The Amazon Experiment

by Deborah Abela

  ‘You ready?’ Max asked Linden.

  ‘Only if you are.’

  A blast of vacuum-like air sucked at their hair and clothes, whisking them round in circles and bouncing them off the soft walls. They were spun, twirled and jostled before the suction stopped and they were spat out of the room and sent toppling into the jet.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ Steinberger was spat out behind them. He gained his balance, patted down his ruffled hair and made his way to his seat. ‘I had it programmed to Super Clean.’

  As Max and Linden took their seats, Max grinned at the entrance, waiting for Suave to blunder through. After a few seconds the agent stepped through as easily as if he was getting out of a car, his clothes intact and his hair still looking perfect. Max disliked him even more.

  Steinberger pressed a button on his armrest and spoke to the jet’s pilot. ‘Ready to go, Sleek.’

  The jet levitated and slowly made its way to the exit of the VART. It then thrust itself into action, forcing the agents into the backs of their seats as it began its high speed journey to the Amazon Jungle.

  Once they were at cruising altitude, Steinberger took out a small bag of herbal Plantorium medicines. He began swallowing pills, drinking measured pink liquids and stirring bright green powders into various mugs of water.

  ‘Steinberger?’ Linden was curious.

  ‘Allergies. The Plantorium staff put this together for me. It only takes little things to set me off if I’m not careful, so let’s hope these tackle the Amazon, eh?’

  When he was done, Steinberger put his pack away and looked intently at Alex’s mission plan and accompanying maps of the Amazon on his palm computer.

  Max watched as Steinberger busied himself with his notes and Linden opened his palm computer to read the mission briefing.

  ‘Linden?’ she whispered. ‘We should say the pact.’

  ‘We don’t have to, Max. I know you don’t like saying it.’ He turned back to his computer screen.

  It was true. In the past Max had thought holding hands and promising to take care of each other before a mission was embarrassing and way too sentimental, but this time she meant it. She wanted to let Linden know she would do everything she could to make sure he didn’t get hurt. Or killed.

  ‘Come on.’ She tried to sound light as she grabbed his hands away from his computer keys. ‘You know you can’t live without it.’

  Before Linden could object, Max started saying the pact, and for the first time, she remembered every word. ‘If Linden M. Franklin should come to harm or get lost or be in danger in any way, I, Max Remy, will do everything I can to help him and bring him to safety.’

  Linden was impressed and repeated his version of the pact.

  Max sighed and let go of his hands. ‘See? That wasn’t so hard.’

  Linden frowned, not sure where Max’s change of heart for the pact had come from.

  ‘What should we do first, Steinberger?’

  ‘I think the first thing for us to do …’

  Steinberger began, but he was interrupted by a message coming through on his palm computer. A broken image filled the screen, accompanied by the hiss and splatter of static. Underneath could be heard the fractured sounds of someone’s voice.

  ‘Who is it?’ Max leant over.

  Steinberger increased the volume and adjusted the settings. ‘I’m not sure.’ Then an icy jolt of recognition reverberated through Steinberger, Max and Linden. The picture stabilised long enough for them to know it was Frond.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Steinberger breathed.

  They played the message again to try and work out what Frond was saying. Max wrote down grabs of information from the splintered message. ‘Captured … triatoma … lab experiments …’

  And then the last part before the transmission ended. ‘Extreme danger …’ The message suddenly became clear. ‘Do not worry about me, please. The safety and security of Spyforce is much more important. My location is …’

  Before she could say any more, the image shifted to a distorted angle, as if her palm computer had been thrown to the floor. The agents gazed helplessly as they heard the muffled sounds of Frond being forcibly taken away.

  All four agents watched the crooked image until the leather boots of the attacker came back. One foot remained still as the other was lifted out of the image. Seconds later, with a violent snap, the picture became a cruel, desolate black.

  Linden put his hand on Steinberger’s back.

  ‘We’ll find Frond. We’ve got enough information to make a good start.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He tried to say more but his lips waved in an aimless shiver.

