Jump Start Read online

  ‘You won’t get a medal if you don’t jump at all,’ said Hannah. ‘Isn’t it worse to know that you won’t even have a chance of winning if you don’t try?’

  ‘Yes, but...’ began EJ, when suddenly the loudspeaker came on again.

  ‘Okay EJ12, it’s time for the jump,’ said LP30. ‘Prepare your landing gear.’

  Gee whizz lemonfizz—what is it with the jumping? thought EJ. Well, at least this is one jump I can do! I can jump down—it’s up that I have the problem with!

  ‘Gotta go, Hannah, but I’ve uploaded you as my BESTie for this mission, so be alert!’

  ‘Of course Em, we always need more lerts.’

  ‘That joke is never funny, Han. See you!’

  ‘Okay,’ laughed Hannah. ‘Just don’t go overboard, Em. I’ll be here for you.’

  Hmm, not overboard exactly—but out of the plane, thought EJ. She pulled on her parachute, double-checked her straps and gave LP30 the thumbs up. The hatch door opened and EJ jumped out of the plane and into the blue sky.

  As she passed the last wisps of cloud, EJ looked down and the ground below became clearer. She was thrilled to see how the enormous river twisted and turned around the rainforest, just like a giant turquoise snake weaving its way through the lush green trees. The closer she came, the better she could see just how dense the rainforest was. SHINE had been right. There was no way a plane would have been able to land there. In fact, EJ wasn’t sure she could land there either.

  And if she couldn’t land on the ground, that only left the river. EJ thought back to her briefing—crocodiles, piranhas and water snakes. That didn’t make a river landing an attractive thought. She needed to land safely, but how? As the water loomed up towards her, EJ decided that it was definitely time to see what her boots would do this time. She just hoped it would be quick.

  EJ clicked her heels together and waited. She watched as the soles of the boots swivelled around and two shiny ice-skates appeared.

  They were great in the Antarctica, thought EJ, but somehow I don’t think they are quite what I need now.

  She clicked again and this time, the ice-skates retracted and two coil springs popped out. I don’t think so. Please, third time lucky, thought EJ. She was nearly down now and would soon hit the water. She clicked again and this time flippers came out. EJ hoped she wasn’t going to have to swim. She looked down at the water. Now that it was so close, she could see that the river was wide, very wide, maybe a kilometre across. Could she swim it with her parachute and her backpack? And even if she could, what else would be swimming with her?

  EJ really needed those boots to give her something better. She clicked again and held her breath. This time, there was a whirring sound and two boards shot out from under the boots. Great, thought EJ, water skis—but I assume there’s no speedboat in there with them. ‘Stupid boots!’ she shouted and crashed the skis together. As she did so, the boards clicked together and a pole shot up at the front of them, a handle-bar unfolded at the top and a small engine dropped down underneath. Clever, thought EJ. I take it all back. With only metres to go before she hit the water, EJ was now on a small water scooter. This was going to be fun!

  She pulled the rope on her parachute straps and the chute disappeared into her backpack. As she touched the water, she squeezed on the handlebars and she was off, skimming her way along the river. And to think that her dad wouldn’t let her ride her pushbike on the road yet!

  EJ switched on her GPS navigation system (another thing her mum didn’t realise you could use your phone for) and set it for 2 South 68 West. From the map, she could see the route she would take. She would have to move off this big river into a smaller one, but for now there was quite some way to go. That was just fine with EJ. She could enjoy the view—but not for too long. SHADOW wouldn’t be far behind and there was no time to lose.

  Everywhere EJ looked, there was something new to see. The river was as wide as five freeways and seemed to have a new bird or animal living around every bend. She looked up and there was a flock of brightly coloured macaws, rich blue with golden yellow tummies, screeching above the trees. They settled on some palm trees where they cracked open coconuts with their beaks. And high above, an eagle was circling with its enormous wings outstretched, before diving down like a fighter plane to claim its prey far below. There was whistling, screeching, squawking and singing as birds of all shapes and sizes filled the branches of the trees that grew along the riverbank and back into the rain forest.

