Chapter 1

Reconnecting

I made an update saying I was going to combine the first two chapters, but this took way less time than I thought it would, so I'll paraphrase here. I've added stuff to this chapter to make it a good length, and will do my best to revitalize my efforts for this story.

Artemis Fowl knew he was in hot water, both physically and figuratively. He and the rest of the Fowls were enjoying a relaxing stay at a hotel resort for winter break. The now nineteen year old boy remembered much, startlingly fast, and Holly Short, of the Lower Elements Police was worried he was remembering too fast. Then she remembered that she was talking to a boy who had the skill to kidnap her at the tender age of twelve, and considered him to be remembering too slowly. The previous year, Artemis had ended a fairy plot to end the Human and Fairy worlds in a war. This only resulted in the death of Artemis, and almost total collapse of human civilization. Artemis' consciousness was put into a clone, and society rebuilt itself, with the aid of Phonetix, a communications corporation. Businesses reopened, families were reunited, and the incident was blamed on tectonic plates all clashing at the same relative time, and some hitting nuclear power plants. The whole thing spawned an award winning movie entitled, "The Great Earthshake" starring Kole Draman, and Landi Forgoe.

Now that things had settled down and the whole business of the previous year was behind them, all of the Fowls (except for Myles) agreed to have a vacation. Myles Fowl sat in an armchair away from both the indoor pool, where Beckett swam with arm floats, and the hot tub where everyone else was. He was on some sort of media player created by fairy technology that Artemis worked up from old scraps. He had dubbed it, "Aristotle," because it was centuries before it's time. It had download speeds if almost one terabyte per minute, storage of 3 Exabytes (3,000,000 Gigabytes), and a 30 million sub pixel display. Myles was designing an app to have a virtual AI to respond to key phrases that he deemed funny or interesting. In many ways he was like Artemis. Perhaps too much. Artemis had learned lately to enjoy being with his family and to relax.

At this particular moment, he saw a slight shimmer. Many people would dismiss this as a reflection of the light off the water, but Artemis knew better. This shimmer meant one of two things: one, that he was crazy, or two, he was being contacted by The People.

"Excuse me for a minute, I must go cool off. This water is rather warm," Artemis said, a rather foolish excuse he knew, but what else could he say? "Pardon me, family, but I must go talk to the invisible fairies that I talk to just about every year to save the world." His mother already knew the truth, she had found out around a year back, when Artemis had freed her from Opal Koboi, a megalomaniac who had the desire to control the world and the power as well as the resources to do just that. But his father would not take the news lightly and would probably send Artemis to a "special" institution. He had no idea what would happen if his mother vouched for him. Artemis got out of the water and strode in a dignified manner (which is hard to pull off when you are shivering) to the locker room. Inside he walked past a few rows of lockers before Holly Short of the LEP materialized.

Holly stared at the Mud Boy, or she should say Mud Man, trying and failing to remember when he was first a criminal and her rival. He cost her a lot, including her trigger finger at one point, but he had saved the world more times than he put it in danger, so she guessed it was forgiven.

"You do realize this is the Men's locker room, right?" Oh great, Holly thought. Now he knew sarcasm. But no one was better at sarcasm than she was.

"Would you prefer we met in the women's?"

He glanced down at his feet with his brow furrowed. "Why are we meeting at all? I thought everything was better. No one suspects anything, do they?"

That was the Artemis she knew. Straight to business. It made her immediately miss the sarcasm. "Technically yes, but 'Crime never truly stops,' as one Gnommish poet once wrote." That was actually the whole poem, and needless to say, that "poet" became infamous. "We want you to take a look at a crime and get your opinion."

Artemis looked up and said, "So Foaly's there too?" Holly nodded. Foaly was a centaur who worked for the LEP as a technician and inventor. Artemis was almost as smart as him. Almost. Holly selected to call Foaly with a few blinks. He picked up right away.

"Hey, if it isn't my least favorite Mud Boy. How's the family? And that big brute of yours?" He was of course referring to Butler, Artemis's body guard. He seemed in high spirits, and Artemis was too.

"Hey Foaly. Still wearing that tin hat I see. Though, in these times I think you aren't being paranoid. The MI6 and CIA are basically monitoring everything in hopes to try to find out what really caused the incident last year."

Holly stared, and wondered how Artemis could have ever agreed to Foaly's superstitions. "It's not those primitive fools I have to worry about. They couldn't find a troll if it went to Disneyland. It's the aliens you need to watch out for."

"I regret I had ever agreed to your superstitions. Though considering that I have went up against demons before, it is possible. Holly says you have something to show me?"

"Yeah, just give me a second to pull it up."

Holly chimed in. "Hey, does anyone else hear static?"

