The centaur popped a Plexiglas cover on the wall and pressed the red button underneath. Instantly a series of Evac sirens began to wail throughout the city. The eerie sound spread like the keening of mothers receiving the bad news of their nightmares.
Foaly chewed a nail. “There’s no time to wait for Council approval,” he said to Trouble Kelp. “Most should make it to the shuttle bays. But we need to ready the emergency resuscitation teams.”
Butler was less than happy with the idea of losing Artemis. “Nobody’s death is impending.”
His principal didn’t seem overly concerned. “Well, technically, everybody’s death is impending.”
“Shut up, Artemis!” snapped Butler, which was a major breach of his own professional ethics. “I promised your mother that I would look after you, and yet again you have put me in a position where my brawn and skills count for nothing.”
“That is hardly fair,” said Artemis. “I hardly think that I can be blamed for Opal’s latest stunt.”
Butler’s face blazed a few shades redder than Artemis could remember having seen it. “I do think you can be blamed, and I do blame you. We’re barely clear of the consequences of your last misadventure, and here we are neck deep in another one.”
Artemis seemed more shocked by this outburst than by the impending death situation.
“Butler, I had no idea you were harboring such frustration.”
The bodyguard rubbed his cropped head.
“Neither had I,” he admitted. “But for the past few years it’s been one thing after another. Goblins, time travel, demons. Now this place where everything is so…so…small.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay. I said it, it’s out there. And I am fine now. So let’s move on, shall we? What’s the plan?”
“Keep evacuating,” said Artemis. “No more empowering those hostage-taking nitwits; they have their instructions. Drop the blast doors, which should help absorb some of the shock waves.”
“We have our strategies in place, human,” said Trouble Kelp. “The entire population can be at their assembly points in five minutes.”
Artemis paced, thinking. “Tell your people to dump their weapons into the magma chutes. Leave anything that might have Koboi technology behind. Phones, games, everything.”
“All Koboi weaponry has been retired,” said Holly. “But some of the older Neutrinos might have a chip or two.”
Trouble Kelp had the grace to look guilty. “Some of the Koboi weaponry has been retired,” he said. “Budget cuts—you know how it is.”
Pip interrupted their preparations by actually rapping on the camera lens.
“Hey, LEP people. I’m getting old here. Somebody say something, anything. Tell us more lies—we don’t care.”
Artemis’s eyebrows furrowed and joined. He did not appreciate such flippant posturing when many lives were at stake. He pointed at the microphone.
“May I?”
Trouble barely looked up from his emergency calls and made a vague gesture that was open to interpretation. Artemis chose to interpret it as an affirmative.
He approached the screen. “Listen to me, you lowlife. This is Artemis Fowl. You may have heard of me.”
Pip grinned, and his mask echoed the expression.
“Oooh, Artemis Fowl. Wonder boy. We’ve heard of you alright, haven’t we, Kip?”
Kip nodded, dancing a little jig. “Artemis Fowl, the Oirish boy who chased leprechauns. Sure and begorra everyone has heard of that smarty-pants.”
These two are stupid, thought Artemis. They are stupid and talk too much, and I should be able to exploit those weaknesses.
He tried a ruse.
“I thought I told you to read your demands and say nothing more.”
Pip’s face was literally a mask of confusion. “You told us?”
Artemis hardened his voice. “My instructions for you two idiots were to read the demands, wait until the time was up, then shoot the pixie. I don’t recall saying anything about trading insults.”
Pip’s mask frowned. How did Artemis Fowl know their instructions?
“Your instructions? We don’t take orders from you.”
“Really? Explain to me then how I know your instructions to the letter.”
Pip’s mask software was not able to cope with his rapid expression change and froze momentarily.
“I…ah…I don’t…”
“And tell me how I knew the exact frequency to tap into.”
“You’re not in Police Plaza?”
“Of course not, you idiot. I’m at the rendezvous point waiting for Opal.”
Artemis felt his heart speed up, and he waited a second for his conscious mind to catch up with his subconscious and tell him what he recognized onscreen.
Something in the background.
Something familiar.
The wall behind Pip and Kip was nondescript gray, rendered with roughly finished plaster. A common finish for farm walls worldwide. There were walls like this all over the Fowl Estate.
Ba boom.
There went his heart again.
Artemis concentrated on the wall. Slate-gray, except for a network of jagged cracks that sundered the plasterwork.
A memory presented itself of six-year-old Artemis and his father walking the estate. As they passed the barn wall on the upper pasture, young Artemis pointed to the wall and commented. “See, Father? The cracks form a map of Croatia, once part of the Roman, Ottoman, and Austrian Habsburg empires. Were you aware that Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991?”
There it was. On the wall behind Pip and Kip. A map of Croatia, though fifteen-year-old Artemis saw now that the Dalmatian coastline was truncated.
They are on the Fowl Estate, he realized.
Why?
Something Dr. Argon had said resurfaced.
Because the residual magic there is off the scale. Something happened on the Fowl Estate once. Something huge, magically speaking.
Artemis decided to act on his hunch. “I’m at the Fowl Estate, waiting for Opal,” he said.
“You’re at Fowl Manor too?” blurted Kip, prompting Pip to turn rapidly and shoot his comrade in the heart. The gnome was punched backward into the wall, knocking clouds of dust from the plaster. A narrow stream of blood oozed from the hole in his chest, pulsing gently down his breastplate, as undramatic as a paint drip running down a jar. His kitty-cat cartoon face seemed comically surprised, and when the heat from his face faded, the pixels powered down, leaving a yellow question mark.
The sudden death shocked Artemis, but the preceding sentence had shocked him more.
He had been correct on both counts: not only was Opal behind this, but the rendezvous point was Fowl Manor.
Why? What had happened there?
Pip shouted at the screen. “You see what you did, human? If you are human. If you are Artemis Fowl. It doesn’t matter what you know, it’s too late.”
Pip pressed the still smoking barrel to Opal’s head, and she jerked away as the metal burned her skin, pleading through the tape over her mouth. It was clear that Pip wished to pull the trigger, but he could not.
He has his instructions, thought Artemis. He must wait until the allotted time has run out. Otherwise he cannot be certain that Opal is secure in the nuclear reactor.
Artemis deactivated the microphone and was moving toward the door when Holly caught his arm.
“There’s no time,” she said, correctly guessing that he was headed for home.
“I must try to save my family from the next stage of Opal’s plan,” said Artemis tersely. “There are five minutes left. If I can make it to a magma vent, we might be able to outrun the explosions to the surface.”
Commander Kelp quickly weighed his options. He could order Artemis to remain underground, but it would certainly be strategically advantageous to have someone track Opal Koboi if she somehow escaped from Atlantis.