Pyramid puzzle, p.1
Pyramid Puzzle, page 1
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Back Cover Material
Emma Jacks couldn’t wait to get to school. She couldn’t wait to find Hannah and Isi and tell them about her great idea for Elle’s birthday. She had been planning it secretly for weeks and had hardly slept at all the night before—she was much too excited about her best bestie idea yet.
Emma had lots of friends at school but she had three special ones, her besties, Isi, Hannah and Elle. Emma loved how she could always rely on her besties, how they were always there to share happy times and to help when things were not so good. Emma wondered if it was a coincidence the names of all her besties were the same whether you wrote them forwards or backwards: I-S-I, H-A-N-N-A-H and E-L-L-E. Her teacher, Ms Tenga, had told her that the names were palindromes but Emma just thought it proved that her friends were super-reliable, the same whatever way you looked at them. She hoped she was as good a friend to them and now she had a plan to show it.
It was Elle’s birthday next week and Emma was planning a surprise for her. She had seen friendship bracelets that had a little heart locket attached to them with the letters ‘BFF’ engraved on the front. When you opened the locket there was a secret compartment with a little card inside for you to write your friends’ names on and what you liked best about them. They were perfect.
Emma had washed windows for her mum all weekend to earn enough money to buy four bracelets so she and her besties could all have one. Emma was beyond excited when her mum took her to buy them. Now Emma had written their names and a word she thought best summed up their friendship and she had even designed different fonts for each of their names. She had practised for hours before writing them on the little cards. The best bit of all was that Elle didn’t suspect a thing.
When she got to school, Emma rushed up to Isi and Hannah as soon as she saw them by the lockers. They smiled as she shared her secret about the bracelets with them. ‘I’ve got them at home,’ she finished up breathlessly.
‘I wish we could wear them now,’ said Isi.
‘Too risky,’ said Emma. ‘Elle might see.’
‘You’re right,’ Hannah agreed. ‘We need to keep this top secret.’
The girls were so caught up in their conversation that they hadn’t noticed Nema walking up on the other side of the lockers. She was listening.
Nema was in their class and if she was around it tended to spell trouble for Emma and her friends. Nema and Emma had been good friends in kinder but Nema had changed and was mean, sometimes really mean. It was almost as if she enjoyed making other people feel bad. There were some days when Nema seemed sort of normal, maybe even nice, but just as you thought she was changing back to being a friend, she would do something mean again. Like the time when she told Emma’s secret about being afraid of deep water to everyone on the school bus. It was so embarrassing but Hannah had saved Emma that day—that’s what friends did. They stood up for you and they kept secrets.
As Nema stood waiting to hear more, one of her friends, Billie, ran up to her.
‘Nema, Nema!’ she cried.
‘Not now,’ Nema hissed. ‘I’m busy.’
Billie gazed around, trying to see what Nema was busy doing. ‘Busy with what?’ she asked.
‘Shhh!’ whispered Nema, taking a few steps away from the lockers and nodding slightly towards where Emma and her friends’ voices were coming from on the other side. ‘Those goody-goodies might not be so good after all,’ Nema told Billie.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly: mean,’ said Nema. ‘They’re planning to kick Elle out of their group.’
‘What?’ whispered Billie. ‘No way!’
‘I heard them talk about buying bracelets but not wanting Elle to find out,’ sneered Nema. ‘Well, I think we know what that means and I’m going to tell.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said Billie.
‘Who asked you?’ snapped Nema as she flicked her hair, nearly hitting Billie in the face. She began walking quickly towards Elle, who was just running in through the school gates.
Emma, Hannah and Isi were still so engrossed in planning their friend’s surprise that they didn’t see Nema running up to Elle and they didn’t notice Elle look over at them with an upset expression on her face. And then the bell went. Emma, Hannah and Isi bounced happily into their classrooms, unaware that their best friend was walking slowly behind them, almost in tears.
The first lesson was maths, Emma’s favourite. Everyone settled into their groups and began working. Emma was on the computer playing a maths game and Elle’s group were on the other side of the room doing mental maths. Emma was busy working away when the girl next to her, Tayla, nudged her and passed a note.
‘It’s from Elle,’ Tayla whispered.
Emma smiled. Elle loved sending silly notes in class, even if she sometimes got in trouble for it. Emma wondered what the note would be about this time but her smile vanished when she saw it.
She spun around and looked at Elle, who looked back crossly at her. Who had told Elle the secret? Only Hannah and Isi knew but they wouldn’t tell. Or would they? It had to be one of them because no one else knew about it.
Hannah was in another class but Isi was working on the computer at the end of the row of desks. Emma checked to see where their teacher, Ms Tenga, was and then clicked on her school email. She sent an email to Isi.
