Grinning, she looked around. There was no easy way across the moat. Slipping the rucksack from her shoulders, Janey dipped it into the water. Immediately the Back-boat inflated, turning into a dinghy with a tiny outboard motor. It was astonishingly robust for something that had felt practically weightless on her back.
‘All very well telling me there’s a motor, G-Mamma,’ Janey muttered, ‘but how does it work?’
She clambered into the dinghy and looked around. A filament of string lay next to her and, as there seemed to be no other option, Janey seized it and gave it a tug. The motor coughed gently into life and propelled the boat out across the moat, sputtering quietly, so that Janey was able to reach the other side, scramble up on to the bank and repack the Back-boat without attracting attention.
As she neared the lollipop building, Janey used her Ultra-gogs to help her peer inside. Nearly all the offices were in darkness, but she could make out desks, conference tables, computers and flip charts. The stick at the bottom of the building was flooded with light, and she could see a couple of figures inside, dotted around a huge desk. She guessed this was the reception area. It seemed a bit strange that Sol’s Lols employees would be at work so late. Looking up, she spied someone in an office right at the top of the building. The light was on.
‘Zoom in,’ she commanded the Ultra-gogs.
They obeyed, but Janey could make out only a neat pair of hands on a computer keyboard. Could be Uncle Sol, she thought. ‘OK, Blonde,’ she told herself sternly. ‘Get in there.’
Janey Fleet-footed around each side of the building, looking for a fire exit, or an open window to climb through, but as she did so, she discovered something else. On each floor, at the end of every corridor, sat a big shadowy man with arms crossed and feet stretched out. Janey wondered whether these were just night security men who guarded Sol’s Lols, or bodyguards that were protecting Uncle Sol now that he was coming into the open. She tutted. Whichever they were, there was no way she could get in through the glass without attracting attention to herself, and she didn’t want the security guards to notice her in case they didn’t know Uncle Solomon was in the building. Her only option was to obey the first rule of SPI work: do the unexpected. Just as G-Mamma had taught her.
A few moments later, the pair of security guards in the reception area looked up in amazement as a girl walked through the door. She had on a bobble hat, scarf, gloves and rucksack and was dressed from head to foot in a silver snowsuit. Her narrow black glasses steamed up as soon as she entered the building.
‘Cold here in Scotland!’ she chirped.
As soon as she was able to see through her steamed-up glasses, Janey checked out the two men before her. Both were stocky and broad-shouldered and wore grey boilersuits with maroon badges saying ‘S-Security’. Having two of Solomon’s own security men in front of her made her feel safer. Even so, she couldn’t assume the guards knew all of Uncle Solomon’s activities – perhaps they only worked for his ice-lolly company.
As the guards eyed her suspiciously, Janey decided that verbal attack was the best form of defence.
‘I’m here to see my uncle. Solomon Brown?’ She wiped her glasses, trying to look as goofy and young as possible – like Janey Brown rather than Jane Blonde.
‘How did you get here?’ growled one of the guards.
‘How do people get here? Good question!’ cried Janey. ‘Oh, you know, planes from Heathrow, taxis, usual stuff.’ Information popped up into the corner of the Ultragogs as she spoke. ‘Well, plane to Edinburgh – had to be looked after by the air hostess, bit embarrassing really. Then I got a train, which broke down.’ She raised her eyebrows in a way that she hoped suggested ‘Well, what can you expect?’ ‘And then I managed to find a taxi because the car Uncle Sol had sent for me had gone, obviously, as the train was so late and everything. Anyway, I’m starved! And he promised me a pizza. Can I go up and see him?’
The two guards continued to stare at her as she chuntered on. Eventually one of them picked up the phone and stabbed at one of the numbers. ‘Girl here says she’s Solomon’s niece. He’s expecting her, apparently. Mmm. Yes. Yes. Yes, ma’am, I will.’
The guard smiled over the desk at Janey. ‘Sorry about that. Gave us a bit of a shock then, wandering in here at midnight. Anyway, I’ve just spoken to his secretary, and she says Solomon is expecting you, like you said. We’re to take you up to his office right away.’
