‘The one that’s so secret nobody but you knows where it is?’
‘So I thought,’ said the Abe-SPIRIT seriously. ‘But someone else must have found out. All the spies have been broken out of captivity.’
Janey swallowed. ‘Sounds like Copernicus. I know I sort of blew him up, but I knew even that might not have finished him off.’ She’d hoped that when she planted SPInamite in the Wower containing Copernicus he’d disappear for ever, but of course his cells were traceable if enough bits of him were rescued by his cohorts. There was always a chance that he might be reformed.
‘That’s what I suspect,’ agreed her father. ‘I’m particularly suspicious about him, as two of my agents, who were operating as scientists at the secret location, have been found dead. They . . . they had both been crushed. The life was literally squeezed out of them.’
‘Oh no. Oh, Dad,’ whispered Janey. ‘That’s terrible. This is getting really serious.’
‘Precisely.’
‘And what’s the part you can’t really explain?’
Her father rubbed his chin. ‘It’s the animals that live around the location of my secret facility. They’re all acting very out of sorts. They’re skittish and restless. I know their strange behaviour means something, but I don’t know what.’
He looked at Trouble as he spoke, and Janey recalled the strong bond that Abe had always had with his cat. Trouble had been able to pick him out even when he was Crystal Clarified into another form, and the cat could tell when someone who looked exactly like him was actually an imposter. Animals acted on instinct, Janey knew, and that was incredibly important in their line of work too.
‘We’ll work it out, Dad,’ she said softly.
He looked up, distracted. ‘Yes. Yes, of course we will.’
Janey paused. She really wanted to warn her father that Jean was on the hunt for a new boyfriend, but he looked so worried that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She would have to deal with that one herself.
Just then the Abe-SPIRIT lifted his head, putting his worries aside. ‘We’ll try to find time to talk some more during the week, Janey, but you’ll have to appreciate that we’re on a very tight schedule, with a great deal to do. Obstacle course after lunch.’ And with that the SPIRIT of her father blew her a kiss and evaporated.
‘Bye, Dad. Oh! How do I . . . ?’
Janey took in her surroundings for the first time. She was inside a huge cube, with the only door halfway up the wall. When she’d made her way into the room she’d been hovering on a cushion of air on a level with the door, but now it was a good few metres away. This was clearly another test. ‘Fleet-feet won’t jump that far, Twubs,’ she said. ‘I think it might be time to try out that bell again.’
She gripped the little globe on Trouble’s collar and felt it open like a flower under her palm. Through her fingers a breeze tickled, turning quickly into a whistling gale that forced her hand open. Then the Spyroscope began its work in earnest, whipping the air around them into a frenzy while cocooning them in a protective cushion of air on which they rose twenty or thirty feet until they were once again suspended in the middle of the room. Turning towards the door, Janey leaned her sharp ponytail into the wind, the better to slice her way through, and with Trouble hanging on to her leg she battled her way through the stormy wind zone at the edge of the room to the door, walking on air, and tugged on the handle.
Suddenly she was outside the vortex room. ‘Phew,’ she said, smoothing out Trouble’s quiff as she spotted someone approaching. It was good to be on solid ground again. ‘Alfie! What have you been doing?’
‘Advanced Boy-battler,’ said her friend, showing her the new black glove on his right hand. He looked incredibly pleased with it. ‘Rocket launcher, dragnet, video projector and a totally cool acid spray gun that would melt through a bank vault. That’s in this finger . . . or, no, whoops, which one was it?’
Janey watched him jabbing at his glove with his left hand. ‘I think you’d better get that right before you do some damage. What have you got next?’
Alfie pointed with his middle finger, and immediately his timetable was projected on to the wall. ‘Um, nothing until after lunch. But that’s only half an hour away.’
‘Me too,’ said Janey, a plan formulating in her mind. ‘Look, there’s something I really need to do back at home. Can you help me?’
Alfie raised an eyebrow. ‘You heard Abe. If we miss lunch, we’re in big trouble.’
‘I just want you to press the Satispy control. There must be one around here.’
‘Oh no. You know I hate that thing.’
‘But it’s really important! My mum might be in trouble. You know I’d help you and your mum if you needed it.’
