A/N: No, I don't mean freak.

Artemis Fowl: The Book of Ages

Artemis the Phreak

Strangeroads Prison Facility, Derbyshire, England

"What are you going to do about… her?" asked Foaly hesitantly.

Holly almost laughed at the absurdity of the question, but quickly regained her composure. She didn't stop her flight towards the back end of the prison though. A few seconds passed before she actually answered.

"I… don't know," said the elf quietly, staring past Foaly's image on her visor to the quickly-passing dark ground below, "is there anything we can do?"

"Well you can't just leave her in there can you?" asked the centaur with concern in his tone.

"You don't know Artemis' plans like I do," Holly replied, "they're… brilliant… but they're only so flexible. If you throw in something like this… it may ruin it."

"You know, you could always just ask the Mud Boy," reasoned Foaly.

The captain slowed her flight and quickly dropped down to the ground, cutting power to her wings a few feet up and landing softly on the dark asphalt. Right in front of her was a steel case mounted high on the wall. It had a small Plexiglas window on it and a pair of thick wires extended from the bottom of it, running towards the ground. It was an electrical control unit for the prison- one of at least half a dozen.

"Not now," Holly said into her communicator. She unhooked her wings and opened the small bag attached under the nuclear battery. She pulled out a thick black hexagonal box about the size of her hand. It felt a lot heavier than it looked though.

The captain reached up and placed the magnetized backing of the device against the control's case.

It didn't stick.

"Foaly!" she hissed into her microphone, "It's not holding!"

"Hmm," hummed the centaur as Holly watched him peer into the monitor on his end, "too much plastic I imagine. You could try melting the surface of the case and attaching it that way."

"Won't that cause a power surge?" asked Holly, gently setting the black device down onto the ground.

"Unlikely," answered Foaly, "the case is insulated and it's pretty thick. Just make sure you use a wide-angle, low-frequency setting on your Neutrino."

The captain nodded reflexively (though Foaly obviously couldn't see it), and pulled out her blaster, adjusting the settings with both thumbs before aiming it at the box on the wall.

She took a breath and steadied her hands, then fired.

The deep red pulse of the weakened beam splayed across the section of the wall, flowing towards the control unit almost like a liquid before dissipating into the plastic, metal, and surrounding concrete.

"And here I always thought Neutrinos were used for shooting people," muttered Holly as she held the weapon steady, carefully watching the cover of the box give way. She was glad her helmet had air filters right now- the smoke from the melting material looked like it smelled pretty awful.

"Stop," ordered the centaur.

Holly released the trigger and dropped the weapon, grabbing the hexagonal case and pressing it roughly against the control's melted, but quickly-hardening cover. As Foaly predicted, the cover didn't melt all the way through.

It stuck- crudely, and looking like it was glued on by a six-year old with a hot-glue gun and too much enthusiasm. But it stayed attached.

"Done," said the captain.

"Now for the west wing," added Foaly.

Holly looked at the timer on her helmet display.

Forty minutes left.

Holly Short had attached two other devices onto two more Strangeroads control units by the time her countdown display hit twenty-five minutes. Her bag was a lot lighter now, though it wasn't completely empty just yet.

Right now, she was hovering over a wide outdoor space set aside for inmate recreation and exercise. Needless to say, despite the fact that it was outdoors, it was surrounded by a thick, barb-wired wall on three sides and the cafeteria section of the prison on the fourth.

By Holly's count, there were no fewer than sixty human inmates, about half as many fairies, and a dozen guards in the courtyard. It was an overcast day, so there wasn't any direct sunlight, which meant there were more fairies out than usual. The relatively high inmate to guard ratio was probably due to the fact that only those inmates who had earned 'excellent behavior' ratings could come out. Naturally, it was a rating that sprites- the only species inside the prison which could fly- were never allowed to earn.

Though most of the people in the yard kept to themselves or only chatted with one or two others, there were actually two rather lively games going on before the elfin captain. One was a human game Holly had only vaguely heard of from the aboveground television stations, and the other, she had never seen before. The first she knew was called basketball; the other that she had no name for involved hitting a white ball back and forth over a tall net with one's arms.

That wasn't the surprising bit though. The surprising part was that while both games' players were mostly humans, there were actually a few fairies sprinkled on each of the four teams involved. Now, they didn't seem particularly good at what they were doing- height being an obvious issue- but the very idea of such an occurrence even being possible boggled Holly's mind.

