Disclaimer: People, people, you need to get a brain transplant if you still believe that Colfer-verse is mine!

Author's Note: I have bad news and good news. The bad news is my current lack of reviews. I understand, people are going back to school, getting a lot busier, and so am I. But I really would appreciate a bit more feedback than the teensy little five reviews I got for chapter 8, which I actually worked quite hard on. But from now on, I will be posting my chapters on Friday afternoons, in face of the weekend so that more people will have time to read— and hopefully, review— future chapters.

On the bright side, I have been nominated for the Orion awards in multiple categories, mainly thanks to missLivia. I assume this is a good thing, even though Liv is my friend, and therefore, biased (no offense!). And I never even knew there was such thing as Orion awards until I was nominated! Crazy, huh?

Okay, well, this is the very long awaited chapter 9 and I'm sorry to say that it isn't very exciting. But the next one will be chock-full of action, I promise! So here we go:


Chapter 9 Too Much Information

Mulch stepped inside the room cautiously, pushing a chest of drawers to cover the hole, his eyes (and beard hair) scanning the room. It was furnished with a few plush lounges and a glass coffee table, cluttered with various papers. No doubt it had once served as an executive lounge of some sort, but nowadays, it was more of a living room. Mulch snorted. Imagine actually living in an abandoned shuttleport— that gnome must really be desperate.

"Stick to the plan, Mulch," Artemis's voice in his ear reminded him. "Look for clues about what Sool's greater scheme is."

"I know, Fowl," Mulch said. He started going through the papers, looking for anything that might be important later on. The papers were mostly internal affairs profiles, no doubt things accessed in Sool's days in Internal Affairs. But on many of the official documents, there were often handwritten notes, all scrawled by the same blue ballpoint pen. Most heavily noted was a thick file that read…

"Is that about me?" Holly's voice came through the mikes. And it was indeed, for the file was entitled Holly Short and included her latest physical, psych report, missions, flight records, everything. But even more revealing, there were clearly the most annotations on the section labeled Relationship with Artemis Fowl II.

"Record every page with your iris cam and email to me," Artemis ordered, curiosity was evident in his voice. "But don't take anything. No trace, remember."

"You mean, email it to me," Holly corrected. Mulch groaned inwardly; surely, this was the start of yet another round of Artemis/Holly bickering

"I need to see the handwritten notes, at least," Artemis protested. "It could be important."

"Or perhaps, you just want to check out my file."

"If I did, I could always just hack the LEP database."

"You could, if you didn't happen to know as well as I do that they've installed a new fiber optic blocker since your little escapade with the C Cube."

"Still bitter I outsmarted you, hmm?" Artemis teased.

"As if," Holly replied, and promptly knocked the human boy over the back of his head, by the sounds coming in through Mulch's earpiece.

"Ow!" Artemis exclaimed. Mulch secretly winced. Fowl may have the highest tested IQ in Europe, but he still hadn't learned his lesson about staying on Holly's good side.

"Fine, email it to her," said Artemis resignedly.

Mulch couldn't help but let out a cackle, as he returned the papers to their original position. The greatest criminal mind of the twenty-first century, once again defeated by a girl's mean left hook.


Lauren was dead. The thought kept on returning to the forefront of Mariana's mind, far more eminent than thoughts of her own safety. Because it had been all her fault. For the first time in her life, she understood the terrible melancholy that shrouded her sister's countenance whenever Holly remembered the day Julius had died. Responsibility for the loss of a life, even if only inadvertently, and very faintly, in her sister's case, was an awful ordeal to bear. Mariana would always know that none of this would've ever happened if only she'd been a little bit smarter, just slightly more cautious. If only she hadn't let her thirst for adventure become more important than even the most basic of common sense.

With tears running down her face like rainwater, Mariana barely had time to lift her head to see the rest of the guards come scampering, right after the nick of time. A particularly burly one pinned Mariana to the wall, demanding, "What the hell did you do?"

"Nothing," she shrieked, her feet dancing a foot from the ground.

"Damn it, the other girl's dead," another guard commented. "The boss won't be happy."

"Doesn't matter," the burly one replied, letting Mariana slide to the floor. "Boss don't need that one."

