Jump Start by Susannah McFarlane Read Free Book Online

monkey. ‘And if you’re coming with me, then you better have a name and given you love them so much, how about Nuts?’
    Nuts tilted her head first one way and then the other and let out a loud shriek.
    â€˜I’ll take that as a ‘‘yes,’’’ smiled EJ. ‘Hey! Where are you going now?’
    Nuts had taken off again, running and jumping down the track, and EJ had to run as fast as she could to keep up. Suddenly the little monkey stopped dead in her tracks. Actually, the whole track stopped and the whole forest stopped too—or rather, it dropped. The rainforest floor dropped away sharply to a canyon, hundreds of metres deep.
    Luckily for EJ, there was a bridge across the canyon to get to the other side. Unluckily for EJ, it was a rope bridge—with lots of holes. EJ took out her binoculars and turned them to the land across the other side of the canyon. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. There was no rainforest and no giant towering trees. There wereno more enormous colourful flowers, twisting vines, leafy canopy or squawking parrots and toucans. Where the rainforest should have been, there was just brown dirt and blackened trunks of burnt and sawn-off trees. The forest had been cleared and in the middle of the bare ground stood exactly what EJ had been looking for. A huge satellite dish with the letters S-H-A-D-O-W written on the side! EJ had found Project Green Eye.



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.
    â€˜EJ12, go ahead,’ said A1.
    â€˜I’ve located Project Green Eye,’ EJ started.
    â€˜That’s excellent, well done.’
    â€˜But I’m not there yet. There’s a deep canyon between me and the site,’ EJ continued.
    â€˜That’s bad.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜That’s good.’
    â€˜But the rope bridge is full of holes and the tower looks as if it might collapse any second. That’s bad,’ EJ finished.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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. Goodluck, 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.
    â€˜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