Thank you for the kind reviews! Here is the next chapter of Fake. Please let me know what you think and if you want me to keep going with this fic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Artemis Fowl. Spoilers for The Opal Deception. Some of the dialogue in this chapter has been adapted from passages in that book to fit this story.

2

When Artemis emerged from the bathroom, he appeared to be much more relaxed than when he'd entered. In reality nothing could be further from the truth. All his nerves were on edge and there was a tension in his mind that was similar to the feeling that accompanied his usual illegal activities, except for now it was very unpleasant. But he had played it cool through heists and charades with much higher stakes than fooling a few people of merely average intellect. He would play it cool now too.

Artemis paid particularly close attention to his body language, knowing how important nonverbal cues were. He kept his palms open, forced his shoulders to relax, and focused on projecting the persona of a more open and trustworthy individual than he actually was. Breathing was the biggest problem and took the most concentration, but he managed to take nice, even breaths as though nothing was wrong.

He found the shuttle's other occupants seated around a table, eating food from foil packets that resembled military MREs. He could only assume that they were the LEP equivalent of human Meals Ready to Eat. The largest pile of foil wrappers was stacked in front of the strange creature whose posterior he'd been introduced to on the Temple of Artemis. Mulch, Holly had called him, and he certainly seemed like a character who'd fit the bill for the Mr. Mulch Diggums who had been recorded in Artemis's files.

Mulch glanced at him and gave him a sharp once over. Artemis had to make an effort not to hold his breath. See how relaxed I am? heprojected to the dwarf. My mind is much more at ease than it was before. And see how I make eye contact with you now, and blink rather than to try and stare you down, or gazing at you mistrustfully? That is because I remember you. So stop looking at me so suspiciously, damn you!

Just when Artemis thought that he'd burst a blood vessal, Mulch's expression relaxed to match his own. "About time you got your head in order," Mulch grunted and started toward the bathroom. "I need to get into that bathroom urgently."

"Nice to see you too, Mulch," Artemis said, stepping aside to allow the dwarf past. Out the corner of his eye he saw the elf he'd bonded over trauma with freeze in the act of raising a foil packet impaled by a straw to her lips.

"You remember him?" Captain Short asked. But no, Artemis had to think of her as Holly now. That was how he'd referred to her as most often in his files.

He felt his stomach turn as he noticed how Holly's hazel eyes were lit up. Or to be more precise, her entire face was lit up. She looked as though her best friend had just come back from the dead. Artemis forced a smile and felt the lie roll off his lips. "Of course, Holly. We have known each other for more than two years."

Holly jumped from her chair and clasped Artemis's shoulders. "Artemis," she said, positively beaming at him. "It's great to see you. The real you. The gods know we need Artemis Fowl right now."

Artemis had to make a conscious effort not to flinch at her words. He had to make an even bigger effort not to throw up, which was confusing, even to him. Always before, when he'd felt bad, or thought that he was "sickened" by something, it had always been in a metaphorical way. Now he was beginning to realize that the phrase had more literal roots.

"Well, he's here and ready for duty, Captain." Artemis forced some levity into his tone, but made sure that his eyes, remained a bit more serious, if happy.

"Do you remember everything?" Holly asked. She was practically glowing with satisfaction now. Her hands were warm on his shoulders, and at that moment Artemis wished more than anything that he could have been the person she wanted him to be.

He opened his mouth again and lied right to her face. "Yes. I do. And first of all, let me apologize for that consultant business. That was very rude. Please forgive me."

He took a chance with that apology. He wasn't sure how good of a person he'd been on his way to becoming before the mindwipe.

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say, because Holly's eyes darkened a bit. "But what made you remember?" asked the elf. She was suspicious now. This was not good. "Don't tell me a visit to the bathroom jogged your memory."

"Not exactly." Artemis quickly held up the disk. His explanation was true, at least, so maybe he could still bluff his way through this. "I gave this to Mulch. It is my video diary. He was supposed to return it to me upon his release from prison."

Holly shook her head and Artemis started to think that he was, as Juliet would say, majorly screwed. "That's not possible. Mulch was searched by experts. The only thing you gave him was the gold medallion."

Gold medallion? What gold medallion? Artemis tilted the disk in his hand, wondering how he could explain how he'd also managed to give the dwarf this disk as well, but of course he couldn't. He couldn't remember. He felt his lies crumbling down around his ears and opened his mouth to confess and apologize, but suddenly Holly was groaning out loud.

