a cup and slowly sip his coffee before reappearing perhaps eight minutes later. This meant Ruby had precisely seven minutes to select a horse, saddle up and get out of there without being spotted.

She took no time choosing a horse: she picked the one that seemed most trusting, most docile. Her choice of horse was a good deal better than her choice of saddle for, as it turned out, the one she had taken had a broken girth.

‘Nice going buster,’ Ruby muttered to herself. She registered this error in her head.

Mistake one: neglecting to check.

It was too risky to go back to the lean-to where the saddles were kept, select another and hope to make it out of there before the ranch hand reappeared. No, she would just have to ride bareback. Ruby led the horse by the reins, climbed onto the corral fence and mounted. It was agony to have the horse walk so slowly, but the sound of galloping hooves would no doubt alert the guard. Once she was into the trees and far enough away from the buildings, she picked up speed and flew through the night.

It was an exhilarating feeling, not just the ride, but the rustling itself: to get away unnoticed was the big deal. She felt like an agent – she was an agent – she was going to ace this test. Now for the next part of her assignment:

Task three:

Swim the horse across the river.

She gulped a little when she saw how wide it was, but there was no time for nerves; she needed to keep going if she was to make her deadline. The water was cold, but thankfully not fast-flowing and the horse did not object to what it was being asked to do. When they reached the far side, Ruby slid off the animal’s back and felt the water squelching in her boots.

Mistake two: failing to remove one’s footwear before crossing the river.

Bozo, she thought.

Part one of the mission was over and, as far she was concerned, this was the important part, the tough part.

Mistake three: failing to take equally seriously every part of the mission.

Chapter 6.

SHE TETHERED THE HORSE TO A POST AND PATTED IT GOODBYE. It would not be long before someone would arrive to deliver it home, no doubt drying it down and offering it a nosebag for its trouble.

If only Ruby had thought to give herself this same treatment, things might have worked out quite differently. But Ruby was ambitious; now all she cared about was arriving back at base camp early, really early. She was on a high, feeling pretty good about everything.

Mistake four: getting too confident.

Task four:

Make your way to the second river.

She decided to keep going, ignoring the natural shelter created by a small dip in the hillside, ignoring the perfect tree with its drooping branches that grew from this hollow, ignoring the fact it created a dry and comfortable place to camp out and get dry. Instead she trekked on in her sodden clothes, each step harder than it should have been because of the weight of the water in her boots and the rest of her garments.

Mistake five: failing to take care of one’s physical self.

Ruby trekked for about two and three-quarter hours and the sun was now up and she was all but dry except for her poor feet which still squeaked in her boots. She stopped for a while and ate her last energy bar.

It wasn’t enough.

She walked for another six miles before she heard a distant rumble. She looked up, but there was little to see except cold, dark nothing. A few minutes later, a lightning fork split the sky and the thunder rolled behind it and, as she ran, she heard the wind begin to shake the trees. It would not be long before the storm reached her.

SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #8:

The Elements

In times of crisis, storms, blizzards, hurricanes, it is always a good idea to seek sanctuary, get warm, get dry, conserve energy. Remember: get out of the deluge, hunker down, ride it out.

OK, said Ruby to the handbook imprinted in her mind, that’s all very easy for you to say, but where do you propose I hunker?

It was a good question – there was very little in the way of hunkering-down landscape. As far as the eye could see, it was just flat, rocky terrain.

‘Just keep thinking kid.’ She could hear Hitch’s voice in her head. ‘The ones that keep thinking are the ones that survive.’

She walked across the flat rock slab and searched for any part of it that might overhang the ground beneath. Twenty minutes later, she got lucky. A small overhang, positioned out of the wind, shielded the earth from the slicing rain. She used the micro-chute as a tent, securing it to the overhang and pulling it down in front to create a sort of cave shelter.

This isn’t so bad, she thought. She was careful to remember to pin down all the flapping parts of the chute, aware that it might be torn away by a fierce gust of wind or simply allow cold to circulate inside the shelter. Fire was more difficult because of the gale blowing outside and it was hard to keep the flames alive and the smoke from billowing into her dwelling. She boiled up a root tea and, having drunk as much as she could endure, she worked on getting some shut-eye.

The night didn’t pass without incident; the stones she had found to secure the material were not really heavy enough and as the gale picked up so did her tent. It was ripped from the rock and went spinning off into the night sky, just like Dorothy’s little house. The dawn light took an age to come, but it was a huge relief to see it.