  But birds were not the only life visible in the trees that overhung the river. There were monkeys! Little black-faced monkeys and larger grey ones, chattering and screaming as they leapt from tree to tree. Except for the ones that were fast asleep, of course, with their arms, legs and tails curled tightly around the branches.

  And then to her right, EJ saw what looked like giant guinea pigs feeding on the river’s edge. Capybaras. They were as big as sheep and there were masses of them munching the long grass along the muddy bank. Just ahead of them, a giant turtle was slowly making its way onto the bank.

  For someone who loved animals as much as EJ, this was animal heaven. She could have just glided forever on her water scooter, watching the birds and animals make their way around the river.

  But EJ wasn’t the only thing gliding along the river, watching. All of a sudden, right in front of her, an otter scurried quickly out of the water and onto the bank. A flock of birds that had been calmly feeding suddenly began to squawk and flap excitedly and then flew swiftly up to the treetops. Everything seemed to be getting out of the water. And EJ got a funny feeling that maybe she should too. It was one of those funny feelings that actually wasn’t funny at all—the feeling that someone, or something, was watching her...

  EJ didn’t want to but she had to turn around. She had to see what it was. Could it be a SHADOW agent? Already? She turned to see two enormous unblinking eyes moving smoothly through the water just behind her. EJ nearly jumped out of her skin! Attached to the enormous unblinking eyes was a large scaly body and long scaly tail that swung slowly from side to side, like a rudder in the water. As the eyes moved closer and closer towards EJ her heart now beat faster and faster. Crocodile?

  Moving slowly and carefully, EJ took her phone from her side pocket, snapped a photo, pressed ‘go’, held her breath and waited. EJ had activated the animal app on her phone which could identify every animal in the world. In seconds, the photo appeared on the screen with text. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that it wasn’t a crocodile: it was a cayman. According to her phone, a cayman was quite like a crocodile but smaller, and while it generally ate fish and small birds, it could also eat small mammals. That was the bad news. I’m a small mammal, thought EJ, starting to feel a little worried. Then there was a sentence that puzzled her. ‘ SHINE recommends the use of charm.’

  Really? Are you serious? Was SHINE seriously suggesting that she start saying nice things to the cayman? Perhaps she should compliment it on its bright yellow eyes or gush over its divine leathery scales? Just as she was beginning to think someone at the agency had gone mad, EJ looked down and saw her bracelet with its silver charms glistening in the sunlight. The little crocodile charm. Of course.

  Well, here goes nothing, thought EJ as she twisted the tail of the crocodile charm, which produced a long, loud, high-pitched beep. The cayman stopped briefly and narrowed its eyes, but then continued towards EJ. It was getting very close to the back of her water scooter. EJ twisted again.

  The noise was louder and higher this time. The caymen stared at EJ. She twisted the charm again.

  This time the cayman blinked, stopped for a second and stared at EJ. She twisted the charm one more time.

  Suddenly the caymen turned sharply before diving down into the water. For a moment EJ was worried that it was about to appear right next to her but when it re-surfaced, it was far down the river, swimming in the opposite direction.

  Lucky charm indeed, chuckled EJ. I wonder if it work
s on older brothers?

  Thankfully, the rest of EJ’s river trip was uneventful. After a while she moved off the big river towards a smaller one that became narrower and narrower. The beeps from the GPS on her phone were becoming louder and quicker. She was nearly there.

  EJ turned towards the bank and pushed the ED button on her scooter. There was a loud cracking noise as the scooter boards came away from her boots. This was followed by what could only be described as a series of farting noises. EJ knew what that meant. The whole scooter was about to collapse and decompose. It was programmed for Eco-Deco, part of SHINE’s eco-friendly equipment policy.

  This was good because it meant agents didn’t leave used equipment all over the place, but it was a rather smelly process.

