Hey there to everyone reading this story. I hope you'll stick with it; I have great plans for it after all. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters (except for the mysterious girl, the people chasing her, a few policemen, and Dr. Sanders) as I am not Eoin Colfer, but that's alright.
Important notice (especially for those of you who might have read this ago and are checking for updates): Please visit my profile page for update schedules and current progress on individual stories.
Chapter 1: It Begins Again
London, England
It three in the morning, and all was quiet in the city of London. Well, as quiet as it ever was downtown at three in the morning. The only people awake and roaming the streets were thieves, gang members, and the police that were after them. With the exception of one, that is. Deep in the heart of downtown London, a girl was running through the streets for her life. The girl had chestnut brown hair wound in a tight braid that thumped her back with each step she took and startlingly bright blue eyes that were currently filled with terror.
Her heart raced, and her breaths came quickly. She ran quickly, faster than any girl her age was capable of running. Every so often, she would glance behind her, searching for her pursuers. While she couldn't see them, she knew they were there, slowly closing in, waiting for her to tire before they confronted her.
She stared ahead of her, looking for something, anything, that could help her, but there was nothing, nothing at all. She kept running, but she was tiring. Her breath came ragged, and she gasped to draw more oxygen into her lungs. Her footsteps were not as light as they had been even a minute ago. She felt heavier, and there was a burning in her chest. Her head ached, and she despaired, knowing there was no way she could escape.
Just then, she heard a scream, and gunshots sounded all around her. Something pierced her shoulder seconds before something hard struck her in the stomach, and she fell backwards, landing on the hard pavement. Several figures moved into the street, and for a moment she panicked, thinking her pursuers had finally caught up to her. But no, she reminded herself, they wouldn't be using guns. She heard the sounds of gunfire and footsteps all around her, and in the distance sirens could be heard, coming ever closer.
They were coming closer, too, she knew. She could sense them approaching, and a terrible dread overtook her. There was no escape. She could no longer move. She would be at their mercy when they arrived, which would be very soon.
She was growing weaker, her vision blurring. Blue and red lights flooded the street, and a car screeched to a stop feet away from her body. Doors slammed and several shadowy figures swarmed the scene. Several of them approached her, and she stared with unseeing eyes up at the sky above her. In the back of her mind, she could feel them retreating, their anger and frustration evident. They had been so close to capturing her before everything spiraled out of control.
One of the officers knelt down beside her and placed two fingers on her neck to check for a pulse. "She's alive!" he called out to the others. "I don't know how long she'll stay that way, though. She's badly injured."
Another officer spoke into his radio. "This is patrol 74. We have one girl shot. She's still alive but needs medical attention. Send an ambulance stat."
She tried to roll her head to see what the men were doing, but she couldn't move. She felt all her panic and fear dissolve as a lethargic calm settled over her. Her vision, already blurry, grew dark, and she passed out.
De Chandler's Hospital, London
The night staff at De Chandler's Hospital was quite used to medical emergencies in the middle of the night, or rather early morning in this case. So when the paramedics wheeled an unconscious girl with a bullet wound near the edge of death, they didn't hesitate for a moment. The head nurse called down the doctor on duty then went straight to the operating room. Several other nurses hurried after her to prepare the girl for emergency surgery.
Dr. Sanders, a tall dark man with a serious expression, strode into the operating room and surveyed the scene. The girl on the operating table had light brown hair wound into a braid. She was exceedingly pale, her pale pink lips seemed even darker by the contrast. The nurses around the table were cutting her clothes off of her and sticking an IV needle into the crook of her arm. Sanders rolled up his sleeves and pulled on a pair of gloves. He approached the table and looked down on the girl. There was something strange about her, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He pushed the niggling discomfort out of his mind. He had a surgery to perform, after all, and surgery required complete concentration.
Sanders bent over the table and inspected the wound. The bullet had lodged itself an inch into her stomach. There was little bleeding as the shot was still embedded inside her. There was something strange about the area around the wound, however. He leaned closer, his face inches from her pale skin and narrowed his eyes. The skin surrounding the bullet was a dark grey, and it was spreading. Slowly but surely. The doctor was puzzled, but he pushed it aside as he reached out a hand for a scalpel and prepared to make the incision.