Janey could hardly stop herself from smirking. With apes like these two around, this was all going to be remarkably easy. And with Uncle Solomon out of hiding, the danger must have passed.
lost in a lolly
After her run-in with the Sinerlesse on the rooftop of Uncle James’s bank, it felt good to get straight into a lift and just hit a button. Janey could hardly believe that she had rescued her mum just a few short days ago. She knew so much more now that she could hardly keep track of it all.
Flanked by the S-Security guards, she felt very small, but unworried. They seemed amiable enough, chatting easily over her head about what they would be having for breakfast. Janey decided to keep up the chirpy-kid front by joining in with them. ‘So, is he nice to work for then, my uncle?’
Immediately the two big heads whipped round and down. The chatting stopped. ‘What do you mean?’ asked one of them eventually.
Janey cleared her throat. ‘Well, you know. He’s all jolly looking, isn’t he? Looks like he’d be a nice person to have as the boss of Solomon Security.’
As Janey spoke, the eyes of the second man flitted over the badge of his colleague and then back to meet the man’s squinting frown. ‘Yeah, Solomon Security,’ he nodded. ‘That’s right. We’ve got a really great boss. The best. Look, here we are.’
The doors slid open. Ahead of her Janey saw a swinging glass door leading to a floodlit room. Uncle Sol’s office, she thought excitedly. His chair was facing away from her but Janey could hear the scratch of the computer mouse on the desktop. Janey felt a tingle of anticipation. She was finally going to meet her uncle, Solomon Brown: the great SPI; the incredible scientist; the one person in the whole world who might be able to tell her what her father, Boz ‘Brilliance’ Brown, had really been like. Her heart thumped heavily beneath her silver SPI-suit.
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t hear what the security men were saying.
‘Ariel said to bring her into Brown’s office, right?’
‘Yep, that’s the one, mate.’
The words seeped into Janey’s brain as she felt a firm grip on her arm. Confusion fell over her like a blanket. ‘Ariel? Not . . . Don’t you mean—’
‘Think I know what I mean, love. I’m not as stupid as I look.’ Grinning nastily, the first security guard flung open the glass doors and shoved Janey through. ‘Here’s the girl. Where do you want her, ma’am?’
Janey felt sick. It was not her uncle sitting in the office, busily working at his computer. This must be Ariel, the power-crazed, faceless leader of Sinerlesse Group and her uncle’s biggest enemy. Beneath the desk squatted a mean-looking dog, a dachshund. It was currently being used as a footrest, and across its back lay a small pair of low-heeled shoes. Had it not been for the way the dog bared its small, needled teeth at Janey, she might have thought it was a stuffed cushion.
‘No!’ screamed Janey.
She started to struggle. Immediately two sets of vice-like fingers clamped down on her, holding her fast as they all watched the ten neat fingernails tapping away on the keyboard. When the noise stopped, all three of them drew in a breath of anticipation. Suddenly Ariel raised one delicate hand and pointed once, twice, three times over to the right. Then the tapping resumed.
‘No! Where’s my uncle?’ Janey tried to wriggle out of the iron hands of her captors. In the struggle she managed to point her middle finger towards the chair and flick. Without a flash, thankfully, Janey felt the camera whirr against her knuckle as she took a photograph of all she could see of Ariel – her busy, tiny
, treacherous hands.
‘He’s not here, is he? Sorry, you missed him. You were just a little . . . late!’ snickered the second security guard. And pinning her arms behind her back, the Sinerlesse henchmen dragged Janey down the dark corridor.
‘This is where Ariel wants her, isn’t it?’ asked one of the guards, opening a door. Janey was catapulted so hard through the opening that she fell, sprawling, on to the cold floor. The door closed behind her and she was plunged into complete darkness.
Her instinct was to cry, but Janey now realized that the bridge of her Ultra-gogs pressed on precisely the points that she herself would squeeze when she felt tears approaching. Janey could have kicked herself for trying to be so clever. She had walked, like a fool, straight into the arms of the Sinerlesse Group and its dangerous leader. Suddenly the last thing on her mind was crying. Angry that she’d been so naive and so easily fooled by the security guards, Janey felt a cold, vengeful logic flood into her brain.
