Jane Blonde: Spy in the Sky

by Jill Marshall

  ‘Good idea – they are horrible, aren’t they?’ Jean laughed.

  Janey nodded. She didn’t like lying to her mother, but somehow her spy instincts told her it was the right thing to do. For now.

  They joined the others in Boy’s Clothes, paid for their purchases and made their way down the high street. Two shoppers were complaining about bird poo on their coats, and one man was wiping what looked like a Cadbury’s Creme Egg off his bald head. ‘Big flock of them – with teeth! I swear it,’ he was saying loudly. ‘Like vampire birds or something. Going for my neck, it was.’

  Janey found her mum frowning at her with sudden suspicion. She looked around quickly for a distraction, and there it was, right beside her. ‘Oh, Jamie,’ she said, pulling her brother round to the display stand, ‘do you want to go and visit your sister –’ she dropped her voice in case a passer-by heard her – ‘at the zoo?’

  His little face lit up so quickly that Janey didn’t know whether to feel mean for using him that way or a little envious that he never looked quite that pleased to see her.

  Alfie looked glad of an activity too. ‘I could go with them. Check out the Solfari Lands Spylab while we’re there.’

  ‘No need,’ said Janey’s mum brightly. ‘Boz and I went yesterday – it’s intact. But I’ll happily drop you off at the zoo.’

  Mrs Halliday shrugged. ‘It’s all right by me. I’ve got next year’s rotas to do.’

  ‘Call me when you’re ready to come home,’ said Janey’s mum half an hour later as they clambered out of the back of the Clean Jean van, over all its mops and buckets. ‘I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘Great,’ muttered Alfie, shaking a duster off his foot. He changed his tone quickly when he realized both women were glaring at him. ‘I mean, thanks. That would be really . . . great. Wish we had our SPIcicles with us,’ he added in an undertone to Janey as the trio waved.

  ‘Never mind that.’ Janey tugged his sleeve urgently. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you. The birds that man was moaning about – I saw them too!’

  ‘The vampire birds? Ri-i-i-ight,’ said Alfie, not believing a word of it.

  ‘G-Mamma was after this turkey, with Trouble behind her, and these sparrows were chasing G-Mamma and Trouble up the street at the side of the shop. Then one turned back and tried to get me.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘It’s true. But I think G-Mamma invented them by mistake, so . . .’ Janey stopped and looked around. ‘Where’s Jamie?’

  ‘James!’ shouted Alfie. He was nowhere to be seen. ‘Well, you know exactly where he’ll be.’

  Janey nodded. ‘The Primate Palace.’

  But an hour later, after checking every ape, lemur and orang-utan in the whole of Solfari Lands, including James’s chimp sister, Belle, they were no closer to finding him.

  Janey had lost her little brother.

  And suddenly the ground shook. Another bomb. Janey felt sick with terror for her little brother. ‘Poor Jamie,’ she said to Alfie, who was still recovering his balance. ‘Please don’t let him be dead.’

  Alfie’s phone rang.

  ‘Ignore it!’ shouted Janey.

  But Alfie had already answered. With a grimace, he handed it to Janey. ‘It’s for you. Sorry,’ he mouthed.

  ‘Where are you?’ Her father sounded stern, organized. Almost military. When she told him, he said, ‘Have you been in the Spylab?’

  ‘Not yet. But James has gone missing, and I think there was just another explosion.’

  ‘I’ll come and check,’ barked her father. ‘Stay right where you are, Janey.’

  Janey almost dropped the phone, so surprised was she at his tone. Not that she had any reason to be shocked, she thought. His gruffness was becoming quite a habit.

  ‘All right,’ she said quietly, and ended the call.

  Alfie put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I heard that last bit. He must be a bit stressed out. Not quite himself.’

  ‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ said Janey. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no way Jane Blonde is staying put. Come on!’

  And she sprinted off towards the Solfari Lands Spylab, housed below the Amphibian House, wishing fervently that she had her Fleet-feet on as well as the rest of her Blonde outfit.

  ‘You’ll be in big trouble,’ panted Alfie as he matched her step for step, but before he could stop her he was caught off guard by his phone ringing. ‘Hello?’ Again he handed it over to Janey. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Blonde!’ screeched G-Mamma. ‘That Cat’s Eye Collar is brilliant. Brilliant! Up you popped in my SPIV, spying on me while I was chasing that stupid escaped turkey all over town.’