That much was certainly true. Alfie wrestled with his conscience for a few moments, then shrugged. ‘All right, but if you’re not back for lunch, don’t tell anyone I was involved.’
Janey grinned as she reached over to Trouble’s collar. ‘I will be. It’s just a little idea I had. Something I have to do.’ She’d already realized she had to deal with her ‘mum’ problem herself. Best to get in right at the beginning, before the planning had even started.
They located the Satispy control in the administration outbuilding, where they’d first met Abe the SPIRIT. ‘Makes sense,’ said Alfie. ‘This must be where they organize all the visitors and what have you.’
‘Just give me ten minutes and then bring me back, OK?’ Janey slipped the Spyroscope off Trouble’s collar and pocketed it, and prepared for the stomach-lurching journey.
Alfie checked his watch and then, a little reluctantly, pressed the button on the Satispy activator. Janey watched him disappear as her eyeballs separated and she streamed up to the nearest satellite station. Within seconds she was reassembling in her own back garden. She scooted down the side path to the front of the house and flung herself into G-Mamma’s unruly front yard.
‘Just in time,’ she said as a smart black hatchback pulled up at the gate. Taking the Spyroscope out of her pocket, Janey crouched behind G-Mamma’s hedge and waited for Joy, the administrator from Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines, to step up the path. She was dressed in her Sunday best, in a summery skirt and T-shirt. Her mum was opening the door, smiling in welcome. ‘Now!’ said Janey sternly, and she gripped the Spyroscope firmly in her palm.
The whistling sensation prickled her palm, and she released the mini-tornado across the garden. Suddenly Joy found her freshly washed hair standing in a crest across the top of her head, her necklace whipping backwards and forwards across her face and her whole body pressed back against the gate she had just passed through, as she battled to keep her floaty skirt in place. Janey glanced at her mum; she was hanging on to the door frame with both hands, trying to stop her feet from parting company with the doorstep. Although sounds were muffled around Janey, she could see the two women trying to shout to each other, the words being snatched from their mouths and thrown up into the sky like autumn leaves.
What she had forgotten, however, was that setting off the Spyroscope caused a huge globe of wind in which she would be suspended at the very central point. As the wind grew more furious between Joy and her mother, she felt herself rising up from behind the hedge, heading for the power lines above G-Mamma’s roof.
‘Oh no! They’ll see me any second!’ Janey looked around frantically. If she dropped the Spyroscope, the wind would drop too. If she didn’t, she’d loom up next to them – or possibly even over them - like a SPIsuited phantom. ‘Blonde, you idiot!’
‘You said it.’ A voice suddenly sounded close to her ear. Janey whipped around, and there, sitting on the edge of the roof behind the sycamore, was Titian Ambition.
‘If you don’t make it to lunch, Blonde, we’re all history.’ The red-haired girl glared at her belligerently.
‘How did you get here?’ gasped Janey. ‘You’re in my vortex!’
‘I did my Spyroscope training just now, and when I noticed Al Halo lurking
in the admin block I thought
tumble-tubes
Janey and Tish skidded up to the door of the refectory several minutes after the rest of the SPIs.
‘See?’ said Tish with a flick of her head. ‘One more minute of your tornado time and we’d have been toast.’
G-Mamma looked at Janey, puzzled. ‘What were you up to, Blondette? You nearly made me miss my lunch.’
‘I . . . I was worried about my mum,’ said Janey.
‘She set off a Spyroscope right next to her,’ blurted Tish in her surprisingly loud voice. ‘How worried is that?’
‘That sounds very odd, Janey,’ said Mrs Halliday, somehow commanding Janey to explain herself without raising her voice. Alfie twitched uncomfortably.
Janey sighed. She didn’t really want to be telling everyone her family’s private business. ‘It’s nothing really. Just . . . some family stuff.’
Magenta put out her hand so that Tish trotted to her side. ‘Well, thankfully my Titian Ambition was there to sort it out. It appears to me no harm’s been done. But there will be if we all stand around chatting about it.’
