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Chapter 5: Onward And Outward

The Deeps Maximum Security Prison, Atlantis; Now

Turnball Root took his entertainment wherever he could get it. Maximum security prisons didn’t tend to be brimming with fun and flighty distractions. The guards were gruff and unobliging. The beds were unyielding and not enjoyable to bounce on, and the color scheme was simply ghastly. Olive green throughout. Disgusting. In surroundings like this, one had to enjoy every modicum of light relief that came one’s way.

For months after his arrest by his brother, Commander Julius Root, and that naive, straight-arrow Holly Short, Turnball had simply fumed. He had actually spent weeks on end pacing his cell, bouncing his hatred off the walls. Sometimes he ranted, and occasionally he threw fits, smashing his furniture to smithereens. He realized eventually that the only person he was hurting with these displays was himself. This point had been driven home when he’d developed an ulcer, and because he had long since forfeited his magic through abuse and neglect, he had been forced to call in a medical warlock to put his organs right. The young whelp didn’t seem much older than Turnball’s prison uniform and had been extremely patronizing. Called him grandpa. Grandpa! Didn’t they remember, these whelps? Who he was? What he had accomplished?

I am Turnball Root, he would have thundered, had the healing not totally sapped his strength. Captain Turnball Root, nemesis of the LEP. I stripped every ingot of gold from the First Pixie Prudential Bank. I was the one who rigged the Centenary Crunchball Final. How dare you refer to me as grandpa!

“Youngsters today, Leonor,” muttered Turnball to his absent, beloved wife. “No respect.” Then he shuddered as he considered this statement.

“Ye gods, darling. I do sound old.”

And using phrases like ye gods wasn’t helping any.

Once he’d had enough of self-pity, Turnball had decided to make the best of the situation.

My chance will come eventually to be with you again, Leonor. Until then, why not make myself as comfortable as possible?

It hadn’t been too difficult. After months of incarceration, Turnball had opened a dialogue with the warden, Tarpon Vinyáya, a malleable university graduate who had never washed blood from under his manicured nails, and had offered Tarpon tidbits of information to send to his sister Raine in the LEP in return for some harmless comforts. It hadn’t bothered Turnball a whit to sell out his old underworld contacts, and for his trouble he was allowed to wear whatever he liked. He chose his old LEP dress uniform, complete with ruffled shirt and three-corner hat, but without insignias. Betraying two visa forgers working out of Cuba got him a computer limited to the prison network. And the address of a rogue dwarf operating as a house breaker in Los Angeles got him a sim-down quilt for his plank of a bed. The warden would not be moved on the bed, however. Something for which his sister would one day pay the price.

Turnball had often passed many a happy hour thinking how he would one day kill the warden in revenge for this slight. But, truth be told, Turnball was not too concerned about the fate of Tarpon Vinyáya. He was far more interested in securing his own freedom, in looking deep into his wife’s eyes once more. And to achieve these goals, Turnball would have to play the soft, doddery reprobate for a while longer. He had been toadying up to the warden for more than six years now; what did a few more days matter?

Then I will be transformed into my true self, he thought, squeezing his fingers into tight fists. And this time, my baby brother won’t be around to apprehend me, unless that young rascal Artemis Fowl has come up with a way to bring the dead back to life.

The door to Turnball’s cell fizzled and dissolved as a nuclear-powered charge precipitated a phase change. In the doorway stood Mr. Vishby, Turnball’s regular guard for the past four years and the one that he had finally managed to turn. Turnball did not like Vishby, in fact he detested all Atlantean elves with their fishlike heads, slobbering gills, and thick tongues, but Vishby had the seeds of discontent in his heart, and so had unknowingly become Turnball’s slave. Turnball was prepared to tolerate anybody who could help him escape from this prison before it was too late.

Before I lose you, my darling.

“Ah, Mr. Vishby,” he gushed, rising from his nonregulation office chair (three mackerel-smuggling sprites). “You’re looking well. That gill rot is really clearing up.” Vishby’s hand flew to the triple stripes below his tiny left ear.

“Do you think so, Turnball?” he gurgled, his voice thick and labored. “Leeta says she can’t stand to look at me.” I know how Leeta feels, thought Turnball, and: There was a day when I would have had you flogged for addressing me by my first name. Captain Root, if you please.

Instead of voicing these less than complimentary thoughts, he took Vishby by his slick elbow with barely a flinch of revulsion. “Leeta does not know how lucky she is,” he said smoothly. “You, my friend, are a catch.” Vishby did not try to conceal his flinch. “A c-catch?”

