Making Waves (6 page)

Now EJ had the whole message. She deleted the curly writing.

‘Oh no!' cried EJ. ‘We're too late. Adriana has already harvested more coral and she's left dolphins trapped in one of her nets.' EJ quickly checked her animal app on her phone. ‘This is awful: dolphins can't last much longer than thirty minutes without air.'

‘We need to act fast, EJ,' said C2C climbing on her
SHINE
mobile. ‘And we will need to split up. I'll search for Adriana. Your phone can give me the location where the message was intercepted. If she stopped to add more nets, she won't have had
time to go too far from that point. I should be able to catch her. Squirt will be able to find the sunken net. She is trained to locate any new objects on the ocean floor. You need to get to those dolphins fast. Good luck, EJ12. I hope we both make it in time.'

‘We have to, C2C,' cried EJ as she ran for her
SHINE
mobile, taking a bucket of fish and stowing it under her seat. ‘We just have to!'

EJ looked at Squirt. Squirt looked at EJ.

‘Let's go,' EJ said, pressing the Search button on the dolphin trainer. Another high-pitched tone sounded. That was Squirt's command to begin her search and the dolphin took off immediately.

EJ jumped on her
SHINE
mobile and took off after Squirt, thumping over the waves as Squirt dived in and out of them. Then EJ noticed that Squirt was spending less time jumping and more and more time swimming in the water.

Is she picking up something? Are we close?
wondered EJ.
I need to be able to follow Squirt.
She checked the time. It was twelve minutes since Adriana had sent the message. EJ had to get to those trapped dolphins quickly. She pressed the S-button on the
SHINE
mobile and waited while a shield came over the top of her and the jet-skis folded up underneath.
SHINE
mobile 3
had converted to sub mode and EJ12 steered it downwards, following Squirt as the dolphin dived deeper and deeper.

It was getting darker. The sun's rays were weaker this far down and it was harder to see. EJ switched on
SHINE
mobile 3'
s headlights and powered through the water past schools of fish. As she sped along after Squirt, EJ noticed that there were fewer and fewer fish and the water was growing murkier.

EJ was suspicious. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, she activated her test flask charm and inserted it into the robotic aqua-arm cabinet and shut the watertight door. She switched the arm on and it slowly moved, extending outside the sub. Once outside, the flask took in water. EJ pressed the button again and the arm retracted with the flask.
Even as she took the flask back out of the cabinet she could see the water was extremely cloudy with streaks of black through it. EJ pressed the small button on the neck of the flask. The results would be sent to her phone. As she waited for them, she suddenly realised that she could no longer see Squirt. Just as EJ began to worry, she saw the dolphin coming down from the surface.

She must have gone up for air,
thought EJ.
She can, unlike the poor dolphins trapped in Adriana's nets.

Squirt swam forwards and EJ followed closely behind.

Piinngg!

Oil? From the A-Sub perhaps?
thought EJ.
At least it is only a trace.

EJ knew the real problem was the pollution and the industrial activity that caused it and as she looked up away from her phone and out the window she could see exactly what that activity had done. Horrified, EJ saw that they had come to a part of the reef that had been completely destroyed. There were broken and crushed bits of coral and shredded seaweed. A solitary zebra fish darted to and fro as if looking for its home.

EJ had found Adriana's harvest area but too late. She hoped however that she could still save the dolphins.

‘Adriana has been here so the net must be close,' she said to herself. ‘Come on Squirt, where is it?'

Squirt had gone back up for air but was now swimming down again, all the time clicking. EJ could hear the dolphin through a speaker that went outside the sub. It was the clicking noises that enabled the dolphin to find things and EJ was
amazed how the dolphin moved so quickly through the dark water. Then, all of a sudden, as Squirt swam through the destroyed reef, her clicking stopped and was replaced by a short, piercing whistle. Then EJ heard new noises, more distressed-sounding than Squirt's. Squirt started to make buzzing noises, blowing bubbles furiously and flapping her tail.

EJ saw why. Squirt had found the broken net and tangled up inside it were two bottlenose dolphins, thrashing to get out, making frantic buzzing, whistling noises as they did. EJ couldn't believe it. Adriana had just left the dolphins there to die. EJ had no time to lose if she was to save them.

Slowly she drove the sub close to the net. She checked the dashboard, activated the robotic aquaarm and switched the sub onto auto-hover. Using a joystick to guide the robotic arm, EJ tried to pull the net away from the trapped dolphins.

‘Come on, come on,' she urged herself, but the net was too tangled.

I'm going to have to cut them free,
thought EJ and she pressed another button on the sub's dashboard. Another arm extended from the side
of the sub. This one had a cutting saw on its end. Carefully, knowing that one wrong move could cut a dolphin and not the net, EJ used the grip arm to hold a piece of net up and the cutter to tear it. The two trapped dolphins stopped thrashing around, as if they knew EJ was trying to help them.

‘One more slice and I should have cut away enough net to pull it free,' EJ told herself. ‘Hang in there guys, hang in there!'

EJ grabbed another piece of net and raised it as high as the robotic arm would let her. She then pulled the cutting device down, ripping through the net. With the gripping arm still holding the net, she then put the sub into reverse. With a jolt, the net lurched backwards and the two dolphins fell out. They were free. In a frenzy, they shot up through the water to the surface.

Squirt and EJ followed and Squirt seemed to be pushing the dolphins up, as if she were helping them get to the surface. Would they make it in time?

