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 vapour 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 were correct.
‘There’s the culprit,’ she said from a wall speaker. ‘A sneaky sniper near the harbour.’
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?
The second point of interest, and the cause of Myles’s bewilderment, was another, much smaller figure that had been captured by one camera. The tiny creature had appeared out of thin air, pedalled to keep herself aloft and then plummeted into the seaweed silo.
Beckett’s confusion was more general in nature, but he did have one question as the brothers reviewed the balloon footage. ‘A pedalling fairy,’ he said. ‘But where’s her bicycle?’
Myles was not inclined to answer, but was inclined to disagree. ‘There’s no bicycle, brother mine,’ he snapped. ‘And I do not happen to believe in fairies or wizards or demigods or vampires. This is either photo manipulation or interference from a satellite system.’
He rewound the footage and froze the figure in the sky, stepping closer for a decent squint.
‘Magnify,’ he told his spectacles, which he had augmented with various lenses pillaged from his big brother’s sealed laboratory. Artemis had set a twenty-two-digit security code on his door that he did not realise Myles had suggested to him subliminally by whispering into his ear every night for a week as he slept. To add further insult, the numbers Myles had chosen could be decoded using a simple letter–number cipher to spell out the Latin phrase Stultus Diana Ephesiorum, which translated as Diana is stupid, Diana being the Roman version of the Greek goddess Artemis, for whom Artemis had been named. It was a very complicated and time-consuming prank, which, in Myles’s opinion, was the best kind.
‘Yes,’ said Beckett. ‘Magnify.’
And the blond twin accomplished his magnification simply by taking a step closer to the screen, which, in truth, was both more efficient and cost-effective.
Myles studied the suspended creature and it seemed clear that there was, at the very least, a possibility it was not human.
Beckett jabbed the wall screen with his finger, daubing it with whatever gunk was coating his hand at the time.
‘Myles, that’s a fairy on an invisible heli-bike. I am one million per cent sure.’
‘There is no such animal as a heli-bike and you can’t have a million per cent, Beck,’ said Myles absently. ‘Anyway, how can you be so sure?’
‘Remember Artemis’s stories?’ asked Beckett. ‘He told us all about the fairies.’
This was true. Their older brother had often tucked in the twins with stories of the Fairy People who lived deep in the earth. The tales always ended with the same lines:
The fairies dig deep and they endure, but, if ever they need to breathe fresh air or gaze upon the moon, they know that we will keep their secrets, for the Fowls have ever been friends to the People. Fowl and fairy, fairy and Fowl, as it is now and will ever be.
‘Those were stories,’ said Myles. ‘How can you be certain there is a drop of truth to them?’
‘I just am,’ said Beckett, which was an often-employed phrase guaranteed to drive Myles into paroxysms of indignant rage.
‘You just are? You just are?’ he squeaked. ‘That is not a valid argument.’
‘Your voice is squeaky,’ Beckett pointed out. ‘Like a little piggy.’
‘That is because I am enraged,’ said Myles. ‘I am enraged because you are presenting your opinion as fact, brother. How is one supposed to unravel this mystery when you insist on babbling inanities?’
Beckett reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a gummy sweet.
‘Here,’ he said, wiggling the worm at Myles as though it were alive. ‘This gummy is red and you need red, because your face is too white.’
‘My face is white because my fight-or-flight response has been activated,’ said Myles, glad to have something he was in a position to explain. ‘Red blood cells have been shunted to my limbs in case I need to either do battle or flee.’
‘That is soooo interesting,’ said Beckett, winking at his brother to nail home the sarcasm.
‘So the last thing I shall do is eat that gummy worm,’ declared Myles. ‘One of us has to be a grown-up eleven-year-old, and that one will be me, as usual. So, whatever I do in the immediate future, gummy-eating will not be a part of it. Do you understand me, brother?’
By which time Myles had actually popped the worm in his mouth and was sucking it noisily.
He had always been a sucker when it came to gummy sweets. In this case, he was a sucker for the gummy he was sucking.
Beckett gave him a few seconds to unwind, then asked, ‘Better?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Myles. ‘Much better.’
For, although he was a certified genius, Myles was also anxious by nature and tended to stress over the least little thing.
Beckett smiled. ‘Good, because a squeaky genius