Turnball drew a sharp, guilty breath. “Ah yes, excuse me, Vishby. Atlantean water elves do not like to think of themselves as catches, or being caught, for that matter. What I meant to say was that you are a fine specimen of an elf and any female in her right mind would consider herself fortunate indeed to have you as a mate.” “Thanks, Turnball,” muttered Vishby, mollified. “How’s it been going, then? The plan?” Turnball squeezed the water elf’s elbow to remind him that there were eyes and ears everywhere.

“Oh, my plan to construct a model of the Nostremius aquanaut? That plan? It’s going rather well. Warden Tarpon Vinyáya is being most cooperative. We’re negotiating over glue.” He led Vishby to his computer screen. “Let me show you my latest blueprint, and can I say how much I appreciate your taking an interest? My rehabilitation depends on interaction with decent individuals like yourself.” “Uh . . . okay,” said Vishby, uncertain whether or not he had just been complimented.

Turnball Root waved his hand in front of the screen, awakening a V-board on the desk (real wood: identity thieves, Nigeria).

“Here, look. I’ve solved the problem with the ballast tanks, see?”

Then with a smooth three-finger combination, he activated the scrambler that Vishby had smuggled in for him. The scrambler was an organic wafer, which had been grown in the Atlantis branch of the now defunct Koboi Labs. The scrambler was a reject lifted from the trash, which had merely needed a dab of silicon to get it operational.

There is so much waste in industry, Turnball had sighed to Vishby. Is it any wonder we’re in the middle of a resource crisis?

The tiny scrambler was vital to Turnball because it made everything else possible. Without it he would have no link to the off-site computer; without it, the authorities here in the Deeps would be able to record every stroke of his keyboard and see exactly what he was really working on.

Turnball tapped the screen. It was split into two sections. One showed a recording from a few hours ago: an arena packed with mesmerized humans crawling all over each other. The second a real-time bot’s-eye view of a burning shuttle craft on an icy tundra.

“One tank is gone and the other is an indulgence, so I will outsource rather than waste any more time on it.” “Good thinking,” said Vishby, who for the first time was beginning to understand that land dwellers’ phrase in over one’s head.

Turnball Root rested his chin on one hand in the fashion of an elderly actor posing for his headshot. “Yes, Mr. Vishby. Very soon now my model shall be complete. Already one of the major parts is on its way down here, and when that arrives, there won’t be a fairy left in Atlantis . . . Eh, that is, there won’t be a fairy left undazzled by my model.” It was a feeble cover-up, he knew. Was undazzled even a word? But no need for panic, as nobody watched him anymore. They hadn’t for years. He was no longer seen as a threat. The world in general had forgotten the disgraced Captain Turnball Root. Those who knew him now found it difficult to believe that this shabby old-timer could really be as dangerous as his file said he was.

It’s Opal Koboi this, and Opal Koboi that, Turnball often thought bitterly. Well, we’ll see who breaks out of this place first.

Turnball banished the screen with a click of his fingers. “Onward and outward, Vishby. Onward and outward.” Vishby smiled suddenly, which with sea elves was accompanied by a slurping noise as they pulled their tongue back to make way for teeth. In fact, smiling was an unnatural expression for sea elves, and they only did it to let others know how they were feeling.

“Oh, good news, Turnball. I got my pilot’s license back finally after the Mulch Diggums escape.” “Good for you, sir.”

Vishby had been one of Mulch Diggums’s escorts when he escaped from the LEP. All sub-shuttle crew were required to hold a pilot’s qualification, in case the primary pilot became incapacitated.

“Just for emergency trips. But in a year or two I’ll be back in rotation.” “Well, much as I know how you long to pilot a submarine again, let’s hope there are no emergency evacuations, eh?” Vishby approximated a wink, which was difficult, as he didn’t have any eyelids and would have to give himself a spray soon to wash off the accumulated grit on his lower lid. His version of a wink was to tilt his head jauntily to one side.

“Emergency evacuations. No, we wouldn’t want that.”

Eye grit, thought Turnball. Disgusting. And: This fish boy is about as subtle as a steamroller with a siren on top. I’d better change the subject in case someone does happen to glance at the security monitors. It would be just my luck.

“So, Mr. Vishby. No mail for me today, I assume?”

“Nope. No mail for the umpteenth day in a row.”

