Possibly for good, she thought. I don’t see him leading any international organizations for a while.
Holly noticed something. One of Kronski’s lenses had completely shattered, revealing the eyeball underneath. The iris was a strange violet, almost the same shade as the spectacles had been, but this was not what caught Holly’s attention. The edge of the retina was ragged, as though it had been nibbled on by tiny sclera fish.
This man has been mesmerized, Holly realized. A fairy is controlling him.
She climbed to her feet and hobbled one-shoed down the nearest alley, the voices of squabbling greed fading behind her.
If a fairy is involved, then nothing is as it seems. And if nothing is as it seems, then perhaps Artemis Fowl still lives.
Below the Extinctionists’ Compound
Mervall Brill winked at himself in the chrome door of a body freezer.
I am a handsome chap, he thought. And this lab coat covers the paunch rather well.
“Brill!” called Opal from her office. “How is that brain fluid coming?”
Merv jumped. “Just sucking him dry now, mistress.”
The pixie put his weight behind the trolley with its human cargo, trundling it down a short corridor to the lab itself. Being stuck in this tiny facility with Opal Koboi was no picnic. Just the three of them for weeks on end, draining the fluids from endangered species. Opal could afford to hire a thousand lab assistants to work for her, but she was uberparanoid about secrecy. Opal’s level of paranoia was such that she had begun to suspect plants and inanimate objects of spying on her.
“I can grow cameras!” she had shrieked at the Brill brothers during one briefing. “Who’s to say that despicable centaur Foaly hasn’t succeeded in splicing surveillance equipment to plants? So get rid of all the flowers. Rocks, too. I don’t trust them. Sullen little bl?bers.”
So the Brill twins had spent an afternoon scouring the facility for anything that might contain a bug. Even the recycling toilet scent blocks had to go, as Opal was convinced they were photographing her when she used the facilities.
Still, though, Mistress Koboi is right to be paranoid, Merv admitted as he barged through the lab double doors. If the LEP ever found out what she was doing here, they would lock her up forever and a day.
The double doors led to a long triple-height laboratory. It was a place of misery. Cages were stacked to the ceiling, each one filled with a trapped animal. They moaned and keened, rattling their bars, butting the doors. A robot food-pellet dispensing machine whirred along the network, spitting gray pellets into the appropriate cages.
The center island was a series of operating pallets. Scores of animals lay sedated on the tables, secured, like Artemis, with rigid octobonds. Artemis caught sight of a Siberian tiger, paws in the air and bald patches shaved into its skull. On each patch there sat what looked like a tiny slice of liver. As they passed, one of the slices made a squelching sound, and a tiny light emitting diode on its ridge flashed red.
Merv stopped to peel it off, and Artemis saw to his horror that the thing’s underside was spiked with a dozen dripping spines.
“Full to the brim, Mr. Super Genetically Modified Leech Mosquito thing. You are a disgusting abomination, yes you are. But you sure know how to siphon brain fluid. I’d say you’re due for a squeezing.”
Merv pumped a foot pedal to open a nearby fridge and finger-tinkled the beakers inside until he found the right one.
“Here we go. SibTig BF.”
He placed the beaker on a chrome work surface, then squeezed the leech like a sponge until it surrendered its bounty of brain fliud. Afterward the leech was casually tossed into the trash.
“Love you lots,” said Mervall, returning to Artemis’s pallet. “Miss you loads.”
Artemis saw everything though the slit of an open eye. This was a depraved, horrible place, and he had to get out of here.
Holly will come for me, he thought, and then: No, she won’t. She’ll think I’m dead.
This realization chilled his blood.
I went into the flames.
He would have to save himself, then. It would not be the first time. Stay alert; a chance will come and you must be ready to take it.
Mervall found room on the operating section and parked Artemis neatly in it.
“And he squeezes it into an impossible space. They said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong. Mervall Brill is the king of trolley parking.” The pixie belched. “Which is not the future I had in mind for myself as a younger pixie.”
Then, somewhat moodily, he trawled a low-level aquarium with a perforated jug, until it was full of convulsing superleeches.
Oh no, thought Artemis. Oh, please.
And then he was forced to close his eyes as Mervall turned to face him.
Surely he will see my chest heaving. He will sedate me, and it will all be over.