Police Plaza, Haven City, The Lower Elements

"Just a minute, please," said the desk sergeant. "I'm running a cross reference on all LEP fairy files, which, if I may remind you, there are over-"

"Stop imitating Foaly," snapped Captain Holly Short, irritably eyeing the sergeant and the cuffed goblin she held at arm's length in turn.

"Didn't find him!" exclaimed the pixie with unprofessional glee. "This means that he's just another one of those last B'wa Kell grunts that are running around Haven."

Holly rolled her eyes, wondering how long ago it had been that the desk sergeant had gotten out of training. A day? A week?

"What else is new?" she asked sarcastically, gingerly adjusting the weight of the stunned goblin against her arm.

The pixie looked blank. "Um, so take him to the cells while I run up a profile for him. Shoplifting, was that what he did?"

Captain Short spared him a ferocious glance before dragging the limp goblin out of the tiny cubicle and storming down to the cells of Police Plaza.

After locking the grunt up, the LEP captain proceeded to the assignment room, which doubled as a lounge for off-duty officers.

She ran a scan on her hand-held computer, penning in a few Gnommish symbols with a practiced hand.

"Nothing," she said aloud, lifting off her helmet to reveal a face almost as well known in Police Plaza as that of Captain Trouble Kelp, possibly the most decorated officer of the LEP.

Holly massaged the tips of her pointy ears, draping her slim frame over a metal chair. She was alone in the large room, which would explain why there were no assignments showing up on her computer. The captain lifted hazel eyes to the three plasma screens that dominated the far wall, scanning the lists of names and minor duties. Most of which had to do with the B'wa Kell. No surprises there.

Holly scowled. Her favorite time of year, tourist season, had just started, so most officers were still out on the last desperate, straggling efforts of Operation Mop-Up, trying to effectively flush out the last of the B'wa Kell, the goblin group that had caused a revolt led by demoted LEP officer Briar Cudgeon and the master engineer Opal Koboi.

Captain Short at last allowed a shadow of a smile to cross her pretty features, remembering. She, Commander Julius Root, Mulch Diggums and the humans Butler and Artemis Fowl had crushed that rebellion: Cudgeon was dead, and Opal Koboi was spending a few centuries in Howler's Peak, a goblin prison.

Memories. Holly mused, running them through her mind like a video disk's contents. Everything she thought of seemed to lead back to Artemis Fowl, the human genius that had abducted her eighteen months ago.

Artemis had been mind-wiped two months ago, Holly reminded herself. Why should she be thinking of him when he obviously didn't know a thing about her? But there was something about that Irish boy that Holly refused to let go of. When you heal someone's entire family, fight a troll for them and rescue their father from the freezing Arctic, it sort of makes them yours. Which, Holly realized, was entirely ridiculous.

Foaly's face flickered into view on the middle screen, grinning. "Hey, Holly."

The elf captain raised her eyebrows at the view screen, knowing that the camera Foaly'd planted there would broadcast her image onto his computer mainframe. "Hey, Foaly."

Foaly tapped his moonometer. "Guess who forgot the time?"

Holly didn't answer, instead fumbling for her own wrist meter underneath the sleeve of her LEP jumpsuit.

"Oh."

"Work's over, so pack up and go home now," intoned Foaly, fading his image feed out of the screen.

Holly frowned, retrieving her bag from the lockers and slipping out of the plaza. It was odd for her to forget the time like that. Maybe it was because she'd been remembering so much lately.

Captain Short lifted her eyes, narrowly avoiding a blundering gnome. Memories were what had been. If she was going to get back to normal, she had to start living in the present and stop dwelling in the past. no matter how tempting it was.