Turnball rubbed his hands in the manner of one with urgent business. “Well, then. I must not keep you from your duties, and I myself have some modeling to do. I impose a schedule on myself, you see, and that must be adhered to.” “Right you are, Turnball,” said Vishby, who had long since forgotten that he should be the one doing the dismissing, not the other way around. “Just wanted to let you know I had my license back. Because that was in my schedule.” Turnball’s smile never wavered, and he kept it bright by promising himself that he would dispose of this fool the second he was no longer of any use.

“Good. Thanks for coming by.”

Vishby was almost fully through the hatch before he turned to drop another clanger.

“Here’s hoping we don’t have an emergency evacuation, eh, Captain Root?” Turnball moaned internally.

Captain. Now he calls me Captain.

Vatnajökull; Now

The new guy, Orion Fowl, was checking his hosiery.

“No compression socks,” he declared. “I have been on several plane journeys over the past few weeks, yet Artemis never wears compression socks. And I know he is aware of deep-vein thrombosis; he simply chooses to ignore the risks.” This was Orion’s second rant in as many minutes, the last one detailing Artemis’s use of nonhypoallergenic deodorant, and Holly was growing tired of listening.

“I could sedate you,” she said brightly, as if this were the most reasonable course of action. “We slap a pad on your neck and leave you at the restaurant for the humans. End of hosiery discussion.” Orion smiled kindly. “You wouldn’t do that, Captain Short. I could freeze to death before help arrived. I am an innocent. Also, you have feelings for me.” “An innocent!” spluttered Holly, and it took an especially outlandish statement to make her splutter. “You are Artemis Fowl! For years, you were public enemy number one.” “I am not Artemis Fowl,” protested Orion. “I share his body and his knowledge of the Gnommish tongue, among other things, but I have a completely different personality. I am what is known as an alter ego.” Holly snorted. “I don’t think that defense will stand up in front of a tribunal.” “Oh, it does,” said Orion happily. “All the time.”

Holly wormed up the slide of wafer slop to the lip of the crater in which the small band sheltered.

“No signs of hostiles. They appear to have descended into the underground craters.” “Appear?” said Foaly. “Can’t you be a little more specific?”

Holly shook her head. “No. I’m on eyes only. All our instruments are out. We have no link outside our own local network. I would guess that the probe is blocking communications.” Foaly was busy grooming himself, peeling long strings of gluey nano-wafers from his flank. “It’s designed to emit a broad-spectrum jammer if it’s under attack, knocking out communications and weapons. I’m surprised Artemis’s cannon fired, and I would imagine your guns have been isolated by now, and shut down.” Holly checked her Neutrino. Dead as a doornail. There was nothing on her helmet readout either except a slowly revolving red skull icon, which signaled catastrophic systems failure.

“D’Arvit,” she hissed. “No weapons, no communications. How are we supposed to stop this thing?” The centaur shrugged. “It’s a probe, not a battleship. It should be easy enough to destroy once radar picks it up. If this is some mastermind’s plot to destroy the fairy world, then he’s not much of a mastermind.” Orion raised a finger. “I feel I should point out, correct me if Artemis is misremembering, but didn’t your instruments dismally fail to pick up this probe in the first place?” Foaly scowled. “I was just starting to like you a little better than the other one.” Holly stood erect. “We need to follow the probe. Work out where it’s going and somehow get word through to Haven.” Orion smiled. “You know, Miss Holly, you look very dramatic like that, backlit by the fire. Very attractive, if I may say so. I know you shared a moment passionné with Artemis, which he subsequently fouled up with his typical boorish behavior. Let me just throw something out there for you to consider while we’re chasing the probe: I share Artemis’s passion but not his boorishness. No pressure; just think about it.” This was enough to elicit a deafening moment of silence even in the middle of a crisis, which Orion seemed to be blissfully unaffected by.

Foaly was the first to speak. “What’s that look you have on your face there, Commander Short? What’s going through your head right now? Don’t think about it, just tell me.” Holly ignored him, but that didn’t stop the centaur talking.

“You had a moment of passion with Artemis Fowl?” he said. “I don’t remember reading that in your report.” Holly may have been blushing, or it may have been the aforementioned dramatic backlighting. “It wasn’t in my report, okay? Because there was no moment of passion.” Foaly didn’t give up so easily. “So nothing happened, Holly?”