"Are you so stupid that you're incapable of stringing together a proper sentence?" Mariana scoffed, defiant even in face of peril. "It's 'it doesn't matter' and 'The boss doesn't need that one'."

"It's you that's stupid, girl," the burly gnome replied. "You don't even know when to keep your mouth shut."

"Give it a rest," the other guard berated his comrade. "We've got to get the girl to the boss like he told us to."

"What?" Mariana exclaimed, as the guards lifted her off the ground again, and began down the hall. "Hey, let me down!"

They deposited her in a chair at the far end of a long, mainly empty room. The way it was currently decorated, with a single rickety stool at one end and a plush chaise longue at the other, and emphasized with soft lighting, it resembled a modern day throne room. It came at no great surprise to Mariana that the gnome seated at the opposite end of the hall was the same who'd threatened her earlier.

"What are you a megalomaniac?" Mariana asked disdainfully, squinting at the gnome. For some reason, at a more careful glance, he looked rather familiar.

"I'm afraid that it is I who will be fielding the questions today, Miss Short," he replied, his tone stunningly unruffled for a person who'd just kidnapped two people and as good as killed one of them.

"Wait a sec," Mariana recalled his voice as well as his countenance. "Aren't you an LEP guy? You were in the paper, and on television, around the time Holly—"

But she stopped suddenly. This guy, whoever he was, already knew far too much her and her sister. Surely, it couldn't be beneficial to Holly for her younger sister to be blabbing about her to this obvious megalomaniac. One person had already died today because of Mariana's imprudence; it mustn't happen again.

However, it would've made no difference, for he already knew. "Around the time your sister disappeared?" he smirked, savoring the fearful revelation splattered across the girl's face for all to see. "Yes, indeed, I know all about that, because, after all, I was LEP. Internal Affairs, to be exact, and then Recon commander for a short period after that. Don't you recall?"

"Sool!" Mariana spat, her face full of indignation. "You were the jerk who accused my sister of murder! How could you?"

"I see that fiery temper runs in the family," Sool remarked, perfectly unconcerned. "But no matter. You will answer me: What is Holly Short's greatest weakness?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Mariana sneered. "I'm not psychic."

"Surely you know something about your sister," Sool frowned. This was going to be a tad more difficult than he thought. Of course, he already knew all that he needed, but this girl ought to be shaking in terror, affirming his every suspicion, conforming to his every command. She was the hostage, for goodness sakes. Instead, she was jeering at him!

"Sure," Mariana shrugged, eager to give away only thoroughly unhelpful information. "I know her middle name, how many sugars she likes with tea, what she got for her last birthday…"

"What about Artemis Fowl?" Sool cut her off. "What do you know about him?"

"He's a human, he has blue eyes, he hates lollipops with a passion…"

"For goodness sakes, don't you know anything useful about either of them?" Sool exclaimed, exasperation showing on his usually impassive countenance at last. Mariana grinned inwardly; as dire as the situation was, she could help but love aggravating this supercilious jerk.


Only a few feet aboveground, Artemis had just been similarly aggravated. Although, apart from the throbing lump that had risen beneath his scalp, he wasn't actually bothered. Being a Fowl, Artemis was prone to quarrel with people when not receiving precisely what he wanted, though in most cases, the mistake was immediately corrected. Most did not seek to argue with a Fowl, being rather intimidated, to say the least, if not by the strange child who acted like an adult, then by the monstrous giant that usually stood by his shoulder.

But not Holly. To this day, she was the only person who dared to tell him when he was being a bombastic jerk. In fact, more than once (quite a handful of instances, actually), she had retaliated with, shall we say, more violent measures. And of course, she was the only one who could match him in a battle of witticism, time and time again.

Artemis couldn't help but smile nowadays whenever they bickered, in a way that was indeed reminiscent of an old married couple, as Mulch would say. But squabbling with her was unlike arguing with anyone else— it was a like a game, and fun. Hard enough for even Artemis himself to believe, he thoroughly enjoyed it. Whenever neither could think of yet another droll retort, the tension would deflate like a released balloon and both could not help but explode in laughter at their own impertinence. It was like a battle of wits, and always ended in amusement.

