The Fowl Twins: Chapters 4–6

While he was still gazing at his altered card in slack-jawed amazement, he received a terse call from the minister of defense himself, who summarily informed Conroy that his squad had been deputized by a top secret intergovernmental organization and he was to follow Sister Jeronima’s orders to the letter until his ID returned to its original color.

“And if I don’t, Minister?” Conroy had brazenly asked.

Beckett’s snores, technically speaking, were not snores at all but a trio of whistles that he exhaled through both of his nostrils and his mouth. This triple exhale was unusual enough in itself, but the really extraordinary thing was that each orifice played a different note.

Myles’s skull was very sensitive, and the least change in atmospherics could precipitate a migraine.

“I may not know a zombie,” continued the nun, segueing neatly into her area of interest, “but I do know other creatures who are not human.”

He made his position even more tenuous by pushing the chair back on two legs with his foot.

“We don’t use expressions like pain in my neck. They are colloquialisms.”

"...And the more we learn—”
“—the less we know. ¿Correcto?” Sister Jeronima completed the maxim with the hope of cutting off the Fowl boy’s lecture.

“I cannot help what you thought you meant, Sister. I merely interpret your words and draw inferences from the movements of your eyeballs, your limbs, and general deportment. I am not a mind reader.”

“Apologies, children. Have no fear, I will chastise the helicopter team for this infection, but we are not having the luxury of time. There will be no series of medical shampoos-ings.”

And humans are invariably fallible, often inexpert, and occasionally dull-witted.

Lord Teddy’s smartphone synced with the Skyblade’s onboard navigation, quickly extrapolating the most likely destination for the army helicopter, and so, two hours later, the Skyblade swooped into late-night Dutch airspace before the Fowl Twins even arrived.

Any thief possessed of the temerity to lay a finger on the seaplane's bio-coded handle would find himself with ten thousand extra volts of electricity coursing through his system, so the duke felt reasonably confident that the Skyblade would be safe from ne’er-do-wells and good-for-naughts.

And then it will be simplicity itself to disguise myself in that garish suit.

And what of our wayward pixel, Specialist Heitz?

It had all been going very well, and Lazuli was quietly most pleased with herself, until the interrogation room door was summarily slammed in her face, and Specialist Heitz had no choice but to flatten herself against a wall and do very little until something happened.

Though Lazuli could not hear exactly what was being said, the tone was unmistakable. This hectoring continued for some minutes until the nun's register elevated sharply, and though it might be an exaggeration to say that all hell broke loose, it was certainly true that a portion of Hades was unleashed.

He did not use those precise words but rather spoke in what the brothers called Fowl Argot, a secret cryptophasic language developed by the twins over the past decade and spoken by them alone.

It seemed that the vigilant human was also stymied by the nun's arrival.

Conveniently, the jumpsuits had inoculation patches on both sleeves, so it was a matter of less than a single second for Oberon to rip open the Velcro seal and expose the skinny Fowl biceps within.

And now that we are finished with the playacting, let me tell you the bald truth: ACRONYM has good reason to believe that the Fowls are in collusion with these Fairy People, and now we have proof. Regardless of whether you twins are complicit or not, I intend to keep you here until someone attempts to rescue you.

Jeronima’s look was loaded with derision.

Myles had often postulated that this throbbing was a phantom manifestation of the physical connection they had shared in the womb, while Beckett reasoned that Myles was a pain even when he wasn’t in the room.

He did so now, thumping Oberon above the kneecap. There was no pain and Oberon was on the point of making a disparaging remark when his entire body seized up and he keeled over like a felled oak, his mouth frozen oddly in a whistling aspect.

Mere seconds ago, Jeronima would have pooh-poohed the notion that she could be secured by an eleven-year-old, but a lot had happened in the past few minutes, and so she checked and found one of her wrists cuffed to the table, the junior manacles’ ratchets stretched to their last tooth.

“I was saying, you odious child, that if you do not release me immediately, I will be forced to kill you.”

The effect of the cellophane slug on Clippers was predictable in that the man was quickly trussed in cellophane like a supermarket turkey.

In any case, the cellophane was virulent enough to contain Lance along with his steam, which soon fogged up the interior of the bubble.

Traditionally, there would be two groups: goodies and baddies, to use a vernacular that Myles Fowl would doubtless frown upon.

“Au contraire, mademoiselle,” Teddy riposted, his surprise concealed by his head covering. “I have, in fact, quite a good idea of what manner of creature I have at my mercy..."

Lord Teddy had about as much of this assorted claptrap as he was prepared to endure.

“Artemis,” said Lazuli, recalling her angel’s words: If you ever meet Artemis Fowl, he is to be trusted.
She would have to heed those words now, no matter what her misgivings about the twins might be.

“Myles is the smarty-pants, but I am the smarty-fists.”
Myles sighed, aggrieved. “I do apologize for my brother's egregious mangling of the language, but he is, in essence, correct. I think, and he does.”

However, in the narrow corridor, the ACRONYM operatives were hampered by their own pumped-up bulk and forced to advance two abreast, and so the FFA opted for the Thermopylae approach, which had worked so well for King Leonidas and his Spartans (for the first three days, at least).

But considering the enraged nun to the rear, the dislocated duke in the wet room, and the brigades of ACRONYM agents doubtless converging on the underground lair, Myles thought it was probably prudent to move along and skip the anti-violence lecture.

One might think that the universe would have granted the Fowl Twins a moment's respite, considering all they had endured at the hands of ACRONYM, but no, it was not finished meddling with the brothers just yet.

I have no doubt we can concoct a plan to evade the clutches of Sister Jeronima and her lackeys.

But this time there was derring-do involved, so Beckett made an exception.

“Turn, brother,” he said through gritted teeth, the water sluicing over his gleaming head.

But, if Myles’s calculations were correct, then it should be possible for him to both vindicate his reputation and buy the Regrettables a little time.