*waves* Hey ya'll! Chapter 3 finally up—sorry about the delay. I spent the whole weekend doing some exhaustive fanart for a friend… and studying for exams of course! I was going to just upload what I already had written, but remember, this is old and when I reread it, I really didn't like some sections. So, I rewrote it! Sorry it's so short, though… it's sheer plot exposition!
Reviewers: I'm going to post replies at the bottom! I love you all so much, though. Your reviews are the Breath of Life to my story, honestly. ^_^
Chapter 3
One gleeful elf, a shuttle ride, and two sick humans later, Artemis was slumped in a chair in the waiting room of the Police Plaza. He tried to ignore the menacing and fanciful people around him. It wasn't hard; he was using all his concentration on not throwing up.
He wanted to die.
"I hate shuttles," he told himself out loud, earning him even more curious looks from the gnomes, dwarfs, elves, and sprites that crowded the room. He felt very conspicuous as the only human there. Besides Butler of course, who was sitting stone still and looking just a little greenish.
Captain Short reentered the room. She spotted Artemis and proceeded to haul him from his chair.
"Come on Mudboy," she ordered. "Root wants to talk to you."
Artemis allowed himself to be unceremoniously dragged down the hall by an elf half his size, all the while vowing revenge just as soon as he wasn't sick...
At long last, they reached Commander Root's office. Artemis glanced around the dingy, windowless little room before turning to face Root's desk.
"Lovely place you have here."
Root's face may have darkened, but being nearly purple already, the change was a little hard to notice.
"Shut up and sit down, Fowl," was all he said.
Artemis sat down, pointedly taking a while to get comfortable while Root went through some more interesting color changes.
"So, Root," he said finally.
"Mudboy," Root interrupted immediately. "Let's get some things straight. As much as it pains me to say it—which is a lot—we need you." He winced. "Ooh, the agony."
Artemis very carefully did not let a smug grin spread across his face. He had always known he would get Root to admit his help was needed someday. He felt all warm and fuzzy as another one of his life goals was fulfilled before his eyes.
"So Fowl," Root continued. "I'll explain everything you need to know, and then we'll need to take you down to the new labs. Later we can take you back up to …"
"Commander," Artemis said suddenly.
"What?"
Artemis glanced down to his long fingers. "What was it… last time we talked… You know, that whole alien debacle? Well, you called me something I think, just before I left… What was it again?"
Root grunted. "A sniveling, traitorous, cowardly, greedy little defective excuse for a pathetic Mudchild." He stiffened when he heard what he had just said. "Er... I mean a valuable asset and irreplaceable part of our cross-species team?" It looked as though the words pained him to say.
"Right," said Artemis. "That's what I thought."
Root scowled deeply and sent Artemis a furious stare from beneath his heavy eyebrows. Artemis lifted one of his own slender eyebrows, and waited.
"A—situation—has come to the attention of the LEP," Root said finally. "We believe that the matter involves your species…for various reasons." He cleared his throat. "The fact that we are asking you for help should show just how serious this is."
For once in his life, Artemis kept his mouth shut. Maybe Root's mood was infectious; maybe Artemis just didn't feel like making a snide remark, maybe he was getting soft. Root was silent for a brief moment as if expecting comment, and went on with a faint air of surprise when he realized there was none.
"To fully understand the problem," he said, "We're going to have to take you down to our labs to see something. All your questions will be answered there." Without further ado, he stood up and ushered Artemis out of the office, shutting the door behind him.
Holly Short fell into step with them as Artemis followed Root down the hall. She turned to grimace at Artemis, then engaged in a whispered conference with Root. Artemis didn't try to listen. It was obvious that the fairies were determined to do things their way, whether he liked it or not. He just hoped they would stop playing games soon and get to the issue at hand.
"We're going to have to go down the street to the science compound," Holly announced as they turned a corner. "It's just a short walk but most of the city's inhabitants have never seen a human before. Since we over here at the LEP have a little policy that goes 'Don't cause mass panic, except on Tuesdays', you're going to have to wear a disguise."
She and Root ducked into a room opening off the hallway, and Artemis followed, wincing as his head brushed the top of the doorframe. The room was filled with racks of clothing and hundreds of cosmetic containers.
"This is basically the costume department," Holly told Artemis. "We've got any thing you'd ever need for an undercover assignment." She started rummaging through one of the clothing racks, and finally turned, pulling a black cloak out with a flourish. "See?!" she said. "The answer to our problem!"
Artemis looked levelly at her. "That's my disguise? A cloak."
"A big cloak," she corrected him. "You just put it on-" She demonstrated. "Pull up the hood—and tada! Either a very large elf or a somewhat small troll!" The fabric shadowed her face completely, falling to the floor and beyond, puddling in wide black pools at her feet.
"Thank God for the brilliant minds and advanced technology of the LEP," Artemis said, taking the cloak from her.
A few minutes later, they were hurrying down the crowded sidewalk. People of all shapes and sizes veered out of the way as Artemis approached.
"Could you try not to be so big?" Holly hissed, unobtrusively kicking a passing sprite that happened to bump into her.
"Excuse me," Artemis hissed back. "I'm sorry for not being able to shrink at will!"
"Well, hunch over or something because people are looking at you!"
Artemis thought that the stares might be spurred more by the huge bloody black cloak he was wearing, but he gritted his teeth and tried to oblige. A dwarf gave him a terrified look and leapt out of his way.
"I hate all fairies," he said under his breath as he stalked along.
"Talking to yourself is a sign of insanity, Mudboy!" called Holly from somewhere in front of him.
Artemis was relieved when Holly pulled him through the door of a tall steel-and-glass building. She led him down a labyrinth of gleaming white halls, studded on either side by formidable metal doors. They saw no other fairies as they went.
