Urban Outlaws

by Peter Jay Black

  Wren nodded.

  • • •

  Back at the bunker, Jack rechecked his bag and zipped it up. He looked around. ‘Everyone ready?’

  Charlie strode into the room, her hood pulled up, her bag strapped to her belt. ‘You know, we’re likely to get caught on this mission, don’t you?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Easy is boring though, right?’

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘Guys,’ Slink said, stuffing rope into his backpack. ‘You seen my shoulder cam?’

  Charlie tossed a small bag to him.

  ‘Everything running?’ Jack called to Obi.

  Obi gave him a thumbs-up. ‘Not gonna know what hit ’em.’

  Jack, Charlie and Slink strode to the door.

  ‘Wait for me.’

  They turned back. Wren ran up to them, with her black hoodie pulled up and a bandana loose around her neck.

  Charlie grinned. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘if –’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Wren said, ‘if something goes wrong, I’ve gotta get out of there as fast as I can.’ She looked at Jack as if to say that would never happen.

  Jack thought if there was ever a definition of what an Urban Outlaw was, then Wren was it. He leant into her ear and said, ‘I promise I’ll use you in every mission from now on.’ He stood straight and Wren smiled. Jack looked between them all. ‘Ready, team?’

  They all nodded.

  Jack turned to the door, hit the button and it hissed open.

  Slink and Wren ran through.

  ‘Wait,’ Obi called.

  They turned back to look at him.

  Obi’s hands shook.

  Jack felt his stomach sink. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Obi spun a monitor to face them. It showed a breaking news headline – Panic As London’s Power Grid Infected.

  Wren frowned. ‘Infected by what?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Jack knew exactly what had happened. He looked at the others. ‘The virus. It escaped.’

  THE URBAN OUTLAWS

  HACKER NAME: ACHILLES

  REAL NAME: JACK FENTON

  AGE: 15

  SPECIAL SKILL: HACKING

  LIKES: PHYSICS

  DISLIKES: DUBSTEP

  GREATEST FEAR: HEIGHTS

  HACKER NAME: PANDORA

  REAL NAME: CHARLOTTE CAINE

  AGE: 15

  SPECIAL SKILL: MAKING GADGETS

  LIKES: COMPUTER GAMES

  DISLIKES: GROSS HABITS

  GREATEST FEAR: FIRE

  HACKER NAME: OBI

  REAL NAME: JOSEPH HARLINGTON

  AGE: 14

  SPECIAL SKILL: SURVEILLANCE

  LIKES: CONSPIRACY THEORIES

  DISLIKES: SALAD!

  GREATEST FEAR: ANYTHING THAT CRAWLS

  HACKER NAME: SLINK

  REAL NAME: TOM SMITH

  AGE: 12

  SPECIAL SKILL: FREE RUNNING

  LIKES: ART

  DISLIKES: QUIET DUBSTEP

  GREATEST FEAR: NOTHING

  HACKER NAME: WREN

  REAL NAME: JENNIFER JENKINS

  AGE: 10

  SPECIAL SKILL: DECOY/PICKPOCKET

  LIKES: CARTOONS

  DISLIKES: HOSPITALS

  GREATEST FEAR: DROWNING

  BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE URBAN OUTLAWS

  Wren sat at the dining table next to the kitchen area of the bunker, checking through a file of notes. Jack paced back and forth, muttering to himself.

  ‘Hey,’ Wren said. ‘Can you help me with this?’

  ‘Sure.’ He dropped into the chair opposite her. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I want to interview you.’

  Jack cocked an eyebrow. ‘Me?’

  ‘Everyone. Charlie set me an English assignment. I just need to ask a few questions.’

  Jack shuffled in his chair, visibly uncomfortable. ‘All right.’

  Wren held her pen ready and dived into her notes. ‘Your hacker name is Achilles. And I know your real name is Jack Fenton.’ She looked up at him. ‘You plan stuff, like our missions, right?’

  ‘And we all mess them up,’ Slink said, striding past them to the fridge and grabbing a can of lemonade.

  Jack nodded. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Can you tell me what your favourite mission so far is?’ Wren said.

  Jack considered this a moment. ‘One time, we had to break into a theme park. It was at night. Charlie turned on a couple of the rides and we had a go on Dragon’s Revenge and Total Oblivion before we left.’

  Slink sat in a spare seat at the table. ‘It was awesome.’

  ‘Did you draw this?’ Wren said, pulling out a sheet of paper. It was a layout of the bunker.

  ‘Kind of. I found the original plan in the filing cabinet and modified it,’ Jack said. ‘Everyone was arguing about what room they got.’

  ‘Yeah and Obi got the biggest one,’ Slink said. ‘How come Obi’s bedroom is two steps from the command chair? That’s just lazy, if you ask me.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Obi grumbled.

  Wren was scribbling down Jack’s answers as Charlie walked in.

  ‘What are you lot doing?’

  ‘Interviews,’ Wren said, sitting up straight. ‘I’ve done Jack. You’re next.’

  Charlie sat at the table. ‘OK.’

  Wren flicked to another page in her notes. ‘Your real name is Charlotte Caine, but why’s your hacker name Pandora?’

  ‘It was Dad’s nickname for me. He said I couldn’t stop opening things – like Pandora with the box.’

  ‘Have you got a favourite gadget you’ve built?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ve seen Shadow Bee, right?’

  Wren nodded.

  Charlie continued, ‘Well, the best thing I ever made was a radio-controlled aeroplane called Raptor Scout. We used it on a mission six months ago. It had a night-vision camera and everything.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘Obi crashed it into the side of Big Ben.’

  ‘Not. My. Fault.’ Obi spoke without taking his eyes off the screen in front of him.

  ‘Whose fault was it then?’ Charlie said.