"Foaly, are you getting this?" she asked in amazement.

"Getting what?" asked the centaur.

"This…" Holly repeated, panning her view around so her helmet's camera caught all that was going on.

From what she had seen from Artemis' iris cam of the situation inside the cafeteria, this looked like an entirely different place. Apparently, games were more effective at reducing social stigma than she could have imagined. Interaction that wasn't permissible in a lunch room seemed almost normal outside. It didn't go without notice, though, that many of the games' onlookers- human and fairy alike- didn't exactly seem to approve, with some expressing disapproval much more obviously than others.

"Sports?" asked Foaly, raising an eyebrow on the visor's image. Then he paused, "Oh… I get it," he chuckled softly, "you've never seen this before have you?"

Holly shook her head but then quickly muttered a "no," when she remembered that Foaly couldn't actually see her.

"It was never exactly common, but things like this did happen back when we made first contact and suppressed the Haven rebellion with the help of the Mud Men." The centaur shrugged almost sadly. "I guess the only place it ever happens now is in prison. It helps that a few of the Mud Men down there are imprisoned Humanes, I suppose."

Holly blinked hard and shook her head quickly.

"Alright, let's do this…"

The elfin captain ripped the Velcro fastener from a pocket on her thigh and dipped her hand inside. It came out grasping three chrome spheres, each small enough so that all three together were just a large handful for her.

Holly glanced at the spheres and the humans below and felt almost sentimental. The last time she had used these was a long time ago. It was a memorable night- though not in a good way. It had been in an Italian restaurant during a recon mission that caused the LEP's damage control team a month-long headache. That was also the night that had her ending up in a concrete cell in Fowl Manor.

This was not a good time to be reminiscing though.

"You've got the cameras right?" Holly asked as she began to rise higher above the courtyard.

"Of course," answered Foaly, seemingly quite pleased with himself, "I slowed down the frame rate of the six in your area to about fifty frames a second and replaced the missing frames with spliced copies of the images before and after. As far as shielding is concerned, these cameras are just as ineffective now as your average home video cam."

"You know, a simple 'yes' would have been enough…" muttered Holly, "Alright, I'm setting these for fifteen seconds with a five-second alarm."

Holly pressed a button on her helmet with her free hand and opened up the audio connection to Artemis. She switched it to 'send.'

"Arty, this is your twenty-second warning. Get ready."

She counted silently to five, and then thumbed the release on the spheres, throwing them off in separate directions before pushing her throttle to quickly ascend. She kept her eyes straight at the sky as she sped upward, though she was listening for the sounds to come from below.

She was not disappointed.

"Arty, this is your twenty-second warning. Get ready."

Artemis had been ready for a while now. He didn't really have much to do but get ready for the last half hour or so. Sitting in a prison cafeteria when you didn't have an appetite really wasn't all that interesting, after all.

The wall separating this room from the courtyard was to his back, and the side of the cafeteria where the fairies stayed seated was in front of him, probably to avoid the sunlight that would come through the windows behind him on a sunnier day.

No matter what the reason, it still worked out in Artemis' favor.

He caught Commander Kelp's eye and waited until he heard a loud beeping sound coming from outside, muffled by the wall. He got up like most of the curious inmates were doing, but instead of turning to the windows, he raised a finger and pointed it at a spot on the wall right behind the commander.

Artemis watched as the confused elf swiveled his head around and looked for what it was the he had pointed to.

Then he closed his eyes.

FLASH

BANG

Though loud, the blast wasn't really the explosive kind that sent everyone to the floor.

Actually, aside from the sound and light, the building was completely unaffected- no shaking, no glass breaking, nothing. The flash also wasn't what you might have expected from a fireball, which was quite understandable, since there was no fireball. It was more the sort of light you saw during a thunderstorm, when you're indoors and lightning strikes close by, throwing everything in the room into a sharp dark and light contrast for a moment before quickly disappearing.

Of course, this particular kind of device wasn't for knocking down buildings- otherwise, there would have been much stronger objections from everyone present as soon as someone brought up the idea of deploying them in an area full of people.

As it was, the three spheres that Holly Short had dropped onto the prison courtyard were designed to simply induce unconsciousness on anyone who happened to be looking at them when they went off- the alarms were simply to attract attention. The Recon teams called them- quite appropriately- flash-bangs. Though from his position, Commander Kelp was unlikely to have been affected, Artemis didn't want to take chances.