Finally, Holly stopped in front of one of those uniform doors. She folded her arms and looked at Artemis, who looked right back.
"Well," she said. "Go in."
"I thought you were going to explain everything to me when we got here."
"I will," she said. "In there." She was obviously not going to say any more.
Artemis very nearly rolled his eyes—fairies—but managed to keep his face smooth as he opened the door.
He walked into the room. It was brightly colored, with soft walls, and dozens of shimmering fairy toys littered the floor. It looked like a dream of a child's playroom. Artemis let his eyes sweep the perimeter briefly, but when he saw the figure seated at the center, he blinked and nearly lost his composure.
The most beautiful girl he had ever seen turned her face up to him and smiled.
She looked to be about his age, maybe a few years younger, although she was small and slender for her age. Her hair was long and red-gold. It fell in bright waves down her back and over her shoulders, brushing the smooth cream of her cheeks and clinging to her neck. Artemis' gaze moved to her lips, full and red, and her ears, which seemed odd somehow, underneath those masses of hair….
When he got to her eyes, he completely lost his balance and sat down, hard. On the floor.
Her eyes, a soft, clear blue, were as empty as a doll's.
She turned her head back towards him at the sound, and smiled again, reaching out awkwardly in his direction. Her arms seemed unsteady and thin, like those of a newborn child or the victim of a long illness. When she moved, her hair swung forward, baring the tips of pointed ears.
Artemis stared, without moving, at those eyes. The pupils were gone, missing. A wide sweep of golden lashes framed flawless irises, blank and perfect like a cloudless sky.
"She's blind," Holly said, coming to stand beside him. When he turned to look at her, the fairy's features were carefully dispassionate, but when the girl on the floor looked towards her voice, an indefinable emotion flickered across Holly's face.
"What…" Artemis said, and cleared his throat. "Why?" The girl smiled again, and crawled toward him on hands and knees, clumsily. She stopped just short of him, and reached out, tracing his features with delicate hands. He sat inert, unable to move away from her touch.
"Two weeks ago," Holly said, "A pair of LEP officers on a routine sweep in an uninhabited part of the city stumbled upon what seemed to be an illegal genetics lab. The scientists at the lab put up a resistance, and as hard as LEPrecon tried, all but one were killed in the ensuing shoot-out. Before the last could be arrested, he took his own life with a shot of poison. Inspection of the lab yielded dozens of illegal technologies, most using Koboi patents. Even though all Koboi-manufactured items were seized by the LEP after the company collapsed.'
'In a back room, this girl was found. The officers at first took her to be human, but closer inspection revealed fairy characteristics—the ears, for example. It's a pity nothing could be learned from her—as well as being blind, she's mentally handicapped, all brain growth inhibited at a human level of about two years. Genetic analysis revealed that she was sterile as well, and LEP scientists discovered the reason—chromosome incompatibility."
"Because she's half fairy, half human," Artemis said wonderingly.
"Exactly," Holly said, and her voice was cold. "Human genes and fairy genes are so inherently different that the resulting incompatibility rendered her blind and mentally retarded as well."
She turned to Artemis, her eyes glinting angrily. "Research like this is outlawed for a reason. Nearly fifty years ago, when the field of genetics was first being explored, scientists tried this. The embryos they created never survived—with the exception of one time. That one embryo, when brought to term and allowed to grow, was recognizable as neither human nor fairy. No intelligence was present at all—while the creature could go through simple routines, there was no communication or feeling ever witnessed. It was no better than an animal.'
'They kept it in a lab somewhere remote—trying to hide the evidence of their own failure, I guess. Thirty-five years ago it attacked its caretakers and killed them. It took a LEP squad to finally bring it down."
Artemis shivered, suddenly more aware of the girl in front of him, now poking gently at a toy, a metallic butterfly with silken wings that lifted into the air at her touch.
"LEP needs to find whoever is behind this. It wasn't an isolated incident—as well as the Koboi things, there was over a million human dollars' worth of open-market equipment in that lab. It was being funded by somebody."
Artemis' mind was racing as he considered the possibilities, but suddenly one question stood out in his mind.
"This is very interesting," he said coolly, "But it seems to me like this is a fairy problem. Things at LEP must be pretty bad if you're bring me in just to track down a couple of mad scientists."
Holly smirked suddenly. "Not just a fairy problem, Mudboy. There were messages on their computers from an email address on the human Internet. No, I'd say this is very much a human problem as well."
Trisani Slytherin- Sorry about the reviewing inconvenience, that's been fixed. Now why don't you try again? ; )
Ryyan- Thanks!
Kitty Rainbow- I'm glad you think I've done well, and thanks for the tips on Artemis' speech—I'm still subconsciously letting my own speech patterns fall through to my writing, but I'm working on it! And the National German Party… It's got an explanation (of sorts) on my author profile…
Kelti- Glad you noticed the fairy-tale detail (ooh that rhymed). I hope this chapter answered some of your questions about "the girl" and the LEP pod thing was a blooper on my part. Good catch!
Blue Yeti- I've read some of your work; it's absolutely gorgeous and I'm honored that you like this!
Ciza- You liked it so much, you posted five times? Lol just kidding—thanks anways!
Sora Potter- I'm trying, I really am! Stupid school…
Animefanatic07- Well, Artemis isn't quite normal… his parents think so, though! And while Artemis is a genius, in terms of experience and sheer mechanical knowledge, Foaly probably takes precedence in technological matters. I usually think of Artemis as more of a logistics/creative thinking genius.
Addicted- glad you think so and glad you like it!
Thanks again ya'll!