Myles was sitting in his armchair working on his new app, which he was trying to use to get any door with a keypad open. He heard faint voices coming from the locker room nearby, and one sounded female. He slowly got up and said he was using the toilet. He walked across the room to the door, and opened it slowly as to not attract attention. He passed one row of lockers and hid behind the second while he pulled up a voice recorder, and hit record. Artemis was there and was talking about the MI6 and CIA. Why was he talking about them? Even stranger was the second voice which was definitely not a female, and didn't sound exactly human. There was a quivering in the voice, like a neigh from a horse, but it talked about aliens. Myles wrote this off as one of Artemis's many business deals, but kept recording so as to blackmail him into giving him extra caviar at the dinner table. Quietly, he sat there listening, until something lifted him up, and Myles looked behind him and saw... Nothing. He was hanging on nothing, but a faint shimmer hang nearby.

Artemis walked calmly to the floating child with a face of disappointment. "I must say, I'm impressed that you managed to sneak up on us. However, it seems that you aren't skilled enough yet to keep yourself from being caught." He looked from Myles to the shimmer and spoke again. "We'll have to take him as well, to make sure he won't remember anything of your people." The shimmer shifted slightly, as if uneasy. Then, the incredible thing: It spoke.

"Are you sure there's no other way? I'm not sure I want another Fowl in the city…" There was no mistaking it. The invisible person was a female. Myles wondered what city they were referring to, but wisely thought it best not to let on how perceptive he was. All he wanted was to gather information on these mysterious invisible people and what Artemis was doing associating with them.

After a brief moment, Artemis answered the invisible woman. "Well, I guess you could let him try and kidnap you. He'd break my record of being the youngest hostage-taker." Myles had no time to examine Artemis' sentence before the woman had made up her mind.

Somewhat aggressively, she said, "Well, I guess it's time for a field trip."

Artemis sat down on the bench for a few moments, deep in thought. "Now there's just the matter of getting away without my father or Beckett realizing." Myles noticed immediately the exclusion of their mother. Was she aware of these no doubt illicit activities?

The almost inhuman voice from before chimed in from nowhere, saying, "I've got that covered. I've hacked into the new Phonetix servers and taken all of Mr. Fowl's assets. There's probably some that I've missed because he spreads them around, but I think it should prove to be a good distraction for quite some time." Could this mysterious voice also be cloaked? No, thought Myles. It seemed too digitized, too amplified. It must be coming from a speaker from the invisible woman. Outside, he could just make out the sound of a phone ringing, then being picked up. It seemed like a man was angry, and that was Artemis' cue to exit the locker room.

"Excellent," Artemis said. "Now we just need Myles to fall asleep. Got anything for that?"

The invisible woman sounded almost hurt, saying, "You had better bet I do." There was a sound of hissing, followed by a green cloud swarming over Myles. He felt himself losing consciousness, and saw darkness slowly envelop his vision. Silently, Myles questioned what would happen next. He desperately fought the gas but ultimately failed, and saw only black.

Artemis exited the locker room with Myles in his arms, and assuaged his mother's concerns that he just wanted to fall asleep. Aristotle was still in Myles' hands but looked like a regular phone. Artemis Senior had dressed in a hurry and left with few words, only that there was some serious business to take care of. Artemis Junior briefly explained that there was a slight situation in the Fairy World and would need Myles' help, but there was no danger. Angeline seemed skeptical, but under the Mesmer allowed her sons to go, as long as they would be back before 7:00 in the afternoon. Artemis Junior agreed, and off the two brothers went to the secret underground city of Haven.

One hour later, on the nearest shuttle ride down a shaft that leads to the core of the Earth, Artemis and Holly looked visibly worried, albeit for different reasons. There was a silence for a time, before Artemis broke it. "I believe my mother is building up a resistance to magic after Opal used magic on her." He shuddered at the word Opal. It seemed he hadn't forgotten any details on her. That was to be expected. Opal had been the cause for numerous escapades now, and led to his death. Holly was surprised he didn't require counseling, even if he were Artemis.

"Yeah," she replied absently. "It's unheard of, but then again, so were the circumstances she endured." Another moment of silence.

Artemis spoke again. "How long does the sleeping gas last?"

Holly answered quickly. "At least an hour."

Another moment of silence.

"Will that be long enough?" asked Artemis.

"He'll at least be in the city by then. He can't escape after that."

Artemis sat back in his seat, dissatisfied. "You're being rather short with me, no pun intended. May I ask why?"

Holly looked back angrily and pointed at Myles' hands, or more accurately, what they held firmly, even in sleep. "You built another bootleg Fairy Machine, Artemis! Don't you remember last time how that worked out?"

He responded defensively. "Yeah, I do remember. There's nothing harmful about Aristotle though. It has a fingerprint scanner, and if it's not held by a select few people, then it doesn't function properly. I've learned from my mistakes, Captain Short." It was clear he wasn't just talking about the device.