  ‘The wind caught it.’

  Charlie shook her head.

  Wren smiled and asked another question. ‘You like gadgets, but what things don’t you like?’

  Slink forced out a burp.

  ‘That,’ Charlie snapped. Obi was laughing in the background, but Charlie ignored him.

  ‘Is it my turn now?’ Slink asked Wren.

  ‘No,’ Wren said. ‘Obi’s.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Slink said. ‘I’ll answer his questions.’

  ‘No you won’t.’ Obi climbed out of his chair and joined them at the table. ‘Go on, Wren, ask me.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘Joseph Harlington.’

  Slink snorted.

  Wren moved on before Slink and Obi started arguing. ‘You hack into CCTV cameras. How did you learn to do that?’

  ‘Bullies,’ Obi said. ‘I used to plant secret cameras to keep an eye out for them. Cover my back.’

  Wren jotted his answer down and asked Obi a final question. ‘Does anything scare you?’

  ‘Bees, wasps, hornets, spiders, worms, caterpillars, beetles, cockroaches, snakes, centipedes, ants – especially those red ones – flies, earwigs, moths, daddy-long-legs –’

  ‘My turn,’ Slink interrupted.

  ‘Here we go,’ Jack muttered.

  Slink took a swig of lemonade. ‘Go.’

  Wren read her notes. ‘Charlie told me your real name is Tom Smith?’

  Slink gave her a serious nod.

  ‘What’s your job in the Urban Outlaws?’

  ‘To be a pain in the neck,’ Obi said.

  Slink nodded again. ‘True. And I climb stuff. Race over stuff. Jump stuff. Sometimes, I even break into stuff.’

  ‘Are you scared of anything?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Wren said.
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  Slink shook his head. ‘Not one thing.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Jack said. ‘Slink’s biggest fear is his iPod’s battery running out halfway through a mission.’

  Slink shuddered. ‘That would be a disaster.’

  Wren looked at Charlie. ‘OK, I’m done.’

  ‘No you’re not.’ Slink snatched her notes and sat upright in his chair, like a reporter in a TV studio. He cleared his throat and, putting on a posh voice, said, ‘Good evening, Jennifer Jenkins. May I call you JJ?’

  Wren giggled. ‘No.’

  ‘Where were you born?’ Slink said.

  ‘Whitechapel in London. It’s where Jack the Ripper killed people.’

  ‘Does that scare you?’

  ‘Nah, it happened ages ago.’

  ‘OK,’ Slink said. ‘What’s the best thing about being an Urban Outlaw?’

  ‘We get to live here,’ Wren said. She pointed at the games area. ‘We have really great stuff, like that racing game called Track. I’m the best at it.’

  ‘And RAKing,’ Charlie reminded her.

  ‘Yes,’ Wren said. ‘I love RAKing.’

  Slink handed her back the notes. ‘So when can we see this masterpiece of reporting?’

  Wren looked around at them all and smiled. ‘Soon.’

  THE REAL GADGET GENIUS

  I’m often asked where the inspiration for Charlie’s gadgets comes from and the answer to this is simple – my late father. He looked like a ‘Mad Professor’ type. His white hair was messy, sticking out at odd angles, and he never cared about his appearance. My mother would be in a constant battle with him to brush beard trimmings off his suits and, to my knowledge, my father NEVER ironed anything. His socks always had holes in them and his shoes looked as though they belonged in a bin. You see, his mind was on bigger and more interesting things than what he happened to look like that day – inventing! He was a design engineer. The guy was my world and the only true genius I believe I have ever met.

  I don’t think I can remember a day when my dad wasn’t tinkering with something. ‘Why go and buy that from the shops when I can make it,’ he’d say. And so he did. He’d use elastic bands, wood, bits of plastic from old packaging, a huge amount of superglue, and the next morning we’d wake up to find a new toilet-roll holder or something similar. The only problem was, the things he made looked appalling, really untidy, as though they could fall apart at any moment. But they always worked. Sort of. Well, if you didn’t mind supergluing yourself to a toilet seat.

  Dad worked on designs for some big companies – everything from electro-mechanical bus signs and a special lift to help people in and out of baths, to machines that made the nation’s best-loved chocolates.

  I have hundreds of stories about my dad, like when he drove through a shop window because he ‘forgot’ to apply the brakes on his car. ‘My mind was on a problem,’ he said. Or the time he was given some money to go and buy a new pair of shoes – his were hanging off his feet – and he came back with a kite instead. It was a ‘perfect windy day’, apparently. But one of my favourite stories about my dad is when he designed and built a flatbed rocket launcher and, along with a team, installed it on a top-secret submarine. While everyone else went to lunch, my dad stayed behind. He was too impatient to get on with the job of testing the rocket launcher to wait for the others to come back, and unable to find the specialised trolley for transporting the heavy rocket, he decided to carry it himself. There he was, feet apart, knees bent, waddling along with a rocket cradled in his arms when, yep, he dropped it! He later told me that the bang it made on the deck was deafening and reverberated for ages afterwards. Some shocked mariners climbed out and stared at the huge dent he’d made in their brand new submarine.

  And so, that’s where the inspiration for Charlie’s gadgets comes from – a mad inventor who just so happened to be my father.

  Peter Jay Black

  Peter Jay Black loves gadgets, films and things that make him laugh so hard he thinks he might pass out. He went to Arts University Bournemouth and a career in IT followed. One day, a team of super-skilled kids popped into his head and, writing in a Hollywood apartment, he brought them to life. Peter lives in Dorset and in his spare time he enjoys collecting unusual artefacts like Neolithic arrowheads, ancient Egyptian rings and fossilised dinosaur poo.

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain in March 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  This electronic edition published in March 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © Peter Jay Black 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4088 5142 5

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