The boy opened his eyes.

All around him, people were slumped on the tables, in their seats and on the floor. The ones further away from the window were moaning lightly, but the people who had been closer to the windows were completely passed out and didn't make a sound. If this was the effect of the flash-bangs though several large windows, it was pretty safe to assume that everyone outside was knocked out. Well, everyone except one airborne elf.

But not everyone in this room was out cold.

"We're under attack!!" yelled a guard who was, rather obviously, quite conscious.

Holly Short landed in a crouching position on the concrete roof of the cafeteria building. She surveyed the scene before her with a quiet satisfaction. Inmates and guards alike were lying on the ground, unmoving. Some appeared to be in very uncomfortable positions. A basketball and the white ball that the elf had seen before rolled off aimlessly on the asphalt.

Directly underneath her, Holly heard loud shouting going on in the cafeteria. She opened the video feed from Artemis' end and watched with some relief as humans and fairies ran towards the back of the large room with paces that ranged from nervous to frantic. The fact that the iris cam's vantage point constantly shifted and was occasionally blocked by blinking let her know that Artemis hadn't been affected by the blast.

She looked on as Artemis watched one of the guards grab a medical kit from the wall and drop down by an unconscious inmate. The man grabbed a small flashlight from his pocket and looked to be examining the prisoner's eyes.

Then Artemis looked away.

"Cut the power," ordered the boy quietly, whispering into his mike so that his voice came out a bit raspy on Holly communicator.

She didn't need to respond. Instead, she thumbed the voice-activation on her helmet's computer and spoke in a clear voice.

"Activate EMP One."

The first electromagnetic bomb she had set nearly forty-five minutes ago went off.

Now, television would have you believe that when such a device is detonated, a bright blue shockwave would dramatically emit from the center of detonation (somehow, the shockwaves were always blue) and race outward in an expanding ring, causing electronics to spark, fizzle and die as they were hit.

The truth was considerably less dramatic. When the first EMP blew, all that happened was that the control unit it was mounted on gave off several loud popping noises before growing silent. The pulse didn't even affect anything past the control box. The activation also triggered a seal inside the device, which broke and mixed two rather volatile chemicals together, reacting to reduce the bomb into little more than a smoking pile of metal, but that was just Foaly's failsafe in case anyone found his technology, and had nothing to do with blowing out human electrical systems.

There were EMPs in existence which made loud noises, looked pretty (or scary), and affected a large area when they activated, but fairies didn't use those. Humans did. Those were called nuclear warheads, and this wasn't one of them.

That wasn't to say it wasn't effective.

The electromagnetic pulse didn't immediately have an effect that was noticeable throughout the entire prison. The visitors' center still operated more or less normally, and it was here in the relative calm that a pair of humans was just leaving Strangeroads.

"Thank you for your time and cooperation, Mr. Templeton," said Hunter, giving the man a thin smile.

Opal stood nearby, holding a large metal briefcase in both hands and looking a lot more restless than usual, though she seemed happy. Well, as close to happy as she could get. She kept on glancing at the waiting limousine parked just outside.

"It's been a-" began the prison supervisor, just to be cut off by a voice from the radio of a guard standing next to him.

"Somebody get Director Templeton!" said the garbled voice, "There's been some sort of… explosion in the courtyard… inmates are unconscious… Power's been shut down in the D Block!"

Templeton held a panicked expression on his face for just a second before he swallowed hard and grabbed the guard's radio. Holding it up to his mouth and roughly jabbing the switch, he spoke quickly, already beginning to head back to the prison's security center.

"What the hell do you mean 'there's been an explosion'!?" he asked through clenched teeth as he began walking rapidly away from Hunter and Opal, "Well, somebody get Manchester Police on the line!"

Hunter looked at the retreating man thoughtfully for a moment before turning to Opal.

"Go to the car and stay there," he said, glancing pointedly at her briefcase, "I'm going to see what I can do to help."

"Why bother?" hissed Opal, "It's probably just a malfunction and an overexcited guard."

Hunter smiled. "Even if that's the case, this is a very good opportunity to make a sales pitch for that security system I've been trying to get contracts for."

Opal rolled her eyes. "Fine, whatever, just get back quickly, I have work to do."