  Janey puffed a little as they rounded the otter enclosure, still running as fast as their non-spy clothes would allow. ‘I wasn’t spying. Anyway, G-Mamma, now’s not the time!’ Janey skidded around a corner, slightly ahead of Alfie now. ‘Jamie’s missing, and I think the Solfari Lands Spylab has just been blown up.’

  ‘Wait for me!’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Janey. ‘No time – Jamie might be in danger.’

  ‘OK. Well, I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ said G-Mamma.

  As fast as they could, the two Spylets pelted around the footpaths and across the flower beds, hopping on to the back of the little train that scuttled around the zoo, only to be pushed off by the alarmed parents of some toddlers in the last carriage.

  ‘Ow!’ Janey felt her ankle twinge as she hit the ground, but she didn’t slow. There’d be time to sort that out later.

  ‘Janey, look!’ Alfie pointed over the perimeter hedge; it looked as though a bucket and mop were sliding along the top of it.

  ‘Mum,’ said Janey. ‘Darn.’ The Clean Jean van was just minutes from the car park.

  ‘We’re . . . nearly . . .’ Alfie didn’t even bother finishing the sentence, just lifted a shaky hand towards the entrance to the Amphibian House.

  ‘Wait here,’ gasped Janey. ‘Fend them off at the door.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Alfie had no intention of letting Janey have all the fun, and Janey knew there was no time to argue it out. Together they ran for the entry tubes, covering for each other as first Janey, then Alfie, hurtled down the perspex tube into the Spylab on a cushion of air.

  Or at least into what used to be the Spylab. ‘Not here too . . .’ whispered Janey, willing her eyes to adjust more quickly to the subterranean gloom.

  The first Spylab she had ever seen – the place she had discovered her father for the very first time – had been reduced to a mess of smouldering embers. Dust rose in little eddies from the piles of bricks, over the toppled and fragmented benches, shattered plasma screens and glass-fronted cupboards; here and there, flames licked around the debris.

  Janey panicked. ‘Jamie!’ she cried. ‘James, are you in here?’

  She clambered over a mound of rubble, pushing things to one side, digging where she could with her bare hands, and Alfie, seeing what she was doing, took another area of the former Spylab and did the same thing. For long minutes they searched, until Janey heard a sound in the far corner of the room. ‘Jamie! Are you . . . ?’

  Both Spylets turned to where the scrabbling noise had originated, and Janey’s mouth went dry. It wasn’t James who had caused the noise at all.

  Alfie pointed, eyes wide, stuttering hoarsely: ‘Jazz spark . . . jazz spark . . .’

  ‘Jazz spark?’ whispered Janey, shaking his arm to get him to calm down. The creature in the corner took a couple of dainty steps towards them, rolling its head, and they backed up rapidly. ‘What’s jazz spark?’

  ‘No,’ hissed Alfie, white-faced. ‘Jurassic . . . Park, you idiot! Slashy claws . . . eats your organs . . .’

  And then she remembered. They’d watched the film together, and now one of its star characters was hopping around on a pile of bricks right in front of them.

  A velociraptor.

  ‘It can’t be,’ said Janey, looking around for a way past the creature.

  ‘No?’ Alfi
e picked up a rock and threw it at the raptor. The monstrous head snapped at it and then turned angrily back towards the two Spylets. ‘Makes sense to me. Vampire birds this morning, velociraptors this afternoon . . .’

  ‘And now you’ve made it mad,’ said Janey as the raptor attempted to fly at them. ‘Argh!’ Just before the vicious teeth came too close, the creature lost its footing among the piles of stone and fell on its side. Moments later it was up again, stalking them, backing them into a corner.

  ‘Maybe it’s a vampire too,’ whispered Alfie. ‘It’s eyeing up my neck.’

  Janey’s mind raced as she picked up a piece of metal to protect herself. They were pretty much in the corner of the room now, with no SPIsuits or gadgets to help them. They were doomed. Unless . . .

  ‘I know,’ said Janey. ‘Dig!’