When EJ surfaced, she was relieved to see the two dolphins opening and closing their blowholes—they were sucking in air and blowing it out again. They looked calmer now that they could breathe.

EJ converted
SHINE
mobile 3
to jet-ski mode and reached under the seat for the fish.

‘Good job, Squirt,' said EJ, throwing the dolphin some fish. ‘That was close. Let's hope C2C has been just as successful.' She threw out some more fish, and the two recovering dolphins gobbled some down too.

EJ checked her phone but there was no message from C2C. She tried to ring her but there was no answer. That was strange and definitely not good. Had C2C found Adriana—or had Adriana found C2C first?

Piinngg!

Another message. EJ just had a feeling that it wouldn't be good news.

EJ looked at it. It was quite a short code and it seemed to be the same mirror code in the same crazy font as last time. EJ smiled to herself.
Adriana is getting a bit lazy, this won't take long at all.

She again pasted the message into the code app and applied the mirror app to each line. She keyed in what she saw in a font that was easier to read.

Hmmm, I take that back,
thought EJ looking at what she had just keyed.
Adriana must have changed code because this doesn't make sense.

At least it didn't make sense if you read it normally, left to right. But no one thought Adriana was normal. EJ re-keyed the text right to left.

Something Shiny, that's got to be a
SHINE
agent—C2C!
thought EJ.
Adriana has captured C2C and is taking her along to her next harvest area. We will have to hurry. We can't let Adriana start another harvest.

‘Squirt,' said EJ, turning to her dolphin buddy, ‘I think we have another rescue mission.'

Adriana's A-Sub might be hard to find in water but C2C's sub wasn't—if the A-Sub was holding the other agent's
SHINE
mobile, Squirt should be able to find them.

A light on EJ's dashboard started to flash. EJ reconnected her phone and her screen flashed as well.

‘Yes,' shouted EJ. ‘C2C has activated the homing device on her sub. Looks like you are going to have some help. Come on Squirt!'

EJ pressed the S-button and the shield came over as
SHINE
mobile 3
went into sub mode and EJ once again headed deep down into the water.

EJ was steering her way through the last of what had been a long series of underwater canyons when the light on her dashboard started to flash faster, just as Squirt started to flap her tail and make her distressed buzzing noises. EJ had to be close.

She reversed back into the reef then turned off the engine and waited: if it was the A-Sub, she didn't want to be caught like C2C. In the distance,
she could see a large submarine, long and black with windows right around the front half of the boat, moving through the water. As it came closer, she could see the letters on the side: A-SUB. As the vessel came closer still, she could make out someone standing at the front looking out of the windows. It was a woman with jet-black hair swept up in a big beehive-like but messy bun, and black, thick, thick glasses. It was Adriana on the A-Sub, the Adriana Submarine. Trust Adriana to name her submarine after herself. And then EJ saw the thing that was different about the A-Sub: underneath, on the submarine's bottom, were two sets of poles and between each of them hung a giant net made of heavy chains. One net was closed and full of coral and one was open.

‘That's how she harvests the coral,' said EJ to herself. ‘The A-Sub drags the net along the bottom of the seabed and it pulls along the coral with it. No wonder it makes such a mess; it just rips out everything! And then Adriana pulls up the net and
takes her precious black coral.'

Then, suddenly, there were clanking noises and the A-Sub began to turn and, as it did, EJ could see C2C's
SHINE
mobile attached to the side, held in a giant clamp. Adriana had captured it. Then the nets underneath the A-Sub started to move. At the same time, from the top of the sub, a pole with a huge searchlight attached to the end began to extend into the water. EJ held her breath. The bright light was coming closer and closer. Had she found Adriana or had Adriana found her?
Adriana must be preparing for the next coral harvesting,
thought EJ.
I can't let that happen. But if I take
SHINE
mobile 3
closer I'll be captured just like C2C.
EJ swallowed and her mouth felt dry.
There's nothing for it, I will have to swim.

Then in her mind, she heard Nema's voice again. ‘You're not still afraid of the deep end, are you? Only little kids are afraid of the deep end. Babies.'

‘Well, are you?' said EJ to herself. She looked out the sub's window at the water, then she looked at the A-Sub and Adriana's haul of coral. She bit her lip. Then she looked out the window and saw
Squirt, who seemed to be looking at her, waiting. ‘No, I am not,' she said out loud, ‘but I'm glad I have a dive buddy.'

‘Okay, okay, I'm coming,' she said laughing. She wasn't scared at all, she had just forgotten to tell herself that. She should actually thank Nema. Well, maybe not.

EJ switched the
SHINE
mobile 3
sub to auto-hover and activated the homing device. She then sent a text to A1.
SHINE
would now know exactly where to come to find her sub. Then EJ took out the scuba gear from behind her seat, and pulled on her tank, flippers and goggles. Taking a deep breath, she moved to the back and opened the door to the escape hatch. Submarines had hatches to allow divers to leave and enter a submarine while it was under the water. The divers first entered a small, sealed chamber that separated the rest of the sub from the sea. Once the diver was in that chamber, she could then open the next door and enter the ocean. EJ closed the first door and then opened
the next one. She was in the water. She closed the door behind her and clicked her dive shoes together and waited for them to convert to flippers. She then swam away from her sub. Seconds later, and unknown to EJ, the A-Sub's searchlight swept over
SHINE
mobile 3.