The Fowl Twins Deny All Charges

by Eoin Colfer

  Armageddon is here, folks. So sacrifice a goat and dig your-self a hole.

  Inside the animated building, Myles Fowl was under pressure, or rather, NANNI was. With every thrust and parry, the graphene-housed computer seemed to be losing the battle with the more powerful Horteknut devices that overflowed her buffers with malicious commands.

  “‘Screw your courage to the sticking place,’” quoted Myles. “A few more moves and we will end this, NANNI.”

  But, alas, a few more moves were not to be, as Gundred had apparently found a pinhole in NANNI’s firewalls.

  “I have him,” she said. “We can take back all the elevators, but it will cost us air-conditioning and some shafts.”

  “Do it!” snapped Gveld. “Do it now!”

  Gundred obeyed the order, and Myles could do nothing but watch the progress of Gveld’s elevators on his lenses. Gveld was all in, plotting the only available route through the shafts to send all of her elevators to the top of the building for a coordinated pile-driver action. Myles imagined that she would release the dampers and send the cars plummeting to earth, where they would pulverize the floor entirely and leave the building no choice but to collapse in a heap of rubble.

  “You left me a way through,” she gloated. “I expected more from you.”

  “You were right to expect more,” said Myles. “I left you a way through and you took it. You control the elevators, but you relinquished some shafts to me. And you have placed your cars in my shafts. Delivered the mice to the traps, as it were.”

  “More human doublespeak,” said Gveld. “What do I care for shafts? Prepare to be buried alive, Fowl. I doubt you have enough oxygen in that box to last you both. My dearest wish is that one of you kills the other for five minutes of air.”

  Gveld released her stacked elevators, which should have plummeted earthward, smashed into the foundations, and made an unappealing meat stew of the humans inside. But, ironically for a dwarf, the Horteknut general had underestimated the importance of shafts. It is true that, with traditional elevators, shafts are merely glorified holes for cars to pass through. However, with multidirectional magnetic rail elevators, the shafts are as important as the cars, as the rails are on wall-mounted turntables that rotate automatically to send a car in the direction it wishes to go. So, consequently and crucially, if a person controlled the shafts, then that person could also control the turntables. And if that person were Myles Fowl, then those elevators were going where he wanted them to go, or rather, staying where he wanted them to stay. With a click of his fingers, Myles locked his shaft turntables in the horizontal attitude, and Gveld’s cars not only remained stacked on the top floor but also balanced out the entire building somewhat.

  “The elevators are stuck!” said Gundred, pounding the screen of her device, which of course had no effect on the situation.

  “Oh, don’t sulk so,” said Myles. “You have been outmaneuvered by Myles Fowl. You are not even the first one today, and you will certainly not be the last.”

  Gveld beat her fists on the transparent wall. “Fowl!” she said. “Fowl.”

  “They all say that,” Myles noted, absently straightening his tie. “And then they try to kill me.”

  Gveld stopped her pounding and fixed Myles with a murderous gaze. Myles could have sworn that the rune tattoos on her cheek were glowing, which was probably impossible but improbably possible. And, as Myles was learning, the border between those two countries was shrinking by the day.

  “Kill you,” she said. “Good. Absolutely. I shall kill you both. But first I want you to know that your parents are dead.” Gveld raised her phone and traced a pattern on the surface. “There. I have sent the kill command. Axborn—remember him?—will gut your dear family like fish with his beloved homemade blade, the skovl. Your precious mother and father will watch their own innards slide onto the floor.”

  Myles winced. “That is quite an image. But do not fret on my parents’ account, as someone will be there to stop your burly assassin.”

  Gveld might have laughed some minutes earlier, before she had been so comprehensively hoodwinked by Myles Fowl.

  “And who might stop him?” she asked now with a serious visage affixed. “The buried pixel? You? Your twin brother? Perhaps you might try if the two of you were not stuck here in front of me plain as worms on a platter.”

