Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex (5 page)

Where are you going?

Not running away, that was for sure. If anything, Artemis was moving directly into the path of the still-falling space probe.

Holly tried to scream a warning. She opened her mouth but could only cough smoke. She tasted smoke and battle.

“Artemis,” she managed to hack after several attempts.

Artemis glanced up at her. “I know,” he shouted, a ragged edge to his voice. “The sky appears to be falling, but it isn’t. None of this is real, the ship, those soldiers, none of it. I realize that now. I’ve been . . . I’ve been having delusions, you see.”

“Get clear, Artemis,” cried Holly, her voice not her own, feeling like her brain was sending signals to someone else’s mouth. “That ship is real. It will crush you.”

“No it won’t, you’ll see.” Artemis was actually smiling benignly. “Delusional disorder, that’s all this craft is. I simply constructed this vision from an old memory, one of Foaly’s blueprints I sneaked a look at. I need to face my dementia. Once I can prove to myself that this is all in my head, then I can keep it there.”

Holly crawled across the roof, feeling her insides buzz as magic went to work on her organs. Strength was returning, but slowly, and her legs felt like lead pipes. “Listen to me, Artemis. Trust me.”

“No,” Artemis barked. “I don’t trust any of you. Not Butler, not even my own mother.” Artemis hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know what to believe, or who to trust. But I do know that there cannot be a space probe crash-landing here at this precise moment. The odds against it are just too astronomical. My mind is playing tricks on me, and I have to show it who’s boss.”

Holly registered about half of that speech, but she’d heard enough to realize that Artemis was referring to his own mind in the third person, which was a warning sign no matter which head doctor’s theories you subscribed to.

The spaceship continued to bear down on them, unaffected by Artemis’s lack of belief in its existence, shunting shock waves before it. For a memory, it certainly seemed very real, each panel richly textured by the tribulations of space travel. Long jagged striations were etched into the nose cone like scars from lightning bolts, and buckshot dents peppered the fuselage. A ragged semicircular chunk was missing from one of the three fins, as though a deep-space creature had taken a bite from the passing craft, and strangely colored lichen was crayoned in the square patch vacated by a hull plate.

Even Artemis had to admit it. “That doesn’t seem particularly ethereal. I must have a more vivid imagination than I had thought.”

Two of the ship’s silencers blew out in rapid succession, and engine roar filled the bowl of gray sky.

Artemis pointed a rigid finger at the craft. “You are not real!” he shouted, though even he did not hear the words. The ship was low enough now for Artemis to read the message written in several scripts and pictograms across the nose cone.

“‘I come in peace,’” he mumbled, and thought: Four words. Death.

Holly was thinking too, images of tragedy and destruction flashing past like the lights of a train carriage, but there was one other notion holding steady through the chaos.

I can’t reach him from this rooftop. Artemis is going to die, and there’s nothing I can do but watch.

And then a hysterical afterthought.

Butler is going to kill me.

Cancún, Mexico; The Night Before

The man in the rental Fiat 500 swore loudly as his broad foot mashed the tiny brake and accelerator pedals, stalling the tiny car for the umpteenth time.

It might be a little easier to drive this miniature vehicle if I could sit in the backseat so my knees were not jammed under my chin, the man reasoned. And with that thought he pulled over sharply onto the verge bordering Cancún’s spectacular lagoon. In the reflected light of a million twinkling luxury-suite balcony lamps, he performed an act of vandalism on the Fiat that would definitely cost him his deposit and possibly send him rocketing to number one on the Hertz blacklist.

“Better,” grunted the man, and tossed the driver’s seat down the verge.

Hertz only has itself to blame, he thought, on a reasoning roll. This is what happens when you insist on giving a toy car to a man of my proportions. It’s like trying to load fifty-caliber rounds into a Derringer boot gun. Ridiculous
.

He crammed himself into the vehicle and, navigating from the backseat, pulled into the flow of cars, which even at close to midnight were packed together tighter than train carriages.

I’m coming, Juliet, he thought, squeezing the steering wheel as though it were a threat to his little sister somehow. I’m on my way.

The driver of this carelessly remodeled Fiat was of course Butler, Artemis Fowl’s bodyguard, though he had not always been known by that name. In the course of his career as a soldier of fortune, Butler had adopted many a nom de guerre to protect his family from recriminations. A band of Somali pirates knew him as Gentleman George, he had for a time hired himself out in Saudi Arabia under the name Captain Steele (Artemis had later accused him of having a touch of the screeching melodramas), and for two years a Peruvian tribe, the Isconahua, knew the mysterious giant who protected their village from an aggressive logging corporation only as El Fantasma de la Selva, the ghost of the jungle. Of course, since becoming Artemis Fowl’s bodyguard, there was no more time for side projects.

Butler had traveled to Mexico at Artemis’s insistence, though insistence had hardly been necessary once Butler had read the message on his principal’s smartphone. They had been in the middle of a mixed martial-arts session earlier in the day when the phone rang. A polyphonic version of Morricone’s “Miserere,” which signified the arrival of a message.

