by Eoin Colfer
Minutes later, a greater mystery presented itself. As I washed my face at the basin, two tiny objects fell from my eyes. Close examination in the lab revealed them to be semi-corroded tinted contact lenses. Not only that, but a mirrored layer had been added behind the tinted lens. Ingenious. Undoubtedly the work of a master craftsman. But to what purpose? It is strange, but even though I have no knowledge of these lenses or how they came to be in my eyes, I feel the answer is somewhere in my own brain. Hidden in the shadows.
Imagine my surprise when Juliet and Butler discovered mirrored lenses in their own eyes. These lenses are so clever they could have been my own invention, so obviously this unknown adversary must not be underestimated.
I will track the culprit down, make no mistake. No clue will be left uninvestigated. Butler has a contact in Limerick. An expert in the field of lenses and scopes. He may recognize our intruder’s handiwork. Butler is on his way there, as I write.
And so, a new chapter begins in the life of Artemis Fowl II. In a matter of days my father returns with his newfound conscience. I will shortly be shipped off to boarding school, where I will have access only to a pathetic computer center and an even more pathetic laboratory. My bodyguard seems to be too old for physical tasks and there is an unknown adversary planting strange objects on my very person.
Overwhelming difficulties, you may think. An ordinary person would draw the shutters and hide from the world. But I am no ordinary person. I am Artemis Fowl, the latest in the Fowl crime dynasty, and I will not be turned from my path. I will find whoever planted those lenses and they will pay for their presumption. And once I am rid of this nuisance, my plans will proceed unhindered. I shall unleash a crime wave the likes of which has never been seen. The world will remember the name of Artemis Fowl.
The J. Argon Clinic, Haven City, the Lower Elements; Three Months Earlier
The J. Argon Clinic was not a state hospital. Nobody stayed there for free. Argon and his staff of psychologists only treated fairies who could afford it. Of all the clinic’s wealthy patients, Opal Koboi was unique. She had set up an emergency fund for herself more than a year before she was committed, just in case she ever went insane and needed to pay for treatment. It was a smart move. If Opal hadn’t set up the fund, her family would undoubtedly have moved her to a cheaper facility. Not that the facility itself made much difference to Koboi, who had spent the past year drooling and having her reflexes tested. Dr. Argon doubted if Opal would have noticed a bull troll beating its chest before her.
The fund was not the only reason why Opal was unique. Koboi was the Argon Clinic’s celebrity patient. Following the attempt by the B’wa Kell goblin triad to seize power, Opal Koboi’s name had become the most infamous four syllables under the world. After all, the pixie billionairess had formed an alliance with disgruntled LEP officer Briar Cudgeon, and funded the triad’s war on Haven. Koboi had betrayed her own kind, and now her own mind was betraying her.
For the first six months of Koboi’s incarceration, the clinic had been besieged by media filming the pixie’s every twitch. The LEP guarded her cell door in shifts, and every staff member in the facility was treated to background checks and stern glares. Nobody was exempt. Even Dr. Argon himself was subjected to random DNA swabs to ensure that he was who he said he was. The LEP wasn’t taking any chances with Koboi. If she escaped from Argon Clinic, not only would they be the laughingstock of the fairy world, but a highly dangerous criminal would be unleashed on Haven City.
But as time went by, fewer camera crews turned up at the gates each morning. After all, how many hours of drooling can an audience be expected to sit through? Gradually, the LEP crews were downsized from a dozen to six and finally to a single officer per shift. Where could Opal Koboi go? the authorities reasoned. There were a dozen cameras focused on her, twenty-four hours a day. There was a subcutaneous seeker-sleeper under the skin of her upper arm, and she was DNA swabbed four times daily. And even if someone did get Opal out, what could they do with her? The pixie couldn’t even stand without help, and the sensors said her brain waves were little more than flat lines.
That said, Dr. Argon was very proud of his prize patient, and mentioned her name often at dinner parties. Since Opal Koboi had been admitted to the clinic, it had become almost fashionable to have a relative in therapy. Almost every family on the rich list had a crazy uncle in the attic. Now that crazy uncle could receive the best of care in the lap of luxury.
