A/N: Most of the section dividers in this chapter are just for switching between Holly's and Artemis' perspectives.
Artemis Fowl: The Book of Ages
Chronology
'This is not happening… this is not happening… THIS IS NOT HAPPENING…'
Holly was sitting on a low cot on one side of the observation pod. She was drenched in cold sweat, which formed faster than her suit could wick it away. Her hands were grasping the sides of her head with an iron grip, pressing against her temples as if the action could take away the pounding she was feeling in her brain.
It was all gone.
Everything the People had worked on to preserve their way of life, their peace, their homes, their families. Everything the Lower Elements Police had built up as some measure of confidence that they were secure, that interspecies conflict would never again mar the face of the Earth as it had ten thousand years ago.
It was like the history books were coming to life. The killing fields of Taillte, the battle for the Yangtze, failed diplomacy in with the humans near the Nile, the collapse of the Frond Dynasty.
The retreat from the surface.
Fairies tried to avoid war at nearly any cost- even withdrawing into the bowels of the Earth, just to see its surface taken over by another species.
Now she was seeing every fairy's worst nightmare playing out before her in incomprehensible languages and terrifying images. She was almost glad her magic was gone- at least she didn't have to understand the occasionally frantic, but usually cold human commentary on the systematic search and seizure of fairy forts worldwide.
Holly realized she was shaking, and drew her knees up against her chest slowly, still staring forward though not actually seeing.
'If we came five years too late, then it was more than a decade ago that I should have been captured… is this all because I ended up safe in my own bed that night instead of drugged and trapped in a concrete prison?'
The elf focused her vision at the pale teen across from her, who was watching several newscasts and reading an online newspaper at the same time.
Right now, Holly knew that she would rather have been kidnapped by a conceited, uncaring, evil little boy a thousand times over than live in the reality she was in now.
Arty was gone.
That wasn't saying, of course that the boy was physically gone. It was just that the side of the young Fowl that would have let anyone even call him 'Arty' was, at the moment, hidden somewhere deep in the recesses of his psyche.
Artemis Fowl, the criminal mastermind and child prodigy extraordinaire, was the one watching the outside world right now. He dully noted that Holly was something akin to a bag of nerves right now, but focused more on the flashing pictures and text before him. Time was not on their side, and they needed as much information as they could get to back them up before coming up with a plan.
He needed answers.
The most obvious question would have probably been: What the hell was going on with the world?
That, at least, was slowly being answered. Artemis did not like the answer much.
Then, of course, there was the question of where Trouble and N°1 were. To that, he had no answer. There was the worst case scenario naturally, but he didn't want to believe that had happened.
Finally, there was the all important question: how to fix the world.
'If I had a gram of gold for every time someone tried to answer that one…' thought Fowl, 'I'd be… well, I'd be richer, I suppose.'
His face twisted into a slight grimace as he mentally chided himself. Thinking of gold at a time like this!
Two newspapers hung in the air before him, even as a ten year old news clip of a tall German reporter spoke quietly to his left. The print articles scrolled up at nearly a page a second, and Artemis was actually pressed to concentrate in order to read them quickly enough. At least they were the same language. To most other people, the words would have been a blur, but to the boy's trained eyes, they showed a terrible tragedy.
Artemis accelerated the video playback, and the German began speaking nearly twice as fast.
They needed information. And they needed it now.
Once again, Holly Short was back to feeling completely and utterly useless.
It obviously wasn't very rational of her, as she had just saved Artemis' life hours earlier, but when elves had their emotions strung up, they tended not to be too rational. How long had it been since Artemis had begun 'reading the news' as he put it? Hours? It certainly felt like hours to Holly, but really it was probably less than one.
The quickly shifting pictures on the newscast and the completely foreign words were really getting to the elf. Especially the language thing. It just felt so… unnatural for her not to be able to understand what the humans were saying. It was an ability so innate for fairies that for Holly, not having it was like suddenly going deaf.
She gave in and spoke for the first time in what seemed like a long time.
"Artemis…" she began slowly, and saw the boy's gaze flicker down from the images to look at her, "can you stop for a minute?"
Fowl's brow knitted ever so slightly, but he quickly pressed a button on the cube in front of him which paused all three holographic screens.
