simply taken off the helmet, as there was an infrared connection between each LEP officer and their helmet. No, Holly was dead, and it hadn’t been by natural causes. Foaly felt the tears brimming on his eyelids. Not Holly too. “Recall the Retrieval team? Are you insane, Sool? We have to find Holly. Find out what happened.” Sool was unaffected by Foaly’s outburst. If anything, he appeared to enjoy it. “Short was a traitor and she was obviously in collusion with the goblins. Somehow her nefarious plan backfired and she was killed. I want you to remote-activate the incinerator in her helmet immediately, and we’ll close the book on a rogue officer.” Foaly was aghast. “Activate the remote incinerator! I can’t do that.” Sool rolled his eyes. “Again with the opinions. You don’t have authority here; you just obey it.” “But I’ll have a satellite picture in thirty minutes,” protested the centaur. “We can wait that long, surely.” Sool elbowed past Foaly to the keyboard. “Negative. You know the regulations. No bodies are left exposed for the humans to find. It’s a tough rule, I know, but necessary.” “The helmet could have malfunctioned,” said Foaly, grasping at straws. “Is it likely that all the life-sign readings could have flatlined at the same moment through equipment failure?” “No,” admitted Foaly. “And just how unlikely is it?” “About one chance in ten million,” said the technical adviser miserably. Sool picked his way around the keyboard. “If you don’t have the stomach for it, centaur. I’ll do it myself.” He entered his password and detonated the incinerator in Holly’s helmet. On a rooftop in Munich, Holly’s helmet dissolved in a pool of acid. And in theory, so did Holly’s body. “There,” said Sool, satisfied. “She’s gone, and now we can all sleep a little easier.” Not me, thought Foaly, staring forlornly at the screen. It will be a very long time before I sleep easy again.
Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland Artemis Fowl woke from a sleep haunted by nightmares. In his dreams, strange, red-eyed creatures had ripped open his chest with scimitar tusks and dined on his heart. He sat up in an undersized cot, both hands flying to his chest. His shirt was caked with dried blood, but there was no wound. 67