“Nothing worth talking about. When we went back in time, my emotions got a little jumbled. It was temporary, okay? Can we please focus? We are supposed to be professionals.” “Not me,” said Orion cheerily. “I’m just a teenager with hormones running wild. And may I say, young fairy lady, they’re running wild in your direction.” Holly lifted her visor and looked the hormonal teen-ager in the eye. “This had better not be a game, Artemis. If you do not have some serious psychosis, you will be sorry.” “Oh, I’m crazy, all right. I do have plenty of psychoses,” said Orion cheerily. “Multiple personality, delusional dementia, OCD. I’ve got them all, but most of all, I’m crazy about you.” “That’s not a bad line,” muttered Foaly. “He is definitely not Artemis.” Holly stamped the slush from her boots. “We have two objectives: first, we need to hide evidence of fairy technology, i.e. the shuttle, from curious humans until such time as we can send a LEPretrieval team to haul it below. And our second objective is to somehow stay on the tail of that probe and get a message through to Police Plaza that it’s up here.” She glanced sharply at Foaly. “Could this be a simple malfunction?” “No,” said the centaur with absolute certainty. “And I say that with absolute certainty. That probe has been deliberately reprogrammed, the amorphobots too. They were never meant to be used as weapons.” “Then we have an enemy. Police Plaza needs to be warned.”

Holly turned to Orion. “Well, any ideas?”

The boy’s eyebrows rose a notch. “Bivouac?”

Holly rubbed the spot on her forehead where a headache had just blossomed.

“Bivouac. Fabulous.”

From behind came a sudden wrenching noise as the shuttle sank a little lower in the ice like a defeated warrior.

“You know,” mused Foaly, “that ship is pretty heavy and the rock shelf there is not very—” Before he could finish, the entire shuttle disappeared into the landscape, taking the restaurant with it, as though both had been swallowed by a subterranean kraken.

Seconds later, Artemis’s Ice Cube nano-wafer cannon tumbled into the newborn chasm.

“That was incredibly quiet,” said Orion. “If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have known.” “This terrain is like dwarf cheese. Full of holes,” said Holly, then she was up and gone, racing across the ice toward the new crater.

Orion and Foaly took their time strolling across the glacier, chatting amiably.

“On the plus side,” said Foaly, “there’s our first objective achieved. The evidence is gone.” Orion nodded, then asked, “Dwarf cheese?”

“Cheese made by dwarfs.”

“Oh,” said Orion, relieved. “They make it. It’s not actually . . .”

“No. What a horrible thought.”

“Exactly.”

The hole in the surface of the ice revealed a cavernous underworld. A subterranean river pulsed along, tearing shreds from what was left of the Great Skua restaurant. The water was deep blue and moving with such power that it almost seemed alive. Great chunks of ice, some the size of elephants, sheared away from the banks, tumbled against the current, and then submitted to its will, gathering speed until they struck the building, pulverizing what was left. The only sound was one of raging water; the building seemed to surrender without a whimper.

The shuttle had become impaled on an ice ridge below a slight bank in the underground river. An ice bank that could not survive the pounding waters for long. The craft was stripped down by the brute force of nature until only a small section remained, an obsidian arrowhead jammed point down into the ice and rock.

“The shuttle’s escape pod,” shouted Holly. “Of course.”

Objective two, staying on the probe’s tail, was now actually possible. If they could board the pod, and if the pod still had any power in it, they would be able to follow the probe and try to get a message to LEP headquarters.

Holly tried to scan the small craft with her helmet, but her beams were still blocked.

She turned to the centaur. “Foaly? What do you think?”

Foaly did not need her question explained. There was only one thing to think about: the escape pod wedged into the ice below them.

“Those things are damn near indestructible and built to hold the entire crew in a pinch. Also, the power source is a solid fuel block, so there aren’t many moving parts to go wrong. All the usual modes of communication are on board, plus a good old-fashioned radio, which our secret enemy might not have thought to block, though considering he thought to phase the probe’s shield to repulse our own sensors, I doubt there’s much he didn’t think of.” Holly lay down and wiggled forward until her torso hung over the rim, spray from the subterranean river painting a sheen on her visor.

“So that’s our way out, if we can make it down.”

Foaly clopped his front hooves. “We don’t all have to make it down. Some of us are a tad less nimble than others, those with hooves for example. You could hop on down there, then fly the pod back up to collect the rest of us.” “That makes perfect sense,” said Orion. “But I should be the one to go. Chivalry demands that I take the risk.” Foaly scowled. “Come on, Holly. Please sedate this deluded idiot.”

