Chapter 4
After hearing where the Butlers were being taken, Artemis shuddered. Did he really have to go back there again? The place where he came closest to death, and only survived because Butler came in with a shuttle and broke him out. He couldn't believe it, and furthermore, he didn't understand why that place still existed.
"I thought they were tearing that place down a month after we were taken there?" Artemis asked Holly.
"Well, it was supposed to be torn down, originally," she started, "but because it was a part of what happened with Opal, it became a crime scene and well, nobody ever got around to tearing the place down."
"Lucky us," Artemis said, his sarcasm still not betraying him.
"It should be fairly simple to break them out, shouldn't it be? We just take a shuttle in there like Butler did last time and get them out," Holly said.
Artemis gave her a look that sent the message; do you really think it's going to be that easy? And after a few seconds he said to her, "Opal will have thought of that, so I doubt we will be able to fly in with a shuttle to rescue them," he said, and then sat down at a chair in the waiting room and massaged his temples.
"So are you giving up now, Mud Boy?" Mulch said.
"Be quiet," Holly said, "he's thinking," she said back to him.
After sitting there for a few minutes, he stood up and said to his two friends, "Okay, so the past Opal wants to destroy all of us, and the present day Opal wants to reveal the People to the humans, inevitably starting a war. This makes it very difficult for us to stop her, since we can't get out of Haven without her seeing us, and we can't rescue the Butlers without her seeing us either. We really only have one way of getting them out, the way I see it," he said to Holly and Mulch, "but you aren't going to like it very much…and get Foaly," he continued, noticing for the first time that the centaur was not there, "were going to need him for this one."
The Eleven Wonders exhibit
Butler awoke about half an hour after he had been tranquilized. The first thing that he noticed was that he was in an enclosed room, or something that looked like it. It was a triangle shaped room, with a roof about only two stories above him. The second thing he noticed was that Juliet was next to him, still unconscious from the Neutrino blast.
You will wish I had killed you right here, he could remember Opal saying only a few minutes ago, but what felt like a few days. He studied the room further, it was dark, but his soldier's eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and eventually realized that the room was completely empty, except for the two of them, and there was a singular door in front of them, with gnommish writing on it.
Though Butler could not speak gnommish completely fluently, he did know how to read it, and he quickly was able to translate what it said into English.
Emergency Exit only, alarm will sound when opened.
If it was Opal who put them here, the exit was almost certainly locked, Butler thought to himself.
"No harm in trying," he said aloud.
"Dom, is that you?" Juliet, who had suddenly awoken, said.
"Yes, it's me, and please don't use my first name, Opal may be watching," he said, and Juliet frowned, remembering what had happened a half hour previous.
"Is there any way out?" Juliet asked.
"There's only this emergency exit, as far as I can see, but it's almost certainly locked, Opal would have thought of that," he replied.
"Try it anyways," Juliet said, the smallest hint of hope still in her voice.
He did, and had immediately wished that he didn't. The door swung open without any resistance, and when the Butlers thought that they were free, they realized that they were really inside a troll habitat, and they had just set off an alarm that must be shouting, dinner! to the trolls.
Most of the trolls stayed where they were, but a few outsiders turned their way, and with a few loud grunts and howls, they communicated what they had seen to the other trolls.
They immediately began charging, which would have given possibly any other humans in the world the biggest fright of their lives, but these were Butlers, and when faced with enemies they had only one reaction.
Butler went for his Sauer, and he was surprised to find that it was there.
Opal forgot about my gun? She's slipping.
He took aim at the trolls' necks, their weak spots, and fired two shots at the first four trolls in the line.
They hit, or rather, they should have hit, Butler's aim was perfect, he was sure of it, and then the penny dropped.
Blanks, he thought, what a time for Opal to develop a sense of humor.
Juliet's reaction was a little different after seeing what happened to her brother, she reached into her hair and pulled out the ring in her ponytail, and whipped it at one of the trolls, which actually worked, to a point, the beast actually fell backwards, but quickly got up and started to chase again.
"Do you have any other weapons?" Butler asked his sister.
"No, all gone, I can't believe Opal put blanks in our guns."
Butler was about to try and run for it, when he noticed that the building that they had walked out of was a replica of one of the Great Pyramids. He started making his way to the top of the tower, and instructed Juliet to do the same.
"Why are we going up here, they'll surround us!" she screamed at him.
"The blocks of the pyramid, they're coming loose, throw them at their necks, it may incapacitate them, it may not, we won't know unless we try," he said, more calmly than anyone else in this situation would. He had known Artemis Fowl too long for anything to be shocking to him anymore.
