Suggested music: Foo Fighters, Pretender
Suggested Beverage: Red wine
0o0o0o0
C h a p t e r 1 1
S h e d d i n g
0o0o0o0
Trouble Kelp was dead. He had lived as a lousy private, and he died as a lousy private, even if his family name had carried him to the rank of Brigadier General posthumously. He didn't die a hero's death: the higher ups had spent an unglamorous amount of time trying to shuffle him out of the way and keep him away from real danger, so he died of little more than bad luck. He'd been in a building when in collapsed. Rumor had it he had been with his wife and had turned off his tracker, but it was all very hush-hush. No one dug around for dirt. Lousy private he might have been, but lousy man he was not: towards the end of his life, he had been one of the most loved men in recon.
Holly had never seen anything crueler than what his death did to his little brother. Private Kelp, or as the other troops had affectionately taken to calling him, Private Discord, had advanced to First Lieutenant with a speed and determination that meant his title was, for once, entirely rightly earned. He had a steady hand when it was wrapped around a gun, eyes like a hawk, and a peculiar tilt to his mouth that made him look like he was constantly struggling not grimace. Even his smile looked pained.
It was common around the canteen to spend lunch breaks betting on what he could possibly get up to after hours. People had made bets on different female officers, on different hotels and bars, on different restraints and shows, on different male officers, and so far no one had won the pot.
All in all, Holly wasn't at all surprised to find him at the military graveyard, staring down at a dull white stone with dry eyes and his hands tucked in his pockets.
Holly cleared her throat hesitantly. Discord's eyes slid to up her face for a moment, then slid back down. He didn't say anything. She shifted onto her right leg anxiously, unsure of what to do. She was his superior officer. She'd never been so aware of how cumbersome the title could be until that moment.
"Someone you know?" She asked, nodding to the stone.
He looked down again and his mouth parted, like he'd only just realized he was standing in front of a gravestone.
"Dunno," he said. If she listened hard, Holly could hear a slur at the ends of his words. "I can't read it."
"What?"
"My eyes." He waved towards his face vaguely. "Some sort of blast shock. I can't…"
"Do you want me to find someone for you?" Holly asked softly. The wind blew up the hair at the back of her neck. Overhead, the simulated sky was threatening rain.
He shook his head. "I've been like this for two years. I can see far away, but close up… I know how to get to his grave, now, without having to see it." She didn't have to ask whose. "Besides," he continued, staring hard at the stone, "I might have known them. I'm not sure. I don't remember any of their names anymore, except his."
He looked up at her with haunted eyes. Holly hadn't seen many eyes like that before, except on a few mud-men who'd fought in the three world words on the surface. He'd been one of the first to volunteer for the worst kind of work his rank could afford him. Watching children die. Drowning deranged animals. Burning decrepit, starved bodies.
"What about you?" He asked finally.
Holly looked down at the handful of violets she was carrying. "No one you would know," she murmured, and brushed by him. One violet fluttered down onto the grave that he was looking at. The stone read Eva Vinyaya.
The grave yard was enormous and, as far as Holly could see in any direction, empty but for herself and Discord. It was located several miles away from the smallest city in Haven. There was one public transit stop at the entrance, with a little café and an out-of-sorts looking souvenir shop that almost exclusively sold cigarettes, flowers, and cheap wine.
Holly walked for about half an hour, turning south and east every so often. The rows of graves were numbered, and so long they disappeared on the horizon, as tiny and white as fish teeth. She stopped in front of a familiar, double wide marker with the carved likeness of a ring of granite roses spread across the top. She knelt down and could see her own reflection upon the immaculate stone, face divided by two sets of deeply engraved letters.
Private Jane Holly and Second Lieutenant Anthony Augustus Short, they read.