Orion cleared his throat. “You are not being very sensitive to my illness, centaur.” Holly seriously considered the sedation, then shook her head. “Artemis . . . Orion is right. One of us should go.” Holly unraveled a piton cord from the reel on her belt, quickly wrapping it around one of the exposed steel rods in the restaurant’s foundations.

“What are you doing?” asked Orion.

Holly strode briskly to the hole. “What you were going to do in about five seconds’ time.” “Haven’t you read the classics?” shouted Orion. “I should go.”

“That’s right,” she said. “You should go.” And she hopped into the underground cavern.

Orion made an animalistic noise, if the animal were a tiger having its tail tied in a knot, and he actually stamped his foot.

“Wow,” said Foaly. “Foot stamping. You are really angry.”

“It would seem so,” said Orion, peering over the edge.

“Generally, the foot stamping is on the other foot, as you are usually the one driving Holly crazy. The other you.” “I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Orion, calming somewhat. “I can be insufferable.” The youth lay flat on the ice.

“You’re on a good line, Holly,” he said, almost to himself. “You should definitely miss that big wall of ice.” “I doubt it,” grunted Foaly, and, as it turned out, the centaur was right.

Captain Short went down faster than she would have liked, which was totally due to equipment malfunction. If the reel at her belt had not been damaged during the recent amorphobot attack, then it would have automatically slowed her descent, and Holly could have avoided the impact that was surely to come. As it was, she was more or less falling at full G with nothing to lessen her impact other than a slight tension from the piton line.

A thought flashed through Holly’s mind even faster than the ice could flash past her head.

I hope nothing breaks; I have no magic left to fix it.

Then she crashed into the ice wall with her knees and elbows. It was harder than rock and sharper than glass, cutting her uniform as though it were paper. Cold and pain jittered along her limbs, and there was a cracking noise, but it was surface ice and not bones.

The wall sloped gradually to the bank of the underground glacier runoff river, and Holly Short slid down helplessly, tumbling end over end, landing feetfirst through sheer luck. The final gasp of air huffed from her lungs as the shock of impact traveled along her legs. She prayed for a spark of magic, but nothing came to take away the pain.

Get a move on, soldier, she told herself, imagining Julius Root giving the order.

She scrambled across the ice bank, seeing her own distorted reflection in the ice stare wild-eyed back at her, like a desperate swimmer trapped under a skating pond.

Look at that face. I could use a day in a sludge-immersion tank, she thought.

Usually the idea of spending time in a relaxation spa would horrify Holly, but today it seemed a most attractive prospect.

Regeneration sludge and cucumber eye pads. Lovely.

No point dreaming about it now, though. There was work to be done.

Holly scrambled to the escape pod. The river rushed past, pounding the fuselage, hammering cracks in the ice.

I hate the cold. I really hate it.

Mist rose in freezing clouds from the water, draping a spectral blue tent over the massive stalactites.

Spectral blue tent? thought Holly. Maybe I should write a poem. I wonder what rhymes with crushed?

Holly kicked at the ice clustered at the pod’s base, clearing the hatch, thankful that the doorway wasn’t completely submerged, as, without her Neutrino, she would have no way to clear it.

The captain channeled all the day’s frustrations into the next few minutes of furious kicking. Holly stamped on that ice as though it had somehow been responsible for blowing up the shuttle, as though its crystals were somehow to blame for the probe’s attack. Whatever the source of Holly’s strength, her efforts bore fruit, and soon the hatch’s outline was visible beneath a transparent sheath of mashed ice.

A voice floated down from above. “Helloooo. Holly. Are you okay?”

There was another phrase at the end. Muffled. Could this Orion person have called her fair lady again? Holly fervently hoped not.

“I . . . am . . . fine!” she grunted, each word punctuated with another blow to the shell of ice.

“Try not to become too stressed,” said the echoing voice. “Do a few breathing exercises.” Unreal, thought Holly. This guy has lived in the back of Artemis’s head for so long that he has no idea how to handle the actual world.

She wormed her fingers into the recessed handle grip, flicking away tenacious clots of ice blocking the handle. The hatch was purely mechanical, so there was no problem with jammers, but that did not necessarily hold for the pod’s controls. The rogue probe could theoretically have fried the pod’s guidance systems just as easily as it had taken out their communications.

Holly planted a boot on the hull and hauled the hatch open. A deluge of pink disinfectant gel poured out, pooling around her second boot, and quickly evaporated to mist.