“No phones in the dojo, Artemis,” Butler had rumbled. “You know the rules.”

Artemis had delivered one more blow to the hand pad, a left jab that had little power and less accuracy, but at least his shots were landing on the pad now. Until recently, Artemis’s punches were so wide of the mark that in the event of actual combat a passerby would be in more danger than any assailant.

“I know the rules, Butler,” said Artemis, taking several breaths to get the sentence out. “The phone is definitely off. I checked it five times.”

Butler pulled off a pad, which in theory protected the wearer’s hand from punches, but in this case protected Artemis’s knuckles from Butler’s spadelike palm. “The phone is off, and yet it rings.”

Artemis trapped a glove between his knees and tugged his hand free. “It’s set to emergency breakthrough. It would be irresponsible of me not to check it.”

“Your speech seems strange,” noted Butler. “Stilted somehow . . . Are you
counting
your words?”

“That is patently ridiculous . . . actually,” said Artemis, coloring. “I am simply choosing carefully.” He hurried to the phone, which was one of his own design with a dedicated operating platform based on an amalgamation of human and fairy technology. “The message is from Juliet,” he said, consulting the three-inch touch screen.

Butler’s pique immediately evaporated. “Juliet sending an emergency message? What does it say?”

Artemis wordlessly handed over the phone, which seemed to shrink as Butler’s massive hand enfolded it.

The message was short and urgent. Five words only.

In trouble, Domovoi. Come alone.

Butler’s fingers squeezed the phone until its casing cracked. The first names of all Blue Diamond bodyguards were closely guarded secrets, and the mere fact that Juliet had invoked his name to summon him was an indicator of how much trouble she was in.

“Naturally I’m coming with you,” said Artemis briskly. “My phone can trace that call to the nearest square centimeter and we can be anywhere in the world in just less than a day.”

Butler’s features belied the struggle between big brother and detached professional that raged inside him.

Finally the professional got the upper hand. “No, Artemis. I cannot put you in harm’s way.”

“But . . .”

“No. I must go, but you will return to school. If Juliet is in trouble, I need to move quickly, and caring for you will simply double my responsibility. Juliet knows how seriously I take my job, and she would never ask me to come alone unless the situation was dangerous.”

Artemis coughed. “It’s probably not too dangerous. Perhaps Juliet is more
inconvenienced
than in any actual peril. But in any case you should go as soon as . . .”

He plucked the phone from Butler’s grasp and tapped the screen.

“Cancún, Mexico, that’s your destination.”

Butler nodded. It made sense. Juliet was currently with a Mexican wrestling troupe, building a rep for her character, the Jade Princess, and praying for that magic call from the World Wrestling Entertainment group.

“Cancún,” he repeated. “I’ve never been. There’s not much call for people like me there. Too safe.”

“The jet is at your disposal, naturally,” said Artemis, who then frowned, unhappy with the sentence. “Hopefully this entire thing is nothing but a . . . goose chase.”

Butler glanced sharply at his young charge. Something was wrong with the boy, he felt sure of it, but at the moment there was only room for Juliet in the
concern for others
corner of his brain.

“This is no goose chase,” he said softly, then with considerably more force: “And whoever caused this message to be sent will regret it.” To drive this point home, Butler allowed his big-brother side to surface for a moment and punched a training mannequin so hard that its wooden head flew off and spun on the practice mat like a top.

Artemis picked up the head and tapped the crown half a dozen times, or thereabouts.

“I imagine they already do,” he said, his voice the rustle of dry leaves.

So now Butler was making agonizingly slow progress through the late-night Cancún traffic, head and shoulders squashed flat against the Fiat’s roof. He had neglected to reserve a car, and so had been forced to accept whatever the Hertz lady had left in the lot. A Fiat 500.
Très
cool if you were a single teen on the way to the spa, but not so suitable for a two-hundred-twenty-pound hulk.

An unarmed two-hundred-twenty-pound hulk, Butler realized. Generally the bodyguard managed to bring a few weapons with him to whatever party he was about to break up, but in this case public transport was actually quicker than the Fowl jet, so Butler had been forced to leave his arsenal at home, even his beloved Sig Sauer, which had almost drawn a tear. He had connected through Atlanta, and the marines at customs would not have taken kindly to anyone smuggling hardware into the U.S., especially someone who looked like he could probably breach the White House with a few belts of ammunition.

Butler had been at something of a loose end since leaving Artemis’s side. For more than fifteen years he had spent the vast bulk of his time engaged in Artemis-related activities. Finding himself virtually alone in business class on a transatlantic flight with several hours of enforced downtime, he could not sleep for worrying about his sister, and so his mind naturally drifted to Artemis.

His charge had changed recently—there was no doubt about it. Since his return from saving endangered species in Morocco last year, there had been a definite mood swing. Artemis seemed less open than usual, and
usually
he was about as open as a Swiss vault at night. Also, Butler had noticed that Artemis seemed obsessed with the placement of objects, something Butler himself was very alert to, as he was trained to see everything in a building as a potential weapon or shrapnel fragment. Often Artemis would enter a room that his bodyguard had already swept and cleared and start moving things back to where they had been. And Artemis’s speech seemed
off
somehow. Artemis generally spoke in sentences that were almost poetic, but lately he seemed to care less about what he said than how many words it took to say it.

