Disclaimer: I've said it enough times, haven't I?
Author's Note: Again I put out a plea for people to review when they find mistakes. Anything from a spelling or grammar error to my knowledge of Canon or Ireland falling short. Please. If you do I'll give you praise and a plushy doll of your favourite AF character as long as it's not Root or Grub.
Thanks to: Tie Kerl, (breakfasted is a word surprisingly enough. And I believe Root has lots of possibilities.) Bride of Lister, (I don't know what to do with your spaces. I can't even see what you're saying when I view the page. Does that happen to you on other stories? On other stories of mine?) The Seasyngr, (I was hoping that more people would have put together the parts of my plot. I've been despairing in the readers of late and I don't know how to put in more hints. I'm glad someone can see it coming together.) Ivycreeper, (Yes, you do sound like a bloodthirsty creature. But that's better than a MS-loving one. I'm glad you like my Amalbus Dinnerware – I was picturing a few people in my head as I wrote the parts of Cheryl and Betsie and they are the types who host those bloody things. I couldn't help myself…) and Dreamy-eyes and Midnight (I'm sorry if it's confusing at points it's just that when I'm writing I'm trying to be subtle and I think I'm letting on more than I actually am. Sorry but hopefully it should all come together at some point.)
And to Skywise from whose bio I stole my quote for the chapter. Sorry for that Emma.
And also to Skye Firebane because I nicked the idea of the name 'Johann' from her.Chapter 7
Romeo and Juliet"We work in the dark, we do what we can. Our doubt is our passion, our passion is our task and the rest is the madness of art."
-Henry James
Liam stood still and breathed in and out a few times before entering the room once more. His sister on the bed looked paler than usual and her dark hair stood out in stark-relief against the white of the pillowcase and the pallor of her skin. But the least comfort was the placement of her body and hands, which quite clearly said that they had not moved to those positions on their own accord. She was lying straight in the bed with her hands pulled over the blue quilt and sitting upon her chest. Liam couldn't stop the thought that it was like a body laid out for a funeral from sneaking into his mind.
The scariest thing, apart from the unnatural aspect of the illness in the first place, was the way that even though Jac had a very high fever she wasn't moving at all. She wasn't throwing herself around in an effort to get away from the heat and she hadn't moved at all since she had been found by Cathy in a faint not much more than 24 hours ago. It was as if she wasn't even having feverish dreams and it was because of that Liam was so scared. No dreams meant that her mind wasn't awake. She was comatose.
Liam heard the door open behind him and Marcus came in almost silently and re-took up his place beside Jac's head with a fresh cloth for her forehead. Liam himself sat down on the side of the bed and took one of his sisters hands in his and stroked it aimlessly for a time as his eyes flitted around the room at all the little artefacts that made it so special. But soon he replaced it on the bed, trying to move it so it looked like it had been dropped naturally and stood back up in agitation.
Everything he could see in the room was a painful reminder of the fact that his sister wasn't really there.
He was just about to flee from the room yet again when the door bell rung.
* * * * *
The car wound up the drive slowly and with a certain degree of caution that went everywhere with Butler. It was surprising enough that there hadn't been a proper gate onto the Brambling property but the circumstances such as he understood from what Artemis had told him were very suspicious. If, as it appeared, the mysterious code was linked to the illness of Brambling's younger sister then someone with quite a reasonable amount of power and influence had to be involved. They could only guess right now about how these humans might know of the fairies and how the links fitted together but hopefully when – if - demands were given then they might know something more.
Butler stopped the car and quickly got out, moving to the front door. He looked back at the car and saw that Artemis clearly hadn't even realised the stop and was still staring, unseeingly, at his lap. Then just as he was about to move and open the door, Artemis looked up and realised the change of scenery. As his charge opened the door and stood up, Butler saw the gold coin with the hole vanish back into a pocket - clearly Artemis had been so lost in thoughts about the fairies and his own reactions to them.
Artemis smoothed his trousers down and pressed the button for the doorbell.
