Big Brother (2 page)

After dinner on Sunday evening, when Elle and Isi had gone home, a rather tired Emma was cleaning her room, sort of. Pip and Beret weren't helping. They were playing a tug-o-war with one of Emma's socks.

‘Hey, let go!' she cried, prising the sock from Beret's surprisingly sharp little teeth. Emma lay down on the doonas and cuddled the little puppy. ‘I'm pretty sure spy dogs don't eat socks.'

‘And you need to get off that bed, Emma! You're supposed to be making it, not sleeping on it,' said her mum as she walked into the room.

‘I'm too tired to tidy up,' groaned Emma.

‘You weren't too tired to stay up all night watching TV and playing truth or dare,' rebuked her mum.

That woke Emma up. ‘How did you know that we were playing truth or dare?' she asked.

‘Oh, Bob mentioned it in the car on the way to footy this morning.'

‘Bob? But how did he know?'

‘I don't know,' said Emma's mum as she left with some dirty plates. ‘You were playing it though, weren't you?'

‘Yes,' said Emma, ‘but in my room, in secret.'

Then Emma remembered how quick Bob and Otto had been to go to the toilet after Isi started her dare and how the raspberry bullets had gone missing. She raced into Bob's room. She saw the empty lolly bag and then the car, the remote-controlled car Bob had received for his birthday. Emma picked it up and saw there was a small box with a red light strapped to the top of the car. She pressed the button on the top of the box and the red light started to flash.

Like on a video camera,
realised Emma.
Could this be a camera?

Then she spied Bob's laptop on his desk. Emma opened it and saw there was a video file open. Bob had called it ‘Operation Trojan'.

Emma pressed play and saw that Bob had recorded her sleepover. ‘So that's what Bob and Otto were doing on the computer all night,' she said to herself. ‘And it must have been the car that Beret was barking at under the bed.' While she was grudgingly impressed with his technology, Emma was furious that Bob had been spying on her. Emma had been wrong about her brother doing things to her before, but not this time. This time she had caught him. She didn't need to watch any more. She ran out of Bob's room and down to the kitchen.

‘Mum!' yelled Emma. ‘Mum!'

‘Why all the yelling?' said her mum.

‘It's Bob. He was spying on me—on us—last night!'

Bob was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal.

‘Bob, is this true?' asked Mum.

‘Um,' started Bob.

‘Don't even try getting out of it this time,' started Emma. ‘I saw your car. I saw your laptop.'

‘You were in my room?' said Bob, irritated. ‘Touching my laptop?'

‘You can talk,' said Emma. ‘You shouldn't have been spying on us!'

‘Yeah, well,' said Bob, ‘you guys were so boring to listen to that we stopped.'

Emma went cold. When did the boys
start
listening? Had Bob heard them talking about
SHINE
? Had she just blown the agency's cover?
Keep cool,
she told herself.

‘When did you put that car in my room?' she demanded.

‘Wouldn't you like to know?' said Bob, smirking. ‘Scaredy-cat—or should that be scaredy-horse?'

‘Marpum!' said Emma switching to the secret language she and her Mum used sometimes for fun—and when they were talking about ‘girls' stuff'.
Emma's grandma had taught it to her mum and her mum had taught it to her: you put an ‘arp' in front of every vowel sound. It was easy to do but hard to pick and it was sometimes useful. Like now. ‘Wharpat arpif harpe knarpows arpabarpout
SHARPINE
?'
^*

Emma's Mum looked into her eyes.

‘You and your silly language,' smirked Bob. ‘I know your secrets!'

‘Aaaaarrgghh! I'm going to bed!' cried Emma, running to her room and slamming the door behind her. She didn't like having an older brother, or at least, she certainly didn't like having Bob as an older brother. He was always bugging her.

Emma got into bed and though she should have been exhausted after the sleepover, she didn't sleep well that night. She was too worried: had Bob found out her most important secret?

^*
What if he knows about
SHINE
?