  She threw a rock over the raptor’s head to distract it, then dropped to the floor and scrabbled in the rubble. As the creature turned back in surprise, her hand seized a football-sized boulder beneath the surface. Janey yanked it as hard as she could, and to her great relief the other rubble shifted dramatically, slithering around to fill the hole that the boulder had left behind. With the surface of the rubble moving like a lava flow, the raptor was once more thrown off balance; it fell to the ground, cawing like some crazed and enormous crow.

  ‘Fantastic!’ hissed Alfie, and Janey looked around, pleased. It wasn’t often that Alfie could bring himself to compliment her. Then she realized that his eyes were wide with terror, and that he was just being his usual sarcastic self. ‘Really fantastic,’ he went on. ‘Now there’s nowhere for us to go, and it’s going to be on us in seconds.’

  The shifting of the floor had created great gaps all around them. They were stuck on a disintegrating island of metal and brick in the corner of the Spylab, with the velociraptor pecking at them from across the small ravine, ready to lunge at any moment. And just as the raptor took a couple of little paces left and right, like a cat rounding up a rat, Janey gasped.

  ‘We’ve found it! Look at what we’re standing on!’ she said. ‘Cover me, Alfie.’

  Barely taking in his horrified expression, Janey leaped off their precipice into the surrounding rubble and turned her back on the raptor. ‘What . . .’ grunted Alfie as he hurled a fridge handle at the raptor . . . ‘the heck . . .’ as he lobbed a cremated pineapple across the crevasse . . . ‘are you doing?’

  ‘Hang on!’ There was a cackle as the raptor caught the pineapple and cracked it between its jaws, then Janey found what she was digging for. The door would open only a fraction, pushed up against the debris, but she could just manage to shove her head and right arm through the gap. Then ‘Wow me!’ she hollered.

  She had no idea whether the Wower would work with only some of her body inside and the door still open. ‘Please Wow me!’ she begged.

  The Wower must have been damaged in the explosion, but somehow, with a slight shudder that had Alfie yelling and stamping from somewhere over her head, it managed to poke forth one robotic hand which frisked around her head for a moment, while a small mist of spy-transforming droplets rained down on her arm. Janey emerged a moment later, red-faced, with half her mousy hair now jutting out in a jagged platinum ponytail that could cause as much damage as velociraptor teeth, and the rest still dangling limply by her face. Her right hand was successfully encased in her much-loved Girl-gauntlet.

  Limited as it was, the transformation didn’t come a moment too soon. Just as Alfie reached down and pulled her, Gauntlet first, to stand on top of the Wower, the velociraptor let out a screech of frustration and launched itself at her legs.

  ‘The door’s still open – Wow up!’ cried Janey. Alfie dangled upside down from the top of the Wower and shoved his head and one arm through the open door as Janey crouched and turned in the same motion, her back to the monster as it lunged. Her dagger ponytail plunged into the soft flesh of the raptor’s throat; there was a horrific gurgling sound and the creature fell back.

  But before she even had time to be sickened by the dinosaur blood dripping off her hair, the wounded raptor was climbing the rubbly slope again, turning, lunging, snapping with its hideous teeth . . .

  It flung itself across the narrow ravine in the rubble, straight for Janey’s neck. She didn’t want to kill it, but this was the law of the wild. Kill or be killed. So as the slashing claws of the short front legs moved in above her head, and the creature’s exposed underbelly crossed before her eyes, Janey flicked her finger to release the titanium blade and smacked the raptor where she thought its heart must be. The creature screeched and recoiled, falling on top of her, Jane Blonde’s Girl-gauntlet buried in its breast. Before it could squash her completely, Alfie drew back his newly Wowed arm and socked the raptor straight across the room with his Boy-battler. They slumped on top of the Wower, panting, as the creature fell silent.

  ‘I don’t want to go back that way,’ said Janey after a while, pointing to the entry tubes. ‘What if it’s still alive?’

  ‘I don’t THINK so, Blonde,’ said Alfie, ‘but I know what you mean. Stand back as far as you can.’

  Janey watched Alfie punch a hole in the ceiling using the acid-sac in his fist. She just hoped they weren’t under the alligator enclosure. There had already been too many tooth-related dangers for one day.

  But alligators might have been better than what was actually waiting for them when they clambered up through the hole. Lined up along the wall overlooking the tapir enclosure were some of the scariest creatures Janey had ever seen: three parents, all of whom had been completely – and deliberately – disobeyed.

