Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

“Butler!” she called. “Brother! Are you under here?”

The top of her brother’s head appeared, smooth as a lollipop. Juliet knew immediately that her brother was alive because of the vein pulsing at his temple.

There was a chubby seminaked infant wrapped around Butler’s face and chewing on his thumb. Juliet dislodged the boy gently, noticing that he seemed very sweaty for a baby.

Butler drew a deep breath. “Thank you, sister. Not only did that child bite my thumb, but it tried to get a fist up one of my nostrils.”

The baby gurgled happily, wiped its fingers in Juliet’s ponytail, then crawled across the piles of humanity toward a crying lady who was waiting with open arms.

“I know you’re supposed to like babies,” said Juliet, huffing as she grabbed a banker type by his braces and sprung him from his perch on Butler’s shoulders, “but that guy stank and he was a biter.” She took a firm grip on a middle-aged lady whose blond hair had been sprayed till it shone like a buttercup. “Come on, missus. Get off my big brother.”

“Oh,” said the lady, eyelids fluttering as she tried to make sense of everything. “I was supposed to catch the bear. Or something like that. And I had popcorn, a large popcorn that I just paid for. Who’s going to compensate me for that?”

Juliet rolled the lady across the bellies of four identically dressed cowboys who all wore floyd’s stag night T- shirts under their rhinestoned waistcoats.

“This is ridiculous,” she grunted. “I am a glamorous young lady. I can’t be dealing with all this body odor and squidginess.”

There was indeed a lot of body odor and squidginess about, much of it related to Floyd and his stag night, which smelled like it had been going on for about two weeks.

This was confirmed when the cowboy wearing a floyd badge awoke from his stupor with the words: “Dang. I stink worse than a dead skunk wearing a suit of bananer skins.”

Bananer? thought Juliet.

Butler rolled his head, clearing space to breathe.

“We’ve been set up,” he said. “Have you made any enemies down here?”

Juliet felt sudden tears plop over her bottom lids. She had been so worried. So worried. Big brothers can only be indestructible for so long.

“You big galoot,” she said, sounding very Floyd-like. “For your information, I am fine. I saved you and everyone else.”

Butler elbowed himself gently from between two luchadores dressed in garish Lycra and leather masks.

“Time for patting yourself on the back later, sister.” He climbed from the tangle of limbs and stood tall in the center of the stage. “Do you see all of this?”

Juliet clambered along her brother’s frame and stood lightly on his shoulders, and then to show off she stepped with easy balance onto his head. One foot only, the other tucked behind her knee.

Now that she had a second to appreciate the enormity of what had happened, it took her breath away. A sea of confusion spread out all around them, groaning and twisting. Blood ran, bones cracked, and tears flowed. It was a disaster area. People pawed at their mobile phones for comfort, and sprinklers sent down a fine mist that dusted Juliet’s face.

“All this to kill us,” she breathed.

Butler held out his massive palms, and, as she had done so many times in the Fowl dojo, Juliet stepped onto her brother’s hands.

“Not just to kill us,” he said. “Two bolts from a Neutrino could have done that. This was entertainment for someone.”

Juliet somersaulted to the stage. “Entertainment for who?”

At the rear of the conference hall, a section of the stand collapsed, sending up a fresh round of shrieks and misery.

“I don’t know,” said the bodyguard grimly. “But whoever tried to kill us wanted Artemis unguarded. First I change into my own clothes, and then we find out who Artemis has annoyed this time.”

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 Vinyaya, 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 simdown 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 Vinyaya. 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