  Just as the farting noises became really loud, EJ jumped on to the riverbank, pulling the remains of the smelly scooter behind her. With one final squelch, it had gone. No one would ever know she had been here. Once the smell went away, at least.

  EJ looked around and checked her GPS. According to the phone, she had arrived at 2 South 68 West. Now all she needed to do was to find the Butterfly Tree and the second message from SHADOW.

  Standing on the riverbank, EJ12 was feeling a little jumpy. Not to mention squirmy and creepy. And she wasn’t the only one. The floor of the rainforest seemed to be moving on its own—it was home to hundreds of every kind of insect you could imagine.

  There were ants, mosquitos and grasshoppers (irritating but at least EJ had her SHINE insect repellent spray); there were snails and slugs (fine—slimy but fine); there were little caterpillars and grubs (pretty gross) and there were spiders (completely gross and scary). EJ really didn’t like spiders. They gave her the shivers. For a moment EJ wished she was back on the river, even with the cayman. EJ loved animals, and would do anything to help them but she definitely preferred the kind you could cuddle. Spiders did not fit into that category however furry they got.

  Yet for every hairy black spider, there was also something beautiful. There were red and black ladybugs, and little shiny beetles with hot pink and turquoise shells, just as if someone had painted them in art class.

  And there were butterflies—beautiful, vibrant, enormous butterflies with red and white spots, black and yellow stripes and deep, deep blue wings. They were all flying and flitting around the plants on the rainforest floor. So where was the Butterfly Tree? What was the Butterfly Tree? Was it shaped like a butterfly?

  EJ scanned the forest, looking for anything that might fit. Suddenly she felt something stroke her cheek. Was that a spider? EJ really hoped not. She jumped back in fright and as she spun around, she saw a swarm of blue butterflies ducking and weaving their way through the trees. Worth following? EJ had nothing else to go on.

  EJ set off after the butterfly swarm, keeping her eyes on them as she ran through the rainforest—she couldn’t lose them. Suddenly the swarm dived straight down and flew low to the ground as if they were trying to avoid something. Something fine and sticky. Something that EJ had just run into. Yuck, a spider web! Please don’t have a spider, please don’t have a spider, thought EJ as she wiped her face and pulled the rest of the web out of her way. She was lucky, no spider in sight but also, no butterfly swarm. Where had it gone? Had she lost them? EJ started to run again, afraid the swarm had got too far ahead of her. She need not have worried. The butterfly swarm had stopped. Directly in front of EJ was a huge tree, dripping with sap, and crowded with thousands upon thousands of fluttering blue butterflies.

  The Butterfly Tree! The butterflies were feeding off the sap, which is why there was so many of them. The tree reminded EJ of one of her favourite books that her mum used to read to her at bedtime. It was about an enchanted tree, the tallest tree in the forest, and one that was home to all sorts of fairy folk. It was a magical tree and if you climbed all the way up, there was a magic cloud and if you passed through it you could visit magical lands. There was also a little door at the foot of tree...

  Ouch! No little door here—just an enormous tree root and EJ had tripped over it. As she lay sprawled out at the base of the tree, she noticed some carvings on the bark in front of her. The carvings showed numbers—the second message! Who needed magic when you could just be clumsy!

  EJ scrambled up and took a closer look. Sure enough, there were a series of numbers carved into the trunk.

  Yes, the second code! EJ pulled out a note-pad from her backpack and carefully wrote the code down. It was another number code. She had expected that. She tried the same letter-number match as the first code but that didn’t work and EJ hadn’t expected it to. SHADOW never used the same code twice, but the codes were always connected so it was probably still going to be a letter-number match, but which one?

  EJ looked again, studying the code for patterns. Whenever she was stuck on a code, she would try lots of different ideas. It was the same with maths problems. She knew they wouldn’t always be the right ideas but they helped her move towards the right one.

  EJ enjoyed this part, trying to make sense of something that looked as if it was never going to make sense. She liked to have plenty of time to do it however, and on missions there was never plenty of time. EJ had to work quickly but carefully.

