Anger and Hate
I remembered at the end of the first book, when it said Artemis was in danger because Child Protective services was investigating his situation, with a missing father, and a detached mother, and that was part of the reason why he had Holly heal Angeline from her depression, so he wouldn't get taken away.
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Haven, several years ago
Holly was a little girl, sitting in the clinic where her mother was dying.
She sat in the waiting room, her knees drawn up, biting her fingernails. Her mother was dying from radiation poisoning and the doctors said it didn't look good. They were trying everything they could, but the poisoning was slowly killing her.
It was the humans fault. They destroyed the above ground world, filling it with toxins and radiation, killing animals, plant life, themselves, everything.
The last day of her mother life came, but Holly didn't know it yet. They wouldn't allow Holly in the room, not wanting to take chances in case she became infected. No matter how much she begged and pleaded, they wouldn't allow it. Holly only wanted to hold her mother's hand and tell them how much she loved her.
They only allowed Holly to look at her mother through a glass window into the room where a doctor was administering medicine, not that it did much good. No healings or anything seemed to be working now. Holly watched as Coral looked at her from the bed, mouthed, "I love you" and then closed her eyes. The heart rate monitor flat lined and Holly could do nothing but crumple to the floor, shrieking in despair.
Haven, present time
She carried this hurt and hatred even as she joined the LEP. She tried to tell herself to just let it go, do her job, help the People, and let the humans destroy themselves, as they usually did. But the hate lingered, nagged, and remained, regardless.
Then after the incident with Lili, Holly grew worried. Human tech was always expanding, new animals being discovered, people probing every surface of the earth, trying to discover knew things, learn more about the old stuff that had already been discovered, ect. It was only a matter of time before Fowl revealed his discovery of fairies to the world to some scientist and Haven would be invaded and the People killed or exploited.
Her old hatred of humans grew stronger, especially for Fowl, who had audacity to actually kidnap one; not that Holly cared particularly for Lili, who was a conceited slut, but it was the idea. Fowl had said he would keep the fairies secret and release Lili in exchange for the gold. He had escaped the Blue Rinse and in a sense, won the game. But Holly knew you could never trust a human.
The LEP had maintained surveillance on Fowl after the Lili incident. They knew his mother remained insane, his father was dead, and Artemis was committing crime as usual, following in the footsteps of his departed father. The way he was going, he would end up worse than father, and eventually end up telling someone where the fairies where.
The LEP, honoring the deal, hadn't mind wiped Artemis, even thought Holly thought they should. They decided to keep an eye on him and if they found he started to do anything that would endanger the People, they would take action then. Holly wanted to take action right now.
Fowl Manor, Present
Artemis finally emerged from his room, his hand bandaged, no sign that he had been crying, except for slightly red eyes. Butler knew it couldn't be good to bottle up your feelings like that, but Artemis merely brushed off his concerns.
The funeral was held and of course, Angeline did not attend, to wrapped up in her own fantasy world. Artemis thought about having her committed to a hospital, but Child Services was already investigating them. Artemis had, obviously, thought of a way out of this.
He found a willing woman that would agree to plastic surgery to change her looks. After it was done, she looked pretty much like Angeline and Artemis merely instructed on her how to act and what to say when Child Services came. The plan worked and the caseworker stopped bugging them, believing Artemis's mother was indeed out of her depression, and taking care of her son the way she was supposed to. Afterwards the woman was sent on her way with a hefty payment and an added bonus, in case she was never need again.
Butler was sitting in the study with Artemis one day.
"Artemis, you haven't spoken much about your father," said Butler.
"What's done is done," replied Artemis. "I tried my best, but it was too late for him. He is gone."
"Yes, but I think your bottling your emotions up," said Butler. "That's not good. It takes time to get through grief-"
"I know very well the stages of grief and I have gone through them all." In about the space of an hour, but he wasn't going to mention that bit. He had told himself in his room that he would have to harden himself and get on with life. He had money to make, a mortgage to pay, an electric bill to take care of, medicine for his mother, food to buy, and other things that cost money. Sitting around and whining for his daddy to come back and begging Mummy to get better wasn't going to pay the bills. If it wasn't for him doing the work he did, they'd be on the street, and Artemis would likely end up in a foster home or something of the sort. No, he had to keep a level head and not let grief catch him in its clutches. He couldn't let himself crumble to pieces like Angeline.
Butler sighed and left the room.
Artemis had become much colder since he'd found out his father had died. There had been the lemur event a couple of years ago, where he had sold the last one to a society. One of his latest escapades was a well known entrepreneur had died, Artemis had hacked into his computer system and altered the will, so Artemis got all the money and assets, and the aging wife and her sick child was left penniless. Even Butler was shocked at what Artemis had been doing.