Remembering the urgency of the situation, he reluctantly turned his thoughts back to the task at hand. Glancing once more at the live video that was currently being shot by Mulch inside the shuttleport, crisscrossed with a 3-D model of the blueprints, Artemis traced a route with his index finger. Or several routes, to be exact, at strategic points where there were sure to be guards. And there were approximately a dozen guards that Sool had either mesmerized or more likely, bribed, according to what Mulch's beard hairs had scoped out so far.

So, Sool had them in his arsenal, along with what probably included several especially designed bio-bombs. What he didn't have was far more important. Naturally, he would not want to use mesmer on other fairies, for fear of losing his magic, and Sool himself was neither a genius nor a soldier. Alone, he was powerless; his power utterly depended on the fact that his sentinels seemed to be loyal to him and would remain steadfast.

Finally, Artemis felt the gratifying sensation for concocting a stunningly cunning plan flow through him. All the pieces of the puzzles seemed to be united, fitting together nearly flawlessly, creating a panorama of true brilliance. At last, the genius within him rekindled, after what seemed like an insufferably long hibernation fraught with the pesky nuisance of self-doubt.


Wrestling: even on the best of days, the average human isn't usually enticed to discuss at great length the manner in which one extremely large and bulky wrestler slams into another. However, Juliet Butler, needless to say, was not the average human.

"So then Rey Mysterio nearly got his entire skull crushed," Juliet gushed. "That Khali Vise Grip is just amazing! I so have to try that out in the ring sometime."

"Uh-huh," Holly muttered, barely registering Juliet's words. Instead, her eyes were entirely fixated on Artemis. The unnaturally pale mud boy, (or rather mud man, nowadays), looked as incongruous as usual in the vivid Mediterranean sunset. But in spite of his less-than-handsome visage, there was still something quite…unique about the way his brow furrowed as he thought, and the way his ambidextrous fingers flew over the keyboard.

Juliet noticed; in fact, her fairy friend's thoroughly inattentive behavior was hard to miss. "Strange seeing vampire boy in the sun for once, huh?" said Juliet, her voice light and teasing. But in all honesty, she was testing the waters; could it be that Holly actually liked her principle?

"Definitely," Holly agreed, at a loss for a better response. But what Juliet suspected was only too true, in a way Holly herself didn't understand. Why are you feeling this way about a stupid mud boy, she silently berated herself. You are on a mission, and you mustn't let anything else distract you, even if…

Even if you love him? The forbidden words floated treacherously into her thoughts. It couldn't be, it simply couldn't. Such an affair would never work; Holly told herself logically, it is unheard of nowadays. Perhaps during the Frond Dynasty, but never now.

"So, you're Artemis's bodyguard now?" Holly asked, deftly turning the subject and her wandering eyes away, even though her mind was still pondering that unanswerable question.

"Not really," Juliet said, rolling her eyes. "Arty would be glad if I came back home but wrestling is good, you know? Is it silly to say that for the first time in my life, I was doing something I loved and not something I was expected to do?"

"No," Holly replied. "That's not silly at all. That's how I felt about Recon."

"But all you do is deskwork nowadays."

"Well, sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do."

"Yeah," Juliet sighed. "I don't want to give up wrestling though. But I know I can't do it forever, and I'm not a lithe little teenager anymore. Like Arty says, I should think about getting a real job, huh?"

"But for you, wrestling is a real job," Holly said. "And if you love it, you should keep at it, no matter what."

"I'm not like you, Holly, practically young forever," Juliet pointed out. "I'm twenty-six, and the shelf-life for a wrestler isn't long, to be truthful, even if you are really good. But you, why did you take that stupid promotion if you don't even want it?"

Holly thought back to when she had just returned from Hybras, only to realize that three years had gone by without her. Everything had been different— Mariana had transferred to Haven, Foaly had returned to working for the LEP, and Trouble was commander. Naturally, Foaly and Trouble had wanted her to resume her old Recon position, but Vinyaya…well, Vinyaya had had a few words with her.

"It's a really long story," Holly began, hoping she would be spared from having to recount it. Not only was it lengthy, but it also featured a decision that she was neither particularly pleased nor proud about. Thankfully, Mulch chose this particular moment to emerge from the nearby dirt, his reconnaissance mission complete.