"Hey, guys," she said, then cleared her throat, feeling foolish. "It's… ah… been a while since I visited. I brought flowers." She forced a smile and put them down on the grave gingerly. The wind blew again, and one of them tumbled away from the group, into the grass. "Violets. I found some pictures the other day, and I noticed mom had some violets on the kitchen counter. I don't know if… you liked them, or if it was just because someone gave them to you, but… either way, it looked like good memories, so I…"
She trailed off, out of words. She hadn't thought at all about why she was visiting on the bus ride over, but she still kind of knew, deep down, that all of this, the flowers, the pretense of familiarity, the whole graveyard, was more about Emmet than about her dead parents.
"I don't know what you'd tell me to do if you were here. Things have gotten really complicated. I used to think I knew what I wanted, but now I'm not sure. I mean, I don't even really remember you guys. I don't know how to be a parent. I'm… I'm just trying really hard to hold everyone together, all these… men… with big ambitions, and I just can't do it anymore. Julius Root told me to calm down today. Captain Root." She laughed dryly, and then went quiet. "He's grown up a lot. If I didn't know any better, I'd say… ha, I'd say all this has been good for him. I guess he and Artemis knew each other better than I thought.
"Dippet… I don't know how he works into all of this. He's not even a ranking medic. I don't like him. He causes trouble. But… I suppose he means well."
She tilted her head back, lashes fluttering. Storm clouds thick and dark as grapes were creeping up onto the horizon, but directly overhead everything was a bright, glowing grey, harsh on the eyes.
"Then there's Foaly." She opened her mouth, choked faintly, then shut it. "I don't want to talk about him," she whispered after a long pause.
"Artemis. Artemis…. I need to be careful of him. He… I think he's dying. I… sometimes I can practically smell it. He's not sick, not seriously, anyways. But there's something really wrong with him. He's suffering." Her voice was hoarse with self loathing as she spoke. "Sometimes… sometimes I think it would be better if he just died already. I can't put it all into words, but… I'm scared. And not just for him.
"That's a new one, isn't it?" She shook her head ruefully. "You'd probably laugh at me, but after all these years in the military, I guess it's not just about me anymore." She paused, staring at her feet, at the flimsy violets, at the turned earth above her parent's bodies.
She only had the strength to say one more word: "Emmet."
0o0o0o0
Foaly was in his office sweeping up bits of plastic when someone knocked on his door. He squashed an irritated sigh, dropped the broom onto a couch, and went to see who was visiting. He was surprised to find Holly blinking up at him, soaking wet and nervous looking.
"May I come in?" She asked after a pause, folding her arms over her chest.
He stepped aside. "By all means, make yourself at home. Don't worry about dripping on the furniture."
Holly shifted back and forth, uncharacteristically anxious, and Foaly watched her avoid looking at him for a moment before deciding to go put the coffee on.
"I got caught in the rain," she said abruptly.
"Ah. Could I offer you a blanket? I'm making coffee. That should help."
"No, I-" she stopped, shut her eyes. When she opened them, they were still everywhere but his face. "Yes. That would be good."
"Which? Blanket or coffee?"
"Both."
Foaly grabbed a polar fleece from under the couch and tossed it at her. She shivered convulsively as the smart fibers in the material started to warm up, then she shot him a considering look.
"Turn around for a second," she said. "My shirt is saturated; it's starting to shrink up. I've got to take it off."
"I'm flattered that you decided to come here before stopping at your dorm."
He turned away obligingly, and she was silent for a moment. There was something distinctly uncomfortable about not being able to pin quite where she was behind him, but at the same time he was immeasurably glad that she had chosen to seek out his company. It was a strange, tingling mix of emotions on his already pressed nerves that made the skin on his hind legs twitch. Abruptly, he wanted to laugh at himself.
"I want to talk to you," Holly said eventually.
Foaly fished out two mugs under the sink. One of them was plain blue with a chip on the handle; the other was white and read Champion Geek in black letters, courtesy of Julius a couple holidays back. Foaly filled them both and handed Holly the blue one.
"Cream? Sugar? Honey?" He asked, and she shook her head, taking the cup carefully. The black coffee reflected her face perfectly upside down. She had tied blanket up and over her shoulders then pulled it to the side so she had one arm free, the other holding the fabric closed at the base of her neck. He smiled faintly, and then doctored his own coffee to the optimal level of sweetness. "What do you want to talk about?"