Disinfectant gel. In case whatever destroyed the shuttle had been bacterial.

She poked her head inside, and the motion sensors heated a couple of phosphorescent plates on the roof panels.

Good. Emergency power, at least.

The escape pod was totally inverted, pointed straight down to the center of the earth. The interior was Spartan and made with soldiers in mind, not passengers.

Orion is going to love this, she thought, strapping herself into the pilot’s harness. There were six separate belts in the harness, as this ship had little in the way of gyroscopes or suspension.

Maybe I can shake Artemis out of his own brain. We can count up to five together.

She flexed her fingers, then allowed them to hover above the control panel.

Nothing happened. No activation, no sudden heads-up controls. No icon asking her for a start code.

Stone Age it is, thought Holly, and leaned forward to the limits of her harness, reaching underneath the console for a good old-fashioned steering wheel and manual propulsion controls.

She pressed the ignition plunger, and the engine coughed.

Come on. I have things to do.

One more press and the escape pod’s pitiful engine caught and turned over, irregular as a dying man’s breathing, but it turned over nevertheless.

Thank you.

Holly thought this just before jets of black smoke blurted through the vents into the cabin, making her splutter.

There’s some damage, but we should be okay.

Holly cranked open the for’ard porthole and was alarmed by the view that was suddenly revealed. She had expected to see the blue waters of a subterranean river splashing across the transparent polymer, but instead she saw an abyss. The pod had punched into a vast underground cavern that seemed to run right through the glacier in a dizzyingly sheer drop toward the bedrock below. Rippling walls of ice stretched below her, illuminated by the distant flickering blue lights of the probe’s engines as it made its way into the depths of the cavern.

There it is. Heading down.

Holly hit the thaw button for the fuel block and tapped her fingers impatiently while it heated up.

“What I need now,” she muttered to herself, “is reverse. And quickly.” But reverse did not come soon enough. The glacier river worked its tendrils into the ice ridge supporting the escape pod, and quickly stripped it away. For a moment the probe hung suspended, then it dropped through the hole and fell powerless straight down.

A couple of minutes earlier, the boy who wore Artemis Fowl’s face had been standing on the surface, peering down at Holly Short. Appreciating her labors and admiring her form.

“She’s a feisty one, n’est-ce pas? Look at her battling the elements.” Foaly clopped to his side. “Come on, Artemis. You can’t kid me. What are you up to?” Orion’s face was smooth. On him, Artemis’s features seemed open and trustworthy. This was a neat trick, as, on Artemis, these same features seemed conniving and almost sinister, some would say sneaky. Indeed, one music teacher did use this term in Artemis’s school report, which was quite an unprofessional thing to do, but in fairness, Artemis had rewired the man’s keyboard so that it would only play “Jingle Bells” no matter what keys were pressed.

“I am not up to anything,” said Orion. “I am alive and I am here. That is all. I have Artemis’s memories but not his disposition. I believe that I owe my sudden appearance to what fairies would call an Atlantis Complex.” Foaly wagged a finger. “Nice try, but Atlantis Complex generally manifests itself through compulsion and delusion.” “Stage two.”

Foaly took a moment to consult his near-photographic memory.

“Atlantis Complex stage two can result in the subject displaying signs of several completely different and distinct personalities.” “And?” prompted Orion.

“Stage two can be initiated by either or both mental trauma or physical shock, typically electrocution.” “Holly shot me. So there we go.”

Foaly scraped the snow with a hoof. “That’s the problem with beings of our intellect. We can argue our points of view all day without either gaining a significant advantage. That’s what happens when you’re a genius.” The centaur smiled. “Look, I scraped an F for Foaly.” “That is excellent work,” said Orion. “Such straight lines. That takes hoof control.” “I know,” said Foaly. “It’s a real talent, but there’s no forum for this kind of expression.” Foaly was well aware that he was babbling about hoof drawings in order to distract himself from the current situation. He had often assisted Holly through one crisis or another. But he had rarely been in the field to actually witness these crises occurring.

The video logs never really capture the emotion, he thought. I am scared out of my wits right now, but no helmet-cam footage can convey that.

It scared Foaly that someone had managed to hack his space probe and reprogram the amorphobots. It scared him that this person had no regard for life—fairy, human, or animal. And it totally terrified him that if, gods forbid, Holly was injured or worse, then it would be up to him and this simpering alternate Fowl personality to warn Haven, and he hadn’t the first idea how he was qualified for this job, unless the talents of smart-aleckry and rapid V-board manipulation were somehow called for. Artemis would know what to do, but apparently Artemis wasn’t at home right now.

