Though Lazuli’s spine had not been compacted by a high-speed impact with Dalkey Island, she still had the problem of how to effectively engage a sniper when she was operating under pedal power. If Lazuli attempted to approach the sniper, he could take potshots at his leisure.
Visibility was the problem.
So become invisible, Heitz.
But how to become invisible without any magic or even an operational shimmer suit?
There was a way, but it was neither foolproof nor field-tested, though it had been tried in somewhat raucous conditions, those being the communal area of the cadets’ locker room—inside lockers 28 and 29, to be precise. Lazuli knew this because she had witnessed the bullying, and lost ten grade points for repeating the experiment on the bully.
Lazuli reached into one of the myriad pockets in her suit and drew out a pressurized pod of chromophoric camouflage filaments held together by reinforced spider silk. The Filabuster, as it was known by LEP operatives, was rarely deployed, and in fact was due to be removed from duty kits in the next few months because of the unpredictability of its range, but now it was the only weapon in Lazuli’s arsenal that was actually of any use, as it had no electronic parts and came pre-primed.
The Filabuster operated on the same system that certain plants employ to disperse their seeds. The fibers inside the dried egg pulled against each other to create tension, and when the silken cowl was ruptured, the reflective filaments exploded with considerable force, creating a visual distortion that could provide enough cover to cause momentary confusion.
But I need more than momentary confusion, Lazuli thought. I need to be invisible.
Which was where the locker-room antics came in. When a hulking demon cadet had forced a tiny pixie into his own locker and then tossed in an armed Filabuster, the pixie had emerged coated in filaments and practically invisible, and also, it turned out later, battered and bruised.
Perhaps this is not a good idea, thought Lazuli; then she pulled the spider silk ripcord before she could change her mind. Now there were approximately ten seconds before the silk surrendered to the internal pressure and exploded in a dense fountain of chromophoric filaments that would adjust to the region’s dominant color, which ought to be the blue-black of the early evening Irish Sea.
“D’Arvit,” swore Lazuli in Gnommish, knowing that this experience was going to be, at the very least, quite unpleasant. “D’Arvit.”
But what were a few cuts and bruises in the face of a troll’s life?
Specialist Heitz hugged the Filabuster close to her body and went to her happy place, which was the cubicle apartment she’d recently rented on Booshka that she shared with one single plant and absolutely no people.
“See you soon, Fern,” she said, and then the Filabuster exploded with approximately ten times more force than the locker model.
The sensation was more kinetic than Specialist Heitz had anticipated, and she instantly had more respect for the locker pixie who’d borne the torment without complaint. Lazuli felt as though she had been dropped into a nest of extremely irritable wasps that were not overly fond of hybrid fairies. The filaments clawed at every inch of her suit, more than a few managing to wiggle inside and tear her skin. This laceration was accompanied by a tremendous concussive force, which sent pedaling to the bottom of Lazuli’s list of priorities and sent the pixel herself tumbling to earth, with only the drag of doubledex wings to slow her down.
As she fell, Lazuli had the presence of mind to notice a ragged shroud of Filabuster filaments assemble around the small island, rendering it invisible to anyone outside the field.
Good, she thought. If I survive the fall, the camouflage filaments should hang around long enough to facilitate a toy-troll rescue.
Though perhaps her thoughts were not so lucid. Perhaps they were more as follows: Aaaargh! Sky! Rescue! D’Arvit!
Whichever the case, Specialist Heitz was correct: If she survived—which was a gargantuan if for a fairy without magic—then the Filabuster drape should afford her time to rescue the toy troll.
And it would have afforded her time if left undisturbed. Unfortunately, mere moments later, an army helicopter thundered over Sorrento Point, the downdraft from its rotors scattering the Filabuster curtain to the four winds. And just as suddenly as Dalkey Island had disappeared, it returned to view.
Specialist Lazuli Heitz hit the earth hard. Technically she did not hit the earth itself, but something perched on top of it. Something soft and slimy that popped like Bubble Wrap as she sank through its layers.
Lazuli could have no way of knowing that her life had been saved by Myles Fowl’s seaweed fermentation silo. She plowed her way through several slick levels before coming to a stop in the bottom third of the giant barrel, and in the moment before the seaweed covered her entirely, she watched the lead helicopter hover above and noticed a black-clad figure standing right out on the landing skid, her skirt flapping in the rotor-generated wind.
Is that what the humans call a ninja? Lazuli wondered, trying to remember her human studies. But ninja was not the right word. What had come after ninja on the human occupations chart?
Not a ninja, she realized. It’s a nun.
Then the seaweed slid over Lazuli’s small frame, and, because the universe likes its little jokes, this felt almost exactly the same as being submerged in a brass tub of eels.
INSIDE Villa Éco’s safe room, Myles and Beckett Fowl were experiencing a shared emotion—that emotion being confusion. Confusion was nothing new to either boy, but this was the first occasion on which they had felt it simultaneously.
To explain: As the twins were so dissimilar in everything except for physiognomy, it was not unusual for the actions of the one to confound the mind of the other. Myles had lost count of how many times Beckett’s attempted conversations with wildlife had bewildered his logical brain, and Beckett, for his part, was flummoxed on an hourly basis by his brother’s scientific lectures.
So, generally, one twin was lucid while the other was confused, but on this occasion, they were mystified as a unit.
“What’s happening, Myles?” asked Beckett.
Myles did not answer the question, reluctant to admit that he couldn’t quite fathom what exactly was going on.
“Just a moment, brother,” he said. “I am processing.”
Myles was indeed processing, almost as quickly as the safe room’s processors were processing. NANNI’s gel incarnation may have been a puddle on the floor, but the AI itself was safe inside Villa Éco’s protected systems and was now replaying footage from a network of cameras slung underneath a weather balloon. These cameras were outside the Faraday cage and, unfortunately, had succumbed to the EMP, but before then they had managed to transmit the video to the Fowl server. NANNI had zeroed in on two points of interest. First, the AI located a dissipating bullet vapor trace and followed it back to the mainland to find that there was a camouflaged sniper there, a hirsute chap with an antique Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle, which would be over eighty years old, if NANNI was correct.
“There’s the culprit,” she said from a wall speaker. “A sneaky sniper near the harbor.”
This was not the source of Myles’s confusion, as the sonic boom had to have come from somewhere, and after all, the Fowl family had many enemies from the bad old days. The fact that one enemy would employ an antique weapon could relate back to some decades-old vendetta having to do with any number of the twins’ ancestors, most probably Artemis Senior, who had once attempted to muscle in on the Russian mafia’s Murmansk market. This sniper might simply be on a revenge mission, and what better way to hurt the father than to target the sons?