by Eoin Colfer
The Fowls were kidnapping a fairy!
An LEP operative’s first responsibility was to protect life, prioritizing fairy life, and so now Lazuli was duty bound and morally obliged to rescue the toy troll.
The prospect both terrified and thrilled her.
The first thing to do was inform her angel of the developing situation, even though radio silence was protocol during exercises.
“Specialist Heitz to Haven. Priority-one transmission…”
If anyone was on the other end of that transmission, they would have been left curious, because at that moment dozens of flares were launched from the house, and Specialist Heitz was forced to take evasive action to avoid being clipped. She had barely gotten her rig under control when there came a rumbling series of booms and Lazuli felt a wave of crackles pass through her body. The crackles were not particularly painful, but they did have the effect of shorting out her communicator along with every circuit and sensor in her shimmer suit. Lazuli watched in horror as her own limbs speckled into view.
“Oh…” she said, then fell out of the sky.
Not all the way down, fortunately, as Specialist Heitz’s suit launched its backup operational system, which ran like clockwork, because it was clockwork: a complicated hub of sealed gears and cogs ingeniously interlinked in a series of planetary epicyclic mechanisms that fed directly into a motor in Lazuli’s wing mounts.
Lazuli felt the legs of her jumpsuit stiffen and instinctively began to pedal before she hit earth like an injured bird. The gears were phenomenally efficient, with barely a joule of energy loss thanks to the sealed hub, and so Specialist Heitz was able to reclaim her previous altitude with a steady midair pedal. But she was still quite plainly in the visible spectrum, looking for all the world like she was riding an invisible unicycle.
Though Lazuli’s spine had not been compacted by a high-speed impact with Dalkey Island, she still had the problem of how to effectively engage a sniper when she was operating under pedal power. If Lazuli attempted to approach the sniper, he could take potshots at his leisure.
Visibility was the problem.
So become invisible, Heitz.
But how to become invisible without any magic or even an operational shimmer suit?
There was a way, but it was neither foolproof nor field-tested, though it had been tried in somewhat raucous conditions, those being the communal area of the cadets’ locker room—inside lockers 28 and 29, to be precise. Lazuli knew this because she had witnessed the bullying, and lost ten grade points for repeating the experiment on the bully.
Lazuli reached into one of the myriad pockets in her suit and drew out a pressurized pod of chromophoric camouflage filaments held together by reinforced spider silk. The Filabuster, as it was known by LEP operatives, was rarely deployed, and in fact was due to be removed from duty kits in the next few months because of the unpredictability of its range, but now it was the only weapon in Lazuli’s arsenal that was actually of any use, as it had no electronic parts and came pre-primed.
The Filabuster operated on the same system that certain plants employ to disperse their seeds. The fibers inside the dried egg pulled against each other to create tension, and when the silken cowl was ruptured, the reflective filaments exploded with considerable force, creating a visual distortion that could provide enough cover to cause momentary confusion.
But I need more than momentary confusion, Lazuli thought. I need to be invisible.
Which was where the locker-room antics came in. When a hulking demon cadet had forced a tiny pixie into his own locker and then tossed in an armed Filabuster, the pixie had emerged coated in filaments and practically invisible, and also, it turned out later, battered and bruised.
Perhaps this is not a good idea, thought Lazuli; then she pulled the spider silk ripcord before she could change her mind. Now there were approximately ten seconds before the silk surrendered to the internal pressure and exploded in a dense fountain of chromophoric filaments that would adjust to the region’s dominant color, which ought to be the blue-black of the early evening Irish Sea.
“D’Arvit,” swore Lazuli in Gnommish, knowing that this experience was going to be, at the very least, quite unpleasant. “D’Arvit.”
But what were a few cuts and bruises in the face of a troll’s life?
Specialist Heitz hugged the Filabuster close to her body and went to her happy place, which was the cubicle apartment she’d recently rented on Booshka that she shared with one single plant and absolutely no people.