Holly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, her expression had resolved itself into one of great determination. Foaly felt something inside himself coil tightly in anticipation.
"I'm going to be completely honest with you, Foaly," Holly said. "Looking at you makes me so angry I want to spit."
Foaly wasn't quite expecting that much frankness. Stomach acid punched his gut, and he winced. Every part of him hurt. He… didn't think he deserved that. He honestly didn't. He'd made the choices he felt would best serve Haven and the world, and there was nothing shameful about that. If she hated him for it, then she hated him truly.
"Holly, I-"
"However, that's not what I came to talk you about, so you can stop flinching like you're afraid I'm going to hit you." Something in her voice broke and she looked down again. Foaly couldn't even guess what she was going to say. "I came to talk to you about Emmet. I promised the man I took him from that I would bring him back to visit. It's… it's very important to me that we do it now. More than important. This man, Hobbs, was like a father to Emmet. Foaly… I don't know if you understand how he must be feeling, but prove to me that you do. Bring us to the surface. Please."
And, well, there really wasn't any way to argue with that.
0o0o0o0
It took roughly five hours to reach a decision about how they were going to reach the surface, an amount of time that, under the circumstances, Dippet found ridiculous.
First, Holly wanted to get a private pod with just her and Emmet to the surface. Foaly pointed out that she would need him to get the pod back down, so he was in too. Root wanted to come as well, to mediate, he said, between Holly and Foaly. That left Dippet to babysit Fowl, and he refused. Either Fowl was going up, or Dippet was. Foaly said that Dippet should come up and Root could stay and look after Artemis. After all, as a medic, Dippet could be more useful on the trip. Dippet pointed out that Foaly was probably just scared Root would side with Holly on everything. Dippet assured Foaly that whatever he thought of Root, Dippet would do his best to be several times worse. That made Holly angry and turned Root a peculiar red in the face that Dippet had only ever heard about. Foaly lost his spine again until Dippet pointed out that nothing had been decided, then Holly tried to push Foaly out and take Artemis instead- "You can just explain it to him- don't give me that, Foaly, he catches on quick, don't you? Hey, her Artemis, you catch on quick, ri- Look at me when I'm talking to you!"- and that didn't work, because Root said that the only person who could properly muscle Fowl into anything was Dippet. Holly needed Foaly, Foaly needed Root, Root needed Dippet and they couldn't leave Fowl alone. So it was decided that they would all go. Plus Emmet. A very full pod indeed, Dippet griped, but no one was listening to him, anyways.
The pod was set to leave at 10:30 the next morning. When Dippet arrived a good fifteen minutes late, Holly was standing on the loading deck, holding Emmet against her shoulder and rocking back and forth. He was crying.
"The others are inside," she mumbled, gesturing to the large, glittering pod waiting in the terminal behind her.
"I thought you were running this today," Dippet snorted. "Why did you get lackey duty?"
Holly glanced down at Emmet and bit her lip. Her eyes were red rimmed, the corners sticky with sleep. Her hair was a mess and Dippet noticed for the first time that it looked like her outfit had already been worn a few times. "He didn't sleep all night," she whispered. "He's been at it for hours. I thought the music out here might calm him down." She gestured faintly to a few hidden speakers sprinkling quiet jazz onto the sparkling plastic floors.
Dippet looked at the child. Emmet was healthy enough, considering his upbringing. He could stand to gain a few pounds, but he was nothing like the severely emancipated Artemis Fowl. His shoulders jerked weekly, muscles shaking with fatigue. It was… unusual enough to refer to a child neurologist or psychologist, but Dippet wasn't going to pretend he was a shrink. He shrugged.
"It's not working. Let's go."
She nodded and led the way to the pod. The door slid open with a mechanized hiss, then snapped shut again and he stepped through the gateway. Inside, Foaly, Fowl, and Root were waiting, along with a huge computer and a wall covered in weapons. Dippet stilled, blinking.
"I didn't realize we were expecting a fight," he said.
