The Amazon Experiment Read Free Page A

instructor.
    Why was he looking at her and what did he want? Maybe he was planning something evil? Harrison had warned her to be careful judging other people before she knew all the facts, but she couldn’t ignore the strange feeling that crept over her when she saw him staring at her.
    She shook it off and quickly turned away to join Steinberger and Linden, unaware that the new recruit had turned back and was watching her again.

‘Just stare directly at the wall and stand as still as you can.’
    â€˜Steinberger, are you sure we have to do this?’ Max sighed.
    â€˜Oh yes, most definitely.’
    â€˜But won’t we end up in the Plantorium?’
    â€˜This part of the Wall will take us directly to Quimby.’
    The Wall of Goodness. The only object in Spyforce Max had a personality clash with.
    Max, Linden and Steinberger stared at the solid stone wall, waiting for the atoms to start reconfiguring in its jelly-like identification process.
    â€˜Come and get me, Wall.’ With Linden, of course, there was no clash. He and the Wall might as well have been old soccer buddies.
    â€˜You will notice the Wall start to move —’ Steinberger began.
    â€˜We know, like jelly. Can you hurry it up?’ If Max had to do this she wanted it to be fast.
    After a few more seconds, the Wall wavered in front of them before reaching out and slowly enveloping them. Linden and Steinberger were sucked through in a quiet, no-fuss slurp, while Max’s dirt-smeared body was jiggled, massaged and wrestled like a football during a grand final.
    Then it stopped.
    â€˜Hey, Wall, maybe you could choose some other time to flake out. I’ve got work to do.’
    Nothing.
    Max stood glued in her Wall-surrounded state. Maybe this time she really wouldn’t get through. What was the Wall doing? Why wasn’t it moving? How come …
    â€˜Aaaaah!’
    The Wall finally chose to spit her out the other side and she was sent sprawling across the highly polished lab floor, stopping in front of a small, nondescript red door and several pairs of feet.
    â€˜Max! How lovely to see you again. Now we can get started.’ Quimby stared down at her with her hands in her lab coat and a bright purple scarf on her head attempting to hold in her long unruly hair. Max dragged her ego-dinted body from the ground and followed the inventor as she unlocked the door and opened it onto the testing area.
    â€˜What do you think?’ Steinberger asked in his chuffed kind of way.
    Max stared. It wasn’t quite the VART-like hangar full of gadgets and vehicles that she’d imagined.
    â€˜It’s a lake.’ She gazed at the vast and seeminglyendless blue expanse of water before her, fringed with grass and trees.
    â€˜It is. Kind of.’ Quimby smiled as a fish splashed through the surface and somersaulted before falling back into the water.
    â€˜But we’re in the middle of London!’ Linden needed to make sure the Wall of Goodness hadn’t spat them into a different place.
    Quimby’s face exploded in a smile of excitement. ‘Yes, we are, but with a clever mix of physics and nature, we’ve created the naturescape you see before you. You see, what we did …’
    Quimby explained her work to the others but Max heard none of it as she strode along the bank of the lake.
    â€˜Is there an end to this?’ Max walked on, but before Quimby could say anything to stop her, her head rebounded off something hard.
    â€˜Ow!’
    â€˜Looks like there is,’ Linden said.
    Quimby tried to conceal a smile. ‘It does look like it’s never-ending, but that’s because its borders are carefully concealed.’
    â€˜Isn’t that amazing?’ Steinberger gasped.
    â€˜Yeah. Amazing.’ Max rubbed her head.
    â€˜The machines we test in this area havebuilt-in sensors so they automatically stop when they approach solid objects. Perfect for manoeuvring through