"Those sentries sure are stupid," he reported with his typical self-satisfied smile plastered across his face. "They didn't even notice me when I planted the bugs."

"What're the defenses like, then?" Holly asked, ignoring the dwarf's smug attitude.

"Easy," he replied, "Just a few sensors, CCTV cameras in all the key rooms, and those idiot gnomes patrolling the place."

"Well, Foaly can control their communications, providing you inserted the fiber optic blocker?"

"Yeah, yeah," Mulch replied, his tombstone teeth now chomping through a substance that no one cared to ask about. "Just can't do anything without me, huh?"

"Does anyone else think that this seems a bit too easy?" Artemis asked, standing up from his perch on at the steps of the shuttle for the first time in two hours. "Even Sool must have a bit more up his sleeve than this, if he actually expects to succeed with his plan."

"Oh yeah," Mulch added. "Forgot to say; they've also got these human guns."

"What?" Holly and Artemis exclaimed simultaneously.

"Yeah, these big long rifles— all the guards have them," Mulch said, perfectly nonchalantly. "Shouldn't be too big a problem, right? They're only human technology after all."

"Yes, but that means they are armed to kill," explained Artemis. "And don't you think that makes it just a bit more dangerous? And then there is the question of where they got these guns from and if there is another human link besides Monsieur Moreau."

"Whatever," Mulch shrugged. "It ain't gonna be me going in there anyways."

"Foaly, you listening?" Holly said into her helmet mike.

"Yeah, yeah," the centaur replied. "Trouble and his team are flying over from Switzerland as we speak, Holly. Haven't you guys got a plan yet?"

"Of sorts, yes," Artemis nodded, calling up a 3-D virtual model of the shuttleport. "There are approximately a dozen guards, patrolling along their assigned paths around the edges of the shuttleport, as such," he explained, marking their respective paths. "We split up into groups of two, and neutralize the targets, all the while sending phantom images to the cameras, with a little help from Foaly."

"A little?" Foaly interrupted incredulously. "Do you know how hard it is to find the appropriate 3-D images for all those sentries? I'll have to run searches through three years of PPTV reruns just to find the right files!"

"Moving on," Artemis continued, ignoring Foaly's complaints. "The operations center seems to be on the top floor, just above Sool's own quarters which, naturally, don't have cameras. Team A will approach the center through here, on the second floor, and from then on, I will proceed to the third floor to penetrate their inner defenses."

"And just what are the inner defenses?" Holly asked. "I'm guessing that this is the hard part."

"Quite so, yes," Artemis admitted. "Sool seems to have access to quite the arsenal and though I can penetrate the first two layers of retina and voice recognition scans, there is a third that I'm afraid is impenetrable."

"Impenetrable?"

"Flux metal," Artemis explained. "Even cutting of his hand would not do the trick, as the metal would read the lack of pulse. A little trick our dear ex-commander learned from Section 8, no doubt."

"But then what do we do?" Juliet asked, confused.

"That's where Holly comes in. She will burn through Sool's private quarters, where he surely will be tonight, and capture him. Then, we will proceed to the third floor, and penetrate the defenses to override the system."

"Which you can do, I assume?"

"I believe I can," Artemis nodded, his customary smugness only too visible.

"What's the catch mud boy?" Mulch asked, still sucking on whatever it was he had been eating. "I've been on enough missions with you to know that it's never as easy as it sounds."

"You're right," Artemis admitted. "There is a slight catch— in the form of a rather considerable time restraint. You see, by the plans that I have examined from the confiscated papers, Haven will be bio-bombed at midnight tonight."


Author's Note: In case you forgot, it's about sunset now, so they've got approximately four hours to penetrate the the defenses, get to Sool, and override the system. Pretty tight time constraint, huh? Besides, there's going to be some nice little twists in the storyline after this- in other words, it's far from over.

The next chapter is already partially written and actually quite exciting to write, so it'll probably be up quite soon. But still, I've got school and about 100 lines from Antigone to memorize this weekend so that could be subject to change. But in the meantime, would it be too hard to just submit a little review encouraging me to continue? Or any advice, questions, ideas, flames- you know the drill, anything's welcome!

Thanks in advance,

Lily