  In response, Myles simply plucked the spectacles from his face. When he folded the frames, Beckett disappeared. For, of course, Beckett was a hologram. The same hologram that had been running around Dalkey Island for the past several months bamboozling the LEP surveillance, and that had, until more recently, been beamed from the arm of Myles’s glasses.

  “I am here, it’s true,” he said. “But Beckett has never been here. I must bring him to visit when they rebuild this place. Now, as you can see, your warriors are defeated. Your plan has failed utterly.”

  As if on cue, the convention center’s emergency power decided to shut off, which automatically opened all the multidirectional elevators but not the traditional cable ones. So now the ACRONYM agents were free, but Fowl and fairy were locked in their own respective elevators.

  “Ah,” said Myles. “And there is the final nail in your coffin. There is nothing you can do but accept that you are beaten and wait for the LEP to take you into the custody you so richly deserve.”

  Myles had thought Gveld Horteknut could not get any angrier.

  He was wrong.

  The Fowl twin’s general manner did that to a person.

  That and his face.

  Dalkey Island

  On the Fowl island, two people were trying very hard to stick to their respective orders. Axborn of the Horteknut Seven’s instructions were undoubtedly the more straightforward in that they only had two steps. He mentally reviewed them as he lay in a shallow ambush trench on the beach below the Fowl residence, a building which, in Axborn’s unimpressed opinion, looked like a higgledy-piggledy assembly of children’s building blocks.

  Step one: Keep an eye on the LEP surveillance feed in case the Fowl Twins somehow returned to the island. And if they did, then kill all the humans on the island. And all meant all.

  Axborn had asked whether seals counted as humans and was told, No, they do not.

  And step the second: If the order came through to kill all humans on the island, then kill all the humans on the island even if the twins had not returned.

  Axborn would have preferred to skip step one altogether and simply proceed directly to step two, as step one was, in his opinion, long-winded and confusing. Also, step one had the extra element of surveilling the surveillance, which was not as straightforward as it sounded. The LEP, in spite of their promises to desist from spying, were still keeping an eye on the island from one of their satellites. This surveillance, which Axborn had open on his phone, consisted of a bird’s-eye view of Dalkey Island with live icons representing the Fowls.

  Axborn had pointed to the trails left by Myles and Beckett and said to Vigor, “Look, the Fowl boys are already on the island.”

  And he was told by Vigor, “No, Axborn, you total dunce. I explained this. Those trails are avatars set up by Myles Fowl to outfox the surveillance. We can’t switch them off or the LEP will know we hacked into their feed.”

  Axborn did not understand any of this aside from the fact he was being called a dunce.

  “So, can the LEP see me?”

  “Not as long as you’re wearing your vinesuit. It will show up as vegetation and not raise any flags. Just to be safe, you shall burrow into the earth for an extra layer of camouflage.”

  “So, do I kill the yellow trails?” Axborn had asked.

  “No,” Vigor had told him. “The avatars are on a loop, which I was able to flag as yellow. The real twins will deviate from this loop, and when they do, their avatars will turn red.”

  “So, I kill the red things?”

  “Yes. Anything red shows up, you kill it. And then get out of there before the LEP arrive.”
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  “What about that brown thing?”

  “That’s a house.”

  “Do I…?”

  “No, you don’t kill the house.”

  “Just the red things? What about those gray things?”

  Vigor had sighed for a little longer than necessary, and perhaps Axborn would not have been too unhappy if he knew that his superior looked decidedly pasty now, having been mashed into the innards of a building support.

  “Those are the parents. Look, here’s what I’ll do: I can make it so that if either of the twins shows up, all the human icons turn red. So here’s a little memory trick: gray is okay, but red is dead. Got it?”

  Axborn repeated the rhyme, which he considered a little patronizing. “Gray is okay, but red is dead.”

  “Good. So, kill only red, unless the kill order comes through. Then kill everything.”