"Yes?"
Holly moved to sit on one of the beds so she wouldn't have to look at him through a hologram. She took a long look at his impassive face before speaking again.
"Tell me what's going on" she said seriously.
Though to her, it sounded more like a plea.
Artemis blinked and felt like he had forgotten something very important. Well, obviously he had. In the back of his brain, he probably knew what was going on, but he was too preoccupied to realize it. With the urgency of the situation, he had unconsciously slipped back into his old mannerisms, taking in information, formulating a plan, testing possible scenarios, and completely ignoring everything else.
'Oh, right…' he realized, a bit late, 'I should probably tell her…'
When he saw her look though, and remembered what he had just been reading and listening to, he grimaced. He took a shuddering breath and tried to think of the best way to put things.
"I've gone through about four years worth of major fairy related news reports… and it isn't good."
Artemis saw that his hands were shaking a little. Curious, he had been perfectly fine when he was reading.
"Tell me," ordered the elf with a hard look, "and start from the beginning."
"Of course."
The boy laid one hand on top of the other to still them and took another breath.
"Eleven years ago, I was supposed to… kidnap you."
Holly didn't react. Artemis continued.
"That never happened here, so this is the set of events that is more stable than the world we're from, that doesn't rest on a paradox. Just over ten years ago, fairy sightings around the world skyrocketed. Or more precisely- goblin sightings, mostly in Ireland and southern France."
Artemis pulled up one of the articles he had been reading earlier- the one with the goblin image on one side. He saw Holly cringe at the sight of the multiple bullet wounds on the fairy's chest. The text was in French, so he summarized and translated it for Holly.
"French police found a goblin apparently wandering in an abandoned farm around the Côte d'Azur region a few miles from the France-Italy border. The goblin was originally thought to be just some child in a costume- but then when it saw the humans, it started throwing fire around. Police… tend not to take too well to being attacked by fireballs, and they reacted… and fired back with handguns."
Holly's expression darkened and she spoke with a low voice.
"What happened to LEP incident control?"
Artemis shook his head.
"I have to guess that they failed, or got there too late. The body disappeared from the lab where it was being examined though a few days later. The LEP probably got it back then, but the pictures were already out. People who had been paying attention to the story passed it off as a hoax, and the examiner who had believed it was a real unknown species was disgraced and fired from her job.
"The next reports came nearly a year later, but they were all just moonlight sightings, nothing too substantial. A small group of Irish scientists were independently checking the reports though, and they were gaining evidence for the existence of the People. Four months after the French sighting, the incident at Los Angeles happened."
"What incident?"
"A goblin unshielded in broad daylight in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. It was already badly hurt and when a few humans went out to look at it, one of them tripped on something invisible…"
Holly groaned. "The Retrieval officer assigned to catch him…"
Artemis nodded.
"Yes, and oddly enough, he didn't have wings with him either. There was a whole crowd by then, so he couldn't escape. He unshielded and apparently tried to mesmerize the crowd. There were too many of them though, and he was caught."
Artemis saw the captain pressed a hand against her face and screwed her eyes shut.
"That's when the People made first contact" he whispered.
Holly snapped her head back up, and her eyes widened in shock. It shouldn't have been shocking of course, since it had to happen sooner or later with all the runaways and the capture of an officer, but still, after nearly ten thousand years of secrecy, official contact was an earth-shattering development.
"How?" she asked urgently.
"Completely unlike the LEP response to me. Commander Root actually went aboveground with only two backup officers and just… spoke to the human police chief. No time stop, no containment, nothing. It was all real time and the Commander was already at a severe disadvantage."
Holly sucked in a breath of air. Commander Root- of course, he was probably still alive in this world.
"How could Foaly let this happen without containment? We had all the tech we needed for that, even if it was an urban area!"
"I can't say."
Something was seriously wrong. How could all of this have happened? The captain tried hard to think back, wading through memories to try to find some key event that must have gone wrong, something that would have made contact inevitable.
"The revolution succeeded…" she whispered.
The very same goblin revolution that had only failed because of intervention by the two in that very room.
Fowl's face was a grim mask, but he nodded just once, slowly.