If only every fairy in the facility was as docile as Opal Koboi. All she needed was a few intravenous tubes and a monitor, which had been more than paid for by her first six months’ medical fees. Dr. Argon fervently hoped that little Opal never woke up. Because once she did, the LEP would haul her off to court. And when she had been convicted of treason her assets would be frozen, including the clinic’s fund. No, the longer Opal’s nap lasted, the better for everyone, especially her. Because of their thin skulls and large brain volume, pixies were susceptible to various maladies, such as catatonia, amnesia, and narcolepsy. So it was quite possible that her coma would last for several years. And even if Opal did wake up, it was quite possible that her memory would stay locked up in some drawer in her huge pixie brain.
Dr. J. Argon did his rounds every night. He didn’t perform much hands-on therapy anymore, but he felt that it was good for the staff to feel his presence. If the other doctors knew that Jerbal Argon kept his finger on the pulse, then they were more likely to keep their own fingers on that pulse, too.
Argon always saved Opal for last. It calmed him somehow to see the small pixie asleep in her harness. Often at the end of a stressful day, he even envied Opal her untroubled existence. When it had all become too much for the pixie, her brain had simply shut down, all except for the most vital functions. She still breathed, and occasionally the monitors registered a dream spike in her brain waves. But other than that, for all intents and purposes, Opal Koboi was no more.
On one fateful night, Jerbal Argon was feeling more stressed than usual. His wife was suing for divorce on the grounds that he hadn’t said more than six consecutive words to her in over two years. The Council was threatening to pull his government grant because of all the money he was making from his new celebrity clients, and he had a pain in his hip that no amount of magic could seem to cure. The warlocks said it was probably all in his head. They seemed to think it was funny.
Argon limped down the clinic’s eastern wing, checking the plasma chart of each patient as he passed their room. He winced each time his left foot touched the floor.
The two janitor pixies, Mervall and Descant Brill, were outside Opal’s room, picking up dust with static brushes. Pixies made wonderful employees. They were methodical, patient, and determined. When a pixie was instructed to do something, you could rest assured that that thing would be done. Plus, they were cute, with their baby faces and disproportionately large heads. Just looking at a pixie cheered most people up. They were walking therapy.
“Evening, boys,” said Argon. “How’s our favorite patient?”
Merv, the elder twin, glanced up from his brush. “Same old, same old, Jerry,” he said. “I thought she moved a toe earlier, but it was just a trick of the light.”
Argon laughed, but it was forced. He did not like to be called Jerry. It was his clinic after all; he deserved some respect. But good janitors were like gold dust, and the Brill brothers had been keeping the building spotless and shipshape for nearly two years now. The Brills were almost celebrities themselves. Twins were very rare among the People. Mervall and Descant were the only pixie pair currently residing in Haven. They had been featured on several TV programs, including Canto, PPTV’s highest-rated chat show.
LEP’s Corporal Grub Kelp was on sentry duty. When Argon reached Opal’s room, the corporal was engrossed in a movie on his video goggles. Argon didn’t blame him. Guarding Opal Koboi was about as exciting as watching toenails grow.
“Good film?” inquired the doctor pleasantly.
G
rub raised the lenses. “Not bad. It’s a human Western. Plenty of shooting and squinting.”
“Maybe I’ll borrow it when you’re finished?”
“No problem, doctor. But handle it carefully. Human disks are very expensive. I’ll give you a special cloth.”
Argon nodded. He remembered Grub Kelp now. The LEP officer was very particular about his possessions. He had already written two letters of complaint to the clinic board about a protruding floor rivet that had scratched his boots.
Argon consulted Koboi’s chart. The plasma screen on the wall displayed a constantly updated feed from the sensors attached to her temples. There was no change, nor did he expect there to be. Her vitals were all normal, and her brain activity was minimal. She’d had a dream earlier in the evening but now her mind had settled. And finally, as if he needed telling, the seeker-sleeper implanted in her arm informed him that Opal Koboi was indeed where she was supposed to be. Generally, the seeker-sleepers were implanted in the head, but pixie skulls were too fragile for any local surgery.