It was already hot on Monday morning when Emma
left for school but she was more worried about whether Bob knew about
SHINE
. She didn't have time to talk to Isi and Elle when she arrived and she didn't dare talk to them in class while Ms Black was taking the maths lesson.

Everyone's away today
, thought Emma as she looked around the class. Hannah was still on her basic training and Eve was away too. As Emma looked around she saw that Laila's seat, the one next to Nema, was also empty. Nema was there though, looking as cross as ever.
Lucky me
, thought Emma.

Nema was the class mean girl and Emma's biggest problem at school. Nema's special talents included flicking her hair back and finding really mean things to say to people, normally in front of lots of other people for maximum embarrassment. Nema always made you feel bad but, having seen Nema's parents be so cross with each other at the school karate competition, Emma was starting to think it might be because Nema felt pretty
bad herself. Besides her being mean, there was something else about Nema that wasn't good. She was working for
SHADOW
, the evil agency that caused
SHINE
a lot of problems. However, while Emma knew about Nema, Nema didn't know about Emma. Or did she?

‘Where's Hannah?' asked Nema.

‘Away,' said Emma.

‘Really, Einstein!' snapped Nema, flicking her hair. ‘Away where?'

Is she suspicious?
wondered Emma.

‘Away, Nema,' repeated Emma.

‘That's enough chatting from you, Emma Jacks,' said Ms Black sharply. ‘Back to work.'

Emma was kind of relieved to get back to her maths. She worked hard until the bell went for recess. Then she caught up with Isi and Elle as they left the classroom.

‘We've got to talk,' said Emma. ‘I think something awful might have happened.'

‘There's a world-wide chocolate, ice-cream and
lolly shortage?' asked Isi.

‘Is, I'm being serious!' cried Emma.

‘So am I!' said Isi, but she was grinning.

‘No really, guys. You know how we were all talking in my room on Saturday night?'

Her two friends nodded.

‘Well, Bob was spying on us.'

‘My brothers do that all the time,' said Elle.

‘But Bob was using a spy camera,' said Emma.

‘We looked okay, didn't we?' asked Isi. ‘I think my cupcake pyjamas are awesome.'

‘And the camera had sound!' Emma went on. ‘He and Otto could hear what we were saying.'

Both Isi and Elle's mouths dropped open. Now they looked as serious as Emma.

‘He couldn't …' said Isi.

‘He didn't …' said Elle.

‘Hear us talking about
SHINE
?' asked Emma. ‘He hasn't said anything yet but he might have,' she said glumly.

‘What do we do now?' asked Isi.

It was Emma's special
SHINE
spy phone. She took it out and saw it flashing an indigo flash. It was a mission alert. Emma looked back at Isi and Elle, who also checked their phones, but both of them shook their heads.

‘Looks like it's only you, Em,' said Isi.

‘Good luck,' said Elle.

Emma gulped as she headed towards the girls' toilets. Normally she was excited about reporting into
SHINE HQ
but now her stomach felt tight. She bit her lip. Did
SHINE
know about what happened with Bob?

As the other students headed towards their classrooms for the start of class, Emma walked across to the girls' toilets. She pushed open the door and quickly scanned the room to make sure she was alone. When she was certain she was, Emma turned on the hand-dryer, as a precaution to block out any noise and walked to the last cubicle on the right, went in and locked the door behind her. She sat on the toilet seat and took out her phone, inserting it into a tiny, almost unnoticeable, socket on the side of the toilet roll holder. The phone clicked in and a message flashed on to the screen.

EJ took her phone out of the socket and put it back in her dress pocket. She held on to the sides of the toilet seat as the back wall of the cubicle spun around. EJ dropped onto a beanbag and pushed off down the long slide that was the
SHINE
Mission Tube. She knew the ride to the
SHINE
Code Room usually took ten minutes so she was surprised when she was still whizzing around corners more than fifteen minutes later.

This is weird,
she thought.
I mustn't be going to the Code Room.