‘Sort it out, Blonde!’ she hissed to herself. ‘Did you come all this way to be locked up by two oversized meatheads and a . . . teeny-tiny evil woman? No. Did you let your whole body disintegrate and re-form just to be fooled that easily into the most obvious of traps and then GIVE UP? No! And are you going to let Mum discover you’re not in bed in the morning and call the police and . . . and blow your first mission entirely? No, no, no!’
Her fury was really bubbling now. She couldn’t give up. The Sinerlesse must somehow have intercepted the message on the envelope. They were probably holding Uncle Solomon right now. Jumping to her feet, Janey held her white-gloved hand out in front of her.
‘Right. Girl-gauntlet. Index finger – pen.’ Janey pointed and flicked her finger, and sure enough a pen nib appeared from the end of the gauntlet finger. ‘Middle finger, camera. Already used that. Now, what was the next one? Ring finger – ah!’
From Janey’s fourth finger a beam of acid-yellow light arced into the darkness. By scanning around with her finger, she could make out that the surfaces were all shining glass, but the beam was so narrow she found it hard to see anything more. Thinking quickly, Janey directed the finger at herself; light bounced off her reflective SPI-suit, warming her front and creating a glow that reached a few metres ahead of her.
Janey was in a spacious room with an enormous vaulted glass ceiling, which would have let in the starlight if the cloud cover had not been so dense. A walkway of about two metres ran all the way around the perimeter. Luckily, Janey had fallen on to this, rather than beyond it. For the whole of the middle of the room was a vast swimming pool.
Janey lay down on her front and edged towards it. She reached a finger out towards the flat, glistening surface of the water. It didn’t move: the swimming pool was frozen into a solid block of ice. Janey took a photograph of the ice, then stood up to think about how to escape.
It was hopeless. The walls and floor blended seamlessly into each other: she couldn’t even see where the door had been, let alone open it. The floor was completely smooth, and in the centre was a huge pool of ice, frozen all the way through. She even looked upwards at the vast cathedral ceiling for a possible way out, but it was so high that her Fleet-feet would be useless. Squatting on the floor, Janey looked around, trying to stay calm. It was bitterly cold now and ice had started to form on the lenses of her Ultra-gogs. She looked up to the heavens, but there was no help from there. Only a rocket could blast her through that roof.
‘Think, Blonde-girl!’ Janey cried. She knew she would work out a solution somehow, if she could just concentrate for long enough. ‘Think like a SPI!’
But before her thought processes could click into action, Janey heard a voice. The faintest whisper seemed to be coming from the very walls of the room. It was almost like her own mind was speaking aloud to her, repeating her name over and over. Rigid with fear, she pointed the finger-beam into every corner but could see no one.
‘Janey . . . Janey . . .’
There it was again. A low, insistent whisper. It wasn’t just in her mind, she was sure of it.
‘Who is that? Uncle Solomon, is it you?’
‘Janey, get out!’ The whisper rippled with the icy tinkle of wind chimes.
‘Uncle Sol! Tell me if it’s you. I can’t see you!’ Janey whipped the beam of light back and forth across the room. ‘Did my brain cells drop out on the Satispy? I must be going mad!’
Loud voices suddenly interrupted Janey’s search. They were coming from the corridor outside. Though she couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, Janey guessed that her future was being discussed. Fear rattled up her spine.
‘Out. Out. Out.’ More insistent now, the whisper echoed around the stark walls.
‘OK, but how?’ whispered Janey.
It was like trying to work out how to get up the side of Uncle James’s bank all over again. This time the only equipment she had with her was the Back-boat. There was nothing she could do. Launching herself out on to the ice pool on a dinghy was no protection. Her captors could just skate out on to the ice and grab her.
Then all at once, with a searing flash of inspiration, it came to her. With her left hand she checked the end of her ponytail, then pointed the ring finger of the Girl-gauntlet at the surface of the ice. The needle of light burned into the ice-crystals, and slowly, too slowly, a tiny puddle of water began to form. The footsteps were closer now: Janey could hear them clearly. ‘Come on!’ she groaned, willing the laser’s heat to work more quickly.