  ‘Yeah. We’ll find her before anything happens,’ Max assured him.

  Steinberger’s mind filled with a skirmish of imaginings of what terrible things might become of Frond, of what might be happening to her now.

  But there was no time to dwell on these thoughts. At that moment the jet rolled forward, overbalancing into a slow but steady nosedive.

  Max and Linden turned to each other. ‘Sleek!’

  Suave and Steinberger unbuckled their seatbelts and lurched their way to the front of the jet.

  Max was having trouble with her belt, but when she did get it undone, the plane shifted sideways and she was flung headfirst into the wall of the jet.

  ‘Max!’ Linden turned from the door of the cockpit and climbed back to pull her up.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘You mean apart from the fact that we’re plummeting to our deaths?’

  ‘Good,’ Linden smiled. ‘You’re fine.’

  They pushed through the door into the cabin and saw Steinberger pulling an unconscious Sleek into the copilot’s seat and strapping him in. Next to them, Suave was at the flight controls. ‘We’ll have to land where we can,’ he announced to no-one in particular.

  ‘You know how to fly this thing?’ Linden yelled above the droning fall of the jet.

  ‘A little,’ Suave answered calmly, as he tried to lift the jet from its spiralling fall. ‘Sleek’s been giving me lessons.’

  ‘You just happen to know how to … Aaaah!’

  Max was flung to the floor as the sharply descending plane hit the top of a cluster of trees, damaging one of the engines. Suave tried to pull the plane up.

  ‘It’s no good. We need more power. We’ll have to make an emergency landing.’

  Linden clung to the back of the pilot’s seat and Max tried to stand up, but her efforts were interrupted by a food hatch that flung open, knocking her out and sprinkling her with a powdery mixture of coffee and sugar.

  ‘I suggest you all strap yourselves in,’ Suave said. ‘This may not be one of the smoothest landings you’ll ever have.’

  Steinberger and Linden managed to get Max to a seat and strap her in before doing the same themselves.

  As Linden gripped his hand rest, he concentrated on watching Suave’s sure grip on the controls and his face sculpted with determination.

  The window of the jet filled with the deep green and brown tangle of the jungle coming closer and closer. Suave craned his head to find a clearing to land in and realised there was none. He tried to slow the jet down as much as he could to make the landing. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the only choice they had.

  ‘Hold on!’ he yelled, barely turning his head, as the jet made its wayward descent into the heart of the Amazon jungle.

  Agent Max Remy ran along the damp stone tunnels that snaked their way deep beneath the city of Paris. Her shoes splashed through the algae-strewn pools of water that dribbled beneath the hum and splendour of the majestic city.

  She was pursuing the dreaded and devious Sir Snivel Snodbottom, France’s most fraudulent gangster, who had used his hypnotic charms to seduce the richest and most powerful of French citizens into handing over vast sums of expensive jewels, antiques and artwork.

  His latest scam was taking place in the Louvre, one of the world’s most famous art museums. Snivel had charmed the head c
urator of the museum into handing over some of its most valuable works, but just as the deal was about to be done, Max lowered herself through a manhole into the curator’s grand art-filled office.

  ‘Your thieving days are over, Snivel!’ But before Max could move any further, Snivel turned and ran through a concealed exit behind him.

  Max ran after him through ornate corridors and rooms filled with huge portraits and elegant sculptures of Greek goddesses under long, ornately carved domed ceilings. The museum had been closed for hours, and the low level lights outlined a path for Snivel to a secret trapdoor that led him down to the city’s sewers.

  Max followed quickly after him, opening the trapdoor and landing in a squelching stream of water below.

  The low lights of the tunnel caught the edges of Snivel’s weaselly frame as he splashed through the watery passage like a scurrying rat. The sound of a thousand drips echoed around the coarse stone walls, which swept into a sudden curve, and Snivel disappeared from Max’s sight.

  ‘You won’t get away that easily,’ she breathed.

  As she swung around the ominous corner, her feet slid to a precarious stop, only centimetres from the frothing edge of a long, cascading fall.