Foaly realized with a jolt that the current situation was quite close to being his own worst nightmare, especially if it eventually led to Caballine shaving him. Control was very important to Foaly, and here he was stuck on a glacier with a damaged human, watching their only hope of salvation fighting an underground river.

His current worst nightmare was suddenly relegated to second place as the escape pod, with Holly inside it, was suddenly swallowed whole by the ice. Loose chunks tumbled quickly to fill the hole, and before Foaly had time to gasp in shock, it was as if the craft had never been there.

Foaly sank to his fore-knees. “Holly!” he called desperately. “Holly.” Orion was equally distraught. “Oh, Captain Short. There was so much I wanted to tell you, about how we feel, Artemis and I. You were so young, with so much left to give.” Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. “Oh, Artemis, poor foolish, Artemis. You had so much and did not know it.” Foaly felt hollowed out by sudden, wrenching grief. Holly was gone. Their last best chance of warning Haven. How could he hope to succeed aided only by a mooning Mud Boy who began every second sentence with the word “Oh”?

“Shut up, Orion! Shut up. A person is gone. A real person.” The ice was hard beneath Foaly’s knees, and made their situation seem more desperate.

“I don’t have much experience with real people,” admitted Orion, slumping beside the centaur. “Or feelings that translate to the world. But I think I am sad now. And lonely. We have lost a friend.” These were words from the heart, and Foaly felt he had to be sympathetic. “Okay. It’s not your fault. We have both lost someone special.” Orion sniffed. “Good. Then, worthy centaur, perhaps you could give me a ride to the village on your back. Then I can make a few pennies with my verses while you build us a shack and perform circus tricks for passersby.” This was such a surprising statement that Foaly briefly considered jumping into the hole to get away.

“This isn’t Middle Earth, you know. We’re not in a novel. I am not noble, neither do I have a repertoire of circus tricks.” Orion seemed disappointed. “Can you juggle at least?”

Orion’s idiocy was just what Foaly needed to shake him temporarily from his grief. He jumped to his feet and stomped in a circle around Orion.

“What are you? Who are you? I thought you shared Artemis’s memories. How can you be so stupid?” Orion was unperturbed. “I share everything. Memories and movies are as real as each other to me. You, Peter Pan, the Loch Ness Monster, me. It’s all real, maybe.” Foaly rubbed his forehead. “We are in so much trouble. Gods help us.” Orion brightened. “I have an idea.”

“Yes?” said Foaly, daring to hope that a spark of Artemis remained.

“Why don’t we look for some magic stones that can grant wishes? Or, if that doesn’t work, you could search my naked body for some mysterious birthmark that means I am actually the prince of somewhere or other.” “Okay,” sighed Foaly. “Why don’t you get started on the stones thing, and I’ll scrape some magical runes in the snow.” Orion clapped his hands sharply. “Excellent notion, noble creature.” And he began kicking over stones to see if any of them were magical.

The complex is progressing, realized Foaly. He wasn’t this deluded only minutes ago. The more desperate the situation becomes the further from reality he gets. If we can’t get Artemis back soon, he will be gone forever.

“I found one!” Orion shouted suddenly. “A magic stone!” He bent to examine his discovery. “No. Wait. It’s a shellfish of some kind.” He smiled apologetically at Foaly. “I saw it scuttling and so I assumed . . .” Foaly thought a thought he had thought he would never think.

I would prefer to be with Mulch Diggums.

This notion caused him to shudder.

Orion yelped loudly and scuttled backward. “I found it. Really, this time. Look, Foaly. Look!” Foaly looked, in spite of himself, and was amazed to see that a stone actually did seem to be dancing.

“That’s not possible,” he said, and wondered, Is he somehow sucking me into his delusion?

Orion was jubilant. “Everything is real. I am abroad in the world.”

The stone flipped high into the air, spinning off across the frozen lake. Where it had been, the black hull of the escape pod punctured the ice. It rose and rose above a bass rumbling of engines that set the ice plates vibrating themselves to pieces.

It took Foaly a moment to realize what was happening, but then he too was jubilant.

“Holly!” he called. “You made it. You didn’t leave us.”

The escape pod lurched to the surface, then toppled on its side. The for’ard porthole was winched open, and Holly’s face appeared in the frame. She was pale and bleeding from a dozen minor cuts, but her eyes were bright and determined.