Jerbal punched in his personal code on the reinforced door’s keypad. The heavy door slid back to reveal a spacious room with gently pulsing floor mood lights. The walls were soft plastic, and gentle sounds of nature spilled from recessed speakers. At the moment a brook was splashing over flat rocks.
In the middle of the room, Opal Koboi hung suspended in a full body harness. The straps were gel padded and they adjusted automatically to any body movement. If Opal did happen to wake, the harness could be remotely triggered to seal like a net, preventing her from harming herself or escaping.
Argon checked the monitor pads, making sure they had good contact on Koboi’s forehead. He lifted one of the pixie’s eyelids, shining a pencil light at the pupil. It contracted slightly, but Opal did not avert her eyes.
“Well, anything to tell me today, Opal?” asked the doctor softly. “An opening chapter for my book?”
Argon liked to talk to Koboi, just in case she could hear. When she woke up, he reasoned, he would have already established rapport.
“Nothing? Not a single insight?”
Opal did not react. As she hadn’t for almost a year.
“Ah well,” said Argon, swabbing the inside of Koboi’s mouth with the last cotton ball in his pocket. “Maybe tomorrow, eh?”
He rolled the cotton ball across a sponge pad on his clipboard. Seconds later, Opal’s name flashed up on a tiny screen.
“DNA never lies,” muttered Argon, tossing the ball into a recycling bin.
With one last look at his patient, Jerbal Argon turned toward the door.
“Sleep well, Opal,” he said almost fondly.
He felt calm again, the pain in his hip almost forgotten. Koboi was as far under as she had ever been. She wasn’t going to wake up any time soon. The Koboi fund was safe.
It’s amazing just how wrong one gnome can be.
Opal Koboi was not catatonic, but neither was she awake. She was somewhere in between, floating in a liquid world of meditation, where every memory was a bubble of multicolored light popping gently in her consciousness.
Since her early teens Opal had been a disciple of Gola Schweem, the cleansing coma guru. Schweem’s theory was that there was a deeper level of sleep than experienced by most fairies. The cleansing coma state could usually only be reached after decades of discipline and practice. Opal had reached her first cleansing coma at the age of fourteen.
The benefits of the cleansing coma were that a fairy could spend the sleep time thinking, or in this case, plotting, and also awake feeling completely refreshed. Opal’s coma was so complete that her mind was almost entirely separated from her body. She could fool the sensors, and felt no embarrassment at the indignities of intravenous feeding and assisted bathings. The longest recorded consciously self-induced coma was forty-seven days. Opal had been under for eleven months and counting, though she wasn’t planning to be counting much longer.
When Opal Koboi had joined forces with Briar Cudgeon and his goblins, she had realized that she would need a backup plan. Their scheme to overthrow the LEP had been ingenious, but there had always been a chance that something could go wrong. In the event that it did, Opal had had no intention of spending the rest of her life in prison. The only way she could make a clean getaway was if everybody thought she was still locked up. So Opal had begun to make preparations.
The first had been to set up the emergency fund for the Argon Clinic. This would ensure that she would be sent to the right place if she had to induce a cleansing coma. The second step had been to get two of her most trusted personnel installed in the clinic, to help with her eventual escape. Then she began siphoning huge amounts of gold from her businesses. Opal did not wish to become an impoverished exile.
The final step had been to donate some of her own DNA, and green-light the creation of a clone that would take her place in the padded cell. Cloning was completely illegal, and had been banned by fairy law for more than five hundred years, since the first experiments in Atlantis. Cloning was by no means a perfect science. Doctors had never been able to create an exact fairy clone. The clones looked fine, but they were basically shells with only enough brain power to run the body’s basic functions. They were missing the spark of true life. A fully grown clone resembled nothing more than the original person in a coma. Perfect.
