Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

Turnball moved on to Artemis. “And, of course, Artemis Fowl. Ex-criminal mastermind and current psychotic. How is the Complex going, Artemis? I bet you have a bad number. What is it, five? Four?” Artemis must have flinched because Turnball knew he had guessed correctly. “Four, then. And how do I know you suffer from Atlantis? You should ask your friend Foaly. He’s the one who supplies me with pictures.”

Artemis was not at all surprised to find that some of his paranoia was actually justified.

Turnball paced along the line like a general delivering a prebattle pep talk. “I am delighted that you are all here, genuinely delighted. Because you can be useful to me. You see, my wife is very old, and to save her life and bring her youth back, I need a very powerful magician.”

Artemis’s eyes widened. He got it straight away. All of this to lure N o1 out of Haven.

“Your friend N o1 will be helping out with the injured on the Nostremius , and we were going to go in there, masquerading as patients, and bring him out with my super-duper modified lasers, but there was always going to be the niggly problem of the little fellow perhaps getting a magical bolt off before I enthralled him. But now, Holly Short, one of his best friends in the whole world, is going to fetch him for me.”

Turnball turned to Unix. “Tell the bot to spit out Captain Short.”

Unix consulted a computer rendering of the bot and its contents on a wall screen. With a flick of his finger, he dragged Holly from the gel. Almost instantaneously, the bot did the same. Holly felt as though she were being vomited from the belly of a beast onto the cold metal floor. She lay there gasping as her lungs accustomed themselves to breathing pure air once more. She opened her eyes to see a grinning Turnball looming over her.

“I’m remembering more and more about you as time goes by,” he said, and kicked her hard in the ribs with one black boot. “And I remember that you put me in prison. But never mind, eh. Now you can make up for it by doing me a good turn.”

Holly spat a blob of gel onto the deck. “Not likely, Turnball.”

Turnball kicked her again. “You will address me by my rank.”

Holly spoke through gritted teeth. “I doubt it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Turnball, and put his boot on her throat. From his pocket he pulled what looked like a penlight.

“This looks like a penlight, doesn’t it?”

Holly could not speak, but she was guessing the slim cylinder was something more sinister than a light.

“Yet it is quite a bit more than that. You may have guessed that black-magic runes are something of a hobby of mine. Illegal, yes, but almost everything I do is illegal, so why start worrying now? What this little laser does is burn the rune directly into the skin of the person I wish to enslave. No magic necessary. So long as I have the corresponding rune on my person, then you are in my thrall forever.”

Turnball showed his thumb to Holly, the one with Vishby’s rune still inscribed on the pad, the magic of which could be transferred to her now that Vishby was dead. “And guess what, my dear? A free slot just opened up in my organization.”

Root activated the laser and hummed for a moment until the tip turned red, then he jammed it into Holly’s neck, branding her with his binding rune. Holly bucked and screamed in a black-magic fit. “Not so gentle as the touch,” noted Turnball, stepping out of puke range just in case. The fit lasted less than a minute, leaving Holly rigid on the floor, breathing abnormally fast, eyelids fluttering. Turnball licked the blood rune on his own thumb. “Now, Miss Short, what say we go and kidnap a warlock?” Holly stood, arms stiff by her side, eyes unfocused.

“Yes, Captain,” she said.

Turnball clapped her on the back. “That’s more like it, Short. Isn’t it liberating not to have a choice? You just do what I say, and nothing is your fault.”

“Yes, Captain. Most liberating.”

Turnball handed her a Neutrino. “Feel free to kill anyone who gets in your way.”

Holly checked the battery level expertly. “Anyone who gets in my way, I kill them.”

“I like these lasers,” said Turnball, twiddling the rune pen. “Let’s do someone else. Tell the bot to pop young Fowl out of his bubble, Unix. It will be nice to have a pet genius.”

Unix dragged his finger across the touch screen, and Artemis flopped gasping to the floor like a fish out of water.

The Aquanaut Nostremius, Atlantis Trench; Now

The young demon warlock who chose to call himself N º1 was feeling extremely sad. He was a sensitive little fellow-though you would not think it to look at his gray armor-plated hide and the squat head that seemed to push its way out of his lumpy shoulders-but he felt others’ pain, and this trait, according to his master, was what made him such an excellent warlock.

There was a lot of pain in the fairy world today. The Martian probe disasters in Iceland and the Atlantis Trench were the worst fairy disasters to have occurred in recent times. To the humans, injury on this scale would probably not even make it onto the big news stations, but the fairy folk were small in number and cautious by nature, so to have two probe-related disasters in one cycle was horrific. But at least a larger catastrophe had been averted by the efficient evacuation of Atlantis. N o1 had barely begun to grieve for the loss of his friends in Iceland, when the LEP had informed him that Holly, Foaly, and Artemis had actually survived.

Commander Trouble Kelp asked him to go to Atlantis on the Nostremius hospital ship to help heal those injured by the probe’s blast wave. The little demon had immediately agreed, hoping that he could distract himself for a short period at least by using his powers to help others. And now news had filtered through that Holly’s escape pod had gone down at sea, and all hands were presumed lost. It was too much to process: dead, alive, then dead again. If Holly had had some magic in her system, N o1 might have been able to sense her out there somewhere, but he could feel nothing.

So for the past several hours N o1 had worked himself ragged, laying hands on the injured. He had knitted bones, sealed gashes, repaired ruptured organs, drawn salt water from lungs, draped veils of calm over hysteria, and, in some extreme cases, wiped the entire pileup from people’s memory. For the first time since he had blossomed as a warlock, N o1 was actually feeling a little depleted. But he could not leave right now, as word had just come over the aquanaut’s speakers that yet another ambulance had docked.

I need to sleep, he thought wearily. But not to dream. I would only dream of Holly. I cannot believe she’s gone.

And something made him look up at that moment, and he saw Holly Short walking down the corridor toward the quarantine door. The sight was so unexpected that N o1 was strangely unsurprised.

It’s Holly, but she’s moving weirdly. As though she’s underwater.

N o1 finished the bone knit he was working on, then left the cleanup to a nurse. He shambled toward the security door, where Holly was having her retina scanned. The computer accepted her LEP credentials and popped open with a pneumatic hiss.

Nº1 skipped outside to prevent Holly entering.

“We have to keep that area germ free,” he said, sorry these had to be the first words he uttered to his resurrected friend. “And you look like you just escaped from toxic garbage.” Then he hugged her tightly. “You smell like a toxic dump too, but you’re alive. Thank goodness. Tell me, did Foaly survive? Please say he did. And Artemis? I couldn’t bear it when I heard you were all gone.”

Holly did not meet his eyes. “Artemis is sick. I need you to come.”