It was less than a minute when a very bedraggled Liam Brambling who looked as if he'd spent several days in a windstorm without a comb opened the door.
But as he registered who was standing on the doorstep his mouth fall open in shock, he was stunned and frozen in place. It didn't even wear off as Artemis pushed past him into the Hall, took off his warm coat and hung it on the hallstand.
In fact, the first to recover from Artemis' well thought out display was Marcus, who had come down the stairs to assist Liam with whoever the visitors could be. And his words were what shocked everyone else into moving once again.
"Romeo!"
Artemis looked around him looking at first for the source of the call and then for whoever it might be directed towards.
"Romeo Butler! I thought you were employed by the Fowls. Haven't seen you in ages, cousin. How long? And how's the little sister going? She's in training isn't she?"
Marcus had made his way down the stairs in a hurry and gave a heart-felt embrace to Butler who was still only half-way through the doorway.
"Marc." Said Butler affectionately slapping him on the back.
Liam and Artemis were for once in agreement in their confusion of the situation. Liam looked as if this was just a painful straw to add to the camel's back and Artemis was just looking back and forth from Butler to … the other Butler. And then his ears snagged an unoccupied part of his brain and started screaming for attention.
"Romeo…" Artemis mussed, "Romeo and Juliet... You never told me your name was Romeo." And with that Artemis felt a hot flush of embarrassment - which he barely managed to subdue - at not knowing the true first name of the man he'd known all his life. "On your passport it says your first name is 'Johann'. You told me that your name was Johann when I asked you. You lied?"
"Johann's my middle name, Artemis. No one calls me by Romeo. It was my parent's joke as you can guess."
"But… How could I not have known?"
"I'm sorry, Artemis. I just—"
"Juliet even calls you 'Butler' most of the time and when she doesn't it's 'bro'."
"Does it matter?" yelled Liam.
Quite clearly it did matter to Artemis but he took a deep breath and just turned to Liam. "Can you tell me what happened to your sister?"
"She collapsed last night at about 7 pm." He started leading the way up to the room where Jac lay. "She hasn't woken since. At first we thought it was one of her severe allergies – cashew nuts, pistachios or mangoes – and so we called an ambulance and injected her with adrenaline but it wasn't. Luckily. She's still in a fever and I think it's now a coma as well." They had reached the door with Artemis listening attentively and here Liam stopped. "Why did you come, Fowl?"
"Because I was curious as to what all this had to do with Taliesin and some other friends I know."
Liam's mouth dropped open and he froze in place then recovered, speaking too quickly. "Taliesin? I really don't know what you're talking about, Fowl."
"That just incriminated you as well as your essays in your school account do. Your little pseudonym for writing letters to the public, don't you remember? Haven't you figured it out yet? This isn't a natural disease. It was created to make your sister sick and so whoever it was making it could control what you write."
"But… Why would they? What would they want me to write? And why would I do it for them?"
"They have the antidote – probably something only temporary – and they'll give it to you in return for you writing something which is about whatever they want it to be about. And as for what it might be about… religions, wars, anti-American, pro-Iraq, lies in the UN, communism, defence of nuclear warfare, anything!"
Liam still looked hopelessly lost so Artemis simply pushed past him for the second time in five minutes and into the room. Liam shook his head a few times to clear it then followed him.
Artemis had his hand on Jac's forehead and moved the hand that Liam had so artistically placed down on the bed in a natural way back onto her chest so that he had room on the side of the bed. "You called an ambulance?" Liam nodded. "And…? Why isn't this girl in hospital?"
"The doctor thought it was only a faint from stage fright - she had her school concert on yesterday night - or maybe the flu. She's worsened recently. I didn't want to get a doctor back to see her because I don't think they'd recognise it either. And it could cause more harm than help."
"I agree." He felt her neck under the chin and stood back up. "Do you have a needle and a chemistry or biology set so that I can test her blood for foreign bodies?" Liam looked blank. "A microscope at least?"