He worked quickly and methodically. He was, after all, an expert surgeon. After making the incision, he carefully removed the bullet. The internal areas that had been in direct contact with the bullet were an even deeper shade of grey, bordering on black. This worried the doctor, for he had never seen something like that with any other bullet wound. As soon as he had removed the bullet, however, the areas immediately seemed slightly healthier, and after treating her with disinfectant, the grey stain began to clear.
Relieved, he began to stich up the wound when one of the nurses, who had been searching the girl's body for any other injuries, exclaimed, "That's funny."
Sanders tied off the stiches and looked over at her. "What's funny?"
"This," she said pointing at the girl's shoulder. "It looks like she was shot here as well, but not with a bullet. It must have been some sort of dart."
Sanders moved closer, and the nurse quickly stepped out of the way. He examined the area she had pointed to and immediately noticed that she was right. The girl had been shot with a dart. Carefully, he plucked the tip out of her shoulder and held it up to the light. "It's a tranquilizer dart," he said.
One of the nurses gasped. "Why would someone be shooting at a young girl with a tranquilizer dart?"
"And why both the dart and the gun?" asked another.
Sanders narrowed his eyebrows, thinking. "I'm not sure he told them, but I would guess that the dart and the bullet came from two different sources. The paramedics said she was caught in the crossfire in a gang fight. Obviously, that's where the bullet came from. But then there's the matter of the dart—it seems as if someone was hunting her."
"But why?" asked the nurse who had noticed the dart.
"That's the question," agreed Sanders looking down at the unconscious girl. "Why, indeed?"
They were silent for a moment, considering the girl that lay on the table before them. "You all go on," said Sanders suddenly, breaking the reverie. "I'll finish up in here."
Reluctantly, the nurses left the room, leaving Sanders alone with the girl. He waited until the door had shut behind them before turning back to the girl on the operating table. "Who are you?" he asked her softly. "Why was someone hunting you?"
He rested his chin on his hand, thinking. Shaking his head, he began connected her to the machines so that they could monitor her condition more efficiently. She was breathing lightly, so he saw no reason for an oxygen tank. A light beeping informed him that the heart rate monitor was connected and running. Out of habit, he glanced over at the screen and started.
Her heart rhythm was like nothing he had ever seen before, and certainly not what one would expect from a girl who had just been shot, let alone any human being. Her heart beat slightly faster than was normal, and the rhythm was very irregular, though it seemed as if there was a pattern to it. Sanders stared in disconcertion at the monitor then turned to the girl lying still.
"What is wrong with you?" he wondered aloud. Suddenly, he realized what was strange about her appearance: the proportions were all wrong. She was taller and slimmer than one would expect with longer arms and legs. Her brow was higher and her eyes slanted. Even her ears were pointed.
Curious, he took an instrument from the table and waved it over her. The black and silver rod was designed to measure electrical currents to help medics identify electrical imbalances in their patients. The contraption in his hand vibrated, and Sanders nearly dropped it in shock. He glanced down at the reading on the screen, and his eyes widened. The girl's entire body was buzzing with a greater amount of electricity than Sanders had ever seen before in all his years in the operating room.
Sanders set the instrument down on the table beside him and stared down at the girl in wonder. "What are you?" he asked now.
Fowl Manor
Artemis Fowl couldn't sleep. He had tossed and turned for hours in bed before deciding to give up sleep as a lost cause. As Artemis loathed wasting time, he was now in the study browsing the internet. After all, what better thing was there to do before dawn than researching the latest developments in medicine? Often, however, Artemis caught himself wistfully staring out the window at the grounds of Fowl Manor, reminiscing about all the events, both mundane and supernatural, that had taken place there over the years.
He sighed quietly. It had been over a year since there had been any suspicious aboveground activity that concerned the People, and it seemed as if all the adventures he had had with Holly, Mulch, and the others were, finally, over. It was not a happy thought. Of course, he had kept in contact with his fairy friends, but it was rather difficult to keep up relationships when the other party concerned lived miles below ground while he was restricted to the surface.
Artemis smiled wryly to himself. Life would be very long if, at only seventeen, he was already reminiscing about the 'good old days.' Be that as it may, he told himself, I need to find a distraction, something to occupy my mind and prevent me from mourning the end of my fairy adventures.