  Max looked about her, trying to find a sign of Snivel in the wide pool that opened out below her. But what she saw, through the flickering shadows and deafening wash of water, was something that gripped her heart.

  Linden was suspended above the pool in a giant web, as if caught by a spider.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for my thieving days to be over, Ms Remy.’ Snivel’s voice rose above the watery din, but he was nowhere to be seen. ‘So while I get back to business, I will leave you to work out how to save your little friend.’

  Each fear-filled breath scratched at Max’s throat as she searched for a way to save Linden. All around her, similar stony passages ended in the same abrupt fall.

  ‘Linden?’

  He didn’t answer, his body lightly buffeted by the swirling winds of the cavern.

  ‘Oh, wait, there’s one more thing I almost forgot to do.’

  From out of the blackness shot a fiery arrow. It made a direct hit into the outer thread of Linden’s web. Terror rose in Max like a rising wave of nausea, as she watched what happened next.

  The small flame latched onto the rope like a burning fuse, making its way around the outer layer of the web, sending a disintegrating wisp of ash into the churning water below.

  ‘Bye-bye, kids.’ Snivel’s laugh rang out loudly before receding into the murky darkness.

  Max watched as the flame wound its way closer and closer to Linden, burning the only thing between him and certain death. She had to save him. She had to try and reach him before

  ‘Aaaah!’ Max opened her eyes to see the creeping legs of a giant spider crawling over her hand. She shook the eight-legged animal into the air and it landed with a small bounce on the floor of the jet.

  ‘A tarantula. Excellent! I never thought I’d see one in the wild.’

  Linden was sitting in the chair next to Max, wide-eyed at their hairy, slow-moving visitor.

  ‘That thing is a tarantula? I could have been killed!’

  Killed … Linden’s fall, Max thought sadly. When would these nightmares stop?

  Linden kept his eyes fixed on the spider as it made its way to the broken hatch of the jet. ‘They might give you a painful bite but most of them aren’t deadly.’

  ‘That makes me feel much better.’ Max rubbed her aching head and felt a small lump where she’d been struck by the food hatch.

  The spider sprang from the jet and it was then that Linden noticed the dense greenery outside. ‘I guess we’re here. The Amazon Jungle.’

  After the jet had made its unexpected and invisible landing, there’d been a scattering of birds, animals and insects, but after a few minutes they’d crept back to see who their uninvited guests were.

  Max swiped angrily at a mosquito that was circling her head, but in her stupor, she missed the mosquito and struck her ear instead. ‘Ow!’

  She tried to remember what had happened.

  The flight. The plunge. Then the last thing she remembered.

  The smug face of Suave at the controls just before everything went black.

  ‘Could have been smoother, but otherwise not a bad landing for a beginner.’ Linden made his announcement in his usual unruffled way.

  Max shooed away another mosquito and smiled. Seeing Linden’s wide grin beneath his hurricaned hair drove away her storm-clouding bad mood.

  She went to stand but was pulled back by her seatbelt.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Linden.

  ‘For someone who was almost flown to their death, I’m fine.’

  Max was pulling roughly at the belt that was strangling her when they heard a voice behind them.

  ‘Frond … We’re coming. Everything will be all right.’ A mumbled pledge wormed its way out of Steinberger’s lips.

  ‘Looks like Steinberger’s okay.’ Linden undid his seatbelt and stood over the Administration Manager, wiping Steinberger’s face with his hanky. The day had only just begun but the heat was starting to settle on their skin in waves.

  ‘Hope that’s clean.’ Max raised an eyebrow in mock disgust.

  ‘It’s clean,’ Linden assured her.

  Steinberger opened his eyes. ‘Better be.’

  ‘I’ll guarantee it!’ It was unusual to hear Steinberger joke and Linden enjoyed every bit of it. ‘Nice to have you back.’

  Steinberger offered an uneasy smile, then remembered something and quickly reached into his pocket. His face calmed when he saw that Quimby’s transparent cover had protected his palm computer, and Frond’s message, from damage.

