‘What do you mean? They were all, “Hello, Hope”, “Hello, Joanna”. They seemed pretty friendly to me.’
‘You know nothing about girls, Alex Sparrow. When girls are overly polite like that it usually means they hate each other.’
‘Girls are weird.’
‘Not as weird as you.’
We had Miss Fortress’s staff file laid out on the breakfast bar but there was nothing useful in it. The whole day had been a disaster. We’d taken so many risks, all for nothing.
‘Bob, what happened when you were spying on Miss Fortress? Did you see anything to suggest that she’s an evil psychopath?’
Jess began to twitch. ‘He said she mostly sat at her computer, eating a Chunky Kit-Kat. At one point she got up and went over to one of the windows. She leaned out and was talking to someone, but he couldn’t see who it was.’
‘Could he hear what she said?’
‘She spoke very quietly, and he could only see her profile so it was difficult to lip-read. He couldn’t really make any of it out. When she turned away from the window, she spotted him, huffed about a lot and then took him to the PALS room.’
‘Well that’s all a bit weird again, but there’s still nothing definite. How will we ever know which side Miss Fortress is on?’
‘Another dead end,’ Jess said. ‘Let’s Google that Montgomery McMonaghan guy – we forgot last night.’
‘Yeah, we were distracted by the pop-up of doom.’
I grabbed my laptop from upstairs and put it on the counter, then went to get some snacks while Jess typed the name into Google.
‘It says he’s the head of a corporation called SPARC,’ she said.
‘That is the perfect super-villain job,’ I said, all excited. ‘What does the company do?’
‘It’s all stuff to do with fitness, health and wellbeing. Apparently SPARC stands for Strength, Peace, Activity, Recreation and Clarity.’
‘Sounds like PALS.’
‘It does sound like PALS,’ Jess agreed.
‘Do you think they’re connected?’ I asked.
But Jess had started twitching away, apparently having a conversation with Bob.
‘What now?’ I said, annoyed that he’d stolen my moment.
‘He says he’s thought of something else that might help us.’
‘Really? What is it?’
‘He’ll only tell us if we agree to play Scrabble with him once a week.’
‘For how long?’
‘Forever.’
I saw our evenings stretching out ahead of us, being beaten at word games by a goldfish when we could have been doing something fun. Unfortunately, we were desperate and Bob knew it. ‘Fine, but it had better be good.’
When Jess stopped twitching she turned and looked at me, mouth wide open.
‘Oh, my God.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before.’
‘What?’
‘We’re idiots.’
‘Tell me!’
‘If you rearrange the letters of her name: Hope Fortress is an anagram of The Professor!’
14
Jess vs Fortress
‘How did you figure it out?’ Miss Fortress looked up from her computer. She didn’t try to deny it. She didn’t even seem very surprised.
Jess and I had agreed not to give anything away, so I put on my best smooth-operative-under-interrogation voice: ‘It wasn’t so hard.’
‘I slipped up. I lied in class. But I didn’t think that would be enough for you to guess who I was.’
‘It was enough to make us suspicious and we worked the rest out later.’ Jess had that look on her face again. She was really good at doing hostile.
‘And Miss, the whole name-anagram thing dropped you right in it.’
‘Ah, yes, I couldn’t resist that. I thought it was ever so clever. Didn’t you think it was brilliant? And I really didn’t think anyone would work it out.’
‘So you underestimated us,’ I said.
‘Apparently so.’
We stood for a moment, sizing each other up. Miss Fortress looked pretty hacked off. Jess looked like someone had just threatened to confiscate her entire supply of studded bracelets. I stood between them, thinking hard about what to do next.
‘We want some answers,’ I said.
‘I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.’
‘OK, we’ll start,’ Jess said. She could be quite intimidating when she wanted to be. ‘Who are you? I mean really?’
‘I’m just a scientist. By day I teach under the name of Hope Fortress and by night I carry out research in the lab.’
‘So you’re an actual professor?’ I couldn’t quite take it in.