Liam shook his head yet again.
Artemis was stunned. "What have you been doing? She's not going to get better by you watching over her. I… I can't believe you. Not figuring out the real code is one thing but just … sitting here worrying! I don't believe it. It's important to you so why aren't you doing anything?"
"Okay, but what was I meant to do? And what real code?"
"Figure out whatever it is that's making your sister sick! And you never did figure out that if you broke the code up into its components - splitting up the Greek from the Ghnommish and the Chinese, etcetera - and translated each one separately there was another message inside it. Messages about bio-weapons and one aimed to control Taliesin."
"Ghnommish?"
Artemis started slightly but recovered and ignored the query. "I don't even know why I'm trying to help you." He stormed past Liam and back out into the corridor.
"Butler." He called.
Butler was standing at the end of the corridor next to… the Brambling Butler. He nodded.
"Can you go back to the Manor and get things which you might think we'll need to figure out what this disease is – set of standard chemicals, my strongest microscope, anything else you see that might be useful."
"Certainly Master Artemis. Cousin Marcus is to take care of you until I come back. I trust him." Artemis nodded his assent. "I'll be back A-SAP."
"Thankyou, Butler."
Butler strode down the stairs and out the front door as if barging into a strangers home and then barging back out and, in general, acting as if you owned it was a completely natural thing to be doing.
Artemis turned to Liam. "Just so you know, I'm not doing this for you, Brambling."
"Then why are you doing it at all?"
"Because of— I want to— I don't have to explain myself to you."
* * * * *
The underground room was dark and dank in nature and atmosphere. The high ceiling was vaulted but this was more because of the moisture that ran down the walls rather than for any aesthetic value it might have. Flickering electric lights sat at intervals along the walls but beside the centre stage-like platform Quentin Thyme had insisted on having flame-torches for the guttering effect they threw around at the occupants of the room.
It could not be argued that the torches made the green skin of the sprite look particularly eerie and surreal. And no one would argue if they valued their own skin.
There was a small group of AAA members with their purple armbands standing at attention before the terrifying spectacle of their leader. The armbands were another invention of Quentin's - worn to inspire fear and awe when the public was faced with a member, even if they were alone. It was dark purple with a single white 7-pointed star in the centre – a point for each of the seven leaders and ideals of The Ancients. It was the symbol of the fairies who were more powerful than their bastard children who now live beneath the earth in fear of the Mud People. The symbol held meaning to everyone below ground. This was another thing that Quentin had discovered from the Mud People who are so eager and ready to go to war. In the Second World War (Quentin was highly amused at the fact that they had seen fit to number them as if it was expected that there would be many after) Adolf Hitler had taken a Hindu symbol for peace – the Swastika – and reversed it to create a new meaning and a new Swastika of his own. It was appropriate to take a symbol of power greater than anything else and use it for identification.
Quentin's voice echoed up the vaulted ceiling and back down when he finally broke the silence. "Friends," he called. And no one was going to admit that they were not friends of Quentin because that would then make them enemies. And no one wanted to be enemies with him. "What was that display today?"
There was silence. A young sprite in the front row opened his mouth as if to speak but at a nudge from the veteran next to him, closed it again.
"Okay then, I'll tell you what it was. It was immature. It was badly considered. It was petty. It was unorganised. It was… pitiful. I've told you before that our first proper strike has to be the best, the most flawless, the most viable step to fear. Now, with that unwanted effort of today and those of recent times we are now exposed to the LEP as something they have to watch out for, something they are curious about. This isn't what we want. They should fear us immediately. Fear us so much that they don't know what to do when faced with one of us. So much fear that they hide rather than fight. So much fear that they don't know who we are; and don't want to know for fear of new nightmares where the demons come out and can be identified as fellow Fairies. This isn't because we are unable to fight… but because fear as deep as that only breeds more fear and in not many years we would have complete control over all the pathetic creatures who wouldn't be able to even fathom leaving their living rooms.