And it was for that reason exactly that he was currently researching the latest breakthroughs in medical research. A few groundbreaking medical discoveries were precisely what he needed to distract himself from his current melancholy. With newfound purpose, Artemis returned to his computer screen and allowed himself to be inundated with information.
He had been at it for several hours and the sun had already risen before he found something that made himself pause. There was a new entry on the European Society of Medicine's webpage from a Dr. Sanders.
Artemis pulled his chair closer to the desk to read what the doctor had to say.
The Patient on the Operating Table
Early this morning I was called to perform a routine surgery on the victim of a shooting. The procedure was standard, but it became apparent quite soon that something was strange. The patient in question was a Caucasian girl of approximately nineteen years. (5 ft. 7 in, 115 lbs.) The patient developed an adverse reaction never seen before to the lead bullet. The area around the entry point had turned grey, and when the bullet was removed and disinfectant applied, the color lightened considerably. This is but the first of strange symptoms.
As soon as I looked at the patient, I knew something was strange about her, but what I could not tell at first. As per hospital procedure, she was hooked up to a heart monitor: her heart beat much faster than any other girl's her same age, weight, and height. Additionally, the rhythm was irregular.
It was at this point that I realized what was strange about the girl (as if what I had seen already wasn't strange enough): she did not have the proper body proportions. The ratios of height to leg/arm/neck length were off. Furthermore, her brow was higher, her eyes slanted, and her ears pointed.
Furthermore, her electrical current was mystifying. On a hunch, I checked for electrical imbalance and discovered that her electrical currents are much higher than any other human's. They are, in fact, much higher than any human could be capable of supporting.
Finally, another aspect of the surgery lends even greater mystery to this whole affair. As I already mentioned, the patient was the victim of a shooting—she was caught in the crossfire of a gang fight. While this could be considered normal, there was something else. One of the nurses assisting the surgery, discovered a dart tip in the patient's shoulder—it was a tranquilizer dart. Now why, I ask, would someone shoot at this girl with a tranquilizer dart? Could someone have been hunting her? If so, why?
At this point, I assume that you, like myself, are intrigued by these facts. But this is just the beginning, I am sure. I intend to run several other tests on her, which I will be posting on this webpage for any interested viewers. However, I also invite any members of ESM to journey to London to join a research team I am heading that will endeavor to discover the answer to these mysteries. Is this girl evolutionarily advanced, or is she genetically mutated? Or could it be something else?
Dr. Elias Sanders, M.D.
Head Surgeon
De Chandler Hospital
London, England
Artemis sat back in his chair, his brow furrowed. He was deep in thought. The English doctor certainly had an interesting story: a girl of mysterious origins who had a novel reaction to a lead bullet, whose body didn't match normal human proportions, who had an irregular heartbeat and had excessive electrical current in her body. And on top of that, there was the business with the dart. Artemis, himself, had once been shot with a tranquilizer dart by his own bodyguard, as it happened, when he had journeyed into the past with Holly to save his mother.
Artemis tore his mind away from the memories and back to the task at hand. He looked closely at the images that accompanied the article: the heart monitor and its irregular rhythm, the electrical reading, and the girl herself including her reaction to the lead bullet. Artemis studied the final image carefully. It was true: she did not seem entirely human. And while the doctor assumed she was 'evolutionarily advanced or genetically mutated,' Artemis had another theory: the girl was a fairy.
He enlarged the image and contemplated it, his chin resting on his hand. It was true that she had slanted eyes and pointed ears—she reminded him rather of Holly in that respect. Her brow was also more like that of a fairy than of a human. What was most curious, however, was not how she resembled the fairies, but how she didn't: the girl was too tall to be one of the people. Few fairies were taller than three feet, let alone five and a half.
Artemis sat in the study, turning over everything in his mind and rubbing his forehead absentmindedly for several minutes. The more he considered it, the more concerned he became. At the very least, this warrants an investigation, he thought, and then he smiled. It appears that the fairy adventures might not be over, after all.
Artemis was searching the webpage for the promised updates from Dr. Sanders when Butler entered the study. "There you are, Artemis," he said. "I was beginning to worry. Your mother called a few minutes ago, but I couldn't find you. I had to tell her that you were still asleep, so she wouldn't worry."
"Did she believe you?"
Butler laughed shortly. "Actually, she wondered why you weren't awake yet."
