‘What?’
‘Get in there. The magic is spreading up his spinal column. Hold his head still for the healing, or any damaged cells could be replicated. And once something’s been healed, we can’t undo it.’
Great, thought Holly. Hold Butler still. No problem. She battled her way through the debris, cold-pack crystals impacting against her visor.
The human’s frame continued thrashing in the cryo pod, shrouded by a cloud of steam.
Holly clamped a hand on either side of Butler’s head. The vibrations travelled the length of her arms and through her body.
‘Hold him, Holly. Hold him!’
Holly leaned across the pod, placing the weight of her body on the manservant’s head. In all the confusion, she couldn’t tell if her efforts were having any effect whatsoever.
‘Here it comes!’ said Foaly in her ear. ‘Brace yourself!’
The magical lattice spread along Butler’s neck and across his face. Blue sparks targeted the eyes, travelling along the optic nerve, into the brain itself. Butler’s eyes flew open, rolling in their sockets. His mouth was reactivated too, spewing out long strings of words in various languages, none of which made any sense.
‘His brain is running tests,’ said Foaly. ‘Just to check everything’s working.’
Each muscle and joint was tested to its limit, rolling, swivelling and stretching. Hair follicles grew at an accelerated rate, covering Butler’s normally shaven dome with a thick growth of hair. Nails shot out of his fingers like tiger claws, and a raggedy beard snaked from his chin.
Holly could only hang on. She imagined that this was how it must feel to be a rodeo cowboy straddling a particularly bad-tempered bull.
Eventually the sparks dissipated, spiralling into the air like embers on a breeze. Butler calmed and settled, his body sinking into fifteen centimetres of water and coolant. His breathing was slow and deep.
‘We did it,’ said Holly, sliding off the pod on to her knees. ‘He’s alive.’
‘Don’t start celebrating just yet,’ said Foaly. ‘There’s still a long way to go. He won’t regain consciousness for a couple of days at least, and even then who knows what shape his mind will be in. And, of course, there’s the obvious problem.’
Holly raised her visor. ‘What obvious problem?’
‘See for yourself.’
Captain Short was almost afraid to look at whatever lay in the pod. Grotesque images crowded her imagination. What kind of misshapen mutant human had they created?
The first thing she noticed was Butler’s chest. The bullet hole itself had completely disappeared, but the skin had darkened, with a red line amongst the black. It looked like a capital ‘I’.
‘Kevlar,’ explained Foaly. ‘Some of it must have replicated. Not enough to kill him, thankfully, but enough to slow down his breathing. Butler won’t be running any marathons with those fibres clinging to his ribs.’
‘What’s the red line?’
‘At a guess, I’d say dye. There must have been writing on the original bulletproof jacket.’
Holly glanced around the surgery. Butler’s vest lay discarded in a corner. The letters ‘FBI’ were printed in red across the chest. There was a small hole in the centre of the ‘I’.
‘Ah well,’ said the centaur. ‘It’s a small price to pay for his life. He can pretend it’s a tattoo. They’re very popular among the Mud People these days.’
Holly had been hoping the Kevlar-reinforced skin was the ‘obvious problem’ to which Foaly had been referring. But there was something else. The something else became immediately apparent when her gaze landed on the bodyguard’s face. Or, more accurately, the hair sprouting from his face.
‘Oh gods,’ she breathed. ‘Artemis is not going to like this.’
Artemis paced the yard while his bodyguard underwent magical surgery. Now that his plan was actually in progress, doubts began to chew at the edges of his mind, like slugs on a leaf. Was this the right thing to do? What if Butler wasn’t himself? After all, his father had been undeniably different on the day he had finally come back to them. He would never forget that first conversation…
EXCERPT FROM ARTEMIS FOWL’S DIARY. DISK 2. ENCRYPTED.
The doctors in Helsinki were determined that they should pump my father full of vitamin supplements. He was just as determined that they shouldn’t. And a determined Fowl usually gets his way.
‘I am perfectly fine,’ he insisted. ‘Please allow me some time to reacquaint myself with my family.’
The doctors withdrew, disarmed by his personality. I was surprised by this approach. Charm had never been my father’s weapon of choice. He had previously achieved his aims by bulldozing over anybody stupid enough to stand in his way.
Father was sitting in the hospital room’s only armchair, his shortened leg resting on a footstool. My mother was perched on the armrest, resplendent in white faux fur.