"We are going to have a proper strike and we are going to implement it soon."
Were this anyplace else, with any other leader, there would have been cheering. But here there was only more terrified silence.
"Briggs. You have the parts that you need for the bomb?"
One dwarf towards the back nodded.
"Including … my suggestions?"
The dwarf paled but nodded again.
"Good. The rest of you will understand how it should be done very soon. Even the shadows will be too scared to show themselves in our presence once we finish."
* * * * *
Basil Rune gulped noticeably and then stood like the majority of the members present. He moved towards the crowded exit and with one look back at Quentin, left the meeting room. He couldn't stand to live this lie every moment – a lie that wouldn't even let him escape in sleep – at least, not for much longer.
* * * * *
Artemis turned his back on Liam and stalked back into the room where Jac lay. He moved quickly about the bed and once on the other side spun around quickly.
"Does it matter why? Just be grateful that I'm doing anything for you."
And with that he was once again businesslike, with a cold stability that eludes most people whatever the situation. Liam blinked once again and his eyebrows furrowed as he contemplated his classmate. Artemis Fowl was definitely someone who… then he half understood, as much as anyone can understand. Artemis Fowl is someone who can't quite comprehend what they're capable off. Someone who might even be scared of their own mind. Someone who was just like a 'normal' person in that he doesn't understand his latest series of actions.
Liam was halfway through congratulating himself on this insight and even comparing it to his own situation when a phone rang. Artemis shifted around to find the offending mobile and pulled it open with a flourish.
"Yes, Butler?"
Artemis half-frowned and changed his tone when he heard the voice on the other end of the line. And what the speaker was saying was obviously shouted because Liam could hear every word.
"Fowl! What do you know about this disease thing? And you better hope to all the Seven Lords that this isn't one of your tricks or 'enterprises' because if it is Root's going to kill you. Twice!"
Fowl's enterprises? The Seven Lords? Then Liam's mind snapped back to the important thing. The disease. Someone else was involved in this disease. Liam's eyes strayed to his sister in the bed.
"Foaly. Did something happen to Hol—Short?" The silence on the other end of the line answered for him. "It's not one of my … activities. Trust me. I don't even know what it is or why it involves the Fairies. Or from the other point of view, why it involves Humans."
Liam blinked in curiosity. Did Fowl just identify a group of somethings as 'Fairies'? And talk as if these were somehow separate from humans?
"I swear I know next to nothing about this. And everything I know is from deduction and some coded message that was freely given out up here. Captain Short isn't the only one who's been targeted. I'm at the house of a … friend," this word was said with distaste, "who was also implicated in the code. His sister has got the same disease as Captain Short has, I presume."
The answer to this wasn't loud enough for Liam to be able to tell what was being said but it went on for a reasonable amount of time.
"Right. That would probably be best. Definitely. You do know that the existence of The People would have to be exposed to—"
The speaker on the other end obviously cut him off.
"Ha! You insult the name of a genius just by existing, Foaly. So you're going to—Right. Do you need me to tell you where-- Okay!" Fowl's free hand flew up in an unconscious gesture of exasperated surrender.
"Right." And Fowl snapped the phone shut. And his eyes flickered slightly in anger or something when he caught sight of Liam on the other side of the bedroom. And then changed from the insecure boy that Liam had deduced before in an instant.
"Change of setting is always good. We're going to be moving your sister to a new ward. Do you have a large room without many furnishings that we could set up as a workroom as well? We need to…"
And with that Artemis Fowl completely took over the Brambling house. Jac was moved downstairs to the library and a long table was set up in preparation of the things which Romeo Butler was retrieving from Fowl's own home. And when it finally got too much and Liam was about to flop down on the floor in despair the doorbell rang for the second time that night. And Liam followed the other boy out to the main hall to be greeted by the strangest looking people he had ever seen. And they were just about to cross the threshold.
Liam's shock was in his wide-eyes and his mouth that was hanging open to the cold air from outside.
"What are they?!"