A/N: Yeah, I know, there isn't enough dialogue, but it's coming in chapter three. At this point there's no one for Holly to talk to.
Chapter Two: The Disc
Holly wanted to die; she willed herself to die. But when half-an-hour had passed and she was still stubbornly alive, she pushed herself to her feet and looked about, her eyes emanating despondency and despair. Even the most dejected person can only remain in one position for so long.
A month's acquaintance with dead bodies left her numb, and the sight of them scattered across the tunnel floor for as far as she could see garnered no response. Mechanically, she picked her way down the hall, with no particular objective in mind but to kill the time before she dropped dead of exhaustion and dehydration, or a final explosion decimated the remainder of Haven. After several minutes of walking, she came upon a body she thought she recognised. Crouching down beside it, she pushed aside the arm of another body which lay across his face. Yes, it was who she had thought it was – Dr. J. Argon, the famous psychiatrist who had written extensively on Artemis Fowl. Holly sat back on her heels and looked at him for a while, feeling nothing. Strange how obsessed he had been with the mental workings of a mud boy. But he had been proven right when Haven was attacked, and before he'd died, he had made sure every fairy knew it. Holly didn't know when Argon had died, but she guessed it was when his psychological briefings to Commander Kelp had ended a couple days ago. Holly could have accepted the breaching of Haven much more easily if she hadn't been forced to acknowledge that Artemis was the cause of it. And he had not endangered the fairies accidentally, as he had so many times when he was younger. This time he had made it known that he was doing it on purpose – he wanted the fairies exterminated. It was this which really stung Holly – since meeting Artemis and witnessing his change from heartless fiend to arrogant, yet somehow humble friend of the fairies, she'd supposed there was some good in mankind, and the differences between fairies and humans seemed lessened, nearly inconsequential. But then he had reverted.
Artemis' father and mother died within a few days of each other. An attack was made on Artemis' life, but it had been thwarted by Butler. However, when Butler and Juliet were killed soon after, his grief had manifested itself as cold fury. He'd tracked down their killers and discovered the shocking truth – a new element inside the fairy Council following Root's death had lobbied for the assassination of Artemis and his family, and the movement had passed almost unanimously. No one was to know of it except the Council – not the LEP, and certainly not fairy civilians. But Artemis didn't know this – he only knew the fairies had killed his family and friends. Ironically, this caused him to become exactly what the fairies had feared he would all along.
While she was thinking these thoughts, it occurred to Holly that Argon was grasping something protectively in his right hand. She tried to pry the hand open, but his grip on whatever-it-was belied his lifeless state. Eventually she opened his fingers enough to see a tiny fairy disc in its casing. She pulled it out and looked at it. In small fairy lettering across the case, it said "Artemis Fowl." This was hardly surprising since Argon had ate, slept, and breathed the mudman since the attack. But looking closer, she saw a date beneath the name. The disc had been made a good ten years before. A cold chill swept over Holly for reasons she did not yet understand. Something wasn't right – she could sense it. She got to her feet with something of the old fire returning to her eyes, and continued walking down the hall. She had to find a computer and see what Argon had on the disk. Maybe it was nothing, but if it was what her fairy intuition was hinting it was, it could change everything.
Just then another explosion, much closer this time, shook the tunnel and knocked her to the ground. When it ended, she rose up on her newly skinned knees and set off down the hall at a faster and faster pace, until eventually she found that she was sprinting. She had no thought of getting away or saving herself; she didn't want to be saved, after the evils she had seen. She wanted only to see what was on the disc before she died.