Read Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian for Free Online Page B

“There are five minutes left. If I can make it to a magma vent, we might be able to outrun the explosions to the surface.”
    Commander Kelp quickly weighed his options. He could order Artemis to remain underground, but it would certainly be strategically advantageous to have someone track Opal Koboi if she somehow escaped from Atlantis.
    “Go,” he said. “Captain Short will pilot you and Butler to the surface. Stay in contact if…”
    He did not finish the sentence, but everyone in the room could guess what he had been about to say.
    Stay in contact if…there is anything left to contact.

The Deeps, Atlantis
    Opal did not enjoy being forced into the depths of the tube by a flat-topped ramrod, but once she was down inside the neutron crust, she felt quite snuggly, cushioned by a fluffy layer of anti-rad foam.
    One is like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, she thought, only a little irked by the rough material of her anti-rad suit. I am about to transform into the godhead. I am about to arrive at my destiny. Bow down, creatures, or bear thine own blindness.
    Then she thought, Bear thine own blindness? Is that too much?
    There was a niggly doubt in the back of Opal’s head that she had actually made a horrific mistake by setting this plan in motion. It was her most radical maneuver ever, and thousands of fairies and humans would die. Worse still, she herself might cease to exist, or morph into some kind of time-mutant. But Opal dealt with these worries by simply refusing to engage with them. It was childish, she knew; but Opal was ninety percent convinced that she was cosmically ordained to be the first Quantum Being.
    The alternative was too abhorrent to be entertained for long: she, Opal Koboi, would be forced to live out her days as a common prisoner in the Deeps, an object of ridicule and derision. The subject of morality tales and school projects. A chimp in a zoo for the Atlantis fairies to stare at with round eyes. To kill everyone or even die herself would be infinitely preferable. Not that she would die. The tube would contain her energy; and with enough concentration, she would become a nuclear version of herself.
    One feels one’s destiny at hand. Any minute now.
Haven City
    Artemis, Butler, and Holly took the express elevator to Police Plaza’s own shuttleport, which was connected to a magma vent from the earth’s core that supplied much of the city’s power through geothermal rods. Artemis did not speak to the others; he simply muttered to himself and rapped the steel wall of the elevator with his knuckles.
    Holly was relieved to find that there was no pattern in the rappings, unless, of course, the pattern was too complicated for her to perceive it. It wouldn’t be the first time Artemis’s thought process had been beyond her grasp.
    The elevator was spacious by LEP standards and so allowed Butler enough headroom to stand up straight, though he still knocked his crown against the capsule wall whenever they hit a bump.
    Finally Artemis spoke: “If we can get into the shuttle before the deadline, then we stand a real chance of making it to the magma chutes.”
    Artemis used the word deadline , but his companions knew that he meant assassination. Pip would shoot Opal when the time was up; none of them doubted that now. Then the consequences of this murder would unfold, whatever they might be; and their best chance of survival lay on the inside of a titanium craft that was built to withstand total immersion in a magma chimney.
    The elevator hissed to a halt on pneumatic pistons and the doors opened to admit the assorted noises of utter bedlam. The shuttleport was jammed with frantic fairies fighting their way through the security checkpoints, ignoring the usual X-ray protocols and jumping over barriers and turnstiles. Sprites flew illegally low, their wings grazing the tube lighting. Gnomes huddled together in crunchball formations, attempting to barge their way through the line of LEP crowd-control