Spiro strode down the corridor, emboldened by his newfound technological friend and the thought of finally putting Phonetix out of business. The security elevator put up no more resistance to the Cube than a picket fence would to a tank, and soon Spiro and Co. were riding the eight floors down to the sunken laboratory.
“We’re going underground,” chortled Pex. “Down where the dinosaur bones are. Did you know that after a million billion years, dinosaur dung turns into diamonds?”
Usually a comment like that would have been a shooting offense, but Spiro was in a good mood.
“No, I didn’t know that, Pex. Maybe I should pay your wages in dung.”
Pex decided that it would be better for his finances if he just kept his mouth shut from then on.
The lab itself was protected by a thumbprint scanner. Not even gel. It was a simple matter for the Cube to scan the fingerprint on the plate, then project it back onto the sensor. There wasn’t even a key-code backup.
“Easy,” crowed Spiro. “I should have done this years ago.”
“A little credit would be nice,” said Foaly, unable to hide his pique. “After all, I did get us in here and disable the guards.”
Spiro held the box before him. “Not crushing you into scrap metal, Cube, is my way of saying thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” grumbled Foaly.
Arno Blunt checked the security-monitor bank. Throughout the facility, guards lay unconscious, one with half a ham sandwich stuffed in his mouth.
“I gotta admit it, Mr. Spiro. This is beautiful. Phonetix is even gonna have to foot the bill for the sleeping gas.”
Spiro glanced toward the ceiling. Several camera lights winked red in the shadows.
“Cube. Are we gonna have to raid the video room on our way out?”
“It ain’t gonna happen,” said Foaly, the method actor. “I wiped your patterns from the video.”
Artemis was suspended by the armpits between Pex and Chips.
“Traitor,” he muttered. “I gave you life, Cube. I am your creator.”
“Yeah, well maybe you made me too much like you, Fowl. Aurum Est Potestas. Gold Is Power. I’m just doing what you taught me.”
Spiro patted the cube fondly. “I love this guy. He’s like the brother I never had.”
“I thought you had a brother,” said Chips, puzzled, which was not unusual for him.
“Okay,” said Spiro. “He’s like a brother I actually like.”
The Phonetix server was located in the center of the lab, a monolithic hard drive with pythonlike cables rippling out to various workstations.
Spiro unclipped his new best friend from his belt. “Where do you need to be, Cube?” “Just pop me down on the lid of the server, and my mni-sensor will do the rest.” Spiro complied, and in seconds schematics were flickering across the C Cube’s tiny screen.
“I have them,” crowed Spiro, his hands two fists of triumph. “That’s the last snide e-mail with stock prices I get from these guys.”
“Download complete,” said Foaly smugly. “We have very Phonetix project for the next decade.” Spiro cradled the Cube against his chest. “Beautiful. I can launch our version of the Phonetix hone before they do, make myself a few extra million efore I release the Cube.” Arno’s attention was focused on the security monitors. “Eh, Mr. Spiro. I think we have a situation here.” “A situation?” growled Spiro. “What does that mean?
You’re not a soldier anymore, Blunt. Speak English.” The New Zealander tapped a screen as if that would hange what he was seeing. “I mean we have a problem. A big problem.” Spiro grabbed Artemis by the shoulders. “What have you done, Fowl? Is this some kind of . . .” The accusation died before it could be completed.
Spiro had noticed something. “Your eyes. What’s wrong with your eyes? They don’t match.”
Artemis treated him to his best vampire smile.
“All the better to see you with, Spiro.”
In the Phonetix lobby, the sleeping security guard suddenly regained her senses. It was Juliet. She peeped out from under the brim of a borrowed cap to make sure Spiro had not left anyone in the corridor.
Following Artemis’s capture in Spiro’s vault, Holly had flown them both to Phonetix to initiate Plan B.
Of course there had been no sleeping gas; for that matter there had only been two guards. One was taking a rest-room break and the other was doing the rounds of the upper floors. Still, Spiro wasn’t to know that. He was busy watching Foaly’s family of sim security snoring all over the building, thanks to a video clip on the Phonetix system.
Juliet lifted the desk phone and dialed three numbers.
Nine ...one ...one ...