"That was my conclusion as well. With goblins in control of Haven, their recklessness would have let all of this occur when the generals expanded their territory. Anyway, the chief was already mesmerized and went to file for the release of the bodies. Still, as soon as he saw the news the next day, he had total memory recall. The news was rather bad."
"There's bad news too?" asked Holly with sarcasm on her every syllable.
"A group of about twenty goblins started attacking a rural town in eastern France, and though they were initially skeptical, the military finally got involved. Needless to say, all hell broke loose after that."
Terrible images began flashing through the elf's mind. Human armies clashing with severely outnumbered goblin gangsters, and the rest of the People caught in the lethal crossfire. That wasn't too far from the truth.
"The town was retaken, but by now Haven was desperate and the humans were frantic. The LEP eventually made contact with high level government during an emergency G8 summit. They already knew that any secrecy they had was blown, and it was pure anarchy underground, so they called for help."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," muttered Holly sardonically.
"Yes," agreed Fowl, "but unlike the goblin revolution of our timeline, this was a disaster. Government bureaucracy delayed an official response by nearly six months, but smaller, local groups had already sprung up to help one side or another when a fairy popped up. Eight and a half years ago, human forces finally responded. A joint European Union military force stormed Haven with the help of the LEP and restored order."
Holly's face turned into an expression of amazement.
"They actually worked together? So how are they at war now?"
"That's years later," responded the boy, "at that time, there were peaceful relations, and though neither side really trusted the other, hostilities were very local and far between. I suppose to both the People and humans it was sort of a surreal experience, since now aboveground travel became a lot more common among the People, and quite a few humans had actually visited Haven and Atlantis. Where I'm up to now, eight years ago, is when things turned bad."
He gave a verbal command in English to the C Cube, which immediately switched to a display of a fuzzy, almost translucent figure in the middle of a human city. Despite the poor image quality, it was clear what it was.
A warped demon in the middle of a city square.
"Oh no…" whispered Holly as her eyes landed on it.
"Demons started to land eight years ago, and the appearances grew more and more frequent over the next three years. Human paranoia grew considerably, and the relations between the humans and fairies became strained. Eventually, the British Prime Minister accused the People of intentionally withholding information about the demons."
"We had the information," said Holly, "and there's no way we wouldn't have shared it if it became a problem."
"I agree," replied Artemis, "but I think that perhaps because so few people knew about the Eighth Family, and the information itself was so restricted, it might have been lost during the revolution."
"That makes sense," agreed Holly grimly, "Section Eight was a tiny group, and its security funding was probably pulled as soon as the revolution began to get out of hand."
"That's all I've gotten up to so far," said Fowl.
The elf doubted that. While he might have only read four years worth of news, there was certainly a lot more information that he had gotten that he wasn't telling her. Right now though, she trusted him enough to believe he was giving her all the important bits without boring her to death.
"What about the space attack?" she asked, "and the meteors?"
"I was just looking into that right now."
Holly gave him a minute to read the five articles he had floating in the air. She noticed most of them had huge lettering screaming some message to their readers that she could not begin to decipher.
When Artemis was done, he closed his eyes and looked to be trying to piece together an explanation. After a moment, he started.
"Seven years ago, the island of Hybras landed on Earth."
Holly cursed under her breath.
"No one was there to control its landing, and it broke up in Limbo, as we saw yesterday. Small fragments appeared in space and destroyed a few communications satellites, before burning up in the atmosphere. But the biggest pieces materialized much closer."
A map replaced the articles as Holly watched Artemis mark three spots on the Earth with bright red lights as he spoke.
"The largest fragments landed primarily in three places: one in the Gobi Desert region of southern Mongolia, two in the Atlantic Ocean- one three hundred miles east of Halifax, and the other, five hundred miles off the coast of Ireland. The last one didn't appear in the atmosphere like the other two had, but rather materialized in the ocean itself, causing a lot more water displacement. The desert impact turned the sand into a glass crater for nearly ten square miles and caused an earthquake felt as far away as Beijing. The ocean landings caused waves which flooded the eastern parts of Nova Scotia and the northeast United States, as well as western Ireland and Scotland."
Holly stared at the map with a deadened expression.
"…and the Mud Men accused the People…" she muttered.
