Achilles is established as an enemy of one of the main characters,
Julian "Bean" Delphiki, another citizen of Rotterdam. Both Achilles and Bean are considered for
Battle School, the training ground for Earth's interstellar military; Bean is accepted, but Achilles is deemed too unstable and violent. Achilles is later sent to Battle School simply as a test for Bean: Colonel
Graff wants to see how Bean will deal with the resurfacing of his old nemesis from Rotterdam. Bean tricks Achilles into a trap in an air shaft, forcing him to confess to all his murders onto a recorded tape, which Bean shows to the school's administrators. This results in Achilles' expulsion and placement in a mental institution. Bean hoped that with his confession to his murders made public, Achilles would be confined to a mental institution for the rest of his life, unable to hurt anyone ever again. The teachers remark on the irony that Bean, the small boy of Rotterdam, ends his problems nonviolently, while
Ender, a similar child with a stable, fairly comfortable
middle class upbringing from the
United States, kills the boy who attacks him in the bathroom, defeating his enemies so they will never be able to attack him again. Bean eventually becomes an assistant to Ender and a hero of the Third Invasion.
At the end of the film, it is revealed that a mental institution was compromised by the Second Warsaw Pact in an attempt to gain the mind of the ex-Battle School student; three security guards dead, but all of the escaped prisoners are accounted for save one: Achilles.