Foaly was bent over the computer, something like glee spreading across his face despite the fact that his tale twitched nervously. Artemis was standing next to him, watching the screen like a cat might watch a bird through a window, tale twitching. He glanced up when Dippet spoke and regarded him openly, unblinkingly, then extended one finger to point at Holly as she put Emmet down in a plush chair. Dippet saw that her waste, thighs, and lower arms were covered in weapon holsters, instead of her usual singular gun.
Holly met his eyes. "Ignore it." She picked a helmet off the wall and threw it at him. Dippet raised both hands to try to catch it, fumbled, and wound up slamming his head first with the helmet, then against the wall as he slid to the ground. The helmet hit the floor next to him with a thunk, buckles spreading around it like arms.
"Oh my god," Root wheezed, then burst into laughter, clutching at his sides. Foaly gave a soft, surprised little bleat of laugher, that eventually swelled up in his throat and overtook him until both of them were shaking and crying and looking at Dippet and looking at each other and laughing even more.
Dippet huffed, disgruntled, and pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing his head. Holly gave half a smile and walked to stand right in front of him.
"Sorry," she said. She didn't look it. In fact, she looked distinctly pleased with herself. Dippet frowned at her ineffectually. "Put it on. I want to see if it fits."
He spent a moment considering trying to stay angry, and then decided that if he put the helmet on he could at least avoid further head wounds. He fumbled upright and tugged it on. Inside, the helmet was cool and black. Headphones slid to rest against his ears and a mouthpiece hovered at the end of his chin. Something touched his head softly, and two fingers slid up against his neck to prod a button along his cheek. He winced at his visor slid up, revealing the room in stunning, better than actual clarity. Holly's face was in sharp focus right in front of him, a slightly perplexed expression on her face. She crossed her arms.
"How does it feel?"
"Fine," he said, but she shook her head.
"You have to turn on the speakers."
"Right," he muttered. "Been a while since I've had to wear one of these. There, can you hear me? Everything feels like it's in place."
"Good." She busied herself fastening all the buckles. Behind her, Foaly was starting up the take off process. There was a gentle rocking, and the pod began to ascend, gaining speed as it went.
Dippet was not a soldier or a programmer, but he had an unrivaled understanding of the pull and sway of things, the turning of the earth, the prickle of instincts and human understanding. If there was a reason a man as unkind as Dippet had been drawn towards medicine, it was because of this. He couldn't perceive the subconscious and unconscious, but he could feel what they perceived, somewhere in the basic, animal ID of his construction when it brushed against his ego, like a snake felt an earthquake coming and knew to be afraid. There he knew in a way that made his nerves ignite imperceptibly, that made the muscles along his spine wrap tighter and tighter around his nervous system, that made his very core vibrate like a plucked piano key: whatever waited for them as they gradually rushed up to the surface was grinning with big, hungry teeth.
0o0o0
"Damn," Root mumbled, walk out of the pod and onto the concrete pad they had landed on with unsteady legs. "You really know how to fly one of those things, Foaly."
Foaly walked down the ramp to stand next to Root, twirling the craft's keys around one finger. Foaly had pulled on an unusual suit that covered both his horse and human body parts. Combined with the bulbous helmet he wore, there was hardly anything familiar about his appearance, except for the addition of his tinfoil cap overtop his helmet. His visor slid up to reveal his face through a sheet of glass, and he smiled wickedly.
"I designed the combat training simulation," he grinned.
Dippet stumbled out next, swaying and pale faced, and Holly followed with Artemis and Emmet. Artemis walked up to stand beside Root. His sun visor was down. It looked like he was watching the horizon, trying to catch a glimpse of the sun through the clouds, but it was hard to tell without being able to see his eyes.
Even Emmet had a helmet and uniform, which was, if Root was honest with himself, beyond adorable. Ignoring the fact that seeing a toddler in military regalia should have been exactly the opposite.
Root sighed. "What are we going to do about the food?" He asked.
"Food?" Dippet frowned.