  They all spoke at once as they pulled Janey and Alfie out of the tapirs’ home.

  ‘You’ve lost James!’ cried Janey’s mum.

  Her father grasped her arm extra tightly. ‘You were meant to wait for me, Blonde.’

  ‘Disappointed, Halo,’ said Mrs Halliday. ‘Very disappointed.’

  Janey brushed herself down as she stood up. ‘I know, and I’m sorry, but you’ve got to see what was down there.’

  ‘It’s true! There’s a dinosaur, large as life and twice as ugly,’ said Alfie, miming slashing legs and snapping teeth.

  G-Mamma, who had just arrived, ducked down where the tapirs couldn’t see her.

  ‘I knew it looked weird!’ she hissed, pointing into the enclosure. ‘Can it fly?’

  Janey looked back at the tapir. It certainly did look weird, with half its body white and the other half black, and its strange anteater-like nose, but . . . ‘G-Mamma, those are tapirs. Zoo animals.’

  The SPI:KE got to her feet, assisted by Boz and Alfie. ‘I knew that,’ she said. ‘Tape Ears. Yep, know all about those. So the dinosaur is . . .’ She pointed dramatically beneath their feet.

  Janey’s father held up a hand before anyone else could speak. ‘People are staring. Perhaps it would be better if we took this discussion somewhere a little less public. Maisie, would you come with me and help clear up downstairs?’

  ‘The raptor’s dead, I think,’ said Janey. ‘It won’t bother you. But the room’s a mess.’

  ‘Thank you. You and Alfie take this back to our lab,’ said Boz, thrusting a Solfari Lands security video into her hand, ‘and your mum and G-Mamma can keep looking for James after you’ve been dropped off. SPIV us with any info.’

  Her mum had saved all her ranting for the drive home, the words floating in and out of Janey’s brain as she tried to work out what was going on: ‘. . . killed . . . how did a dinosaur . . . T. rex and all his friends eating you . . . James might be . . . and after your father specifically said . . .’

  Where was James? It was quite possible that the raptor had got him before she and Alfie had even reached the Spylab. It was too horrible to contemplate, and yet Janey knew that she had to discover the truth, and quickly – before things got more complicated. Where had the raptor come from? Were there more of them? Were they anything to do with the pelican thing they had seen from the jet? And how did these creatu
res link to the exploding Spylabs?

  ‘Mum, I’m really sorry,’ she said abruptly, interrupting her mum’s steady flow of accusations. ‘I know we shouldn’t have gone against orders and everything, but can you hurry up? This security film might show us where James is, and you can get back to help Dad look for him.’

  Jean looked very sternly at her for a moment, then fixed her eyes back on the road. ‘You’re right, Janey. There are more important things to worry about right now. But don’t think you’ve got away with this. There will be . . . consequences.’

  Consequences, thought Janey. What worse consequence could there be than if something had happened to James? She didn’t really think sitting in her room thinking about what she’d done was going to help. Sometimes she wished her mum would just stick to spying. Or mothering. But at least make up her mind.

  They were home at last. Before the van had pulled up at the gate, Janey had shoved open the door and jumped out, quickly followed by Alfie. ‘Bye, Mum,’ she called.

  ‘Stay safe, sweetheart!’ Jean thrust the car into reverse. ‘And tell one of us the second you find anything out.’

  ‘You too!’ Despite the strange politics that had settled on Janey’s household, it seemed that everyone was pulling together in the search for James.

  They were just reaching the door when the hedge between G-Mamma’s house and Janey’s shook, and out shot Trouble, eyes bulging with terror, fur stiff with cement dust, haring along as if his life depended on it. He spotted Janey, doubled back and leaped into her arms. Suddenly a dozen small feathered bodies cornered the building like a squadron of tiny fighter jets. ‘Told you!’ shouted Janey at Alfie, fumbling for the key as twelve sets of teeth looped the loop over the next garden, then zoomed viciously in their direction.

  Alfie lifted his hand, still in its Boy-battler, ready to blast down the door, but Janey screamed at him: ‘No! If you make a hole in the door, they’ll just fly through it.’

  With shaking fingers, barely able to see as Trouble scrabbled up her chest and around her neck, she just about managed to turn the key in the lock. Feeling braver from his protected position, Trouble reached out a paw and brandished his claw in the face of the first SParrow. It sped up.