“See you soon, Fern,” she said, and then the Filabuster exploded with approximately ten times more force than the locker model.
The sensation was more kinetic than Specialist Heitz had anticipated, and she instantly had more respect for the locker pixie who’d borne the torment without complaint. Lazuli felt as though she had been dropped into a nest of extremely irritable wasps that were not overly fond of hybrid fairies. The filaments clawed at every inch of her suit, more than a few managing to wiggle inside and tear her skin. This laceration was accompanied by a tremendous concussive force, which sent pedaling to the bottom of Lazuli’s list of priorities and sent the pixel herself tumbling to earth, with only the drag of doubledex wings to slow her down.
As she fell, Lazuli had the presence of mind to notice a ragged shroud of Filabuster filaments assemble around the small island, rendering it invisible to anyone outside the field.
Good, she thought. If I survive the fall, the camouflage filaments should hang around long enough to facilitate a toy-troll rescue.
Though perhaps her thoughts were not so lucid. Perhaps they were more as follows: Aaaargh! Sky! Rescue! D’Arvit!
Whichever the case, Specialist Heitz was correct: If she survived—which was a gargantuan if for a fairy without magic—then the Filabuster drape should afford her time to rescue the toy troll.
And it would have afforded her time if left undisturbed. Unfortunately, mere moments later, an army helicopter thundered over Sorrento Point, the downdraft from its rotors scattering the Filabuster curtain to the four winds. And just as suddenly as Dalkey Island had disappeared, it returned to view.
Specialist Lazuli Heitz hit the earth hard. Technically she did not hit the earth itself, but something perched on top of it. Something soft and slimy that popped like Bubble Wrap as she sank through its layers.
Lazuli could have no way of knowing that her life had been saved by Myles Fowl’s seaweed fermentation silo. She plowed her way through several slick levels before coming to a stop in the bottom third of the giant barrel, and in the moment before the seaweed covered her entirely, she watched the lead helicopter hover above and noticed a black-clad figure standing right out on the landing skid, her skirt flapping in the rotor-generated wind.
Is that what the humans call a ninja? Lazuli wondered, trying to remember her human studies. But ninja was not the right word. What had come after ninja on the human occupations chart?
Not a ninja, she realized. It’s a nun.
Then the seaweed slid over Lazuli’s small frame, and, because the universe likes its little jokes, this felt almost exactly the same as being submerged in a brass tub of eels.
INSIDE Villa Éco’s safe room, Myles and Beckett Fowl were experiencing a shared emotion—that emotion being confusion. Confusion was nothing new to either boy, but this was the first occasion on which they had felt it simultaneously.
To explain: As the twins were so dissimilar in everything except for physiognomy, it was not unusual for the actions of the one to confound the mind of the other. Myles had lost count of how many times Beckett’s attempted conversations with wildlife had bewildered his logical brain, and Beckett, for his part, was flummoxed on an hourly basis by his brother’s scientific lectures.
So, generally, one twin was lucid while the other was confused, but on this occasion, they were mystified as a unit.
“What’s happening, Myles?” asked Beckett.
Myles did not answer the question, reluc
tant to admit that he couldn’t quite fathom what exactly was going on.
“Just a moment, brother,” he said. “I am processing.”
Myles was indeed processing, almost as quickly as the safe room’s processors were processing. NANNI’s gel incarnation may have been a puddle on the floor, but the AI itself was safe inside Villa Éco’s protected systems and was now replaying footage from a network of cameras slung underneath a weather balloon. These cameras were outside the Faraday cage and, unfortunately, had succumbed to the EMP, but before then they had managed to transmit the video to the Fowl server. NANNI had zeroed in on two points of interest. First, the AI located a dissipating bullet vapor trace and followed it back to the mainland to find that there was a camouflaged sniper there, a hirsute chap with an antique Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle, which would be over eighty years old, if NANNI was correct.
