Jump Start (7 page)

EJ's alarm was going off again and now there was just one hour left, at the most, before a
SHADOW
agent—or agents—would arrive to save what EJ12 now had to destroy.

EJ grabbed her phone. It was time to report back to
SHINE HQ.

‘EJ12, go ahead,' said A1.

‘I've located Project Green Eye,' EJ started.

‘That's excellent, well done.'

‘But I'm not there yet. There's a deep canyon between me and the site,' EJ continued.

‘That's bad.'

‘There's an old rope bridge across the canyon, with a kind of platform in the middle on top of an old wooden tower,' EJ explained.

‘That's good.'

‘But the rope bridge is full of holes and the tower looks as if it might collapse any second. That's bad,' EJ finished.

‘No, that's good!' said A1 on the other end of the line. ‘You're a gymnast, EJ12. And gymnasts know how to jump!'

This one doesn't, thought EJ miserably. But she wasn't going to tell A1 that. Then she heard a buzzing noise coming from
SHINE HQ.

‘EJ12,' said A1 urgently. ‘That was the
SHADOW
alert light again. It's what we feared.
SHADOW
knows that we intercepted the second message and has set the third and final message to self-destruct. That may take some time, but according to our calculations, you probably have less than an hour to find the third message and crack the code. Good
luck, EJ12.
SHINE
out.'

EJ picked up her binoculars and looked across to the Project Green Eye site. She was so close and yet so far. The rope bridge reminded EJ of a challenge she had done at school camp last year. You had to cross a small creek on a set of two ropes, holding on to the top rope with your arms and moving along the bottom rope with your feet. But that rope bridge had only been about one metre above the water – this one was quite a bit higher and above a canyon.
Well,
thought EJ to herself,
it's a bit different from school but really the same challenge. I need to concentrate and I need to have balance.

Nuts certainly had balance. The little monkey took one big leap, landed on the bridge and ran along it nimbly, without a care. After a few metres, the monkey stopped and looked back at EJ.

‘Smarty monkey!' she shouted, her voice echoing across the canyon below.
A1 was right—I'm a gymnast,
thought EJ as she climbed nervously onto the rope bridge.
I have balance too!

The bridge was made up of three main ropes. There were two ropes at the top, and EJ grasped one tightly with each hand. There was a single rope at the base, which was joined to the top ropes by smaller loops—many of which were broken or missing. EJ balanced her boots on the bottom rope and slowly began to edge her way across.

If this was a movie,
EJ thought,
people would say, ‘Don't look down! Whatever you do, don't look down!'
And now, as EJ looked down, she understood why. It was a long, long, long way down! In fact, the more she looked down, the more she thought about falling instead of moving. EJ paused. What did that remind her of? Her mind went blank.
Oh well, no time to think about it now.
She had a super-wobbly bridge to cross.

‘Just look up!' EJ told herself and she took a deep breath. Then she forced herself to look straight ahead and told her body, not her mind, to do the walking. It was working well, until halfway across EJ's right foot slipped on the base rope and she fell through one of the loops as she tried to regain her balance. Clinging on to the top ropes and staring down into
the valley far below, EJ gulped. She would have to be more careful. She swung her feet around to find the base rope, hauled herself upright, put one foot forward and started again. At last she made it to the platform in the middle. Halfway there, but she was running out of time.

From her perch on the platform, high above the canyon floor, EJ could see the Project Green Eye site more clearly. And she could hear it now too. There was a whirring noise, lots of whirring noises actually, but where were they coming from? EJ pulled out her binoculars and took a closer look.

Moving around and around the satellite dish was a small army of little machines on wheels. The machines seemed to have arms, arms holding building tools.
Robots with building tools? Builder robots? Buildbots!

How could she not have picked that one? EJ did sometimes wonder how she had got into the code-cracking division! However, these buildbots weren't building—they weren't doing anything except going around and around in circles. EJ knew from her
SHINE
training on spy satellite systems that it was the satellite dish, not the things building it, that was supposed to go around in circles. So that had to be the problem
SHADOW
had written about in the first message. Somehow, the buildbots had lost the plot! A1 had been right, there must be a problem with the Master Control that ran the buildbots.

And then, as she scanned across the building site, EJ noticed something else. Just past the satellite dish, EJ could see rows and rows of large wooden crates. She adjusted the binoculars so she could make out the label on one of them.

Ship what? What has
SHADOW
packed in the crates?
thought EJ. She re-adjusted the binoculars and scanned the crates again. This time she saw another label.

Live animals? Being shipped to
SHADOW?
Away from their home in the rainforest?
It looked as if
SHADOW
was stealing wild animals from a World Heritage protected area.
But for what? Private zoos? Collectors? Or something worse?
EJ couldn't bear to think about it. It was bad enough that
SHADOW
had destroyed part of the animals' home, but to collect them all up and steal them was outrageous.
Would
SHADOW
stop at nothing?
EJ wondered.
Do they really think they can get away with it?

‘I don't think so,' EJ said to herself. ‘No way, not with EJ!' And despite being in a tense situation, she smiled, feeling rather happy with that little saying. There was no way these animals were going anywhere other than back into the rainforest.

EJ stuffed her binoculars into her backpack. Now more than ever, she needed to get across the last stretch of bridge. And she had to do it quickly.