"They thought it was a so-called 'space attack,' and within two weeks, human governments began to move against Haven."
Artemis went back to an internet search page, as Holly assumed he was looking for what happened next. He didn't put up a new site though, but rather stared at one of the search results with slightly wide eyes.
"Interesting…" he mumbled.
Exclusive Interview with Dr. A. Fowl
Artemis continued to stare at the words with surprise.
'I guess I shouldn't be surprised,' he thought, 'I was bound to get involved sooner or later…'
"What?" asked Holly next to him.
"It's me," he said without turning.
He opened the site and a video began to play as he looked on in a sort of morbid curiosity.
An aged Caucasian man in a dark burgundy suit looked into the camera with an almost excited expression. His wrinkled face and thick-framed glasses gave him a sort of grandfatherly look, but Artemis could see from the studio setting behind him that he was an interviewer of some sort.
"This is Martin Paul," introduced the man, "and I'm here with Artemis Fowl II of Ireland, a noted expert on the fairy People and a person considered by many to be the brightest living mind. And he's only twenty one years old!"
The shot changed to show another person.
To say that this man looked identical to the Artemis who was watching right now would have almost been true. He wore a pressed Armani suit, and his jet black hair was neatly parted just a bit away from the middle of his head, not unlike one of the clip's viewers. Of course the one who was watching had his hair rather tousled by the recent events, but it still looked strikingly alike. The man on the screen had a face that was just a little longer that Artemis' own, and his cheekbones appeared more defined. His piercing blue eyes complemented a pair of thin lips that were upturned ever so slightly in what might have been arrogance, secrecy or humor.
"Artemis Fowl," began the interviewer in a joking tone "CEO. MD. PhD. PhD. PhD. DSc. Esq." he paused, "Sir, how should I address you?"
"How indeed," the on-screen Artemis gave a low chuckle, "Mister is fine, Doctor if you must."
"Naturally," laughed the newsman. He composed himself a moment later and began the first of what must have been a small book's worth of questions.
"Let's start from the beginning then Dr. Fowl. Since this is the first television interview you've granted since we media people have started asking a number of years ago, can you tell us a little about how you got into all the fairy business?"
Fowl's eyes twinkled a little and he wore a tight smirk.
"Well, before I became known to the newspapers the 'Fairy Boy,' I worked in the alternative energy sector."
"And revolutionized it with your breakthrough eight years ago," interjected Paul.
"Well, yes, there was that. Since I gave up keeping my contributions to the nuclear fusion field secret a while ago, I can say now that my company that first made fusion into a feasible energy source. The fact that I was thirteen at the time made it seem like a bad idea to get tangled with the media."
The camera flashed a look on the interviewer's incredulous face.
"I've always held a bit of a fascination with unlikely sources of power, so when the goblins started to show up, I immediately became engrossed in answering the question of what could possibly allow them to keep us in the dark about their very existence for so long. Their technology must have been incredible! But within a little time of actually studying them, I became much more interested in People themselves as opposed to their batteries."
"Well, let me get straight to the point here then," said Paul, "knowing as much as you do about the fairies, what do you think about the current situation?"
Fowl frowned.
"For one thing, I don't believe at all that the so-called 'attack' was actually what many people thought it was."
"What do you mean?" the man inquired.
"I think that the People were just as clueless as we were about the rocks. The closest thing they have to actual information about it is an old legend about a demon colony that was teleported out of time. None of the fairy scientists I've spoken to when we were on good terms ever had a suspicion that something as cataclysmic as this could have happened."
"And how could you know they weren't lying?"
Dr. Fowl rolled his eyes quickly.
"One of those doctorates you mentioned was a psychology one and I've written some of the most influential psychological research papers since Freud. I know when I'm being deceived."
The interviewer nodded in silence.
"I'm quite opposed to the military action being taken," continued Fowl, "we could do so much more with the fairies as our allies, and though we'd certainly win a war against them, we'd also destroy thousands of years worth of records on history, science, and even magic. It's totally not worth it."
"But people say that you're making millions with the military contracts for your fusion reactors which even now are being installed on every new plane, ship, shuttle and tank," accused Paul.
The image of Artemis scowled deeply.