The other SPI:KEs considered this for a moment and then nodded their agreement. Janey, Alfie and even Tish breathed a sigh of relief and followed the adults into the refectory. ‘Good start,’ the girl muttered softly in Janey’s ear. ‘Keep this up and you won’t be “sensational” for much longer.’
Janey glowered at Tish’s scarlet back as she stalked off in front of her. For someone even younger than Janey, she was very sure of herself, and not a little competitive. Titian Ambition was the right name for her, and she was definitely someone to be watched, Janey decided. She just wasn’t sure what she should be watching her for.
In the refectory, G-Mamma had stationed herself at the head of the table and was handing round the serving dishes that were perched on slender stainless-steel tripods, being sure to dollop a huge mound of everything on to her own plate first. Soon everyone was tucking into sausage and mash with fresh peas and broccoli, followed by apple crumble with a choice of custard or cream. Janey wasn’t particularly hungry and pushed a sausage round her plate, trying not to feel too guilty about almost getting them all into trouble. It didn’t work, and the horrible anxious feeling in her stomach seemed to fill her to bursting.
Everyone else was soon bursting too. ‘If they keep feeding us like this, I’m going to need a bigger SPIsuit,’ said Peregrine half an hour later, snapping the black-feathered Lycra against her taut stomach as the dishes were automatically replenished once again.
‘Bring it on,’ beamed G-Mamma, happily helping herself to a second portion of crumble with custard, cream, a sausage and a bit more cream. ‘We obviously need to keep our strength up.’
‘That’s right,’ said Abe suddenly, and they all turned to see a SPIRIT standing at the far end of the table. ‘You might need a couple of extra layers in the near future. And you’re going to be doing some hard physical work during the next week, so be sure to eat well. You have ten minutes before I need you all at the obstacle course.’
Janey was looking forward to the obstacle course. Throughout her missions she had always been able to use her SPI-buys to good effect to get out of, into, over or under things, and she imagined this was going to be no different. Hastily shoving her plate to one side, she joined the queue at the door and jogged behind Eagle and his son Rook to the obstacle-course zone. G-Mamma lagged behind, groaning roundly, until she thought to pop the wheels out of her in-line skate-shoes and roll her way to the site.
‘Is this it?’ Janey looked around at the field at which they’d arrived. She’d expected an army obstacle course, with tall wooden structures, flying foxes and perhaps the odd chain of tyres to run through, but there was nothing like that. This field had a high fence around the edge, with a sturdy gate to one side, and was simply divided into four by a couple of large fences criss-crossing in the middle. Surely that wasn’t all they’d be expected to do – leap over a few fences? That could be done with a straightforward Fleet-feet jump. Leaf, who was standing beside her, shrugged as his eyes flicked backwards and forwards. ‘I am sure that Mr Rownigan has something planned for us. We just have to wait and see.’
There was nothing else for it. Janey stood around, trying to catch Alfie’s eye to see if they could pair up, but he seemed engrossed in conversation with Leaf’s father and didn’t make eye contact. In fact, everyone was talking intently with someone new – G-Mamma to Peregrine, Mrs Halliday to Titian Ambition, Ivan to Rook – and Janey suddenly felt rather left out. It was with some relief, then, that she saw the Abe-SPIRIT at the gateway to the field.
He pointed to the locked entrance. ‘One at a time, please. Find your way in, tackle each quarter in order and run through me at the end to record your time. And remember what I said earlier – try not to use the same trick twice.’
The spies jumped quickly into line. Tish was first – no surprise there, thought Janey. Miss Know-it-all. The redhead stood in front of the gate, looked puzzled for a few moments as Abe spoke to her, then tapped something into a small keypad by the entrance. The gateway slid open and Tish disappeared. Behind her went Magenta, listening intently to the SPIRIT and then pondering for some time at the gateway before finally throwing her head back in realization and punching the keypad.
The line moved slowly, Janey at the back. As she watched she noticed that a pattern was emerging: all the SPI:KEs were taking much longer than the Spylets to go through. G-Mamma, in particular, kept talking back at Abe and spent ages trying to key in the right code until she finally gave up and shuffled to the back of the queue behind Janey.
‘Blasted codes,’ she cursed as she passed. ‘Couldn’t he just give me someone to pulverize?’
