The Ruby Code by Jessica Khoury

Author:Jessica Khoury [Khoury, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2023-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

“EYES AHEAD!” Ruby orders, cranking the volume of my phone so she’s yelling into my ear. Even then, I can barely hear her.

The train blasts its horn, but what can I do? Jump off the tracks? They’re just a pair of metal beams snaking through the skyscrapers. It’s not like there’s an off-ramp.

Ahead and far, far below me, the East River sparkles with ships and boats and hovercrafts, and horrible dark patches of open water.

Yeah, better keep my eyes up.

The wind smacks my face, distorting my mouth and making my cheeks flap like a hound dog’s ears. I guess this is why you never see a jetbike rider without a helmet on. I can’t even blink. The wind blows my eyelids back so hard I lose control of them. My eyeballs are probably bugging out of my skull. I feel like my hair is ripping out of my scalp.

“R-R-R-R-R-u-b-y-y-y-y-y-y!” My voice comes out in one long, vibrating note, the wind whipping my lips like a pair of rubber bands.

“Hang on! We’ll be at the next station soon!”

I don’t dare turn around to look at the train. If I do, I’ll lose my balance and we will fall. I doubt even the world’s most powerful AI can hack gravity.

But I can feel the train closing in. The light’s getting brighter. The roar of its whistle is getting louder. It’s an express train, shooting past the last station and continuing at a blistering speed. Too fast to slow down for a stupid kid on a jetbike.

I am going to die.

I am going to die so spectacularly, in so many squishy, itty-bitty bits, that parents will still tell their kids my story fifty years from now. Never ride your bike on the Skytrain rails, my sweet, darling Bartholomew Archibald, or what happened to Ashton Tyler will happen to you! They’re still finding bits of him!

Suddenly, the lights on my bike start flashing again, and I realize Ruby’s trying to get my attention. I can’t hear her over the roar of the train, so she sends a message scrolling across the bike’s dash screen.

EXIT NOW!!!!!!

I yank the bike to the left just as the rails split. The train rushes past seconds later, the tidal wave of its backdraft knocking me off the bike.

With a scream, I pinwheel through the air—and land in a heap on a station’s dirty polycarbon floor.

“Pleugh!” I spit out the bugs that hit my tongue during that horrible ride, then groan and sprawl on the ground. I’m dimly aware of some people gathering around me.

Holy cats, I actually made it across the East River. The lights of Manhattan glow all around me, a vibrant, noisy blur of pink, blue, and white.

“Gotta keep moving, Ash,” Ruby says urgently from my pocket. “Cops are coming.”

Oh. Right. Taking a jetbike on the Skytrain rails probably comes with a prison sentence of a billion years.

Pushing myself to my feet, I stumble through the crowd and down the next set of stairs. I pause only long enough to puke the rest of my tacos over the side of the station wall.

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