As an agent in the Code-cracking Division, EJ would start each mission by deciphering a secret message that
SHINE
had intercepted from
SHADOW
. Once she had cracked the code, she would then, normally, go to the Operations Room of
SHINE HQ
where she would prepare for the mission behind the intercepted message. EJ liked
knowing what she needed to do but she was also learning that things didn't always go to plan.

The Mission Tube stopped winding and went straight ahead, picking up speed until it was going so fast that EJ thought she might fall off. Finally it began to slow and then stopped. In front of her on the Mission Tube slide was a large white capsule, like a mini bullet train, just large enough for one person. On the door to the capsule was a button like a doorbell. EJ stood up and when she pressed the button a flap slid up revealing a screen. The screen flashed.

EJ went to put her index finger on the screen.

‘No not that finger, the little one,' a digital voice corrected.

Wow
, wondered EJ as she put her little finger on the screen.
Is everyone watching me today?

The digital voice spoke again. ‘Pinkie print match. Agent Identity confirmed. Enter Mobile Code Room, Agent EJ12.'

The capsule door slid open and EJ stepped inside. She was surprised to see that there was no steering wheel, only a stool facing another, larger screen and keyboard. The screen had both a red button and a green one on the side.

EJ sat down, looked at the big screen and pressed the green button. The screen flashed.

‘I have to fasten my seat belt to crack a code?' asked EJ. ‘What's going on?'

But she knew to obey instructions and as she strapped on the belt, a piece of paper came out from a slit at the bottom of the screen. As EJ examined it, she felt the capsule beginning to move along the Mission Tube.

EJ looked at the code. She didn't recognise it but she immediately spotted something unusual: every word ended in ‘AY'.

‘This is like our “arp” language,' said EJ to herself. ‘You do something, the same thing, to each word. This one is pig Latin, I'm sure of it. You take the first sound and send it to the end and then add AY to the end of that. If the first letter is a vowel, you add a W. Let's see what happens when I take the AY away and make the last sound the first.' EJ tried the first word, murmuring to herself as she worked.

‘ONAY becomes ON and then it becomes NO. The first word is NO.' EJ tried the second word. ‘IESFLAY becomes IESFL and then it becomes FLIES, so the second word is FLIES. Both of them are real words, so pig Latin must be the code.'

EJ quickly cracked the rest of the message.

Wow,
thought EJ.
That's a lot of animals in one message. Flies, cats, foals, horses and the code's in pig Latin. What's that about?

There was, however, one part of the message EJ did understand: NEW HORSE CHARMS. CHARMs were the concealed spy gadgets all
SHINE
agents used and if
SHADOW
knew that
SHINE
was getting more CHARMs that wasn't good. How could they have found out?

EJ keyed the decoded message into the keyboard and pressed the green button. Seconds later the screen flashed and text appeared.

EJ felt the capsule speed up and then tilt upwards.

Now EJ felt herself being pushed back into the seat as the capsule lifted off the Mission Tube track. She was in the air.

I must be leaving the Mission Tube,
EJ realised.
But where am I going?

After a few minutes, the capsule began to drop and then it landed with a soft bump.

The digital voice spoke again. ‘Door opening. Exit capsule and stand back. Eco-Deco is about to commence.'

EJ knew what that meant and she quickly unstrapped her seatbelt, stood up and stepped outside of the capsule as it began to shake and make gurgling noises. Within seconds, it was nothing but a small pile of rubble in front of her and EJ was standing in a small bushland clearing, surrounded by gum trees. Above her, a kookaburra gave its distinctive laughing call.

EJ looked up at the kookaburra and saw that instead of eyes, there were two glowing yellow lights. EJ climbed up the lower branches of the white ghost gum to take a closer look. She had just noticed a small
SHINE
logo on the bird's breast when she heard a car engine. She climbed around to the other side of the tree trunk and watched as a silver campervan with two satellite dishes on the roof drove into the clearing. It stopped and a metal door slid open.

The driver's dark-tinted window slid down and EJ recognised LP30 from the Transport Division.

‘Come on down, EJ12,' called LP30. ‘A1 is waiting for you.'