“Took a while for the fuel block to dissolve,” she explained over the engine noise. “Get inside, both of you, and buckle up. We have to catch that fire-breathing monster.” This was a simple order, and both Foaly and Orion could obey without their realities clashing.

Holly is alive, thought Foaly.

My princess lives, exulted Orion. And we’re chasing a dragon.

“Foaly,” he called after the centaur. “I really think we should search for my secret birthmark. Dragons love that sort of thing.” Artemis Fowl’s Brain; Now

Artemis was not gone completely. He was confined to a small virtual room in his own brain. The room was similar to his Fowl Manor office, but there were no screens on the situations wall. In fact, there was no wall. Where his selection of gas screens and digital televisions had been mounted, there now floated a window into his body’s reality. He could see what the fool Orion saw, and hear the ridiculous sentences dripping from his own mouth, but he could not control the actions of the romantic nincompoop who seemed to be in the driver’s seat, to use a motorcar reference that Butler and Holly would appreciate.

In Artemis’s room there was a desk and a chair. He wore one of his lightweight Zegna bespoke suits. He could see the weave of threads on his arm and feel the material’s weight as though it were real, but Artemis knew all these things were illusions constructed by his mind to put some order on the chaos in his brain.

He sat upon the chair.

In front of Artemis, on what he had decided to call his mind-screen, events played out in the real world. He winced as the usurper, Orion, rolled out his clumsy charm.

He will utterly destroy my relationship with Holly, he thought.

Now he appeared to be treating Foaly like some kind of mythical pet.

Orion was right about one thing: he was in the second stage of Atlantis Complex, a mental illness he had brought on himself through a combination of reckless dabblings in fairy magic and feelings of guilt.

I brought the guilt on myself too, exposing my mother to Opal Koboi.

Artemis realized suddenly that while he was trapped in his own mind, numbers held no sway over him. Neither did he feel any compulsion to rearrange the objects on his desk.

I am free.

A metaphorical weight lifted from his allegorical chest, and Artemis Fowl felt himself again. Vital, sharp, focused, for the first time in months. Ideas fluttered from his mind like bats from the mouth of a cave.

So much to do. So many projects. Butler . . . I need to find him.

Artemis felt energized and potent. He surged from his chair toward the mind-screen. He would push his way through, force his way out, and send this Orion character back to where he came from. Next on his to-do list would be to apologize to Foaly and Holly for his rudeness and then get to the bottom of this space-probe hijack. His Ice Cube had been torn to pieces by the subterranean river, but it could be rebuilt. In months the project could be operational.

And when the glaciers were safe, perhaps he would submit to a little regression therapy from one of the People’s less flamboyant psychotherapists. Certainly not that Cumulus fellow who had his own talk show.

When Artemis reached the screen, he found it to be less solid than it had first appeared. In fact, it was deep and gloopy, reminding Artemis of the plasma conduit he had crawled through at Opal Koboi’s lab all those years ago. Nevertheless, he forged ahead and soon found himself submerged in a cold, viscous gel that pushed him backward with floppy fingers.

“I will not be deterred,” shouted Artemis, finding that he could shout inside the mind-screen. “I am needed in the wide world.” And then.

Deterred? Wide world? I am beginning to sound like that idiot Orion.

This thought gave him strength, and he tore at the curtains of gunk that kept him a prisoner. It felt good being active and positive. Artemis felt like the Fowl heir of old. Unstoppable.

Then he spotted something in the air before him. Bright and fizzling like a Halloween sparkler. There were more, dozens, all around him, sinking slowly through the gel.

What were they? What could those things mean?

I made them, thought Artemis. I should know.

A moment later he did know. The fizzling sparklers were actually tiny golden numbers. All the same number. All fours.

Death.

Artemis recoiled, but then rallied.

No. I will not be a slave. I refuse.

A tiny number four grazed his elbow, sending a shock through his entire body.

This is a memory, nothing more. My mind is reconstructing the plasma conduit. None of this is real.

But the shocks felt real. Once the tiny fours realized that he was there, they gathered like a shoal of malignant fish, herding Artemis back to the safety of his office.

He fell backward to the floor, panting.

I need to try again, he thought.

But not yet. The fours seemed to watch him, matching his movements.

Five, thought Artemis. I need five to stay alive. I will try again soon. Soon.

Artemis felt a weight settle on his chest that seemed too heavy to be just his imagination.

I will try soon. Hold on, my friends.