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hours, with a reminder every thirty minutes. She was now in a race against SHADOW and needed to keep track of the time. Then she looked at the message again. SHADOW never seemed to give straightforward instructions. What were jump arrows? she thought. And hello—a buildbot?
    One step at a time, thought EJ. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Straight up? Okay, I can do that, thought EJ. She looked straight up but was immediately blinded by the sun. EJ squinted, but still the bright rays piercing through the leaves made it impossible to see. She reached into her backpack and pulled outher sunglasses. A1 was right—sometimes common sense was just what a secret agent needed. Much better, thought EJ as she put them on, and rather stylish as well!
    Now she could see a thick leafy vine that seemed to grow right up to the top of the tree. EJ guessed she would need to climb ‘straight up’ that vine, but what was she going to do about all those butterflies? She needed to grip the vine with her hands and climb up the tree with her feet—but that meant stepping on an awful lot of butterflies. No way. She needed another plan. She tried to shoo the butterflies away but there were simply too many. As fast as some flew off, others flew back again, all very keen to continue feeding on the tree sap. It was hopeless. EJ really needed to get up that tree, and time was ticking away.
    She sat on the ground and thought hard. Whenever she got stuck with something, she liked to sit quietly and see if she could puzzle it out. She liked to sort things in her mind in an orderly way.She hated time tests but now that she was in one, she needed to think calmly and quickly—easier said than done. As she thought, she started to fiddle with her charm bracelet. Then she remembered. The butterfly charm! How slow could a secret agent be?
    â€˜Here goes,’ said EJ and she twisted the butterfly charm. A small puff of crimson smoke floated up into the air. It had a sickly sweet smell. Instantly, the butterflies came darting towards it. This must be the butterfly version of chocolate, thought EJ. She kept twisting the charm as she moved away from the tree. The butterflies followed the crimson smoke and sweet smell, and soon the whole swarm had moved away from the Butterfly Tree, which was now more like an ex-Butterfly Tree. Now the trunk was clearly visible and EJ could see a green arrow pointing straight up etched into the bark. She was on the right track, or should that be tree?



EJ grabbed the vine with both hands and began to climb. At gym, her squad was always practising on the ropes. They climbed straight up with both their arms and legs. Then, and it hurt even to remember, they let their legs hang loose and climbed straight up, pulling themselves with their arms only. This vine should be easy compared to that. EJ gripped the trunk with her boots and started climbing.
    The first ten metres were easy, the next ten metres were easy-ish, and the next ten metres werenot easy at all! Thirty metres up with at least another ten to go, EJ was beginning to wish she’d saved a little more energy at the start. Her arms and legs ached and she was struggling just to hold on. But she needed to get to the top. She took a deep breath and hauled herself up with her arms. One pull at a time, EJ continued slowly upwards.
    Finally, with one last heave, she reached the top of the vine. She had also climbed all the way up through the trees and was now on top of the rainforest canopy. If she had not already been out of breath, the view would have taken her breath away. EJ was sitting atop the most beautiful rainforest she had ever seen.
    Tall, tall trees shot straight up into the air and then exploded with a burst of leaves at the top. Deep green vines and brightly coloured flowers twisted around their branches, almost strangling the trees in shocks of colour. The flowers were enormous and the strangest, most unusual shapes and colours EJ had ever