Spiro reached two fingers delicately into Artemis’s eye, plucking out the iris-cam. He studied it closely, noting the micro circuitry on the concave side.
“This is electronic,” he whispered. “Amazing. What is it?”
Artemis blinked a tear from his eye. “It’s nothing. It was never here. Just as I was never here.”
Spiro’s face twisted in sheer hatred. “You were here all right, Fowl, and you’ll never leave here.”
Blunt tapped his employer on the shoulder. An act of unforgivable familiarity.
“Boss, Mr. Spiro. You really need to see this.”
Juliet stripped off her Phonetix Security jacket. Underneath she wore a Chicago PD SWAT uniform. Things could get hairy in the R&D Lab, and it was her job to make sure that Artemis did not get hurt. She hid behind a pillar in the lobby and waited for the sirens.
Spiro stared at the lab’s security monitors. The pictures had changed. There were no more guards slumbering around the facility. Instead, the screens played a tape of Spiro and his cronies breaking into Phonetix. With one crucial difference. There was no trace of Artemis on the screen.
“What’s happening, Cube?” spluttered Spiro. “You said that we’d all be wiped from the tapes.”
“I lied. It must be the criminal personality I’m developing.”
Spiro smashed the Cube against the floor. It remained intact.
“Tough polymer,” said Artemis, picking up the microcomputer. “Almost unbreakable.”
“Unlike you,” retorted Spiro.
Artemis looked like a doll, between Pex and Chips. “Don’t you understand yet? You’re all on tape. The Cube was working for me.”
“Big deal. So we’re on tape. All I have to do is pay the security booth a visit and take the recordings.”
“It’s not going to be that simple.”
Spiro still believed that there was a way out.
“And why not? Who’s gonna stop me? Little old you?”
Artemis pointed to the screens. “No. Little old them.”
The Chicago PD brought everything they had, and a few things they had to borrow. Phonetix was the city’s biggest single employer, not to mention one of the top five subscribers to the Police Benevolent Fund. When the 911 call came in from their offices, the duty sergeant put out a citywide call.
In less than five minutes, there were twenty uniforms and a full SWAT team beating on the Phonetix doors. Two choppers hovered overhead and eight snipers lined the roofs of adjacent buildings. No one was leaving the area, unless they were invisible.
The Phonetix security guard had just returned from his rou
nds and noticed the intruders on the monitors. Shortly after that he noticed a group of Chicago PD tapping the door with their gun barrels.
He buzzed them in. “I was just about to call you guys,” he said. “There’s a buncha intruders in the vault. They musta tunneled in or somethin’, ’cause they didn’t come past me.”
The security guard on a restroom break was even more surprised. He was just finishing off the sports section of the Herald Tribune when two very serious-looking men in body armor burst into the cubicle.
“ID?” growled one, who apparently did not have the time for full sentences.
The security guard held up his laminated card with a shaking hand.
“Stay put, sir,” advised the other police officer. He didn’t have to say it twice.
Juliet slipped out from behind the pillar, joining the ranks of the SWAT team. She pointed her gun and roared with the best of them, and was instantly assimilated into the group. Their assault was cut short by a tiny problem. There was only one access point to the lab. The elevator shaft.
Two officers pried open the elevator door with crowbars.
“Here’s our dilemma,” said one. “We cut the power, then we can’t get the elevator up here. If we call the elevator up here first, then we tip off our intruders.”
Juliet shouldered herself to the front of the group.
“Excuse me, sir. Let me go down on the cables. I blow the doors and you cut the power.”
The commander did not even consider it. “No. Too dangerous. The intruders would have plenty of time to put a hundred rounds into the elevator. Who are you, anyway?”
Juliet took a small gripper from her belt. She clipped it onto the elevator cable and hopped into the shaft.
“I’m new,” she said, disappearing into the blackness.
* * *
In the laboratory, Spiro and Co. were hypnotized by the monitors. Foaly had allowed the screens to show what was actually happening on the upper levels.
“SWAT,” said Blunt. “Helicopters. Heavy armament. How did this happen?”
Spiro smacked his own forehead repeatedly.
“A setup. This entire thing. A setup. I suppose Mo Digence was working for you too.”
“Yes. Pex and Chips too, even though they didn’t know it. You would never have come here if I had suggested it.”