"For the refugees," Holly explained. "I promised I'd bring them supplies. It's all packed underneath in the holding bay; we can get them all to help unload it."
"Where exactly are we going, by the way?" Dippet asked. He had a pinched, tired expression on his still green-tinged face.
"We should be going just a little south of due east," Holly said, pointing out into the great expanse of metal in front of them.
"Lead the way," Foaly told her with a sweeping gesture and a bow. He must have really enjoyed piloting the pod to be that giddy, Root thought sourly.
Holly led them down off the platform and into the maze of streets, following a long avenue through the center of the city. Overhead, broken iron beams formed a rusted canopy. In some dark corners, Root saw rats the size of cats living in mass, scuttling down to the open sewers and then back up to the pavement without pause. They watched him and his companions pass with red eyes. Every so often, Artemis would drift behind, and they would all pause for him to catch up. His head roved back and forth as he took in the landscape. Root wished he could see the boy's face.
Eventually they reached a narrow crevice between two buildings where Holly paused, clutching Emmet's hand tightly. Root walked over to her and put a hand on her should. She glanced up at him, smiled, and then slid through the crack. Root followed closely, with Dippet, Foaly, and Artemis trailing after him. It was a tight squeeze. Rust brushed off on Root's shirt, streaked like blood. He grimaced as metal scraped along the side of his helmet, and then he was standing in a crude, metal dome with a large pit in the center, scorched with the remains of fire. There were crates all around the walls, some full of canned goods and others full of rotting fruits. Everything was covered in the traces of ash. Everywhere there were rats.
Holly gasped and pulled her helmet off like the smart filters had deceived her somehow. Instantly she reached up a hand to cover her nose and mouth, eyes watering.
"It's not supposed to be like this," she whispered. There was terror in her voice. "What happened?"
Root looked around. "This is where they were living?" he asked. "You're sure? It's not just… a storage unit, or some-"
"No! This was it, this was the place. Oh no. Oh no. I…" She broke off with a weak, desperate sound, fisting her hands. She walked around the fire once, spinning around, looking for signs of life. Rats scattered. "Hello?" She called. "Anyone here? It's me- it's Holly Short! I brought Emmet!"
No one responded. Root walked over to her quickly and snagged her arm. "Holly," he whispered. "This is important: you said there was a branch of AMN nearby, but I need to know: did you show these coordinates to any other officers?"
Holly's stared at him in horror. Root found an odd sense of irony in the fact that she hadn't even considered the military's possible involvement. She had always been all about doing, all about emotions and noble intentions. She never gave herself time to really think about things.
"No," she whispered back. "But I gave Foaly the footage, and he knew I was in New York. Do you think…?"
"I don't know. It would explain why he might have lowered the priority on those pods." Root glanced at the others, who were all beginning to spread out and search for signs of life, looking down between crates and under rubber tarps. Dippet was examining the fire pit. Emmet and Artemis were sitting on the ground near each other.
Holly blinked at him for a moment, face full of confrontations, then clenched her hands into fists and swung on her heal.
"We're dealing with this right now," she said.
"Wait, Holly, don't-" He jumped after her, but she was already across the dome and had Foaly by the arm.
"General Foaly," she said, "I want a good alibi, a really good alibi, to prove that you didn't do this."
Foaly stared down at her like she had a knife in his gut, like she was killing him. Root winced. There it was. The accusation out in the open. How very like Short to completely disregard strategy and just go for it. Root wished he had that kind of confidence. Or a cigarette to make up the difference. Christ.
Dippet turned around, sighed out through his nose, and said, "If he can't tell you, I can. He does have an alibi. Every second that he hasn't been in your presence or in his home- which is under surveillance for security reasons, by the way- he has been reviewing the tapes from Fowl's eye cam. Together, we've been trying to date every injury on Fowl's body, leading up to and possibly after the brain surgery."
Holly turned to Dippet, mouth open to shout, then seemed to hear what he'd said and snapped her mouth shut again, considering. She turned back to Foaly.
"Is this true?"
