Here is Chapter 10! I'm feeling guilty about not posting for a while, so Chapter 11 coming soon!

~Tiffu

Holly was sprawled over a couch at the back of the shuttle, sitting in front of a vast array of equipment, most of which the likes of, the LEP had never seen. There was a screen in front of her, into which she gazed blankly at, and as if on cue, Opal's face suddenly flashed onto the screen, malignant as ever.
"Why hello, Holly," spat Opal. "I see that you have been captured by my dashing partner in crime, Jade. How does it feel, to be outsmarted again?"
Holly, still under the influence of the drug, didn't seem to understand her and instead, smiled lopsidedly.
"Jade!" Opal screeched when she saw this. "You gave her too much of the drug! I told you to be careful with the elf, or it wouldn't work properly!"
Jade shrugged. "She's a feisty one, she is. If I put her under any less medication, she would've escaped. This is the best I can do."
Opal sighed. "You always have to mess up my plans, dear, couldn't you be a bit more careful next time?"
Jade nodded his head in fake remorse. "Of course, dearest Opal. Do we continue the plan as normal?"
She smirked. "Yes, of course, my plans never fail. Mesmerise her now, then let the drug wear off for ten minutes before you begin the transmission. Do you remember the exact wording I told you? It has to be exact, or knowing you, some slip of the tongue will mean she finds a loophole and escapes."
"Yes, yes, Opal. I've repeated it so many times to you already." Jade sighed.
Opal was slightly taken aback by this flippant rejection, but swallowed it, probably for the first time in her entire life. Only for Jade. "Very well. I shall be watching."
Jade began the mesmer. But Holly just dozed off instead. Jade slapped her across the face. She shot up, her face an amusing mixture of shock and drowsiness.
"Stay awake and focus, dumb fairy!" Jade muttered angrily, rubbing his hand.
He started the mesmer, occasionally pausing to remember exactly what he had to say. Opal listened in from the receiver, nodding every once in a while.

"Done," sighed Jade, exhausted. He watched Holly carefully, waiting for something to happen. Opal shuffled on her seat in her jail cell, also watching intently, covering her wrist every once in a while to hide the technology from the guards walking past.. Holly just stared into the distance, glassy eyed and unmoving.
Jade started twiddling his thumbs nervously, wondering if he really had put her under too much medication and how badly Opal would punish him and hate him for this mistake. He was about to speak up, when Holly twitched. Just slightly, it would've been unnoticeable if she had not been completely still. The two conspirators watched, as Holly started to come out of the trance she was in. She suddenly tensed, then took a groggy look around the room. Her face creased for a second, her eyebrows arching and a vein stood out on her forehead. Sweat started to form as her mind was pulled in two different directions, two different wills. But resistance was futile and her expression eventually settled out into a calm, albeit dazed expression. She looked calmly at Jade, then at Opal in the receiver, who were both still observing her carefully.
"Well then," stated Holly in a monotone. "What next, Mistress Opal?"

"Incoming video file, ohoho, what is this?" came Foaly's own voice over the speaker system. Foaly looked up from his current project, which was the construction of a second batch of prototypes to replace the first ones that had been stolen by Holly, to notice the new message icon flashing on his screen.
"Well, my dear pony boy, aren't you going to open it? It's pretty important, from what I see. Don't you wanna have a look?"
Foaly got up to open the file on the gas screen, but the file zipped away from him, into the top right hand corner.
"Oh no you don't!" chirped the computer gleefully. "Jump, pony boy, jump!"
It was at times like this that Foaly regretted putting a personality chip into his computer. It got like this when he was busy working on something and had no time to talk. Who knew that he could be so infuriating to himself? Someday he would have to alter it.
Foaly let out a sigh. "Cummon, computer, this is not a time for fooling around. Just tell me who it's from, at least."
"No!" stated the computer playfully. "If I'm going to give it to you, I'm going to make you work for it! I'm tired of obeying your each and every command, now is the time to have fun!"
"Computer. I don't have time for this. Give me the file, and in the meantime, please trace it for me," sighed Foaly.
"Say pleeease."
"Please."
"There you go. Let's see, file is from …woah, it's untraceable. That's strange."
"Untraceable? Let me see."
"I already told you, it's-"
"Quiet, computer."
For once, his tiresome computer complied.
Foaly's fingers flew over his human -style keyboard. Solid too. He had always liked the solid instead of the virtual. Much better than wiggling his fingers mid-air in an attempt to input data into the system.

The file was locked. There was no sender name. Foaly sighed and opened up a program, attempting to hijack it and bypass the password. Lines of coding scrolled past his eyes, all of them refusing to tell him their secrets. It shouldn't have been that difficult, this coding was way too complicated to be from any ordinary fairy. "Opal," he breathed, and his eyes widened.

There was a faint 'ding!' as he finally got into the file. It had been sent from a remote area, not too far from a shuttle port on the surface, but there was nothing in it. Before he got to investigate his suspicions, the face of a familiar friend appeared on the screen.
"Holly!" he exclaimed, overjoyed. "Where have you been? What did you do? I knew I shouldn't have trusted you. But why did you leave, if you had just stayed…"
But Holly wasn't listening. She was staring blankly, coldly back at him. "Foaly," was all she said.
Foaly glanced at her apprehensively. What had changed? There was something present in her expression that he couldn't place a finger on…

Holly started speaking again. "I've got a few things to discuss with you, so listen carefully. I have something that you want. As you will have discovered by now, I have all your newest prototypes. I know you can rebuild them, but you know as well as I do that it is not as easy as that."
Foaly gasped. How did she know about that…
"Anyway, you have something I want, and I have something you want. All you need to do is just hand it over to me. I need you to find me something. I need Artemis's only Overground Location Finder, by tomorrow at the latest. I know you only have one, give it to me. Leave it near E37, attached to the fifth pillar of the bridge on the nearest river. There will be consequences if this is not adhered to. You may not have noticed the virus that was attached to this file as you opened it. The only way to open it was to give it access to the network. By now it would've spread so far to be in all the traffic networks, computers of unsuspecting fairy teenagers, mobile towers and production factories. Fail to comply and the whole network is shut down without a trace. All programming, gone. Not even the great Foaly can solve that, hey? Can't repair something if there's nothing to repair," Holly smiled a cold grin. "I will be waiting. And you must do it yourself. Go alone. If you send someone else or tell anyone, the system goes. That is all."

The screen went blank and Foaly was left staring at the screen, the image of Holly's face still burnt into his retinas. He couldn't think, couldn't act, he cursed himself for being so useless. Never in his life had he been in such a situation. It had always been behind the scenes work, he had never had to go out. He'd only been to the surface a few times in his life, but he had hardly been in danger, he had had Artemis then. Now Artemis was missing and he had to do this alone or risk Haven's complete shutdown. Tired, he slumped and lay in his specially designed study chair, millions of thoughts and emotions running through his head, none of them making any sense to him. Nothing was clear to him in his jumbled state of mind, except for one thing that he hated himself for not seeing before. He could've prevented it, but old friendships had gotten in the way, which he promised he would never let happen again. Though he still had mixed feelings, what hurt the most, was the utter reality of Holly's betrayal.