Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer Page B

say it was easy, and Juliet imagined her muscles screaming as she swung her other hand about for a better grip, then hauled herself on to the beam. On another day, she would have paused to allow her heart to slow down a little, but from the corner of her eye she saw her brother about to be engulfed by wrestling fans, and decided that this was not the day for leisurely recuperation.
    Juliet popped to her feet and ran the length of the beam with the confidence of a gymnast. A good gymnast, that is, not one who slips painfully on the beam, which is exactly what happened to a mesmerized lighting technician who attempted to cut Juliet off before she could reach the screen.
    Juliet winced. “Oooh. That looked sore, Arlene.” Arlene did not comment, unless turning purple and tumbling flailing into space can be counted as commentary.
    Juliet knew that she shouldn’t have grinned when the technician’s fall was comically broken by a cluster of men lumbering toward her brother, but she couldn’t hold it in.
    Her smile faded when she noticed the mass of bodies swarming along Butler’s frame, burying him. Another technician approached her, this one a little smarter than his predecessor; he straddled the beam with his ankles locked below him. As he inched forward, he banged a large spanner on the beam, raising concussive bongs and spark flurries.
    Juliet timed the arc of his swing, then planted a foot on his head and stepped over him as though he were a rock in the middle of a stream. She did not bother to topple the man from his perch. By the time he turned around, it would be too late for him to stop her, but he should have a nice bruise on his forehead to wonder about when his senses returned.
    The screen was ahead, bracketed by metal tubing, and the red eyes glared at her out of the black background, seeming to emanate pure hate.
    Or maybe this guy was up late partying.
    “Stop where you are, Juliet Butler!” said the voice, and to Juliet it seemed as though the tones were suddenly those of Christian Varley Penrose, her instructor at the Madame Ko Agency. The only person, besides her brother, whom she had ever considered her physical equal.
    “Some students make me proud,” Christian would say in his BBC tones. “You just make me despair. What was that move?”
    And Juliet would invariably answer. “It’s something I made up, master.”
    “Made up? Made up? That is not good enough.”
    Juliet would pout and think, It was good enough for Bruce Lee .
    And now Christian Varley Penrose seemed to have a line directly into her brain.
    “Stop where you are!” the voice told her. “And, having stopped, feel free to lose your balance and plummet to the earth below.”
    The voice, Juliet felt, was taking hold of her determination and twisting it like a wet towel.
    Don’t look. Don’t listen.
    But she had looked and listened, if only for a second, and it was long enough for the insidious magic to snake a couple of tendrils into her brain. Her legs locked as though clamped with braces, and the paralysis spread upward.
    “D’Arvit,” said Juliet, though she wasn’t quite sure why and, with her last spurt of self-control, pinwheeled her arms wildly, sending her entire body careening into the tubular frame supporting the screen and speakers.
    The screen yielded elastically, and for a moment, the little bubble of Juliet’s mind that she still held on to believed that the screen would not break; then her elbow, which Butler had told her as a child was sharp enough to open a tin of field rations, punched through the material, sending a jagged rent running down its length.
    The fairy’s red eyes rolled, and the last thing Juliet heard before her outstretched arm snagged the AV cables was an irritated snort, and then she was tumbling through a hole in the suddenly blank screen and falling toward the spasming mass of bodies below.
    Juliet used the half-second before impact to curl herself into a ball.
    Her very last thought before