"Yes. Holly, please believe me." He wasn't smiling at all, now. Years ago, Root had wanted to bring Foaly down a few notches, but this was awful to watch. "I wanted to figure out a way to heal some of Artemis's injuries without damaging his brain. Or, I suppose, figure out a game plan for him to do it himself. I was trying to finish it before the month ended. It was going to be your birthday present."
For a moment, Holly looked like she was going to cry, then the moment passed and she recovered herself. Root wondered if she finally understood why Root knew Foaly wasn't a traitor. Because to Foaly, Holly was the daughter he'd always wanted. "Oh," she breathed.
Emmet stood up and walked over to her, taking hold of her hand firmly. His eyes were wide, but dry.
"I'm sorry, Emmet," Holly said, touching his helmet lightly with her free hand. "They're not here right now." Root noticed that Emmet's face, however somber, was dry of tears, completely clear, at what he imagined was precisely the same moment as Holly. Holly flashed him a confused look and then knelt down next to Emmet. Even with her helmet on, there was something soft and natural and distinctly female about her posture that Root had failed to see in a long time. "Honey?" she murmured. "It's okay if you need to cry."
"I don't need to cry," he said. "I was only doing it because he told me too." One hand extended and pointed towards Artemis like the fingers of fate herself.
The great god of the machine turned. Artemis. Artemis was a genius. A crazed, wounded, and very possibly homicidal genius.
Four sharp gazes flashed up to where Artemis had been standing a second before, only to just catch sight of him slipping through the mouth of the dome. His discarded helmet rolled unsteadily across the dirt flood, like an egg, and came to rest at Root's feet. Root bent down and picked it up. He considered, for a moment, the mechanics of humans using magic, and the story Artemis had told them, and the AMN base Holly had said was close by. Then, as the only recon officer present, he assumed authority.
"Catch him."
Holly bit her lips, then handed Emmet over to Foaly like a sack of potatoes, pulled out a gleaming gun in each hand, and shot a steaming hole through the wall. Her wings snapped open, buzzed a few times in protest of the sudden heat from the melted iron, and then she jumped into the air and zoomed out into the sky.
Root turned to Foaly and Dippet. "You stay here."
"But-" Foaly tried to stop him, but he glared.
"No. Stay."
"Honestly," Dippet snorted, "he's not a dog-"
But Root was already charging out the door, drawing his shiny 4000 and turning it on. It hummed in his hands like a living thing.
0o0o0
Holly's heart was beating faster than it ever had before in her life. She didn't ever remember feeling this alive, she didn't ever remember feeling this angry. She could hear Root's harsh breathing through her headset, accompanied by the mechanical click of his weapon as he set different autofire zones. It felt good having a gun that big below her, reading to pick off her enemies. Her infrared vision showed a severely overheated body moving with surprising dexterity through the densest cover of debris.
"Root," she said into her headpiece. 20 degree east, 30 degrees up from my current location. Fire down that beam."
Root grunted in affirmation, and Holly swerved upward sharply as three bright blue jets of light shot through the sky, striking the thick beam. It roared with heat and collapsed into the wreckage beneath, throwing up the harsh scream of bending metal. A cloud of rust and dust rose around the area, briefly dampening Holly's vision, but the dot she was watching, the dot that was Artemis, stayed crystal clear. It paused under the new obstacle, then began to climb up. Holly glared, appalled at the shear gal of it, trying to face her, a heavily armed Vice Captain while completely defenseless.
"Target is rising," Root said. "I have a clear shot to the supports under the bridge. Stay airborne. Holly: try not to shoot him, will you?"
"Shoot-" Right, it was Artemis she was chasing, not some random terrorist. The thought of him enchanting Emmet into tears, though… that made her angry. But how had her done it? Emmet had shown none of the regular symptoms of mesmer. It was hard to check the red eyes, but she would have been able to feel the magic on him, certainly, and even if he'd whined to go back up, an emotional plea like the one she'd received… The more she thought about it, the more certain she was it hadn't been anything she'd ever seen before, and that made her pissed as hell.
