Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

It took the cube an age to float by, and Turnball counted three doors on the side.

Three doors. My cell has a single door. Why does Koboi need a cell so big that it has three doors?

It didn’t matter. He would be out of here soon enough and then he could treat himself like royalty.

Leonor and I shall return to the island where we first met so dramatically.

As soon as the intersection was clear, Vishby led them on toward their shuttle bay. Through the clear plastic, Turnball noticed crowds of civilians walking briskly but without apparent panic toward their own rescue pods. On the upper levels, groups of Atlantis’s more affluent citizens strolled to private evacuation shuttles that probably cost more than Turnball could steal in a week.

Ruffles are back in, Turnball noted with some pleasure. I knew it.

The corridor opened out into a loading bay, where groups of prisoners were waiting impatiently by air locks that opened directly on to the sea.

“This is all so unnecessary,” said Vishby. “The water cannons are going to blast this probe thing to smithereens.

We’ll all be back here in a few minutes.” Not all of us, thought Turnball, not bothering to conceal a smile. Some of us are never coming back.

And he knew in that instant that it was true. Even if his plan failed, he was never coming back here. One way or another, Turnball Root would be free.

Vishby beeped the shuttle door with his keys, and the manacled prisoners filed inside. Once they were seated, Vishby activated carnival-ride-style safety bars, which also acted as very effective restraints. The convicts were pinned to their seats, still cuffed. Totally helpless.

“You got ’em, Fishby?” asked the Cro-Magnon pixie.

“Yes, I got ’em. And the name’s Vishby!”

Turnball smirked. Office bullying; another reason he had been able to turn Vishby so easily.

“That’s what I said, Frisbee. Now, why don’t you pilot this bucket out of here and let me keep watch on these scary convicts?”

Vishby bristled. “Just you wait a minute. .”

Turnball Root did not have time for a showdown. “That’s an excellent idea, Mr. Vishby. You put that pilot’s licence to good use and let your colleague here watch over us scary convicts.”

Vishby touched his neck. “Sure. Why not? I should get us out of here like I’m supposed to.”

“Exactly. You know it makes sense.”

“Go on, Fishboy,” scoffed the big guard, whose name tag had been altered to read k-max. “Do what the convict tells you.”

Vishby sat at the controls and ran a brisk prelaunch, whistling softly through his gills to shut out K-Max’s jibes.

This K-Max fellow doesn’t realize how much trouble he’s in, thought Turnball, the idea pleasing him tremendously. He felt empowered.

“Excuse me, Mr. K-Max, is it?”

K-Max squinted in what he thought was a threatening fashion, but the actual effect was to make him seem shortsighted and perhaps constipated. “That’s right, prisoner. K to the Max. The king of maximum security.”

“Oh, I see. A sobriquet. How romantic of you.”

K-Max twirled his buzz baton. “There ain’t nothing romantic about me, Root. You ask my three ex-wives. I am here to cause discomfort and that is all.”

“Oops,” said Turnball playfully. “Sorry I spoke.”

This little exchange gave Vishby a chance to get the shuttle out of the dock and one of the shuttle’s other occupants a moment to orientate himself and realize that his old leader was about to make his move. In fact, of the twelve rough-and-ready specimens locked down behind the shuttle’s security bars, ten had served under Turnball at one time or another, and most had done very nicely by it, until their capture. Once Vishby had been reactivated, he had easily ensured that these prisoners were allocated seats.

It will be nice for the captain to have friends around him in a time of crisis, he reasoned.

The most important friend was the sprite Unix B’lob, who sat directly across the vulcanized walkway from Turnball. Unix was a grounded sprite with cauterized nubs where his wings should be. Turnball had dragged Unix out of a troll pit, and the sprite had served as his right-hand fairy ever since. He was the best kind of lieutenant, as he never questioned orders. Unix did not justify or prioritize: he was equally prepared to die fetching Turnball a coffee as he was stealing a nuclear warhead.

Turnball winked at his subordinate to let him know that today was the day. Unix did not react, but then he rarely did, icy indifference being his attitude toward pretty much everything.

Cheer up, Unix, old man, Turnball longed to call. Death and mayhem will shortly follow.

But he had to content himself with the wink for the moment.

Vishby was nervous, and it showed. The shuttle sputtered forward in lurchy hops, scraping a fender along the docking jetty.

“Nice going, Vishby,” snarled K-Max. “Are you trying to crush us before the probe does it?”

Vishby flushed, and gripped the rudder stick so tightly his knuckles glowed green.

“It’s okay. I’ve got it now. No problems.”

The shuttle edged from the shelter of the massive curved fins that funneled the worst of the underwater currents away from the dome, and Turnball enjoyed the receding view of new Atlantis. The cityscape was a murky jumble of traditional spires and minarets alongside more modern glass-and-steel pyramids. Hundreds of slatted filter pods sat at the corners of the giant polymer pentagons that slotted together to form the protective dome over Atlantis.

If the probe hit a filter pod, the dome could go, thought Turnball; and then, Oh, look, they used schoolchildren’s designs to decorate the fins. How fun.

Out they went, past the water cannons, which were erect in their cradles, just waiting for coordinates.

Farewell, my probe, thought Turnball. You have served me well and I shall miss you.

A flotilla fled the threatened city: pleasure craft and city shuttles, troop carriers and prisoner transporters, all flitting toward the ten-mile marker where the brainiacs assured them the shock wave would dissipate to the merest ripple. And though the flight seemed chaotic, it was not. Each and every craft had a marker to dock with at the ten-mile circle.

Vishby was growing in confidence and quickly navigated the gloomy depths toward their marker, only to find that a giant squid had latched on to the pulsing buoy, pecking at its glowing beacon.

The water elf turned the shuttle’s exhaust on the creature, and it scooted off in a flurry of rippling tentacles. Vishby let the auto-dock take over, lowering the shuttle onto its magnetic docking buoy.

K-Max laughed scornfully. “You shouldn’t shoot at your cousins, Fishboy. You won’t get invited to family functions.”

Vishby pounded the dash. “I have had enough of you!”

“Me too,” said Turnball, and reached out, casually pinching K-Max’s buzz baton from his belt. He could have shocked the jumbo sprite immediately, but he wanted him to realize what was going on. It took a while.

“Hey,” said K-Max. “What are you-? You just took my. .” And then the lightbulb moment. “You aren’t cuffed.”

“What a bright boy,” said Turnball, and thrust the buzz baton into K-Max’s gut, sending ten thousand volts crackling through the pixie’s body. The guard jittered on point like a possessed classical dancer, then collapsed in a boneless-looking heap.

“You shocked my fellow officer,” said Vishby dully, “which should upset me, but I am okay with it, more than okay, actually, even though you can’t tell by my tone of voice.”

Turnball shot Unix another wink that said, Watch your genius boss at work.

“You don’t need to feel anything, Mr. Vishby. All you need to do is release bars three and six.”

“Just three and six? Don’t you want to release all your friends? You have been lonely for so long, Turnball.”

Bars three and six popped up, and Turnball rose, luxuriously stretching his legs, as though he had been