It was hard to believe that less than thirteen years ago, Artemis had been a sweet innocent baby. Butler had been on guard at the hospital the night Artemis was brought into the world and had been there as he grew into a toddler, already showing that he was smarter than most and watched as he grew from a knowledge hungry child to a money hungry monster.
"Those days are over," Butler muttered to himself.
Haven
Holly sat in her house, eating some vegetarian takeout, mulling over her plan. Humans were quite bad and seemed to enjoy destroying themselves and others. Artemis Fowl was the most dangerous of them all and would take out the entire fairy population sooner or later.
But when?
She would be going above ground to do the Ritual tomorrow night, so she would go check out his manor, see if he was plotting anything. She had figured out a way to fiddle with the mechanics of the suit and disable the tracking sensors, or make it so they would show she was somewhere else. Foaly would applaud this brainy idea, unless he knew the reason why she was doing it.
She had taken care of a simple above ground mission. Foaly had sensors spread over the world that monitored all telephone conversations. If words like, fairies or haven was used in conversations, the conversation could be brought up, investigated, tracked, and a LEP officer could go check it out. Usually it was nothing, but Foaly was always paranoid.
So Holly went to check it out, and of course, it was nothing. A boy was simply playing a new video game on his Xbox that had many magical creatures and involved slaughtering other creatures. The gouts of blood looked quite realistic.
"It's just some stupid kid, talking on the phone while playing," said Holly, watching through a window as the boy somehow managed to play, talk on the phone, drink a coke, and shove potato chips in his mouth. If he tried to do anything else, he'd soon be using his feet to work the controller.
"Okay, well your shift is done now, so I guess you can head on home or whatever," said Foaly through her helmet.
"Alright, I'm going to go do the Ritual real quick," said Holly.
Holly cut communications and flew toward Dublin and made a detour to Fowl Manor.
She hovered around it. It was nighttime, so the security would be up, most likely.
She spotted an open window with a dim light on. She flew in and hovered by the window, afraid to go in, because of the nausea and other bad side effects that would happen if she entered uninvited.
Artemis appeared to have slumped over on his desk, asleep, his PowerBook up and running still.
Artemis was mumbling something in his sleep. His eyes flickered open and Holly unshielded, seeing her chance.
"You will let me in," she said, using the mesmer.
"You can come in," slurred Artemis, disoriented from the mesmer and from being still half asleep.
"Go back to sleep, you will not remember this," said Holly.
Artemis's head slumped back to the desktop.
Remaining shielded, Holly skipped over to the laptop and turned it toward herself a bit. If Artemis had plans involving the fairy people, he likely had it written down. She unshielded to conserve magic and remained alert, in case Butler decided to come and check on his principle.
What luck, the computer program was showing his journal. He must have updating it.
Holly flicked upwards a bit and skimmed through the entries, growing angrier and angrier. His entries detailed all his criminal enterprises, even the one with the hacked will. His later entries spoke of the fairies, and what would someone pay if he could get a hold of another, and sell it.
He was planning something! Why hadn't Foaly seen it!? He could hack into anything, unless Artemis had a new and improved cryption system and firewall, blocking it. Foaly might have been getting lax. Fowl hadn't done anything lately, so maybe he hadn't checked as thoroughly as usual.
Artemis slept, his head on the desk. Holly pulled out her Neutrino and pressed it against the back of his head. She should kill him right now, before he started the trouble. He was heartless and worthless, a despicable creature.
But not now, not like this. Holly removed the barrel from Artemis's head. To just blast his brains out would raise questions. She would kill this boy, eventually, but she needed a plan, something smarter, but…what?
She turned away toward the window. She would have to go home and figure out a way to do this.
Suddenly she felt something hit the side of her neck and her Neutrino was wretched from her hand. She whirled around, and found the barrel was pointed at her face.
"One twitch and I fry your head."
Artemis was looking at her, his icy blue eyes narrowed with satisfaction.
"And if you're thinking of trying anything, I am capable of sending a message, to, Foaly, I believe his name is? I can simply tell him that of his trusted officers was up here, about to delivers some revenge, despite orders that only surveillance be kept of me. Yes, I know of you fairies watching over me."
Holly felt panic rise in her gut. If Foaly or anybody found out she had done this, she would be some deep doo doo. She'd be fired for sure.
"Give me my weapon and forget this happened." Holly tried to mesmer him, wondering why it hadn't worked properly the first time.
"Did you really think that I'm so stupid?" asked Artemis. "I always wear mirrored contact lens. Did you really think I would remain unprotected, so one of you could prance in and mesmerize me if you felt you needed to?
"But-you fell back asleep and-"
"An act, my dear," said Artemis. "Now walk to the window."
