Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian Read Online Free PDF Page A

today?”
    Pip shook his head sorrowfully at Kip. “Why are the pretty ones always stupid?” He turned to the camera. “You know what you can do for us. We told you already. Release Opal Koboi, or the younger model is gonna take a long sleep. And by that I mean, get shot in the head.”
    “You need to give us some time to show good faith. Come on, Pip. One more hour? For me?”
    Pip scratched his head with the gun barrel, pretending to consider it. “You are cute, Holly. But not that cute. If I give you another hour, you’ll track me down somehow and drop a time-stop on my head. No thanks, Cap. You have ten minutes. If I was you, I would get that cell open or call the undertaker.”
    “This kind of thing takes time, Pip,” persisted Holly, repeating the name, forging a bond. “It takes three days to pay a parking fine.”
    Pip shrugged. “Not my problem, babe. And you can call me Pip all day and it won’t make us BFFs. It ain’t my real name.”
    Artemis deactivated the microphone. “This one is smart, Holly. Don’t play with him, just tell the truth.”
    Holly nodded and switched on the mike. “Okay, whatever your name is. Let me give it to you straight. There’s a good chance that if you shoot young Opal, then we’re going to have a series of very big explosions down here. A lot of innocent people will die.”
    Pip waved his gun carelessly. “Oh yeah, the quantum laws. We know about that, don’t we, Kip?”
    “Quantum laws,” said Kip. “Of course we know about that.”
    “And you don’t care that good fairies, gnomes that could be related to you, will die?”
    Pip raised his eyebrows so that they jutted over the top of the mask. “You like any of your family, Kip?”
    “Ain’t got no family. I’m an orphan.”
    “Really? Me too.”
    While they bantered, Opal shivered in the dirt, trying to speak through the tape. Foaly would get voice analysis on the muffled mumbles later—if there was a later—but it didn’t take a genius to figure out she was pleading for her life.
    “There must be something you need,” said Holly.
    “There is one thing,” replied Pip. “Could I get your com-code? I sure would love to hook up for a sim-latte when this is all over. Might be a while, of course, what with Haven City being in ruins.”
    Foaly put a text box on the screen. It read: They’re moving Opal now.
    Holly fluttered her eyelids to show she understood, then continued with the negotiation. “Here’s the situation, Pip. We have nine minutes left. You can’t get someone out of Atlantis in nine minutes. It’s not possible. They need to suit up, pressurize, maybe; go through the conduits to open sea. Nine minutes is not long enough.”
    Pip’s theatrical responses were getting a little hard to take. “Well then, I guess a lot of people are going swimming. Fission can put a hell of a hole in the shield.”
    Holly broke. “Don’t you care about anyone? What’s the going rate for genocide?”
    Pip and Kip actually laughed.
    “It’s a horrible feeling, impotency, ain’t it?” said Pip. “But there are worse feelings. Drowning, for example.”
    “And getting crushed by falling buildings,” added Kip.
    Holly banged her tiny fists on the console.
    These two are so infuriating.
    Pip stepped close to the camera, so that his mask filled the screen. “If I don’t get a call from Opal Koboi in the next few minutes telling me she is in a shuttle on her way to the surface, then I will shoot this pixie. Believe it.”
    Foaly rested his head in his hands. “I used to love Pip and Kip,” he said.

The Deeps, Atlantis
    Opal Koboi was making a futile attempt to levitate when the guards came for her. It was something she had been able to do as a child before her chosen life of crime had stripped the magic from her synapses, the tiny junctions between nerve cells where most experts agreed magic originated. Her power might have regenerated if it hadn’t been for the human pituitary gland she’d had