Artemis Fowl wasn't the kind of person who was easily pushed around. But he was being rather rudely pushed around right now. The ones doing the pushing couldn't really be blamed though- they had just seen most of the people in the room get knocked out and were trying to get away from whatever it was that was clearly trying to hurt them.

The entire cafeteria's lights had shut down and the surrounding hallways were just as dark, leaving the only light being those from a few exit signs and a hall some distance away. The inmates ran like moths to a light bulb.

It was Trouble Kelp who made it by Artemis' side as the crowd pushed and shoved in the darkness. Always the professional, he dispensed with greetings and got straight to the point.

"How many men did you bring with you?" he whispered, the din of the crowd covering his words so that only Fowl could hear.

"Men?" asked Artemis, giving the commander a tight smile, "We have Holly somewhere outside with a pair of wings and a gun, if that's what you mean…"

Trouble gave him a look of disbelief and muttered something along the lines of "no tactical sense."

He huffed as they were pushed past the doors at the back of the room and into a crowded hallway where a few guards were unsuccessfully trying to guide the mass of humans and fairies.

"So what's the plan, Fowl?" asked Trouble.

"Activate EMP Two. Activate EMP Three." Holly looked with satisfaction as two more lights went dark on her helmet display- the other e-bombs had detonated and melted. The area with the solitary units had just lost power. So had the main security center. She switched off voice command and turned to Artemis' channel. "Arty, how are things going down there?"

"I'm with the commander." Fowl said over what sounded like a large crowd of people, "We're making our way to the segregation units now. We're near the hallway leading to it, and it looks like the power's gone out there too. Can you confirm that the security system is on backup power?"

Foaly's image nodded at the captain. Obviously, he had been listening as well.

"They're on backup. Just tell me when to broadcast; I don't want to blow your eardrums out."

Artemis actually let out a short chuckle. "Will do, captain."

"Uh, Artemis… there's one more thing," began Holly hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"Um, well, you see, in the segregation section… um…" stammered the elf.

Foaly gave an exasperated whinny from his lab and grabbed a microphone on his end.

"Fowl, can you hear me?" he asked quickly, interjecting into Holly's line.

"Foaly? Yes, I can hear you."

"Listen to me carefully, Fowl." Holly saw the centaur close his eyes and rub his temples as he spoke slowly and clearly. "Lieutenant Colonel… Holly Short is being held in solitary unit… HMP0079…" there was a long pause before Foaly spoke again, "can you get her out?"

Artemis Fowl actually stopped running. He and Trouble were already in a darkened and deserted hall, some distance away from the general confusion of the veritable mob of inmates, guards, and newly arrived medics in the cafeteria and nearby hallways. The guards who usually patrolled this section of the prison were off helping control the inmates. They were probably glad to have something to do, really. Guarding the solitary section was probably the most boring job in the entire facility. After all, who could break out? And who could even want to break in?

Trouble kept on running for a few seconds before he realized Artemis had stopped and doubled back.

"What is it?" asked the commander.

Artemis relayed Foaly's message.

Trouble stared at him for a full five seconds before slowly drawing a breath.

"Does it… matter if we get her out?" he asked hesitantly, "I mean, if we complete the original mission…" he trailed off without finishing the sentence. But Artemis knew what he meant.

"No, it doesn't." Artemis answered with a frown.

Foaly heard the exchange and made a frightened noise. "But you can't just ignore the fact that she's right there! Look Fowl, for whatever it means to you, Holly's not just another prisoner, she's my friend! Uh, no offense captain."

"No, I understand." Holly replied. There was a silence on the communicators for a moment before Holly spoke again. "Arty, look- I know it's kind of weird coming from me… but if it were any other LEP officer, or heck, if it was any friend of mine, I'd say we try it."

"Please…" added Foaly.

Artemis closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. "We'll… try it."

"But…" he added, cutting off Foaly's thanks, "I can't make any promises."

He and Trouble started running again. They had wasted enough time stalled in the halls.

"So?" asked the commander, who hadn't heard the whole conversation.

"We'll make it work," replied Fowl. "Holly, start making your way to our location, we're near the segregation units now."

"Roger," replied the elf. It sounded a bit strange saying it to Artemis though.

It took another five minutes before Trouble and Artemis reached a T-junction in the halls.

