The Great Brain Robbery Read online

  Frankie glanced up and saw that the walls were topped with a dense mesh of barbed wire that glinted meanly under the stars. Frankie and Neet gulped. They had to make sure that the flying-machine climbed high enough to make a clear sweep over those walls, or else they would both be ripped to ribbons.

  Alphonsine declared that they would need a good, long run-up to get off the ground, so Frankie and Neet dragged the machine up the muddy banks of a neighbouring hillside to give themselves the best chance of making it over the wall without ending up in a deadly tangle of wire. They only had one shot, so it had to be good.

  Neet clambered on to the front and took the controls. Alphonsine carefully explained how everything worked while Frankie steadied his feet on the pedals.

  ‘Have courage, little cabbages!’ urged Alphonsine, as they got ready to push. Then, before Frankie could change his mind, they were off! Eddie and Alphonsine pushed with all their might, Frankie pressed down hard on the pedals and the machine rushed down the slope like a runaway train. The harder Frankie pedalled the faster the wings flapped – one-two, one-two, one-two! But the machine didn’t seem to be rising, only hurtling faster and faster towards the high brick wall. The contraption was shaking so violently Frankie thought his bones would pop out of their sockets.

  ‘Neet!’ he shouted. ‘Neet! We’re not going to make it! We have to bail out!’

  But Neet could feel the front of the machine beginning to lift.

  ‘Keep pedalling, Frankie!’ she called. ‘Pedaaaal!!’

  The machine lurched over a clod of grass then, all of a sudden, the shaking stopped and they were lifted up, up, up into the air.

  ‘Woooooooooaah!’ Frankie yelled, as the ground disappeared beneath them.

  But they weren’t safe yet. Alphonsine may have improved Crispin Whittle’s invention but flying was no easy feat. The machine did not soar like an eagle, rather it fluttered and flapped like a startled chicken, swerving and lurching in all directions. Neet clung to the controls and pulled the machine up with all the strength she had. But the wall was approaching fast. Frankie couldn’t look, he closed his eyes and powered his legs round and round as fast as he was able. Neet gave a shrill cry and at that moment Frankie felt something cold and sharp trace a quick line across his ankle. He gasped in pain but didn’t stop pedalling and pedalling until, suddenly, they were bouncing and skidding to a halt.

  Frankie opened his eyes. They were on the flat roof of the children’s home – all in one piece. Well almost. Frankie felt a warm trickle in his sock. He dabbed his ankle with his fingers. They had skimmed so close to the wire that a sharp barb had left a bleeding slash across his skin. Frankie gulped. If Neet hadn’t steered so carefully they would have come to a very sticky end indeed. Luckily, the wound was only shallow so Frankie pulled up his sock and climbed, trembling, out of his seat.

  ‘Nice one, Neety,’ he whispered. Neet was shaking with exhaustion. But she was OK. Now it was time to find Wes.

  Frankie and Neet spotted a fire escape on top of the roof and lowered themselves down the steep ladder into the building. Inside, it was as dark as the belly of a whale.

  ‘I can’t see a thing!’ Neet whispered nervously. ‘Where’s the light switch?’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Frankie. ‘We don’t want to wake anyone. Have you got the moonglasses?’ Neet rummaged blindly in her rucksack and pulled out two pairs. They slipped them over their noses and took a look around. The moonglasses allowed them to see through the darkness like a pair of prowling tomcats. And what they saw made them shudder.

  You’d probably expect a children’s home to be full of fun things for kids: brightly-coloured paintings, toy chests, playrooms. But there was no such joy at Marvella’s Elves. Everything about the place was hard and grey. The sombre walls and long, bleak corridors reminded Frankie of a prison, not a home. Even the air seemed leaded with gloom. He saw that the walls were dotted with stern-looking notices: ‘DO NOT RUN’, ‘DO NOT TALK’, ‘DO NOT BE LATE’. He gulped: even Mrs Pinkerton wasn’t that strict. Neet pointed to a map of the building that was pinned to the wall nearby. Frankie studied the plans. Deep down in the basement, a couple of levels underground, was a series of long thin rooms marked ‘DORMITORIES’. Neet heaved a trembling sigh. ‘I think that’s where we’ll find him.’