  ‘She’ll be okay.’ Linden gave him a crooked smile.

  ‘Yes, of course she will.’

  A raised voice then came down the aisle from the front of the crashed jet.

  ‘We’re losing altitude! I’m employing reverse thrust! Hold on, everyone.’

  The three agents turned and saw the door of the cockpit had been wrenched off one of its hinges and was hanging limply across the entrance. Light slithered its way through the thin crooked wedge, revealing Suave manipulating the air with his eyes closed, pushing imaginary buttons and knobs trying to control the plane.

  ‘Looks like Suave’s getting an instant replay,’ Linden winced. ‘Going through that crash once was enough for me. We’d better wake him up.’

  Max slapped at her leg as another mosquito bit through her pants in a stinging jab.

  ‘What about Sleek?’ Steinberger asked as he struggled to his feet.

  ‘I’ll check on him too.’

  Linden led the way towards the cockpit, pushed aside the broken door and saw Sleek sitting in the copilot’s seat in a limp, folded heap. Steinberger gently shook Suave, whose eyes shot open in a confused daze until he saw Sleek. ‘Is he okay?’

  Linden reached out and took Sleek’s wrist, trying to find a pulse. He’d studied first aid at the Country Firemen’s Association in Mindawarra and was usually good at finding the pulse first go, but now he had to move his fingers around the wrist, searching for the surging of blood that would show Sleek was alive. Finally he found it.

  ‘It’s faint,’ he told the others. ‘But it’s there.’

  Max’s eyes were fixed on something else. ‘He has the colour of the sleeping sickness in his face.’

  She was right. Steinberger immediately reached into his pack and took out a needle. It was Frond’s Plantorium medicine Finch had given him in case any of them should fall victim to the sickness. He rolled up Sleek’s sleeve and rubbed a small circle of skin with antiseptic before holding the syringe up high to ensure it was ready. As he watched the thin length of the needle and the tube of fluid about to be splurted into the vein, Steinberger’s face went pale and he began to sway.

  ‘I can do that.’ Linden took the needle gently from the woozy-looking Steinberger. ‘Maybe it’d be best
if you looked away.’ Steinberger gratefully did as he was told as Linden guided the needle into Sleek’s arm.

  ‘Thanks.’ Steinberger took a deep breath. ‘I usually pass out at the sight of those things. He’ll need this as well.’

  Steinberger took a mini-respirator from his pack and, stretching the plastic strap around Sleek’s head, fixed an oxygen mask to his face.

  ‘This will assist his lungs to function during the sickness.’ Steinberger held his forehead, a niggling headache working away in his head. ‘He should be all right. For a while.’

  He looked towards Suave. ‘You saved our lives. Thank you.’

  The two men shook hands. It was all that needed to be said.

  At least according to them.

  ‘Yeah, and lucky we had such thick forest to cushion our fall or we’d all be smears of gooey Spyforce mush by now.’

  ‘Max, my stomach is still recovering from the fall … could you be less descriptive, please?’ Linden held his queasy stomach, trying to convince it not to go anywhere.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Suave apologised.

  But Steinberger was right. They had been almost killed, and it had been Suave who had saved them.

  Max was more shaken by the jet’s plummet than she wanted to admit. She was scared by what had happened to Sleek. With the importance of their mission, she knew they couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.

  Suddenly she felt the thick heat of the jungle that had moved in around them. ‘I think I need some air.’

  She made her way to the broken hatch the tarantula had jumped from a few minutes before.

  ‘Aaaahh!’

  Max made a grab for the hatch as she stepped out into nothingness, noticing too late that the jet had landed in the thick canopy of the jungle, which was acting like an overgrown hammock. Max clung to the broken door, her legs scissoring through the air as her mind became strangled with panic at the sight of the dizzying drop to the forest floor.

  ‘Max!’ Linden sprang forward to save her. ‘Hold on!’ Standing on the edge of the doorway, he reached into his pack for his Abseiler and quickly fixed it around himself, attaching the super-grip fibres to the inside of the plane.