Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [17]
Holly surveyed the mess she had created. There was no doubt, it was a shambles. Worse than Hamburg. Root would skin her alive. She’d rather face the troll any day. This was the end of her career for sure, but suddenly that didn’t seem so important because her ribs were aching, and she had a blinder of a pressure headache coming on. Perhaps a rest, just for a second, so she could pull herself together before Retrieval showed up.
Holly didn’t even bother looking for a chair. She simply allowed her legs to buckle beneath her, sinking to the chessboard linoleum floor.
Waking up to Commander Root’s bulging features is the stuff of nightmares. Holly’s eyes flickered open, and for a second she could have sworn that there was concern in those eyes. But then it was gone, replaced by the customary vein-popping fury.
“Captain Short!” he roared, mindless of her headache. “What in the name of sanity happened here?”
Holly rose shakily to her feet.
“I . . . That is . . . There was . . .” The sentences just wouldn’t come.
“You disobeyed a direct order. I told you to hang back! You know it’s forbidden to enter a human building without an invitation.”
Holly shook the shadows from her vision.
“I got invited in. A child called for help.”
“You’re on shaky ground there, Short.”
“There is precedent, sir. Corporal Rowe versus the State. The jury ruled that the trapped woman’s cry for help could be accepted as an invitation into the building. Anyway, you’re all here now. That means you accepted the invitation, too.”
“Hmm,” said Root doubtfully. “I suppose you were lucky. Things could have been worse.”
Holly looked around. Things couldn’t have been a lot worse. The establishment was pretty trashed, and there were forty humans out for the count. The tech boys were attaching mind-wipe electrodes to the temples of unconscious diners.
“We managed to secure the area, in spite of half the town hammering on the door.”
“What about the hole?”
Root smirked. “See for yourself.”
Holly glanced over. Retrieval had jimmied a hologram lead into the existing electricity sockets and were projecting an unbattered wall over the hole. The holograms were handy for quick patches, but no good under scrutiny. Anyone who examined the wall too closely would have noticed that the slightly transparent patch was exactly the same as the stretch beside it. In this case there were two identical patches of spiderweb cracks and two reproductions of the same Rembrandt. But the people inside the pizzeria were in no condition to examine walls and by the time they woke up, the wall would have been repaired by the telekinetic division, and the entire paranormal experience would be removed from their memories.
A Retrieval officer bolted from the rest room.
“Commander!”
“Yes, sergeant?”
“There’s a human in here, sir. The Concusser didn’t reach him. He’s coming, sir. Right now, sir!”
“Shields!” barked Root. “Everyone!”
Holly tried. She really did. But it wouldn’t come. Her magic was gone. A toddler waddled out of the bathroom, his eyes heavy with sleep. He pointed a pudgy finger directly at Holly.
“Ciao, fulletta,” he said, before climbing into his father’s lap to continue his snooze.
Root shimmered back into the visible spectrum. He was, if possible, even angrier than before.
“What happened to your shield, Short?”
Holly swallowed.
“Stress, Commander,” she offered hopefully.
Root wasn’t having any of it. “You lied to me, Captain. You’re not running hot at all, are you?”
Holly shook her head mutely.
“How long since you completed the Ritual?”
Holly chewed her lip. “I’d say . . . about . . . four years, sir.”
Root nearly popped a vein.
“Four . . . Four years? It’s a wonder you lasted this long! Do it now. Tonight! You’re not coming below ground again without your powers. You’re a danger to yourself and your fellow officers!”
“Yessir.”
“Get a set of Hummingbirds from Retrieval and zip across to the old country. There’s a full moon tonight.”