Did you tell Elle about the secret?
She knew the moment Isi read the email because her friend swung around and looked at Emma. ‘No!’ she mouthed.
Then who did? wondered Emma. Was it Hannah? And what was she going to tell Elle?
Emma scribbled a note and passed it back to Tayla who passed it on to Elle.
Emma thought that would make it better, that Elle would get it and that everything would be okay and Emma could still give her the birthday surprise that she had been planning for so long. But as Emma watched Elle read the note, she realised that Elle didn’t get it and that it wasn’t okay. She watched Elle scrunch her brow as she scribbled a reply.
Oh, no! thought Emma. Who told?
The bracelets had been a good secret but now that secret was causing problems. How had Emma, of all people, got into this mess? She should have been good at keeping secrets. After all, she was a secret agent, Special Agent EJ12 in the under-twelve division of SHINE to be exact.
SHINE was a top-secret organisation dedicated to keeping the world safe from people who would try to harm it. People like those in SHADOW, another top-secret organisation but one as committed to doing bad things as SHINE was to doing good ones. SHADOW liked to make money and they didn’t seem to mind what they did to get it: destroy rainforests or city water supplies, disrupt computer networks and communication satellites, and even try to melt the polar ice cap. And they would have got away with all those schemes if it weren’t for SHINE—and for EJ12.
Emma was selected to join SHINE after she won a school maths competition that was really a way for SHINE to find new agents to crack the codes SHADOW agents used to send messages to each other. That’s where the maths competition came in. Emma loved maths; she loved finding the clues, working out the answer hidden in the question. Maths is often about patterns and so are codes and so Emma Jacks, schoolgirl, became Special Agent EJ12, code-cracker, for SHINE. But EJ didn’t just crack codes. SHINE had a motto (they had lots of mottoes, they loved them): ‘If you crack the code, you carry the load.’ And so after EJ12 cracked the SHADOW code, she went on mission to stop their evil plot.
SHINE agents, however, never worked alone—it was much too dangerous. They worked as a team and there were many different sections within the organisation. As well as the section for code-cracking, there was surveillance, which monitored suspicious activity; transport, which took agents all over the world by car, plane, ship, even rocket; and there was the science and invention division, which researched anything from space to underwater environments and also invented gadgets for SHINE agents to use. Emma’s friend, Isi, or rather Special Agent IJ12, had recently joined SHINE. She was in the science and invention section. She had been recruited through a school science competition. Isi loved inventing things and while not all her inventions were completely successful (her turbo straw for drinking milkshakes quickly was a little too turbo) her competition entry was a clear winner. Using scales and a weight sensor, she had invented an alarm to let you know when your pet’s water bowl was empty. SHINE had loved it.
IJ was still completing her basic agent training and was often at SHINE HQ at the same time as EJ. It was fun having one of her besties there as well as her spy buddies. It had to be top secret, of course. Emma’s mum knew because she was a former SHINE agent, but no one else could know. Emma didn’t really mind because she could keep a secret but now she was not so sure she could trust her friends to.
Emma didn’t know it yet but Nema was the one she had to watch out for. And Nema wasn’t the only one who had uncovered a secret. On the other side of the world, SHADOW had discovered something they were going to keep for themselves. Unless, of course, SHINE—and EJ12—could stop them.
The bell went for morning recess and Elle left the classroom with Tayla before Emma could talk to her. It was if Elle was rushing away from her. Then Emma ran into Hannah and things went from bad to worse.
‘Hey, Em. What’s up?’ said Hannah.
‘Elle’s really upset. She found out about the bracelets and now she thinks we were keeping a secret from her, that she wasn’t going to be included.’
‘How did she find out?’ asked Hannah. She looked surprised. Emma was surprised that Hannah was surprised.
‘You mean you didn’t tell her?’ said Emma.
‘How could you think that?’ cried Hannah. ‘I would never tell Elle!’
‘Never tell Elle what? Another secret?’ It was Elle.
‘Elle, I need to explain,’ said Emma.
‘Explain why you kept a secret from me?’ said Elle testily.
‘Well, yes,’ replied Emma, biting her lip nervously.
‘Okay then,’ said Elle, her voice hard.
That wasn’t like Elle at all. Emma knew she must have really hurt her feelings. How could she explain everything without ruining the surprise?
‘We had this idea,’ she began but was interrupted by Isi coming up. And then everyone stopped to look at Isi. She had tied her hair up. But they weren’t looking at her hair. They were looking at her ears, or rather her earrings.