As the Boeing began its descent into Atlanta, Butler decided that he would go to Artemis Senior as soon as he made it back to Fowl Manor and make a clean breast of his concerns. While it was undeniably his job to protect Artemis from danger, it was difficult to do that when the danger came from Artemis himself.

I have protected Artemis from trolls, goblins, demons, dwarf gas, and even humans, but I cannot guarantee that my skill set will save him from his own mind. Which makes it imperative that I find Juliet and bring her home as soon as possible.

Butler eventually grew tired of the traffic’s crawl down Cancún’s main strip and decided that he would make better time on foot. He pulled over sharply into a taxi lane and, ignoring the indignant cries of the drivers, set off past the rows of five-star hotels at a brisk jog.

Locating Juliet would not be difficult: her face was splashed all over dozens of downtown banners.

LUCHASLAM! FOR ONE WEEK ONLY AT THE GRAND THEATER.

Butler did not much care for Juliet’s picture on the banners. The artist had twisted her pretty face to make his sister seem more aggressive, and her stance was obviously just for show. It might look good on a poster, but it was all wrong, and left her wide open for a hook to the kidneys.

Juliet would never approach an adversary in that way.

His sister was the best natural fighter he had ever seen, and too proud to ask for help unless there was no other option available to her, which was why her message was so worrying.

Butler jogged two miles without breaking a sweat, weaving through throngs of revelers, until he arrived at the glass-and-stucco façade of the Grand Theater. A dozen or so red-jacketed doormen clustered around the automatic doors, nodding and smiling at the crowd hurrying in for the main event.

Around the back, he decided. The story of my life
.

Butler skirted the building, thinking that it would be nice, just once, to go in the front door. Maybe he would in another lifetime, when he got too old for this business.

How old do I have to be? he wondered. Come to think of it, with all the time travel and fairy healings, I’m not even sure how old I actually am anymore
.

As soon as Butler reached the back door, he put all other thoughts from his mind, apart from the job at hand. Get to Juliet, find out what trouble she was in, and extricate her with minimal collateral damage. There were still ten minutes before the show was scheduled to start, so with a little luck he could nab his sister before the room got too crowded.

The only security on the back door was a single surveillance camera. Luckily, the Grand was a straight theater and not the convention room of a resort hotel, or there would have been a cluster of pools at the back door, along with crowds of tourists, a salsa band, and possibly half a dozen undercover private cops. As it was, Butler slid unnoticed into the theater and simply waved at the camera on the way in, effectively covering his face.

Butler did not meet a shred of opposition on his way through the theater’s backstage area. He passed a couple of costumed wrestlers sharing an electrolytic drink, but they barely spared him a glance, probably assuming he was one of them. Big and dumb, by the look of him—the bad guy.

Like most theaters, the Grand had miles of corridors and back passages that had not shown up on the blueprints Butler had downloaded on his smartphone from Artemis’s interpedia, which had a dedicated blueprint site containing any plans that had ever been uploaded and quite a few that Artemis had stolen and uploaded himself. After several wrong turns, even Butler’s excellent sense of direction was failing him, and the big bodyguard was tempted to simply punch through walls and create the shortest route to where he wanted to go: the performers’ dressing room.

Butler finally arrived at the dressing room door just in time to see the tail end of the wrestling squad winding their way through to the stage, looking like sections of a Chinese dragon in all their Lycra and silk. After the last wrestler slipped through, a barrier of meat and muscle in the shape of two enormous bouncers closed across the backstage doors.

I could take them, thought Butler. That would not be a problem, but it would only leave me seconds to find Juliet and get her out of here, and, knowing my sister, she will want to conduct a complicated and ultimately meaningless conversation before she’s ready to go. I need to think like Artemis, like the Artemis of old, and play this calmly. Blundering in is likely to get both of us killed.

Butler heard the howls and whoops of the crowd as the wrestlers entered. The noise was muffled through the double doors, but clearer from the dressing room. He poked his head inside and saw a monitor bracketed to the wall, displaying the action in the ring. Convenient.

Butler stepped close to the screen and searched for his sister. There she was, at the corner of the ring, performing some ostentatious warm-ups that were more for show than actual effect. If Butler could have seen his own normally taciturn features at that moment, he would have been surprised by the fond, almost sleepy, smile that lingered on his face.

It’s been too long since I’ve seen you, little sister.

Juliet did not seem to be in any immediate danger; in fact, she appeared to be relishing the crowd’s attention, raising her arms for more applause and whipping the jade ring on her ponytail around in figures of eight. The crowd loved her too. Several young men waved banners bearing Juliet’s image, and a few were bold enough to shower her with confetti hearts. Butler frowned. He would definitely be keeping an eye on those particular young gentlemen.