“Download complete,” said Foaly smugly. “We have very Phonetix project for the next decade.” Spiro cradled the Cube against his chest. “Beautiful. I can launch our version of the Phonetix hone before they do, make myself a few extra million efore I release the Cube.” Arno’s attention was focused on the security monitors. “Eh, Mr. Spiro. I think we have a situation here.” “A situation?” growled Spiro. “What does that mean?
You’re not a soldier anymore, Blunt. Speak English.” The New Zealander tapped a screen as if that would hange what he was seeing. “I mean we have a problem. A big problem.” Spiro grabbed Artemis by the shoulders. “What have you done, Fowl? Is this some kind of . . .” The accusation died before it could be completed.
Spiro had noticed something. “Your eyes. What’s wrong with your eyes? They don’t match.”
Artemis treated him to his best vampire smile.
“All the better to see you with, Spiro.”
In the Phonetix lobby, the sleeping security guard suddenly regained her senses. It was Juliet. She peeped out from under the brim of a borrowed cap to make sure Spiro had not left anyone in the corridor.
Following Artemis’s capture in Spiro’s vault, Holly had flown them both to Phonetix to initiate Plan B.
Of course there had been no sleeping gas; for that matter there had only been two guards. One was taking a restroom break and the other was doing the rounds of the upper floors. Still, Spiro wasn’t to know that. He was busy watching Foaly’s family of sim security snoring all over the building, thanks to a video clip on the Phonetix system.
Juliet lifted the desk phone and dialed three numbers.
Nine ...one ...one ...
Spiro reached two fingers delicately into Artemis’s eye, plucking out the iris-cam. He studied it closely, noting the micro circuitry on the concave side.
“This is electronic,” he whispered. “Amazing. What is it?”
Artemis blinked a tear from his eye. “It’s nothing. It was never here. Just as I was never here.”
Spiro’s face twisted in sheer hatred. “You were here all right, Fowl, and you’ll never leave here.”
Blunt tapped his employer on the shoulder. An act of unforgivable familiarity.
“Boss, Mr. Spiro. You really need to see this.”
Juliet stripped off her Phonetix Security jacket. Underneath she wore a Chicago PD SWAT uniform. Things could get hairy in the R&D Lab, and it was her job to make sure that Artemis did not get hurt. She hid behind a pillar in the lobby and waited for the sirens.
Spiro stared at the lab’s security monitors. The pictures had changed. There were no more guards slumbering around the facility. Instead, the screens played a tape of Spiro and his cronies breaking into Phonetix. With one crucial difference. There was no trace of Artemis on the screen.
“What’s happening, Cube?” spluttered Spiro. “You said that we’d all be wiped from the tapes.”
“I lied. It must be the criminal personality I’m developing.”
Spiro smashed the Cube against the floor. It remained intact.
“Tough polymer,” said Artemis, picking up the microcomputer. “Almost unbreakable.”
“Unlike you,” retorted Spiro.
Artemis looked like a doll, between Pex and Chips. “Don’t you understand yet? You’re all on tape. The Cube was working for me.”
“Big deal. So we’re on tape. All I have to do is pay the security booth a visit and take the recordings.”
“It’s not going to be that simple.”
Spiro still believed that there was a way out.
“And why not? Who’s gonna stop me? Little old you?”
Artemis pointed to the screens. “No. Little old them.”
The Chicago PD brought everything they had, and a few things they had to borrow. Phonetix was the city’s biggest single employer, not to mention one of the top five subscribers to the Police Benevolent Fund. When the 911 call came in from their offices, the duty sergeant put out a citywide call.
In less than five minutes, there were twenty uniforms and a full SWAT team beating on the Phonetix doors. Two choppers hovered overhead and eight snipers lined the roofs of adjacent buildings. No one was leaving the area, unless they were invisible.
The Phonetix security guard had just returned from his rounds and noticed the intruders on the monitors. Shortly after that he noticed a group of Chicago PD tapping the door with their gun barrels.
He buzzed them in. “I was just about to call you guys,” he said. “There’s a buncha intruders in the vault. They musta tunneled in or somethin’, ’cause they didn’t come past me.”
The security guard on a restroom break was even more surprised. He was just finishing off the sports section of the Herald Tribune when two very serious-looking men in body armor burst into the cubicle.
“ID?” growled one, who apparently did not have the time for full sentences.
The security guard held up his laminated card with a shaking hand.
“Stay put, sir,” advised the other police officer. He didn’t have to say it twice.
Juliet slipped out from behind the pillar, joining the ranks of the SWAT team. She pointed her gun and roared with the best of them, and was instantly assimilated into the group. Their assault was cut short by a tiny problem. There was only one access point to the lab. The elevator shaft.