Isi had just received her SHINE Mission Alert Wireless Studs, tiny studs that looked like earrings but were actually a small personal alert system. When SHINE wanted to contact an agent during school time, when students weren’t allowed to have their phones, they sent a small ping that no one else could hear to the studs, directly into the agent’s ear. You didn’t need to have your ears pierced (which was lucky as Emma wasn’t allowed to until she was in high school): a small magnet at the back of the ear held the stud in place. Agents could choose from a range of colours. EJ and IJ had both chosen to have gold.
‘Hey, when did you get your ears pierced, Isi?’ asked Elle.
‘And you have exactly the same studs as Emma,’ said Hannah.
‘Yes,’ said Isi, looking uncomfortable. She wasn’t allowed to tell Hannah and Elle about SHINE until she completed basic training.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you were getting them done?’ asked Hannah. ‘It’s not like it’s a secret.’
Isi looked at Emma.
‘Well, Is, she was, um she...,’ started Emma. Aaaaaaarrrrgghh! This is not happening to me! she thought as she struggled for an answer. Then there was a noise in her ear.
Piinngg!
It was the alert. Before she could say anything, Isi spoke.
‘I have to go,’ said Isi, putting her hand up to her ear.
‘Oh,’ said Emma, looking questioningly at her. ‘So do I.’
‘Where to?’ asked Elle.
Emma paused briefly. ‘To the toilet, Elle. You know, OM.’
‘So why is Isi going? Is it really OM or just another secret?’
Isi looked frantic, like she was busting to tell Elle and Hannah everything.
‘It isn’t,’ Emma said, looking pleadingly at Hannah, who was now also looking sad. Emma could see that Elle’s eyes were starting to tear up under her glasses. ‘It really isn’t what you think, Elle, but we have to go, sorry—we’ll tell you later, we promise!’
‘Sure, Emma,’ said Hannah but she didn’t sound convinced.
‘Whatever,’ said Elle, sounding like she didn’t believe a word Emma had said.
Piinngg!
There it was again. Emma had to move. She couldn’t stay and work things out. She—they—needed to get to SHINE HQ, and fast. Emma turned to walk quickly towards the girls’ toilets. It wasn’t the most exciting place to start a mission but it was Emma’s access point for the SHINE Mission Tube, an underground network of tubes that connected agents to SHINE HQ. And Isi was right beside her.
‘So did you get a mission alert too?’ Emma asked her.
‘Yes, but it can’t be for a mission. I’m not allowed OM yet.’
‘Well, they must need you for something,’ replied Emma. Then she had a thought. ‘Is,’ she whispered, ‘do you know about the Mission Tube yet?’
‘Yeah! It’s awesome,’ whispered Isi.
Emma smiled. ‘It is, isn’t it, but where do you enter it?’
‘From the girls’ toilets.’
‘Please tell me it’s not from the last cubicle on the right.’ Emma loved her friend but she didn’t really want to sit on a toilet seat with her.
Isi laughed and, as if reading her friend’s mind, replied, ‘Ew, that would be gross, wouldn’t it? No, my access point is the last cubicle on the left. It takes me straight to the science lab.’
‘That’s a relief.’ Emma smiled as she pushed open the door to the toilets and saw that there was no one else there. Finally something was going her way. ‘We can go straight in,’ she told Isi as she pressed the hand-dryer on and headed down to the last cubicle on the right.
Emma pushed open the far right cubicle door and Isi pushed open the far left one. As they did, they both turned to face each other.
‘Good luck,’ said Is.
‘You too,’ said Emma. ‘Is, you didn’t tell Elle about the bracelets did you?’
‘No. I told you, Em. I wouldn’t.’
‘Then it must have been Hannah. She says she didn’t but who else knew?’
Isi smiled. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out.’
Emma hoped so but right now she had to get to SHINE.
Emma entered the cubicle and locked the door behind her. She opened the toilet roll holder and plugged her phone in to a hidden electronic socket. There was a beep. She entered her pin code and unplugged her phone. There was another beep and a message flashed up on her phone screen.
EJ held on tight to the side of the toilet. The wall behind her started to vibrate and then it spun around, taking both toilet and EJ to the other side. EJ then slid off the toilet and on to a beanbag that sat on the top of a giant slide. This was the SHINE Mission Tube. The wall with the toilet on it spun around again. There was a click as the toilet door was automatically unlocked and then, just a few seconds later, slightly further away, another door unlocked. That must be IJ, she thought. We’re on our way.
A protective shield clicked into place over the beanbag. EJ took her phone and keyed in ‘GO’. She held on tight. She knew what was coming next.
EJ sped down and around and then entered the main tube system. After about five minutes, EJ stopped at a platform with a keypad. This was the Code Room entry point. Again EJ keyed in her pin code and waited, for the security check. SHINE changed the check every time and some of them were pretty weird.