‘Yes. Why? Were you expecting Albert Einstein?’
Yes.
‘Sorry to disappoint you but having mad hair and a moustache isn’t a prerequisite for being a professor. My turn: what have you found out about what’s going on at the school?’
‘We’ve found out that kids are being brainwashed,’ Jess said. ‘We’ve found out that Miss Smilie is evil. We’ve found out that you aren’t who we thought you were, so how can we trust you?’
Miss Fortress lit up. ‘I knew Joanna Smilie was behind it. No normal person smiles that much! And that PALS nonsense – all those ridiculous affirmations. I’m almost relieved that it’s a cover for a diabolical scheme.’
Jess and I looked at each other. Perhaps Miss Fortress could be trusted.
We gave her a quick rundown of what we’d learnt – it was the only way we were going to get the answers we wanted. She listened and nodded and I got the feeling she was on our side. Jess was still angry and suspicious though, especially when she found out that Dexter had been spying on us with a recording device strapped to his leg. Do you remember that scratching I heard when we broke into the office? That was Dexter at the window. And that time we saw a pigeon in Oak Avenue? Yep, him again.
Once we’d filled her in, it was time for Miss Fortress to explain what the heck was going on.
‘The intricacies of brain function are a mystery. I have devoted my life to finding out how to access inactive areas of the brain and unleash their potential. Some years ago, during our experiments, my lab partner and I stumbled upon a process that allowed us to inhibit brain function. Fearing that our discovery might be used for evil means, I took my research and fled from the organisation that employed me. I left everything behind and changed my identity.’
‘In English, Miss?’
‘But I’ve been working on this speech for ages, so that in the event you found me out, I’d have a compelling and dramatic monologue.’
‘You probably need to get over yourself then, Miss. I’m ten. Jess is eleven. All we’re hearing is fancy blah blah blahs.’
‘How annoying. Fine. I was working as a scientist for an organisation when my partner and I discovered a way to control minds. I thought they might use our knowledge to do bad stuff so I suggested that my lab partner and I should leave and keep our techniques to ourselves. But he plotted against me. He used the research to move up the ranks and planned to get rid of me. When I found out, I ran away and changed my identity. I took all my notes and files but I knew there was a chance they’d have enough information to be able to do the mind-controlling without me. I kept an eye on the organisation and sure enough, I found out they had plans involving your school.’
‘So you came here, tricked us into buying powers and sent us to do your dirty work for you while you hid away?’ Jess was obviously not about to forgive The Professor that easily.
‘I wouldn’t have put it that way…’
‘No, you would have put it in another, much longer, more boring way, because apparently you really love the sound of your own voice.’
Woah, I’d never seen Jess this angry.
‘Jess,’ I whispered, ‘she’s still a teacher, remember, she can keep us in at break if she wants to.’
‘I don’t care. She lost my
respect when she decided to use pop-ups and a pigeon to pass on her orders, rather than asking us to our faces.’
She turned back to Miss Fortress. ‘Do you know how much danger we’ve been in? Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for us? Especially Alex. You can’t give someone like him a superpower and just leave him to get on with it. He got himself in a right mess.’
‘Yeah … I mean, hey!’ A bit harsh, Jess.
Miss Fortress looked kind of guilty. ‘I did try to guide you both. I got you together, I stepped in when I realised you might be in trouble.’
‘She did do that, Jess. She did help us yesterday.’
‘What were you doing in the PALS suite, anyway?’ Jess was not going to let this go.
‘Dexter recorded you talking about some kind of rescue, and then you seemed strangely interested in that goldfish. I used my advanced powers of deduction to work out where you’d be. And lucky for you both that I did!’
‘So we’re supposed to be grateful? You made me twitch and you made him stink. You ruined his life!’
‘Ah, the side effects,’ she said. ‘I am sorry about those. There’s no way of predicting exactly how they’ll manifest themselves. Different every time.’
‘So you knew there was a chance of it happening?’
‘I suppose I did, yes.’