  As they crept silently down the stairs, Frankie felt as if a cold hand had gripped his heart and was squeezing it tighter and tighter. This place, he thought, had not heard a single laugh, not a single giggle or titter for a very long time. He found it hard to believe that there were actually children living within those walls. In fact, Frankie hardly expected to find anyone at all in those stern, silent surroundings. It was like one of those planets that scientists talk about on the telly – planets that are ‘hostile to life’. This whole place felt like it was ‘hostile to life’ and it made Frankie’s skin creep.

  ‘Shhh!’ Neet whispered suddenly as they approached the bottom of the stairs. There was a door ahead of them with a small sign outside: ‘WARDEN’. Frankie crept closer and carefully peeked through the window. He saw an immensely round lady in a grey smock wedged into an armchair and snoring like a cement mixer. They were safe – for now. The two friends slipped quickly past in their silent sneakers and stole down the corridor towards the dormitories.

  The dormitories were long and cold with rows of bunks stacked with sleeping children. Frankie and Neet crept quickly through them, taking care not to make a sound. But they needn’t have worried – nothing could have woken those sleepers. Indeed, Frankie had never seen anyone sleep like those children slept. There was no snoring or tossing and turning. The pale faces that poked above the thin grey blankets were as motionless as waxworks and their limbs were so tired, so heavy, it was as if their bodies had been nailed to the beds.

  ‘Wait,’ whispered Neet, stopping dead in her tracks. She pointed to a small, huddled shape on a lower bunk. A tuft of ginger hair sprouted above the blanket. Frankie’s heart turned a somersault of joy.

  ‘Wes!’ Neet whispered, running to the bedside and shaking the sleeping boy’s shoulder. ‘We’re here, wake up!’

  The bundle jolted in surprise and a pale hand scrabbled around on the floor for a pair of glasses. The glasses were pushed on to a freckly nose and a pair of magnified brown eyes blinked anxiously. It was Wes.

  As soon as Wes recognised them his face broke into an enormous smile.

  ‘You made it!’ he whispered. ‘I knew you would!’

  The friends hugged silently. Frankie could feel that Wes was very thin around the ribs.

  ‘So you solved my riddle!’ Wes whispered.

  ‘We did,’ smiled Frankie, noticing the dark circles around his friend’s eyes, ‘but it wasn’t exactly easy to crack! Make it a bit easier next time, will you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ smiled Neet, nudging him, ‘we don’t all have your brains, you know!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Wes whispered. ‘But the warden checks all our letters to make sure we don’t say anything about what goes on here.’ Frankie thought he felt the room temperature drop.

  ‘What does go on here?’ he asked. The colour drained from Wesley’s cheeks.

  ‘It’s Dr Gore,’ he whispered, ‘he’s back.’

  ‘We know,’ Neet nodded.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Wes, ‘then we need to put a stop to it all.’

  Neet and Frankie followed Wes through the maze-like corridors of the building. Wes scurried ahead, glancing about him like a nervous squirrel.

  ‘You have to remember,’ he whispered, ‘that no one cares about the kids here. Most of us don’t have parents. No one knows where we are, and no one misses us.’ Wes led them across a steel walkway to a separate part of the building. Frankie strained his ears. He could hear the distant whirring and clanking of heavy machinery. It grew louder and louder, like the sound of an approaching train.

  ‘Keep quiet and stay low,’ said Wes. ‘You mustn’t be seen.’

  ‘Isn’t everyone in bed
?’ said Frankie. Wes gave a small, grim smile.

  ‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head, ‘it never stops.’

  They reached a large metal door plastered with scary-looking warning signs. Frankie and Neet got down on their hands and knees as Wes pushed the door open a crack.

  What Frankie then saw chilled him to the centre of his bones.

  As soon as the door opened, Frankie’s eardrums were pounded by a deafening hammering and screeching. The children squeezed through the gap and crawled out on to a narrow steel ledge with an iron-mesh floor that cut into their knees and the palms of their hands. Frankie took off his moonglasses and peered down through the railings. They were high up over an enormous hangar-like space that was large enough for an aeroplane to park in. It was packed to the rafters with a giant tangle of machinery. Long conveyor belts whizzed up, down and around, transporting hundreds of multicoloured packages. Giant brass pipes and drums puffed and belched out clouds of steam. Cranes as tall as giraffes hoisted heavy boxes into large steel containers. And amongst all this unstoppable machine-power, hundreds of small, pink fingers were working away, sealing packaging, packing boxes and pulling levers.