Now that she was closer, EJ discovered three things about the last stretch of the bridge. First, it wasn't really a whole rope bridge anymore. No doubt it used to be a whole rope bridge, but now it was more like a series of holes with a bit of rope joining them together. Big holes. The sort of holes you always saw people falling through in the movies.

Second, for the last couple of metres before the bridge reached the cliffs on the other side of the canyon, there were only the two top ropes left. No bottom rope.

And the third thing EJ noticed made everything else a lot worse. A strong wind was starting to blow. All the birds were hang-gliding in the stiff breeze rather than flying, and the bridge was starting to swing from side to side.

Now EJ felt sick—really sick. She swallowed deeply but her mouth had gone completely dry. She felt her legs tighten and then go wobbly, like jelly. She knew exactly what needed to be done and that was exactly what was making her feel sick. All of a sudden, she felt more like Emma Jacks than EJ12. She would have to jump across the end of the bridge with big jumps, really big jumps, and she was not totally sure that she could.

And then, just to make matters worse, it started to rain. Not little spots of rain or a light shower, but big wet rain. Rainforest rain.
Excellent,
thought EJ.
The whole mission now depends on me being able to do enormously big jumps in the howling wind and pouring rain.

EJ needed something extra to help her do this. It was definitely time to use the BEST system.

EJ flicked her phone to video mode and called Hannah.

‘Hey Em, where are you? Okay, I know you can't answer that. What's up?' asked Hannah cheerily.

‘I'm here,' said EJ, swinging her phone around so her friend could see her. ‘And I came from there,' she continued, swinging the phone around to show the first bridge. ‘And now I need to get over there,' she finished, swinging the phone back to the last stretch of the bridge and zooming in, ‘on that!'

‘Oh,' said Hannah. ‘That's not much of a bridge, is it?'

‘No. You can see my problem.'

‘I can,' Hannah replied. ‘But how long is that gap at the end?'

‘A metre or so, maybe a little bit more.'

‘Well, that's alright then!' Hannah chuckled.

‘What do you mean?'

‘That's no more than the high jump in your gym routine,' Hannah explained.

‘You mean the one I can't do.'

‘No, the one you can do but you psyche yourself
out of doing by thinking about the fall, not the jump. You can do this easily. Just concentrate on the jump, a big, long, beautiful jump, as if you have wings.'

‘I'm not sure that will work...'

‘Hey Em,' said Hannah. ‘What's the best that can happen?'

‘I can't tell you that, Han,' said EJ, and she thought how close she was to completing her mission, shutting down Project Green Eye and rescuing all those animals. ‘But it's good, really good. Actually it's completely awesome. Maybe I can do the jump but I just think–'

‘So stop thinking and fly. What are you waiting for—don't be nuts!'

That reminded her. Where's Nuts?
EJ looked up. She'd been following Nuts the whole way across the bridge. She watched as the little squirrel monkey took a flying leap from the end of the bridge, scrabbled up the cliff face, turned and sat there on the other side of the canyon, waiting.

Half an hour to go. What am I waiting for?

And then suddenly, standing on a wobbly rope bridge in the wind and rain, everything became clear to EJ12. She had jumped out of planes and onto riverbanks. She had leapt from trees to vines and vines to trees. She had edged her way across the first stretch of the bridge. She was going to do this jump too. EJ suddenly got it, Hannah believed she could do the jump and now so did she. She really did, she could feel it. EJ's mouth was no longer dry and she suddenly felt lighter. She smiled to herself. She was ready.

‘Watch out, Nuts. I'm coming after you!' she yelled.

EJ climbed onto the bridge and walked along a little. When she came to a gap in the base rope she slid her hands along the top ropes and jumped. She did this again and again until she was nearly across. Just one more jump, and it needed to be the biggest jump of all. EJ began to think ... Actually, perhaps I am not ready, perhaps I should think...

But her friend, still on the end of the phone, knew her well.

‘Don't start thinking, Em. Just do it!'

Something clicked in EJ's brain. She could do this jump—she could feel it. She thought of all the animals waiting for rescue on the other side. Then she closed her eyes and imagined the perfect flying jump. She could do it! She could see it! She knew it!

EJ took two steps, as long as the holes in the base rope allowed, and then she jumped up across the last big gap. It was biggest, highest, longest leap of her life. She flew off the bridge and, with legs fully outstretched, jumped onto the top of the cliff. She stuck the landing on both feet and then, just because she felt like it, she did a perfect double flip.

‘Show-off!' shouted Hannah gleefully.

EJ stood on the cliff and looked back. Had she really done that?

‘That was awesome! Because you were holding the phone, I felt like I did the jump with you,' said Hannah. ‘Good luck and see you back at school.'

‘Thanks Han, I couldn't have done it without you,' said EJ.

‘Actually, you could have' replied her friend, laughing, ‘but I am glad I could help. Now go save something!'

EJ grinned. She was officially awesome! She rocked! She jumped!

But there was no time for celebrating. There was now less than thirty minutes until the third and final
SHADOW
message would self-destruct. She needed to find that message and decode it quickly.

It was a text from HQ

Make that super-quick,
thought EJ. She reviewed her situation. There was a lot to do. There were buildbots to manage, a satellite dish to destroy, and animals to return to the rainforest. But EJ12 was on a roll and nothing was going to stop her now.