A. N. T. I. D. O. T. E. Read Free

but it was slow. Just about good enough for homework; but to do justice to a new state-of-the-art game, I’d need the power of Mum’s computer. I’d have to be careful that Mum didn’t catch me – not after she’d told me to go straight to bed. I knew if Mum caught me she would go ballistic to say the least, but I couldn’t help it. I was desperate to try it out. I tiptoed out of the bathroom and across the landing to my bedroom to get the disc.
    ‘I’ll only be on Mum’s PC for five minutes. Just five minutes,’ I muttered, already working out my excuses in case Mum caught me.
    But I didn’t make it to my bedroom. Raised voices reached me from downstairs. I stopped and looked over the banister. I couldn’t believe it, but Mum and Uncle Robert were arguing . I’d never, ever heard them argue before. I crept down the stairs. Mum and Uncle Robert were in the living room and the door was shut but as I reached the hall, snatches of their conversation echoed out to me.
    ‘ANTIDOTE needs your help, Lisa. I need your help. Please !’ Uncle Robert’s voice was a mixture of frustration and entreaty.
    ‘… No! No! NO ! How many more times?’ Mum replied furiously. ‘I gave all that up when Elliot was born. I’m not getting back into it now.’
    ‘But we need you …’
    ‘So does Elliot. No!’
    ‘If I do this job alone, I’ll be found out in less than a minute,’ said Uncle Robert. ‘You’re the expert, not me.’
    ‘Expert? Yeah, right! What did it ever get me? Nothing. And where did it ever get me? Nowhere. I’m not doing it, Robert, and that’s final.’ Mum’s voice was bitter.
    Stunned, I moved in closer towards the living-room door.
    ‘Just look at the data on this memory stick – that’s all I ask,’ Uncle Robert pleaded.
    ‘Why? I won’t change my mind,’ said Mum.
    ‘Lisa, this data is important. It was smuggled out of Shelby’s two days ago,’ Uncle Robert began.
    ‘I’m not interested.’
    I recognized Mum’s tone. When she was in that kind of mood, nothing short of a truckload of Semtex could shift her.
    ‘Lisa, they are performing experiments on illegally imported, rare animals in that building. It goes on in their top-security lab down in the basement. This data refers to it – but it’s not enough. Someone needs to get into Shelby’s and film what’s going on,’ said Uncle Robert.
    ‘I’m not doing it, Robert. And you have no right to ask me.’ Mum’s voice was so low, I had to strain to hear it. I took another step towards the door.
    ‘Lisa, listen. There’s … there’s something else. Some of us at ANTIDOTE have found out that Shelby’s have planted an agent in our organization,’ said Uncle Robert. ‘We managed to get a print-out of a confidential memo, written by Marcus Pardela himself, where he talks about his “mole” in our group.’
    At Mum’s stunned gasp, I pressed my ear right up against the cool wooden door.
    ‘An agent? Are you sure?’ Mum asked.
    ‘Positive. Someone at ANTIDOTE is secretly working for Shelby’s. I was hoping you’d help us find out who, once this other business is out of the way. Please say you’ll help us. We can’t call in someone from outside in case the news leaks out and damages our organization and we can’t tell too many people in the organization what’s going on in case our “mole” goes underground,’ said Uncle Robert. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t desperately need you – you know that.’
    ‘You don’t want much, do you?’ Mum said tersely.
    Silence.
    ‘Who else knows about this confidential letter about the mole?’ asked Mum.
    ‘Just me, Sarah Irving – she’s chief executive of ANTIDOTE, Ian Macmillan, the general secretary, and Rohan Adjava, the treasurer. Four people – that’s it. And the other three are as anxious as I am to find out who’s betraying us to Shelby’s. But we’ve all agreed that getting proof of Shelby’s experiments on illegally imported animals