CHAPTER 16

Tabatha studied the scanner, and the blip flashing on its screen. Smithy and Denzel drew closer together, their eyes darting around the corridor.

“What kind of ghost is it?” Smithy whispered. “Is it a mean one?”

“I don’t know,” said Tabatha.

“Is it a big ghost?” Smithy asked.

Tabatha held up the scanner for them to see. “Again, I don’t know. It’s a flashing red dot.”

Smithy gave a little squeak of fear. “That’s the worst kind of ghost of all!”

Denzel shot him a sideways look. “No, the ghost isn’t a flashing red dot. Just the reading on the scanner.”

“Phew!” said Smithy, visibly relaxing. “That’s fine then. You had me worried for a minute.”

Tabatha handed Denzel the scanner, then turned silently on her heel and held her cane as if it were a rifle. “Lead the way,” she urged. “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”

Denzel wasn’t keen on leading the way, but he did it anyway. The blip on the scanner moved gradually down towards the bottom of the screen as he shuffled along the corridor.

There was a set of double doors ahead and on the right. Judging by the rate at which the blip was moving down the screen, and the distance to the door, Denzel worked out that the ghost must be somewhere in the room beyond.

He pointed to the doors and they all crept closer, Tabatha drawing level with him so they were now walking side by side. Smithy, not wanting to be at the back on his own, squeezed into the gap between them.

“This is cosy, innit?” he whispered, only to be shushed by both of them.

There was a little plastic plaque on the door with some Japanese writing on it. Denzel had no idea what it said, and fired a hopeful look in Tabatha’s direction. “Can you translate that?”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Great!” said Denzel.

“If you give me forty minutes and a Japanese-to-English dictionary.”

“Oh,” said Denzel a little less enthusiastically.

“Vulteron Vehicle Storage,” said Smithy.

Denzel and Tabatha both turned their heads and looked down at him. “What?” Denzel asked.

Smithy nodded to the sign. “Vulteron Vehicle Storage,” he said. “Or maybe Vulteron Garage. You could read it either way.”

“You speak Japanese?” Denzel gasped.

“What? No! Of course not!” Smithy laughed. He gave another nod to the sign. “I only read and write it.”

“How? When? Why?” asked Denzel. “You’ve never mentioned it before.”

“Why would I?” Smithy asked. “I’ve never mentioned a lot of things before. I can yodel too. I’ve never mentioned that before either.”

To prove this, he drew in a breath and launched into some genuinely impressive yodelling, which was only cut short by Tabatha clamping a hand over his mouth. “Great. Well done. Now, shut up. Ghost through there, remember?”

Denzel consulted the screen. The red dot had suddenly started moving upwards again.

“It’s on the move! It must’ve heard us,” he announced.

“Probably your footsteps,” said Smithy, as Tabatha tore her hand from his mouth. “I didn’t want to say, but you thump around like your shoes are filled with cement.”

“It wasn’t my footsteps, it was your—”

Before Denzel could finish the sentence, Tabatha grabbed him and dragged him through the door. Sure enough, they emerged into a large, garage-like room lined with dozens of high-tech vehicles.

They were, Denzel thought, some of the sleekest, coolest-looking machines he’d ever seen, and would have been even more so were it not for the fact that most of them were on fire.

“There!” said Tabatha, pointing ahead with her cane. A flowing white figure was dodging through the flaming wreckage, zigzagging across the garage towards a ramp that led to a large roll-up door. Symbols had been etched into the metal, presumably to stop any ghosts from phasing through it.

“Are we sure that’s even a ghost?” asked Denzel, as Tabatha set off in pursuit. He and Smithy stumbled along behind her, trying to keep up. “It looks like someone in a white sheet!”

“Scanner says it’s a ghost,” Tabatha reminded him. “But it doesn’t matter. Ghost or not, it’s our only lead. If we want to find out what’s going on, we need to catch it.”

She raised her cane and bellowed, “Stop!” The word bounced around inside the cavernous garage, but the fleeing figure didn’t slow.

A bolt of energy streaked from the end of Tabatha’s cane. It was a warning shot that sailed harmlessly above the maybe-ghost’s head and detonated against the far wall.

The figure weaved suddenly to the right, as if it had spotted some other exit in that direction. Then it scurried across to a row of motorbike-like vehicles that had been toppled over but not, as far as Denzel could tell from this distance, blown to pieces.

“It’s going for one of those bikes,” Tabatha cried.

Denzel wheezed as he stumbled along behind her. “It’s fine. All vehicles are locked down. You can’t just jump on and start one.”

The ghost jumped on one of the bikes, fiddled with some cables down under the handlebars and fired up the engine.

“Or maybe you can,” Denzel groaned.

Tyres screeching, the bike surged forwards and then skidded towards the ramp. The engine roared, powering it up the slope towards the roll-up door. It weaved from side to side, dodging a couple of Tabatha’s cane blasts.

“It can’t pass through it,” Denzel said. “Those are protection symbols. Ghosts can’t phase through anything with—”

There was a deafening bang as a missile was launched from the front of the bike and struck the door ahead, punching a hole straight through the metal.

