failure?’
‘No,’ admitted Foaly.
‘And just how unlikely is it?’
‘About one chance in ten million,’ said the technical adviser miserably.
Sool picked his way around the keyboard. ‘If you don’t have the stomach for it, centaur, I’ll do it myself.’ He entered his password and then detonated the incinerator in Holly’s helmet. On a rooftop in Munich, Holly’s helmet dissolved in a pool of acid. And, in theory, so did Holly’s body.
‘There,’ said Sool, satisfied. ‘She’s gone, and now we can all sleep a little easier.’
Not me, thought Foaly, staring forlornly at the screen. It will be a very long time before I sleep easy again.
TEMPLE BAR, DUBLIN, IRELAND
Artemis Fowl woke from a sleep haunted by nightmares. In his dreams, strange, red-eyed creatures had ripped open his chest with scimitar tusks and dined on his heart.
He sat up in an undersized cot, both hands flying to his chest. His shirt was caked in dried blood, but there was no wound. Artemis took several deep, shuddering breaths, pumping oxygen through his brain. ‘Assess the situation,’ Butler always told him. ‘If you find yourself in unfamiliar territory, become familiar with it before opening your mouth.
Ten seconds of observation could save your life.’
Artemis looked around, his eyelids fluttering like camera shutters. Absorbing every detail. He was in a small boxroom, about three metres square. One wall was completely transparent and appeared to look out over the Dublin quays. From the position of the Millennium Bridge, the room had to be somewhere in the Temple Bar area. The chamber itself was constructed from a strange material: some kind of silver-grey fabric — rigid, but malleable — with several plasma screens on the opaque walls. It was all extremely high-tech but seemed to be years old, and almost abandoned.
In the corner, a girl sat, hunched, on a folding chair. She cradled her head in both hands, her shoulders twitching gently with sobs.
Artemis cleared his throat. ‘Why are you crying, girl?’
The girl jerked upright, and it became immediately obvious that this was no normal girl. In fact, she appeared to belong to a totally different species.
‘Pointed ears,’ Artemis noted, with surprising composure. ‘Prosthetic or real?’
Holly almost smiled through her tears. ‘Typical Artemis Fowl. Always looking for options. My ears are very real, as you well know… knew.’
Artemis was silent for several moments, processing the wealth of information in those few sentences.
‘Real pointed ears? Then you are of another species, not human. Possibly a fairy?’
Holly nodded. ‘I am a fairy. Actually an elf. I’m what you would call a leprechaun too, but that’s just a job.’
‘And fairies speak English, do they?’
‘We speak all languages. The gift of tongues, it is part of our magic’
Artemis knew that these revelations should send his world spinning on its axis, but he found himself accepting her every word. It was as though he had always suspected the existence of fairies, and this was simply confirmation. Although, strangely, he could not remember ever having even thought about fairies before this day.
‘And you claim to know me? Personally, or from some kind of surveillance? You certainly seem to have the technology.’
‘We’ve known you for a few years now, Artemis. You made first contact, and we’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.’
Artemis was slightly startled, ‘I made first contact?’
‘Yes. December, two years ago. You kidnapped me.’
‘Is this your revenge? That explosive device? My ribs?’ A horrible thought struck the Irish boy. ‘And what about Butler? Is he dead?’
Holly did her best to answer all these questions. ‘It is revenge, but not mine. And Butler is alive. I just had to get you out of there before another attempt was made on your life.’
‘So we’re friends now?’
Holly shrugged. ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
All this was slightly confusing. Even for a genius. Artemis crossed his legs in the lotus position, resting his temples against pointed fingers.
‘You had better tell me everything,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘From the beginning.
And leave nothing out.’
So Holly did. She told Artemis how he had kidnapped her, then released her at the last moment. She told him how they had journeyed to the Arctic to rescue his father, and how they had foiled a goblin rebellion bankrolled by Opal Koboi. She recounted in great detail their mission to Chicago to steal back the C Cube, a supercomputer constructed by Artemis from pirated fairy technology. Finally, in a small, quiet voice, she told of Commander Root’s death and Opal Koboi’s mysterious plot to bring the fairy and human worlds together.
Artemis sat perfectly still, absorbing hundreds of incredible facts. His brow was slightly creased, as if the information were difficult to digest. Finally, when his brain had organized the data, he opened his eyes.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember any of this, but I believe you. I accept that we humans have fairy neighbours below the planet’s surface.’
‘Just like that?’
Artemis’s lip curled. ‘Hardly. I have taken your story and cross-referenced it with the facts as I know them. The only other scenario which could explain everything that has happened, up to and including your own bizarre appearance, is a convoluted conspiracy theory involving the Russian Mafiya and a crack team of plastic surgeons.
Hardly likely. But your fairy story fits, right down to something that you could not know about, Captain Short.’
‘Which is?’
‘After my alleged mind wipe, I discovered mirrored contact lenses in my own eyes and in Butler’s. Investigation revealed that I myself had ordered the lenses, though I had no memory of the fact. I suspect that I ordered them to cheat your mesmer.’
Holly nodded. It made sense. Fairies had the power to mesmerize humans, but eye contact was part of the trick, coupled with a mesmeric voice. Mirrored contact lenses would leave the subject completely in control, while still pretending to be under the mesmer.
‘The only reason for this would be if I had planted a trigger somewhere.
Something that would cause my fairy memories to come rushing back. But what?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Holly. ‘I was hoping that just seeing me would tripper recall.’
Artemis smiled in a very annoying way. As one would to a small child who had just suggested that the moon was made of cheese.
‘No, Captain. I would guess that your Mister Foaly’s mind-wiping technology is an advanced version of the rnemory-suppressant drugs being experimented with by various governments. The brain, you see, is a complex instrument; if it can be convinced that something did not happen, it will invent all kinds of scenarios to maintain that illusion. Nothing can change its mind, so to speak. Even if the conscious accepts something, the mind wipe will have convinced the subconscious otherwise. So, no matter how convincing you are, you cannot convert my altered subconscious. My subconscious probably believes that you are a hallucination or a miniature spy. No, the only way my memories could be returned to me would be if my subconscious could not present a reasonable argument — say if the one person whom I trust completely presented me with irrefutable evidence.’
Holly felt herself growing annoyed. Artemis could get under her skin like nobody else. A child who treated everyone else like children.
‘And who is this one person whom you trust?’
Artemis smiled genuinely for the first time since Munich. ‘Why, myself, of course.’