‘We should report you to the NSPCC.’
‘I thought some minor side effects would be a small price to pay for superhuman powers.’
Jess was fuming. ‘What do you mean, “small price”? We paid nineteen ninety-nine for these powers and it really wasn’t clear exactly what we were buying when we clicked the mouse.’
‘It was all in the terms and conditions. You should always read the terms and conditions. Let that be a lesson to you.’
Jess launched herself at Miss Fortress and I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t pulled her back. For a small person, she was pretty strong. Perhaps Tiny Terror was the right sidekick name for her after all.
‘Ladies! Let’s just chillax a bit, shall we? We’re not getting anywhere with you two scrapping like Han and Leia in Star Wars. Oh no wait, they end up kissing, that’s a bit weird – forget I said that.’
They both looked at me like I was a complete moron.
‘That’s more like it. Now let’s back up a bit. I want to know how you gave us our powers. Is it that mind-control business you were talking about?’
‘Not exactly. The process can be used in two ways, though my old organisation only knows how to achieve one of them: the capacity to freeze areas of the brain. From what you’ve told me, I suspect that Miss Smilie is using the freezing procedure to control the children at Cherry Tree Lane. The process I used on you is the reverse: it stimulates areas of the brain to give a person enhanced abilities. I developed this process alone and have never revealed it to anybody, for fear of it being misused.’
‘Still not quite with you…’
‘OK, imagine that every child in the world is a muffin. There are infinite possibilities for flavour combinations – toffee and banana, pecan and apricot, carrot and courgette. Anything is possible and every muffin is different…’
‘I think I’m triple chocolate: dark and delicious with delightful surprises inside.’
Jess made a rather disrespectful noise that sounded like a snigger.
‘Shut up, Jessticles. What would you be? A Tesco Value muffin that’s been dropped on the floor and put on the whoopsie shelf for 2p.’
‘Better that than a delusional boy who thinks he’s a chocolate muffin and uses phrases like “whoopsie shelf”.’
‘Excuse me!’ Miss Fortress interrupted us. ‘Please stop bickering and pay attention! As I was saying, what the Neuro-Electric Impulse Transmutation Procedure…’
‘The what?’
‘She means the spark-in-the-ear thing, dunce-boy.’
‘Oh, the sparking, I get you. Sorry, carry on.’
‘One of the things the Neuro-Electric Impulse Transmutation Procedure does is to stimulate areas of the brain. This is the procedure that you two have undergone. So you are still your own unique muffin but with a special ingredient added, like chocolate sprinkles on top.’
‘Nice.’
‘But the reverse procedure does something different. It freezes areas of the brain, like the part that makes people naughty or challenging which effectively makes each muffin revert back to the basic batter. The “cook” – in this case Miss Smilie – can then add whatever ingredients she likes to the batter, let’s say it’s blueberries…’
‘Why blueberries?’
‘Because blueberry muffins are boring,’ Jess huffed at me. ‘Pipe down, Sparrow.’
‘What’s your beef with blueberries, Prof? I can call you Prof, can’t I?’
‘Certainly not, and I have no beef with blueberries, I’m just using them for an example.’
‘But I quite like blueberry muffins.’
‘Shut up Double-O-Dumby. She’s trying to explain.’
‘Anyway, in this way, Miss Smilie, using those headphones in the testing room, can turn every child into the same muffin. Imagine a whole world of blueberry muffins. Every child a blueberry muffin. Nothing but blueberry muffins.’
‘Hold up,’ I said, ‘how is Smilie adding the blueberries?’
‘There are various ways. Think about how the brain takes in information – through reading, watching television…’
‘The PALS videos!’ I said.
‘And that awful music Smilie plays!’ Jess added.
‘But even though the PALS stuff is the boringest rubbish ever, it doesn’t seem like it’s feeding us any information. It’s just pictures of dolphins and feelings. How is it making those kids act like nutjobs?’
‘That’s what I need you two to find out.’