“There’s the culprit,” she said from a wall speaker. “A sneaky sniper near the harbor.”
This was not the source of Myles’s confusion, as the sonic boom had to have come from somewhere, and after all, the Fowl family had many enemies from the bad old days. The fact that one enemy would employ an antique weapon could relate back to some decades-old vendetta having to do with any number of the twins’ ancestors, most probably Artemis Senior, who had once attempted to muscle in on the Russian mafia’s Murmansk market. This sniper might simply be on a revenge mission, and what better way to hurt the father than to target the sons?
The second point of interest, and the cause of Myles’s bewilderment, was another, much smaller figure that had been captured by one camera. The tiny creature had appeared out of thin air, pedaled to keep herself aloft, and then plummeted into the seaweed silo.
Beckett’s confusion was more general in nature, but he did have one question as the brothers reviewed the balloon footage. “A pedaling fairy,” he said. “But where’s her bicycle?”
Myles was not inclined to answer but was inclined to disagree. “There’s no bicycle, brother mine,” he snapped. “And I do not happen to believe in fairies or wizards or demigods or vampires. This is either photo manipulation or interference from a satellite system.”
He rewound the footage and froze the figure in the sky, stepping closer for a decent squint.
“Magnify,” he told his spectacles, which Myles had augmented with various lenses pillaged from his big brother’s sealed laboratory. Artemis had set a twenty-two-digit security code on his door that he did not realize Myles had suggested to him subliminally by whispering into his ear every night for a week as he slept. To add further insult, the numbers Myles had chosen could be decoded using a simple letter-to-number cipher to spell out the Latin phrase Stultus Diana Ephesiorum, which translated to Diana is stupid, Diana being the Roman version of the Greek goddess Artemis, for whom Artemis had been named. It was a very complicated and time-consuming prank, which, in Myles’s opinion, was the best kind.
“Yes,” said Beckett. “Magnify.”
And the blond twin accomplished his magnification simply by taking a step closer to the screen, which, in truth, was both more efficient and cost-effective.
Myles studied the suspended creature. It seemed clear that there was, at the very least, a possibility it was not human.
Beckett jabbed the wall screen with his finger, daubing it with whatever gunk was coating his hand at the time.
“Myles, that’s a fairy on an invisible heli-bike. I am one million percent sure.”
“There is no such animal as a heli-bike and you can’t have a million percent, Beck,” said Myles absently. “Anyway, how can you be so sure?”
“Remember Artemis’s stories?” asked Beckett. “He told us all about the fairies.”
This was true. Their older brother had often tucked in the twins with stories of the Fairy People who lived deep in the earth. The tales always ended with the same lines:
The fairies dig deep and they endure, but if ever they need to breathe fresh air or gaze upon the moon, they know that we will keep their secrets, for the Fowls have ever been friends to the People. Fowl and fairy, fairy and Fowl, as it is now and will ever be.
“Those were stories,” said Myles. “How can you be certain there is a drop of truth to them?”
“I just am,” said Beckett, which was an often-employed phrase guaranteed to drive Myles into paroxysms of indignant rage.
“You just are? You just are?” he squeaked. “That is not a valid argument.”
“Your voice is squeaky,” Beckett pointed out. “Like a little piggie.”
“That is because I am enraged,” said Myles. “I am enraged because you are presenting your opinion as fact, brother. How is one supposed to unravel this mystery when you insist on babbling inanities?”
Beckett reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a piece of gummy candy.
“Here,” he said, wiggling the worm at Myles as though it were alive. “This gummy is red and you need red, because your face is too white.”
“My face is white because my fight-or-flight response has been activated,” said Myles, glad to have something he was in a position to explain. “Red blood cells have been shunted to my limbs in case I need to either do battle or flee.”
“That is soooo interesting,” said Beckett, winking at his brother to nail home the sarcasm.
