But Mervall apparently did not notice. “Ooh, I hate you guys. Disgusting. I tell you something, human, if your subconscious can hear me, be glad you’re asleep, because you do not want to go through this awake.”
Artemis almost cracked then. But he thought of his mother, with less than a day left to her, and he kept silent.
He felt his left hand being tugged, and heard Mervall grunt.
“Stuck tight. Just a tick.”
The grip loosened, and Artemis tracked Mervall’s movement with his ears and nose. A brush of soft belly on his elbow. Breath blowing past his ear. Mervall was at his left shoulder, reaching across.
Artemis opened his right eye just enough to roll his pupil into the slit. There was an operating light directly overhead, craned in above the operating table on a thick flat chrome arm.
Chrome. Reflective.
Artemis watched Mervall’s actions in the surface. The pixie tapped the octobond’s touch-sensitive control pad, revealing a Gnommish keyboard. Then, singing a popular pixie pop song, he tapped in his password. One number with each beat of the chorus.
“‘Pixies rock hard!’” he sang. “‘Extreme pixie hard rock, baby.’”
Which seemed unlikely to Artemis, but he was glad of the song, as it gave him time to file Mervall’s pass code.
Mervall released one of the bonds, allowing him to extend Artemis’s forearm. Even if the human did happen to wake up, all he could do was flail.
“Now, my little leech, do your nasty work for Aunt Opal, and I will reward you by squeezing your innards into a bucket.” He sighed. “Why are all my best lines wasted on annelids?”
He plucked a leech from the jug, pinched it to make the spines stick out, then slapped it onto Artemis’s exposed wrist.
Artemis felt nothing but an immediate sense of wellbeing.
I’m being sedated, he realized. An old troll trick. Cheer you up before you die. It’s a good trick, and anyway, how bad can dying be? My life has been one trial after another.
Mervall was checking his chronometer. His brother had been in that recycling cage behind the galley for an awfully long time. That red river hog might decide to have himself a bite of pixie meat.
“I’ll just check,” he decided. “Be back before the leech is full. First blood, then brain. You should have complimented Mistress Opal’s boots, brother.”
And off he toddled down the center aisle, plucking the mesh of each cage as he passed, driving the animals wild.
“‘Pixies rock hard!’” he sang. “‘Extreme pixie hard rock, baby.’”
Artemis was finding it hard to motivate himself. It felt so easy lying on the pallet, just letting all his troubles run out of his arm.
When you decide to die, Artemis thought sluggishly, it doesn’t matter how many people want to kill you.
He did wish the animals would calm down. Their chattering and chirping were interfering with his mood.
There was even a parrot somewhere, squawking a phrase. “Who’s your mama?” it asked over and over again. “Who’s your mama?”
My mama is Angeline. She’s dying.
Artemis’s eyes opened.
Mama. Mother.
He lifted his free arm and bashed the unwelcome leech against one of the octobonds. It exploded in a spatter of mucus and blood, leaving half a dozen spines jutting from Artemis’s arms like the spears of tiny soldiers.
That’s going to hurt eventually.
Artemis’s throat was dry, his neck was twisted, and his vision was impaired, but even so, it took him barely a minute to activate the keypad with Mervall’s code and retract the bonds.
If these are alarmed, I’m in trouble.
But there was no siren. No pixies came running.
I have time. But not much.
He picked the spines from his skin, wincing not from pain, but from the the sight of the red-rimmed holes in his wrist. A rivulet of blood ran from each wound, but it was slow and watery. He would not bleed to death.
Coagulant in the spines. Of course.
Artemis zombie-walked across the lab, gradually straightening out the kinks. There were hundreds of eyes on him. The animals were silent now, noses, beaks, and snouts pressed against the wire mesh, waiting to see what would develop. The only sound came from the food-pellet robot zipping through its routine.
All I need to do is escape. No need for confrontation or saving the world. Leave Opal be, and run away.
But of course in the world of Artemis Fowl, things are rarely straightforward. Artemis donned network goggles he found hanging from a low peg, activated the V-board, and used Mervall’s password to log on to the network. He needed to know where he was and how to get out.