‘So what you’re saying is that you gave Jess and me chocolate sprinkles so that we can find some way of stopping Miss Smilie from sparking every kid at school and blueberry muffining them?’
‘Yes, that’s about it.’
Blimey.
‘Why couldn’t you just do it yourself?’ Jess said.
‘I can’t break my cover,’ Miss Fortress said. ‘You can’t imagine how bad things would get if he discovered me.’
‘Is that really likely, Miss?’ I said. ‘No offence but he’s just a scientist – what’s he going to do? Flap his lab coat at you? How dangerous can he be?’
‘He’s a very powerful man now with hundreds of people working for him. He has unlimited resources and spies everywhere. He couldn’t be more dangerous. And frankly, I find your attitude to scientists extremely offensive.’
‘Fine,’ Jess interrupted. ‘You were too scared to investigate yourself, so you tricked a couple of kids into doing it.’
‘But why did you choose us?’ I said. ‘I mean I can understand why you chose me; I’ve got skills, but Jess? Why her?’
‘Yeah, you’ve got skills in hacking people off and coming up with rubbish ideas.’
‘Shush, little Jessticles – back in your box.’
Fortress was looking from me to Jess. She seemed a bit alarmed. Anyone would think she was regretting her choice of super-helpers. ‘Both of you were chosen because of your superior qualities. Alex, you have an extremely high IQ and a remarkable knack of being able to think on your feet. Jess, I chose you because you are sensible…’
‘You mean boring, Miss,’ I said.
‘No, I mean that Jess has common sense – something which you are lacking, Alex. Jess also has a fierce sense of right and wrong, is honest and fearless. And she has really nice hair.’
‘Er, what’s wrong with my hair?’
‘Your hair’s fine.’
‘Fine? That means rubbish.’
‘No, it means it’s fine. Pleasant … inoffensive.’
‘Ha ha,’ Jess said. ‘Alex has got the hair version of, like, Captain America.’
‘I do not have Captain America hair. I’m dark and edgy.
My hair’s a hundred per cent Hulk!’
‘Only in your head, Cap.’
‘But I don’t want to be the boringest Avenger.’
‘Too late. The Professor said so.’
Miss Fortress put her hands on her hips. ‘Do you two do this all the time? I’m surprised you manage to get anything done.’
‘We get loads done, no thanks to you.’ Jess was back on the attack. ‘You should have a bit of respect – you chose us because we were superior, remember?’
‘Only in comparison to the rest of your school. It’s not like I had the choice of every child in the nation.’
The conversation went on like that for quite a long time. Just my luck to get stuck with the two most argumentative women in the world. Naturally, as I have an extremely high IQ, I came out on top, but not until Jess had picked off most of her nail varnish and Miss Fortress had drunk about five cups of coffee. At least I think it was coffee.
And then I remembered the tracker. I pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to Miss Fortress.
‘Is this a tracking device, Miss?’
‘It looks like it,’ she said, picking it up and examining it. ‘Although there’s some residue on it which is probably stopping it from working as well as it should. Where did you get it?’
‘Miss Smilie planted it in my hat,’ I said.
Miss Fortress did a girly scream and dropped it on the floor.
‘I knew there was something wrong with that hat,’ she said. ‘Other than the obvious.’
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Is that why Dexter pooed on it? To try to help us? I thought it was because he hated me.’
‘He does hate you,’ said Miss Fortress. ‘But his faeces helped disable the device. As far as I’m concerned you’ve scraped through, so far, thanks to my assistance and blind luck.’
‘Well, as far as I’m concerned,’ Jess said, ‘you’ve scraped through, so far, thanks to our assistance, which you obtained through trickery and lies. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t expose you on my vlog.’
Miss Fortress turned on Jess. ‘Everything I’ve done has been for a cause far greater than you, or me, or even this school. Why did you bring this tracker here? You’ve put me in grave danger!’ She lifted her foot to stomp on the tracker.
Alex Sparrow and the Really Big Stink Page 9
