The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) by Brenda Cooper Read Free Book Online

specifically, to help her friend Nona solve her problems. Nona was being stupid with dangerous people, and Ruby was going to stop her. It was bad enough Ruby was already scared her mom might be killed doing the same thing, and her mom was way smarter than Nona, had more edges and more toughness.
    Nona had let it slip that she was meeting reds on the maintenance level. Stupid. Ruby had been there a few times, although never alone. She’d gone with senior repair techs to learn where the parts depots and the metal reclamation bins were.
    No one had ever let her go to the maintenance levels alone.
    The nearest entrance was in the corner outside the train station. The unmarked hatch in the floor swung up easily on well-oiled hinges. She climbed down a ladder, balancing the hatch over her head, letting it down slow enough that she barely heard it close.
    The corridor here looked like the one above, except greasier and more banged up. Pipes and braces and way-finding signs hung overhead. The lights shone bright and stark, encouraging her to go about her business instead of standing still in their cold, square patterns.
    Before she started off, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. With any luck, she’d go straight to Nona, and she’d catch out the men who were using her. Reds were supposed to take care of you instead of hurt you. Reds were supposed to protect.
    That’s what they said in school.
    It was a lie. Mostly. Sometimes it was a serious lie.
    If Nona had told her the truth last night, protecting wasn’t what they were doing to her at all. She’d come back with bruised forearms and a thick lip. She’d also come back with a flask of clear still and some pain cream her mom needed.
    Everyone should be allowed to make some mistakes, but Nona had used up all the tolerance left for her, even though she was only a year older than Ruby. If she got caught skipping school or work again, she’d have to live down here the rest of her life.
    Most lives down here didn’t last very long.
    Ruby frowned as she passed a door that had been permanently bolted shut. A toxic sign warned people away. Probably medical waste.
    Ruby and Nona had sworn to graduate together and get on one of the good crews together, but it was only going to happen if Ruby made Nona act differently.
    Her journal was folded into a sharp hard square and clipped to her belt. She opened it up and set it to be ready to take pictures.
    It was nearly the end of second shift, and the corridors were so quiet Ruby heard her own breath and the laboring of the air scrubbers above her head.
    A tall, lanky man with three half-height bots squeaking along behind him rounded a corner. Ruby hid in a side corridor and waited for them to go by.
    She swallowed and kept going, passing the bottom part of the water reclamation plant, its doors all marked with the same familiar water-drop symbol that she saw on the maintenance doors of her own level and on some of the pipes above her head.
    Nona had told her that the men met her just past the water plant, in some space that had once been a storeroom, and then offices, and was now a makeshift sleeping quarters.
    Ruby planned to catch them and report them. Sex with underaged girls was against the rules, even if it happened all the time. All she needed was proof. Gripping her journal so hard that the edges dug into her palms, she turned sideways and sidled along the wall, trying even harder to be quiet. She wanted to see what was happening and get a picture of the men, but she didn’t want them to catch her.
    A squeak. A click. Laughter and then a harsh word, cutting it off. Footsteps around a corner from her, going away.
    Heavy. Not Nona’s boots. Whose?
    Ruby shuffled as fast as she could go without making noise. Rounding the corner, she caught a glimpse of two red uniforms. She reacted before thinking, drawing back, hiding. When she got the courage to look around again, she cursed under her breath. These were probably the men she