Holly let out a sigh, and decided to let up. He didn't know the other reason she was on edge. Not yet anyway.

The shuttle landed after a few minutes with a loud clunk. Artemis and Holly got out and walked along a short path quickly to the Lower Elements Police Headquarters. Holly got out, hoping against hope that she wouldn't be here. She cautiously entered the building and saw no sign of her. Holly got a little braver and walked towards Foaly's office, but a loud female voice boomed through the room. "MISS SHORT. HOW NICE OF YOU TO JOIN US," the voice said.

"D'Arvit," she whispered, and turned to face a small woman (even for Fairy standards) with an angry face, tight lips, short but crooked nose and brown hair tied back very tightly into a bun. Holly looked at the surrounding area and sure enough found that all eyes were on her. "Yes? Can I help you?"

The woman nodded toward Artemis, who blindly wandered inside, not knowing that the strictest woman ever may have been waiting. "Oh yes," Holly said. "Well, since we are kind of stuck on the Shuttle case, I figured we'd bring in some outside help."

The woman started nodding. "Oh, I see. You just aren't good enough to figure this out on your own, so you brought in this… this stinking Mud Crawler. I understand. Truly I do. Clearly, you believe you aren't good enough for the job, but DO believe that you can break Lockdown simply because you aren't good enough, and need help from our sworn enemy."

Before Holly could reply, she saw Artemis start to open his mouth and before she could warn him, he was off. "Actually, Captain Short is the person who saved the Earth countless times over as well as save plenty of other innocent lives on multiple occasions, so if she can't solve something, she is either being misguided by someone," He glared at the woman for a second, "or there is no one else who can solve it, and as for 'Your sworn enemy,' I've proven to be a friend to the People time and time again, Ms..?" The woman turned unfazed and looked up at the boy.

"The name is Wervaarts. Commander Wervaarts. And as for you… Crawler… I don't care if you saved the Earth or not. You are still a Mud Creature, and you shall receive no special treatment from me. Off with you." Holly quickly turned around and grabbed Artemis' hand, trying to quickly lead him away from the Commander before she did anything else. Unfortunately, Wervaarts must've known this, and called back, "Oh, Captain Short… You will receive a dock in your pay for breaking Lockdown and bringing a Crawler here, and another dock for the Crawler's unabashed rudeness. Dismissed." With that she sauntered away, almost skipping.

Once they were safely in Foaly's office, Artemis began with the questions. "I thought Trouble was the Commander? What Lockdown was she talking about? Weren't we supposed to get Myles taken care of? And Mud Crawler? That sounds somehow worse than Mud Man… "

Foaly answered the first question, which was a relief to Holly, who was still blindingly mad about the situation. "Trouble Kelp took the fall for Opal Koboi's plot a year ago. The city wanted a new Commander, and Angie Wervaarts had a successful campaign. Truth be told, though, I think she paid off some very big groups of people to vote for her. She's been a real treat to listen to." Foaly was dripping with sarcasm.

"She's the worst commander I've ever seen," Holly told Artemis, "and unfortunately since she's the first female Commander, she acts entitled even though she hasn't done anything. Meanwhile, Trouble's been lucky and landed a job at an antique store that sells old Overworld items. It's not at all fair. And trust me, you don't want to know about Mud Crawlers. And lastly…" She looked at Foaly.

"That's why we brought you here," he informed him. "Over the past month, people have been submitting complaints about small hack jobs. They are usually trivial stuff, like an asset of a big business here, an email there, but last night something changed." He picked up a remote and activated a human made projector that shined on the back wall which was bare. "Nice right? I figured I'd make you a bit more comfortable while you're here." He pressed another button and a video popped up. "This was a shuttle in the Dublin shaft, with LEP Officer Franz Cerven inside." The video was a long shot of a shuttle in the middle of the shaft on top of a large horseshoe shaped clamp holding it in place, with red light glowing ominously closer to the craft. Artemis watched in horror as the vehicle was engulfed in flames. The video promptly ended.

"What happened? I thought Shuttles were built to ride the flames like that?"

Foaly clopped his feet on the linoleum floor once in frustration. "Really, it was due to several systems failing at once. The large clamp holding the shuttle was supposed to tilt and allow the shuttle to fall. This wouldn't have been a big deal normally, but the fins that were supposed to pop out and allow the craft to ride the gas failed. In that event, a pilot can activate manual controls and get away from the magma as much as they can until it settles down. Unfortunately, that also malfunctioned. The pressure proved to be too much and the pod broke. The officer died. Wervaarts thought it was an accident, even though it's practically impossible for all of the systems to fail at once, but a few hours later, all of our computer screens flashed the words, 'Dirty Cop' on the screens. We don't have too many hackers in Haven, so we figure it's the same person that made the other hacks. There are questions though. How did we have such a major breach? Why did they just now do something major?"