However, the day was about as pleasant as the night before: the only plus – it was light. Ruby trekked on, damp and demoralised, trudging through scrub and bushes. The weather was still terrible and getting worse. She didn’t take shelter under the close-growing trees in the small woodland she glimpsed through the sheeting rain; she gave up checking in regularly with the home-made compass, it just didn’t seem to work well, and then she dropped the needle and that was that. As for trying to read the stars when dark fell, forget it. They were nowhere to be seen.

Mistake six: failing to Stand still, Take stock, Orientate and Plan.

She was alone and things had just not gone as she had expected. The words of Sam Colt came back to her. ‘You can try and predict what might happen next, but don’t imagine it’s gonna come out that way just because you thought you’d like it to.’

As the day arrived once more and became nothing but grey, uncompromising drizzle, Ruby began to feel the cruel pangs of hunger. Bypassing food had been a false economy: it had depleted her of energy and starved her brain of fuel. As a result, her thinking was off and things went from bad to seriously bad. She began to make dumb errors and soon lost her confidence completely.

As luck would have it (and few would call it good luck since it served only to make things worse), Ruby did finally stumble upon the second river.

The next task:

Cross it.

She realised she must be much further downstream than she had planned on being because she could hear the rapids. As she peered over the edge of the steep, rocky riverbank, she could see how she might get down to the water’s edge, but could not immediately see how she was expected to cross the river. She felt exhausted; she hadn’t eaten in a good while and didn’t want to waste more time walking a mile upriver to find a better crossing place. Far too much time had been lost getting lost.

No, she would cross here. If she could make it down to the precarious-looking stepping-stone rocks, she would be OK – she would figure it out. It was a dangerous plan by anyone’s reckoning: one slip and the rapids would grab her.

Mistake seven: taking an unnecessary risk.

Had she allowed her brain to hook up with her survival instincts, she would have decided it might be wise to stop for a while. It had been raining continuously for five solid hours and the ground was sodden and the rock slippery. Thirty seconds into her descent, Ruby lost her balance, her arms flailed and she caught air as her boots slipped and her feet lost contact with the rock – a nasty collision and then Ruby found herself clinging to the branch of a near-dead tree. It was inevitable that either the tree or Ruby would finally have to let go – Ruby had no intention of losing her grip and so it was the tree that gave up first. She had lost count of the mistakes she had made and all she could think as she felt herself falling was, What kind of duh brain are you Ruby Redfort?

There was no time to answer this sad question before she plummeted down into the icy-cold water.

Chapter 7.

FROM THAT POINT ON, Ruby’s mind was no longer thinking: everything was beyond her control. Her body was wrenched this way and that, sucked under, spat out, dragged round rocks until she was finally tumbled down a short but furious waterfall.

The pressure was immense and exhausting, impossible to fight. She felt herself pushed to the very bottom of the stony river bed before several seconds later bobbing up into a pool of calm, clear water. She dragged herself onto the bank, spluttering water from her lungs and feeling both fortunate and unfortunate to be alive.

Unfortunate because she had now lost her entire kit, one boot and her glasses and, without her glasses, well, she couldn’t really see a thing.

Mistake who-knows-what: losing a vital part of one’s equipment.

Also unfortunate because Ruby was utterly lost and completely alone. She thought of Hitch’s parting words:

‘Something goes wrong out there – you know I’ll find you.’ But would he, could he? She certainly wasn’t feeling optimistic. Would she ever see anyone again?

What was in some ways worst of all was the thought that if she did survive she would have to explain herself to Spectrum, to admit she had failed. Ruby knew she could never do that. She would have to keep the truth from them and instead fake an injury, an excuse for her failure to get back to base on time. She was busy contemplating what kind of injury it should be when she realised that there would be no need to fake one: her left foot was pouring blood.

It was the kind of wound that would be dealt with easily any place civilised, but in the wilds of nowhere was actually rather serious. A deep gash to her foot, painful and bothersome. How was she going to make it back now? She was just contemplating this troublesome predicament when she found herself losing consciousness.

When a person experiences tremendous pain or alarming injury, it is not unusual for the body to go into shock and shut down, resulting in heavy sleep. This is the body’s survival mechanism, there to conserve energy and deal with fear, stress, blood loss etc. In the right situation, this can be a useful state, there to protect against mental trauma, but in some circumstances, the wilds of nowhere, hostile environments and so on, it can put the victim in great peril.