"Make no mistake Mr. Paul," he said sharply, "I did not want to sell my technology to be put in any weapons systems. The European Union simply invoked its legal power of 'compulsory purchase' to basically force me to give it to them, and in effect, to all their allies. The fact that I am being compensated for the reactors is a moot point."
"What about challenging it in court then?"
Fowl breathed an exasperated sigh.
"I can't win a legal battle against the entirety of the EU. Not that I'm a bad lawyer, mind you, but more because of the little fact that they happen to control the courts."
"Alright, quite true," conceded the man, as he shuffled his papers, apparently to go on to something else.
"Concerning a recent statement made by the Secretary General of the United Nations…"
Thirty minutes later, Artemis and Holly were eating from packs of what looked like green slime. It actually looked greener than it was supposed to be because of the light from the glow cube in the middle of the room.
Holly saw Artemis gulp down the stuff with a distracted air, and tried to break the silence.
"The slurry's made of a mixture of algae and artificial nutrients grown in Atlantis," she told him, motioning towards the pouches they held and the ones in the survival kits on the floor.
The boy nodded absently, seemingly not interested at all about gathering information.
"What do you think of your other self?" asked Holly curiously, trying to get him to say something.
"I'm nicer than I expected," he said dryly, "But I bet I'm really still an arrogant, selfish jerk somewhere in there."
The captain raised an eyebrow.
"What, so meeting me made you humble and sociable?"
"Hardly," replied Artemis, then he paused, "but maybe I'm a better person than the man we were listening to."
Holly thought about the idea for a moment.
'Heh, well if I can make Artemis Fowl a nice person, saving the world should be easy!' she thought sardonically.
The silence enveloped them again, and the elf let a minute pass before asking the question she had been holding back ever since she found out Artemis was still alive.
"What do we do now?"
Her own voice sounded so strained and dry, despite the water she was drinking just a minute ago.
Artemis set the algae down and rested his chin on his hand with his legs crossed under him.
"Dublin's under martial law because of its proximity to the fairy fort at Tara, so our options are limited. That's also why most of the lights are out. Apparently they're afraid of an air strike, and this is part of their defense" he said with an almost mocking tone. He let out a tired sigh before continuing.
"Let me see what you were reading in the Book, I need to see if it changes anything I've thought of so far."
Holly opened up the golden volume, but quickly gasped in surprise at what she was looking at.
"Problem?" asked the boy across from her as he stood up and looked over her shoulder.
The captain pointed at the passage.
The Earth shall bathe in water and fire,
And cities of Mud shall fall into mire.
Then one great family, one of eight,
Shall fall from the heavens and peace abate.
But fear not traveler! For if it shall be found,
That even in ruins, aid will abound.
"The last two lines weren't there when I last checked," she told him.
"That sounds hopeful," Artemis commented behind her, "but honestly, that's far too vague to change anything."
He sat down again and looked Holly in the eye.
"You aren't going to like my plan," he said seriously.
Holly shut the Book and let it drop back on the chain that held it around her neck before giving Artemis a small, humorless smile.
"I never like your plans- seems I usually end up following them anyway."
"Of course," said Fowl, "Well, the way I see it, you need your magic back,"
"Yes," agreed Holly quickly.
"And we're going to need more resources before we figure out what to do about Mu. Unfortunately, finding Trouble and N°1 is going to have to come later. Right now, we don't have nearly what we need to even begin to look for anyone or anything, especially with N°1 missing."
Holly frowned. It made perfect sense of course, but she still hated it.
"It's too dangerous to go to any Ritual sites right now, since they're all being closely guarded, so we'll go for resources first."
"What kind of resources?" asked Holly slowly.
"Resources to get us to the other side of the world without questions being asked," answered Artemis, "In other words, bribes."
The captain's mouth dropped open an inch.
"No way…"
"Aurum est potestas Holly. Gold is power. Maybe power enough right now to help us save our world."
Holly stared at him with a pained expression. She knew what was coming next.
'Stupid Mud Boy… why does he always have to be right?' she thought angrily.
Artemis stood up and stared out towards the city, which was just starting to be lit up by a morning sun.
"We, Holly, are going to have to rob a bank."