  “Do I…?”

  “No, dummy. Not the house. You can’t kill a house.”

  Axborn checked his phone now. Nothing red and no kill order.

  You can too kill a house, he thought. I could burn that place to the ground—did you ever think of that, Vigor? Who’s the dummy now?

  Beckett Fowl was also trying his very best to stick to his instructions, which were more complicated than the Reclaimer’s. “You must follow a very specific path back to the villa,” Myles had told him after they’d escaped their captivity in the dwarves’ HQ. “A route that is cobbled together from seven stages of your avatar’s various routes. If you go the exact way I tell you, the dwarf guard should not see you until it’s too late.”

  And then Myles laid out the route in terms Beckett would remember.

  “Any necessary combat maneuvers I will leave to your discretion,” Myles had added. He was tempted to tell Beckett how to fight, but that would have been akin to telling a monkey how to peel a banana, so he simply said, “Farewell, brother mine. I trust you to save our parents should they need saving.”

  “I will save them, Myles. And you’d better stop that building from collapsing.”

  “Have no fear, Beck. You may consider that building un-collapsed.”

  The boys wrist-bumped and went their separate ways, which was unusual in itself, because the Fowl Twins generally went the same way.

  Beckett had a third dolphin drop him off at a shingled beach on the slope behind Villa Éco. Actually, drop him off is a misleading term, as the dolphin, whose name was Eeeeoooo-eh-eh-eh-flaaarb was famous in the dolphin community on account of her tail strength, and she more than justified her reputation by flipping Beckett directly onto the grassy ledge that was the starting point of his journey to the Fowl homestead.

  Beckett enjoyed being flipped off a dolphin’s tail immensely and vowed that he would beg Myles to submit tail-flipping as an Olympic sport when this whole Horteknut thing was over. Beckett had already badgered Myles into filling out the complicated Olympic Programme Commission’s inclusion form for several other potential sports, including troll wrestling and the long fart. Beckett was confident that he could bring home the gold in these sports, having certainly put in the hours of training.

  Beckett had written his travel instructions on his forearm, and he consulted them now. Number one was Get off at the ledge where I fought the dwarves.

  Check.

  Next was Walk directly to the monks’ well, which was where all the trouble with the troll venom got started (see LEP file: The Fowl Twins). Beckett remembered now, as he walked along a path worn in the grass, that Myles had designed and 3-D–printed a most excellent cross-section model of the island. It illustrated, among other things, how it was possible to have a fresh-water well on a small salt-water–bordered island as long as a person didn’t draw the fresh water too quickly, as this would result in a rise of salt-water levels. Beckett wished now that he had thanked his twin for the effort instead of pretending not to understand simply to infuriate Myles.

  I give your model an A++, he broadcast into his scar, even though Myles did not believe that anyone was qualified to grade him on any subject, except perhaps physical education, which he didn’t consider actual education anyway.

  Step three in Beckett’s route was a series of cartwheels toward Artemis Senior’s office, where his father had scolded the twins earlier in the week. Beckett knew that his father and mother had planned to watch the eclipse from Villa Éco’s observation roof deck just outside the office, but Myles had assured him that Mum and Dad wouldn’t be able to spot him, for they would be locked in the safe room while Axborn awaited instructions. The ideal outcome for this mission would be for Beckett to get his parents off the island before Axborn even realized he was on it. But, obviously, if Axborn were guarding the safe room door, a showdown would be unavoidable.

  Beckett was 180 degrees into his third cartwheel when it became suddenly obvious even from his upside-down vantage point that Myles’s plan was a bust. The blond twin would have to rely on improvisation—which, fortunately, was the only type of plan in which Beckett Fowl had even the slightest interest.

  What happened to foil Myles’s plan was this: just as Beckett reached the monks’ well, the overly aggressive and frankly distasteful dwarf with the testosterone-loaded name Axborn received the kill order from Gveld Horteknut some miles upriver.

