Disclaimer: I don't own Holly, or the Irish Sea.
Chapter 1
Holly closed her eyes against the glare of the sun for a few moments, breathing in deeply. Surface air. Maybe it was tinged with pollutants, but it was still a lot better than trying to breathe water. A lot, lot better.
She inflated a special compartment in her suit, though it took a while as she had to do it manually, so that she wouldn't drown, and looked around. At least it wasn't raining, although the clouds did look a little threatening. But she was avoiding the reason she was here. And, at the same time, the fact that she looked like being here for a long time. Total electronic failure. Unheard of. Particularly in equipment designed by Foaly. He built about a dozen fail safes into every single piece of equipment. But she had experienced total electronic failure, and so her wings had stopped working and so she had blown up her air pocket manually when it should have inflated automatically, and she was sat in the Irish Sea, roughly equidistant from each coast.
Ireland, she decided, was her best bet. More deserted, less likely that people would notice her. She couldn't shield constantly, it would drain her of too much energy and she'd never be able to keep it up all the way. Therefore, Ireland was her best bet. And perhaps, if she was clever, she could find some unattended clothing and then she would look vaguely human. Provided nobody looked too closely at her ears. And if they did, well, provided she didn't drain all her magic shielding, she could always use the mesmer on them. So, glancing up at the sun to gauge the direction, she started to swim.
She realised at once that being partially inflated did not help matters, and so, reluctantly, she allowed the air to escape and set off again with a steady breaststroke. In theory, she could keep this up all day—she was in good shape physically, and even if she hated swimming with a passion she could do it—but the cold water was starting to sap her strength already. The odds were stacked against her. She was without any way of contacting Haven, had no power and therefore no heating, no navigation systems, no wings, no camouflage, no nothing. All of the gadgets she relied on unthinkingly were useless without power.
As she swam she started to wonder. There was, after all, nothing else to do. What was going on? Why had power cut out so suddenly, no warning flickers, no low battery warning as it were, though the tiny nuclear chips used by the Fairy people to power just about everything in existence went on for forever and a day, lasted longer than the product itself? Had someone done it? Some sort of blocking signal maybe, or sabotage, telling the electricity to cut out at a certain point above the ocean? How could every piece of equipment have turned into dead weight in only a few short seconds?
Like any LEP officer, Holly had her enemies. She'd just never thought they'd go this far. Well, apart from Opal and Opal that was. But one was in prison and the other was on the run. The one on the run might even have gone back to her own time, though that was a little like wondering if the sun would shine on a bank holiday. In theory, the one on the run had no access to the kind of technology that would allow her to cut out all electronics within a certain area, but sabotage was always a possibility. Even if Section 8's headquarters was supposedly impregnable, she'd heard once that where there was a will, there was a way. And Mulch Diggums, when asked to help test the security, had broken in. Ok, they'd taken note of that, but Opal Koboi was a very, very smart pixie, she was capable of finding a way in. She might even have used Mulch, but Holly quashed that thought as soon as it entered her mind. He had gone straight, he claimed, more than that, he hated Opal as much as she did.
As Holly swam on, she wondered whether anyone would ever come looking for her, whether the humans would find her body. She could see very little hope, but while there was still breath in her body, she'd just keep on going. Artemis knew she was coming, but she didn't hold out much hope on that front. Ok, so he had a helicopter and he could fly it, but... Well, she was only very small, wouldn't stand out much even if he nearly flew over her, and the Irish Sea was such a large place. Foaly would realise what had happened though. Maybe. Even if he ruled out complete equipment failure, it was bound to show that something had happened, he would send someone. If he knew where to send them. Unless this taking her out the picture was the preparation for something big. Why start with her then? She was only a captain, and although Section 8s complete anonymity had been blown what with the whole demon thing, there was still a very limited number of people who actually knew where she was and what she was doing.