Artemis smiled slightly. "Mother tends to forget that there is a time difference, even within Europe."
"And I tried to tell her that, it's just she—"
"—she wouldn't listen," finish Artemis.
"Exactly," replied Butler, repressing a smile.
Artemis nodded slightly and returned to the computer screen.
"What are you working on, Artemis?"
Artemis didn't take his eyes off the screen. "Dr. Sanders of the De Chandler Hospital in London recently posted an article about a patient he operated on early this morning." Artemis continued to tell Butler everything that he had read while he looked through the webpages. "Here it is," he said, pulling up another image on screen. Bodyguard and genius stared at the x-ray on the screen before them.
"That is not human," commented Butler.
"No, it's not," agreed Artemis, "but what it is, I'm not sure." He stood up suddenly and looked up at Butler. "Get everything you need. We're going to London."
Butler nodded and started to leave. At the door, he paused and turned around. "What are you going to do, Artemis?"
A small smile flitted across Artemis's face. "I'm going to make a call," he said, playing with the rather bulky ring on his finger.
Operations Booth, the Lower Elements
Foaly sat in the Operations Room staring at one of many computer screens when a beeping came from behind him. He quickly swiveled in his chair and faced another screen which read: Incoming call. Foaly narrowed his eyes. That was supposed to be a secure channel. Nobody should be able to access it. But apparently someone could, and Foaly had an idea of who it might be. He sighed. Today is not going to be an easy day, he thought and tapped the keyboard to accept the call.
"Yes?" he said.
"Foaly?" came the voice, and Foaly bit the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning. The person on the other end was no other than Artemis Fowl, a human boy who had been both enemy and friend to the People. Over five years, he had certainly changed from the cruel, criminal mastermind he had been when the People first met him, but that didn't mean that Foaly looked forward to his calls, or at least he pretended he didn't. Artemis Fowl always brought trouble with him; it was attracted to him. Despite that, Foaly did enjoy the adventures the boy had led them on: the excitement was exhilarating, and he did rather enjoy needling the human. After all, Artemis was the only one who always understood what he was saying.
"Artemis Fowl," said Foaly drily after a moment. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
There was a pause. "We have a problem."
Foaly sighed theatrically. "'We,' Mud Boy? There is no 'we.' If you have a problem, you can deal with it yourself. You certainly have a big enough brain, and you don't need fairy power to sort out every little crisis. It's not our fault you attract trouble like a magnet attracts washers."
Artemis cut him off. "Are you quite done yet? Because we do have a problem, and it could be serious."
Of course it was serious, thought Foaly, when is it not? Out loud he said, "Alright, Mud Boy, I'm listening. What's going on?"
Foaly listened skeptically to Artemis's explanation. "I don't know, Artemis. It seems a little far-fetched."
Impatience crept into Artemis's voice, "Look at the x-rays yourself, Foaly. The girl is clearly not human."
"But from what you said, it doesn't sound like she's a fairy either," interjected Foaly.
"Whether or not that is the case," answered Artemis evenly, "Sanders' little research project will ask many questions, questions that I'm sure the People would prefer to remain unanswered. If they find out that she is, in fact, not human then they are going to do everything in their power to find others like her, and, whether you like it or not, they will stumble upon the People."
Foaly sighed. Artemis always had an argument for everything. "Fine, I'm pulling up the webpage now," he said. There was silence on the other end, and Foaly suspected Artemis was wearing a smug smile. He rolled his eyes briefly before tapping his keyboard. After a moment, he said, "Alright, I've got it."
"And?"
Foaly took a moment skim the article before viewing the images that accompanied it. A sinking feeling crept into the pit of his stomach. When he came to the x-ray, he cringed and let out a small, "Oh."
"Oh?" repeated Artemis triumphantly.
"I—this is—it's—this is bad," said Foaly. "What are we going to do?"
"I was hoping you would ask that," answered Artemis, and this time Foaly knew that Artemis was most certainly wearing the smug smile. But even as he began to worry anew about the fate of civilization as they knew it, Foaly couldn't stop a small smile from forming on his own face. He had missed the old adventures. They all had.
So. . . what do you think? Type a comment in the box below?
I promise you all that I will update, but I can't give promises as to when. It all depends on which story I feel like working on each and every day. Btw, has anyone read The Last Guardian yet? I haven't, but I can't wait!