She wrenched back to visor on her helmet, turned up her speakers, and got ready to yell the scowl off one immature brat.
Then Artemis climbed up on to the top of the collapsed beam, and Holly remembered why she'd brought Emmet down to the Haven in the first place. Artemis straitened up like a god, like a statue. He was white as marble, dark hair whispering around his face in the ethereal winds, thick lashes and black eyes staring right at her, right into her… soul, or something. She stumbled to a halt on a ledge a few feet from him, wings whirring and clicking behind her.
He stared at her calmly, and suddenly she wondered how she'd thought he was looking at her soul, when he wasn't looking at her at all. He was looking through her, like a fish or a bird.
"What are you doing?" She gasped.
He blinked slowly. "Goodbye, Vice Captain Holly Short."
She took a step forward. "Wha- Where are you going? Why?"
He shook his head, turned around, and started to walk away from her.
"Don't turn your back to me! You must be about ready to pass out," she shouted, then added quietly to Root, "Permission to fire?"
"Permission granted. Fire at will."
Holly set her gun to low, then licked her lip and pushed it up a little past civilian force. He didn't even glance back as the lasers heated under her fingers, warm even through the fabric of her gloves. Three short beeps told her it was ready and she fired sharply, perfectly strait, arm jerking faintly with the delayed report from each.
There was a flurry of movement, so fast that Holly couldn't understand where it had come from or what it was doing until the clarity filters in her helmet caught two frames, two human faces. And then Holly's three shots froze in mid air, like suspended glow sticks, completely halted. They shone brightly for a few second, so bright that without the smart filters they would have been hard to look at, and then blinked out.
"Root," Holly breathed. "Two humans, do you have a clear visual?"
"No. Send me a chart."
Her fingers twitched as she sent him the feed from her camera, then she focused for the first time on the two people in front of her. They were both women, medium height, willowy, wearing blue uniforms, tall black gloves and boots and broad, yellow armory belts across their hips, curiously similar to Holly's own outfit. They were almost identically built. One of the girls- because they were young enough to easily be called such, in their early twenties at the oldest- had dark skin and long black hair loose around her shoulders. There were wide cutouts along her uniform, a triangular one dropping down from her collar bone and two long ovals from the narrowest part of her waste and ending at halfway down to her knees. It looked indecent, and Holly's lip drew back slightly. The other girl's uniform went all the way up her neck, but her gloves were open on the fingers and she had one hand spread out in front of her, awkward and frail. Artemis didn't even glance back at them.
"Artemis!" Holly shouted, in one last ditch attempt to get him to face her, to make him explain.
His head turned just slightly, so that she could see a sliver of his ghostly profile against the sky. "That is not my name," he said simply, then stepped off the bridge and dropped out of sight.
"Stop!" The scream wrenched out of Holly's throat like all of her anguish taking flight all at once. "You can't leave again, you bastard! You can't leave us! Artemis!"
"You heard what he said," the dark skinned girl said. Holly stared at her, stunned and horrified.
"Who are you?" She asked. In her ear, Root was talking fast.
"Target cannot be hit unless you retreat. Vice Captain, retreat. I order you to retreat. I order you-" She ignored him.
The blonde girl shifted slightly, almost like she was shy. "We are guards."
"Guards of what?" Holly asked. She made a show of turned her 3000 away. She wasn't sure what they wanted. There was cold sweet on the back of her neck, heavy with the knowledge that they could belong to AMN, but somehow they didn't look like what she'd imagined members of a lethal organize would.
The dark girl smiled playfully. "We are the Guards of Speed," she said, like she was explaining something that should have been very obvious. "My sister makes things slow down, and I make things speed up." She winked, then slammed her hand onto the ground. The metal exploded where her fingers brushed it. Alarms in Holly's helmet screamed, but Holly was frozen in place, because the solid iron, solid iron was suddenly-
Furious, boiling liquid, shooting out towards her like a crack in ice, leaping and roaring and-
She had her wings to thank for her life. The air above the iron heated instantly to white hot and was pushed up by the downward weight of the cold air above it. The sudden gust of wind swept her backwards like so much dust, so hot that she could feel the whispering, dangerous heat even through the reinforced, high-tech material of her clothes, threatening to find even the slightest week spot between the fibers and turn her to ash inside her uniform. She gritted her teeth and began to accelerate backwards as fast as she could.
