Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - The Eternity Code

Holly stepped back into the hologram. ‘Team One, you and Mulch, climb the Needle and burn through on the eighty-fifth floor. From there, you place this video clip on a CCTV cable.’

Holly held up what looked like a twist of wire. ‘Loaded fibre optic,’ she explained. ‘Allows for remote hijacking of any video system. With this in place, Foaly can send the signal from every camera in the building to our helmets. He can also send the humans any signal he wants them to see. You will also replace two oxygen cylinders with our own special mix.’

Juliet placed the video clip in her jacket pocket.

‘I will enter from the roof,’ continued Holly. ‘From there, I proceed to Artemis’s room. As soon as Team One gives us the all clear, we’ll go after the C Cube.’

‘You make it sound so easy,’ said Juliet.

Mulch laughed. ‘She always does that,’ he said. ‘And it never is.’

TEAM ONE, THE SPIRO NEEDLE’S BASE

Juliet Butler had been trained in seven martial arts disciplines. She had learned to ignore pain and sleep deprivation. She could resist torture both physical and psychological. But nothing had prepared her for what she would have to endure to get into this building.

The Needle had no blind sides, with twenty-four-hour activity on each face, so they were forced to begin their ascent from the pavement.

Juliet pulled the van round, double-parking it as close to the wall as she could.

They went out through the sunroof, draped in Holly’s single sheet of camouflage foil. Juliet was clipped on to the Moonbelt on Mulch’s waist.

She rapped on Mulch’s helmet. ‘You stink.’

Mulch’s reply came through the cylindrical transmitter in Juliet’s ear.

‘To you, maybe, but to a dwarf female I am the essence of a healthy male. You’re the one that stinks, Mud Girl. To me, you smell worse than a skunk in two-month-old socks.’

Holly stuck her head through the sunroof.

‘Quiet!’ she hissed. ‘Both of you! We’re on a tight schedule in case you’d forgotten. Juliet, your precious principal is stuck in a room up there waiting for me to show up. It’s five minutes past four already. The guards are due to change in less than an hour, and I still have to finish mesmerizing these goons. We have a fifty-five-minute window here. Let’s not waste it arguing.’

‘Why can’t you just fly us up to the ledge?’

‘Basic military tactics. If we split up, then one team might make it. If we’re together, then one goes down we all go down. Divide and conquer.’

Her words sobered Juliet. The fairy girl was right; she should have known that. It was happening again — she was losing concentration at a vital moment. ‘OK. Let’s go. I’ll hold my breath.’ Mulch stuck both palms in his mouth, sucking any last vestiges of moisture from the pores.

‘Hold on,’ he said, having removed his hands from his palate. ‘Here we go.’

The dwarf flexed his powerful legs, leaping one and a half metres to the wall of the Spiro Needle. Juliet bobbed along behind, feeling for all the world as though she were underwater. The problem with riding a Moonbelt was that, as well as the weightlessness, you got the loss of coordination and sometimes the space nausea too. Moonbelts were designed for carrying inanimate objects, not live fairies, and certainly not human beings.

Mulch had not had a drink for several hours, causing his dwarf pores to open to the size of pinholes. They sucked noisily, latching on to the smooth external surface of the Spiro Needle. The dwarf avoided the tinted windows, sticking to the metal girders, because, even though the pair were draped in a sheet of camouflage foil, there were still enough limbs sticking out to be spotted. Cam foil did not render the wearer completely invisible. Thousands of micro-sensors, threaded through the material, analysed and reflected the surroundings, but one shower of rain could short out the whole thing.

Mulch climbed quickly, settling into a smooth rhythm. His double-jointed fingers and toes curled to grip the smallest groove. And where there were no grooves, the dwarf’s pores adhered to the flat surface. His beard hair fanned out under the helmet’s visor, probing the building’s face.

Juliet had to ask. ‘Your beard? That’s a bit freaky. What’s it doing? Searching for cracks?’

‘Vibrations,’ grunted Mulch. ‘Sensors, currents, maintenance men.’

Obviously, he wasn’t going to devote any energy to full sentences. ‘Motion sensor picks us up. We’re finished. Foil or not.’

Juliet didn’t blame her partner for saving his breath. They had a long way to go. Straight up.

As they cleared the buffer provided by the adjacent buildings the wind picked up. Juliet’s feet were plucked from beneath her, and she fluttered from the dwarf’s neck like a scarf. Rarely had she felt so helpless. Events were utterly beyond her control. Training counted for absolutely nothing in this situation. Her life was in Mulch’s hands completely.

The floors slid by in a blur of glass and steel. The wind pulled at them with grabby fingers, threatening to spin the pair into the night.

‘There’s a lot of moisture up here from the wind,’ gasped the dwarf.

‘I can’t hold on much longer.’

Juliet reached in, running a finger along the outer wall. It was slick with tiny beads of dew. Sparks were popping along the sheet of cam foil as the moisture-laden wind shorted out its micro-sensors. Patches of the foil failed altogether. The effect was of blocks of circuits apparently suspended in the night. The entire building was swaying too — maybe just enough to shake off a tired dwarf and his passenger.

Finally, the dwarf’s fingers locked on to the ledge of the eighty-fifth floor. Mulch climbed on to the narrow outcrop, directing his visor into the building.

‘This room is no good,’ he said. ‘My visor is picking up two motion detectors and a laser sensor. We need to move along.’

He scampered down the ledge, sure-footed as a mountain goat.

This was his business, after all. Dwarfs did not fall off things. Not unless they were pushed. Juliet followed cautiously. Not even Madame Ko’s Academy could have prepared her for this.

Finally Mulch arrived at a window that satisfied him.

‘OK,’ he said, his voice sounding strained in Juliet’s earpiece. ‘We got a sensor with a dead battery.’

His beard hair latched on to the windowpane. ‘I don’t feel any vibration, so nothing electrical running and no conversation. It seems safe.’

Mulch trickled a few drops of dwarf rock polish on to the toughened pane. It liquefied the glass immediately, leaving a puddle of turgid fluid on the carpet. With any luck the hole would remain undiscovered over the weekend.

‘Ooh,’ said Juliet. ‘That stinks nearly as much as you do.’

Mulch did not bother returning the insult, preferring instead to tumble indoors to safety.

He checked the moonometer in his visor.

‘Four twenty. Human time. We’re behind schedule. Let’s go.’

Juliet hopped through the hole in the window.

‘Typical Mud Man,’ said Mulch. ‘Spiro spends millions on a security system, and it all falls apart because of one battery.’

Juliet drew an LEP Neutrino 2000. She flicked aside the safety cap and pressed the power button. The light changed from green to red.

‘We’re not in yet,’ she said, making for the door.

‘Wait!’ hissed Mulch, grabbing her arm. ‘The camera!’

Juliet froze. She’d forgotten the camera. They were barely a minute inside the building and she was already making mistakes. Concentrate, girl, concentrate.

Mulch aimed his visor at the recessed CCTV camera. The helmet’s ion filter highlighted the camera’s arc as a shimmering gold stream. There was no way past to the camera itself.