  “Hooray!” cried Axborn, or some word to that effect. And without a moment’s consideration for anything except his order, the dwarf sprang from the shallow ambush trench.

  As Beckett cartwheeled, he noticed the spade-shaped digging tool that doubled as Axborn’s weapon of choice. It was on the dwarf’s right forearm, and Beckett hazarded a guess that perhaps the Reclaimer’s intention was to fill in the trench he’d excavated.

  But then he saw the dwarf stride with some purpose toward Villa Éco’s front door, and he revised his guess to: I think that fellow intends to murder Mum and Dad.

  As this was unthinkable, Beckett had no choice but to cartwheel away from the proscribed route and make himself a target.

  The moment Beckett left the safety of his path, Axborn’s phone sounded an alarm over and over until the dwarf stopped what he was doing, removed the sharpened skovl from his forearm, and checked the screen of his communicator.

  “Yes!” he crowed. “Finally.”

  For his killing orders had suddenly been streamlined:

  Do Kill: All the humans on the island.

  Do Not Kill: Seals or the house. Unless seals interfere with killing the humans.

  Axborn had added that last piece himself.

  And bonus good news: he didn’t even have to search for the Fowl who had set off the alarm, as the Mud Boy’s avatar was pulsing.

  He’s right behind me, Axborn realized. I bet he tries a surprise attack. Typical human. This will be so funny.

  As it turned out, Axborn was correct in his assumptions, both regarding the sneak attack taking place and the attack being somewhat funny—initially at least, because while it was true that Beckett preferred honorable combat as a rule, on this occasion his parents were in danger, and that fact trumped sportsmanship. Therefore, Beckett threw himself into a floor routine that would make Olympian gymnasts cry into their protein shakes as he approached Axborn at high speed and varying altitudes.

  Axborn didn’t even bother to turn around, for, while he might have been slow in many ways, he was very quick when it came to combat. And so, just when Beckett believed this fight might end with a single blow, something unexpected happened: Axborn whistled, and the sleeve of his vinesuit unspooled from one of his arms and twirled into the air behind the dwarf.

  Beckett couldn’t help thinking, That vine looks like it’s aimed right at me.

  And indeed, it was, for even though Beckett was in the middle of a maneuver that he had dubbed an AFWEBS, or Arabian Front With Extra Beckett Sauce, the vine tracked his movement perfectly. For those who might be interested, an Arabian front is an aerial movement where the gymnast does a half turn, then flips twice in the air before landing. Beckett liked to flap
his elbows like a chicken while performing this advanced move, thus providing the extra Beckett sauce.

  However, extra sauce or no, the vine plucked Beckett out of the sky and wound about him in slick coils, squeezing tight enough to make his ribs groan. It was all Beckett could do to keep one arm out of the package, for all the good that might do him, trussed as he was neater than a harpoon handle in the coils of a sailor’s rope.

  The vine delivered Beckett to Axborn’s feet, and the hulking dwarf leered down at him. “Hello, Mud Boy,” he said. “You’ve met my little kreperplont. His name is Bud, which is short for Budacious. These kreperplonts are one of our big secrets. The dwarves, I mean. We have many big secrets.”

  It was perhaps ironic that, although Beckett was a polyglot, he found it difficult to understand English spoken with Axborn’s almost impenetrable accent.

  “You’re doing really well with English,” Beckett said in the Horteknut dialect of Gnommish. “But we can speak your language if you prefer. It’s got less words and is also a lot cooler.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Axborn in his own tongue, as if he had scored a point. “It is a lot cooler, you idiot!”

  “I like Budacious,” said Beckett, trying to stay calm, though he was very close to panic due to the restriction of his movements.

  “Me too,” said Axborn. “Did you know that Horteknuts are often placed into their kreperplonts as babies?”

  Why does everybody lecture me? Beckett wondered before answering, “No. I totally did not know that.”