  Is it the opposite of the last code? Does A=26 and Z=1? She looked again at the first bit of code – 38-40-36-2-18-14-16-40 42-32. She looked again.

  That couldn’t be right because some of the numbers were bigger than twenty-six. Hmmm.

  Suddenly she realised that all the numbers were even numbers. Even numbers, two by two...

  EJ had an idea. What if the second code went through the alphabet, two by two. Would that work? She flicked open her phone, opened up the codes app and scrolled down.

  EJ tried the first word. I’ve still got it, she smiled to herself, and in next to no time she had cracked the rest of the code.

  What could it possibly mean? She would need some help with this one. EJ remembered her instructions. She had to call SHINE as soon as she found the second message. She pressed the top-secret HQ app on her phone, texted the message from SHADOW and waited.

  After a few seconds, her phone rang.

  ‘EJ12,’ she answered.

  ‘A1,’ came the voice at the other end. ‘Well done, EJ12.’

  ‘Thanks A1, but even though I cracked the code, I don’t understand the message.’

  ‘Keep working on it, EJ12,’ urged A1. ‘I can help you with one thing though. We know SHADOW has been working on a surveillance system that can be run completely automatically from a master control. If I am not mistaken, the problem they are having with Project Green Eye may well be a bug in the system of that master control.’

  ‘Well, there are certainly enough bugs here,’ said EJ looking around.

  ‘Very funny EJ. But not so funny is that SHADOW knows we are on to Project Green Eye so you need to figure it out quickly—very quickly. We have the jump on SHADOW but they have leapt into action. You probably only have a couple of hours before they arrive in the rainforest to stop us from stopping them. I’ll contact you if there are any more updates, but for now, get going, EJ12.’

  Get going, but where?

  EJ12 needed to figure out that message, and fast. She flicked to the alarm app on her phone and set it for two hours, with a reminder every thirty minutes. She was now in a race against SHADOW and needed to keep track of the time. Then she looked at the message again. SHADOW never seemed to give straightforward instructions. What were jump arrows? she thought. And hello—a buildbot?

  One step at a time, thought EJ. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Straight up? Okay, I can do that, thought EJ. She looked straight up but was immediately blinded by the sun. EJ squinted, but still the bright rays piercing through the leaves made it impossible to see. She reached into her backpack and pulled out her sunglasses. A1 was right—sometimes common sense was just what a secret agent needed. Much better, thought EJ as she put them on, and rather stylish as well!

  Now she could see a
thick leafy vine that seemed to grow right up to the top of the tree. EJ guessed she would need to climb ‘straight up’ that vine, but what was she going to do about all those butterflies? She needed to grip the vine with her hands and climb up the tree with her feet—but that meant stepping on an awful lot of butterflies. No way. She needed another plan. She tried to shoo the butterflies away but there were simply too many. As fast as some flew off, others flew back again, all very keen to continue feeding on the tree sap. It was hopeless. EJ really needed to get up that tree, and time was ticking away.

  She sat on the ground and thought hard. Whenever she got stuck with something, she liked to sit quietly and see if she could puzzle it out. She liked to sort things in her mind in an orderly way. She hated time tests but now that she was in one, she needed to think calmly and quickly—easier said than done. As she thought, she started to fiddle with her charm bracelet. Then she remembered. The butterfly charm! How slow could a secret agent be?

  ‘Here goes,’ said EJ and she twisted the butterfly charm. A small puff of crimson smoke floated up into the air. It had a sickly sweet smell. Instantly, the butterflies came darting towards it. This must be the butterfly version of chocolate, thought EJ. She kept twisting the charm as she moved away from the tree. The butterflies followed the crimson smoke and sweet smell, and soon the whole swarm had moved away from the Butterfly Tree, which was now more like an ex-Butterfly Tree. Now the trunk was clearly visible and EJ could see a green arrow pointing straight up etched into the bark. She was on the right track, or should that be tree?