Opal had had a greenhouse lab constructed far from Koboi Industries, and had diverted enough funds to keep the project active for two years: the exact time it would take to grow a clone of herself to adulthood. Then, when she wanted to escape from the Argon Clinic, a perfect replica of herself would be left in her place. The LEP would never know she was gone.
As things had turned out, she had been right to plan ahead. Briar had proved treacherous, and a small group of fairies and humans had ensured that his betrayal would lead to her own downfall. Now Opal had a goal to bolster her willpower. She would maintain this coma for as long as it took, because there was a score to be settled. Foaly, Root, Holly Short, and the human Artemis Fowl. They were the ones responsible for her defeat. Soon she would be free of this clinic, and then she would visit those who had caused her such despair and give them a little despair of their own. Once her enemies were defeated she could proceed with the second phase of her plan: introducing the Mud Men to the People in a way that could not be covered up by a few mind wipes. The secret life of fairies was almost at an end.
Opal Koboi’s brain released a few happy endorphins. The thought of revenge always gave her a warm fuzzy feeling.
The Brill brothers watched Dr. Argon limp up the corridor.
“Moron,” muttered Merv, using his telescopic vacuum pole to chase some dust out of a corner.
“You said it,” agreed Scant. “Old Jerry couldn’t analyze a bowl of vole curry. No wonder his wife is leaving him. If he was any good as a shrink, he would’ve seen that coming.”
Merv collapsed the vacuum. “How are we doing?”
Scant checked his moonometer. “Ten past eight.”
“Good. How’s Corporal Kelp?”
“Still watching the movie. This guy is perfect. We have to go tonight. The LEP could send someone smart for the next shift. And if we wait any longer, the clone will grow another inch.”
“You’re right. Check the spy cameras.”
Scant lifted the lid on what appeared to be a janitor’s trolley, festooned as it was with mops, rags, and sprays. Hidden beneath a tray of vacuum nozzles was a color monitor split into several screens.
“Well?” hissed Merv.
Scant did not answer immediately, taking time to check all the screens. The video feed was from various micro-cameras that Opal had installed around the clinic before her incarceration. The spy cameras were actually genetically engineered organic material. So the pictures they sent were literally a live feed. The world’s first living machines. Totally undetectable by bug sweepers.
“Night crew only,” he said at last. “Nobody in this sector except Corporal Idi
ot over there.”
“What about the parking lot?”
“Clear.”
Merv held out his hand. “Okay, brother. This is it. No turning back. Are we in? Do we want Opal Koboi back?”
Scant blew a lock of black hair from one round pixie eye.
“Yes, because if she comes back on her own, Opal will find a way to make us suffer,” he said, shaking his brother’s hand. “So yes, we’re in.”
Merv took a remote control from his pocket. The device was tuned to a sonix receiver planted in the clinic’s gable wall. This in turn was connected to a balloon of acid that lay gently on the clinic’s main power cube in the parking lot junction box. A second balloon sat atop the backup cube in the maintenance basement. As the clinic’s janitors, it had been a simple matter for Merv and Scant to plant the acid balloons the previous evening. Of course, the Argon Clinic was also connected to the main grid, but if the cubes did go down, there would be a two-minute interval before the main power kicked in. There was no need for more elaborate arrangements; after all, this was a medical facility, not a prison.
Merv took a deep breath, flicked the safety cover, and pressed the red button. The remote control emitted an infrared command activating two sonix charges. The charges sent out sound waves that burst the balloons, and the balloons dumped their acidic contents on the clinic’s power cubes. Twenty seconds later the cubes were completely eaten away and the whole building was plunged into darkness. Merv and Scant quickly put on night-vision goggles.
As soon as the power failed, green strip lights began pulsing gently on the floor, guiding the way to the exits. Merv and Scant moved quickly and purposefully. Scant steered the trolley, and Merv made straight for Corporal Kelp.
Grub was pulling the video glasses from over his eyes.
“Hey,” he said, disoriented by the sudden darkness. “What’s going on here?”