  ‘It’s a factory!’ whispered Neet. ‘A toy factory!’

  ‘Right,’ said Wes. ‘This is where Marvella’s toys are made.’

  Marvella’s toy factory was nothing like the magical workshops you see on the front of Christmas cards. There was no jolly Santa and no merry little helpers. Instead, Marvella’s factory was staffed by row upon row of exhausted-looking children, many younger than Frankie himself. The children’s hands and arms moved so precisely and mechanically you could almost believe that they were part of the machines. In fact, they seemed as lifeless as the animatronic elves Frankie had seen in the grotto. As the machines whirred and throbbed, the children moved in synch, staring straight ahead of them with eyes like blown lightbulbs. Frankie shrank back in alarm. The lanes between the children’s workbenches were patrolled by wardens with swivelling eyes, each of whom carried a mean-looking rod that would snap down on tired little fingers the moment they paused for rest.

  ‘Good grief,’ Frankie whispered, lost for words.

  Frankie’s gaze travelled to the edge of the factory. All along the walls were what looked like enormous spinning hamster wheels. At first Frankie couldn’t work out what he was seeing. Or maybe he just couldn’t believe it. Each wheel was powered by a child running round and round as fast as they could go, sweat pouring down their foreheads.

  ‘What on earth are those?’ whispered Frankie.

  ‘Those are the Wheels,’ Wes replied. ‘They power the machinery. Dr Gore invented them.’

  ‘No kidding,’ said Neet, grimly remembering Dr Gore’s days as a classroom pet. ‘I guess it is some kind of revenge.’

  Frankie shook his head in dismay. The whole scene reminded him of some books he had read about the lives of children many, many years ago, long before Alphonsine was born. Back in those days children used to be sent down mines and would spend all day in the dark, on their hands and knees, scratching out lumps of coal. Or they would be made to work in factories like this one, stitching, stamping or weaving until the joints in their fingers ached and their brains turned to slop. Frankie didn’t think that such a thing could be allowed to happen any more. But Dr Gore was capable of anything.

  Neet saw that one production line was packaging Mechanimal schoolbags like the one she had picked out for Frankie.

  ‘Look!’ she whispered. ‘Mechanimal schoolbags! That’s where we found your note, Wes.’ Wes nodded.

  ‘I must have sent hundreds of them,’ he said. ‘We’ve all been trying to get messages to the outside, but nobody responded until now. I guess everyone was too excited by their new toys to notice. It’s so lucky you recognised my writing, Neet, because . . . because if you hadn’t . . .’ Wesley’s voice tailed off and his eyes darkened momentarily as if a shadow had passed behind them,

  ‘OK, Wes,’ said Frankie. ‘We need to get you out of here.’ Wes looked worried.

  ‘I can’t go by myself,’ he whispered anxiously. ‘What about everybody else? We can’t leave them here!’

  ‘We’ll come back for them, Wes, don’t you worry,’ said Neet, putting her arm around his thin shoulders. ‘But we can only take one person with us tonight. There’s not enough room for more.’

  Frankie nodded in agreement. ‘And you’re the only one who can stop Dr Gore.’

  As they clambered back on to the roof, Frankie and Neet told Wes everything. They told him about the Mechanimals and Crispin Whittle’s workshop and Project Wishlist. By the time they had finished, Wes looked as white as a goose.

  ‘So what you’re saying is . . .’ he gulped, ‘Dr Gore has already won. He’s turned everyone into zombies.’

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ Frankie replied. ‘We can find a way to reverse the process. I’m sure we can. But we need your help, Wes. You’re the only one who knows about computers and digital stuff.’ Wes couldn’t suppress a proud smile. Yes indeed, he knew a lot about computers and digital stuff. He listened carefully as Frankie told him about the mind-sweepers and the computer laboratory at Marvella’s headquarters where they turned children’s brains into billboards.

  ‘OK,’ said Wes, ‘I think we can do it.’