"Captain, fire!" She shouted.
"Firing in three, two, one," Root said calmly, and then the entire world was swallowed in blue light.
Holly had only seen the full fire power of the 4000 used once, during a demonstration from about 1000 yards away. Here, only a few hundred meters from the target, it was a stunning sight to behold. It raced up the street, a cylinder of brilliant cyan light extending from the tip of Root's gun, cone shaped for about five meters before it reached its maximum diameter- more than twice her body height. The pavement beneath it was torn to rubble feet in advance of being hit, the sides of buildings peeled away before its crushing power. A thrill of fear went through Holly as the blonde girl raised her hand again, but this time the light barely slowed.
Holly slammed her visor shut as the beam hit the bridge; the last afterimage burned into her retinas was that of two frightened girls, hair blown back and face illuminated with ghastly light, staring death in the face before the platform exploded.
Holly raised her visor a crack a few second after the roar reached deafening levels and then vanished, leaving her ears ringing. All that remained of the bridge was a white hot metal stump. This time, the blast itself created very little wasted heat energy, and only the metal itself warmed the air around it until everything shimmered. The pavement below of decimated, open all the way to the wrecked sewers. Even if Holly couldn't smell it, she could feel the vile reek of waste thickening the air around her. Her wings buzzed a little harder to compensate for the sudden increase in humidity in the air.
"Direct hit achieved. Target neutralized. Report."
"No other threats detectable, Captain" she said, then paused. "Permission to pursue Fowl?"
Root sighed tiredly. "Denied. Holly, we need to rearm, get you an effective weapon, and ensure the other's safety. Don't you want to make sure nothing has happened to Emmet?"
Holly stared numbly out at the city.
"Root… what do you think he meant? 'That is not my name'?"
"I don't know. Come on, let's go."
Holly stared at the spot where Artemis had disappeared in helpless fury, hands curled painfully tight inside her gloves.
She flipped off her speakers. "Don't think this is the end," she whispered into the dark space of her helmet, which felt, for the first time she could remember, more like a lonely extension of her body than a sanctuary. Her words were as much a warning as a promise.
0o0o0o0o0
You guys are amazing! Thank you so much for all these reviews.
Review Replies:
Holly Marie Fowl
Thanks! I'm glad you still like it. I think I'm really going to finish this one. For a while I wasn't sure.
TexasDreamer01
Heh, making you stay up was my plan all along! Bwahaha! But seriously, thank you so much for betaing for me. I just posted the redone chapters, you are amazing.
mercenarymoon
Sad and amazing is what I am going for ;). The Aztec Incident? I'll have to see if I can't read that…
Tanglenight
I'm glad I've continued, too! I am trying to work on the spelling errors. TexasDreamer01 actually betaed chapters 1-3 for me just recently, so that is very exciting. The background research is actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Information is so easily available these days, it's not even hard. Don't worry, there won't be any romance. I just… feh. I don't write it.
andaere
Hehe, I love Artemis angst too. He'll be back, I promise. Nike's part of Artemis, of course, but Artemis is essentially the main character bits. Like, the part that has emotion. And I'm so glad you've been enjoying this, I really am. I've been pouring my soul into this the last couple of weeks.
sheluby94dreamer
Woot! Thanks for hanging in there through all these ridiculous, plotty chapters. For some reason, whenever somehow doesn't post an update in a while, the first thing I always think is "Holy crap, what if they died? What if they're dead and this account is just rotting and I will never know what happens? What if they haunt me because that's what's making me upset? NOoOo!"
I'm predicting 5 more chapters. I like writing this much more than I thought I would. Now with added GOD and FEMINITY and DEATH and VILLAINS. Expect more illumination in the next chapter- more exciting illumination- and possibly… a certain lost race?
