Quiz: Commander Markin Rose has been mentioned once before in a previous story. But, which story was this? Which chapter? Why was he mentioned?
It may have been late in the Lower Elements, but they knew that Markin Rose would have to work late as leader of the Guns & Gangs unit anyway. With Foaly having been told to stay back in his Ops booth and protect The Obelisk, Artemis led Holly and Cecily down the corridor towards Rose's office. Once they reached it, they couldn't quite decide if they should barge down the door or actually knock first. In the end they decided to knock, mainly because Holly didn't like the idea of Artemis trying to break something down again.
"Come in" A loud, deep voice said from the other side of the door, so Artemis slowly opened it.
"Commander Markin Rose" Artemis said, and Rose looked up from the stack of papers on his desk.
"I am a very busy elf, please make this quick." Rose said, staring at Artemis. Artemis stared back, just to see if Rose would flinch, but he wouldn't, so Artemis smiled instead.
"I'll make this quick for you" Holly joined in, seeing as she was an actual LEP operative. "Commander Markin Rose, you are under arrest for Treason, illegal access to the LEP mainframe, Conspiracy to commit an act of Terrorism, 13 counts of murder by proxy and a further 64 counts of assault with a deadly weapon by proxy. And that's just for the assault on Police Plaza. I could go on for everything else you've done, but it should be clear enough that you're going to spend the rest of your life in a hole deep inside MaxSec, and will never see the light of day again."
"Nicely done" Artemis said, still looking at Rose, who had by this point turned rather red in colour.
"How dare you!" He seethed. "How dare you come into my office and accuse me of such crimes. I do not know what you think you know, or what wild goblin chase you have latched onto the tail of, but I had nothing to do with the attack on Police Plaza. That was a dark day for all of us, you know that, and to be accused of being a part of it is defamation. I strongly suggest you get out of my office now whilst you have the chance, or I will end your careers, all of you. Whatever you think you have, I can turn it on you in an instant, and you will regret ever accusing me of these acts."
"I liked that" Artemis said, refraining from starting a slow clap. "But I'm afraid you have a few problems."
Markin Rose looked like he was ready to explode. Artemis liked that too, it worked to his advantage.
"A very nice and passionate speech" Artemis started. "Granted it was more passionate towards saving your own reputation that anything else, but we'll gloss over that for now. You think threatening us will be enough to get us to run away, which in itself shows that you're scared, because you know we're close and you don't just want us to stop, you want to make sure we never look into it again. Threatening to ruin someone's career is a good step in that direction, but you chose the wrong people to threaten. The fact is we already have the evidence against you, and you can't bully us into abandoning it. You almost had an invisible paper trail that we couldn't follow. We were scrambling to piece together the puzzle, but you had one fatal flaw. You hand wrote your own letters. And they led us straight to you."
"Ha!" Rose exclaimed. "Handwritten letters? Is that all you have? There's no way of proving those letters were mine."
"You obviously haven't met Foaly" Artemis said. "Everybody's handwriting has tells, specific to you, such as the way you curl the end of your lines. We found these letters in the possession of someone working for you, hidden away. For a long time, we couldn't we couldn't understand why he was part of this, until we found out he was an anti-police anarchist. Ironically, he had no idea he was taking orders from a high ranking LEP officer, not initially. I accessed your records, just before we came here, and I found you made a 6-hour trip to the surface several months ago at the same time your accomplice was, to retrieve a prisoner who fell under the remit of Guns & Gangs. This prisoner and your accomplice were integral parts of releasing highly dangerous prisoners from MaxSec, who would all turn up at the siege of Police Plaza. I dug deep into all your deleted, redacted files and had them un-redacted; every single prisoner released from MaxSec was released under the jurisdiction of Guns & Gangs, which is led by you. This is all one coincidence too far for me not to come to the conclusion that you were involved."
Rose had waited for Artemis to finish, before slamming back his chair and standing up, pointing his finger, his face getting even redder. Artemis might well have been slightly taken aback, if Markin Rose wasn't just over half his height.
"You have no concrete proof of anything!" He practically screamed. "All you have is hearsay and coincidence. It is not unusual for me to make surface trips to take in high risk prisoners. What happens once they're incarcerated is none of my concern, none of my problem. I run one of the biggest departments in the LEP, my signature goes on a lot of documents. It wouldn't be hard for somebody to copy it without my approval, to frame me. Or are you just looking for a big target? Any link you think I have to this is born out of circumstance not proof, but just because Ferran Goy and the rest of the small guys in this twisted conspiracy are dead and can't answer for their crimes, you come after me instead! I have never heard something so ridiculous in my very long life. Get out of my office before I have you all detained. Now!"
Artemis had been waiting for a moment like that. He had baited Rose in perfectly, waiting for him to slip up. As soon as he heard the name Ferran Goy, he raised his head slightly- which was hard to do considering he was still trying to make eye contact with Rose. Both Holly and Cecily noticeably clocked it too.
"I didn't mention any names "Artemis said, calmly. "I specifically didn't mention any names, for this reason. Nobody told you that Ferran Goy was a part of this."
"Are you kidding?" Rose said. "His mysterious murder has been all over this precinct, it's not hard to know his name. It's not hard to know that he was bent."
"His murder, yes" Artemis said. "Maybe even that he was corrupt. But there's no reason you have ever had to specifically name him for this conspiracy, not unless you knew he was a part of it. Also, can I just point out that, for all the threats you've made given the damning evidence we have against you, that you still just want us to leave. You know that having us detained will only put more of a spotlight on you, don't you? You just want us to disappear. I'm afraid that isn't going to happen, because this is over. You are over."
Rose steadied himself, then looked Artemis dead in the eyes.
"It isn't over. It won't be over until Haven rises from the ground and humanity is wiped out. And, it starts with you."
"GUN" Cecily suddenly yelled, drawing her own. Artemis pretty much pushed Holly out of the way as shots rang out inside the office. There was a small explosion as the light above them shattered, plunging them into darkness.
Then there was silence.