“So the last thing I shall do is eat that gummy worm,” declared Myles. “One of us has to be a grown-up eleven-year-old, and that one will be me, as usual. So, whatever I do in the immediate future, gummy-eating will not be a part of it. Do you understand me, brother?”
By which time Myles had actually popped the worm in his mouth and was sucking it noisily.
He had always been a sucker when it came to gummy candy. In this case, he was a sucker for the gummy he was sucking.
Beckett gave him a few seconds to unwind, then asked, “Better?”
“Yes,” admitted Myles. “Much better.”
For, although he was a certified genius, Myles was also anxious by nature and tended to stress over the least little thing.
Beckett smiled. “Good, because a squeaky genius is a stupid genius. I dreamed that one time.”
“That is a crude but accurate statement, Beck,” said Myles. “When a person’s vocal register rises more than an octave, it is usually a result of panic, and panic leads to a certain rashness of behavior untypical of that individual.”
But Myles was more or less talking to himself at this point, because Beckett had wandered away, as he often did during his twin’s lectures, and was peering through the safe room’s panoramic periscope’s eyepiece.
“That’s nice, Myles. But you’d better stop explaining things I don’t care about.”
“And why is that?” asked Myles a little crossly.
“Because,” said Beckett. “Helicopter.”
“I know, Beck,” said Myles, softening. “Helicopter.”
It was true that Beckett didn’t seem to either know or care about very many things, but there were certain subjects he was most informed about—insects being one of those subjects. Trumpets was another. And also, helicopters. Beckett loved helicopters. In times of stress he sometimes mentioned favorite items, but there was little significance to his helicopter references unless he added the model number.
“Helicopter,” insisted Beckett, making room for his brother at the mechanical periscope. “Army model AgustaWestland AW139.”
Time to pay attention, thought Myles.
Myles propped his spectacles on his forehead and studied the periscope view briefly for visual confirmation that there was, in fact, a helicopter cresting the mainland ridge. The chopper bore Irish Army markings and therefore would not need warrants to land on the island, if that were the army’s intention.
And I cannot and will not fire on an Irish army helicopter, Myles thought, even though it seemed inevitable that the army was about to place the twins in some form of custody. For most people this knowledge would be a source of great com
fort, but, historically, incarceration did not end well for members of the Fowl family, and so Father had always advised Myles to take certain precautions should arrest or even protective custody seem inevitable.
Give yourself a way out, son, Artemis Senior had said. You’re a twin, remember?
Myles always took what his father said seriously, and so he regularly updated his Ways Out of Incarceration folder.
This calls for a classic, he thought, and said to his brother, “Beck, I need to tell you something.”
“Is it story time?” asked Beckett brightly.
“Yes,” said Myles. “That’s precisely it. Story time.”
“Is it one of Artemis’s? The Arctic Incident or The Eternity Code?”
Myles shook his head. “No, brother, this is a very important story, so you will need to concentrate. Can you achieve a high level of focus?”
Beckett was dubious, for Myles often declared things to be important when he himself regarded them as peripheral at best.
For example, some of the many things Myles considered important:
1. Science
2. Inventing
3. Literature
4. The world economy
And things Beckett considered hugely important, if not vital:
1. Gloop
2. Talking to animals
3. Peanut butter
4. Expelling wind, however necessary, before bed
Rarely did these lists overlap.
“Is this important to me, or just big brainy Myles?” Beckett asked with considerable suspicion. This was a most exciting day, and it would be just like Myles to ruin it with common sense.
“Both of us, I promise.”
“Wrist-bump promise?” said Beckett.
“Wrist-bump promise,” said Myles, holding up the heel of his hand.
They bumped and Beckett, satisfied that a wrist-bump promise could never be broken, plonked himself down on the giant beanbag.
“Before I tell you the story,” said Myles, “we must become human transports for some very special passengers.”
“What passengers?” asked Beckett. “They must be teeny-tiny if we’re going to be the transports.”