“OK, that was actually pretty awesome,” said Tabatha. She made the same sudden right-hand turn as the ghost had and arrived at another of the bikes just as the first one went roaring through the hole in the door.

Grabbing the handlebars of another bike, she stood it up on its wheels. “Get on,” she urged, nodding to the seat.

“Who?” asked Smithy and Denzel at the same time. “Him or me?”

“Both of you. Denzel first. You’re driving.”

“I can’t drive!” Denzel protested. “I’m not old enough.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Tabatha.

“And I’ve never been on one of these things before!”

“Also doesn’t matter.”

“And I don’t know how to drive!”

“You’ll figure it out!” Tabatha barked. “The ghost is getting away. We need to move. Now.”

With a groan, Denzel swung his leg over the bike and slid himself towards the front. Something in the seat seemed to grip his bottom, and a series of metal clips locked in place over both legs, pinning them in place.

“I don’t like that much,” he grumbled.

“Budge up,” said Smithy, sliding on behind him. Nothing locked in place around his legs, so he wrapped his arms around Denzel and squeezed so hard Denzel’s eyes almost bulged out of his head.

“Not so tight,” Denzel spluttered.

Smithy relaxed just enough to allow Denzel to breathe. As he did, Tabatha hoisted up another bike beside them and jumped on. Just like the other ghost had done, she rummaged around under the handlebars and Denzel saw a series of sparks come from the ends of two exposed wires.

“I don’t know how to do that,” he pointed out.

“You don’t need to. You’re official,” Tabatha said. She let out a little whoop as her bike fired up, then twisted the throttle and gunned the engine. “Grab the handlebars.”

Denzel tentatively placed his hands on the bike’s handlebars. The rubber grip hummed against his skin for a moment, then a heads-up display appeared on the curved screen that stuck up from the bike’s front.

Some Japanese writing appeared, followed by his own name in English.

“It says you’re an authorised user,” Smithy said, then he and Denzel both yelped as Tabatha roared past them towards the ramp.

“Hurry up!” she urged. “Before it gets away!”

Denzel steeled himself. “OK. I can do this,” he said.

“You can do this!” Smithy confirmed.

Denzel swallowed. “Here goes.”

“You can totally do this!” Smithy cheered.

Denzel twisted the throttle. The bike shot backwards at quite a high speed. They both screamed, then let out a collective “Oof!” when they crashed into the wreckage of a tank-like thing in the row behind them.

“Other way,” said Smithy. “Go forward.”

“I’m trying to go forward!” Denzel explained. “But I don’t know—”

He twisted the controls in the opposite direction. The bike reared up on to its back wheel and lurched forwards in a series of screeching bunny hops.

“Like that, only faster,” suggested Smithy. “And use both wheels.”

Denzel didn’t waste his breath replying. Instead, he eased off on the throttle a little, leaned his weight to the front and brought the front wheel down with a thump. The bike crawled ahead slowly, wobbling like it was about to fall over.

“Maybe you should press that button,” said Smithy, pointing past him to a small yellow button on the dash. “It says ‘Ride Assist’.”

“I think I’m getting the hang of it,” Denzel replied.

Smithy looked around as they teetered slowly through the gap in the wreckage where they’d taken the bike from.

After a moment, he reached over and pressed the button.

The display was suddenly filled with streams and streams of Japanese writing, moving too fast for Smithy to be able to translate. For a fraction of a second, Denzel thought he saw the words “He is coming” written in English among all the other text, but then it was gone, and he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it.

As he was wondering about this, three other things happened.

A male Japanese voice began booming instructions from a speaker on the front of the bike. Neither boy knew what it was saying, so they both ignored it.

A jet of white-hot flame ignited at the back of the bike. This was harder to ignore, although the thing that happened a fraction of a second later took their mind off it.

The bike moved.

No. That wasn’t doing it justice.

The bike went from an almost standing start to what felt like several hundred miles per hour in the space of a couple of seconds. The saddle and leg straps held Denzel in place as the garage became a blur.

There was some screeching, some skidding and a distinct smell of burning rubber as the bike went roaring towards the ramp. It rocketed up the slope, before being launched like a projectile through the hole in the door.

Denzel and Smithy didn’t scream this time. Not because they weren’t scared, but because they were too scared to make a sound. They just stared in mute, bleary-eyed horror as the bike sailed through the air above the roofs of several cars, then smashed unceremoniously on to the other side of the road.

It stopped then, the engines chugging noisily, like it was getting its breath back. The boys both looked up and around them at towering city blocks with colourful neon frontages that stood out against the now fully dark night sky.

The neon signs on the buildings were like a rainbow across the darkness. The glowing reds, greens, oranges and blues shone down over an endless stream of late-night traffic. Taxis, mostly, although there were plenty of other vehicles clogging the streets too. Japanese writing was emblazoned across the signs, although quite what any of them said, Denzel had no idea.

Smithy inhaled deeply through his nose. “Ah,” he said a little wistfully. “Paris.”

And then the jet of flame erupted from the back of the bike again, a voice barked instructions from the dashboard and Denzel, Smithy and the motorcycle all went rocketing along the street.