"Of course!" She slapped her forehead. "You passed off that disk as the gold medallion."

I did?

"Very clever."

Artemis shrugged and decided to try for levity again. That seemed to work well the first time. And he decided to add a touch of arrogance in there for good measure. "Genius, actually. It merely seems clever in hindsight, but the original idea was pure genius."

Holly cocked her head. "Genius. Of course. Believe it or not I actually missed that smug grin."

Artemis took a breath and tried to think of what he would say to Holly next if they really were friends. His mind settled on the image of her crying, when he'd first woken up and seen her. If we were friends, I'd try to offer her some sort of comfort, he thought. And so he made the attempt. "I am so sorry about Julius. I know our relationship was a rocky one, but I had nothing but respect and admiration for the commander."

Holly wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. She said nothing, just nodded. Artemis immediately regretted moving on to that topic. The sight of Holly struggling not to burst into tears made him feel like even more of a fraud. Who was he to bring up her late commander? Certainly he wasn't her real friend. He was just pretending to be her friend. That made offering his sympathy for a man that he couldn't even remember even worse. Artemis had never felt so disgusted with himself in his life. Perhaps what was even worse was his desire to hug Holly now, to try to offer her comfort the way someone who really cared about her would.

Butler spoke up, mercifully providing a distraction. "Now that we're all reacquainted we should try to track Opal Koboi down. It's a big world."

At last, something that Artemis could deal with and not feel guilty about. No, on the contrary, he'd rather enjoy toppling that sadistic pixie's plans right out from under her.

The smirk that crossed his face was not feigned, as he waved his finger dismissively at Butler's worries. "No need. I know exactly where our would-be murderer is. Like all megalomaniacs, she has a tendency to show off." He crossed to a plastic computer keyboard on the wall and called up a map of Europe.

The ease at which he navigated the unfamiliar system seemed to further assure Holly that he was indeed who he was pretending to be. "I see your Gnommish has come back to you," she sniffed.

"Of course," lied Artemis. There was no need for her to know that he had relearned the language rather than remembered it. The files on his disk had included a translation guide, and of course one look at it was all it took for him to commit it to memory. It was a very small comfort that he and Holly hadn't been such good friends that she'd learned just how smart he really was. No, actually that really wasn't a comfort. For some reason it depressed Artemis even more. He had to forcibly tear his thoughts away from musings on friendship and focus them on the present.

"Opal revealed a little bit more of her plan than she knew," he said, enlarging part of the map. "She let two words slip, though one would have been sufficient. She said that her human name was to be Belinda Zito. Now, if you wished to lead the humans to the Fairy People, who better to have adopt you than the renowned billionaire environmentalist Giovanni Zito?"

Holly crossed the shuttle deck to the screen. "And where would we find Dr. Zito?"

Artemis carefully tapped a few keys, double checking to make sure they were right before pressing down on them. He zoomed in on Sicily and forced a self satisfied expression on his face. "At his world-famous Earth Ranch. Right there in the Messina province," he said.

Mulch stuck his head out of the bathroom. The rest was mercifully hidden behind the door.

"Did I hear you talking about a Mud Man named Zito?"

Holly turned toward the dwarf, then kept right on turning. "Yes. So what? And for heaven's sake close the door."

Mulch pulled the door so only a crack remained. "I was just watching a bit of human television in here, as you do. Well there's a Zito person on CNN. Do you think it's the same person?"

Holly grabbed a remote control from the desktop. "I really hope not," she said. "But I'd bet my life it is."

The small group watched the press conference unfold on the screen and Artemis split his attention so that he could study Holly and Butler even as he took in the information presented from the television. His performance, he knew, was not as convincing as it needed to be. Regardless of his newly developed moral qualms or the way his body seemed to try to reject the lies he was continuously spouting, he had to keep to this course.

His mind was as sharp as it had always been. His abilities were as ingenious as they had always been. He knew how to play this game. All the cards were in his hands. But his friends didn't trust him. Or rather, they wouldn't trust him if they knew that he still didn't remember. If they knew that he wasn't who he was pretending to be. He couldn't let them start to doubt him, or everything would be lost. So he had to keep pretending to be the person they needed him to be. He had to continue being a fake.