  Inky clouds had blotted out the moon and stars. The friends climbed on to the flying-machine and prepared themselves for take-off. Wes hopped into the remaining saddle and put his feet in the stirrups. But even with Wes’s extra pedal-power, with no one to push them they would have to work extra hard to lift themselves up off the edge of the roof and over the wire-topped walls. Frankie touched his ankle. The blood had dried, but he didn’t fancy taking any risks. On the count of three Frankie pumped his legs round and round as fast as he could while Neet held a steady course. As they sped towards the edge of the roof the wings began to move up and down and up and down. Then, as if the machine were as light as a feather, it lifted gracefully off the ground.

  ‘We’re getting better at this!’ cried Neet.

  But at that moment, Frankie suddenly felt his feet jam and the machine jerk. Somebody had grabbed on to the back. Frankie glanced down and saw a pair of round blue eyes blinking up at him in terror. It was Timmy.

  ‘Let go, Timmy!’ Frankie yelled as the flying-machine lurched and dived like a dozy duck. ‘We’ll come back for you later! For all of you!’ But it was too late. They were already way up high in the air. If Timmy let go now he’d end up splattered like a raspberry ripple on the ground below. Timmy’s fingers clutched and clawed at the back of the saddle.

  ‘Oooooeeeeeee!’ he yelled, as he was flung left and right and shaken about like an old duster. Neet struggled to control the machine while Frankie pedalled so hard he thought his legs might never stop. As the machine ducked and plunged, Wes turned himself around and grabbed on to Timmy’s wrists.

  ‘Quick!’ Wes called in panic. ‘He’s slipping!’ Wes was right. Timmy’s hands were so damp with sweat they were fast losing their grip.

  ‘Heeeeeeeelp!’ Timmy squealed, his eyes widening in fear. ‘Heeeeeeelp meeeeeeee!’

  Frankie squeezed his eyes tight as Timmy’s dangling legs just missed the barbed wire mesh. They were over, but the danger had not yet passed. Frankie could feel the gear-box straining like a carthorse. Then suddenly, there was an ear-splitting crack just above his head. He looked up to see one of the fragile wings tear off and go spinning down to the ground, where it broke into a dozen mangled pieces. Neet tried desperately to wrestle back control but the machine was spinning and screeching like a cat in a dryer. Frankie could no longer tell which way was up and which way was down. As they hurtled through the cold night air, the whole world seemed to blur into speeding, multicoloured stripes. Neet shouted something at the top of her voice, then Frankie heard a terrific shattering sound as if somebody had broken a dinner plate on his head.

  After that . . .

  . . . nothing . . .

  .
. . blackout . . .

  . . . silence.

  The next feeling Frankie was aware of was a cold, mossy smell in his nostrils. He opened one bleary eye and swivelled it slowly around. It was still night time. His face was pressed up against some wet bark and his limbs were dangling in space.

  ‘Euuuurgh!’ he grumbled, rubbing his sore head. ‘Where am I?’

  He glanced downwards and his stomach clenched like a fist. He was high above the ground, caught in the branches of a sycamore tree. From where he was lying, he could just about see the remains of the flying-machine scattered far below. Frankie took a deep breath and focussed his eyes on the branch in front of him. As his head began to steady, he remembered the terrifying descent. ‘Where are the others?’ he gasped.

  He sat up straight and looked up through the branches, searching for his friends. He soon spotted Neet and Wes, who were perching on a higher branch, rubbing their heads and inspecting their bruises.

  ‘You OK?’ Frankie shouted up to them.

  ‘Just about,’ Neet replied. ‘Where’s Timmy?’

  Frankie looked around, but couldn’t see a trace of him. Then, just as he was suspecting the worst, he heard a soft snivelling coming from behind a cluster of leaves. Frankie pushed the branches aside. There was Timmy, dangling upside-down, suspended by a single shoelace that had become caught in the branches.

  ‘Stay still, Timmy,’ said Frankie, worried that the shoelace might snap. But Timmy was far too upset to listen.

  ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry, Frankie . . .’ he burbled. ‘I’m sorry everyone.’

  ‘You almost got us killed!’ Neet shouted down crossly. Large blue tears spilled from Timmy’s eyes. But these ones weren’t phoney.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I had to get out of there. I’m sorry for everything.’