Suddenly it was Janey’s turn. She walked up to her father, who simply smiled at her and said, ‘See you, mate.’
It sounded slightly odd – he usually called her ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’ or just ‘Janey’ – but she smiled back anyway. ‘Thanks, Dad. See you soon.’
He simply nodded and remained still, staring at her . . . and suddenly she got it. He hadn’t said goodbye at all. He’d been giving her the code. It was just like a text message – the Spylets were getting it more quickly because they were more familiar with mobile phones! G-Mamma relied on Janey for all the code-cracking and would never get this, so she hoped fervently that her SPI:KE was still wearing her SPI-Pod. With a hand poised over the keyboard, she spoke each keystroke aloud as if she was concentrating. ‘See you, mate. So . . . C . . . U . . . M . . . 8.’
There was a tiny whoop of ‘Cody crafty!’ behind her, signalling to her that G-Mamma had indeed been wearing her listening device, and then the gate slid open. She stepped through into the grassy pasture and took another step forward as the gate slid home behind her. So far, so good. She took another step . . . and found herself up to her knees in mud. Furthermore, there was a sucking sensation beneath her feet, which reminded her of a scene from a film she’d watched with Alfie. The baddy had been gobbled up by the ground. ‘It’s a bog!’
She frantically thought through her options as the peaty earth swallowed her further until her knees, thighs and then her hips were fully submerged. There was nothing to push against to activate her Fleet-feet, and she was trapped almost to her waist so the ASPIC strapped to her thigh was useless. She forced herself to remember not to struggle, as that would pull her in further, but it didn’t seem to be making much difference; the bog sucked her in anyway. Her own father was about to kill her. He would have to dig her out of a sloppy, muddy grave, only to put her back in another one after he’d explained to her mum what he’d done. The holes in the SuSPInder around her waist made tiny bubbles in the mud, like the little air bubbles her own mouth would make when she was pulled right under . . .
And then it came to her. ‘SuSPInder! Of course.’ Before it disappeared into the mire completely, Janey grabbed the buckle of the belt and unwound it. Coiling it like a lasso above her head, and try
ing to ignore the thick mud that had now reached almost to her shoulders, she flung the buckle towards the fence at the far side of the bog. Like a grappling hook the buckle caught, and Janey yanked on the line suspended from the fence to her boggy body until it tightened. With a nasty slurp she was pulled from the earth, dragged across the deceptively grassy surface of the bog and hoisted up the fence. She sat there for a moment, gathering her breath before she dropped down into the next segment of field, just as she heard the gate slide shut behind G-Mamma followed by a ferocious yelp as the bog took a hold. ‘You let go of me now, boggy bog, or you’ll be sorry!’
Janey grinned as she glanced around at her new obstacle. Once again it appeared simply to be a quarter of a field, with a tall fence on every side. The fences were taller here than in the previous section though. Janey looked again. They looked taller still. But they weren’t actually taller, she realized. They were closer. With every passing second they got a bit nearer to her. They were boxing her in. And fast. She patted the SPInamite in her pocket. Should she blast a way through them? It might work, but the fences were closing in so quickly she might not have time. Suddenly they were just an arm’s length away . . . moving in to flatten her . . .
The move she made had almost become second nature. Bracing her arms against the walls encroaching on her, she drew up her feet and banged them down as hard as she could. The Fleet-feet exploded into operation and she sprang into the sky, sailing upwards like a firework and coming to land on the very tops of the fences as they finally drew together. To her shock, Janey found that they weren’t just simple white wooden fences. Behind each one a solid block of granite was now apparent. Each block had shifted across the field so that Janey now stood atop a great platform of grey stone. All she had to do now was walk across it, vault down and land in field three.
Only she didn’t exactly land. As her feet touched the grass, the ground parted beneath her feet and Janey found herself sinking into murky cold water. Instantly she groped in her sleeve pocket for a small rubber device and shoved it between her teeth. The SPIder sent two legs out between her lips and up her nose, then anchored the remaining six legs around her mouth and shot oxygen down her throat. It was much easier to work out what to do when you could breathe, as Janey had discovered before.
Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice Page 4