These words, which she had learned in the comfort of her Twinford home, echoed in Ruby’s mind for a moment before she found herself drifting back in time to Wolf Paw Mountain. Very small and very alone, but for the creature with the pale blue, violet-circled eyes.

Then nothing.

Meanwhile, unlocking the large carved oak door of the apartment. . .

. . .the elegant young woman stepped out of her heels and glanced down to see a pale blue envelope lying there on the black and white floor. It was addressed and stamped, but had been delivered by hand; there was no postmark and no name to indicate who it was for.

But Lorelei von Leyden knew that it was definitely intended for her.

Rather than pick it up, she fumbled in her purse and took from it a polythene bag containing a pair of white silk gloves; she shook them out and carefully pulled them on. Only then did she pluck the envelope from the cold marble. She reached for the paperknife that lay on the hall table and, piercing the paper, ran it along the top of the envelope.

She withdrew a completely blank sheet of white paper, held it between her fingers and wafted it in front of her nose, breathing deeply.

Then she staggered back as if she had had a terrible shock, as if she had just been given the most dreadful news.

Chapter 8.

WHEN RUBY WOKE, the first thing she smelled was woodsmoke. Someone had lit a campfire. She slowly sat up and peered around; it was all rather fuzzy and hard to make out, but then she heard a voice she knew well.

‘You look in pretty bad shape Redfort.’ Sam Colt was silhouetted against the light sky, a sky now clear of rain.

‘How did you find me?’ Ruby croaked.

‘I’m a tracker, wasn’t difficult,’ he replied.

‘How much time do I have?’ asked Ruby.

‘Depends how you look at it,’ he said. ‘You might consider time to be up or you might say you got all the time in the world.’

Ruby slumped back. ‘What happened?’

‘My guess?’ said Colt in a slow drawl. ‘You lost focus – set about trying to beat the elements. Sometimes you can be lucky with that approach.’ He peered at her from under the brim of his hat. ‘Sometimes not.’

‘What do I do now?’ said Ruby.

‘Now we got a stitch that wound on your foot, clean it up before it goes septic and then I’ll get you to base camp.’

He made neat work of the stitching and although it wasn’t exactly pain-free Ruby was grateful that he was able to take care of it without drama. He found her a spare pair of boots from his kit, a little too big but certainly better than no boots.

She drank a cup of something hot and sweet-tasting, but she was unable to eat – the pain had made her nauseous.

‘You’re gonna have to ride in back,’ Samuel Colt said, saddling up. He helped Ruby onto the back of his horse and together they galloped across the plains.

When they reached the edge of a high bank on the edge of the woods, Sam pulled the horse up and helped Ruby down.

‘I’ll let you make your own way from here,’ he said. ‘That way it won’t show on your test score.’

‘I guess I flunked,’ said Ruby.

‘Depends how you define failure,’ said Sam.

‘Depends how Spectrum define failure,’ said Ruby.

‘Survival don’t sound like failure to me,’ he replied. He tipped his hat at her, turned and rode off, like he was the Lone Ranger himself.

Just below her, Ruby could make out a small wooden cabin sitting in a clearing edged by pine trees. A figure was chopping logs and stacking them against the house. At least she thought that’s what he must be doing, but it was the sound that told her so. The figure was a blur, her eyes unable to see any detail now she was parted from her glasses. If she had still had them, she would have been able to see how every once in a while the man looked at his wristwatch, then at the dimming sky, pausing before continuing on with his work.

She had no idea who this blurry figure was, but she was hopeful it might be Hitch.

Ruby limped into base camp by sundown, just. She punched in her time – she was about thirteen hours overdue. The man was sitting on a stool fashioned from an old tree stump and he was drinking a hot beverage, book in hand. He looked up.

‘Better late than never Redfort.’

It wasn’t Hitch.

Ruby slumped down on the grass. It was a nice enough night, not raining at least, but she was tired, really, really tired. She looked around her.

‘Everyone else has been and gone,’ said the Spectrum agent. It was the same agent who had doled out the mission briefing the day of the drop. His name was Emerson.

She sighed. Did anyone else fail? she wondered.

‘Hungry?’ asked Agent Emerson.

Ruby nodded.

‘Didn’t do so well finding food, huh?’

Ruby shook her head.

Emerson helped Ruby hobble to the tiny log cabin.

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