"And what has Mr. Cerven done that would make them put 'Dirty Cop' on our screens?" added Holly. "And of course with Our Glorious Commander breathing down our necks, we haven't had much time to begin our investigation…"

"So," Artemis began, "that's why there's been a Lockdown. To prevent further accidents…"

"Precisely," said Foaly. "Wervaarts has taken it to a bit of an extreme though, and spread all of the LEP to different areas. Holly and I were stationed here, probably because the Commander trusts hungry trolls more than she trusts us, and the Mind Wipe unit has been moved to the other side of town. Travel between them is strictly forbidden right now, so we may have to keep Myles detained until further notice."

Artemis could feel his spirits getting lower. He hated to do that to his brother but knew it was necessary. He was upset, however, at Holly for not filling him in on the details of the mission on the way over. "Holly, you seem to have conveniently left that part out."

Holly shrugged and replied, "We needed you here as soon as possible. And Myles is getting his mind wiped anyway, so there's no danger…"

Artemis let out a sigh of aggravation. "What about Aristotle?"

Foaly looked puzzled. Holly clarified for him, saying, "He made another device out of Fairy technology, and named it!"

Foaly rubbed the bridge of his nose while shaking his head. "Will you ever learn, kid? Making a device like that is seriously bad news."

Artemis was on the defensive again. "I have learned, Foaly. I've taken steps to ensure nothing harmful comes out of it again." He took a moment to appreciate the moment. He missed the days where he, Foaly and Holly would get into debates about the ethics of the People and Humans. It felt like an eternity since they'd done this. He supposed that dying may do that to a person.

Foaly backed down and quit rubbing his nose. "Well, if it's as secure, like you say, then I guess the boy can keep it. We don't have our tech team to analyze it right now anyway. Afterwards, we'll check to make sure it's not a problem."

Artemis finally asked, "What's the first stop?"

Holly breathed in sharply and looked at him. "We were kind of hoping you could tell us. We don't really have any leads here…"

Artemis looked at both of them, barely containing his joy. It's good to be alive, he thought. "We have at least one. I think it's time to investigate Mr. Ceven."

They made one final stop to deposit Myles, and, making sure that Wervaarts wasn't around, boarded a shuttle bound for downtown Haven.

Myles woke up with a start. He felt as if he had been sleeping for two solid years, and his head was pounding with a steady rhythm that showed no sign of stopping. He looked around his surroundings worriedly and found that his suspicions were true. He'd been knocked out and taken to who knows where. It was a slightly green concrete room, about 5 meters long, and with a door that had no windows in the corner. There was a fluorescent light above that gave off an unexpectedly soothing light… He decided he must be in "The City" that Artemis and the Invisible Gal had spoken about. The Invisible Gal, Myles thought. That seems more like a dream than anything… But he knew it was no dream. He knew the events that had unfolded in the locker room may very well haunt him for the rest of his life. He grimly thought that it may not be very long while in here. He felt something was firmly in his grasp and he looked down at Aristotle. He had been recording, last he knew. He checked to make sure the tape was still there, and sure enough. There was Artemis talking to nothing, then the Shimmer holding him up and… wait… He activated the camera filters and selected the frame-by-frame mode. The camera ran at 5,000 frames per second, and at that speed he could clearly see the woman who'd been holding him up. She was short, very short, and had auburn hair, hazel eyes… and pointed ears. She seemed to slightly move every few frames, and Myles found that may be how she stayed invisible. Myles had officially reached the weirdest point in his life. He stared at the image for a while, and was aware of a beeping followed by the opening of the door in the corner. A short woman entered, about his own height, with the unhappiest face he could imagine. Even though she was short she looked much older much meaner. Meaner, Myles thought. I'll have to label that under words I will never say again.

The short woman snorted and made a comment about the smell of mud. Myles started recording the woman so when he eventually found a way out of here, he could alert his father to what his brother (and possibly mother) were doing. He did his best to conceal himself recording, which was a very good job. The woman didn't say much to Myles, but made plenty of very quiet comments to herself, including one about "docking pay." She soon left after making another comment about crawling around in mud. Myles didn't understand, but what he understood less was his device making a high pitched whistle after she left. This went on for a minute while Myles tried to discern what was going wrong. Eventually the screen went black, the ringing stopped and was replaced by a male voice, distortedly low, started speaking.

"Hello there."

Myles was never one to be scared, but now he was frightened. His one tool he had left seemed to turn against him. "You- you can speak?"

The voice wasted no time in answering. "Yes I can. But do not be alarmed. I am here to help you out. I am the hero."

You don't sound like a hero to me, he thought. "Who are you?" he said after a minute of trembling.

"I am the Huntsman."

The image on Myles' device suddenly turned to the mean woman from before.

"And she is the Wicked Queen."

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