But as the door started to open, Janey was ready. Hands appeared around the edge of the door. She ripped off the Back-boat and slammed it down on to the foot-sized puddle of water she had created on the ice. It did the job. Instantly the inflatable boat sprang into being. The security guards heard the whoosh of air and ran into the room just in time to see Janey whip off her hat, angle her head towards the air-filled side of the dinghy and thrust her frozen ponytail into the rubber.
Like an enormous party balloon, the inflatable popped. Janey hung on to the rope strap around the edge as the boat, deflating rapidly and making some very rude noises, shot into the air at immense velocity. It spluttered around the apex of the vaulted ceiling in a few demented circles and, just as Janey thought it was going to drop out of the air on to the shouting security guards, she tugged the string to start the motor. At the burst of life from the engine, the boat crashed through the ceiling and hurtled through the air. Janey could just make out the low, insistent voice again calling out to her . . .
‘Destroy the—’
But she had no time now to think about what her uncle might mean. Instead she yelled out into the night sky, ‘What have I done? I’m going to die!’
She hung on tight, every sinew in her back straining with the effort. Cold fresh air poured down her throat and she spun like a sycamore leaf, down, down the side of the building, until she landed in the moat with a resounding splash.
Gasping and spluttering, she reached for the surface. The boat had had it, but Jane Blonde was just fine.
‘Whoo!’ Janey whooped for joy just like G-Mamma would as excitement coursed through her. ‘You’re alive, Blonde-girl!’
But she wouldn’t be for long, if she hung around yelling. From the lolly-shaped building behind her came the pounding of heavy feet. Gulping and coughing, Janey hauled herself up the sheer side of the moat by looping her scarf around the post on the edge and levering her legs up the slimy, moss-coloured stone. Her elation now as deflated as the Back-boat, she dared for just one moment to lean her hands on her knees to try to replace the water in her lungs with air. Then she struck out for the trees on the far shore, planning to hide there until she could use the Satispy to get home.
But two S-Security men were running towards her, out of the trees she’d been heading for. Janey looked back across the moat: men lined the opposite side, and some were running across a bridge that had risen out of the water. Panic rose in her chest. She felt like a diver with the bends. She couldn’t think what gadgets she ha
d that could help her now. She was almost ready to turn around with her hands in the air . . .
But suddenly she got a grip on herself. ‘No. Come on, Blonde.’
And she took off as fast as her Fleet-feet would carry her, towards the two assailants approaching from the trees.
The men paused for a moment, then carried on running, arms outstretched to grab Janey as she reached them. They were less than twenty metres away. Fifteen. Ten. As soon as Janey could see the triumph written on their faces, she knew she was close enough. In mid-stride, she drew both her feet up to her chest and drove them as hard as she could towards the ground. Feeling the familiar firework explosion beneath her feet, Janey shouted with glee as she sprang up into the air and sailed right over the heads of the security guards in a tight, athletic somersault. She hit the ground again, perfectly upright, and covered the distance to the trees in seconds. By the time the men had recovered themselves, Janey was flying over the perimeter wall.
‘Stop her!’ shouted a female voice. ‘Don’t let her escape too!’ But the men were too far behind, still thrashing around in the woods.
So it sounded like her uncle had got away then. Janey smiled and slowed to a trot as she spoke to her Ultra-gogs. ‘Um, Satispy, please.’
A message popped up instantly: Press remote-control button.
Janey flicked her hands across her body. Nothing. No remote control, just some woolly clothing and a Lycra SPI-suit.
‘There’s no remote control. I need the Satispy to work from here. Satispy, please!’
There was a desperate whine in her voice. The same message flickered before her eyes. With a deep sigh, Janey stopped and leaned against a tree. Her SPI:KE hadn’t worked out a way for Janey to get home. She was going to be stuck in Scotland. Even worse, she was going to have to call her mum and explain that she wouldn’t be home for breakfast, or lunch, or possibly even supper.
Barking instructions at her Ultra-gogs, Janey vowed to give G-Mamma a good kick in the behind – if she ever got home.
Jane Blonde: Sensational Spylet Page 8