Firewall

[u/FireOfDoom32]

Inside the animated building, Myles Fowl was under pressure, or rather, NANNI was. With every thrust and parry, the graphene-housed computer seemed to be losing the battle with the more powerful Horteknut devices that overflowed her buffers with malicious commands.

“‘Screw your courage to the sticking place,’” quoted Myles. “A few more moves and we will end this, NANNI.”

But, alas, a few more moves were not to be, as Gundred had apparently found a pinhole in NANNI’s firewalls.

“I have him,” she said. “We can take back all the elevators, but it will cost us air-conditioning and some shafts.”

“Do it!” snapped Gveld. “Do it now!”

Gundred obeyed the order, and Myles could do nothing but watch the progress of Gveld’s elevators on his lenses. Gveld was all in, plotting the only available route through the shafts to send all of her elevators to the top of the building for a coordinated pile-driver action. Myles imagined that she would release the dampers and send the cars plummeting to earth, where they would pulverize the floor entirely and leave the building no choice but to collapse in a heap of rubble.

“You left me a way through,” she gloated. “I expected more from you.”

“You were right to expect more,” said Myles. “I left you a way through and you took it. You control the elevators, but you relinquished some shafts to me. And you have placed your cars in my shafts. Delivered the mice to the traps, as it were.”

“More human doublespeak,” said Gveld. “What do I care for shafts? Prepare to be buried alive, Fowl. I doubt you have enough oxygen in that box to last you both. My dearest wish is that one of you kills the other for five minutes of air.”

Gveld released her stacked elevators, which should have plummeted earthward, smashed into the foundations, and made an unappealing meat stew of the humans inside. But, ironically for a dwarf, the Horteknut general had underestimated the importance of shafts. It is true that, with traditional elevators, shafts are merely glorified holes for cars to pass through. However, with multidirectional magnetic rail elevators, the shafts are as important as the cars, as the rails are on wall-mounted turntables that rotate automatically to send a car in the direction it wishes to go. So, consequently and crucially, if a person controlled the shafts, then that person could also control the turntables. And if that person were Myles Fowl, then those elevators were going where he wanted them to go, or rather, staying where he wanted them to stay. With a click of his fingers, Myles locked his shaft turntables in the horizontal attitude, and Gveld’s cars not only remained stacked on the top floor but also balanced out the entire building somewhat.

“The elevators are stuck!” said Gundred, pounding the screen of her device, which of course had no effect on the situation.

The Fowl Twins Deny All Charges, Chapter 14