"Foaly, there are security cameras here," hissed Fowl.

"Before you ask," said the centaur, "yes, they run on an independent power source and are working, but they can't be accessed right now because the monitoring station's lost power and yes, I already did what you were about to say. The hall was deserted except for you two so I'm just giving the cameras a running loop of the last three minutes. Not like it'll matter, the cameras can't see anything right now- it's too dark."

Artemis headed immediately for a red telephone in a similarly colored case mounted on the wall.

"Artemis," called Trouble, tugging at the boy's prison shirt.

"Yes?" replied the boy without looking down.

"Look," said the commander.

Fowl turned away from the phone and followed Trouble's pointed finger to a door that was right behind him. Room 0079 was right there.

Artemis made a quick about-face and peered into the small steel-barred window. It was dark inside- the power to this entire section had been cut after all. There was little enough light in the halls, and Artemis couldn't see anything in the darkness he now looked into.

"Lieutenant Colonel?" he called out.

He thought he saw movement, but nobody answered.

"Holly, is that you?" he tried again.

Again, nobody answered.

Artemis shook his head at Trouble and whispered, "We'll deal with this later."

He moved back to the red telephone and unhooked the receiver.

That's when someone spoke up behind him.

"Yeah, I'm Holly," came a voice that sounded so much like the Holly Short that Artemis knew, but with a much harsher and embittered tone, "What's it to you, Mud Scum?"

Well, at least that much was clear now.

Artemis didn't respond though, he knew what he needed to know now. Instead, he spoke into his throat-mike.

"Hol- uh, captain," he said, "where are you?"

"Still near the cafeteria Arty. I can't fly too fast or somebody's going to notice a draft from my wings. Give me another five minutes."

"Fine," replied Artemis, "then I need you to play the sound file I prepared. Three one-second pulses, I'll tell you when to begin."

"Alright, I'm opening the Red Box file now."

Artemis slipped the sticky beige dot of a speaker from behind his ear and pressed it onto the red phone's speaking end. He dialed zero on the keypad.

"Begin," he whispered.

The beige speaker made three low, but shrill whistles.

Perhaps a bit of explanation would be helpful at this point.

Among the many things Artemis Fowl was known to be skilled at, computer hacking was certainly one of them. It was during this process of learning how to navigate the lesser-seen parts of computer networks when he was a child that he came across what was generally considered the predecessor to hacking: phreaking.

Instead of undermining computer and internet systems, phreaking served to take advantage of telephone systems. The art (if you could call it an art) relied mostly on utilizing specific frequencies of sound to override telephone switchboards which used to depend on such sounds for making the right connections. It wasn't legal, but back in its heyday, phreaking was most commonly used just to get free long-distance calls. Not exactly a threat to national security. But since the rise of digital telecommunications, phreaking became more or less a dead art.

It was too bad Strangeroads Prison was built well before the digital age. It was also too bad that the newfangled fairy-spotting security cameras took up enough money so that the phone lines were never upgraded.

English tax money hard at work: working harder in some places than in others.

It wouldn't have been too hard to guess what command the three whistles gave to the prison's central security system.

Artemis pulled the tiny speaker back from the receiver and stuck it back on his ear. He nodded to Trouble and they began to make their way to the end of the dark hall, to cell number 0075.

Seconds later, the first gate clicked open. Two soft red lights still glowed on the remaining door- one above a keyhole, the other above a number pad.

Artemis immediately punched in a long sequence of numbers. One light turned green.

Trouble gawked at the boy.

"How did you get the weekly code?" he whispered.

"I didn't." Fowl answered, "The weekly code is stored on a temporary memory chip embedded in this door. The chip needs a constant electrical current to keep it active, so when the power went out, the weekly passkey was deactivated. When backup power came on, nobody was here to reprogram to code, so it was switched back to the default number."

The boy smiled, "Only one company makes this kind of security system in Europe, and the default codes are easy to get if you know what to hack."

Trouble shook his head, though he wasn't sure if it was entirely in disapproval.

"And now," said Artemis, "we wait for Holly."

"She has the last key?" asked the commander.

Artemis nodded.

And now, they waited.

A/N: Phreaking is real (no, you probably can't break into prison with it in reality). Also, fun fact about phreaking- one of the most famous phreaks was an American who was named Joybubbles. That's his full and legal name. No, I'm not making it up.