They started throwing block by block at the trolls, each one appearing to do less damage than the last. At first, the younger, smaller, but faster trolls were hit, and the blocks actually managed to knock those trolls out, but as the larger trolls made their way to the tower, they withstood more damage, only getting knocked back, and when the largest bull trolls came along, the blocks could hardly do anything at all.
The Butlers were running out of blocks, and they could hear a voice coming from seemingly nowhere say "Is that all you can do, Mud Man? Throw some rocks at these giants? You are even more pathetic than I thought you-!" the voice shouted, then suddenly stopped, and both Butlers managed to recognize the voice of Opal Koboi.
They were almost out of rocks, when all of a sudden, the ground beneath them suddenly disappeared, and a small figure jumped out of the clay and said, "If you want to live, hang on!"
The Butler's did not need to be told twice, they grabbed onto the back of Mulch Diggums (for of course it was he,) and they were launched into the ground, which had been sealed up as soon as they left, the trolls left to wonder what happened.
Once they had resurfaced safely outside the exhibit, the first that that Butler said was,
"Where is Artemis?"
Mulch looked at him, then said, "you're welcome for saving you Mud Man, and as for your question, Artemis should be here any second with Opal, then we can finally wipe her and send her back."
Butler doubted it, with Artemis's plans, no matter how well they seemed to be working out, something had to go wrong. And after a few minutes waiting for Artemis to arrive, he got his answer.
"He's not here Mulch, tell me what his plan was, NOW!" he demanded.
"Well you see, I don't know," he started, "I was only told that I had to rescue you when he gave the order, and that he would be back with Opal," he finished.
"Why does he always have to do this to me?" Butler wondered aloud.
Outside the exhibit, fifteen minutes ago
Artemis and Holly were looking for Opal's shuttle. Or rather, they were looking for where her shuttle wasn't. He told them that he was sure Opal would want to stick around to watch the show, as she would likely not want to be there to see the Butler's die. So Artemis had to make sure that she wouldn't see them escape, and that meant that they somehow had to distract her, and the best way to distract her was to capture her.
He put his search filters through the LEP scanner, and it took him no more than a minute to locate the shuttle, two hundred feet in the air and about a thousand feet away from them. Artemis was suddenly very glad that their entire station was hidden behind cam foil.
"Okay Foaly, so what do you have for me?" Artemis asked.
"Well, it isn't so much as what I have for you as it is what I have for Holly," he began, "since you can't shoot, she will be the one handling this," he said, handing her a dart gun that Artemis was sure packed quite a punch.
"These darts are even more powerful than Neutrinos, unfortunately my budget is so low I can only make about three of the guns per year," Foaly said disappointed.
"Still, Mud Boy, if you insist on going in, take this anyways," he said, handing him a Neutrino 3000.
As they made their way towards the shuttle in silence, Artemis had a few things that he wanted to clear with Holly, so he broke the silence.
"Holly," he started, "have you forgiven me for what I did a few months ago?"
"You mean when you lied to me?" she started, with just a bit of annoyance in her voice. She sighed, but then said, "Of course I have, after seeing how much guilt you had over it, I know that it must have been tearing away at you inside. Truthfully, I probably would have done the same thing if my mother was dying," she said, much to Artemis's relief.
"Were here, time to go up," she said, clipping Artemis onto her moonbelt.
"Thanks, Holly, but I could have done that myself," he said.
"I know, I just wanted to make sure it was done right," she said, covering herself, and thankfully for her Artemis let it go.
Holly started her wings up and eventually they were up against the shuttle, feeling for the hatch that would open it up, and praying that they were not on the windshield of the shuttle.
Eventually, Holly found it and opened it up silently, and they entered the shuttle, setting up right behind Opal, who was watching the Butler's rock throwing.
"Now Mulch," Artemis whispered into his microphone.
"You are even more pathetic than I thought you-" Opal said, and was stopped short by the tranquilizer dart that hit her in the neck.
As Artemis had thought, they timed it just right, she looked at them at the same time Mulch went in to rescue the Butlers, and was gone in a second. The only problem was that the pixie didn't go down. Any other pixie would, but her specialized magic kept her awake, though she felt drowsy, and as she turned, she pulled out her Neutrino and fired at Artemis and Holly, knocking them both out cold.
"Well, well," she said to herself, "if it isn't Artemis Fowl and Captain Short, just the people I wanted to see."
She took a look back at the screens, and the trolls were clawing at the ground, and when they backed away, nothing was left.
"I'm glad I'm not the Butlers right now, it's a shame I didn't get to see their demise," she said, then called Belinda, her other self.
"Yes?" present day Opal said.
"You were looking for a fairy prisoner, correct?" past Opal asked.
"Correct," present Opal replied.
"Well I can do you one better," past Opal said cunningly, then made her way to the surface, her hostages unconscious on the floor of the shuttle.