Holly did so. She should just disable him and screw the consequences. She could possibly fabricate something if Artemis sent a message to Foaly.
Suddenly she felt something prick her neck and a numbing sensation began to spread.
She slowly sank to the floor, glaring at the boy with hatred.
"Wait until you wake up and find what I did. I really do need some more fairy tech, so I can create some more inventions and sell them. You'll have a hell of a time getting out of this one, I daresay. This will make Hamburg look about as a bad and paperwork error."
Holly felt herself fading out. The last thing she saw was his vampire smile and she his snarky laugh echoed through her head.
Later, she awoke, disoriented, with no idea where she was. She blinked and realized she was in a field, not too far from a shuttle port. Her helmet was gone and so was her gun.
Also, she was completely naked.
Shame and embarrassment colored her face red. She tried to shield and realized she couldn't. She felt a sting on her finger and realized Artemis had drained her magic by sticking her finger with a pin or a tack, slowly draining right from her body.
SHIT!
She could go to the shuttle port and have to explain herself to whoever was on duty, and get help, but Root and the others would find out, and that would mean explaining how she had gotten herself in this predicament.
But what else could she do? Wander around naked and end up being seen by somebody. Fowl had gotten her into quite a pickle. She was going to lose her job once they found out what happened. She should have thought of a better plan before doing this. She knew about the info from his computer, but that wouldn't be enough to save her from being canned.
She went to the shuttle and, covering herself the best she could with her hands, found the attendant and said she needed help.
She was picked up and given a suit to wear, and she had to explain what happened. Holly tried to think of a feasible lie, but knew it wouldn't work. Foaly could tap into the security cameras and go back and find her.
In Root's office, she was fired.
"And you may end up being arrested!" roared Root, a vein bulging in his neck, while he puffed on his cigar with increasing intensity. "How could you do this? One of our best agents, and you get caught tampering with LEP equipment, changing the trackers, so you can go gallivanting off to possibly kill someone. Foaly checked the cameras you know, you had your Neutrino pointed at his head."
"He's going to kill more fairies!" shouted Holly, her face reddening, but not nearly as much as her bosses. "He plans on kidnapping another a fairy! He'll reveal us to humans."
"It doesn't matter!" Root hollered, the vein in his neck looking ready to bust. "Look, Foaly is going to get his budget cut when I find out why he didn't see that entry yet, but you were about to kill someone and you broke so many rules into pieces!"
He turned around to his file drawer.
"You have to sign some papers, and you will be placed on house arrest until, under criminal status awaiting further decision until-"
WHAP!
Holly grabbed Roots head and slammed it into the filing cabinet. The corner dug in, drawing blood. Root moaned and Holly did it again. It wouldn't kill him, but he'd be out for awhile. She grabbed his Neutrino and holstered it. She needed wings, plus a shuttle, and knew how she could get them.
"Sorry, Root," she whispered. "But I can't let that human continue to run around aboveground, while I sit in prison. It'll take fifty Council Meetings before you buffoons figure out what to do, and by then, it'll be too late."
Still boiling with anger, she left the office, shutting the door and adopted a slightly depressed posture, and slumped off to Foaly's booth.
"Holly, your still here?" asked Foaly. "I thought you'd-you know, be fired already."
"It's just a matter of time," said Holly. "I think the only reason why I'm still around is because I was one of the better agents. He said I have until Internal Affairs looks at it, but after that, I'm pretty much guaranteed to be fired. In the meantime, he plans to squeeze as much work out of me as possible. So I need to go above ground and keep surveillance on Artemis."
"Really?" asked Foaly. "But after what-"
"He's doing it to punish me," snapped Holly. "He's pissed. He wants me to take one of the old shuttles to go above ground."
Foaly looked a little suspicious, so Holly upped her act a notch and started blubbing. "I-I don't want t-to get fired! I was n-never going t-t-to hurt anyone. Y-you k-kn-know me, F-foaly!"
Foaly was taken aback by Holly's crying. "Oh, Holly, I know you're not like that. Listen, go get in the shuttle, and I'll try to talk to Root."
Holly didn't want anyone to find Root yet, knocked out on the floor. "He said no one is to talk to him for awhile, because he's so mad, he said he'll fire anybody that bugs him."
"Well, I'll go talk to him, er, later," said Foaly. "I have some important stuff that needs doing."
Foaly took Holly to the shuttle.
"Here one of the old shuttles I haven't gotten around to fixing," said Foaly. "Sheesh, is Root trying to kill you on your way up?"
"No," said Holly, wiping off the tears she had managed to muster up. "He knows I can fly anything."
Holly strapped herself in and Foaly waved at her cheerily through the window of it, not knowing he had just given a shuttle to a fairy who was supposed to be on house arrest and had also just committed assault on her boss.
